The thing was, Devlin was supposed to pass a message back to the Kremlin from the bureaucrats in State. We will let you pull your aircraft back from Alaska, to the ceasefire zone of control. We will not allow your continued presence on Saint Lawrence, but we would be open to a new Arctic freedom of navigation treaty. This may be your last chance to achieve a negotiated outcome because the hawks in our administration are arguing for a resolution by force of arms.
Devlin had full faith in her bucolic NSA analyst and his eccentric AI. HOLMES had been monitoring Russian military signals traffic and troop movements and had increased his assessment of the likelihood of Russian airborne troops moving on Nome to 99.7 %. And knowing what she felt she knew about Russia’s true intentions, the words she was scripted to say were already sticking in her craw. It made no sense to offer to re-establish the ceasefire terms when she knew Russia was already preparing to move ground troops into Alaska.
There was a knock on the door and her assistant showed the man in. He wasn’t your standard oligarch — fat, feted and fetid. He was in his mid-forties, played tennis to keep fit, had a wife, three kids and no mistresses, according to his embassy file.
“Peter, welcome,” she said. “Tea?”
They dealt with the small talk up front. Some days small talk was all she had. Today was not one of those days.
“So, to business… I have to say, the climate at the moment makes it difficult to progress any major business deals,” she said. “As you know, Congress is in emergency session debating sanctions.”
“I understand Devlin,” he said, looking troubled. “We have written off any sales to the USA for this year, and for next year we’ve put in a six-month delay as a downside. But our base case is still that the deal will progress.”
Really? she thought. In your world, war between Russia and the US is a downside? And global nuclear annihilation, is that also a downside? It was clear the US State Department weren’t the only ones out of touch.
“Do you have any special reason to be optimistic?” she asked, giving him an opening to pass on the message from his government.
“Well, you know I have no special information, but people in the circles I move in…” (Such as the President’s family) “…insist this situation can be contained. It’s not like Russia wants a full-scale war with the USA.”
“No? Because it could look like that,” Devlin observed. “When Russia invades our territory, starts an air war and bombs our airfields.”
The man smiled, and brushed an imaginary crumb off his trousers. “You are refreshingly direct as always. Of course, there are different views around who started this shooting match. There are those on our side who would say you sank our freighter, disabled our submarine and then bombed our rescue personnel on Saint Lawrence.”
Ah, to hell with the script, she decided.
“Peter, listen to me, and listen well. Russia may not want full-scale war, but it is about to get it. Your political masters don’t seem to understand that we know what their end game is here. Russia plans to invade Alaska.”
If she expected him to look surprised or confused, she was disappointed. He simply stared back at her and responded, “I was told you would say that. And I understand that you are alone in your State Department in thinking it.”
She scowled, “Do not bet on that.”
“I hope to persuade you that war is the last thing we want. I’m told by my contacts in the government that The Barents Arctic Council will propose a demilitarized buffer zone between our two States, given your general belligerence. No military aircraft, no navy ships will be allowed in or near the Strait.”
She laughed, “Seriously? A military no-fly zone over our own State?”
“Initially, yes. And not the whole state, just Western Alaska.”
“Ah. Well that’s alright then,” she said sarcastically.
“Here. I have drawn on a map how I understand the no-fly zone would work.” From his pocket he pulled a folded piece of paper. It hadn’t been drawn, someone had printed it for him. Probably someone in the Russian Foreign Ministry. It showed a map of Alaska with a diagonal line drawn across the middle from top right to bottom left and the proposed ‘buffer zone’ shaded in red. She saw that Nome was inside the zone — Juneau, Fairbanks and Anchorage were not.
Later, looking back, Devlin thought she took it pretty well, considering.
“Have you people lost your goddam minds?” she asked. “How about we create a ‘no-fly zone’ inside Russia, say from Lake Baikal in Siberia to the Pacific Coast, taking in Lavrentiya and oh, say, Anadyr as well? How about that instead?”
“You can keep the printout,” Khorkina said. He wasn’t fazed, “Would you like to consult with your superiors and get back to me, or is ‘have you people lost your goddam minds’ your last word on the matter?”
Devlin collected herself. She would actually land the meeting close to the wording State had given her after all, just not quite with the tone they had probably hoped for.
“No, here is my last word on the matter,” she said, taking up the page he had pushed forward. “I will pass your message on to my ‘superiors’ in State along with this map, but you should tell your friends in the Kremlin that Russia is courting nuclear oblivion. If Russia doesn’t pull back, and immediately, I expect to spend my final hours in the bunker under this building wondering what more I could have done to save the world from atomic annihilation.”
Bunny collected herself too. She was totally hyped but she had to channel full focus. She had just flown two Fantoms along the northeast coast of Russia, literally. So close to where the sand and gravel met the icy sea that she could have told you where the good beaches were, in case you wanted to buy real estate for the coming climate-change boom. Then she had pushed her Fantoms down a frozen river valley, across rolling hills and mountains and just about clipped a cliff face as she wheeled her drones east up the Anadyr River toward the Anadyr airport at Ugolny. She had picked up the air traffic control radar signature of Anadyr, but hadn’t been locked up by a single military search radar along the way. Of course she couldn’t rule out that she’d been spotted by satellite infrared or motion detection but no fighters appeared to have been vectored to intercept her.
Through the low def forward scanning wide-angle camera on the Fantom, sending its feed up to one of the only functional air force satellites over the Operations Area, the river below was a 660 mph blur of brown water and grey gravel. Occasionally her machines flashed over a small leisure or fishing boat, but she had to figure it wasn’t too likely they were patched into the Russian military command network.
As she got within 50 miles of Anadyr, she started picking up the skeleton fingers of a search radar brushing across the skin of her drones every 20–30 seconds. It was like the touch of a creepy guy at a Christmas party. It slid across her sensors and then was gone again. But like at a Christmas party, the only touch you cared about was the one where solid contact was made, a true butt cheek clutch. So far, the search radar was in the annoying but not lethal range. Which is what she had planned for. If she was a Russian anti-air battery commander set up to defend a forward air base against the USA she’d have 90 % of her energy pointed north, east and south — facing the enemy — and configured to look for cruise missiles first and foremost. Anything to the west, any threat coming from their rear quadrant would get lower priority.