Arctic Storm Rising
- Автор: Браун Дейл
- Серия: Nick Flynn #1
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: William Morrow
- ISBN: 9780063015050
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «Arctic Storm Rising». Краткое содержание книги:
It was useless. The howling wind caught his voice and tore it to shreds.
Down at the far end of the runway, the big HC-130J appeared suddenly out of the darkness and snow. It was no more than fifty feet above the ground and descending rapidly.
Shit, Flynn realized. He was out of time. Frantically, he sprinted toward Hynes, who had his back to the oncoming Super Hercules. He didn’t waste any more breath yelling.
The aircraft touched down hard, bounced once, and then settled firmly onto the ground — thundering straight down the runway right at the two men. Plumes of pulverized snow and ice sprayed out behind its massive landing gear and whirling propellers.
At the last moment, Hynes looked up, brushing at the snow dusting his goggles with an irritated gesture. His mouth opened in surprise. “Hey, Cap—”
And Flynn, still running all out, threw himself forward — and slammed straight into the shorter enlisted man. The hard, diving tackle knocked Hynes backward off his feet, with Flynn ending up on top. Desperately, he buried his face into the icy surface of the runway… just as the left wing of the speeding Super Hercules slashed past right overhead.
For a split second, the whole universe became a hurricane-force maelstrom of shattering, deafening noise and pounding winds, snow, and razor-sharp fragments of ice. And then, blessedly, the noise and pummeling died away.
Dazed, Flynn slowly raised his head and looked behind him. The HC-130J was slowing fast as it neared the end of the runway. Painfully, he levered himself back up to his knees.
“Ow,” Hynes said, sounding aggrieved. “Geez, that fucking hurt.” His eyes focused on the man who’d just knocked him on his ass. “Uh, I mean, that fucking hurt, sir.”
“Yeah, I bet it did,” Flynn agreed with a wide grin. He climbed back to his feet and then helped the enlisted man up. He nodded toward where the big four-engine turboprop had finally come to a stop with its propellers still turning, just before it ran out of runway and risked skidding off across the icy tundra. “But maybe not as much as getting sliced into a bazillion pieces by one of those propeller blades, right?”
“No, sir,” Hynes agreed fervently. “And thanks for not letting me get killed, sir.”
“Too much paperwork involved, PFC,” Flynn said, still smiling. “Fortunately for you, I’m lazy that way.”
About an hour later, once they’d finished helping the HC-130J’s aircrew tie their big plane down and cover its engine cowlings and sensor pods against possible flying ice and hail damage, Flynn had time to welcome the two Air National Guard pilots and their staff sergeant loadmaster a little more formally. Which, since they were all exhausted and freezing, pretty much consisted of a quick handshake and nod across the aisle of the bus as it drove away from the airport.
“Skater and I sure appreciate your guys’ hard work out there, Nick,” Ingalls told him tiredly. “If we’d had to try setting down with all that FOD still littering the runway, we’d have been in a world of hurt.”
“Heck, I’ve been wanting to add my own aviation component to this half-assed command,” Flynn said. “Now it looks like I’m finally getting my wish.”
The copilot, a pretty brunette named Van Horn, choked back a laugh. “Just until the weather clears enough for JBER to fly in mechanics and spare parts to fix that dud engine of ours,” she warned.
Flynn peered out through the windshield. Even with the headlights, it was now basically impossible to see more than a couple of dozen yards, if that. The brief lull in the storm was over and they were trapped again in the heart of a blizzard howling across the treeless, little island at full force. “That could be a while,” he commented mildly.
The others nodded. “Welcome to winter in Alaska,” Ingalls agreed with resignation. “Starts in the fall and doesn’t end until sometime around summer. I figure we’re probably stuck here for at least a couple of days, maybe more.”
“Well, it’s not all that bad around here,” Flynn told them.
Van Horn looked surprised. “It’s not?”
Flynn leaned back out of the way of the punch he thought might be coming his way in a second. “Nope,” he said wryly. “It’s much worse.”
“I would kill you for that,” Laura Van Horn said with an answering smile. “But I’m too darned tired. So maybe I’ll take my revenge later, Captain Flynn.”
Twenty-Three
Piotr Zhdanov watched in frustration as search area after search area shown on a large digital map of Russia turned green — indicating that concentrated sweeps by Tu-214R, Tu-142, and IL-38 reconnaissance planes had come up empty. “You’re quite sure about these results?” he demanded. “After all, Petrov and his coconspirators have almost certainly camouflaged the PAK-DA prototype by now, and swept away any traces left by his landing on a snow or ice field. Couldn’t your pilots and aircrews simply have missed them?”
“That is highly unlikely, Mr. President,” Lieutenant General Rogozin said patiently. “We’ve subjected the most probable landing fields to repeated overflights. We’ve even done the same with many of those places that our planners consider far less suitable. In addition, we’ve deployed Spetsnaz units and other Army formations to multiple possible sites to confirm those negative results. So far, we haven’t found a single trace of the stealth bomber inside our own national territory.”
Zhdanov sighed. “So, then, where is he? And where is our missing stealth bomber?”
“Hidden somewhere on the North American continent,” Rogozin said bluntly. “It’s the safest place for Petrov, because it’s the most difficult for us to search… or to attack.”
“And how much progress have you made in carrying out reconnaissance flights over this region?” Zhdanov asked coldly.
“Not much,” Rogozin admitted.
“Show me.”
Wordlessly, the general brought up a new map on the command center’s wall screen. It depicted the northern third of the North American continent — from Alaska in the west to the vast ice shelf of Greenland in the east. Comparatively tiny half circles colored green showed the areas probed by Russia’s long-range reconnaissance aircraft so far. Fewer than half a dozen of them dotted North America’s long coastline fronting the Arctic Ocean. In no case had a Tu-142 or an IL-38 succeeded in penetrating more than a few miles inside American or Canadian airspace before being intercepted and turned back by F-22 Raptors and CF-18 Hornets.
“Mater’ Bozh’ya!” Zhdanov scoffed. “Mother of God! All you’ve done is nibble around the edges!” He glared at Rogozin. “Were your pilots and crews waiting for engraved invitations from Washington and Ottawa before doing their fucking jobs?”
“No, sir,” Rogozin said quietly, not rising to the bait. “But it’s taking time to move the air tankers and other assets needed by our fighter escorts into position — especially with the bad weather affecting the region. So up to now, all of our flights have been unescorted and vulnerable.”
Zhdanov frowned. “How much longer will it take to assemble the necessary fighters and other planes?”
“One more day.”
“Which will put us well beyond Petrov’s first seventy-two hour deadline,” Zhdanov pointed out bitterly.
“Yes, sir,” Rogozin said. “And his price to return the PAK-DA and its weapons payload to us will go up.”
“Screw his price,” Zhdanov growled. “The only thing that traitor’s going to get from me is a missile down his throat or a bullet in the back of his skull. What worries me more is the possibility that he’ll decide to sell out to the Americans first.” His frown deepened. “We’re not going to get too many more bites at the apple before that happens. So it’s imperative that you concentrate these first fighter-escorted air searches on the most likely hiding places.”