Iron Wolf (13 page)

O
VER
E
ASTERN
U
KRAINE

T
HAT SAME TIME

“My God,” Captain Leonid Davydov said sharply, staring out through the canopy of his Su-24M2. Far off to the south, multiple explosions went off one after another and then faded out—leaving a flickering red and orange glow. “I don't care what Voronezh Control says, Belinsky. They may not have any reports of trouble, but something damned big is burning down there!”

He rolled the big swept-wing fighter-bomber into a tight turn toward the south, pulled the wings back to sixty-nine degrees sweep, and shoved his throttles forward. Driven by two massive turbojet engines producing almost thirty-four thousand pounds of thrust, the Su-24 accelerated fast. Settling on course toward the distant fires, Davydov rolled hard left, letting the loss of lift pull the fighter-bomber's nose toward the ground. He felt himself floating up against his harness as the gentle dive produced a zero-G-like condition. Unloaded, with the aircraft's nominal weight reduced almost to nothing, the Su-24 picked up even more speed.

“Inform Voronezh that we are investigating,” he told his weapons officer as he rolled wings level.

“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant replied.

“And get the Kaira-24 optical system up and running,” Davydov ordered. The Kaira-24 was a combined laser designator and infrared television scanner system. Comparable to the Pave Tack target detection and designation pods first used by American F-111F strike planes, it sent thermal images to a TV screen at Belinsky's station. If necessary, the Su-24's weapons officer could use those images to pick out targets for the laser-guided bombs they were carrying.

Five minutes later, Davydov leveled off at about five hundred meters, reduced his throttles, and pushed the fighter-bomber's wings forward to forty-five degrees for the slower-speed ingress. Now that he had a good fix on the fires burning ahead, coming in too hot
would only make it more difficult to figure out just what was going on. The airspeed indicator on his HUD dropped steadily.

“Five kilometers out,” Belinsky said, peering intently at the grainy infrared images on his monitor. “I see multiple fires burning in what looks like some kind of complex, possibly a military base.”

“Christ,” Davydov muttered. “That must be one of ours. Go active on all countermeasures,
now.
” He thumbed a button on his stick. “Arming cannon.” For strafing runs, the Su-24 carried an internal GSh-6-23 cannon with five hundred rounds.

“There are bodies on the ground in the complex!” Belinsky said suddenly, still staring at his screen. “Many bodies. None moving.”

Davydov swallowed hard. “Warn Voronezh! Tell them this is a terrorist—”

Suddenly there were more bright flashes lighting up the dark ground ahead of them. Streaks of flame slashed up into the air at incredible speed, already curving toward the Su-24 as it streaked past overhead.

“Missile attack!”
Davydov yelled. Desperately, he slammed the defensive countermeasures button on his stick, simultaneously yanking the fighter-bomber into a gut-wrenching, high-G turn to the left. White-hot magnesium flares blossomed behind the rolling Su-24, trying to decoy the heat-seeking missiles homing in on the wildly maneuvering aircraft.

It was no use. Ambushed at low altitude, and without enough maneuvering room or airspeed to evade successfully, the Su-24M2 was easy prey.

Two of the five shoulder-launched SAMs fired by Kravchenko's partisans were spoofed by flares and blew up hundreds of meters behind the fleeing Russian fighter-bomber. One never locked on. It climbed wildly into the night sky before exhausting its solid-rocket propellant and plunging back to earth. But two smashed home and detonated, shredding the Su-24's control surfaces. Still rolling off to the left, the Russian plane slammed into the ground at several hundred kilometers an hour and blew up, strewing burning pieces of itself across Ukrainian wheat fields in a tumbling ball of fire and scorched earth. It happened so fast that neither crewmember had a change to reach their ejection handles.

Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.

