Winter holidays in Scandinavia ... it's writin' time!

SUPPRESSION

Bunny O’Hare was smoking, but only in the metaphorical sense. She’d gone from fuming, when Rodriguez had told her she’d be left behind in an explosives filled cave to fly out their complement of drones, to incendiary as she watched the navy launches shuttle her fellow cave dwellers out to their waiting submarine. But now … now she was smoking.
As in, smoking hot. As in the most smoking hot drone aviator in the whole damn US Navy because over the last two days she and Rodriguez had just set a personal best, single handedly flying 15 Fantoms out the chute over a 30 hour period without one hitch. Of course, if they’d had Rodriguez’s full launch team working they could have got a hex of drones out the chute within 35 minutes but it was just her and the Lieutenant Commander doing all the heavy lifting.
They’d worked out that Bunny wasn’t needed in the trailer between launches. Once she had a Fantom airborne and set its course for Elmendorf-Richardson or Eielson, she was basically a free agent because it was flying itself on full auto until it entered air traffic control range where the Air Force controllers at the other end took over to make sure it got down safely without bumping into anything.
So once her Fantom was out the chute and on its way, she went down to the flight deck and helped Rodriguez bully the empty cartridge off the cat and into the reloader, then dropped the next cartridge and drone onto the EMALS, locked and loaded it, and helped with the pre-flight check. She learned it wasn’t as hands-off as Rodriguez had made it out to be. The damn things didn’t always come out of the cartridges clean, they had a tendency to stick and sometimes the only solution was a good old fashioned kick in the ass with the heel of a boot to shake them loose. The launch bars and locks on the EMALS that secured the airframe to the catapult shuttle, the carriage between the two catapult beams that flung the aircraft forward, were damn fussy and even when you were sure you had a good lock, they refused to give you a green light, and you had to reseat the damn thing. Finally, every drone was loaded inside it’s cartridge with wings folded and an external hydraulic pressure system had to be connected to unfold and lock the wings in place. Only then, could the pre-flight physical and digital inspection be carried out.
Sure, one person could theoretically do it, but two made it much easier.
With 12 hours on and six off, at the end of their second 12 hour shift, Rodriguez had lost track of whether it was night or day. Her watch was telling her it was 1430 in the afternoon, but her body was ready for food and bed. They could afford to take it a little easier now. With 15 kites away, they only had eight remaining Fantoms to get home. Their lift out of here was the same sub that had ferried the walking and the walking wounded out of here two days ago, and it would be back six days from now to pick them up. Rodriguez wanted to get the job done, but they didn’t have to kill themselves doing it. They could fall back to their planned six or so per day, take two days to launch the rest and spend the last four days making sure there was no salvageable equipment left and the demolition charges were set to blow.
She slumped down at their makeshift mess table in one of the empty hangars, where Bunny was flicking through a digital girlie magazine on a tablet. She smiled, “Sorry to interrupt.”
“Just checking out the competition ma’am,” Bunny said. “They got nothin' on us.”
“Speak for yourself O’Hare,” Rodriguez said. “I’ve got bow legs and a big ass and everything topside is heading south.”
“With respect, I’m calling #%&*$# on that ma’am. Anyway, these girls, it’s all silicon and implants, give me the real deal any day.” Bunny ran her hand over the fuzz on her head. “I am a bit jealous of their golden locks though.” She turned her head like she was looking for something. “You think they left any peroxide behind in this joint? I’m thinking of dyeing my stubble blonde.”
Rodriguez lowered her head onto one arm and looked up at her, “You seriously have the energy to worry about what your hair looks like?”
“We’ve finally got the place to ourselves, no damn men spraying their testosterone everywhere? Hell yeah. I’m thinking a hot bath, paint my fingernails and toenails black and die my hair white. Might even do the next shift naked, just because we can. What do you say ma’am? You in?” Rodriguez laughed; a huge, exhausted laugh.
*
*



Devlin got back to her apartment in Spaso House, threw her keys on a table near the door, dumped her bag, kicked off her shoes and poured a cold glass of white wine from her refrigerator.
