Eagle Station

“Has this fake delivery van passed through any of our other checkpoints north of Lesosibirsk?” he asked. Kazyanov shook his head. “So now we know where to concentrate our search,” Leonov said with satisfaction. His eyes narrowed in thought. “I want the police and other local authorities to scour Lesosibirsk and the nearest villages. They know the ground better than anyone we can bring in from the outside.”

“That’s true,” Kazyanov said. He hesitated only momentarily. “And the outlying areas? Who will search them? Between old logging huts and hunting cabins, there must be dozens of possible hiding places scattered through those woods.”

Leonov nodded grimly. “I’m aware of that, Viktor.” He opened another secure channel, this one to the headquarters of Russia’s Central Military District in Yekaterinburg. “This is Defense Minister Leonov. Put me through to Lieutenant General Varshavsky. It’s urgent.”

He looked back at Kazyanov. “We’ll let the army handle the job. Between them, Varshavsky’s Third Guards Special Purpose Brigade and the National Guard’s Nineteenth Special Purpose Detachment Ermak can deploy several hundred Spetsnaz troops and at least a dozen helicopters.” He shrugged. “If the American spies are hiding in those forests, our soldiers will dig them out.”

After he’d issued his orders to Varshavsky, Leonov broke the connection and sat back thinking hard. Was he missing something? His breath caught for a moment. What if Scion planned to fly its agents out? The same way the Americans had covertly retrieved their downed spaceplane pilot from Russia’s Far East during the Mars One crisis?

Leonov shook his head in disbelief. It seemed impossible. The distances involved were much greater: the Krasnoyarsk region was well over four thousand kilometers from any American or American-allied airfield. No known short takeoff and landing aircraft had that kind of range. Not even the stealthy transport plane the Iron Wolf mercenaries had used before in raids against the Motherland.

Still, he decided, it would be a grave mistake to dismiss this possibility altogether. Time and again the Americans had shown themselves willing to run almost insane risks. He opened another secure video link, this one to Colonel General Semyon Tikhomirov. Once his deputy, Tikhomirov had moved up to full command of the Aerospace Forces.

The connection went through in seconds.

“Yes, sir?” the other man asked.

“Contact the 712th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment at Kansk-Dalniy. I want four MiG-31s on ready alert. And make sure the radar stations in our Arctic defense zone are fully operational. If they pick up even the faintest low-altitude blip on their scopes, I want to know about it immediately!”

Eighteen

Scion Seven-Zero, over the Arctic Ocean, North of Nunavut, Canada

A Few Hours Later

Twenty thousand feet above the Arctic Ocean, the XCV-70 Rustler stealth transport flew northeast in close formation with a much larger aircraft — a Sky Masters — owned 767 aerial tanker. The two planes were connected by the tanker’s refueling boom. They were fifteen hundred nautical miles and a little more than three hours outward bound from Yellowknife. While the Rustler still had plenty of jet fuel remaining when it arrived at this midair refueling rendezvous, the immense distances they would have to fly to complete this mission ruled out turning toward Russia with anything but full tanks.

“Scion Seven-Zero, this is Masters Two-Four, pressure disconnect,” the boom operator aboard the 767 radioed. Brad knew that boom operator was several thousand miles away at a remote console, as were the pilots of that unmanned tanker. “You’re topped off and good to go.”

“Copy that, Two-Four,” Brad McLanahan replied from the Rustler’s left-hand pilot’s seat. He felt a quick CL–CLUNK as the boom nozzle slid back out of the slipway and retracted. “Thanks for the gas. Clearing away now.”

Immediately, he tweaked his engine throttles back and pushed his stick forward a tad, lowering the aircraft’s nose a couple of degrees. The roar from their big GE Affinity turbofans decreased as they descended a few hundred feet. At the same time, the bigger air tanker accelerated and climbed away from them, already banking as it made a gentle right turn back toward the distant Greenland coast.

Far below the two rapidly separating aircraft, Arctic ice floes stretched away in all directions. Lit by the midnight sun, they were rippling sheets of dazzling pure white broken only by narrow cracks of dark blue open water.