—
J
OHN
D
.
R
OCKEFELLER,
A
MERICAN INDUSTRIALIST

T
HE
S
CRAPHEAP,

NEAR
S
ILIŞTEA
G
UMEŞTI,
R
OMANIA

T
HAT SAME TIME

Brad McLanahan looked up at the Cybernetic Infantry Device piloted by his father, Patrick. No matter how hard you tried, he thought, there were some things you never got used to. This was one of them.

Nearly two years ago, he was sure that he'd seen his father killed—mangled when a 30mm cannon burst from a Chinese J-15 fighter had ripped into the left side of the XB-1 Excalibur bomber they had been flying together. There had even been a funeral service for him, attended by both the sitting president and the vice president of the United States.

Then, last year, during his work on the Starfire Project, he had come face-to-face with this CID, or one just like it, and learned that
his father had not died of his terrible wounds after all. Or at least not permanently.

Kevin Martindale had dispatched a Scion team to Guam to collect intelligence data on the Chinese sneak attack that had smashed Andersen Air Force Base. There, in a little clinic outside the base, they found Patrick McLanahan resuscitated from clinical death and still clinging feebly to life. But he was in critical condition and it seemed highly unlikely that he would survive long enough to be evacuated back to the United States. As a desperate emergency measure, the Scion team had placed him inside a CID, hoping the robot's automated life-support systems could help keep him alive long enough to die in a hospital. To their amazement, the CID had not only stabilized Patrick's condition, it had brought him back to full consciousness.

But there was a catch.

Patrick McLanahan could fully function inside the manned robot, piloting it and employing its weapons and sensors effectively. The CID's systems monitored his body and brain and supplied the oxygen, water, and nutrients needed to sustain his life. And its sensor arrays and computers allowed him to see and interact electronically with the world. But the CID could not heal him. Outside its confines, his damaged body, unable to breathe on its own, would gradually slip into a coma.

Faced with a choice between life trapped in a machine and the endless twilight of a permanent vegetative state, he had opted for life . . . at least, life of a sort.

Since then, Brad knew his father had become part of Scion—training with Martindale's direct-action teams and using the CID's computers and sensors to assist in the company's intelligence-gathering, planning, and counterterrorist surveillance operations. From some of the things Patrick had said in their relatively few private conversations, he suspected there was a lot more to it than that.

And it was probably high time that he found out exactly what that was.

“It's really great to see you, Dad,” Brad said, working hard to
keep his voice from shaking. “But I guess you didn't bring me all the way out here just for a father-son chat.”

“No, Brad, I didn't,” his father said somberly.

“Have you picked up intel on some new murder plot by the Russians?” Brad asked. Last year, Scion security teams had stopped several attempts by Russian agents to kill him—attempts directly ordered by Russia's president. That was what had first prompted his father to reveal his own unexpected survival to Brad. Another effort by Gennadiy Gryzlov to try wiping out anyone carrying the McLanahan name could explain why he'd been yanked out of Sky Masters and the U.S. so covertly.

“Not precisely,” Patrick said.

“Then why am I here?” Brad wondered. He shrugged. “I mean, seeing all this supersecret spy stuff is really cool, but it's not really my forte. Besides, my junior year at Cal Poly starts in mid-September. And I don't think my professors will buy the ‘please excuse my absence, because I was visiting a covert private military base' line—even if you or President Martindale would let me use it.”

The CID was silent for several moments. Brad wished again that he could see his father's face or hear his real laugh. It was unnerving to look up and see only the robot's smooth, expressionless armor, even knowing that the older McLanahan was cocooned inside.

“To some extent, you're here partly
because
we don't have a good fix on Gryzlov's plans or intentions,” Patrick said finally.

Brad frowned. “Look, Dad, no offense, but I can take care of myself. Sergeant Major Wohl and his countersurveillance guys taught me pretty well.”

“Chris Wohl was a good man,” his father agreed. “But that's not the point, son.”

Brad took another deep breath. “Okay . . . what is the point?”