She had unanswered messages and texts to deal with, the US west coast was just waking up with worried business people and congress members wanting to talk with her, and in her bag was a pile of paper ten inches thick that people wanted her to read by morning. She turned off her phone.
Five minutes, just five minutes. She would have a glass of wine, and then get back to it. She sat on her sofa, and turned on the TV news.
She saw the tickertape across the bottom of the news anchors’ desks first; ‘FLASH update…’ and expected it to be about Alaska. It wasn’t. She watched with horror as she read the text rolling across her screen. “Syrian troops enter Lebanon. Government ministers arrested. Hezbollah seize power. Israeli armed forces placed on high alert.”
It was a strategy as old as time. Use your alliances to occupy your enemy with a crisis on two fronts. No ally could demand US support in a crisis like Israel, and providing military support to Israel would mean committing, or at least reserving, significant assets that could otherwise be brought into play against Russia. So creating an existential threat to Israel through Syrian intervention in Lebanon was a master stroke. It divided focus in Washington, in the Pentagon, in the armed forces, intelligence and security services and in the State Department.
It told her with certainty this intervention in the Bering Strait had not just arisen out of the sinking of a single autonomous freighter. The speed with which Finland jumped into bed with Russia on the Barents Europe Arctic Council and their probable involvement in the sinking already told her that. But mobilizing an ally, even a vassal state like Syria, to effectively invade a neighboring country and depose its government, on your own timetable, not theirs … that took long term planning, and significant negotiation, pressure, compromise. Syria would have seen an opportunity while the US was distracted by Alaska, but it must have been offered something big, and it wouldn’t surprise Devlin if they saw Iran weighing in soon too. With Saudi Arabia and the Emirates weakened by the collapse of oil prices, with Turkey licking its wounds after a bruising border war, suddenly the whole power balance in the Middle East was at risk.
She stood, and found herself in front of her hall mirror, just staring at herself. She was going to break. In two, right down the middle. She felt like she was standing outside herself, watching someone in crisis. She wanted to help, but there was nothing she could do. The woman in front of her was drowning but there was no life preserver to throw, no ladder to help her up. She imagined the water closing over her head, and disappearing without a ripple.
She put a hand on the mirror and pushed herself away.
*
*



It was Bondarev’s 110 Okhotniks that re-opened the air war.
The machines themselves staged out of the large air base at Lavrentiya on the Russian mainland, but Bondarev didn’t need to collocate his pilots and aircraft – in fact, it was wise not to do so.
So while he had the drones on the ground at Lavrentiya, he had put his Okhotnik pilots, their command trailers and those of the 573rd into quarters at the port of Anadyr, well back from the OA but still within operational range when linked to their drones by AWACS aircraft.
Two days after the briefing at 3rd Air and Air Defense Forces Command HQ, 60 Sukhoi-57s and Mig-41s of the 4th and 5th Air Battalions took off from Lavrentiya as though moving into what had become routine patrol positions in the air over Saint Lawrence and the Bering Strait. What was not normal was the high number of aircraft Russia had scrambled.
When they reached what would have been their normal stations inside the Russian no-go zone, they pushed east toward the Alaska coast.
Waiting for them just outside the air exclusion zone were the F-35s and older F-22s of the Alaska air national guard. Behind them, at five minute readiness, were pilots of the 90th Fighter Squadron and 525th Fighter Squadron under the control of an AWACS aircraft from 962nd Airborne Air Control Squadron. As soon as it detected the large Russian formations approaching Saint Lawrence, the AWACS scrambled its Air Force fighters. Within minutes, the US force facing Russia numbered 36 fighters, and 20 more were another 20 minutes out. Pulling data from a combination of its own radar, NORAD and satellites, the US AWACS handed off targets to its flock of defenders and put ground to air defenses around Elmendorf-Richardson and Eielson on alert.
