Gambell could be hit cleanly. The civilians there were judged to be outside the blast radius of the inbound cruise missiles. Six missiles were allocated to Gambell, three to Russian positions and stores identified at the airfield, one to a Verba emplacement near the town hall, one to a Russian transport ship that had recently arrived in the harbor and one to the town hall itself. Savoonga was another matter. Bunny’s initial recon and limited satellite data showed that Russian troops there had quartered themselves in buildings all over the US military cantonment, and distributed their military and civilian hostages like human shields, scattered throughout the complex. At least two potential Verba air defense systems had been identified, but planners had little or no intel on the specific disposition of Russian forces and equipment at the site.
There was no way to avoid friendly casualties at Savoonga, but the order had come from the very top. The 712th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron Savoonga base and its top-secret tech was to be denied to Russian forces. Eighteen cruise missiles were allocated to targets in and around Savoonga. The facility would be leveled.
Private Zubkhov had dived for the ground and lay there until it seemed the secondary explosions from the ammo dump were done. The fire still burned like a small volcano, lighting up the whole town, and the body of the faceless man beside him.
Udinov, that had been his name. They’d served together nearly a year. He liked American country and western music. Had liked.
Zubkhov had taken off his jacket and laid it over the man’s head. A few other men had hit the dirt around him, and they were slowly picking themselves up, checking to see if they still had all their arms and legs.
Captain Demchenko had disappeared. Literally. Usually he would have been there shouting at them to pull themselves together and do… something. Zubkhov looked around him. He counted seven other soldiers like himself, saw a jeep roaring toward them from the other side of town. But the captain was nowhere.
He found himself looking at the dirt, expecting to see a bloody smudge somewhere, but all he saw was dirt, ground ice and debris.
That was when he’d looked up at the bluff that towered over the town and had seen the black clouds of birds lifting into the night, like a small squawking storm cloud, lit by the lightning in the town below.
He watched them swirl into the sky in panic, circle once or twice, and then land again.
And beyond them, barely more than shadows flashing between the rocks, he could swear he saw two men, running.
The water smashed Rodriguez face first onto the concrete of the dock and then rolled her across it. It seemed to Alicia just a question of how she was going to die, not whether she would. Her head collided with something solid and her arms flailed around her trying to grab a hold of something, anything. A leg appeared out of nowhere and gave her an almighty kick in the chest, forcing what little air she had left out of her lungs and she kicked back reflexively, legs slamming into something. She sucked in water, then foam, then blessed air, coughing and heaving before her head went under again. But she’d got a glimpse of where she was, and which way was up.
Kicking out, she sought the red light that must be the surface and broke out onto the top of a wave just as it hammered into the seawall above the submarine dock, and rolled back onto itself. She rolled with it, calmer now, seeing the man who had probably kicked her in the chest floating past, his head and neck bent at an impossible angle.
“Got you Boss!” she heard a voice yell, as a hand grabbed her collar and pulled her over to where she could throw one weak arm around the rungs of a ladder and the other around someone’s legs.
It was her arresting gear officer, Lieutenant “Stretch” Alberti. His small frame clung doggedly to the ladder with one hand, while the other held her collar in a titan’s grip and refused to let the sucking water pull her away.
The broken man who had floated away floated back again, dead eyes looking up at her with an accusatory expression as the ebbing tide carried him past.
Could have been me, she thought, then looked across the Pond at the smashed cranes, collapsed elevator shaft and blocked stairwell. I wonder who’s luckier.
A fighter pilot in Bondarev’s 6983rd Air Brigade had to land one out of three sorties himself, without autopilot, in order to remain qualified for combat operations. Most of Bondarev’s pilots had too much pride to let the AI land their kite even once. Right now, Bondarev had no choice. It wasn’t just that he didn’t dare touch the stick and throttle, it was also because he couldn’t seem to lift his arm to even touch it.
A shell, or parts of a missile warhead, had hammered through the skin of his fighter beside his leg, sliced across his calf, opening up his great saphenous vein, and then spent the last of its energy as it buried itself in the floor beside his foot.
By the time he’d realized what was happening, he’d lost about a half liter of blood. He’d stared at his leg, asking himself why his foot felt wet, why he was having trouble moving it, why he could hear wind blasting around the cockpit. Finally something in his mind clicked, or some of the years of training kicked in, and he pulled a cord from a utility pouch in his flight suit and tied a tourniquet tight around his leg. By then, blood was pooling on the floor.
He spent the next fifteen minutes watching the instruments as the AI steered him down the glide path toward the airfield on the horizon, trying to remember how many liters of blood a human body had in them. Wasn’t it five liters, and you could afford to lose twenty percent, right? So that was what, a liter? Or was it twenty liters, and you could afford to lose five? No matter how he turned it around, the answer wouldn’t come.
The lights of the airport approached.
Definitely five liters. You gave blood, they usually took a third of a liter, maximum, right? So more than that must be dangerous. He looked at the floor. That down there, that is way over the permitted maximum Yevgeny.
He laughed, and then laughed at himself laughing.
Two green lights. Wheels down.
That was good. Assuming there were wheels and tires at the end of the struts and not just broken stumps.
Like his leg down there. Maybe that was just a stump too.
He laughed at that too. Change his call sign to ‘Stumps Bondarev’.
The ground rushed up. His head jerked as the Sukhoi hit the deck once, bounced and then settled into a hard three-point touchdown.
Useless bloody AI, bouncing all over the field. He tried to reach for the stick again, saw his arm flop to his side as though it belonged to someone else, and saw the flashing red lights of emergency vehicles speeding across the field.
Damn. Not good. Someone must be in trouble.
Perri woke to the ground shaking. They were ten feet below ground, but he could feel the mattress beneath him vibrating. Then a sound like muted thunder rolled overhead, penetrating even the hatch cover and the shaft down to their tank. More sonic booms from fighters maybe.
He reached over and turned on the battery powered lamp. Dave had been woken too.
“What was that?”
“I don’t know.”
Another rumble shook the tank and some cans fell off one of the makeshift shelves.
“We have to look,” Dave said.
“Or we could stay here and wait it out,” Perri said. “Which would be smarter.”
“It’s our families out there,” Dave said. “I’m going to look.”
Perri rolled into a crouch and handed Dave the binoculars, taking up his rifle and scope. “You’re right. Here.”