Farrington pulled on the door several times, finally dislodging it. Misha’s assault rifle tumbled to the ground, landing under the Tiger. Glistening scarlet ribbons lined the instrument panel and center column, extending across the dashboard to the passenger side. The operative turned his head toward the light and smiled weakly. In the bright LED beam, Misha looked pale and listless. A deep gash ran across his chin, dripping blood onto the bottom of the steering wheel.
“We made it,” Misha said.
“Somehow,” Farrington said. “Let’s get you out of there.”
A gust of wind poured through the cabin from the open passenger side door, pelting his face with dirt. Squinting to see through the door into the murky darkness beyond, he detected the presence of something big lowering to the ground beyond the Tiger. Not wanting to take a friendly bullet between the eyes less than three hundred meters from the Kazakhstan border, he put his hands over his head and stepped back from the vehicle. Moments later, six heavily armed, dark-clad figures sprinted through the swirling cloud of dirt and descended on the vehicle.
“I need two stretchers!” one of them yelled, hopping down from the rear hatch and walking up to Farrington.
“We need to get out of here, sir. The entire 21st is headed right to this grid square. I don’t know what you did, but you sure as shit pissed them off!” the commando said.
“You have no idea,” Farrington said.
He grabbed the Delta operator’s shoulder before the man had a chance to turn.
“I’ll take care of the KIA,” he said.
Farrington slung his rifle and helped the soldiers lower Misha onto one of the foldable stretchers produced by the helicopter’s extraction team. By the time he had finished securing Misha to the stretcher, the rest of his team had been spirited off into the night. He pulled Seva’s body out of the Tiger’s troop compartment and heaved it over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. No man left behind. He raced through the choking swirl of Siberian dirt to catch up with the men loading Misha’s stretcher onto the strangest helicopter he’d ever seen.
Eager hands pulled Seva’s body into the troop compartment, grabbing him just as quickly. The ground lifted away from his feet before he had fully entered the helicopter.
“Sorry about that, sir, but we really need to get moving,” the Delta operator said, gripping Farrington’s combat vest.
The helicopter banked left, giving Farrington a sweeping view of the Siberian steppe. The dark blue eastern horizon had started to show a faint, blood-red hue under the thinning clouds. The helicopter’s crew chief reached out and pulled the sliding door shut. Dark red lighting bathed the compartment, exposing the urgent effort to stabilize Misha. Toward the rear of the helicopter, one of the Delta soldiers methodically stripped away his body armor and outer garments, while another prepared several IV drip bags. On the bench in front of him, a third operator pressed a medical compress to Gosha’s leg. Sasha’s stretcher lay at his feet, jammed into the compartment. The helicopter’s hasty departure hadn’t allowed for an orderly loading process.
“They’re in good hands, sir. This is one of our combat trauma teams,” said the Delta operator next to him.
He noted that the compartment resembled a stripped-down version of a Black Hawk, configured with eight troop seats and a sophisticated medical station equipped to handle two casualties. An additional station behind the copilot’s seat resembled something he’d seen inside a command-and-control Stryker vehicle.
“What is this thing?” Farrington said.
“Highly classified. That’s about all I know. They didn’t want to send these in after you,” the lead Delta operator said.
“I’m glad they changed their minds,” Farrington said.
“They didn’t. Our task force commander made the call. They’re probably choking on the hors d’oeuvres back in Washington.”
“I hope so. Saves me from having to choke them,” Farrington said.
Chapter 70
The president closed the door and took a seat on the leather couch, ready to jump down Jacob Remy’s throat if the man said another word about the helicopters. Yes, they had all watched Black Magic violate the established rules of engagement to the fullest extent possible, by not only crossing into Russian airspace but also destroying one of the Russian helicopters. And yes, this could have ended badly, with the wreckage of a prototype stealth helicopter and the bodies of a dozen or more American servicemen strewn across the Siberian countryside. But none of that mattered because it didn’t happen. None of it had ever happened, and Jacob Remy needed to get that clear. The operation succeeded, leaving no physical evidence behind, and the Russians were in no position to press the matter.
“Well?” he said, shrugging his shoulders at Remy.
“We’ve got a bigger problem than two Russian helicopters,” Remy said.
“I don’t really care at this point,” the president said.
“You have to care, sir. The CIA has gone rogue. Manning has lost control of the National Clandestine Service. I want to show you something.”
“Go ahead.”
Remy activated one of the large flat-screen monitors, which displayed satellite imagery. He sat behind a small computer station in the corner of the study and zoomed in on one of the images.
“This was taken over Slavgorod right after the mysterious blackout. Thermal imaging confirms the wreckage of seven armored vehicles. All six vehicles situated along the approach road to Slavgorod were destroyed. There’s no way that Blackjack could have done this. I was willing to believe that they had somehow slipped away, but this is clearly the work of something else. Either a drone or stealth bomber,” Remy said.
“General Gordon decided against the use of surveillance drones over Kazakhstan,” the president said.
“Right, and I don’t think anyone stole a stealth bomber. The Pentagon tends to notice when things like that go missing. Do you know what this means?”
The president shook his head apathetically.
“The CIA put an armed drone over Russia without your permission and attacked Russian army units en masse. Renegade special operations pilots destroyed two Russian helicopters,” Remy said. “We’re looking at fifty plus Russian casualties, easily. This thing spiraled way out of control. We should have taken action earlier to limit this.”
“How? By sending our own drones in to take out Blackjack on the Ob River? Or maybe passing along Blackjack’s exfiltration route to the Russians? After they successfully destroyed Vektor, of course,” the president said.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Really? Because I’m beginning to wonder. Jacob, I learned a valuable lesson tonight. Something I’ve lost sight of. Politics has no place in an operation like that. We either check our politics in at the door, or we don’t walk into the room, because the men and women carrying out these missions don’t care about any of that crap. They execute the mission. End of story. If we can’t support them one hundred percent, then we have no business asking them to do our dirty work in the first place.”
“We didn’t come up with the idea to take out Vektor,” Remy reminded him.
“Once we put our stamp of approval on it, we owned it. Thomas Manning, the helicopter pilots, and whoever made the decision to put an armed drone over Slavgorod? We owe them a debt of gratitude for correcting our mistake. Don’t ever forget that, Jacob.”
Jacob Remy remained silent for several seconds. By not offering an immediate contradictory statement, his chief of staff indicated that he understood the president’s point and would abide by it.