OK here we go. This is a big one ...

BARE BONES KICK A$$ERY



“These photos are from the attack on Lavrentiya, you say?” Bondarev said, reviewing the report Arsharvin had just put on his desk. He had moved his 4th and 5th fighter Battalions to the former US airfield at Savoonga to free up facilities at Lavrentiya for his heavy airlift and 6983rd Okhotnik ground attack aircraft. Both were equidistant from Nome, but Lavrentiya was his best protected airfield, with standing fighter patrols and heavy ground-air missile defenses.
Wary of being buried alive again, Bondarev had put his new operations center on the ground floor of the modern Hogarth Kingeekuk Memorial School in the Savoonga township. With fast communication links and its own wind turbines supplying power, plus a field medical clinic already set up inside to treat the local townsfolk, it made a surprisingly suitable headquarters.
Ordinarily he’d say it was also an advantage that the 200 remaining townspeople of Savoonga were being held in the school meeting hall ‘for their own safety’, as it should dissuade the US from attacking the school for fear of killing their own citizens. But they had already shown a callous disregard for such considerations.
“Yes. The photos show wreckage recovered off the coast from American UCAVs downed by the Nebo-M array attached to the 140th anti-air, before the Americans could get their missiles away,” Arsharvin said. He didn’t sound happy, because he knew his commander wouldn’t be.
Bondarev glowered, “More of your damn mobile Fantom units? You still can’t find the trucks they’re launching off?”
“Analysis of the wreckage confirms they were Fantoms,” Arsharvin said. “But they weren’t truck launched.”
“What the hell? The enemy has an operational airfield somewhere within Fantom strike range and we can’t find it?”
Arsharvin had a photograph on his tablet, and he pulled it up, pinched to expand it and showed it to Bondarev, “We’ve solved the mystery. They aren’t flying them off the ground.”
“What is this?” Bondarev peered at what looked like a bent ski attacked to a piece of aircraft fuselage.
“Landing skis,” Arsharvin said. “This is an F-47 variant we haven’t seen before. Some sort of top secret prototype I imagine.”
“A sea-plane?” Bondarev frowned. “The Americans haven’t fielded a combat version of a seaplane since… what?”
“The 1950s, the Martin P6M Sea Master,” Arsharvin said, having expected the question. “But it makes sense, yes? You could launch it off just about any ship the size of destroyer or bigger, land it alongside when it returned and recover it by crane. They’re already doing it with recon drones – this gives them a strike or air defense capability, extends a ship’s eyes, ears and teeth by hundreds of miles. You don’t need static airfields, or a big carrier to fly them off – the smallest guided missile destroyer could carry it. Same concept as putting them on trucks, just sea-borne.”
Bondarev had to reluctantly give his enemy credit. They were a generation ahead of his own country not only in the capabilities of their drones, but also in their application.
“Very well. Find me the damn ships these things are launching off,” Bondarev said. “Compared to finding a few trucks hidden in the Alaskan wilderness, finding a ship launching drones in the open sea south of here has to be easy, right comrade Intelligence Chief?”
Arsharvin gave a wan smile, “If you say so, Comrade Colonel.” He stumped out the door again.
Bondarev swung around in his chair and looked out of the window as one of the ubiquitous local four wheel electric bikes that had been commandeered by his security group hummed past. They were slowly getting the airfield organized for the upcoming operation to land troops in Nome. The American cruise missile attack had devastated its long range radar facility, no doubt because they were worried about what Russia could learn from it after it had fallen so easily and so intact into their hands. It was a state of the art long range early warning facility, with radar arrays dotting the hills of Saint Lawrence all the way down the spine of the island to the site of the old North-East Cape base it had abandoned nearly half a century earlier. With the improvements in communications achieved in the intervening years, the Americans now no longer had to have their command and control facility located right next to their radar arrays, so they had chosen to build up the airfield at Savoonga and create a small base comprising about 50 personnel just outside of the new village.
The base had given a big boost to the island’s economy, provide civilian jobs and make a posting to Saint Lawrence a little less like a prison sentence than it had been when the facility had been located hundreds of miles to the south-east. The USAF 712th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron had been recommissioned under NORAD, a strike hardened cantonment was built, with the command center and personnel barracks inside. New businesses and infrastructure sprung up in Savoonga to service the small air force detachment - a bar, a supermarket, a new school with fast satellite internet links and even a new hotel to serve the needs of families flying in to visit the personnel stationed there. Savoonga had pulled younger people from Gambell, which is why there were more than 500 residents there when the Russian airborne troops arrived.
And why the most secure facility in the area to hold the residents had been the Savoonga cantonment, which US forces hit with enough high explosive to decimate the facility. And a large proportion of the personnel in it, including their own troops, who they knew would be there. And the civilians, who they claimed they didn’t.
Bondarev couldn’t imagine what the scene had looked like as the Russian troops who were left unscathed at the Savoonga airport had made their way into the ruins of the cantonment. They were only able to recover about 200 of 500 civilians alive, 15 with serious wounds and five with minor wounds. Since then five more had died. The Russian airborne commander had estimated nearly 600 dead including civilians, his own, and US troops caught inside the cantonment. Bondarev shuddered at the thought. The Americans had been lucky at Gambell that they had not hit the civilians there too. What sort of nation was it that would treat its own people with such callous disregard?
One to be feared, Yevgeny.
And yet their air forces were happy skulking down south, leaving their population in Alaska at the mercy of Bondarev and his pilots. They couldn’t know he wasn’t interested in attacking their population centers, and had been reading reports of the National Guard ground forces in Fairbanks, Anchorage and Juneau hastily building defenses against a Russian ground attack that would never come. Making inflated claims that they had downed several Russian aircraft, trying to bolster morale, when in fact Bondarev wasn’t even flying missions over populated and defended areas like Fairbanks, Juneau or Anchorage. His only interest was to keep the skies clear of US fighters and attack aircraft, not to terrorize the local population.
Let them pile their sandbags as high as they wanted, let their SAM sites ring their cities. Right now, there was only one threat to his dominance of the skies over Alaska and that was these damn pinprick attacks by sea-launched Fantoms. Anadyr had cost him both in men and materiel, and serious political capital. The Kremlin didn’t seem to care about the numerous US probing attacks he had stopped in the south and east and they were ignorant of the strike on Lavrentiya that had been thwarted. All that seemed to matter to them was that the Americans had gotten through at Anadyr and that had been enough to cause political knees to further weaken.
The Americans had been lucky once, and not since and he intended for it to stay that way.
All he had to do was hold them back for another few days. Looking out the window he couldn’t help a small swell of pride at the activity he saw. These were his forces, these aircraft, these men and women.
With the death of General Lukin he had lost a patron, but he had not been relieved of his command, yet. Gathered at Savoonga and Lavrentiya under his command now were more than 150 aircraft of the Russian 3rd Air and Air Defense Forces Command of the Eastern Military District. In Lavrentiya, and dispersed through nearby towns, were nearly 10,000 airborne and special forces troops, and the materiel needed to support the operation to take Nome.
He realized he shouldn’t let the pinprick attacks of the American drones bother him. A major submarine or ship-launched cruise missile strike was a greater threat and the one which his 14th Air Defense battalion at Lavrentiya was in place to prevent. Then there was the overhanging risk of a tactical nuclear strike against a target either in the OA, or against an unrelated target on the Russian mainland. The US had the assets in place to effect it, and Bondarev had the strike on Anadyr and the command vacuum it created to thank for the fact he was able to convince his superiors they should move on Nome as quickly as possible before it came. They may not care about the lives of a few hundred citizens on Saint Lawrence, but with the 4,000 citizens of Nome under Russian control, the US would have to start negotiating.
For the first time Bondarev had begun to think Operation LOSOS might actually work. As long as the US didn’t do anything precipitous first.

