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

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

Murphy answered this one. As DNI, both the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agencyfell under his authority. “We’d have to get very lucky,” he warned. “Satellite surveillance works best against fixed installationsor other targets whose coordinates are at least generally known. Expecting our analysts to zero in on a single, heavily camouflagedaircraft 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 Valleymath 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 abetter 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 coveringthat much territory would involve dozens of aircraft and hundreds of aircrew. Word would be bound to leak out, no matter howbig 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 amassive 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 Americanattempt to seize the PAK-DA prototype without payment would result in its immediate destruction, along with devastating radiologicalconsequences, 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 missilesaboard 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 Russiansplay by very different rules, especially when it comes to nukes. Hell, back during the Cuban Missile Crisis, it turns outthey deployed tactical nuclear weapons that some Cuban or Soviet general could have used against our troops if we ever invadedthe island—even without an explicit okay from the Kremlin. So this guy’s claim that they were trying to compress their flighttest 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’sgetting 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 createsa 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 ifit’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 betweenthe two high-ranking military officers. “You can’t fight in here. This is the War Room.”

For a moment, both the general and the admiral stared at him in astonishment. But then, almost unwillingly, they grinned sheepishly.“Sorry about that, Mr. Secretary,” Neary told him. Chao nodded her own mute apology.

“Don’t sweat it,” Taylor said mildly. “I don’t imagine anyone here got much sleep last night, so it’s no surprise if tempers are a little frayed.” He looked carefully around the table. “Which is why, right now, I’d like to focus our limited energies on the biggest question we face.”

“Which is: do we pay Petrov to get our hands on the PAK-DA prototype?” Miranda Reynolds said quietly.

“Score one for the CIA,” Taylor said with a slight smile.

Absentmindedly, Murphy rubbed at his chin, frowning a little when he felt the patches of stubble his quick shave on the wayto the Pentagon had missed. “There are a lot of pluses,” he said carefully. “Sure Petrov’s asking for a lot of money, butconventional intelligence efforts to acquire accurate data on Russia’s stealth bomber program could easily end up costingus nearly as much over time. Not to mention taking years to produce results . . . and, in all probability, yielding far lessuseful information. The same goes for those advanced cruise missiles he says are aboard. Not only that, but just knowing thatwe’ve got their prototype, its electronics, and its weapons payload would compel Moscow to dramatically reengineer their stealthbomber and missile programs—at a huge expenditure in time and money.” He turned to General Neary. “How much did the B-2 Spiritprogram cost us?”

“Somewhere north of forty billion in current dollars, not counting procurement,” the Air Force chief of staff told him.

Murphy nodded. “Exactly. So by spending what’s basically pocket change in the context of the