Bondarev got his answer just before he ordered his fighters to engage. In one smooth movement, as it crossed the Alaskan coast into the waters of the Bering Strait, the US force split into two, half swinging north, and the other half swinging south.
They were no longer approaching Saint Lawrence. And they were still outside the Russian no-fly perimeter.
Bondarev quickly split his own force, suspecting that was exactly what the US planners were trying to force him to do, but he had no other option. Within moments he had 27 aircraft flying parallel to and about twenty miles apart from 50 US fighters headed north, and the other 27 tracking the US southern group, with the 36 aircraft of his Silver battalion staying low in the clutter of the Saint Lawrence landscape.
He told his flight commanders to stay alert. There was still a chance this was just a pincer movement, and the US force would swing toward Saint Lawrence again to slam shut the jaws of the pincer. His eyes flicked frantically from threat to threat on his heads-up display, his fingers hovering over the missile launch buttons on his stick.
But then the US fighters turned away, back toward Alaska. One group set up a lower racetrack circuit along the coast to the south, the other took a high cover position, but also set up a race track position along the north coast. Bondarev let out a huge breath, and ordered his people to do the same to the north and south of Saint Lawrence.
He moved his thumb away from the firing button for his weapons. “Gold leader to Gold and Silver commanders, weapons safe, but stay alert. Gold Control, do you see any other enemy air activity? Could this be a decoy for an attack from another quarter?”
“Gold Control to Gold leader, the board is clear,” the air commander replied. “The enemy force did not cross the no-fly perimeter. It looks like they are just rattling their sabers.”
“Roger that, Gold leader out,” Bondarev said. Roger that. If this was saber rattling, he could only imagine what tomorrow would bring, when the US deadline ran out!
“OK, they’re around the corner at the next block now,” Dave said. He’d been following a jeep that was making a regular circuit of the town, waiting for it to get well clear of the ammo dump. There were no foot soldiers near the dump that he could see, and no lights in any of the nearby houses.
Perri ignored the guidance of the digital scope, settled the crosshairs on the furthest edge of the carport roof, took a breath, waited for the small trembling circular motion of his gun barrel to steady itself, and then squeezed the trigger. The report from the Winchester sounded impossibly loud in the still night air, and caromed off the rocks around them. But before it had even registered, Perri worked the bolt and fired again, and again.
Down in the dark, he saw a spark.
“Holy hell!” Bunny exclaimed as the surveillance feed from the Fantom that had just started its run over Gambell flared bright white. In an instant, it looked like she had lost both low-light and infra-red camera coverage, and was suddenly flying blind. She quickly ordered the drone to level out, and saw with relief that it was responding to inputs. She wasn’t showing a missile launch. It hadn’t been hit.
“Laser jamming?” Halifax asked.
“I don’t think…” Bunny muttered. She flicked her fingers across her keyboard. The drone should have passed the airstrip by now and be making its run over Gambell harbor. She reached for a small toggle and taking back control of the drone’s low-light camera she swung it around, seeing the green-white flare fade and some solid imagery emerge again. As she pointed the camera toward the drone’s starboard aft quarter it became clear what had happened.
“Explosion, down in the township,” Bunny said pointing at a screen above her head. “Big mother. Look at that cloud. Showing secondaries too.”
Rodriguez and Halifax leaned forward. On the 2D screen they could see a small mushroom-shaped cloud rising over a brightly burning building at the edge of the town. Smaller explosions within the building seemed to send phosphorescent arcs of smoke out in all directions, starting other fires.
“Operation Resolve sir?” Rodriguez asked Halifax. “That looks like a cruise missile strike timed exactly with our ingress. Is that what we were supposed to record?”
“No, I…”
“With respect Sir, we should have been briefed,” Bunny said, turning her drone out to sea. “Target identification and bomb damage assessment, those are two completely different missions.”
“I wasn’t… I didn’t…” Halifax was stammering.
Rodriguez got the distinct idea that he had no idea what had just happened!
“Holy hell!” Dave yelled, at almost the same time as Bunny O’Hare, 200 miles away. He hadn’t counted, but it seemed to be on about the sixth or eighth shot from Perri, just as Dave was deciding nothing was going to happen, that the Russian ammo bunker exploded in incandescent white light.
“Run!” Perri yelled, scrambling to his feet. “We have to get down among the rocks before anyone looks up here.”
The light from the burning pyre that had once been the sandbagged carport was as bright as a dozen stadium lights. It threw crazy, dancing shadows over the slope of the bluff and the noise and light sent hundreds of Auklets squawking into the night in fright. Perri found himself running through a cloud of birds in what felt like the strobe from a nightclub light show.
They came to the edge of a group of rocks, with a large open patch of ground ahead of them. Dave would have kept running, but Perri grabbed his jacket by the shoulder and pulled him down. “Wait, let’s see if it’s safe.” He looked down toward the town.
Soldiers had spilled out of the town hall. He should have realized that’s where the bulk of them would be. Some jeeps were moving cautiously toward the ammo dump. Other soldiers were spilling out of the school, surrounding it, maybe worried about a breakout? Or with something else in mind.
No one seemed to be headed towards them.
“OK, let’s go,” Perri said, getting to his feet again.
“We did it!” Dave was saying. “We actually did it!”
“Celebrate when we’re back in the tank,” Perri grunted.
Right then, he saw a missile lift off from an emplacement beside the airstrip and arc away towards the sea, aimed at some unknown target.
“Missile launch!” Bunny reported. “Not tracking. They’re firing blind. I won’t jam unless they get a lock.”
“Are we the only aircraft in the target area?” Rodriguez asked Halifax, “Or are there others we aren’t seeing?”
“As far as I know, we are the only unit over Gambell,” he said vehemently. “No one told me anything about a missile strike. We have set up patrols over the Alaskan Coast, that’s Operation Resolve. Not specifically to give us cover, but that’s why our mission was timed now, while the Russian CAP was focused east.”
“Beginning second pass,” Bunny said. “We aren’t going to get a third.”
Halifax reached for a comms handset, “Make the pass and then get to a safe distance and hold. I’m going to try to get some clarity on this.”
At that moment, a voice came over the trailer loudspeaker, “NCTAMS this is ANR. We are showing one or more ground to air missile launches or major explosions near Gambell. Can you confirm?” Rodriguez and Bunny stole a no shit Sherlock glance at each other, and left Halifax to respond.
“Gold Control to Gold leader, we have reports of a ground strike on an ammunition dump at Gambell,” the Airborne Controller said in Bondarev’s ear. “Air defense command at Gambell has reported returns from at least one aircraft in the area, probably stealth, but they cannot get a lock. We are assessing the situation, you are to prepare to engage the US airborne force over Bering Strait on our order. Standby. Gold Control out.”