*
*



The call from the State Secretary showed he was still an old fashioned Southern gentleman, in the best sense of the concept. Devlin had always known that he would never break good or bad news to her in a communique or text. It always came in person. So when she was told to expect a call from the Secretary in ten minutes, she knew it would be one or the other - either very good, or very bad news.
She paced her office nervously, ordering her assistant to stop anyone else from coming in or calling in, no matter how urgent they insisted it was. She knew she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on a single thing until the call was out of the way, and any decision she made while distracted like this would be totally random.
Her mind raced. She was being recalled, that was one possibility. Perhaps Foreign Minister Kelnikov had complained one too many times about the directness of her language and approach, and had demanded she be called home. Or her own people had turned on her, called her out for running her own foreign policy agenda independent of State. That much was true - they had been pursuing a pointless appeasement agenda while she had been dealing with the reality of imminent invasion and trying to persuade her Russian contacts that the consequences of going down this path could be catastrophic.
And then there was this whole business of the commander of the Russian 6983rd Air Base being the father of her grandchild. She had not called her daughter about it. Like, how was that phone call supposed to go? Oh, hello darling, yes fine thanks, tell me, did you have a child with the man who is leading a war against the USA? No, but she was convinced HOLMES discovery was not his alone. Whether or not it had been leaked by him or Williams, it would be leaked, inevitably. That’s what this call must be. The Secretary would be nice about it, but he would expect her to understand they couldn’t have someone in Moscow representing US interests who had such an obvious personal conflict.
When it came, the ringing of her encrypted comms unit nearly made her jump out of her skin. She took a big breath and lifted the handset.
“McCarthy,” she said.
“Devlin, this is Gerard Winburg, how are you holding up?”
“Fine thankyou Mr. Secretary, what’s up?” she asked, and in the background she could hear the sort of burble of conversation that indicated to her that Winburg was in a room full of people.
“I have to keep this short Devlin, I’m sorry. It turns out you were right. I have to advise you that we have indications Russia has now moved considerable air power onto Saint Lawrence in what we assume is preparation for a major airborne landing and offensive. Our satellites are showing a huge amount of air and ground traffic indicating military mobilization in the Russian Far East too. The President is about to go public with this information and a warning to Russia to withdraw from Saint Lawrence and cease its military buildup in the Bering Strait, or there will be ‘catastrophic consequences’.” He paused, “Between you and me, the President has asked the Secretary of Defense to draw up plans to conduct a demonstration of a nuclear armed hypersonic cruise missile in the Pacific Ocean west of the Russian Kuril Islands. He wants it ready to execute in 23 hours.”
The world fell out from underneath Devlin. She’d had her own theories about the way the political winds were blowing, but she’d hoped she was wrong. “An atmospheric nuclear test off the coast of Russia?”
“Yup, and they should be thankful we’re just vaporising a few billion tons of seawater and fish. The President thinks Russia needs reminding of what will happen if it does not stay the hell out of Alaska.”
"That's close to Japan too," Devlin thought out loud, "The Japanese government will freak..."
"The Japanese government should have thought of that when they declined to support us in the last UN vote."
“My God…” she had no idea what to say. “What do you need from us?”
“Real time readout on reactions. I’ll get back to you with exact timing when I have it, but I want your people face to face with Russian key stakeholders when the news of the test drops. I want you getting their unfiltered reaction and then feed it with a single message, ‘yes we will use the nuclear option if they escalate further.”
“We’ll do our best here,” she said.
“I know it. In the meantime, get onto all of our so called ‘allies’. Tell them now is the time for them to #%&*$# or get off the pot. We are calling in our markers and if they are on the wrong side of the next vote in the UN Security Council or General Assembly - and neutral is the wrong side - there will be hell to pay for them too.”

