Iron Wolf (24 page)

“Pushing it up to six hundred knots,” Sievert said. “Go target direct.”

“We're target direct,” Herres said. “Slightly higher terrain left, big city off to the right. Give me weapons.”

“Weapons permission Sievert,” he said.

“Weapons permission Sievert, acknowledged,”
the computer responded.

“You got weapons.”

“Weapons permission Herres.”

“Weapons permission Herres acknowledged. Warning, weapons are ready.”

“We're going in hot,” Sievert said. “Let's get the—”

“Warning, warning, infrared threat, three o'clock,”
the computer said.
“Warning, warning, India-Julia band target tracking radar, nine o'clock, thirty miles . . . warning, India-Julia band missile guidance radar . . . warning, warning, second infrared target, three o'clock . . . warning, third infrared target detected, nine o'clock . . . !”

“MALDs! MALDs!” Herres shouted. “They got us between two SAMs!”

“MALDs deployed.”

“Coming left,” Sievert said. He threw the SuperVark into a tight left turn. The terrain was higher in this direction, but not by very much. SPEAR punched out decoy chaff and flares out of the right-side ejectors.

“Warning, warning!”
the threat computer said in the same monotone, even, unhurried female voice, as if nothing at all were happening anywhere in the world.
“Warning, warning . . . !”
The warnings were almost continuous now. As he thrust his aircraft into another tight right turn, Sievert wished he could meet the woman who recorded that voice . . .

. . . so he could punch her right in the damned mouth.

Four hours later, the last disheveled XF-111 crews dragged themselves back to the ready room, joining others who'd been sitting slumped wearily in their chairs for a lot longer. This time there was no banter, no laid-back swapping of worn-out jokes and good-natured teasing. There was just silence, a heavy, embarrassed silence.

Brad waited for the last of Iron Wolf pilots and weapons officers to get settled before taking his place at the front. He stood there for a few moments longer, eyeing them closely. Very few of them seemed able to meet his cool, ironic gaze. Most seemed content to study the floor or the ceiling or their folded hands. They were certainly a far cry from the cocky, arrogant bunch who'd sauntered out to take a whack at a computer-simulated Lipetsk Air Base.

“Well, that was . . .
interesting,
” Brad said, carefully choosing the most neutral word he could think of. Total freaking disaster was probably the most accurate description, but, hey, why pile on any harder than he already planned to? “Before I run through the full after-action brief, I'll just summarize the results. Unless anyone has any objections?”

No one spoke up.

“Okay, here it is,” Brad said. “It's short. But it sure as hell isn't very sweet. Total number of XF-111 SuperVarks departing Powidz:
nine. Number of XF-111s shot down over Russian territory: six. And a seventh plane crash-landed in Belarus as a total write-off. Number of XF-111s returning safely to Poland: two. Just two. And both of them landed with significant battle damage.” He let those horrifying statistics hang sourly in the air for a bit before going on. “Getting more than a billion dollars' worth of advanced aircraft shot to shit is bad enough. What makes it even worse is the total number of bombs on target at Lipetsk. Which was precisely none. As in zero. Nada. Nil.”

As he expected, that drew return fire from Bill Sievert. The former F-15E Strike Eagle pilot had been one of those shot down on the way to the target.

“Sure we got clobbered!” Sievert snarled. “Crap, anybody would have gotten the snot beat out of them. Between the SAM belt on the way in, a bunch of fucking MiGs fighters already in the air looking for us—over Ukraine, for Christ's sake!—and an even bigger shitload of SAMs ringing that freaking airfield, we never stood a chance. The damned target was completely impossible. Just like I said right from the get-go!”

“Wrong,” Brad replied, no longer bothering to hide the disgust he felt. These men and women were supposed to be highly capable and aggressive aviators, not a bunch of whiny, argumentative, undisciplined brats. “Was Lipetsk a tough nut to crack? Absolutely. Would we have lost some XF-111s going after Lipetsk no matter what we did? Possibly. Was the mission target impossible? Absolutely not. What made it impossible was the half-assed, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-goddamned-pants way you all went after it!”

