“Ah, crap,” he heard Charlie Turlock mutter.
“You’ve got that right. Apparently, we’re back to satellite phones and radio, until CERT teams can find and neutralize the viruses that are locking things up,” Brad told them grimly.
Gryzlov had just landed another solid punch. Without reliable communications, everything from regular day-to-day business to public safety was in jeopardy. Robbed of the ability to call for help, innocent people were going to die — from heart attacks and strokes left untreated until it was too late, from house fires that spread unchecked, or from any one of a dozen other kinds of accidents where minutes could make the difference between life and death.
“What are the president’s orders?” Nadia asked.
“We’re authorized to strike the Russian cyberwar complex at the earliest possible moment,” Brad replied. Fighting the weight of the responsibility he’d just been handed, he straightened up to his full height. “Which means we go tonight.”
THIRTY-ONE
GRU major Leonid Usenko carefully lit another cigarette before turning back to the English-language crossword puzzle he was wrestling with this evening. It was from an American newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. He preferred the American style to those published in the British papers. The English crosswords, he thought, were maddeningly indirect, full of mysterious allusions that meant nothing to those who hadn’t been educated at one of that nation’s elite public schools, like Eton or Harrow. American puzzles, while often cleverly constructed, were far more decipherable — requiring only a solid knowledge of the language, American idiom, and popular culture.
For a moment, he considered sharing this insight with Captain Artem Mikheyev. The other intelligence officer sat at a table just on the other side of the tiny living room of the small lakeside vacation cabin they’d bought through a series of cutouts. But then he reconsidered. Mikheyev was hunched over his laptop computer, grumbling and swearing about something under his breath. One of the problems with any prolonged covert surveillance mission, especially when it involved living in relatively tight quarters, was that tempers naturally frayed over time. The younger man, especially, was feeling the strain. As a cybernetics and computer expert, he was supposed to have been on his way back to Moscow and his regular duties weeks ago. Instead, he had been ordered to stay on with Usenko and Rusanov while they maintained a distant watch on the Iron Wolf base and its activities.
Usenko bent back over his crossword. What was a seven-letter word for “a Roman legionary officer”? he wondered. Was it a—
Suddenly the front door burst open. Both Usenko and Mikheyev looked up in alarm. Usenko shot to his feet. “What the hell…?”
Captain Konstantin Rusanov hurried inside and slammed the door shut behind him, breathless with excitement. The short, dark-haired man had been on duty observing activities at the airfield from a concealed vantage point. “Something’s up,” he panted. “The base is under complete lockdown, with troops patrolling along every meter of the perimeter fence. And the Iron Wolf mercenaries just launched an aircraft, of a type I’ve never seen before — some sort of new stealth craft from the look of it. It took off and then flew due north.”
Usenko shoved his half-finished crossword puzzle aside. “Did you get a picture?”
Rusanov nodded. He dropped into the chair opposite the major and slid his smartphone across. On the surface, the phone looked very much like any of the major brands. Only close examination would reveal that its built-in camera was far more powerful than anything on the civilian market and that it included encryption technology that was beyond cutting-edge.
Usenko expanded the image with his fingers. His subordinate was right. At first glance, the batwing-shaped aircraft bore similarities to the American B-2 Spirit stealth bombers. But there were subtle differences. He looked up. “How big would you say this plane is?”
“Offhand?” Rusanov shrugged. “Smaller than a big strategic bomber, I would guess. But significantly larger than a fighter.”
The major pursed his lips. That was an odd size, he thought — neither fish nor fowl. Well, perhaps the experts in Moscow could make something of it. “We’d better report this at once,” he said.
Mikheyev got up from his chair. “That will be a problem,” he said gloomily. “Our Internet service is down. And so are all cell-phone and landline networks. I can’t find any connections anywhere.”
“You’re kidding,” Rusanov blurted out.
“Unfortunately, I’m not,” Mikheyev said. His mouth twisted in a crooked, sardonic smile. “I think our glorious Q Directorate comrades are up to new cyberwar tricks.”
“Shit.” Usenko took a long drag at his cigarette and then stubbed it out with an angry gesture. “Now would be a damned good time to have a satellite phone.”
The others nodded. Unfortunately, the geniuses at the Ministry of State Security had prohibited the use of satellite phones by deep-cover operational teams, especially those tasked with spying on the Iron Wolf mercenaries and their CID combat robots. Two GRU agents taken prisoner last year in Poland and exchanged at the end of the brief shooting war had blamed their capture on the use of a satellite phone near one of those terrifying machines.
“If the Poles can’t clear their communications networks sooner, we’ll have to report this during our next scheduled radio-contact window,” Usenko decided. He checked his watch. He scowled. “Which won’t open for almost another four hours.”
Their GRU team had a high-powered radio transmitter equipped to send compressed encrypted transmissions. Since even a short signal might still be picked up by Polish counterintelligence, it was a risky procedure. It was also a poor way of trying to send actionable intelligence. For security reasons, Moscow only listened for transmissions during certain set times. Signals sent outside those narrow communications windows would be ignored. They might even be treated as evidence that the Poles had captured Usenko and his subordinates and were trying to feed false information to Russia.
Two hours and nine hundred nautical miles after departing Powidz, Brad McLanahan brought the XCV-62 down for a smooth landing on Kemijärvi’s fourteen-hundred-meter-long runway. He taxied off onto the apron, where a Scion maintenance, security, and refueling team waited.
This airport, just inside the Arctic Circle and deep amid Lapland’s forests and lakes, was a good choice for an interim refueling stop. Used mainly by private jets, Kemijärvi was also an Arctic test site for UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles, operated by Sky Masters and other manufacturers. Which meant that oddly configured aircraft were a relatively common sight here, far less likely to attract unwanted attention. As it was, their flight into the field had been logged as a cargo flight carrying equipment for the region’s timber industry.
Quickly, he and Nadia Rozek ran through their postlanding checklists. Then he clicked the intercom, opening a channel to the troop compartment behind the cockpit. “How are things back there?”
“No problems,” Whack Macomber told him from inside one of the two CIDs squeezed into the compartment alongside Schofield, his four commandos, and their weapons and gear. “Other than Charlie pestering me to ask if there’s time for a quick drink at the airport bar.”