*
*



Bunny had checked the weather, and calculated the best IL-77 flight for their shadow play would arrive at the top of its glide path over the Bering Strait south west of the Rock at 0630 the day after she dragged Rodriguez out of bed. That gave them the night and most of the morning to prep two Fantoms with ground to air ordnance and get them in the air and on station in time for the low level game of shadow puppets.
The Fantom didn’t have passive detection systems like many Russian fighter aircraft, but NORAD had managed to get two new satellites on station over the OA, and one of them was National Reconnaissance Satellite L-70, launched in 2022 with the specific mission of tracking Russian and Chinese military aircraft in real time through their digital, infrared and visual signatures. Satellite L-70 could track up to 100 individual targets at any one time, and by AI interpolation, could predict the flightpath of 1,000 different objects simultaneously.
For the mission that had been assigned to NCTAMS-A4, satellite L-70 dedicated a small part of its considerable attention span to one aircraft, an Ilyushin IL-77 ‘White Whale’ flight out of Murmansk it designed as ‘flight IL-203’. It was tracking all IL-77 flights out of Murmansk, and tracked flight IL-203 in real time as the aircraft made its way across northern Russia. About halfway through the flight, the AI monitoring L-70 calculated a 73% probability, based on signals intelligence and the aircraft flight path, that it was headed for Lavrentiya, and it alerted ANR, which alerted NCTAMS-A4, or to be specific, Lieutenant Alicia Rodriguez.
“You have a ‘White Whale’ incoming,” Rodriguez told Bunny as her fingers tapped her touch screen. “I’m patching the flightpath through now, plus coordinates for intercept.”
“Roger that ma’am,” Bunny said, voice tight. If she was tired, then like Rodriguez, she wasn’t feeling it right now. “I’ll be on them like a leech.”
“You mean remora,” Rodriguez told her.
“Sorry ma’am?” Bunny frowned, head lost in her multiple screens.
“Remoras attach themselves to whales,” Rodriguez told her. “Leeches attach themselves to mammals.”
Bunny didn’t break her stride, just shot back at Rodriguez, “Isn’t a whale a mammal, ma’am?”
“Land mammals then. You ever hear of a leech attaching itself to a whale Lieutenant?”
“No ma’am. Would I be correct in guessing the Air Boss is a little tense right now?” she asked, without looking over.
“Yes O’Hare,” Rodriguez told her. “Yes you would.”
“Chill, ma’am,” Bunny said. “I have a vector to the target. Uh, eight minutes to intercept. Entering Nebo low band range in ten.”
On a big screen in the middle of Bunny’s weapons and navigation system HUDs, Rodriguez was watching as the icon for the Russian transport plane appeared on the screen and began to track toward Bunny’s two JAGM armed Fantoms. She had managed to flit above the wave tops over the Strait without being detected by Russian land, air or satellite based systems so far, but the same parameters applied to this mission as previously. She could be spotted by any random Russian fighter flight that happened to look in her direction and get a lock, and within 30 miles of Lavrentiya, she was at the mercy of the Nebo-M array which had so easily batted her out of the sky last time.
The go-no go for Bunny was whether she could come up with a combination of AI routines that would allow her Fantoms to lock onto the incoming Ilyushin and then hold position underneath it at wave top height. To do it, she’d re-written and combined the code for an optical targeting algorithm with a nap of the earth formation keeping algorithm meant for use with air to ground radar, but it had been impossible to test, so it would either work, or … the Fantoms would die. Most probably by plunging into the ocean as the Ilyushin began its landing descent.
“Got a visual lock. AI matching course and speed,” Bunny said, eight minutes later. Rodriguez saw the two icons merge - the Ilyushin at 20,000 feet and descending, and the two Fantoms below it at wave top height, flying in train, nose to tail, making them nearly the same total length as the monster above them but with a much smaller radar cross-section.

*
*

The communications between the tower at Lavrentiya and the IL-77 were encrypted, but the L-70 could track the inherent pattern in them, and reported to NORAD-ANR-NCTAMS-A4 that comms appeared normal as Bunny’s Fantoms began gliding toward Lavrentiya directly underneath the track of the transport flight.
Inside the command trailer of Russia’s undisputed Nebo-M ace unit - the only unit now with two confirmed combat kills - Lieutenant Colonel Chaliapin listened to the chatter of Lavrentiya air traffic control and watched on his own display as the 0640 transport flight from Murmansk began its approach. There was no enemy air activity in the OA, and he reflected with some satisfaction that the US appeared to have given up any idea of trying to hit him in retaliation for the destruction of their aircraft two days earlier. Normally he would expect a ‘wild weasel’ air defense suppression attack or a cruise missile strike intended to target his radiation signature, and local air patrols had been increased in anticipation. But personally, he doubted the US had the capability for a strike this deep behind the forward line of control. The drone attack of the day before had probably been made with fighters piloted by an autonomous AI and sent on a one way trip from a base 1,000 miles distant, which is why it had been so dumb, and had failed.
He could see no activity around the incoming IL-77, and there were no reported contacts from either AWACS or any of the 3rd Air and Air Defense Forces Command fighter Combat Air Patrols currently blanketing Western Alaska. This particular White Whale was safe.
But he had not become the leading Nebo-M unit in the air force through complacency. If the enemy planned to take this particular flight down, it would be getting in position to hit it now, when it was in its vulnerable landing phase, wheels down, flaps up, flying close to a stall and unable to maneuver.
“Low frequency sector scan on the IL-77 now, 30 seconds,” he ordered. Any stealth aircraft sneaking in behind the White Whale thinking it was going to make an easy kill was about to get a serious dose of radiation poisoning. He smiled. He loved his job.

*
*

“Nebo in narrow beam search mode,” Bunny said suddenly. “They’re looking for us.”
“They can’t be,” Rodriguez said, pointing at the NORAD feed showing the Russian CAPs following their usual routine patrol routes. “We’d see fighters pulled your way if they were.”
“OK, maybe not for us, but they’re suspicious ba*tards,” Bunny said. “No lock. Yet.”

