“Your X-planes are safe from my nefarious clutches… this time,” Brad promised, holding up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
“Okay, so why am I not feeling hugely relieved to hear that?” Boomer asked quietly. He leaned forward again. “Look, if you’re not here to snag a new plane, why the hell are you here?”
Brad lowered his hand. The other man was right. It was past time to get serious. “I’ve got a team of three CIDs parked up in the hills just north of here,” he said flatly. “Because we think the Russians are likely to hit Sky Masters next.” Quickly, he outlined his reasoning.
When he was done, Boomer sighed. “Yeah, that all makes sense. I wish it didn’t.” He forced a tired smile. “But other people around here see the situation the same way you do. I know the possibility of a Russian attack against us has been on my mind ever since I saw the pictures out of Barksdale. And it sure explains a lot of the weird shit we’ve been doing over the past couple of days.”
“Like what?”
“Richter’s had all of us — all of his top people — working like dogs to secretly transfer all of our CID-related materials, components, and software to hidden storage facilities off-site,” Boomer explained. “By the time we’re finished, which should be in the next couple of days, you could walk in here and never realize that Sky Masters had anything to do with those machines.”
Brad felt himself relax slightly. Learning that Jason Richter, Sky Masters’ chief executive officer, was on the ball was a relief. Even though the Russians already had their own combat robots, it was a safe bet that their war machines were not quite as advanced as the Cybernetic Infantry Devices built and continually upgraded by Richter and his cybernetic engineers. But given Russia’s enormous resources, it was also probable that Gryzlov’s robot force now had numerical superiority over the Iron Wolf Squadron. Which meant that allowing the Russians to attain technological parity using information they captured at Battle Mountain would be catastrophic.
Unfortunately, though, CID technology was only the tip of the iceberg.
“What about everything else?” he asked. “All of your X-planes, UAVs, advanced weapons, and sensors. Are you dispersing them, too?”
Boomer shook his head gloomily. “No can do,” he said. “The feds have their guys keeping close tabs on the airport. And more FBI types are arriving all the time. It’s getting so crowded that the trench-coat-and-fedora boys are practically tripping over each other outside our main gate. Right now, I can’t fly anything bigger than a quadcopter toy without setting off alarms from here to Washington, D.C.”
Brad thought about that. “Are you sure all of these new arrivals are FBI agents?” he asked. If Gryzlov was planning a raid on Sky Masters soon, he was bound to have a recon team deployed to scout the company’s Battle Mountain facilities.
“Hell no,” Boomer said, shaking his head. “We’ve got spies hanging off us like fleas on a mangy old dog. Exactly who works for whom is anyone’s guess.” He looked hard at Brad. “Which kind of raises the question of how you’re proposing to set up a defensive perimeter to protect us without getting tagged yourselves.”
“That’s a definite problem,” Brad acknowledged. “The camouflage systems on our CIDs are fantastic, but we can’t run them for more than a few hours without draining our battery power. So with federal agents… and maybe Gryzlov’s people… crawling all over Battle Mountain, the best I can do is post my CIDs high up in the Sheep Creek Range. That way our sensors and computers will have a shot at spotting any incoming missile or ground attack.”
“And then what?”
“Then we’ll come running,” Brad said.
Boomer sighed. “No offense, kid, but I’m sensing a heck of a lot of ‘ifs’ and ‘maybes’ and ‘hope so’s’ in this plan of yours.” He looked out his window. “How close do you figure you can post your robots without being detected?”
“About six miles away,” Brad said reluctantly.
“Which means it’ll take your CIDs at least ten minutes to get here if the balloon goes up,” Boomer pointed out grimly. “The problem being that it took less than ten minutes for the Russians to wipe Barksdale off the map.”
Brad nodded again, even more reluctantly this time. “Which is why it might be a smart idea to move your people away from Battle Mountain until this is over.”
“Because burned-out buildings can be replaced more easily than good scientists and engineers?” Boomer suggested. He shrugged his shoulders. “Helen Kaddiri, Richter, and I have already hashed that possibility out. And it’s not going to fly.”
“Why not?”
“Can you imagine what our brilliant president, Stacy Anne Barbeau, would think if she heard we were closing up shop here? Given her long-standing deep regard and admiration for Martindale, your dad, and Sky Masters, I mean?” Boomer asked dryly.
Brad winced. “She’d think you were guilty as hell and hoping to get out of Dodge ahead of the posse.”
“Exactly,” Boomer replied. “Which is why we’re just going to sit here going about our normal business like the good little boys and girls that we are.” His face was a lot darker than his tone.
Slowly, Brad nodded in agreement. The prospect of using friends as bait for Gryzlov’s mercenaries was looking more unpalatable than ever. No matter how quickly his Iron Wolf team reacted, a lot of good people were likely to die.
Twenty-Three
President Stacy Anne Barbeau took her seat at the conference table with a sense of relief. For the first time in nearly forty-eight hours, she was back on solid ground. This briefing room was situated on the lowest of five levels in the new Strategic Command bunker buried deep below the surface of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It shared the same overbright LED lighting and drab institutional carpet and paint scheme found aboard the E-4B… but at least it wasn’t in constant motion and at the mercy of high-altitude winds and turbulence. Or in danger from some mercenary-piloted stealth aircraft or air-to-air missile.
Far from it, in fact.
This secure bunker had been built at tremendous expense to replace its predecessor, destroyed along with the rest of Offutt Air Force Base in a Russian nuclear-armed cruise-missile attack more than a decade ago. It was housed inside a thick cube of steel, which was, in turn, encased in solid concrete, the bunker’s command, intelligence analysis, and communications facilities designed to ride out a full-scale nuclear war. In short, she was safer here from a missile or bombing attack than anywhere else in the United States.
Barbeau caught the eye of Colonel Daniel Kim, the Air Force officer in charge of security for the facility. “Have those Ohio National Guard armored units arrived yet?” she demanded.
Kim nodded confidently. “Yes, Madam President. The heavy tank transporters carrying Charlie and Delta companies from the Hundred and Forty-Fifth Armored Regiment rolled through Gate 15A an hour ago.” He checked the digital clock displayed beneath one of the large LED wall screens that lined the briefing room. “Their twenty-eight M1A1 main battle tanks should be fully deployed within the next fifty minutes.”