It was also tracking a squadron of 9 Russian Tu160-M2 Blackjack strategic bombers that was returning from what had also become routine trans-polar ‘provocation’ flights.
Cease fire or no cease fire, there was no ambiguity in the US aviators’ orders. If the Russian fighters closed on Alaskan coastal airspace, the US fighters were cleared to engage.
Bondarev had no intention of letting his piloted aircraft get within air-to-air missile range of the Americans. Not yet. Before the US fighters were within range, he turned his Sukhois back east and they withdrew to the Russian mainland.
The US commander misinterpreted the move as a failed attempt to provoke US aircraft into following and breaking the terms of the ceasefire. He had machines he needed to get down and refuel, and pilots who had been living on edge for weeks who needed their rest. Half of the US force returned to Elmendorf-Richardson and Eielson once it was clear the Russian fighters were withdrawing too.
Timed to coincide with this, to the north and south of Saint Lawrence, Bondarev had scattered 60 Okhotnik stealth UCAVs, configured for ground attack. He had ordered his ground based drone pilots to fire at the extreme limit of the Okhotniks’ Brah-Mos III supersonic cruise missiles. With two missiles per aircraft, as the last of the sortied US fighters was landing, within minutes there were 120 cruise missiles on their way toward Elmendorf-Richardson and Eielson.
The last time Eielson had faced a cruise missile attack it was from Bunny O’Hare, and that had not gone so well. This time its HELLADS systems and crews were ready.
Sixty vampires inbound? No problem.
*
*

“Ma’am, turn on your laptop,” Williams voice said over Devlin’s telephone line. She had just been getting ready to go to bed when the phone had rung. “I’m going to push something through to you.”
“Ok, just give me a minute,” Devlin said, cradling her telephone on her shoulder and pulling her laptop out of her bag. She hit the button to boot it up. “Always takes a couple of minutes, this old thing.”
“Two minutes, and it may be all over,” Williams said.
“What’s up?”
“Russia just broke the ceasefire,” Williams said. “HOLMES is tracking multiple cruise missile launches over Alaska towards our air bases at Fairbanks and Anchorage. I’m sending you the feed, you can follow the attack real time.”
“You can do that?”
“Already doing it, when you log on, you’ll see an icon of a pipe on your desktop. Click on that.”
“What?”
“Don’t ask me, HOLMES installed it. I think it’s an Arthur Conan Doyle thing. You’ll see what NORAD is seeing.”
She shook her head and clicked on the icon as it came up. A screen expanded showing a map of Alaska. It took her a moment to make sense of what she was looking at. A spider web of lines was lancing out from small icons that looked like inward facing double triangles with the letters A above them, while a bunch of other triangle icons milled around in the air over Alaska. “OK, I’ve got the computer open, but what am I looking at?”
“The icons with an A over them are Russian attack aircraft, HOLMES is saying mostly drones. They’ve already fired their payloads and are heading back to mother Russia on afterburner. The icons over Alaska, they’re our boys. Most are not close enough to take a shot at the retreating Russians, but they’re trying to engage the cruise missiles. Not much chance, their radar cross section is too small, but they’ll try.”
“The missiles are headed for our air force bases?”
“Yep. They’re scrambling everything they can so that the fewest possible machines get caught on the ground if any missiles get through. But apparently we were caught refueling after a major defensive action.”
“What are the odds?” Devlin asked, knowing HOLMES would have already calculated them. “Of the missiles getting through?”
“23% percent chance of one to six missiles getting through ma’am,” she heard HOLMES voice say on the line.
“How long until they hit?” She saw lines seemed to be extending toward their targets very quickly.
“At 2,000 miles per hour with just fifty miles left to run, one minute thirty ma’am,” the AI replied. “I am showing 47 missiles still tracking. Correction, I am now showing 101 missiles inbound. 53 seconds to first HELLADS interception.”
“What?!”
“Uh, a squadron of Backfire bombers in international airspace north of Northern Alaska just fired their full payload of six missiles each ma’am,” Williams said. “A suicide shot. They were being tagged by a flight of F-35s out of Eielson. They’ve engaged the Backfires, and they’re unescorted. They’re toast.”