*
*



“Sir, I have… I’m not sure…” the systems officer of the Nebo-M said. “Here, look…”
Chaliapin bent over his system officer’s screen. It showed an icon for the White Whale, and overlaid on it, the icon for a potential UI contact. As they watched, the system’s AI wiped the unidentified contact from the screen due to ‘low return, low probability’.
“OK, get ready to override AI,” the Nebo commander said.
“But the UI contact has been wiped,” the man pointed out. “It was a false return.”
“You might trust your life to an AI system,” the Russian commander said. “I don’t. If you get another return like that, override and lock it manually.”
He turned to another officer. “Keep all arrays in circular mode. The ba*tards could be using the IL77 as a distraction, trying to jump us from a different direction.” To himself he muttered, “It’s what I’d do.”

*
*

“Five miles to release point ma’am!” Bunny said. “Goddamn, I never flew a combat mission so damn slow! Any slower, our bird will have to drop flaps and we’ll lose stealth…”
“Easy girl,” Rodriguez said, letting all formality go. “Can you show me the White Whale?”
“Sure,” Bunny said, swiveling her head to look at a virtual screen inside her helmet, tapping a touchscreen and then pointing to one of the overhead 2D viewing monitors. “Topside cameras.” The view on the screen flicked from a forward view, showing water and a smudge of land, to the sky above the Fantoms. The transport swam into focus and looked like it was about to drop right on top of the Fantom.
“#%&*$#…” Rodriguez said, holding herself back from grabbing Bunny’s shoulder. “What’s the separation?!”
Bunny looked down at her VR instrument panels, “500 feet,” she said. “If they evacuate the in-flight toilets, we’re going to get wet ma’am.”

*
*

“Sir!” the systems officer called. “I have another return. Manually locking unidentified object. Entering 30 mile inner ring range. Shall I bring the S-500s up?” He sounded unsure. “Whatever it is, it is congruent with the approaching aircraft. The Ilyushin will be at risk if we fire.”
“No, that’s the last resort. We can order the Whale to abort and go-around for another landing, see if that shakes anything loose.” He picked up a handset, prepared to call Lavrentiya air traffic control.
“It’s on final,” his operator said. “A go-around now would bring it nearly overhead anyway.”
Lieutenant Colonel Chaliapin squinted hard at the screen. Overlaid on the IL-77 icon was a ‘UI aircraft’ icon. The two were blinking alternately, indicating the returns were completely aligned. The AI had decided the two returns were both from the same aircraft, not unsurprising given how close the huge transport plane was to water level. They were probably getting a double return – refraction of their radar energy off the aircraft onto the surface of the water and back. It happened.
But almost never.
“Dammit. Bring the missiles up and give me a full burst sector scan of that Ilyushin,” the battalion commander said. “I really don’t like this.”
If he was wrong, he might be about to blow away one of the biggest aircraft in the world, its crew, and 200 tons of war supplies. But it was the kind of call he relished.

*
*

“JAG-ems one through eight away!” Bunny called, “CUDAs one and two away! Bugging the hell out.”
From the weapons bays of her two Fantoms, six JAGM air-to-ground missiles dropped and accelerated toward Lavrentiya, just visible on the horizon. Right behind them, two CUDA half-RAAMs fell free, lit their burners, turned 180 degrees to clear the tail of their launching Fantom and then sped over the top of it headed straight for the White Whale wallowing along above them. It didn’t stand a chance. Bunny’s fighters spun on their wingtips, went to full burner and began active jamming to spoof any missiles that might be fired their way.

*
*



Chaliapin had done everything a human could do to defend the airspace over Lavrentiya. He had his sector scanning radar pointed directly at the source of the coming attack. He had his missiles online. He had his people on the edge of their seats expecting an attack.
As soon as he heard the systems officer call a warning, he knew all of this wasn’t going to be enough.
“Vampires inbound!!” the man yelled. “UI aircraft maneuvering. AI engaging!!”
Outside the trailer, from three sites around him, missiles leapt off their rails. But prioritized by the combat AI, they weren’t aimed at Bunny’s Fantoms, which were heading as fast as they could out of range of the S-500s. The Russian AI had sensed the existential threat and stopped tracking the two stealth fighters to focus on intercepting the smaller, self-guided JAGMs, speeding downrange at 600 knots. The firing inclination of the S-500 launchers meant that as they were mounted on the elevated hills behind Lavrentiya, their missiles had to begin diving radically almost as soon as they were fired if they were to have any hope of intercepting the JAGMs speeding in at wave top height.
“Mayday from the Ilyushin, it’s going down!” his comms operator called. He turned in terror, looking to Chaliapin for hope, but seeing none.
One S-500 made a proximity detonation and took out a single JAGM. Two others detonated behind their targets, to no effect.
Five JAGMs made it through.
The first and second hit in the center of the truck park and container yard outside Lavrentiya township. The yard contained mostly food and clothing, and the explosions were less than impressive.
The third and fourth hit targets that had been identified as probable fuel containers, and these caused an altogether more impressive conflagration, with a single huge fireball rising a hundred feet into the air over the town. The explosion also rained burning debris, causing spot fires in multiple buildings including a row of containers holding anti-aircraft artillery ammunition. One of them was in the process of being unloaded and the exposed AA shells exploded in a fan-like spread of armor piercing anger, detonating one by one the other containers alongside them in a ripple that caused the air to quiver and sent out a blast wave that took out the windows of the five story administration center two miles away. The final shed to detonate was at the end of the Lavrentiya air field runway, and it sent shrapnel slicing laterally through three of the five temporary hangars housing the Okhotniks of Bondarev’s 6983rd Fighter Aviation Regiment.
The fifth missile wasn’t intended to cause massive destruction. It had been programmed by Bunny O’Hare to identify and home on the communications signature of a Nebo-M anti-aircraft radar array command hub, and the subsonic scream of its solid-propellant engine was the last sound heard by Lieutenant Colonel Alexandr Chaliapin, commander of Russia’s premier anti-aircraft defense battalion.
The last thought to go through his mind was, ‘I was bloody right.’

