Eagle Station

Abruptly, Kingfisher Five veered left and then cut back sharply to the right in order to cross ahead of the speeding vehicle. Flashes lit the helicopter’s starboard side as it fired its 30mm cannon. A stream of high-explosive shells hammered the ground scarcely a hundred meters ahead of the van — smashing trees to splinters and blowing craters in the dirt road.

Coming in behind the lead gunship, which was now turning to make another pass, Drachev saw the blue van suddenly slew broadside across the logging track. Spraying more dust and dirt from under its spinning tires, it slid frantically to a dead stop. He bared his teeth in a fiercely satisfied grin. Now they had these bastards.

Through the haze, he saw someone scramble out of the passenger side of the vehicle. That was one big son of a bitch, he thought. The man reached back into the van’s cab and came back out holding a long green tube over his shoulder. He pivoted toward Kingfisher Five just as the gunship finished its turn and straightened out.

Drachev’s eyes widened in shock. That was a handheld SAM. “Five, look out!” he radioed frantically. “You’re under missile attack—”

In a puff of white exhaust and dazzling flame, the surface-to-air missile slashed across the sky with incredible speed. It exploded just above the other helicopter’s rotor assembly. Spewing smoke and shattered rotor fragments, the stricken Ka-52 spiraled down and crashed among the trees.

Beside Drachev, Senior Sergeant Pekhtin reflexively triggered a full salvo of 122mm S-13 rockets. In less than a second, five unguided rockets streaked downrange and slammed straight into the blue van. It vanished amid a rippling series of powerful explosions as the rockets’ armor-piercing fragmentation warheads detonated.

When the smoke cleared away, there was nothing left of the vehicle or its occupants but a few smoldering pieces of blackened and twisted metal.

Pekhtin swallowed. “Oh, shit,” he muttered.

Drachev nodded grimly. “Nice work, Sergeant,” he bit out through gritted teeth. “Now we’re totally fucked.”

Twenty

Scion Seven-Zero, Northwest of Lesosibirsk

That Same Time

“We are four minutes out from the LZ,” Nadia announced. She glanced up from the computer-generated map showing their projected course. “Still no further signals from Ms. Kerr or anyone else in the covert ops team.”

Despite her deliberately unruffled tone, Brad could sense her growing tension. He shared it. Apart from a brief acknowledgment of their first message, they’d heard nothing more from Scion’s intelligence agents. But by now Sam and the others should have reached the edge of their planned landing zone and reported whether or not it was clear. Their continued radio silence was increasingly worrying.

He looked ahead through his HUD. They were flying south at four hundred knots, skirting along the western edge of the Yenisei valley. Low, forested hills rose off to the right. Higher, more rugged elevations were visible across the river on the left. At this altitude, the clearing they’d selected was still just over his visual horizon.

Brad banked a couple of degrees, starting a wide, curving turn that would bring them in from the northwest, along the LZ’s long axis. He frowned. “We’re getting really close to a ‘go’ or ‘no go’ decision on landing.”

If he waited much longer to start configuring the Rustler for a rough field landing, they’d be coming in too hot and have to go around again — wasting precious time and fuel… which was definitely not a good idea this deep in hostile territory. To buy a little more time, he throttled back and climbed slightly, reducing their airspeed to three hundred knots. He pushed a button on his stick, shutting off their terrain-following system to take full control over the aircraft. “DTF disengaged.”

A cursor flashed onto Brad’s HUD, marking a lighter-colored patch among the otherwise almost unrelieved green of the pine forest. “Okay, I have the LZ in sight.” He glanced across the cockpit. “See if you can get a better read on this situation. I really don’t want to land blind.”

“Copy that,” Nadia said. Her fingers flew across one of her MFDs, ordering their computer to scan through multiple radio frequencies for any indication of trouble. Abruptly, she stiffened as a slew of frantic Russian voice transmissions sounded in her ears. “Brad! Something very bad is happening!”

She switched the active channel to his headset.

“Zimodorok Piyat’ ne rabotayet! Sem’ po marshrutu!” he heard through hissing static. “Baza, nam nuzhno bol’she voysk zdes’! Seychas!”