“If the Russians are quitting Gambell, if they’re pulling them off the island, that’s critical intel,” Sarge said.
“Oh man,” Perri groaned. There had been no activity in the town, so he and Dave had climbed up to the roof of a building two streets back from the school and he had perfect line of sight down into the school master’s office and the Russian soldier sitting there drinking his coffee and enjoying his cigarette, while he stared at some sort of screen. Dave was dragging the car battery and the Russian radio and complaining all the way because he’d had to leave his rifle behind; he couldn’t carry it all. They’d worked out that they could wire the radio to any old TV aerial or satellite dish and get a good signal, so they’d hit the general store and stolen one of those folding portable TV and radio aerials and it worked just fine.
“I could knock this guy out now, and then we could head out after the others,” Perri insisted. He’d zeroed the scope with a few shots at a target a good distance out of town a couple of days ago, and the crosshairs in his electronic scope were indicating very little windage, and minimal bullet drop. He put the red dot right on the temple of the Russian soldier, with the crosshairs sitting on his ear. He told himself it was a shot even Dave could make.
“What you’re doing there is bigger than those elders Perri,” Sarge told him. “I’ve passed your intel to our military here, and they’ve passed it to the Americans. Yeah, maybe you could free your old people from that school, or you could stay cool, and maybe help to free your whole island. The US just announced it is sending a carrier task force your way. The marines are coming Perri and they need your intel.”
Perri felt his finger tighten on the trigger, saw the crosshairs quiver on the head of the Russian soldier. Then he rolled onto his back and swore up at the lead-grey sky.
Private Zubkhov scratched his temple, not realizing how lucky he was. To still have a temple, that is. But he wasn’t exactly focused on the world outside the school office window. He was focused on that damn ghost radio signal, because if he was reading the screen right, the damn thing was transmitting again and it had gotten closer. The screen showed range rings in bands of 5 kilometers, and he could see the last remaining field handset, taken by the Sergeant, had just moved from the 5km ring to the 10km ring as his unit hiked out of town with their captives and headed north around the bluff toward the coast.
The ghost signal, the one with the icon that said it was coming from an armored personnel carrier, that one had just popped up on the screen again, and it was showing inside the 5km ring now! He tapped the screen, in the way of all the non-digitally inclined through the ages, and as he did so, the icon disappeared. He was still seeing the portable handset taken by the troops, but the APC radio had winked out.
Maybe he’d read it wrong. There was that wrecked APC down by the town hall. That must be the one transmitting, not one of the ones out by the airstrip. The screen he was looking at only showed range, not direction, so he must have been mistaken thinking it was coming from way out at the airstrip.
It was right down the street!
He stood up, ground out his cigarette, finished the cold coffee in the bottom of his cup and pulled his thick padded jacket on. It was still about 12 degrees outside, but the wind out there could freeze a man’s tits off. He picked up a 39mm AS VAL rifle, stumped down the corridor and looked in on the wounded. There were seven of them lying on makeshift beds laid across desks. One had an IV drip in his arm that Zubkhov had to change every day. Two of them had abdominal wounds that couldn’t be treated, so they couldn’t be moved. One of them had a fever. They weren’t expected to make it, so all he could do was make them comfortable. In reality, the ones with abdominal wounds were already dead, but luckily none of them were fully conscious; they were on big doses of intravenous painkillers. There were several with leg wounds, including one soldier who’d lost his entire lower left leg. They were doped up on painkillers and antibiotics, sleeping or reading. One gave a small wave to Zubkhov and indicated with a sign that he wanted a smoke, so that he didn’t wake the others. Zubkhov nodded back to him to show he had seen him. Sitting in the corner, mumbling to himself, was Captain Demchenko. He was loaded up with antibiotics too, and Zubkhov had expected him to contract some sort of encephalitis in his brain and clock out sooner or later, which if you asked Zubkhov, would have been a mercy. But the red-hot metal splinter that had sliced through his head had apparently been surgically sterile. The guy didn’t even have a temperature and he looked perfectly normal, for a man who had just had accidental brain surgery that is.
It was only thirty minutes since he’d asked the civilians if anyone needed a toilet break, and an hour until he was supposed to go around and check on them, and hand out some rations for lunch.
But during his first morning of playing combined nurse and prison camp guard, Private Zubkhov had decided. Screw being left behind to play nurse and prison camp guard. Screw the 14th Spetsnaz Squadron. He’d been near-drowned in interrogation simulations, beaten on the soles of his feet with an ice hockey stick for coming last on a cross-country march and had to take a solid shotgun slug in his protective vest just to get through basic training. Hell, he’d survived a US cruise missile landing less than a block away from him, without even a scratch.
He was technically a free man. So, he was going to find that damn radio, call his buddy the fisherman in Anadyr, and get off this shitpile.
A high-value unit like a supercarrier is very well protected indeed. Two hundred miles out from it, covering all quarters, are the ‘picket’ ships, combat air patrol aircraft and airborne early warning drones. Inside that is the outer screen of ships anywhere from 10 to 20 miles from the carrier, positioned to provide anti-missile and anti-air defense. The ships making up the outer screen for the Enterprise were primarily there for anti-submarine defense — ‘delousing’ as it was called — and maintained a constantly patrolling swarm of drones around the formation using thermal imaging and towed sonar, looking and listening for any sign of a subsea intruder.
And inside that, the inner screen. This was the dedicated anti-air warfare screen. For the Enterprise, nothing but the latest HELLADS armed anti-air frigates, supplemented with more conventionally armed anti-air missile destroyers fitted with close-in ballistic defenses. The entire group was tactically data linked; if one of the pickets detected an inbound missile it was engaged if possible, and simultaneously handed off to the outer screen and inner screen to engage if needed. With a hypersonic missile able to get from detection range outside the pickets to its carrier target in less than two minutes, it was unlikely the pickets would be able to successfully engage, but at quantum computing speeds, the inner screen would theoretically have ample time to lock a target and bring it down. Even a target moving at 5,000 miles an hour.
That was the theory.
Russia was well versed in the theory, and in the practice. It had led the race to develop hypersonic missiles and aircraft for decades, and was also aware of the counter-measures developed against them. It had had many years in which to wargame a hypersonic missile attack on a carrier strike group, and had done so in secret using dummy missiles sent against its own (and only remaining) carrier, the TAVKR Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soyuza Kuznetsov. These exercises had revealed that penetrating the multilayered defenses of a carrier task force even using multiple sub launched hypersonic missiles fired from inside the picket screen, had a less than 50 % likelihood of success against HELLADS armed carrier defenses.