*
*



Bunny O’Hare had no time to celebrate.
She had nullified the threat from the Nebo-M, but it had not gone quietly into the night. Even as it fought to intercept the JAGMs closing on Lavrentiya, it was sending targeting data on the two Fantoms to a combat air patrol of two Su-57s circling overhead. Between the data from the Nebo and her own radical maneuvering, the Sukhoi pilots had no trouble locking up Bunny’s Fantoms.
“Missile launch!” Bunny grunted. “Jamming, firing countermeasures.” Rodriguez watched as she handed off control of one of the Fantoms to its autonomous defensive AI, and tightened the grip on her mouse. The VR helmet around her gave her a near 360 degree view, simulating the view out of a cockpit. The two Sukhois were high on Bunny’s starboard quarter and she ordered her Fantoms around to face them, staying low to the water, trying to force the Russian missiles to overshoot.
They did, missing her lead aircraft.
Checking the other Fantom she saw that the AI had spoofed the other pair of missiles too, either through jamming or by drawing them away with chaff and flares. The fact her machines were still alive told her the pursuing fighters weren’t carrying K-77s, they were probably fielding older R-77s – she still had a chance!
She had two units in the fight. They weren’t armed with anything but cannon, but that would have to be enough.
“I’m sorry baby,” Bunny said, taking her support drone off of defensive AI and commanding it to adopt an aggressive attack posture targeting the nearest Sukhoi. “We all have to die one day.”
It was the only chance she had. If one of the drones could engage and distract the fighters now dropping down on her rear quarter, the other might just have a chance of escape. In her downtime under the Rock, Bunny had ‘tweaked’ her drones’ offensive AI settings, creating what she called ‘bezerker mode’. When initiated, the AI would only execute maneuvers intended to give it a firing solution on an enemy. It would take no evasive action whatsoever, no matter how imminent the threat. And even after all ordnance was expended, unless she cancelled the ‘bezerker’ command, the drone would try to destroy its target by ramming it. With each drone costing upward of 80 million dollars, it wasn’t surprising the designers of the Fantom’s combat AI had not considered implementing anything like Bunny’s bezerker code. But Bunny hadn’t felt bound by budget constraints.
“It would totally suck to lose both drones again,” Rodriguez said, before she could stop herself.
“Understood ma’am,” Bunny said, dragging a waypoint across her touch screen and ordering her lead drone to bug out by scooting under the noses of the approaching enemy fighters. “Will try to avoid total suck outcome.” The two Sukhois were dropping on her like sea eagles hunting salmon. She locked them up with her missile targeting radar, knowing it would set alarms screaming in their cockpits, even though she had no missile to fire. Her ploy was psychological. Their AI would have told them by now that they were facing two UCAVs. Human pilots hated UCAVs. A UCAV like the Fantom had only a silicon life to lose, it could pull Gs that no human pilot could, and it knew no fear. US air combat orthodoxy said that if you couldn’t swat a UCAV with your first missile salvo, you should do everything possible to avoid getting in range of guns and short range missiles. Bunny was banking that at least one of the Sukhoi pilots would lose his #%&*$# at the sight of her Fantom closing on him with a missile warning screaming in his ears.
There was no sign of that yet though. As she tried to extend at least one of her Fantoms away from the oncoming Sukhois and let the other take the fight, a warning alarm filled the trailer and the Russians let fly with their second salvo of short range off-boresight missiles.

