Perri’s face showed nothing, “Does it matter? Russia, America… neither of them gives a damn about us man. Come on…” he pulled at Dave’s sleeve.
Dave jerked away, “It matters. These are our people!”
Perri pointed at the Russian graves, “And those are theirs.”
Beyond the graves, Perri saw what looked like a water tower that had somehow survived the bombing. It was about ten feet high, and sitting on four wooden legs, one of which was shattered. The round water tank on its platform had been perforated a hundred places and the water inside had long ago emptied itself out. But climbing up the ladder on the side, Perri pulled aside the manhole on top and saw that they could both fit through it and get inside.
He called down to Dave, “Hand me the gear. I found our hiding spot.”
Private Zubkhov woke, remembered what had happened to him and pried himself up from his hiding spot. Which wasn’t really a hiding spot, more just the bush he’d fallen behind after he got shot. He’d fallen asleep, or passed out; one or the other, or both. His uniform shirt and jacket were stuck to his back, but the blood was mostly dry. The entry wound had also stopped bleeding. His right shoulder was frozen, and any movement of his right arm sent a stabbing pain up his side and neck, so he had to hold the arm in tight against his chest. He picked up his Makarov, put it in his belt and looked around. While he’d been lying on his back and before he’d gotten up, he’d decided on a new plan. He needed medical help, and the only place to get it was Savoonga. But he’d been ordered to stay in Gambell. OK, so this was his story now: he’d spotted the ghost radio signal, realized the Russian column was being followed. Suspected it was US forces — remember the Radar unit jacket he’d found at Gambell? He felt responsible. He’d let that American escape, he felt a duty to try to capture the American again. Except he got ambushed and wounded — that much was all true. What about the wounded back at Gambell, what about the civilians? Yeah, that was the tricky part. But that is where the Captain came in, and it made Zubkhov so glad he hadn’t killed him along with the others. He’d just say the Captain had seemed to recover, mentally at least. He’d given Private Zubkhov permission to go track the American, said he’d look after the wounded and the civilians.
What happened after that, Private Zubkhov couldn’t explain. He’d act shocked. They were dead? All of them? Wow, it must have been the Captain’s work.
Maybe they’d buy it, maybe not. It was his only choice now. The fishing trawler, that would have to wait until he was well again, but a wound like this? They’d have to evacuate him.
Every step was agony, but he began picking his way down the hill towards the town below.
And that was when, silhouetted against the sun behind the bombed-out cantonment south of the town, he saw a figure, climbing up a ladder.
In the office he’d cleared for himself in a building beside the Savoonga airport terminal (a grand name for a big, roughly partitioned shed) Bondarev and Arsharvin were standing up against a cold side wall, while General Potemkin sat at the only desk. He’d advised them he was now taking over the 3rd Air Army after the death of Lukin, as Bondarev had expected, but that was not the main reason for his visit. Butyrskaya had laid a map out on the desk.
“Little Diomede?” Bondarev asked skeptically. He’d flown over the tiny island a dozen times, and there was nothing there but a small American radome. Now even that… “We hit that on the first day,” Bondarev said. “I’ve seen the BDA. There’s nothing left on it but a black smudge.”
“Not on it Comrade Major-General,” Arsharvin said. “Under it.”
Butyrskaya looked annoyed that he had taken her thunder. “As you know, commercial shipping through the Bering Strait has been halted during the current conflict, but smaller coastal fishing vessels have defied the restrictions. Three days ago we got a strange report from one such vessel, which advised the Coast Guard it had seen an aircraft flying out of the cliff face on the eastern side of Little Diomede.”
“The report was ignored,” Arsharvin said. “By Eastern Military District. I never saw it.”
“Yesterday, comrade Arsharvin asked for any reports we may have received of American commercial shipping north or south of the Strait, large enough to launch a drone from. I asked him why. He shared with me his theory about the drones that hit Anadyr and Lavrentiya being amphibious…”
“And you remembered the report from the fishing boat?” Bondarev asked.
“I told her, the drones didn’t have to be ship launched. They could maybe also take off from a harbor. A boat yard or something,” Arsharvin said.
“I pulled satellite surveillance for the three weeks since your Okhotniks hit Little Diomede. I only have digital still imagery, no infrared or synthetic aperture. It hasn’t been a priority surveillance zone, and a lot of the days were foggy,” she said, reaching for a folder on the table. From it, she pulled a single image. “But this is from yesterday.”
The image showed a jelly bean shaped island, from above. It had a flat, plateau-like top and in the middle of the plateau was the cratered radome that Bondarev had mentioned. A number of wrecked fishing boats lay submerged in a shallow harbor on the concave side of the island, and just to the east of these a small blurred shape was clearly visible. Something shaped like an arrowhead, moving fast.
Bondarev peered at it closely. It could be a Fantom, caught in the act of launching.
Or it could be nothing.
He looked at Butyrskaya, arching his eyebrows, “You must have more than a drunken fisherman and a blurred photograph to have dragged the General all this way?”
“Oh, she does comrade Major-General,” Potemkin said, enjoying the reveal. He nodded to the intelligence officer, “Show him.”
Now Arsharvin stepped forward, “Allow me. It was my drone that took the photograph.”
“At my request,” Butyrskaya pointed out.
Potemkin sighed, “If you don’t mind…”
Arsharvin raised his hands in defeat, and stepped back as the photograph was placed in front of Bondarev. It was the same island, taken from above, but a much lower altitude. The time and date stamp showed it had been taken mere hours ago. It took him a moment to see the difference.
Floating on the water, hidden among the smashed and sunken fishing boats, was a US F-47 Fantom drone.
The decoy had been Bunny’s idea. Of course.
Rodriguez had returned with two steaming mugs of coffee to find O’Hare sitting with her feet up on her console desk and a big smile on her face.
“We can’t hit them on the ground, so we have to take them in the air,” Bunny said. “I think Sun Tzu said that.”
Rodriguez sat, and handed her a mug. “I’m pretty sure they didn’t have air warfare in ancient China,” she said. “Unless he was talking about kite fighting?”
Bunny leaned forward, “Or that von Clausewitz guy. Anyway, if we try and go anywhere near Saint Lawrence, we are going to get swatted, right?”
“Correct, whether we go for them on the land, or in the air,” Rodriguez said. “So?”
“So the biggest problem isn’t the 50 enemy fighters, it’s the damn ground and ship-based anti-air. But what if we lure them up here to Little Diomede, out of range of their anti-air cover.” She looked at Rodriguez like she had just laid a golden egg. “Snap. Problem solved.”
“Two brigades of enemy fighters still sounds like a big problem to me,” Rodriguez said. “When we can only launch two fighters at a time.”