“You saw the news about that Russian general who was assassinated and Moscow's revenge attack on that Polish village near the Ukrainian border?”

Brad nodded. “Yeah. It sounded pretty bad, like that crazy son of
a bitch Gryzlov's gone off his meds again. But what's that got to do with me?”

“Maybe nothing,” his father admitted. “But maybe everything. Intelligence gathering, even with my ability to poke around inside secure computer systems, is an inexact science. We only ever see fragments of the real picture, so we have to do a lot of interpolation and extrapolation from the scraps of hard data we
do
pick up.”

“Like figuring out a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle when you've only got handful of the pieces,” Brad realized.

“And when you're not even sure that all the pieces you found belong to the same puzzle,” Patrick agreed. “It's a question of learning to recognize certain patterns—patterns of encrypted communications, troop and aircraft movements, leadership rhetoric, weapons procurement decisions, and a lot of other factors.”

“And now you're picking warning signs of something bad happening?” Brad asked carefully.

“It's more like seeing the intelligence picture we thought we had a grip on suddenly shift into something we don't yet recognize,” his father said. “Which means we're in the dark right now, as far as figuring out what the Russians are up to goes. And being in the dark about what a tyrant like Gennadiy Gryzlov intends is a very dangerous place to be.”

“Yeah, I understand that,” Brad said. Then he looked up at the CID. “I'm sorry, Dad, but none of what you've just described sounds like a serious reason to blow the kind of money or pull the kind of covert stunts your people just used to fly me here.”

“We're convinced the Russians may be planning something big,” Patrick said stubbornly. “Something that may be very dangerous. The murder of that general of theirs, Voronov, was a catalyst of some kind. We're picking up signs of heightened readiness in every branch of the Russian armed forces. They're flying more aircraft near Poland and the Baltic states. More tank and motor-rifle brigades are moving from cantonments deep inside Russia to new bases
closer to the Ukrainian border. And their tactical missile forces appear to be running repeated firing drills.”

Brad whistled softly. “Okay, that doesn't sound good.” Then he shook his head. “But that's not evidence of any threat to me personally.”

“Except for the fact that the last time Gryzlov decided to take a shot at you, he also started firing missiles at our spaceplanes and Armstrong Space Station,” his father reminded him. “He has a track record of trying to settle personal grudges at the same time that he's pursuing strategic military options.”

“That's pretty thin, Dad,” Brad said slowly.

“Yes, it is,” his father agreed. “But you're my son. And I've learned the hard way to trust my instincts. I'm not prepared to risk your life in the hope that Gennadiy Gryzlov or the killers he gives orders to have learned to leave the McLanahans alone. If I'm wrong and there aren't assassins hunting you again, we'll know soon enough, and you can go back to Cal Poly. In the meantime, we really do need you here.”

“You need me?” Brad didn't bother hiding his surprise. “Why?”

“You've met Mark Darrow,” his father said.

Brad nodded, keeping his expression carefully blank. He still wasn't sure what he thought of the ex-RAF flier.

“Well, we're assembling a cadre of pilots like him, all with similar skills and experience,” Patrick said. “So far, they're mostly from the U.S., the UK, and Canada. They're all ex-military, trained to fly some of the most advanced aircraft in the world.”

“Which is interesting, but still it doesn't explain why you've brought me here,” Brad said.

“These men and women are great aviators,” his father said. “But they're still just a collection of individual pilots. They don't yet form a cohesive unit. What we need them to become is a tough, top-notch flying and fighting squadron. And that's what I want you to build them into.”

“Me?”
Brad exclaimed. “Look, Dad, I'm just a college kid. My total real military leadership experience is just about zero, even if you count my time in the Civil Air Patrol.”

“I watched you build your Starfire team, son,” Patrick said. “You took a bunch of eccentric, brilliant individualists and turned them into an incredible scientific and engineering group—a group that was able to meet and overcome obstacles that were far bigger than anyone could have predicted. You then built a design and consultation portfolio with the names of hundreds of scientists and engineers all over the world, all of whom volunteered to assist.”