*
*



Carl Williams of course found out about the planned nuclear strike almost at the same time as the Ambassador. HOLMES didn’t spend all of his time gathering intel for the Ambassador; he also had a considerable portion of his bandwidth devoted to keeping Williams up to date with military developments, with orders to break in on whatever Williams was doing (including sleeping) with a flash alert for any event involving actual or potential losses to either side.
The small buzzing alarm from Williams laptop was the signal of just such an alert. Carl had dragged a mattress down to his office, and had taken to showering in the gym, and eating in the Annexe’s commissary. He hadn’t see his own apartment for nearly two weeks. Nowhere else had the connectivity he needed to keep his uplink to the NSA HOLMES platform operating at fully capacity.
He groaned, reaching an arm up from the mattress on the floor and batting the spacebar on his laptop. “Yes, what?”
“The time is 0100 hours,” HOLMES announced. “I have a military sitrep for you.”
“Go ahead,” Williams said, rubbing his eyes. He could have HOLMES copy it to NSA, and the Ambassador if it was material. He’d probably insist on doing so anyway. HOLMES was still trying to get back into her good books after the Bondarev thing.
“SatInt, ElInt and human source reporting from Saint Lawrence indicates that elements of the Russian 3rd Air and Air Defense Forces Command have moved into Savoonga. DoD analysts conclude this has been done to extend their flight time over the south eastern area of operations.”
“They’ve got Alaska pretty much to themselves then,” Williams observed.
“I have seen no reports of anything except reconnaissance flights from US mainland bases in the last 24 hours,” HOLMES confirmed. “However, there is a Navy covert air unit which has conducted two successful strikes on Russian mainland facilities in the last three days.”
“What covert air unit?” Williams asked, his ears pricking.
“I only have the code name,” HOLMES replied. “Its designation is NCTAMS-A4. I am unable to find any other information about this unit. But I can confirm that three days ago it carried out a strike on Russian military targets at Anadyr which caused significant damage including the incapacitation of a
UCAV squadron of the Russian 6983rd Air Defense Regiment. I have just picked up a report from ANR NORAD that about 30 minutes ago, the same unit apparently struck a Russian supply depot at Lavrentiya. BDA has not yet been conducted, and I have no details yet on the fate of the attacking Navy aircraft.”
“Get some, Navy!” Williams said, punching a fist in the air. “I’m guessing the Russian planes at Savoonga are going to be next on their Christmas list.”
“That may be planned but is unlikely to be effected,” HOLMES said. “A US Columbia Class nuclear submarine is currently moving into position off the coast of the Kuril Islands. My analysis of multiple intel inputs indicates that the submarine may be maneuvering to an established missile launch station.”
“Columbia class subs carry long range hypersonic cruise missiles right?” Williams said. He could imagine tempers in Washington getting short - they might want to send a high explosive ultimatum towards one or more Russian military targets.
“Yes. I have indications that other US SSBNs have also been ordered to readiness, although their posture appears more defensive than offensive. I have assigned a 78% probability to a tactical nuclear attack using hypersonic cruise missiles on a Russian military target by the SSBN located off the Kurils.” Williams was not sure he heard right.
“A nuke?!”
“Yes. I have a conventional weapons attack with subsonic cruise missiles or ICBMs at 54% probability.”
“What …. what target?” Williams said in a strangled voice.
“Repeat your question please Carl.”
“Assume this is a political attack, not an attempt to start an all-out nuclear war. Assume the submarine is only going to target a single Russian base, or location. What are the likely targets for a submarine based off the Kurils?” He had to believe that whatever this was, it was intended as a ‘shot across the bows’. He couldn’t believe his own country wanted to trigger Armageddon. Not over Alaska.
But then he realized, he was hoping exactly what the Russian planners were hoping, and hope was not a sound military strategy.
“Weighted for combined geopolitical and military impact - Iturup anti-ship missile facility 91% probability, Matua Northern Fleet Replenishment Facility 73%. I also calculate a probability of 34% that the warhead will be detonated over a remote area in the Northern Pacific, however this probability is low due to the limited military value of such an act.”
Williams swore. He was shaken to his core. He had grown up in a world where the use of nuclear weapons in conflict was simply inconceivable. It hadn’t happened since 1945. Sure, the world had come close to calamity a few times - the Cuban missile crisis, the Russian submarine malfunction, a US strategic bomber shot down by its own escort when it received a nuclear launch order by mistake. There were probably other events he didn’t know about, but they were all accidents. Even in the heat of the proxy wars in the Middle East, when US backed Turkish forces were being forced back out of Syria, nuclear weapons had never been considered.
But the world had let itself become complacent. Nuclear arms reduction treaties had lapsed and not been renegotiated. Politicians had more focus on the dangers posed by new technologies - hypersonic missiles, cyber warfare, AI systems, unmanned combat vehicles - and had all but forgotten about the first doomsday weapons. The number of nations with nukes had proliferated uncontrollably because no nation was willing to go to war over them before it was too late. North Korea had been the first example, then Iran and Saudi Arabia. Afraid of being left in the cold by weakening US commitment, Taiwan joined the nuclear arms club. And after the bruising it took at the hands of Russia and Syria, Williams had seen reports that Turkey was now starting its own underground weapons program, with the US turning a blind eye.
“Assume a hypersonic cruise missile strike. Have you run the numbers on how soon the sub will be within launch range?”
“Yes Carl. It is already within range of the former North Pacific Open Sea Testing Range. It can be within range of Iturup between 1500 and 1700 hours today. It can be within range of Matua by 2300 hours today.”
“So it’s going to happen today?” Carl whispered, still not believing it.
“There is still a 22% probability my analysis is wrong,” HOLMES said. “It requires that I assign motive and intent to numerous human actors on both sides, but I have calibrated for the recklessness of past strategic decisions and I believe, weighted the role of the US President appropriately.”
Williams knew what HOLMES was saying, even if he didn’t mean to say it. The current US President was a cowboy, in many senses of the word. Short in stature, short on temperament, inclined to shoot first and think later. If he had enough support in DC and the Pentagon…
He thought fast, “Copy your analysis to NSA,” Williams said. “If you have been able to identify a possible SSBN launch by analyzing signals traffic, Russia or China could have too. And copy the report to the Ambassador. She might be able to do something to calm down the hawks in Washington.”
“She may already be aware,” HOLMES said. “I logged a person to person call between her and the Secretary of State about five minutes ago. This was one of the data points that allowed me to refine my final probability analyses and prompted me to wake you.”
It made sense. The US had been pushed ignominiously out of its own territory. Its most powerful supercarrier crippled by cyber-sabotage and its other carrier groups were out of position. It could fight a conventional war that would cost tens of thousands of lives, or it could threaten nuclear retaliation. And potentially cost millions of lives.
And idea came to him.
“HOLMES,” Williams said. “I have a new priority A task for you. Find all possible contact details for Yevgeny Bondarev; landline, cell phone, sat phone, encrypted chat, Savoonga bloody post office, whatever you can pull down.” He had to stop his voice from shaking, as the reality of what was about to happen starting building inside him. “Send everything you can find to the Ambassador’s cell phone and mine.”
“Yes Carl.”
“OK, keep updating your ETA for those subs and send that report. You can log off for now. No, wait!” He said, suddenly remembering something. It had been niggling at him. Not an important thing, just a question he’d meant to ask. “HOLMES, about the Russian forces at Savoonga… you said you had seen human source reporting?”
“Yes Carl.”
“We have special forces on Saint Lawrence?” Carl said, impressed. “Right under the noses of the Russian 3rd Air and Air Defense Forces Command?”
“No Carl,” HOLMES said. “The human source reports are being generated by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. It is their agent on the ground, not one of ours.”

