“Hold position please Gold flight leaders,” Bondarev said with calm dread. “Weapons free. Prepare to engage US aircraft on my mark.”
Please, he said to himself. Please just let us fire first!
As they scrambled down the slope at the outskirts of town toward the safety of their underground bunker, Perri saw another missile lift off from the airstrip and speed out to sea. The Russians were shooting at something, but what? Whatever it was, it made it less likely they suspected a kid with a Winchester had blown up their ammo dump, and Perri was glad about that.
“OK, down down down,” Dave said urgently as he hauled open the trapdoor to the tank and waved at Perri to jump in.
Feet on the rungs, Perri took one last ground-level look at the boiling white column of smoke rising up over Gambell.
Now the shit really got real, he thought to himself.
AMERICAN CARNAGE
Bondarev knew the crew of the A-100 Airborne Control aircraft. He had hand-picked them. He had seen them at work over Syria and Turkey, seen them stay calm even in the face of a direct attack intended to bring their aircraft down. He knew the scene inside the aircraft right now would be one of frenzied efficiency, plotting targets, handing them off to the AI to assign to his aircrafts’ targeting systems, confirming and reconfirming that every US aircraft had been triangulated to maximize the chances of a kill while they awaited orders from Lukin’s staff.
Still, he wanted to scream at them to hurry the hell up and decide.
“Gold leader, you are free to engage. Repeat, weapons free, you may engage.”
“Gold and Silver leaders, engage!” he said. Even as he spoke, he swung his own machine east-northeast, seeing his wingmen follow, and one by one the six missiles in his ordnance bay dropped out and raced away east. Soon the night sky around him was a tracery of white smoke and bright fire, leaping ahead of his fighters like the bony white fingers of death. He looked away so that he didn’t completely burn his night vision.
There was no time to even register the kills. On his heads-up display he saw the icons of US aircraft scattering as their threat warning systems reacted to the missile onslaught. Several winked out, and at the edge of his vision he thought he saw bright flashes in the night sky, far away. Then his own threat warning alarm sounded.
“Evade!” he called, “And re-engage.” If he survived the next two minutes, if any of his men did, the next phase of this battle would be fought with guns.
At night. Against robots, piloted by a generation of video gamers safe in trailers that could be anywhere in the world.
She heard the feet running down the corridor toward her office before her security detail burst through the door.
“Madam Ambassador? Come with us please,” the senior Secret Service officer said, holding the door open as she jumped to her feet. Somewhere in the building an alarm began to sound and her stomach fell. She felt her feet going from underneath her and had to grab the doorway as she went through to stop herself from falling.
It was the Critical Incident alarm. A terrorist attack. Or worse.
“New Annex safe room ma’am,” the officer said, confirming her worst fears. “Stairs, this way. We can get there inside two minutes, just take it easy.”
“What’s the alert for?”
“Just follow us ma’am, you’ll be briefed when we’re in the secure area.”
Two minutes to safety. It seemed like such a short time. But she knew that ‘safety’ was an illusion. A sub-launched ICBM starting from the Baltic sea would take less than 20 minutes to reach Moscow, but a hypersonic cruise missile launched from an aircraft over Germany would take only ten. Say she did make it to the bunker under the Embassy. Say she did survive the nuclear strike.
Then what?
“No!” she said, stopping in her tracks. She knew the protocol; the bunker was equipped with a pulse shielded landline to the Kremlin. In the case of a nuclear attack, she was supposed to ride it out and then seek to establish contact with Russian authorities and either negotiate their surrender or await further instruction. She also knew how insane that idea was.
“Ma’am!” the Secret Service officer said, grabbing at her elbow. “Please.”
“Let me go. Make sure our people are safe. I’m getting on the line to Washington,” she said, in a voice that made it clear she was not interested in discussion.
“Yes Ma’am,” the officer said, exchanging a look with the others in the detail, before ordering two of his men to stay with her and running off down the corridor.
“Not good, not good,” Bunny said, horrified. She had zoomed out the tactical map and patched in a feed from NORAD, as she watched the map light up with hundreds of missile tracks over the air east of Saint Lawrence, not to mention another lancing out from Gambell but falling away behind her drone as it scooted to safety. The missile had obviously been blind fired at a return the Verba crew had picked up from her Fantom, but they might as well have fired at a random arc of sky. Without a solid lock from the ground or another data source, the radar and infrared seekers on the missile were just sniffing empty air.
“ANR, this is Colonel Halifax of NCTAMS-A4, please confirm upload of data from Gambell recon, and I request update on the full disposition of blue and red forces over Saint Lawrence.”
“Upload confirmed NCTAMS,” a voice replied. “Data request denied. You are directed to return your aircraft to base and await further orders.”
“It’s bloody world war three up there,” Bunny said, pulling off her helmet and pointing at the air-to-air missile tracks on the 2D screen. She quickly punched in a return course for their Fantoms that would skirt around the hell over Saint Lawrence and get them back up north to the rock. It would take at least an hour.
Halifax didn’t respond to her exclamation — he picked up a handset and called up to the commander of the Naval Computer and Telecommunications Area Master Station, inside his radar dome.
“Sound general quarters Captain Aslam,” he said. “When the men are assembled, I want everyone not on active duty inside the station to get down here under the Rock. Meet me at the elevator topside.”
Rodriguez looked at him, and he turned to the threat display. “This little cold war just got real hot Boss,” he said. “Russia may not know we’re down here, but they sure as hell have seen our radar dome up there and it wouldn’t take more than an old Mig with a bunch of dumb iron bombs to scrape my nice white radar installation of the top of this rock and into the sea, and everyone up there with it.” He turned and took a step toward the door of the trailer, “I’m going topside to make sure only essential personnel stay behind. You get this place organized, and find bunks for everyone!”
Having been bustled down unfamiliar corridors on the way to the bunker under the New Annex, Devlin found herself taking one wrong turn after another as she tried to move against the flow of people running for the illusory safety of the New Annex basement. It wasn’t entirely irrational, the same alarm was also used for both a terrorist or chemical weapons attack, and the airtight, radiation shielded and self-contained secure rooms below the New Annex were adequate to protect staff against threats that were slightly less dramatic than a direct hit by a thermonuclear weapon. As the panicked traffic thinned out, Devlin found herself standing in a corridor that looked familiar and yet…