He had been thinking about that pie as he said goodbye to the old people in the school buildings. They didn’t know he was saying goodbye of course. They thought he was giving out their rations, and although a few of them had acted like they were suspicious, most of them had reacted with muted delight when he had handed out the big blocks of chocolate alongside the soup.
He liked the thought that the old people had gone to their next life with the taste of chocolate on their tongues.
Once he had dragged the bodies of the Russian wounded outside and covered them up with the bobcat, he had retired to his office. From a pill bottle on his desk, he tipped out two sleeping tablets and drank them down, with a glass of water. Leaned his chair back and put his feet up on his desk. He needed to sleep. Tomorrow he had to get a read on that second radio, try to work out where it was. He had a pretty good idea it was that damn American soldier using it, but he had to find him first.
And as the pills kicked in, he played a mind game, and gave his report to Sergeant Penkov up there somewhere on the coast. He imagined Penkov asking him for an update on the wounded and Zubkhov telling him (truthfully, if not in a complete way) that one of the wounded had died.
“Who?” the NCO would ask, like he cared.
Hmmm, who? Zubkhov thought to himself. A name came to him, “Kirrilov, the boy with the sheared off toes and heel.”
“How did he die?” Penkov would ask. “He was the least wounded of them all.”
“I don’t know,” Zubkhov would lie. “Infection?” Or perhaps he died from an overdose of painkillers. An unfortunate mistake but after all, he wasn’t a trained medic.
“Your job was to keep those men alive, private!” the Sergeant would say. “If you see infection, clean it and make sure the men are taking their antibiotics and antibacterials. We left most of the medical supplies with you.”
Most, right. Thanks so much. “Yes sir!” he would say earnestly. “I will not lose another!”
“You had better not, or I’ll have your balls.”
“Yes sir.”
“We are making good time. The locals say we are four days from Savoonga. I will call again tomorrow at this time. I will need to get instructions from whoever is in command once we reach Savoonga. Keep this channel open,” the Sergeant would tell him.
“Yes sir.”
“The civilian hostages?”
“I gave them chocolate sir,” he would say.
“What?”
“I found some chocolate, so I gave them that, with their rations.”
“OK, well, that’s OK I guess. I’m signing off now. Keep the base station online and stay on top of those wounded Private, Penkov out.”
“Yes sir, out.”
Not that he could give the man a report, as he had left him without any way to communicate. But as he played the conversation through in his head, there was a beep from the base station and he looked at the rangefinder screen. It was showing two handsets now, both at a range of about 20km, one of which was probably the column of troops and townspeople. He tried to zoom the display, see if he could separate the two signals.
Yes! That goddamn ghost radio!
It was showing bright and clear on the rangefinder, but now it was almost right on top of Penkov’s field radio. He stared at the two dots for five minutes, but they stayed right next to each other.
Until the ghost blip winked out and was gone again.
So, the American was following the column? Private Zubkhov loved it when a plan came together!
He wearily clicked the base station to standby.
Sleep. It had been A Big Day.
In the morning, he would gather supplies and ammunition. Catch up to that column, find that ghost and deal with him, get the radio handset off him then call Anadyr. He’d be back in Gambell before his buddy arrived to pick him up. With luck, the Captain wouldn’t go more than a day without a meal. Let the US send its black clad assassins to Gambell to try to take it back. All they would find would be charcoal, ashes and graves.
He’d added something to his plan too. The Captain? He was going to bring him along on the boat to Anadyr. Teach the guy to fish. It got boring out in the Northern Pacific at night. You could really use a guy who could recite Dostoyevsky by heart.
“NCTAMS-A4, this is Commander Naval Air Forces Coronado, stand by for a message from Vice Admiral Lionel Solanta,” the radio in the trailer under the Rock said. After their mission against Anadyr Rodriguez and Bunny had prepped two more Fantoms and loaded one on the Cat in an air-air configuration, with the other in its cartridge loaded for ground attack with standoff missiles, fueled up and ready to roll. They hadn’t received new orders, but they had just stuck a stick into a hornet’s nest and wanted to be ready to defend the base if they needed to. The air-air loadout would let them defend themselves against another small-scale strike by attack aircraft, while the ground attack loadout would be useful if they were given a land-based target or something on the water. Rodriguez wasn’t under any illusions — if NORAD kept sending them combat tasking, it was just a matter of time before Ivan worked out where they were hiding, and came for them.
“Standing by Coronado,” Rodriguez said.
Once they had their two drones locked and loaded, there was nothing more Rodriguez and O’Hare could do. So they had shared a pot of coffee, grabbed some food and dropped into exhausted sleep. Both were awake and on station again at 0400 and the order to stand by their comms had come through at 0430.
Bunny was sitting at her pilot’s console with two booted feet up on her desk beside the coffee cups, joystick and throttles and keyboards. True to her word two nights ago, she had dyed her cropped white-blonde hair black and painted her fingernails to match. As Rodriguez watched her, she was a study in intense concentration, painting small white skulls with crossbones on her black nails. Rodriguez was willing to bet she had painted her toenails black too. She found herself thinking how Bunny had never mentioned a boyfriend. She’d never mentioned a girlfriend either, for that matter.
“Vice-Admiral eh?” Bunny stopped painting her nails and smiled. Then she said in a high sing-song voice, “Bunny go-ing to get a me-dal…”
“Or court-martial,” Rodriguez said, smiling too. “You probably hit the wrong target. Took out a fish factory.”
“Fish factory workers in Russia go to work in Okhotniks do they ma’am?”
“Maybe.” They hadn’t seen a bomb damage assessment yet, but they’d rerun the nose cam footage from the two drones and had counted at least a handful of Russian fighters on the base before they hit it. Pending the BDA, the strike had made Bunny a ‘ground ace’, a pilot with five or more ground kills. And she had been pointing it out to Rodriguez at every opportunity.
“There’s probably a promotion when you get ground ace status, right?” Bunny asked. “He’s probably calling to tell me I’ve made Captain.”
“You’re on DARPA secondment O’Hare, any rank you have is honorary. Besides, you don’t even know those bombs exploded,” Rodriguez pointed out. “They could have been duds.”
“All four? No way ma’am, those eggs hatched.” Bunny retorted. “They…”
“NCTAMS this is Admiral Solanta, can I speak with Lieutenant Commander Alicia Rodriguez please?”
Rodriguez took a deep breath, “Speaking, Admiral.”
“And is Lieutenant O’Hare there with you?”
“Yes sir, Admiral,” Bunny replied.
“Good. Look, I wanted to speak with you in person to let you know I’ve been following what happened to NCTAMS-A4. I know you got hit, and hard. I heard how you got your people out from under that rock Rodriguez and I also know the two of you volunteered to stay behind and close the base down, and you’ve managed to keep it operational despite all that.”