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

Rapidly, the sergeant entered a series of commands on her keyboard to pull up a recording of the data from Barter Island’sradar. Reyes leaned over her shoulder, watching as the faint blip appeared, moved slightly across the screen, vanished, andpopped up again for a few short seconds. Based on the short observed track, if that was a genuine bogey, it had been headingalmost due south across the coast about twenty nautical miles east of Kaktovik. She pursed her lips in thought. “Contact AnchorageCenter. See if they know anything about a private jet or commercial airliner that’s gone astray up that way.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Baker picked up her direct line to the FAA’s Air Route Traffic Control Center and relayed the colonel’s questionto one of the controllers on duty. On its face, the suggestion wasn’t unreasonable. About an hour ago, the Russians had abruptlyclosed all the transpolar routes through their airspace. As a result, ARTCCs across the Northern Hemisphere were scramblingto divert dozens of civilian passenger jets and cargo planes to alternate routes. It was just possible that they’d lost trackof one in all the confusion.

After a brief conversation, Baker hung up. She swiveled to Reyes. “Negative on that, ma’am. Anchorage says all the flightsthey were monitoring are accounted for. No civilian aircraft have been cleared through that sector.”

Reyes tapped her foot on the tiled floor while she ran through her options. Although there weren’t any aircraft currently on patrol, Third Wing did have two F-22 Raptor fighters on alert status. But even if this was a genuine bogey and not just some kind of equipment- or weather-related glitch, its last confirmed position was more than five hundred nautical miles from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. That was very near the outside edge of a Raptor’s subsonic combat range. Plus, by the time any F-22s arrived on scene, whatever the Barter Island radar had detected would be long gone. There was also one more significant factor to consider. “What’s our latest read on the weather?” she asked.

“Horrible,” Baker told her. “The Barter Island station reports strong winds from the north at forty knots, gusting to sixty,with a solid cloud layer down to less than five hundred feet. Conditions are worsening fast, with blowing snow and sleet.Visibility on the ground is only around fifty or sixty feet right now. And the storm front that’s whacking them is headedstraight our way.”

Reyes shivered, suddenly very glad her command post was deep underground and centrally heated. She came to a decision andshook her head. “Right, I’ll buck this one up to Wing for their final call, but my recommendation will be that we let thisbogey go. Given the weather conditions and the extreme range, there’s almost no chance of making a successful or safe intercept.”

Eighteen

Deep in the Brooks Mountain Range, Northern Alaska

That Same Time

Buffeted by the storm howling down from the Arctic Ocean, the PAK-DA stealth bomber streaked onward through a swirling torrentof wind-driven snow and ice. Colonel Alexei Petrov fought to keep his heavy aircraft under control, reacting almost instinctivelyto powerful gusts and unexpected pockets of severe turbulence that tugged and tore at the edges of its wing. Through his canopy,he caught only fleeting glimpses of the rugged, mountainous maze he was navigating. Sheer limestone cliffs and steep, boulder-strewnslopes towered above him on all sides, rising higher and higher until they vanished in a thick, gray layer of low-hangingcloud.

The steering cue on his HUD slid sharply to the right. Immediately, he yanked his stick in that direction. The bomber bankedsharply, narrowly avoiding a cliff face that appeared suddenly out of the darkness and then just as abruptly disappeared astern,cloaked by falling snow.

Petrov felt his left eye twitch. Beneath his oxygen mask, his facial muscles were locked in a manic grin. He’d plotted this low-altitude flight path weeks ago, using a combination of satellite photos and detailed topographic maps. But what had looked practical in the quiet, well-lit confines of his quarters was proving infinitely more difficult at night, in the middle of a raging storm. The course he’d chosen followed a series of narrow river valleys that writhed and twisted and wound their way deeper into this vast labyrinth of barren, snow-covered mountains and ridges. If he misjudged a single turn or lost control for even a fraction of a second, his stealth bomber would slam head-on into a mountainside or clip the edge of a precipice—disappearing forever in an enormous fireball that would briefly light up a few desolate peaks and gorges . . . and leave nothing but fragments of scorched wreckage as a monument. A quick death to be sure, he thought bleakly, but a singularly meaningless one.

Faintly, over the wailing sound of the wind and the roar of the PAK-DA’s jet engines, he heard a groan from the seat nextto him. It was echoed from farther back in the cockpit. Bunin and Mavrichev were starting to stir, slowly and painfully clawingtheir way back toward consciousness. After several hours, the fentanyl derivative he’d used to drug them was finally wearingoff.

Petrov rolled the bomber back to the left, following the trace of an ice-covered river below as it curved back toward thesoutheast. Distances counted down on his HUD. He was very close to the Brooks Range divide, a geological boundary separatingthe rivers and streams that ran north out of the mountains toward the Arctic Ocean from those that meandered south, deeperinto Alaska and Canada’s Yukon Territory.

Now! His navigation cue spiked upward and he yanked back on the stick—pulling into a near-vertical climb. His left hand shovedthe throttles forward, going to full military power. The PAK-DA skimmed just above the slope of an east–west razor-backedridge that cut straight across his flight path. He cleared the top with only meters to spare and plunged into a wall of cloud.Ice pellets rattled off the cockpit canopy like machine-gun fire. Seconds later, his brightly lit steering indicator dippedtoward the bottom of the HUD. He pushed forward, diving back out