Arctic Storm Rising

Neary shook his head. “It’s not that simple, I’m afraid. The Russians put a lot of emphasis on designing their combat aircraft to fly out of rough, improvised airfields. Given some luck and skill, all this guy would need to set down safely was a long enough stretch of compacted snow or ice.” He shrugged. “We fly C-130s onto a similar snowfield down at McMurdo Station in the Antarctic. Now, I sure wouldn’t try that myself with a heavy bomber, but I’m not a test pilot… or a Russian.”

“Can we task our satellites to do the job?” Taylor asked. “We’ve got a number of radar and photo-imaging platforms in orbit right now.”

Murphy answered this one. As DNI, both the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency fell under his authority. “We’d have to get very lucky,” he warned. “Satellite surveillance works best against fixed installations or other targets whose coordinates are at least generally known. Expecting our analysts to zero in on a single, heavily camouflaged aircraft out in the middle of all that territory would be like expecting them to win the lottery by buying one ticket.”

“So, a fifty-fifty shot, then,” Taylor said with a quirky grin.

Murphy matched him with a sardonic smile of his own. “I wouldn’t know, Bill. You’re the Pentagon’s resident Silicon Valley math nerd. By training, I’m just a simple country lawyer.”

“Coordinated searches by a large number of reconnaissance aircraft and drones equipped with air-to-ground radar would be a better bet,” Neary said. “At least inside our own airspace.”

Reynolds felt a frown cross her face. “Can we keep that kind of effort quiet?” she asked.

“From the media?” The Air Force chief of staff shook his head. “Probably not, ma’am. Any reasonably sized effort covering that much territory would involve dozens of aircraft and hundreds of aircrew. Word would be bound to leak out, no matter how big a classified label we slapped on the operation.”

Reynolds shook her head in dismay. “Which means we could end up with nothing for all our pains. Nothing, that is, except a massive ecological and political disaster and a lot of egg on all our faces.”

Taylor, Murphy, and the others nodded slowly, seeing her point. In his video, the Russian pilot had warned that any American attempt to seize the PAK-DA prototype without payment would result in its immediate destruction, along with devastating radiological consequences, thanks to the multiple 250-kiloton thermonuclear warheads stored in its weapons bays.

“That’s another thing,” the defense secretary said. “Is Petrov’s story about having a payload of nuclear-armed cruise missiles aboard that bomber even remotely plausible?”

“If this was an American experimental aircraft, I’d say there was no way in hell,” Neary told him forcefully. “But the Russians play by very different rules, especially when it comes to nukes. Hell, back during the Cuban Missile Crisis, it turns out they deployed tactical nuclear weapons that some Cuban or Soviet general could have used against our troops if we ever invaded the island — even without an explicit okay from the Kremlin. So this guy’s claim that they were trying to compress their flight test program by loading armed missiles as part of a war game isn’t that far-fetched.”

Taylor sighed. “Which makes Ms. Reynolds right. In the circumstances, a large-scale air search effort would be too risky. We wouldn’t gain anything by provoking Colonel Petrov to destroy his aircraft, especially if it does carry nuclear weapons.”

From the far end of the table, Rear Admiral Kristin Chao spoke up. “We do have one possible indication of the Russian stealth bomber’s whereabouts,” the head of the Pentagon’s operations directorate reminded them. “Our North Warning System radar station at Barter Island picked up an unidentified contact last night. At least for a few seconds, anyway. This bogey might have been the PAK-DA bomber entering our airspace.”

“Or just as likely an equipment glitch or some kind of weird weather phenomenon,” Neary argued. “The whole Arctic region’s getting hammered by snow and ice storms right now.”

“Yes, sir,” the admiral agreed calmly. “But it’s at least a data point.”

“One that doesn’t get us much further,” the Air Force chief of staff retorted. “The North Warning System radar network creates a relatively thin air surveillance zone along the northern frontier of both Alaska and Canada. Once the perimeter is penetrated, we have almost no ability to track an unidentified aircraft flying deeper into the North American interior, especially if it’s coming in low or has stealth features.”

Chao looked unmoved. “At the very least, it suggests Colonel Petrov has chosen to conceal the bomber in territory we control, rather than inside his own country’s borders. That could provide us with a useful clue to his ultimate goals.”

“For God’s sake, Kristin,” Neary snapped, “I don’t see how you can possibly draw that conclusion—”

“Hold on there, you two,” Taylor interrupted, jumping in to tamp down what was threatening to become an open argument between the two high-ranking military officers. “You can’t fight in here. This is the War Room.”