“I had Jerry Kim and Jodie Cavendish,” Brad said. “They were the marquee names. That's what attracted the technical and money contributions.”

“They were superstars, no doubt, but there's also no doubt that the team never would have happened without your leadership,” Patrick said. “Jodie had been working on her own for years; Jung-bae Kim was so high in the theoretical-science stratosphere that no one ever thought about recruiting him . . . except
you
. Then, you made them all work together. That kind of leadership is hard to find.”

“Maybe that's true,” Brad said. His eyes darkened at the thought of his friend and fourth teammate Casey Huggins, the youngest female and the first paraplegic ever to travel to Earth orbit. She had been killed in the Russian attack on Starfire, awarding her yet another historic first: the youngest woman to die in Earth orbit. “Casey died in the process.”

“That wasn't your doing,” Patrick said. “Blame Gryzlov and his thugs.”

“Even so, Starfire was different,” Brad insisted. “Corralling students, scientists, and engineers to design and build and test that microwave laser was one thing. It was an incredibly cool project we all loved. But asking me to do the same thing with a bunch of zipper-suited sun-god fighter pilots and bomber jocks . . .” He shook his head. “That's totally different.”

“Maybe not as different as you imagine,” Patrick said.

“I don't get that.”

“I'd guess Darrow did some showing off on your flight in,” his father said carefully.

“Oh, yeah,” Brad said sourly. “He's absolutely a shit-hot pilot. And I got the definite impression he wanted me to know it.”

Patrick said nothing for a few moments. Then he asked, “Didn't it ever occur to you to wonder why he bothered to do that? I mean, if you're just a college student like you said, right? Why should a top-of-the-line veteran RAF aviator give a damn about what you think of his flying skills?”

“Maybe he was trying to impress you through me,” Brad said. “You know, get the word to the boss, former Lieutenant General Patrick S. McLanahan, through his kid.”

“He doesn't know who I am, son,” his father said. “None of them do. We're still keeping the fact that I'm alive a closely held secret. To Darrow and the other pilots here, I'm just a faceless man in the machine or a call sign on the radio or an identifier tag on a Scion e-mail.”

“Oh,” Brad said, trying to hide the sorrow he suddenly felt. His father had always insisted that he didn't want anyone's pity—and that he didn't regret the choice he had made.

“You, on the other hand, are not exactly anonymous,” Patrick went on doggedly, not giving him the chance to dodge. “You've flown in real combat—both against the Chinese and in space, against the Russians. Maybe that's old news to a lot of people on the outside, but it's not in the military aviation community. And especially not among the kind of people we recruit into Scion. Whether you believe it or not, Brad, the other pilots assembling here at the Scrapheap already know that you are their equal. Of course, they would all rather screw the pooch in front of the rest of the others than admit that.”

Not sure of what to say to that, Brad colored in embarrassment. He looked down at his shoes, waiting for the telltale warmth to fade. Then he glanced up at the huge CID standing motionless in front of him. “But what do I do, Dad? I mean, I can't just strut into the ready room, strike a heroic pose, and say, ‘Hey, boys and girls, I've got an idea, let's get together and build ourselves an elite combat air squadron!' ”

“Just be yourself,” his father said. “Trust your instincts about people and about how to motivate them. Get to meet the other pilots first and—”

He broke off suddenly. The CID's six-sided head swiveled away smoothly, as though it were listening to something in the distance.

“Dad?”

“It looks as though you got here just in time, Brad,” his father said. “I'm picking up a whole series of emergency signals on frequencies used by the Russian Air Force. One of their Su-24s just went down over eastern Ukraine.”

“Was it an accident?” Brad asked grimly.

“Only if someone
accidentally
fired off a number of shoulder-launched SAMs at the same moment that Russian pilot flew overhead.”