“Maybe you'd better explain that somewhat more thoroughly, Brad,” Mark Darrow said, sitting up straighter. There might have been just the barest hint of a smile hovering on the Englishman's face. “For those of us like me who are a bit slow, I mean.”

“Glad to,” Brad agreed. He brought up some of the data captured by the simulation program during their mission. The first image showed a schematic of the ordnance loads each XF-111 crew had selected. “Anybody see the problem?”

Slowly, hesitantly, several of the Iron Wolf pilots and weapons officers nodded. “We screwed up our load-outs,” murmured one of them, Karen Tanabe. Before joining Scion, she'd been a B-52 pilot for the U.S. Air Force.

“That's right,” Brad went on. “I let a couple of you load JASSMs, and the ones that did got them off, but we can't count on Poland letting us have any. The rest loaded up on JSOWs and MALDs. A couple loaded AIM-120s and took out some MiGs, and they made it out of Russia, but no one took a shot at the Beriev-100. No one brought antiradar missiles . . .
no one
. You had Belgorod's radar in your face almost all the way after passing Kiev but no one could take it out. You eventually had to fly close enough to Belgorod so it could get a tight lock on you, and that together with the Beriev-100 and the S-300 was enough to get good missile guidance on you. And why did you all make that mistake? Because everybody focused on grabbing the big prize—dropping bombs on Lipetsk—and nobody wanted second place.”

Still scowling, he brought up his next exhibit, this one an animated illustration of the flight paths selected by each crew. It showed a set of nine blue-colored lines arrowing out from Powidz and then curving through different arcs to enter Russian territory at multiple points and widely separated times.

Brad let them look at the damning sequence in silence while it played through once. Then he set the animation on autoplay, looping through over and over while he spoke. “The most charitable thing I can say about your
total
failure to coordinate your flight plans is that the spaghetti mess you see on the screen might have confused the Russian air defense controllers. Maybe.
If
they were already drunk. Of course, as it turned out, all you did was give their early-warning radars the maximum bite at the detection apple, along with exposing your aircraft to fire from multiple SAM battalions.”

He sighed. “Look, I will try to get this across one more time slowly. The XF-111 SuperVark is
not
a stealth bomber. All the improvements Sky Masters worked in
do
reduce its radar cross section significantly, and the ALQ-293 SPEAR gives it a remarkable ability
to jam and spoof a wide range of enemy radars.
But
the hard reality is that single XF-111s
cannot
successfully carry out long-range penetration missions—not against a swarm of advanced Russian radars, S-300 and S-400 SAMs, and advanced fighter interceptors. If you guys try to fly a mission all on your own, like the Lone Ranger, you're just going to wind up as dead as George Armstrong Custer at the Little Bighorn. Which is exactly what happened today.”

This time Brad noticed others besides Mark Darrow looking thoughtful. Maybe he was getting through to them—though it still felt a little weird lecturing the rest of the Iron Wolf crews. Then again, it was pretty clear that all the flight-line and simulator hours he'd put in at Sky Masters, along the special tactics classes he'd taken,
did
give him an edge over them . . . at least as far as knowing how XF-111 missions should be put together and flown.

“We have
got
to learn to fight and fly as a coordinated strike force,” he said. “No more of this stupid ‘I'm Batman!' crap.”

“But I
am
Batman,” Jack Hollenbeck whispered sotto voce to Darrow, pretending to be offended. That broke everybody up, including Brad.

When the laughter died down, he went on in a slightly more relaxed tone. “Look, this squadron needs to develop tactics and mission plans that will let us tear right through Russian air defenses and then rip out the throat of any target we're assigned. The only way we're going to do that is if we fly as a team, not a bunch of lone wolves.” Again, for several long moments, there was only silence.

At last, Bill Sievert, of all the Iron Wolf pilots the one Brad would least have expected to side with him, said, “Okay, McLanahan. I get it. We screwed the pooch big-time. But do you really think your mission plan, the one we bailed out on this morning, was a step in the right direction?”

“There's only one way to find out, isn't there?” Brad said levelly. “We can run the mission again, this time according to my plan. And if I've screwed up somehow, there's more than enough brainpower and flying experience in this room to take the scenario apart and figure out a new approach.”

