You never knew which direction they would come from though; it was something about the wind, but it seemed pretty random to him. He swiveled around, looking east, then west. Yeah, there it was. A tiny speck in the sky about ten miles out, if he had to guess.
No. Two specks. As he watched, the single dot split into two. Then three. What? No one had told him to expect three delivery flights today. That sort of thing only ever happened in the holiday season. Except these weren’t delivery flights. The planes were closing way too fast. He leaned forward on his handlebars, eyes glued to the approaching aircraft.
Could be Air Force, he guessed. Since the Air Force had rebuilt the radar base up at Savoonga ten years ago there were occasional overflights by US bombers and fighters which the Air Force said were using the base to test their navigation systems. Transport flights too; the big four-engined jets bringing in personnel and equipment occasionally overflew Gambell on their way in and out. But none had ever landed. The runway was probably too short for a jet like that anyway. Whatever these planes were, they were booking. Within no time the dots had grown to small dart shapes and were going to be over Gambell in another second or two.
When the Air Force started appearing over Saint Lawrence again, Perri had quickly learned to identify their aircraft. Seeing one of them in the skies over his village was a welcome break in the monotony. Hard to tell yet, but these had to be F-35 fighters or F-47 drones. His money was on the older F-35s — the specks racing toward him looked a little too big to be the pilotless drones. One, two, three; he had barely finished confirming the count when the machines were blasting over the top of him, so low that the sonic boom nearly blew out his eardrums.
He put his hand up to his ears. Shit that hurt! Assholes! That wasn’t funny.
He watched the three jets zoom into a climb, spiraling up into the blue of the sky in perfect formation.
They weren’t F-35s. They weren’t F-47s either.
What the hell?!
Bondarev pulled his Sukhoi onto its back at the top of his climb then barrel rolled to level flight at 10,000 feet over Gambell with his two wingmen staying in perfect formation behind and slightly above him. His radar warning system was screaming at him as the radiation from the early warning station at Savoonga painted his aircraft. It took all of his self-control not to target one his of antiradar missiles at the US installation, but the same heads-up display that identified the US radar for him was also telling him it was not actively tracking. His threat warning system was silent too.
Which was what he was expecting, since the message had come through while his squadron was in flight saying that Russian special forces had been successful in taking the US radar facility at Savoonga without firing a single shot. Arsharvin had texted him a report saying they had fallen on the sleeping US forces in the night, finding only two dozy sentries, a duty officer and two radar operators awake. The other twenty personnel stationed there had been asleep and woke to find themselves the first prisoners of Operation LOSOS. The Spetsnaz had kept the radar station in operation so that NORAD wouldn’t raise an alarm at it going off the air.
He cracked his knuckles and smiled. Against the wishes of his staff he had insisted on being in the first wave of aircraft over the target and he eased his Sukhoi into a lazy racetrack orbit over Gambell. “Swan 1 to Swan 2, I make it one civilian vehicle by the runway at Gambell airstrip, confirm?” The motorbike or buggy down below was too small for his IMA BK air-to-ground radar to pick up, but he pinned it with his optical targeting system. In the town itself, he could see a few people moving around, and something that was probably a pickup truck driving toward the small harbor.
His wingman came on the radio within a couple of seconds. “Confirmed Swan leader, no military vehicles or signals identified.”
Theirs wasn’t a reconnaissance flight. Operation LOSOS was already supported by intensive satellite and drone surveillance and the whole of Saint Lawrence was being monitored in real time by every eye and ear in the Russian Eastern Military District inventory. But Bondarev hadn’t survived 57 combat sorties over Syria and Turkey by trusting someone or something else to be his eyes and ears.
That was why he was leading this initial sortie himself, and had split his squadron of 12 Su-57s into four sections, sending one over Savoonga in the north, two to the eastern end of the island where they expected the inevitable US response to materialize and he took the remaining element in over Gambell to reassure himself that the US hadn’t moved any mobile air defense assets there to give him a horrible surprise.
Phase I of LOSOS was rolling. As he watched Gambell disappear under his wing for the second time, he canceled the lock on the small vehicle below, leveled his machine out and pointed it East, toward Alaska. “Swallow 1, this is Swan 1. Clear skies over the target, you are cleared for ingress.”
“Swallow 1 acknowledges, beginning ingress,” came the reply.
Perri was getting a crick in his neck from watching the fast moving jets circle overhead. He was still trying to work out what they were. They’d had an Air Force officer come to Gambell school a couple of years ago, and he had played a game with them, showing them silhouettes of American fighter planes, bombers and drones and having them guess what each of them was from a small recognition chart he had handed out. Perri had won the quiz, and got himself a 712th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron patch to sow on his anorak. You can bet he did; it was one of his coolest possessions — a large hand-sewn cloth emblem with an image of a polar bear holding a globe of the world in one paw. He reached absently for his sleeve and fingered it now.
As soon as he turned 18 he was going to enlist. Get himself off this island and see the world. He’d already been sent the papers and filled them out.
As the three aircraft overhead stopped circling and sped away to the East, Perri had convinced himself these planes were not on the recognition chart he had at home. He watched them go. Some new sort of top-secret Air Force plane maybe? They could certainly move. In seconds they were gone.
Or had they just circled around and come up behind him again? Damn, that was fast. He heard a sound in the air to the west behind him and swiveled his head. This time he saw a flat line of what looked like five or six large fat flying insects closing on the airstrip. As they got closer, the sound in the air resolved itself into the thud of rotors. A little like the sound made by the Amazon drones as they switched from horizontal to vertical flight for landing. But that was more of a buzzing sound, whereas this was a chest pounding syncopated thump.
There was no doubt in Perri’s mind that these machines were planning to land. They went from a staggered line abreast formation into line astern, each one lined up five hundred yards behind the other, and they snaked toward the airstrip with unmistakable intent. Perri fumbled for his phone. He should call someone. This was too weird. But who the hell should he call? Mayor Pungiwiyi? He was the closest thing Gambell had to a law officer, but the guy was definitely still sleeping off his birthday party from last night. His father? He and his brothers would be well out to sea by now, well out of range of the small cellular bubble around Gambell.
He still had the card for the Air Force officer from Savoonga in his wallet. He’d call them. They’d know what the hell was going on. Fumbling with his wallet and phone in the cold air, he punched in the number and waited. It came back with a busy signal. He dialed again — same thing. It wasn’t unusual, cell coverage between the two towns was often patchy. Damn.