“The Su-50s are turning away from us!” Nadia said exultantly. “They’re flying north, toward the MALD crash site!”
Grinning like a lunatic, Brad jammed the Ranger’s throttles forward to regain some control. He leveled out only a hundred feet above the treetops. The Iron Wolf aircraft zoomed westward down the valley — widening the distance between itself and the Russian stealth fighters now speeding away toward the wreckage of the decoy they had mistaken for their prey.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Russian president Gennadiy Gryzlov listened to Colonel Balakin’s recitation of his woes with growing impatience. Intellectually, he could understand the shock the other man felt in seeing more than three-quarters of his troops killed in a battle against just two combat robots. But it was a waste of time. War ate men and machines. That was its nature. What mattered was victory.
Finally, he snapped. “Look, I don’t give a crap about your casualties, Balakin. We’ll send their loved ones a medal and the usual bullshit letter of condolence, okay? Now, did you stop those Iron Wolf mercenaries who attacked Perun’s Aerie or not?”
“Yes, Mr. President, we destroyed both machines,” Balakin replied stiffly. “And we have a prisoner — one of the robot pilots.”
A huge smile spread across Gryzlov’s face. “Molodets! Well done, Colonel! You should have reported that first.” He spun round in his chair, crooking a finger at Sergei Tarzarov. The older man had just come into his office.
Tarzarov came forward and stood impassively in front of his desk, apparently waiting for instructions.
“Can the mercenary pilot you’ve captured be moved?” Gryzlov asked Balakin over their secure connection.
“Yes, sir,” the other man answered. “It seems this man, an American named Macomber, was only lightly wounded when Zykov’s tanks knocked out his machine. He suffered more injuries when my soldiers took him captive, but nothing too serious.” From the sound of his voice, Balakin regretted that.
“See that your prisoner stays intact, Colonel!” Gryzlov snapped. “I don’t want any slipups. I don’t care how pissed off your troops are, you keep them under control! If the American dies, I’ll have your entire command liquidated… including you. Is that clear?”
“Ya ponimayu. I understand,” Balakin said, frightened now.
Gryzlov relaxed slightly, satisfied that he’d put the other man on notice. He knew how soldiers thought. It would have been all too easy for some junior officer or noncom, enraged by the death of so many comrades, to put a bullet in this Iron Wolf pilot and claim he’d been “shot while trying to escape.” He swiveled back to his computer. “Good, Colonel. You’ve done well so far. Don’t foul up now, eh?”
“No, Mr. President,” Balakin said.
“Then listen carefully,” Gryzlov continued. “I want your prisoner at the aiport in Pechora within three hours. I’m sending an aircraft to bring him back to Moscow. Keep him safe until then. Out.”
When he hung up, he looked across the desk at Tarzarov. “I’m putting this matter in your hands, Sergei. Head for Vnukovo immediately. Take a detachment of troops from the Kremlin Regiment with you. Use my personal Sukhoi Superjet 100.” He grinned cruelly. “We might as well make sure our ‘guest’ is comfortable on his last flight, eh? But you can skip the in-flight caviar and vodka service.”
Expressionlessly, Tarzarov nodded. “Very well.” He looked back at Gryzlov. “But before I go, I should tell you that Colonel General Maksimov phoned me while you were talking to Balakin.”
Gryzlov laughed. “So the old man’s too upset to call me directly now?” His gaze sharpened. “Why? Did his precious stealth fighters muff the job of nailing that Iron Wolf transport aircraft?”
Tarzarov shook his head. “On the contrary, Colonel Baryshev and his wingman report downing an unidentified stealth aircraft in the mountains northeast of Perun’s Aerie.”
“Unidentified?” Gryzlov pounced on the qualifier.
Tarzarov shrugged. “Apparently the debris came down in very difficult terrain. Maksimov says it will take some hours before he can get a search-and-rescue helicopter to the scene to fully confirm the kill.”
“How confident are they that this was the Iron Wolf aircraft?” Gryzlov pressed.
“Maksimov told me his pilots have completed several low-level sweeps of the surrounding mountains and river valleys,” Tarzarov replied as confidently as he could, “without making any further contacts.”
Gryzlov nodded slowly. In the circumstances, the obvious answer was probably right. There was no realistic way a subsonic stealth transport should have been able to survive for long when actively hunted by two of Russia’s most advanced combat fighters. Still, there was no point in taking chances. “Contact Maksimov on your way to Vnukovo,” he said. “Tell him I want fighter and Beriev-100 air-surveillance patrols up along our borders with Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states, and Finland — covering every gap in our ground radar coverage. If, by some miracle, that Iron Wolf aircraft slipped past his Su-50s, I want it detected and destroyed before it escapes our airspace.”
Engines throttled way back, the Iron Wolf XCV-62 Ranger came in low and slow, almost skimming the earth as it flew south. The lights of Pechora and a couple of small adjoining towns twinkled to the southeast and to the west. Brighter lights were visible almost dead ahead, marking the location of Pechora Airport’s nearly six-thousand-foot-long runway.
Brad McLanahan kept his eyes fixed on his HUD. He was pretty sure that the patch of waste ground he’d picked out earlier as a landing site was clear of major obstacles, but there was no way they could risk a radar sweep — even a short, single pulse — to check. One good thing was that there was a lot less snow hiding the ground this far out from the mountains.
“Gear coming down,” he said, tapping in the commands that would set the Ranger’s systems for a very short, rough-field landing. Wing-control surfaces opened wider, providing even more lift to counteract the extra drag from their landing gear. They dropped lower.
A thin belt of forest hid the lights of the airport. Brad was counting on those trees and darkness to screen their approach from any prying eyes. With all the Ranger’s stealth features, the civilian approach radar at Pechora couldn’t pick them up. There wasn’t much he could do about noise, though the XCV-62 was pretty quiet.
Still, all of Gryzlov’s closely guarded, top-secret activities around this area should have taught Pechora’s civilians the value of ignoring the sounds of mysterious aircraft flying overhead. There was an old bomber and AWACS aircraft base, Pechora Kamenka, about sixteen miles west, but it had been decommissioned and its runways and facilities were in serious disrepair. So any cargo flights bringing personnel or equipment to the Perun’s Aerie base had to be flown into the civilian airport. As an added precaution, though, Nadia was monitoring emergency channels, ready to warn him if she picked up any signs that the local authorities were sounding the alarm.
The bright green line marking his desired touchdown point appeared to slide toward them even faster as they descended. Brad’s left hand hovered over the throttles. One hundred yards. Fifty yards. Now, he thought decisively. He pulled the throttles almost all the way back in one, smooth motion.
Robbed of the last bit of airspeed keeping her aloft, the Ranger dropped out of the sky and onto the empty field. The aircraft shook and rattled, jarred roughly from side to side, as they bounded across a rough surface of frozen earth, dead grass, and isolated patches of snow and ice. Every bump hurled Brad and Nadia against their straps and then slammed them back hard into their seats. Finally, they slewed to a stop with just a few yards to spare before they would have slammed head-on into the woods lining the southern rim of the clearing.