Wide-awake now, he scrambled out of his chair. “Get up! Up, you lazy bastards!” he roared, his voice echoing through the crowded van. “We’re on alert! Get the fucking camouflage netting off the antenna truck! Go!”
His crew hurried to obey, bolting outside into the frigid night air. Before turning to follow them, the captain swung back to his sergeant. “Power up the system, Proshkin! As soon as we’ve got the antenna erected, I want this radar fully operational. Understand?”
The sergeant nodded. He turned back to his station and began rapidly flipping a succession of switches. With a low hum, automated signals processing units, satellite navigation systems, and digital map displays started warming up.
Golovkin paused only to pull on his fur-lined gloves and then went outside into the darkness. He gasped as the raw, subzero cold hit him with sledgehammer force. But his men were hard at work, tugging and straining to pull snow-covered layers of antiradar and antithermal camouflage away from their radar antenna truck. With a creaking groan, the huge crane-mounted antenna itself rose slowly but steadily, scattering shattered chips and pieces of ice in all directions.
The captain stood watching it climb into the air. With luck, they would be online and radiating in less than six minutes.
Brad McLanahan peered through his HUD. The Ranger’s advanced forward-looking night-vision camera systems turned the night into a green-tinged version of daylight. They were closing on the foothills of the Urals, a series of barren, boulder-strewn heights cut by twisting, tree-lined ravines.
“We are thirteen minutes out from the LZ,” Nadia reported. Her eyes were fixed on the computer-generated map shown on one of her displays.
Brad nodded. They were a little over one hundred nautical miles from their planned landing zone — a two-thousand-foot-long clearing in the forest about ten miles from Mount Manaraga and Russia’s buried Perun’s Aerie cyberwar complex. For a second, his vision blurred. Crap, he thought. Not now. He blinked rapidly a few times. His vision cleared up. He frowned, glad his expression was hidden beneath his oxygen mask. Even with the aid of the XCV-62’s digital terrain-following system, this prolonged nap-of-the-earth flight was testing his endurance.
“New VHF search radar detected at ten o’clock,” the Ranger’s computer announced suddenly. “Strong agile active frequency signal. Range estimated at thirty-three miles. Detection probability moderate.”
Damn it, Brad thought. Where the hell did that come from? Nothing in their mission planning intelligence had identified a radar site anywhere near here.
“The radar is evaluated as a KB/Agat Vostok E-type,” Nadia said. Her voice was tight. “Shall I activate SPEAR?”
“Negative,” Brad said quickly. “If we use SPEAR, the Russians will know for sure we’re coming. So let’s see if I can shake this radar loose before it firms us up.” Since it used longer wavelengths, VHF radar was extremely effective against stealth aircraft. The Vostok E system was a mobile, modern replacement for the old Soviet-era P-18 Spoon Rest units. But it was usually paired with faster L- and S/X-band fire-control radars as part of a SAM battery. What was this one doing out on its own?
“DTF disengaged,” he said, turning off the Ranger’s terrain-following system. He pushed the stick forward a bit, dropping the aircraft’s nose. They descended from two hundred feet down to just a little over a hundred — almost brushing the treetops that flashed past and below them in a rippling blur. His teeth locked together. While flying this low at 450 knots, even a momentary loss of concentration would be fatal.
Heading east, they zoomed down one of the narrow valleys. Rocky heights rose sharply on both sides. An ice-covered stream twisted and turned down the floor of the valley.
“VHF signal strength decreasing,” the computer reported. “Detection probability now low.”
“You did it!” Nadia said, exhaling.
Feeling a little safer now that they had higher ground between them and that Vostok radar, Brad switched the XCV-62’s terrain-following system back on. It pulled them back up to two hundred feet. He unclenched his teeth. “Maybe. Maybe not,” he told her. “Depends on how jumpy that radar crew is. And why they suddenly powered up.” He shrugged his shoulders against his harness. “I’m pretty sure they got some piece of us, at least for a few seconds. Now, if we’re lucky and that Russian crew was only running a routine test, they may think the blip they saw was just a systems glitch.”
“And if we are not lucky?” Nadia asked softly.
“That’s what has me worried,” Brad acknowledged. He clicked the intercom, opening a channel to the troop compartment. In a few terse phrases, he briefed Macomber, Charlie Turlock, and the others on the situation.
“So,” Macomber drawled, “it may be ‘good-bye, surprise’ and ‘hello, hornet’s nest?’”
“Could be.”
“Care to give me any odds on which one it is?” Macomber asked.
Brad shrugged again. “Maybe fifty-fifty.” He banked right, following the trace of the valley as it curved southeast. “Do you want to abort?”
“Hell, no,” the other man growled. “If those Russian sons of bitches really are awake and waiting for us, skedaddling now won’t improve the situation much. If we’re gonna have to run a missile gauntlet on the way home, let’s blow the shit out of Gryzlov’s cybergeeks first.”
“Charlie?” Brad asked.
“Suits me,” Charlie Turlock said simply. “You know, not that I would ever say I told you so, Whack… but I feel compelled to point out that I did strongly suggest we stop for a drink at that Finnish airport bar first.”
Despite his anxiety, Brad felt himself grinning. “Captain Schofield?”
“My lads and I are ready,” the Canadian told him. “We’re unstrapping now and getting our gear ready.”
“That’s kind of dangerous,” Brad told him. “This could be a pretty rough landing.”
“We’ll take that chance,” Schofield replied. “No offense, Captain McLanahan, but if we are heading into a hot LZ, my troops and I would rather like to get clear of this aircraft and into cover as quickly as possible.”
“Understood,” Brad said. The glowing numbers on his HUD altered slightly as the Ranger’s computer recalculated their flight plan, based on their current airspeed and heading. “We’re eight minutes out. Stand by.”
“Replay that sequence, Proshkin, but slow it down this time,” Captain Fyodor Golovkin ordered. His sergeant obeyed. Together the two men watched the small blip suddenly appear on their radar display, waver, and then just as suddenly vanish. From start to finish, the blip was visible only for fifteen seconds. The captain pulled at his jaw. “What do you think?”
The sergeant shrugged. “We were still powering up, Captain. It could easily have been a false reading.” His fingers drummed lightly on the side of his console. “But since we haven’t been able to run our normal alignment, calibration, and other tests, who knows how out of whack this equipment is. Ordinarily, I’d say that we picked up something real. As it is, in these temperatures and with all that ice coating the ring element radiator—”
Golovkin nodded. He shared the other man’s frustration and uncertainty. As part of the effort to hide the existence of Perun’s Aerie, Colonel Balakin had ordered them to keep their radar completely off the air once it was deployed. Golovkin had argued that his equipment needed periodic checks to confirm its full operational readiness — especially in these harsh winter conditions. Unfortunately, the colonel had ignored his protests. Like many senior officers without a technical background, Balakin expected that fully activating complex systems like their Vostok E radar was as simple and foolproof as flipping a power switch.