“20 seconds to HELLADS interception,” HOLMES said.
Devlin watched in horror as the blue lines tracked toward the two US air bases. One by one, the lines winked out. Then red dots began to appear underneath the airfields. Inside five seconds, all the blue lines were gone, and a row of red dots appeared under each airfield.
“The red dots are strikes?” Devlin asked.
“Yes ma’am,” Williams said. “Four on Eielson, three on Elmendorf-Richardson. Damn good performance.” He sounded pleased.
“There are dead Americans under those dots Carl,” Devlin said gently.
“Yes ma’am, sorry,” he said.
“Thirty three seconds to the impact of the second wave of missiles. There are no air assets in position to intercept,” HOLMES said. “HELLADS units are recycling.”
“Recycling?! What does that mean?”
“A single HELLADS battery can track and shoot down up to 5 missiles simultaneously, with one second between volleys. There are probably four or five batteries around each of those airfields, so they can target twenty incoming missiles all arriving at the same time, and handle multiple waves of missiles for up to five minutes, but working that hard overheats the optics. They need time to cool down - recycle. The second Russian launch was timed to coincide with the HELLADS’ recycling phase. They’ll be arriving just as the defenses are coming back on line. It’s going to be close.”
“Two batteries on line. Five seconds to impact,” HOLMES said. “Three batteries. Firing. Impact.” A bloom of red dots appeared across the map at both airfields.
Once again, the critical incident siren started sounding throughout the Embassy complex.
*
*


Between 2015 and 2022 Russia launched a series of small satellites it designated Kosmos-2499 to Kosmos-2514. Radar tracking of the small 50kg satellites showed they were highly maneuverable and shortly after arriving in orbit they executed what seemed to be a range of test maneuverers, darting away from and then matching orbit with various pieces of circling space junk including their own launch vehicles. They were also detected by amateur radio enthusiasts communicating with the ground using burst radio transmissions. At a year-end press-conference, the head of Roskosmos, Ivor Olapenko, denied speculation that Kosmos-2491 and Kosmos-2499 were "killer satellites." Olapenko said the satellites were developed in cooperation between Roskosmos and the Russian Academy of Sciences and were used for peaceful purposes including unspecified research by educational institutions. After two years of apparent testing, the satellites were parked in permanent orbits and went silent.
Five of the satellites were in orbit over the North Pole. In the intervening years since 2022 they had been quietly mapping all known US and Chinese space-based military objects in their quadrants.
Olapenko had not lied. The Kosmos satellites were not intended to kill other satellites.
They were made to blind them.
*
*

Alicia Rodriguez was blind. Her bedside alarm was ringing, she had to get to school, but she couldn’t see it to turn it off. She panicked, flailing around her, trying to find her alarm clock. She was going to be late for school again!
She opened her eyes. Same dumb dream again. But there was an alarm ringing somewhere. She swung her legs out of bed and hit her bedside light. It was the comms alarm - an incoming call. She fumbled for the handset on her bedside table.
“NCTAMS-A4,” she replied, rubbing her eyes. She looked at her watch. She’d been asleep 3 hours. It was 0400. She and Bunny had planned another three hours sleep then breakfast and another day flying their drones out. As the voice on the other end spoke, she realized that wasn’t going to happen.
“NCTAMS-A4, this is ANR control,” the voice said. “Major Del Stenson, who is speaking please?”
“Rodriguez, Lieutenant Colonel, what’s up Major?”
“Ma’am, I need to bring you up to speed with events and then check your operational status,” the major said.
“Our operational status? We are decommissioned Major,” Rodriguez told him. “We are four days from bringing the roof down on this base.”
“Negative ma’am, I have a new OPORD for you. The situation is that Russian air forces have attacked Eielson and Elmendorf-Richardson air bases. Damage was limited, but both airfields are going to be offline for at least the next 48-72 hours. We have moved air assets south to Gelena, Kingsley Fields, Portland and Lewis-McChord.” He paused. “We have nowhere to receive your drones right now ma’am, and besides, we need them back in the game.”
