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:
Well, when in doubt, improvise like hell, he decided. And, like Teddy Roosevelt said, carry a big stick. Or, in this case, a 9mm Glock 19. He got to his feet and drew his pistol before moving forward into the cockpit.
To Flynn’s surprise, although there were seats for four crewmen, only one, the pilot’s position, was occupied. A Russian Air Force officer, a colonel named Petrov according to the name tag on his flight suit, sat strapped in, bleeding profusely, ashen-faced, and clearly in terrible pain. Through the clear canopy, Flynn could see the snow-covered landscape sliding past at increasing speed as the stealth bomber rolled down the runway. He leveled his pistol at the pilot’s head. “Ostanovi etot samolet seychas zhe!” he snapped. “Stop this aircraft, now!”
To his surprise, Petrov forced an agonized smile. “Or what?” he retorted in lightly accented English. “You will shoot me? And then we crash?”
“Yeah, if that’s what it takes,” Flynn growled.
Still smiling crookedly, the Russian held up his empty left hand. His shattered right arm was immobile. “Shooting me will not change anything, Captain… Flynn,” he said tiredly, reading the name off Flynn’s own uniform. “I am no longer in control. The computers are.”
At that moment, the bomber lifted off, shuddering and shaking as it plowed through wind gusts and low-altitude turbulence. Flynn hurriedly grabbed hold of the back of the copilot’s seat while still keeping his pistol aimed at Petrov’s head. Hydraulic thumps and whines from behind the cockpit signaled that the landing gear had retracted and locked inside.
Slowly, the aircraft banked, turning toward the south as it sped low over snow-capped ridges and hills. With difficulty, Flynn tore his eyes away from the bleak and empty landscape. He set the Glock’s muzzle directly against the Russian colonel’s temple. “Then turn those computers off and land this big son of a bitch.”
Petrov laughed harshly. “I will not.” He shrugged. “I am already dying anyway.” Sardonic amusement flickered in his icy blue eyes. “What you do not understand is that you are dying with me. Though you may live long enough to see the missiles fly.”
“Missiles? What missiles?” Flynn demanded sharply. Oh, shit, he thought, feeling cold.
“This bomber prototype carries twelve nuclear-tipped cruise missiles,” Petrov told him calmly. “Missiles that I have already armed. In a few short hours, once this undetectable stealth aircraft reaches its preprogrammed coordinates, those missiles will launch against strategic targets in your country—”
Flynn listened with mounting shock and horror while the Russian laid out his plan. And, from the smug expression on his gray, bloodless face, Petrov enjoyed seeing his reaction. “You must be fucking insane,” Flynn ground out between clenched teeth when he’d finished.
The other man shrugged again. “Perhaps.” His eyes were half-closed now. “Then again, it could simply be that knowledge of approaching death clarifies the mind, stripping away everything that is useless — concern for mere individuals and so-called morality, for example… in favor of more important matters like the fate of nations and the application of raw power in its most elemental, atomic form.”
“Like I said, you’re nuts,” Flynn said bluntly.
Petrov’s eyes opened fully again. “Insult me all you like,” he said coolly. “It changes nothing.” He waved his left hand at the white wilderness visible ahead of the speeding bomber. “Enjoy the ride, Captain.”
Swiftly, Flynn looked around the cramped cockpit. There had to be something he could try, he thought desperately. Something he could use to stop this lunatic from triggering a war that would kill millions. Faster and faster, he scanned displays, dials, buttons, and switches. There was nothing. No control helpfully marked “Pull to stop nuclear holocaust” in Russian and English. No magic off switch.
He swallowed hard against a sharp, acid taste in his mouth. For one thing, he decided there was no way he was going to ride this bird all the way to the point where it fired its missiles. Especially not strapped in beside this smug Russian son of a bitch. He glanced down at his pistol. If worst came to worst, he always had at least one way out.
A way out. The thought echoed in Flynn’s mind, bright and clear like a bugle call on a windless summer morning. Carefully, he looked around the cockpit again. And this time, he saw what he was looking for.
“Sorry, but your big plan’s a bust, Colonel,” he said quietly. “It’s not going to happen.” He slid into the copilot’s seat next to Petrov and strapped himself in.
The Russian snorted, watching him through narrowed eyes. “What? You imagine you can somehow hack into this aircraft’s computer systems?” He sneered. “Please, take all the time you wish.”
Flynn grinned back at him, feeling suddenly fully alive and in control. “Computer hacking is for subtle, clever guys.” Then he reached down and grabbed the yellow-and-black-tape-wrapped ejection seat handle between his legs. “But I’m not that subtle or clever. Do svidaniya, Colonel.”
He yanked the ejection handle just as Petrov screamed in sudden, horrified comprehension.
Everything after that happened in milliseconds. First, tiny explosive charges shattered the canopy over Flynn’s head. And then the rocket motor below his seat ignited, lobbing him out of the stealth bomber and away into the frigid slipstream with tremendous force. Petrov’s distorted face shrank into a tiny dot, while the cockpit’s computer control panels — smashed by the shock wave — shattered, shorted out, and went dark.
Slowly, with Petrov still strapped into his seat and screaming in helpless terror, the fatally damaged PAK-DA bomber rolled over on one wing and then, completely out of control, whirled end over end down out of the sky. Seconds later, it smashed into a jagged, saw-toothed ridge and blew up with a flash that lit the night sky for miles around.
Flynn, knocked out by the bone-jolting shock of a rough, low-altitude ejection, clawed his way up out of nothingness just in time to see the parachute above him snap open. He looked down and saw the ground rushing up at him at high speed. “Ah, hell—”
Then all he felt was an enormous, shattering impact. The whole world around him went black. Still tumbling downward, Nick Flynn fell endlessly into the darkness.
Epilogue
Captain Nick Flynn resisted looking at the wall clock for what seemed the thousandth time in just the past couple of hours. Frantically, he wriggled his back against the pillows, trying again to scratch an itch somewhere inside the bulky upper body cast they’d put him in while his badly broken shoulder healed. No joy. He sighed.
He’d gone far beyond being ordinarily bored at being stuck alone in this hospital room. In fact, Flynn had now moved on to the next stage of boredom, a stage he privately referred to as the “So help me God, the first chance I get I’m going to grab someone’s weapon and shoot my way out of this fricking place” phase. Although that was mostly a joke, he couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that no one planned to let him out of this isolated wing any time soon.
The only people Flynn saw regularly were doctors and nurses… and the armed guards posted outside his door. He’d had to do a lot of arguing even to get a rundown on what had happened after he’d ejected from the Russian aircraft. Fortunately for him, PFC Hynes, who should have his sergeant’s stripes back now as a reward, had reacted instantly to the sight of his commander vanishing into an enemy bomber by ordering the Ka-60 helicopter crew to “follow that plane!” And while falling farther and farther behind the speeding PAK-DA, they’d still been close enough to see Flynn’s ejection seat parachute open, and retrieve him before he froze to death. After that, the helicopter had returned to the battlefield at the spur hill, picked up the wounded and other survivors, and then made it safely through the tail end of the blizzard to Fairbanks. Thankfully, Floyd Leffert, Rafe Sanchez, and Tor Pedersen were expected to recover fully from their injuries. One of the four badly wounded Spetsnaz commandos hadn’t been so lucky, but the other three were still alive — and apparently the subject of a lot of heated diplomatic negotiations between Moscow and Washington, D.C. The same thing went for the two captured Russian pilots and their Ka-60 helicopter.