When the war had been about sea commerce, his attitude had been cynically professional. But now he knew he was fighting for the very survival of his nation, the fight had become personal.
The call from the State Secretary showed he was still an old-fashioned Southern gentleman, in the best sense of the concept. Devlin had always known that he would never break good or bad news to her in a communique or text. It always came in person. So when she was told to expect a call from the Secretary in ten minutes, she knew it would be one or the other — either very good, or very bad news.
She paced her office nervously, ordering her assistant to stop anyone else from coming in or calling in, no matter how urgent they insisted it was. She knew she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on a single thing until the call was out of the way, and any decision she made while distracted like this would be totally random.
Her mind raced. She was being recalled, that was one possibility. Perhaps Foreign Minister Kelnikov had complained one too many times about the directness of her language and approach, and had demanded she be called home. Or her own people had turned on her, called her out for running her own foreign policy agenda independent of State. That much was true — they had been pursuing a pointless appeasement agenda while she had been dealing with the reality of imminent invasion and trying to persuade her Russian contacts that the consequences of going down that path would be catastrophic.
And then there was this whole business of the Russian commander of the 6983rd Air Brigade being the father of her grandchild. She had not called her daughter about it. Like, how was that phone call supposed to go? Oh, hello darling, yes fine thanks, tell me, did you have a child with the man who is leading the war against the USA? No, but she was convinced HOLMES’ discovery would not remain confidential. Whether or not it had already been leaked by him or Williams, it would be leaked, inevitably. That’s what this call must be. The Secretary would be nice about it, but he would expect her to understand they couldn’t have someone in Moscow representing US interests who had such an obvious personal conflict.
When it came, the ringing of her encrypted comms unit nearly made her jump out of her skin. She took a big breath and lifted the handset.
“McCarthy,” she said.
“Devlin, this is Gerard Winburg, how are you holding up?”
“Fine thank you Mr. Secretary, what’s up?” she asked, and in the background she could hear the sort of burble of conversation that indicated to her that Winburg was in a room full of people.
“I have to keep this short Devlin, I’m sorry. It turns out you were right. I have to advise you our satellites are showing a huge amount of air and ground traffic indicating military mobilization in the Russian Far East. We estimate at least one airborne division. Russia has now moved considerable air power onto Saint Lawrence in what we assume is preparation for a major airborne landing and offensive. The President is about to go public with this information and a warning to Russia to withdraw from Saint Lawrence and cease its military build-up in the Bering Strait, or there will be ‘catastrophic consequences’.” He paused, “Between you and me, the President has asked the Secretary of Defense to draw up plans to conduct a demonstration of a nuclear-armed hypersonic cruise missile over the Pacific Ocean, east of the Russian Kuril Islands. He wants it ready to execute in 23 hours.”
The world fell out from underneath Devlin. She’d had her own theories about the way the political winds were blowing, but she’d hoped she was wrong. “An atmospheric nuclear test off the coast of Russia?”
“Yup, and they should be thankful we’re just vaporizing a few billion tons of seawater and fish. The President thinks Russia needs reminding why it should stay the hell out of Alaska.”
“My God…” she had no idea what to say. “What do you need from me?”
“Real-time readout on reactions. I’ll get back to you with exact timing when I have it, but I want your people face to face with Russian key stakeholders when the news of the test drops. I want you getting their unfiltered reaction and then feed it with a single message; that we will use the nuclear option if they escalate further.”
“We’ll do our best here Mr. Secretary,” she said.
“I know it. In the meantime, get onto all of our so-called NATO ‘allies’. Tell them now is the time for them to shit or get off the pot. We are calling in our markers and if they are on the wrong side of the next vote in the UN Security Council or General Assembly — and neutral is the wrong side — there will be hell to pay for them too!”
Bunny had checked the weather, and calculated the best IL-77 flight for their shadow play would arrive at the top of its glide path over the Bering Strait south-west of the Rock at 0630 the day after she dragged Rodriguez out of bed. That gave them the night and most of the morning to prep two Fantoms with ground to air ordnance and get them in the air and on station in time for the low-level game of shadow puppets.
The Fantom didn’t have passive detection systems like many Russian fighter aircraft, but NORAD had managed to get two new satellites on station over the Operations Area, and one of them was National Reconnaissance Satellite L-70, launched in 2022 with the specific mission of tracking Russian and Chinese military aircraft in real time through their digital, infrared and visual signatures. Satellite L-70 could track up to 100 individual targets at any one time, and by AI interpolation, could predict the flight path of 1,000 different objects simultaneously.
For the mission that had been assigned to NCTAMS-A4, satellite L-70 dedicated a small part of its considerable attention span to one aircraft, an Ilyushin IL-77 ‘White Whale’ flight out of Murmansk it designed as ‘flight IL-203’. It was tracking all IL-77 flights out of Murmansk, and tracked flight IL-203 in real time as the aircraft made its way across northern Russia. About halfway through the flight, the AI monitoring L-70 calculated a 73 % probability, based on signals intelligence and the aircraft flight path, that it was headed for Lavrentiya, and it alerted ANR, which alerted NCTAMS-A4, or to be specific, Lieutenant Commander Alicia Rodriguez.
“You have a ‘White Whale’ incoming,” Rodriguez told Bunny as her fingers tapped her touchscreen. “I’m patching the flightpath through now, plus coordinates for intercept.”
“Roger that ma’am,” Bunny said, voice tight. If she was tired, then like Rodriguez, she wasn’t feeling it right now. “I’ll be on them like a leech.”
“You mean remora,” Rodriguez told her.
“Sorry ma’am?” Bunny frowned, head lost in her multiple screens.
“Remoras attach themselves to whales,” Rodriguez told her. “Leeches attach themselves to mammals.”
Bunny didn’t break her stride, just shot back at Rodriguez, “Isn’t a whale a mammal, ma’am?”
“Land mammals then. You ever hear of a leech attaching itself to a whale Lieutenant?”
“No ma’am. Would I be correct in guessing the Air Boss is a little tense right now?” she asked, without looking over.
“Yes O’Hare,” Rodriguez told her. “Yes you would.”
“Chill, ma’am,” Bunny said. “I have a vector to the target. Uh, eight minutes to intercept. Entering Nebo low band range in ten.”
On a big screen in the middle of Bunny’s weapons and navigation system HUDs, Rodriguez was watching as the icon for the Russian transport plane appeared on the screen and began to track toward Bunny’s two Joint Air-Ground Missile JAGM armed Fantoms. She had managed to flit above the wave tops over the Strait without being detected by Russian land, air or satellite-based systems so far, but the same threat vectors applied to this mission as previously. She could be spotted by any random Russian fighter flight that happened to look in her direction and get a lock, and within 30 miles of Lavrentiya, she was at the mercy of the Nebo-M array which had so easily batted her out of the sky last time.