“Major, there is only myself and one aviator remaining on this base. We can launch, but we can’t recover, refuel and rearm those drones at anything like the speed that would be needed for combat operations. If you are asking us to go to war, I need the full complement of base personnel back here stat.”
“That’s also negative ma’am,” Stenson said. “All available Naval units have been re-tasked. We are responding to multiple simultaneous threats Lieutenant Colonel. You are on your own. I’ve been ordered to tell you we need you to do what you can, where you are, with what you have. A mission package is being sent through as we speak. Questions ma’am?”
“Plenty,” Rodriguez said. “But let me look the package over. I’ll get back to you on what we can do.”
“Yes ma’am. ANR out.”
Rodriguez cut the connection and hit the button that connected her to O’Hare’s quarters.
“O’Hare speaking. Yes, ma’am?”
She sounded like she was already awake.
“We have new orders Bunny,” Rodriguez said.
“Yes ma’am,” the pilot replied. “I heard the comms alert. Briefing in the trailer?”
“Five minutes,” Rodriguez confirmed. “And O’Hare?”
“Yes ma’am?”
“You will be wearing more than just black nail polish, understood?”
“Aw, you are such a buzz killer ma’am,” O’Hare said. “As you wish.” She cut the line.
Rodriguez smiled and reached for her trousers. Then she thought about what they were about to do, and the smile faded from her face.

*
*



Yevgeny Bondarev had a broad smile on his face as he stood in his own operations room, eyes running over reports of the morning’s operations and bomb damage assessments. Around him, his staff were going about the business of destroying the US armed force’s ability to respond to the planned landing in Nome.
He had been ordered to achieve air supremacy, not just air superiority. Air superiority meant temporary control of the airspace over an operations area. Supremacy meant the effective destruction of the enemy’s ability to oppose the operations of friendly forces. The Russian commanders were not dreamers, they knew Lukin’s 3rd Air and Air Defense Forces Command could not defeat the entire US Army, Navy and Air Force once it had been completely mobilized. But it had to establish dominance of the air over Alaska for the duration of the invasion and that meant creating an effective air-front over Alaska all the way to the Canadian border that meant that any attempt by the US to penetrate Alaskan airspace resulted in the complete destruction of American aircraft in the combat area.
The airfield denial operations against the two major US Air Force bases in Alaska had been a spectacular success, with the first wave of missiles being intercepted but performing their task of overwhelming the American defensive systems so that the second wave of mine laying cluster munition armed warheads would be able to penetrate. Russia had learned through many wars that blowing holes in enemy airfields was a pointless exercise, because even a twenty foot crater blown in a concrete runway by a deep penetrator bomb could be filled in a matter of hours and overlaid with metal mesh patches so that flight operations could quickly resume.
So the Bra-Mos III missiles that had made it through the defensive perimeter of ElmendorfRichardson and Eielson air bases had streaked across the airfield scattering hundreds of area-denial mines. Within seconds each airfield was littered with thousands of 5.5lb RDX explosive armed proximity-triggered submunitions. Once the mines were scattered the missiles buried themselves in their terminal targets - usually hangars, radars and control and command facilities. It might only take a few hours to fill a crater or get a new mobile command center up and running, but it would take days to clear all of the unexploded mines at the two air bases.
He had lost none of his Su-57s or Okhotniks, but all six Backfire bombers had been quickly shot down. That had been expected and their pilots and crews had been volunteers, knowing the mission would likely result in their deaths. Bondarev wasn’t sentimental, but the sacrifice of such men in the service of their nation stirred his blood. He would use their example to encourage his own men to do their utmost.
The Americans could still fly their aircraft out of airfields in Oregon, Washington and Idaho, or farther afield, but that gave Russian radar and satellites precious time to detect them and respond. It was time Bondarev planned to use well.
