Arctic Storm Rising by Dale Brown (android based ebook reader .TXT) 📕

“And Colonel Petrov?” the oligarch asked quietly. “What arrangements have you made for him?”

Casually, Voronin leaned against the railing. His eyes were hooded. “Regrettably, Alexei is a proud and volatile man,” he said reflectively. “Somehow, I don’t think he’s really suited to a quiet, discreet life of luxury. It would be very hard for him to accept the need to disappear completely.”

“Perhaps so,” Grishin agreed.

“Which is why my men will take the necessary action on their way to the border,” Voronin assured him. “You can be very surethat no one will ever see the colonel again.”

In the Hills Overlooking Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, near Anchorage, Alaska

That Same Time

On the slope of a hill climbing steeply two hundred feet above a frozen stream, two men crouched near the base of a Sitkaspruce tree. They wore thick parkas, ski pants, and fur-lined hoods against the intensifying cold. Besides their civilianwinter clothing, they also had powerful night vision–capable binoculars slung around their necks. As storm clouds rolled acrossthe sky above them, driven by high winds whistling down out of the north, daylight was fading fast.

One of them, Spetsnaz Captain Arkady Timonov, zoomed in on the pair of American HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopters parked on theapron near one of the air base’s two runways. Both had their rotors turning. “They’re spooling up,” he said to his companion.“Better get ready.”

“This is madness,” the other man, Lieutenant Leonid Brykin, muttered, more to himself than to Timonov. He knelt beside a largeequipment bag and started unzipping it.

“Madness or not, we have our orders,” Timonov growled. Privately, he agreed with his subordinate, but Moscow’s urgent instructions left them with no real latitude. What made it even worse was that their superiors in the GRU had chosen to relay those instructions using encrypted text messages sent directly to their smartphones. Given the eavesdropping and code-breaking capabilities of the American National Security Agency, that was almost as bad as emailing their cover identities and pictures straight to the FBI. As it was, the Spetsnaz captain figured he and Brykin had no more than a day before federal law enforcement officers started looking for Mr. Pindar and Mr. Jones in earnest.

Still grumbling under his breath, Brykin finished unzipping the bag and hauled out a long, green fiberglass tube with a handgripand trigger mechanism near the midpoint. It was a Pakistani-made Anza Mk III surface-to-air missile launcher. Based on a Chinesemodel derived from Russia’s own 9K38 system, this particular weapon had been captured from Muslim extremists in Chechnya andthen smuggled covertly into Alaska years ago. Quickly, he set the tube in place on his right shoulder and flipped a switchto power up the missile’s seeker head and gyros. A soft hum confirmed the system was ready.

Next to him, Timonov peered intently through his binoculars. The first helicopter lifted off, climbed to about a hundred meters,and then dropped its nose slightly to gain airspeed as it crossed the runway. Accelerating, it swung north, heading straighttoward them. The second Pave Hawk trailed close behind. Red, white, and green navigation lights blinked rapidly on both helicopters.He lowered the binoculars. “Here they come, Leonid. Make your shot count.”

The lieutenant nodded tightly. He pressed his eye into the SAM launcher’s sight and turned through a short arc, until he hadthe crosshairs settled squarely on the trailing helicopter. A speaker behind his right ear buzzed. Steadily, the buzz grewlouder and shriller. “I have tone,” he confirmed. The missile’s infrared seeker head had locked on to the Pave Hawk’s heatsignature.

Through the sight, Brykin saw the second Pave Hawk grow progressively larger. He estimated that it was now approximately three kilometers away and closing fast. Slowly, he pulled the launch trigger halfway back. That “uncaged” the missile’s IR sensor, allowing it to swivel freely inside the nose cone so that he didn’t have to aim manually anymore. The buzzing noise intensified. Satisfied that he had a solid lock on his target, Brykin angled the launch tube up at forty-five degrees. Anything lower risked having the missile strike the ground when it launched.

“Any day now, Leonid,” Timonov growled.

Ignoring him, Brykin squeezed the trigger all the way. Instantly, the Anza Mk III’s booster motor ignited, hurling it outof the launch tube in a dense, choking cloud of acrid smoke. The missile itself burst out of the cloud and soared skywardas its main rocket motor kicked in. Visible as a bright white dot riding a plume of smoke, it climbed high above the hill,arced over, and then darted straight at the trailing American helicopter.

Three seconds after launch, the SAM slammed head-on into the Pave Hawk’s main rotor assembly and exploded in a blinding red-and-orangeflash. Trailing torn shards of rotor and fuselage, the stricken helicopter rolled over and plunged into the forest not farbeyond the runway. Flames and darker black smoke eddied away from the crash site.

“Nice shot!” Timonov exulted. “Now, let’s get the hell out of here!”

Obeying, Brykin tossed the spent launcher away and followed his leader upslope and deeper into the woods. With luck, theyhoped to make it back to their parked car and speed away before the base’s security personnel could react to this sudden ambush.Behind them, the surviving Pave Hawk took evasive action, spewing flares as it circled back toward the runway.

The American search-and-rescue mission had just been ruthlessly aborted.

The Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

A Short Time Later

Rear Admiral Kristin Chao tapped a control on her console, bringing up a live video feed from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardsonon the Emergency Conference Room’s largest display screen. It showed a pillar of thick, oily smoke rising from the woods justbeyond the air base. The smoke column curved sharply, swept southward by rising winds from the approaching blizzard.

“Approximately thirty minutes ago, one of the two helicopters assigned to our search-and-rescue mission was shot down—apparentlyby a handheld SAM fired from outside the base perimeter,” she said crisply. She looked sympathetically at Miranda Reynolds.The CIA official looked sick to her stomach. “I’m afraid