*
*

CSIS ‘agent in place’, Perri Tungyan, literally had his a$$ on the ground. He and Dave were camped on a low hill west of Savoonga, overlooking the town and the new base that the US had built nearly ten years ago, which okay, you couldn’t really call new.
Or more correctly, they were overlooking where the base had been. All they could see were the still smoking ruins of the cantonment. At least here, the Americans had spared the township.
Earlier that morning, they had watched as the weary column of townsfolk from Gambell and their Russian captors had trudged into Savoonga. Just as in Gambell, the townspeople had been herded into the Hogarth Kingeekuk Sr. Memorial School, which already looked like a stockade, so Perri figured there must be local Savoonga people in there too.
He didn’t know how few.
About mid-morning, they had made contact with Sarge. For a very long fifteen minutes they reported everything they could see from outside the town, from the number of troops and vehicles, their locations and apparent patrol routes to the number and type of aircraft down at the airfield.
And that, in particular, had taken time, because they had to count them three times to get it right. In the end they made it at about 45 fighter aircraft, mostly all Su-35s and Su-57s as far as Perri could tell. There were some aircraft without cockpits, that Sarge said were probably recon drones, not the bigger Hunter UCAVs. And there smaller transport aircraft coming and going almost continuously. The was one big one too. A huge, white flying wing thing Perri had never seen before. It needed drogue chutes to slow it down so that it didn’t run off the end of the airfield when it was landing, and when it took off again a couple of hours later, only lifted its nose at the very last minute before it ran out of runway.
“OK, that’s good, that’s good,” Sarge had said. “Now are you two safe where you are?”
“I guess,” Perri said. “We’re under a rock overhang, so you can’t see us from the air. We can stay pretty dry. Without a fire, it’s pretty cold though, eh.”
“Pretty cold, or dangerously cold,” Sarge asked. “You guys know your country better than me. It’s your call.”
Dave was making signs like he wanted them to head back to Gambell, to their nice warm bunker under the gas station.
“Nah, we’ll be OK,” Perri said. “We can stick it out a couple more days at least. Then we’ll be out of food, and probably battery too. It will take us three days to hike back to Gambell, or we can try to sneak into Savoonga. I’ve got people there.” He looked through his scope at the Russian troops in the streets, and realized he couldn’t see any locals. “Maybe.”
“OK, you’ll be calling in reports like this for me every four hours, but you shut down and lie low for now,” Sarge said. “You guys are doing awesome, you know that, right?”
“Awesome, yeah,” Dave said, unconvincingly.
Perri disconnected the radio and started to pack it away so it wouldn’t get wet. The wind was picking up and the sky looked like rain was coming. The small overhang they were sitting under wouldn’t offer that much protection. Dave had been sitting with his rifle across his knees, but put it down and picked up Perri's, switching on the scope. He waved it around a bit, then settled it on some far-off target. He squinted, “What’s these numbers across the bottom?” he asked.
“Uh, by memory? I think left to right it’s like compass bearing, then elevation, then windage,” Perri answered.
“Uh huh, and you got it zeroed in, right?”
Perri was winding up the battery cables. “Yeah.”
“So, if I was going to shoot something, I wouldn’t use the red dot in the middle of the scope, I would use these crosshairs off to the side. The ones that move around a bit?”
“You’re not going to shoot anything,” Perri told him.
“I said if I was,” Dave said.
“Sure,” Perri said. “You’d use the crosshairs, not the red dot. The bullet goes where the crosshairs are...”
Dave got up on one knee, pointed the rifle downhill toward the town. “Like, if I wanted to shoot that Russian soldier who is coming up the hill, straight toward us?”
Perri grabbed the rifle off him and stared down the scope. At first, he saw nothing. “Ha ha very fu…” he said, then stopped. A movement in the corner of the scope caught his eye, he swung it slightly to the right.
“#%&*$#. It’s that guy from Gambell,” Perri said. “The one we saw in the school office.”
“No way.”
“Way,” Perri said. He lowered the rifle. The soldier was too far away to see with a naked eye but he could see he had a large rifle strapped to his back, moving fast and staring intently at the ground. “How did he get ahead of us?”
“Quad bike or something?” Dave said. “Maybe a boat or chopper eh. But he’s walking back along the track from Savoonga. So he’s already been there, and now he’s going back to Gambell? Why?”
“Maybe he’s hunting.”
Dave laughed, “Freaking idiot. What, he thinks he’s going to get bear or walrus? Nothing out here this time of year except birds.”
Perri put his own rifle back up to his cheek. “No Dave, I got a feeling he’s hunting us.”

*
*

Private Zubkhov was cold too. But no one was giving him any praise. He’d followed the trail of the column of hostages all the way to Savoonga, but he hadn’t come across whoever it was that had been carrying that ghost radio. If he’d gone on any further, he’d have run a risk of bumping into one of his old comrades, or a sentry outside of Savoonga and he wasn’t ready for that. So there was nothing for it but to double back – his quarry must have turned off at some point and he missed their tracks.
Suddenly he got this funny feeling. He dropped to one knee and looked around himself. Nothing. He saw nothing but scrub, rock and sea birds in any direction. He felt like slapping himself. Come on boy, you’re getting spooked now. But you’re right, that American is around here somewhere, he must be. You just have to be patient, move slower, stay more alert and wait for night fall. He’ll probably light a fire to stay warm, and you’ll have him.
Zubkov didn’t hear the shot. The shooter must have been upwind. He felt something punch him in the chest, just below his right shoulder. It spun him around and knocked him to the ground.


*
*



Bunny’s bezerker routine had done its job. The attacking Fantom had locked up one of the enemy Sukhois, spooking it into thinking it was about to face a US all-aspect short-range missile at point blank range, and the pilot choked. He threw his machine into a twisting dive, firing off chaff and flares as he headed for the deck. The Fantom meanwhile centered its gun pipper on the other Sukhoi, which was following its missiles down range. One Fantom was able to dodge the missiles fired at it, but her kamikaze Fantom did not even try to evade. At maximum range, it opened up with its GAU-22/L 25mm cannon. The ‘L’ designator stood for ‘laser’, because the weapon had its own dedicated laser targeting system, making the system accurate out to 12,000 feet.
Which coincidentally was its exact distance from the Sukhoi at the moment it opened fire. In a head on attack situation, against an unswerving enemy target confidently barreling in behind his missiles at 1,000 miles an hour, it was hard for the GAU-22/L to miss. In the three seconds before the two Russian missiles slammed into it, the Fantom put nearly 200 25mm shells into the Sukhoi.
Its pilot was dead before his missiles hit their target, taking Bunny’s sacrificial drone off the board.
With his flight leader off the air, and his threat warning alarm telling him there was still one enemy UCAV out there, the second Sukhoi pilot decided to get while the going was good. One on one with a human pilot, he would back himself any day. Down on the deck, out of energy and facing a damn robot, those weren’t odds he liked. Bunny watched with satisfaction as he bugged out and she regained stealth status. She gave her surviving Fantom a dogleg route home to try to confuse any satellite surveillance that might be lucky enough to pick up her heat signature along the way, and leaned back in her chair.
“Permission to declare myself freaking awesome ma’am?” Bunny said, grinning widely but keeping her eyes on her monitors.
During the dogfight, Rodriguez had hovered behind the pilot’s chair, biting her bottom lip so hard she could taste blood now. It was ridiculous. Not like my life was on the line. But it felt like it. And that was the way O’Hare was running her drones too - as though her life depended on it.
“Denied,” Rodriguez said. “You don’t get to do that. I get to do that. That was simply awe inspiring, Lieutenant. From ingress to egress.”
“You know ma’am, I agree with you,” Bunny said. “What was it that inspired the most awe, in your personal opinion? Was it the way I snuck in under that IL-77 like a freaking ninja and blew it out of the sky, or was it the four solids I laid on Ivan at Lavrentiya?” She spun her chair around, giving Rodriguez a dead pan look. “Or was it the way I burned that Nebo, evaded like a hundred missiles and bagged myself a Sukhoi-57 in the process?”
Rodriguez knew better than to say something that would bring her ace pilot back down to earth. It was O’Hare’s moment, and she had earned it.
“Honestly?” Rodriguez smiled. “None of that. The most awesome thing of all, is that all that hurt was laid on the Russians by a single pilot whose handle is ‘Bunny’.”