Sievert climbed to his feet and looked around at his fellow pilots. “The kid's right. We need to try that frigging Lipetsk raid again.”

“I can set up the sim for another run-through tomorrow,” Brad told them. “But don't expect all the defenses to play out the same way. The computer throws in different random elements every time. We get ‘intel' from the computer as if we're getting it from real recon sources, but like the real world it may be up-to-date and accurate, or it may be bogus.”

Now it was Darrow's turn to speak. “We should get started on this today, Brad. Not tomorrow,” the Englishman said seriously, looking around the room. “Those bloody fools in Moscow could push this situation over the edge at any moment. Tomorrow may be too late.” There were more murmurs of agreement from the assembled Iron Wolf crews.

Brad nodded slowly, taking it all in. “Okay. Go grab something to eat. While you're doing that I'll reconfigure the sim. And this time I'll fly it with you. Captain Rozek can act as my copilot and weapons officer. That'll give her a better look at what these planes can do, and it'll give us ten aircraft on the raid. We'll meet back here at 1530 for a full briefing.”

One by one, the pilots and weapons officers levered themselves out of their seats, heading for the canteen next door. And once again, Brad noticed their eyes resting enviously, almost longingly, on Captain Nadia Rozek's neat, trim uniform. Ah, he thought, piecing it together at last. Morale and unit cohesion were made up of more than just common purpose and professional respect. What was it that Napoleon had said when handing out medals? Something like, “It is with such baubles that men are led.” Napoleon might have been a cynical son of a bitch, but there was an elemental truth there. One worth considering.

He'd learned a lot about these men and women over the past couple of weeks—listening to their stories over meals or while working together to get the ROCC stations up and running. None of these Americans, Canadians, or Brits had quit their respective militaries because they were misfits. If anything, they'd left because their air
forces were changing for the worse—cutting flying hours that would keep pilots alive in combat, skimping on maintenance, and scrapping good planes without acquiring better ones. These pilots weren't careerists. They were dedicated professionals who couldn't stand watching the squadrons they loved fade away into pale shadows of what they had once been. Maybe the Iron Wolf pilots were hungrier for a renewed sense of shared purpose than he had first thought.

After the room emptied out and they were alone, Nadia rushed over to him and kissed him soundly on both cheeks. “That was
fantastyczny,
Brad! Fantastic!”

He blushed. “Really?” He hemmed and hawed a little and then rushed on. “I was kind of afraid that I was coming across like a know-it-all prick.”

“Oh, you were,” she said, laughing softly. “But I think you were just the kind of ‘know-it-all prick' they needed to hear.”

“Gee, thanks,” Brad said wryly.

“It was nothing,” Nadia told him, still laughing.

“Now that you've popped my little bubble of pride,” he said, “I sure could use some more help.”

“You may ask anything of me,” Nadia said, quickly sobering up. “I am at your service.”

With a tremendous effort, Brad forced down the immediate impulse to ask her out to dinner, focusing instead on what he needed—instead of what he wanted. “I need the telephone number of a good, superfast military tailor.”

Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of ignorance.

—
R
OBERT
Q
UILLEN,
A
MERICAN JOURNALIST

Z
EDNIA
F
OREST
S
UPERINTENDENCY,
P
OLAND,

NEAR THE
P
OLISH-
L
ITHUANIAN
B
ORDER

T
HE NEXT DAY

The Polish countryside due east of Bialystok was mostly woodland, with farms and small villages nestled among the patches of forest. About sixteen kilometers from the city, a narrow two-lane road ran north and south through stands of tall trees and small clearings. A few hundred meters from the State Forest Service's local headquarters, an even narrower dirt track intersected the paved road, heading east, deeper into the woods.

Two men lolled near a dark blue panel van parked at this junction. They were smoking cigarettes, apparently enjoying the afternoon sunshine. Both were dressed like ordinary rural laborers, in dirty jeans, drab work shirts, and dark, often-patched coats. Something about their watchful eyes and tight-lipped mouths, though,
suggested they would be more at home in the tougher, grittier neighborhoods of a big city.

