“Yes Carl.”
“We have special forces on Saint Lawrence?” Carl said, impressed. “Right under the noses of the Russian 3rd Air and Air Defense Forces Command?”
“No Carl,” HOLMES said. “The human source reports are being generated by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. It is their agent on the ground, not one of ours.”
CSIS agent, Perri Tungyan, literally had his ass on the ground. He and Dave were camped on a low hill west of Savoonga, overlooking the town and the new base that the US had built nearly ten years ago, which okay, you couldn’t really call new.
Or more correctly, they were overlooking where the base had been. All they could see were the still smoking ruins of the cantonment. At least here, the Americans had spared the township.
Earlier that morning, they had watched as the weary column of townsfolk from Gambell and their Russian captors had trudged into Savoonga. Just as in Gambell, the townspeople had been herded into the Hogarth Kingeekuk Sr. Memorial School, which already looked like a stockade, so Perri figured there must be local Savoonga people in there too.
He didn’t know how few.
About mid-morning, they had contacted Sarge. For a very long fifteen minutes they reported everything they could see from outside the town, from the number of troops and vehicles, their locations and apparent patrol routes to the number and type of aircraft down at the airfield.
And that, in particular, had taken time, because they had to count them three times to get it right. In the end they made it at about 45 fighter aircraft, mostly all Mig-41s and Su-57s as far as Perri could tell. There were some aircraft without cockpits, that Sarge said were probably recon drones, not the bigger Hunter drones. And transport aircraft were coming and going almost continuously. There was one big one too. A huge, white flying wing thing Perri had never seen before. It needed drogue chutes to slow it down so that it didn’t run off the end of the airfield when it was landing, and when it took off again a couple of hours later, only lifted its nose at the very last minute before it ran out of runway. For what it was worth, he took some photos with his phone and uploaded those too.
“OK, that’s good, that’s good,” Sarge had said. “Now are you two safe where you are?”
“I guess,” Perri said. “We’re under a rock overhang, so you can’t see us from the air. We can stay pretty dry. Without a fire, it’s pretty cold though, eh.”
“Pretty cold, or dangerously cold,” Sarge asked. “You guys know your country better than me. It’s your call.”
Dave was making signs like he wanted them to head back to Gambell, to their nice warm bunker under the gas station.
“Nah, we’ll be OK,” Perri said. “We can stick it out a couple more days at least. Then we’ll be out of food, and probably battery too. It will take us three or four days to hike back to Gambell, or we can try to sneak into Savoonga. I’ve got people there.” He looked through his scope at the Russian troops in the streets, and realized he couldn’t see any locals. “Maybe.”
“OK, you’ll be calling in reports like this for me every four hours, but you shut down and lie low for now,” Sarge said. “You guys are doing awesome, you know that, right?”
“Awesome, yeah,” Dave said, unconvincingly.
Perri disconnected the radio and started to pack it away so it wouldn’t get wet. The wind was picking up and the sky looked like rain was coming. The small overhang they were sitting under wouldn’t offer that much protection. Dave had been sitting with his rifle across his knees, but put it down and picked up Perri’s, switching on the scope. He waved it around a bit, then settled it on some far-off target. He squinted, “What’s these numbers across the bottom?” he asked.
“Uh, by memory? I think left to right it’s like compass bearing, then elevation, then windage,” Perri answered.
“Uh huh, and you got it zeroed in, right?”
Perri was winding up the battery cables. “Yeah.”
“So, if I was going to shoot something, I wouldn’t use the red dot in the middle of the scope, I would use these crosshairs off to the side. The ones that move around a bit?”
“You’re not going to shoot anything,” Perri told him.
“I said if I was,” Dave said.
“Sure,” Perri said. “You’d use the crosshairs, not the red dot. The bullet goes where the crosshairs are. That’s the theory.”
Dave got up on one knee, pointed the rifle downhill toward the town. “Like, if I wanted to shoot that Russian soldier who is coming up the hill, straight toward us?”
Perri grabbed the rifle off him and stared down the scope. At first, he saw nothing. “Ha ha very fu…” he said, then stopped. A movement in the corner of the scope caught his eye, he swung it slightly to the right.
“Shit. It’s that guy from Gambell,” Perri said. “The one we saw in the school office.”
“No way.”
“Way,” Perri said. He lowered the rifle, then lifted it again. The soldier was too far away to see with a naked eye but in the scope he could see he had a large rifle strapped to his back, was moving fast and staring intently at the ground. “How did he get ahead of us?”
“Quad bike or something?” Dave said. “Maybe a boat or chopper eh. But he’s walking back along the track from Savoonga. So he’s already been there, and now he’s going back to Gambell? Why?”
“Maybe he’s hunting.”
Dave laughed, “Freaking idiot. What, he thinks he’s going to get bear or walrus? Nothing out here this time of year except birds.”
Perri put his own rifle back up to his cheek. “No Dave, I got a feeling he’s hunting us.”
Private Zubkhov was cold too. But no one was giving him any praise. He’d followed the trail of the column of hostages all the way to Savoonga, but he hadn’t come across whoever it was that had been carrying that ghost radio. If he’d gone on any further, he’d have run a risk of bumping into one of his old comrades, or a sentry outside of Savoonga, and he wasn’t ready for that. So there was nothing for it but to double back — his quarry must have turned off at some point and he missed their tracks.
Suddenly he got this funny feeling. He dropped to one knee and looked around himself. Nothing. He saw nothing but scrub, rock and seabirds in any direction. He felt like slapping himself. Come on boy, you’re getting spooked now. But you’re right, that American is around here somewhere, he must be. You just have to be patient, move slower, stay more alert and wait for nightfall. He’ll probably light a fire to stay warm, and you’ll have him.
Zubkhov didn’t hear the shot. The shooter must have been upwind. He felt something punch him in the chest, just below his right shoulder. It spun him around and knocked him to the ground.
Bunny’s berserker routine had done its job. The attacking Fantom had locked up one of the enemy Sukhois, spooking it into thinking it was about to face a US all-aspect short-range missile at point blank range, and the pilot choked. He threw his machine into a twisting dive, firing off chaff and flares as he headed for the deck. The Fantom meanwhile centered its gun pipper on the other Sukhoi, which was following its missiles down range. One Fantom was able to dodge the missiles fired at it, but her kamikaze Fantom did not even try to evade. At maximum range, it opened up with its GUA8/L 25mm cannon. The ‘L’ designator was intended to indicate it was a lighter version of the aircraft and ship mounted heavy attack cannon that it had been based on, but the only thing ‘light’ about it was that it used 25mm ammunition instead of traditional 30mm. You could also speculate that the ‘L’ stood for ‘laser’, which it didn’t, but the weapon did have its own laser targeting system, making the system accurate out to 12,000 feet.