He sighed. If only it were that easy. “How does the equipment look now?” he asked, still trying to decide what he should do about this possible contact.
“The antenna array seems okay,” the sergeant admitted. His tone, however, strongly suggested that he wouldn’t be surprised if bits and pieces started falling off in the next few minutes.
“Assuming that contact was genuine, what can you tell me about it?” Golovkin pressed.
The sergeant brought up the recorded sequence again and ran through it one more time. “We picked it up at about sixty kilometers,” he said carefully. “I would estimate the contact’s course as zero-eight-five degrees and its speed at more than eight hundred kilometers per hour.”
“Right, so let’s put that track on a map and then extend it along the observed direction of flight,” the captain said.
Dutifully, the sergeant obeyed. During the fifteen seconds the blip appeared on their radar display, it had covered a little more than three kilometers before disappearing. Golovkin’s eyes followed the projected track as it “stretched” almost due east — slanting toward the Urals on a course that took it within a few kilometers of Mount Manaraga and Perun’s Aerie.
“Damn,” he muttered. Still looking at the map, he picked up the direct line to Balakin’s command post. It was answered on the first ring. “This is Captain Golovkin at the Kipiyevo radar outpost. I need to speak to the colonel. Right now!”
THIRTY-THREE
“We are two minutes out from the LZ,” Nadia Rozek reported. On the surface, she sounded cool, totally unruffled. But Brad could pick up the tension hidden beneath her outwardly calm, thoroughly professional manner.
“I confirm that,” he said. “I have the LZ in sight.” Through his HUD, the clearing they’d picked out from satellite photos as a landing zone was a brighter green against the darker green of the surrounding forest. They were arrowing toward it at three hundred knots, flying low down a narrow gap cut through the tall, razor-backed ridge that formed an outer barrier to the Nether-Polar Urals mountain chain.
The irregular, roughly oval-shaped clearing was a little under two thousand feet long and only about five hundred feet across at its widest point. Close study of the photos taken before snow covered the area had shown no signs of tree stumps or boulders that could tear off the Ranger’s landing gear or rip open its fuselage. But Brad knew satellite photos were one thing. Reality might be quite another.
“Ninety seconds out,” Nadia said. She tapped one of her MFDs, zooming in on the view through one of their forward-looking passive sensors. “No unidentified thermal contacts around the LZ.”
Brad nodded tightly. So far, so good, he thought. While it was still possible that antithermal camouflage might mask Russian troops deployed around the clearing, it wasn’t likely — not unless they’d been stationed there before this mission was even planned. And if that was the case, they were screwed any way you looked at it. “Give me a quick air-to-ground radar sweep of the immediate area, please,” he told Nadia.
Using radar of any kind, even for a single pulse, this close to the Russian cyberwar complex was risky, but he needed to confirm they had a clear field ahead of them. The radar sweep should reveal any obstructions hidden beneath the snow… and any enemy troops, weapons, or vehicles hidden under camouflage.
“Sweeping now,” Nadia acknowledged. She tapped a menu on her right-hand display once.
One quick tone sounded in Brad’s headset as the XCV-62’s radar pulsed once in air-to-ground mode. In milliseconds, the aircraft’s computer analyzed the information received from the sweep and showed the resulting image as an overlay across his HUD. “Looks clear,” he said. “We are go for landing.”
“Go for landing,” Nadia agreed. She tapped a key on one of her MFDs, alerting Macomber and the others in the troop compartment that they were on final approach.
Using a control on his stick, Brad scrolled a blinking cursor across the HUD and selected his preferred touchdown point. The navigation system updated his steering cues.
“Forty-five seconds,” Nadia announced.
“I am configuring for landing,” Brad said quietly. He entered a command on one of his MFDs and throttled back. The muted roar from the Ranger’s four turbofan engines decreased fast.
Their airspeed dropped. Hydraulics whined out along the trailing edge of the XCV-62’s wing. Control surfaces were opening to give them more lift as they slowed. There were more bumps and thumps below the cockpit as the Ranger’s landing gear came down.
When he got the green light confirming that their nose gear and bogies were locked in position, Brad disengaged the terrain-following system and throttled back even farther. “Hang tight!” he warned over the intercom.
The Iron Wolf aircraft slid down out of the sky and touched down. Thick curtains of snow fountained to either side, hurled high into the air as the Ranger raced down the clearing. It bucked and bounced across the uneven ground hidden beneath the snowpack. Carefully, Brad reversed thrust — trying to shed speed as rapidly as possible without risking a skid on this slick surface.
They slid to a shuddering stop with only a couple of hundred feet to spare. “Everyone all right back there?” Brad asked over the intercom.
“Jostled around and bruised a bit, but otherwise fine,” Ian Schofield said cheerfully. “Standing by to deploy once you drop the bloody ramp.”
Smiling with relief, Brad fed just a little power to the engines and steered the Ranger through a tight 180-degree turn so that they were facing back the way they’d come, ready for an immediate takeoff. Then he throttled all the way down and hit the ramp release.
Schofield and his four commandos were out in seconds, fanning across the snow-covered expanse to take up covering positions around the stationary XCV-62. One of them lugged three Israeli-made Spike-SR man-portable antitank missiles. The others were equipped with a mix of sniper rifles and automatic weapons.
The two Iron Wolf CIDs exited right behind them — slowly unfolding out of the cramped troop compartment. They glided down the ramp and out into the snow with long, menacing strides. Packs stuffed full of extra ammunition, explosives, and other gear were slung across their backs. The lead robot swiveled its six-sided head toward the cockpit. “Wolf One to Wolf Six-Two,” Macomber said. “Thanks for the ride. We’re moving out now.”
“Copy that, One,” Brad replied. His chest felt tight. “But be careful, Whack. If the defenses look too tough, don’t try to bull on through.”
“Don’t sweat it, Six-Two,” the other man said gruffly. “Charlie and I know what we’re doing. We’ll go in, shoot the crap out of a bunch of Russians, and boogie on back here before the survivors figure out what the hell just happened to them. Wolf One out.”
With that, the two Iron Wolf robots turned and loped southeast at high speed.
Gryzlov listened intently while Colonel Balakin made his report. “Our radar station at Kipiyevo picked up one brief contact about thirty minutes ago,” the colonel said. “But they say it vanished almost immediately. Within just a few seconds.”