The second prong of the initial attack had not been Bondarev’s responsibility but belonged to the Russian Aerospace Forces. Their little 100kg satellites parked over the pole had maneuvered within range of eight critical NORAD surveillance satellites and were blasting out radio signals at frequencies calculated to jam the ability of the American satellites to send or receive. If they were working as planned the US 213th Space Warning Squadron based at Denali Borough in Alaska, the eyes and ears of NORAD, should be blind and deaf.
It would take at least six hours and up to 18 hours before the US could re-task other nearby satellites to fill the void.
That gave Bondarev a solid window in which his Okhotniks could roam the skies over Alaska seeking out and destroying US land based radar and air defense units, while his Su-57s ran combat air patrols overhead. Several of his units were actively engaged in combat with the US fighters that had managed to get airborne before the missile strikes. He had lost nearly ten aircraft, with two pilots dead and six down, but his intel indicated 23 enemy combatants destroyed, both fixed wing and rotary winged aircraft. After trying to engage the incoming cruise missiles, most of the airborne US aircraft were low on fuel and ammunition and were retiring to US mainland air bases or inadequately equipped civilian fields. The Americans had not yet martialed aircraft for a major counter-attack, but Bondarev was certain it would come. And he was ready.
That was why he was confident moving the bulk of his 6983rd UCAV forces to Savoonga, just 150 miles from Nome. They were ideally suited to flying out of the limited facilities at the forward base, because their pilots and system officers could be based at Anadyr, hundreds of miles away, and didn’t need to be quartered with their planes.
And the bulk of his precious 4th and 5th Air Battalions, his critical Su-57 fighters and pilots and ground crews, he would keep at Lavrentiya. To reach him there, even if did have the fuel, which would have required in-air refueling, the enemy would have to fight its way across the skies of Alaska or the North Pacific and back again.
But he wasn’t a man to take the enemy for granted. He had a surprise or two up his sleeve in Lavrentiya for any US aircraft or missile that did make it through.

*
*

Perri and Dave had been following the column of hostages for a couple of hours now, and it was clear they weren’t going down to the coast to Kavalghak Bay. Once they had cleared the road out of town to the south of the bluff, they had turned northeast and started hiking up an old hunting trail that would take them over the bluff to the deserted inland of the island. It was harsh, windswept terrain that didn’t offer much in the way of game, berries or shelter, so the islanders rarely ventured inland. The sea and the ice around the island were their home, not the rocky interior. They decided the destination must be Savoonga.
“Why would they be going to Savoonga?” Perri asked. “Wouldn’t it have been just as badly hit as Gambell?” He could have kicked himself. While they were online last time, he should have downloaded some news videos to see if there was any information about what had happened to Saint Lawrence. All they knew was what Sarge had told them, and that wasn’t much. He’d spent most of the time they were online asking questions, not giving out information.
“Where else could they be going, there’s nothing else in this direction except vole turds and bird droppings.”
“It’s going to take them days. Did you ever walk it?”
“No, but Tommy Hendriks did. With his father. They were hunting bear but they didn’t get any. By the time they’d been out two days they decided it would be easier to keep going to Savoonga and then get a lift back to Gambell by boat. It took them five days.”
“Including the boat back?”
“No, just the walk over,” Dave said grimly.
“Oh man,” Perri settled the straps of his backpack on his shoulders. “I hope we’ve got enough food.”
“Yeah? Well we could have carried about another 20 pounds except you’ve got me lugging this damned battery and radio,” Dave complained. He was carrying the same big backpack that Perri was carrying, with the difference being the top third of his pack was the car battery and Russian radio they’d liberated.”
“You keep telling me how you’re the strongest of all your brothers,” Perri said. He was looking at the ground, seeing the scuff marks in the snow and dirt from hundreds of feet. Following the column wouldn’t be hard, they were leaving tracks you could probably see from space. He looked up to test the weather, saw low cloud, but no sign of rain. At least they’d be dry the next day or so. As he watched, he heard the now familiar sound of jet engines crossing the island from west to east. For some reason they rarely went east to west. They hadn’t heard or seen any more signs of combat, so he had to assume the aircraft overhead weren’t American.
