The station’s long, rectangular arrays, perhaps its most prominent and memorable feature, suddenly broke away and began tumbling end over end, as the rest of the laboratories and connecting modules began their own strangely graceful ballet, moving with underwater slowness in the vacuum of space.
General Kennedy returned to the screen. “Sir, the threat has been eliminated. Now I suggest we turn our attention to the next one.”
“Those helos up in Canada.”
“That’s right. But sir, we count more than sixty heavy Russian transport aircraft with fighter escorts lifting off from every air base along the east coast of the country. Could be one or more brigades, with accompanying vehicles. We believe they’ll put down just north of Alberta.”
“Let’s get some fighters up there to stop them.”
“There are far too many aircraft, and many of our units in Alaska have been deployed to Europe. The squadrons we do have are already in the air.”
Becerra held back a curse. “Kapalkin has been working on this one for a long time, carefully weakening us, spreading us out too far.”
“Well, as we like to say, Mr. President, the balloon is going up. At the very least, we’d like to get boys from the Tenth Mountain up there, along with some Marines from Pendleton. And we have a Stryker Brigade in Alaska we’ll bring down, along with another one we’ll bring up from Fort Lewis, so long as you can work out a deal with the prime minister.”
“What about air strikes?”
“They’ll have limited effect, because if we’re right, the Russians will be attempting to seize key infrastructure, pipelines, refineries, and so on, intact. We can’t risk damaging those facilities, so for the most part, we’ll be on the ground, with close air support at our shoulders. We’ll need to hold back on the bombers and kinetic energy weapons as our very last resorts.”
“I think the prime minster would agree.”
She smiled crookedly. “Mr. President, I also have to point out that the Russians could cut off their noses to spite their faces.”
“You mean if they can’t control the Alberta reserves—”
“They’ll destroy them. In fact, if those inbound Russian aircraft were bombers, we’d assume that’s the mission. Still could be.”
“General, can we do this? Can we fight this war on multiple fronts and put more people up in Canada?”
“We think so, sir. And remember, the Russians are further dividing their own forces to continue their push. But the key is the prime minister. If you can get him to commit his forces, we’ll be in a lot better shape.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen, not in any official capacity anyway. There will always be some Canadian units that’ll fight if attacked, no matter what the prime minister says.”
“So in that regard, the Russians might be doing us a favor.”
“Yes, sir. In the meantime, we’ll get what fighters we can in the air to disrupt those incoming aircraft.”
“Good. You know, I just spoke to an F-35 pilot operating out of a little base north of Yellowknife. She took out more than half a dozen of those Russian helos. I want her up there.”
“I’ll make sure of that, sir.”
FIFTEEN
Major Stephanie Halverson spotted Boyd lying in the snow, not far from the ejection seat, half covered by the drogue chute. He’d unbuckled, crawled a few meters in the snow, and collapsed. He wasn’t moving.
Now she wouldn’t just fly over, trying to figure out if he was alive or dead. And she wouldn’t tell Igloo Base what she was doing. With the Russian helos still not far off, they would never authorize such an action. They had just ordered her back to refuel and rearm.
Of course she would comply (eventually), but she couldn’t live with herself if she abandoned Jake. She’d rather take the risk, which was, damn it, risking everything.
And God help her, she set down on the snow, landed the multimillion dollar bird, leaving her entirely vulnerable to air attack.
It took her another minute to detach herself from the cockpit, remove her helmet, and finally get down to the snow.
The icy wind stung her cheek, and it smelled as though a storm was coming.
“Jake!” She jogged toward him, the top layer of snow breaking into glistening puzzle pieces that rose to her ankles.
She reached him, slowly rolled him over, and worked on getting off his helmet. Finally, it gave. His nose had been bleeding and his left cheek was beginning to swell.
“Jake, can you hear me? It’s Steph.”
His eyes flickered open. “I want to puke.”
“It’s good to see you, too.”
He swallowed. “I’m so embarrassed. I don’t know what happened. It was like a dream… they fired rockets!”
“I know, Jake.”
“Wait a minute. What the hell? You landed?” He suddenly sat up, looked to her plane, the engine still humming.
“Jesus, Major!”
The ejection seat had a built-in survival kit that was now connected to his chute. Ignoring him, she fetched it, brought it back over. “Can you move?”
“I’m just banged up. I don’t think anything’s broken.”
“Think you can fly?”
“What the hell you talking about?”
“I want you to take her back. Rescue helo is already on the way. I’ll catch it.”
“Steph, you’re not thinking right. You don’t put an injured pilot back in the cockpit.”
She looked at him, thought about how wired to panic she was, how full of rage, the tremors still working into her hands.
“Okay, yeah. You’ll be all right?”
“I’m okay.” He glanced over to the still-burning wreckage of his fighter. “My flying career just went up in flames, but I’m okay…”
“You’re not done yet. Not if I have anything to say about it. Just hang tight.” She pulled out her sidearm, handed it to him. “Now you got two.”
“If they come back, this won’t matter.”
She knew that, too, but pushed back his hand, forcing him to take the weapon. “Rescue will be here soon.” She started back toward her fighter.
And once she was strapped in and lifting off, the news that came in from Igloo Base took her breath away.
The USS Florida’s radio room, immediately aft, starboard side of the submarine’s command, control, communications, and intelligence (C3I) space, made it easy for the radioman on watch to stick his head into the passageway and announce, “ELF traffic,” even as Commander Jonathan Andreas watched the extremely low frequency (ELF) call light start to blink incessantly on his Q-70 display console, accompanied by a steady beeping. “The first character is in, and it matches our first call letter,” continued the radioman.
“Finally,” Andreas said through a deep sigh. He pressed the Acknowledge button, stopping both beep and flash, then stepped across to the port side of C3I and placed his hand on the sonar operator’s shoulder. “Give me a careful three-hundred-and-sixty-degree listening sweep.” Catching the officer of the deck’s eye, he continued, “If we’re all clear, take us up to periscope depth.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” responded the OOD.
Andreas had done as he and the XO had discussed. They had sprinted out of the immediate area, pinged the satellite’s transponder — and had received no response for their effort.
And that had left Andreas standing there in the control room wanting to pummel someone.
In the time it took for them to complete the acoustic sweep, rise to periscope depth, and extend their mast to visually confirm no surface contacts in the immediate vicinity, the second character of the ELF message had arrived on board. It matched the second of the Florida’s three assigned ELF call letters.