*
*

Perri saw the Russian soldier drop and roll, then he disappeared from view behind some low scrub.
“Did you hit him?” Dave asked, scanning the ground in front of them with binoculars.
“Yeah I hit him,” Perri said. Crouched on one knee, the Russian was not a big target. He’d aimed for the guy’s center mass, not taking any chances. The shot had knocked him down, he hadn’t ducked, of that he was sure.
“I can’t see him,” Dave said. “Should we go look for him? Make sure he’s dead?”
“No, we should not go look for him, we should get the hell out of here. He might not be the only one looking for us. Someone could have heard that shot.”
“You want to go back to Gambell?” Dave asked, hopefully.
“Shut up, I’m thinking.” He and Dave were on a small rise, about two miles out from the south-west end of the long runway. Savoonga town was a ways off, on the other side of the runway. The bombed out Radar Facility cantonment was south of it, about two miles south-east of the runway. It wouldn’t have as clear a view over the town and airport as they had now, but they couldn’t stay here, and they had to hide out somewhere. “Saddle up,” Perri said, pointing at the ruins in the distance. “There’s our new home.”
He expected Dave to argue, but the guy just shouldered his rifle, lifted his pack onto his other shoulder and stood there waiting. “What?” he said. “You want me to congratulate you for taking down that Russian?” He walked off in the direction of the cantonment, muttering. “I’m the one spotted the guy. Shooting him was the easy part. I’ve shot sleeping walrus that were harder to shoot than that dumbass Russian…”

*
*


'That dumba$$ Russian' was having trouble breathing.
Laying on his back, looking up at the sky Zubkhov had clawed his rifle out from under him and had its butt propped against the ground, left hand with a finger inside the trigger guard, ready in case the ba*tard who shot him decided to come and finish the job. He had almost no chance if he did. Zubkov’s right arm was completely numb, and he couldn’t even unfold the rifle stock, let alone hold it steady and point it properly.
The American was good, Zubhkov had to give him that. The way he’d escaped back in Gambell, diving straight into the water instead of being stupid and trying to run for it along the runway. Found a Russian radio and got it working. It had to be the same guy. He’d tracked the Russian troops all the way to Savoonga, somehow realizing Zubkhov was on his tail, got around behind and set him up for a hit. Guy like that, he couldn’t be a simple radar technician. He had to be like, base security or something more, maybe special forces - just happened to be in Gambell. Yeah, you had to give him credit.
But not too much credit. Zubkhov was still alive, for now. He waited, expecting every second to be his last. But the kill shot never came.
When he was sure the guy wasn’t coming to confirm his kill - which either made him very cocky, or very careful - Zubkhov put down his rifle and felt around under his uniform. His shirt was soaked in blood: not good. But he could feel an entry wound at the front of his right shoulder, and a pretty damn huge exit wound at the back, that was where most of the blood was coming from. From a pouch on the leg of his uniform trousers he pulled a small field first-aid pack. Ripping open the foil with one hand and his teeth, he pulled out the sterilized gauze bandage, shoved the wrapping between his teeth, and then jammed the bandage as far into the wound in his back as he could. He had to stifle a scream, but he got a fair wad of gauze in there, and then rolled back onto it to try to keep some pressure on it.
He’d told Sergeant Penkov he was no medic. Zubkhov had basic combat medical training though, so unfortunately he knew enough to realize he was hit pretty good, but his wound wasn’t sucking air, so he hadn’t suffered a punctured lung cavity. Hurt like hell though and it was bleeding pretty good. If the shoulder blade wasn’t broken, the slug had taken a big chunk out of it. He could see blood pulsing out of the entry wound. He fumbled with the first aid pack, trying to find the large plastic adhesive wound patch he knew was in there. Finally his fingers grabbed the thin film and he ripped the back off it with his teeth. Luckily he was one of those semi-neurotic guys who were terrified of battlefield wounds so he shaved his chest, arm and legs to get rid of hair. And yeah, some of the others had given him #%&*$# about it, but right now, right now, who was the smart guy huh? Who was laughing now? He laughed out loud.
He realized his mind was wandering. The patch. He pulled the plastic film off the back of it, and slapped it over the entry wound, then remembered something. Something, something. He was doing something wrong. He needed a pressure bandage on there too but was it supposed to go over the patch, or under it? Whatever. He put a wad of gauze over the patch, bound a bandage around his arm and shoulder as best he could with one hand and punched an ampoule of fentanyl-NFEPP into his leg to dull the pain.
Then he just lay back again. No point sticking his head up and flagging to anyone he was still alive.
Actually it was quite nice down here out of the wind. He closed his eyes.

*
*
(C) 2018 Fred 'Heinkill' Williams. To Be Continued...