Eagle Station

Brad nodded somberly. He and Nadia had returned from their long and thoroughly enjoyable honeymoon — spent traveling across Europe and then various Caribbean islands — some weeks before. But then they’d plunged immediately into the day-to-day grind of helping Hunter Noble train U.S. Space Force crews for duty aboard new S-29 Shadow spaceplanes as they rolled out of Sky Masters production facilities and onto the flight line. They’d both been far too busy to keep an eye on the bigger picture… right up to the moment when emergency signals started blazing across Scion’s secure com links with its operatives inside Russia.

“Where do we stand?” he asked.

“In a world of hurt, with no U.S. cavalry on tap to ride over the hill,” his father said bluntly. Through his LEAF’s clear visor, Patrick’s expression was equally bleak.

Martindale nodded his agreement. “Put simply, our intelligence operation inside Russia is royally screwed.” He spread his hands. “At this point, it’s pretty much just a matter of counting our losses.”

Nadia leaned forward. “How so?” She raised an eyebrow. “My understanding was that Ms. Kerr and her team have evaded capture so far.”

Though her voice would have sounded perfectly calm and in control to a stranger, Brad heard an undercurrent of narrowly suppressed anger. Oh, boy, he thought. Even at the best of times, Nadia had never particularly admired Martindale’s seeming ability to detach himself emotionally from those who risked their lives at his orders.

“That’s true, Major,” Martindale said. He shrugged his shoulders. “For the moment, anyway.”

“Meaning?” Nadia demanded.

Martindale’s mouth tightened. “Meaning that their luck is bound to run out — and probably sooner, rather than later.” He shook his head. “Look, I wish it wasn’t so, but we have to face the cold, hard facts. Before too long, every counterintelligence and police officer between Vladivostok and Moscow will be hunting them. And right now, Ms. Kerr and the others have almost nowhere left to run and very few places to hide.”

“Then we must get them out as quickly as possible,” Nadia said matter-of-factly. Brad nodded.

Martindale shook his head again. “Unfortunately, there’s simply no feasible way to extract Sam’s team.” He opened a map file that mirrored in the corner of their screen. A red dot pulsed slowly just outside Krasnoyarsk, showing the Scion team’s last reported position. “They’re more than two thousand miles from the nearest friendly territory. Even if we could get a rescue aircraft that deep into Russia, past all the radars, SAM sites, and roving fighter patrols, the odds against anyone making it back out in one piece are astronomical. A four-thousand-mile round-trip flight through hostile airspace? That’s a suicide mission.”

“It’d be tough, sure. But not impossible,” Brad argued. “It’s been done before. Twice, in fact.”

“True,” Nadia said quietly. Three years ago, she and Brad had flown a covert ops team deep into the Ural Mountains, to carry out a raid against a heavily fortified Russian base. And although the assault team itself had suffered terrible losses, they’d returned safely to Poland, if only by a very narrow margin. Then, just last year, she and Peter Vasey had succeed in rescuing Brad himself from Russia’s tightly guarded Pacific coast, after his spacecraft had been shot down while on a reconnaissance mission against the Mars One orbital station.

Martindale frowned. “It was one thing to risk lives and valuable equipment going after a vital strategic target, or even to retrieve someone whose head happened to be stuffed full of crucial information about our spaceplane technology. But the equation’s significantly different in this situation, where most of the damage has already been done. Whatever happens to Sam Kerr and her team, the Russians are already in a position to roll up most of our intelligence network inside their country.”

“The equation?” Now Nadia didn’t bother hiding her disdain. “Is that how you see this? As a bloodless mathematical game where you assign values to human lives… and discard them if the numbers don’t balance?”

“I call it like I see it, Major,” Martindale said dispassionately. “Sam and the others are professionals. They knew the risks going in.” His eyes were cold. “Let me be clear: I will not authorize some wild-eyed rescue mission that would only throw away more lives and more equipment. Our task now is to figure out how to save what we realistically can — and then to start thinking about how to rebuild our Russian operations once the heat dies down.”

Quickly, before she could erupt, Brad laid a restraining hand on Nadia’s arm. Surprised, she glanced at him. “Let me take this,” he said. She nodded tightly.

“This question is not open for further discussion, Major McLanahan,” Martindale warned.