Arctic Storm Rising by Dale Brown (readera ebook reader .TXT) 📗

Beret noncom said, sounding even more disgusted. Flynn nodded again.

Ruefully, the Special Forces sergeant shook his head. “Well, sir, I’ve got to admit that you and your boys sure kicked ourasses.” Then he looked around the rec room, taking in its worn furnishings, old movie posters peeling off the insulated walls,and the faint smell of too many men crammed together in living quarters that weren’t quite big enough. Outside, the wind roseto a howling pitch, shrieking through the guy wires supporting the radar platform and rattling loose pieces of metal siding.“On the other hand, I got a feeling tonight’s show might just be the high point of excitement around here for the next coupleof months.”

Thinking about the fast-approaching and seemingly endless Arctic winter nights, Flynn had to concede that was probably true.

Twelve

National Defense Management Center, Moscow

Several Days Later

Russia’s primary military command center occupied a massive white concrete compound of Stalinist-era buildings on the northbank of the Moskva River, roughly three kilometers from the Kremlin. Two six-story-high arches joined two wings to a centralstructure topped by the hammer-and-sickle coat of arms of the old Soviet Union and bas-reliefs of soldiers and flags. Theimposing arches were closed off with triumphalist stained-glass windows. One bore the image of a sword-armed knight. The otherdepicted a modern female soldier carrying both a Kalashnikov assault rifle and a young child.

A new addition to the complex had been built in one of the older courtyards. It contained three large auditoriums equippedwith wall-sized, wraparound screens and tiers of computer control stations with hardwired connections to an ultrafast supercomputer.Those were mostly for use as propaganda showcases and backdrops for political figures who wanted to impress their own peopleand those of other nations with images conveying high-tech Russian military prowess.

Smaller command centers and other facilities buried underground handled the real work of coordinating military action across Russia and around the globe. Now, inside a highly secure subterranean conference room, Colonel Alexei Petrov strode confidently to the podium set directly in front of a semicircular table. He looked out across his audience, comprised of the nation’s most senior military leaders and government officials, including its president, Piotr Zhdanov. They were all men. Like the old Soviet Union, the Russian Federation paid a great deal of lip service to equality of the sexes, but its higher-echelon positions were always reserved for men with the right connections.

Zhdanov himself, usually depicted by a compliant government-controlled media as physically powerful and a paragon of perfecthealth, had aged rapidly over the past several months. His round face was pale and pudgy, and he looked thicker around thewaist. There were visible shadows under his hard, brown eyes, and even his hair had thinned and turned gray. Well, Petrovthought dispassionately, death and illness come to us all sooner or later. If Russia’s autocratic president had expected hisrun of good fortune to continue forever, recent events must have shown him how wrong he had been.

Now Zhdanov eagerly leaned forward in his chair. “I understand you have a special proposal to present to us this afternoon,Colonel?”

“Da, Mr. President,” Petrov said. Outwardly calm, inside he battled a storm of swirling emotions. In a very real sense, his fatenow rested entirely on his ability to persuade these men, especially Zhdanov, to approve the plan he was about to present.He tapped a virtual control on the podium’s computer display. Right away, the wall screen behind him lit up to show a detailedtopographic map of the Russian Federation—all the way from its disputed land border with the Ukraine to the Pacific coastaround Vladivostok.

He nodded to the junior officers waiting at the back of the room. They fanned out to present Zhdanov and the others with pairsof sleek, futuristic-looking eyewear. “Gentlemen, please put on the AR smart glasses you’ve been given.”

They obeyed, and Petrov heard a series of stifled gasps as they saw the world around them instantly transform. The augmented-reality technology embedded in each pair of smart glasses had just studded the huge map with three-dimensional representations of the military hardware deployed across Russia—everything from fighter aircraft to main battle tanks, warships, submarines, surface-to-air missiles, strategic bombers, and nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.

He smiled a bit, observing their awed reaction. Pavel Voronin was the one who had pressed him to make full use of this newtechnology in his briefing. “Salesmanship is showmanship,” Grishin’s urbane henchman had pointed out. “Dazzle those old fartsand they’ll be eating out of your hand by the time you’re finished.” It appeared that Voronin’s cynical assessment might becorrect.

Petrov tapped another control on the podium. In response, the map zoomed in to show the region of southern Russia around Akhtubinskand the Chkalov State Flight Test Center. New three-dimensional pictures appeared. These showed the PAK-DA stealth bomberprototype effortlessly performing a series of complicated aerial maneuvers. They finished with image-enhanced video shot fromone of the Su-34 chase planes when the bomber launched its Kh-102 practice cruise missile. That drew more excited murmurs,especially when the augmented-reality program depicted a realistic-looking nuclear fireball rising from the intended target.

“As you can see, Mr. President,” Petrov said smoothly, “our flight tests of the new stealth bomber prototype are progressingrapidly and with complete success so far.”

Zhdanov nodded gravely. “That is a testament to your own skills and courage, Colonel.”

Petrov bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment of the president’s fulsome praise. “But despite those successes, we stillface a long road ahead to certify the design ready for operational deployment and full-scale production,” he warned.

“How long a road?” Zhdanov asked.

“At least twelve more months,” Petrov told him truthfully. “And perhaps as long as two full years, if we adhere slavishly to conventional flight-test procedures.”

The president frowned. “Two years?” he muttered. “That’s too long. Far too long.” Based on current trends, he could easilybe out of power, dead, in prison, or in exile by then. He needed a visible military success, and soon—an obvious triumph thatwould persuade Russia’s fickle masses that his much-touted plans to rebuild their nation’s greatness and its status as a worldsuperpower were paying