One of them straightened up slowly, watching a battered Fiat Panda heading toward them. He flicked his cigarette away. “There's Górski,” he muttered.

“About fucking time,” his comrade growled. Both men were speaking in Ukrainian.

The Fiat pulled up just behind the panel van. The driver, a plump, middle-aged man, squeezed awkwardly out from behind the wheel and walked over to them.

“Sorry I'm late,” the newcomer said nervously, in Polish. “Our goddamned officers wanted to run another combat resupply readiness drill. Right before the weekend, for Christ's sake!”

“All officers are bastards,” one of the two Ukrainians agreed in perfectly colloquial Polish, rolling his eyes at his companion. “It's almost like there's a war on.” He hardened his voice. “Look, did you bring the stuff we asked for, or not?”

“Oh, yes. Definitely. No problem,” Staff Sergeant Teodor Górski stammered. “It's all in the back.”

“Show us,” the second man snapped.

Sweating now, the Polish noncom popped open the rear hatch on his Fiat. Blankets covered an assortment of lumpy shapes piled in the cargo area. He flipped them away—revealing a collection of weapons, ammunition, and communications gear.

The first Ukrainian leaned in past him and picked up one of the weapons, an American-made Colt M4A1 carbine. It was the assault rifle of choice for Poland's GROM “Thunder” Special Forces unit. Quickly, with practiced hands, he checked it over, nodding in satisfaction. He put the rifle back and hauled out an even bigger piece of hardware, a Swedish-made Carl Gustav 84mm recoilless rifle. Like the M4, this antitank weapon was used exclusively by Poland's Special Forces, not by its regular troops. It was in perfect condition. Pleased, he turned back to Górski. “Is any of this going to be missed?”

The Pole shook his head, visibly gaining confidence as he explained. “Not a chance. All of this gear and ammo is marked as
‘unrepairable and junked' or ‘expended' in our logbooks and computer files. I've had it all stashed away in my apartment for months. Nobody's going to come looking for this stuff, no matter how many times they check the supply depot's inventory.”

“What about the serial numbers on the weapons?” the second Ukrainian asked.

“They're still there,” Górski told him. He shrugged. “You'll file 'em off, right?” He smiled weakly. “I mean, you wouldn't want anyone tracing them back to your best supplier, would you?”

“No,” the first man agreed flatly. “We certainly would not want that. Your services have been extremely useful to us.”

“So we have a deal?” the Pole asked.

“We have a deal,” the second Ukrainian confirmed. He tossed the Pole a packet containing more than thirty thousand zlotys, the equivalent of $10,000, in a mix of currencies—euros, zlotys, American dollars, and British pounds. “Unfortunately, once again I seem to have mislaid the tax forms for this transaction. I assume you will handle the necessary paperwork yourself?”

“Naturally.” Górski smirked. He went back to avidly counting his money.

“And take this as a bonus,” the first man said, handing over a business card. The card bore the picture of a very attractive nude redhead and a Warsaw telephone number. “Her name is Franciszka. She's expecting your call this evening, around midnight. It's our treat.”

The plump, middle-aged Pole stared down at the business card. He swallowed hard, staring down at the young woman's incredible body, her moist lips, and her bright, open, inviting eyes. He usually made do with the services of aging prostitutes working out of the sleazier brothels on the left bank of the river. This Franciszka must be one of the high-end escorts who were the favorites of rich businessmen and tourists. “That is . . . very gracious of you,” Górski murmured, eyes greedily drinking in every line and curve. “Most appreciated.”

“You deserve it,” the second Ukrainian told him. He smiled.
“Nothing but the best for one of our friends, eh? She'll take very good care of you. She knows lots of”—he winked—“
special
tricks.”

Once they transferred the weapons and other military hardware to the blue panel van, the Polish supply sergeant was almost pathetically eager to get on his way. With a jaunty wave, he pulled back out onto the little country road and drove off at high speed.

“There goes one fat little jumped-up puddle of piss we won't have to see again,” one of the Ukrainians muttered. “Thank God.”

“God will have nothing to do with it,” his comrade said with a cruel, ice-cold grin. “We'll owe Franciszka for that one.”