They trudged on, “Sarge said there were Russians in Savoonga, as well as Gambell. Maybe the ones in Savoonga were dug in better,” Perri speculated. “The ones here were pretty dumb, just hiding out in the town hall, waiting to get bombed. Maybe the guys up there were better prepared.” He thought about the radar station at Savoonga, the Air Force officer who’d come to talk to them. “I’m going to call Sarge tonight if we can still get a signal through,” he said. “Ask him does he know what’s happening at
Savoonga. If we get that far, I’ve got cousins we could hide out with.”
Dave grunted, “I can tell you this for free. If we can’t get a signal on this stupid radio, it’s going in the nearest creek.”
*
*


There had been no working radio in the wrecked APC near the town hall, so Private Zubkov had hiked out to the airfield. Two of the APCs out there were total write-offs, just burned out, half melted hulks. The third had taken a hit that had flipped it on its roof, shredded its tires and filled it full of holes before its fuel had caught fire, but the fire had burned upward, through the chassis, and the cabin was still pretty much intact. Except that the radio and handset was gone.
And Zubkov had a pretty good idea where.
He leaned back in his chair inside the school master’s office, watching the display on the base station for it to pop up again, just to be sure. His orders were to keep the wounded comfortable and the prisoners fed until reinforcements arrived from Russia or the unit returned to Gambell. But he’d seen the news on the American TV channels. The Americans were sending a freaking carrier strike group up here to take the island back. If Russia had intended to hold the island, it would be swarming with choppers, anti-air batteries and new troops. They’d be dispersing and digging in, not bugging out. There weren’t going to be any ‘reinforcements’.
They had been dropped in as political bait, had the hell blown out of them and they’d been abandoned. Now the Americans were coming and yeah, they had a better chance of putting up a fight if they concentrated their forces and bunkered down at the US facility in the northeast, but a few hundred men against a whole carrier strike group and thousands of marines? Forget it. They were all going to end as prisoners, probably be tried for war crimes.
If he was going to get off this island, it had to be soon. But he couldn’t just leave his comrades here to starve to death, so he had to work something out for them. Luckily when he’d been searching for the radio he had found the solution.
Most of the wounded Russian soldiers were sleeping, which wasn’t surprising given firstly their injuries and secondly, that he had crushed quite a lot of sedative tablets into their food earlier in the day. One of them was awake, a young boy who had lost most of his foot, and who had said he had no appetite. He had joined the unit after Zubkov and he hadn’t really bothered to get to know him. Zubkov looked at the chart at the end of his bed - Kirrilov, that was his name.
“I need some painkillers,” the guy said. “My foot hurts like hell.”
“OK, I got something for you here,” Zubkov said, pulling a small spray dispenser from a backpack. He pulled on rubber gloves and a surgical mask. “It’s a sterilizing agent combined with a strong local anesthetic.” Walking over to the young guy he said, “Pull your covers back.”
The man lifted his bedsheets, to reveal a bloodied bandage. Zubkov pulled it gingerly away and saw the man had lost the two left most toes from his foot, a strip down the side and most of his heel. He angled the spray so that he could cover most of the wound and then pulled a surgical mask over his own face.
“Is it going to sting?” the boy asked. He was propped up on one elbow, watching.
“A lot,” Zubkov told him. “But not for long.” He sprayed quickly, then lay the bandages back on the foot and covered it with the bed sheet.
“Man, that burns,” the guy said through gritted teeth, an arm covering his eyes. “It better work.”
Zubkov had little doubt it would work. He had studied the effects of VX nerve agent in training.
They all had. He knew the symptoms off by heart: abnormal blood pressure, blurred vision, chest tightness, confusion, cough, diarrhea, drooling and excessive sweating, drowsiness then difficulty breathing, and death by asphyxia.
Time from exposure to death could be anything from ten to twenty minutes, depending on the dose.
He sat back to watch.