Contents ( 55)
- In Memoriam
- Epigraph
- Cast of Characters
- Americans
- Russians
- Canadian
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- Weapons and Acronyms
- Weapons
- Acronyms
- About the Author
- Also by Dale Brown
- Copyright
- About the Publisher
Petrov stared up at the shelter’s roof and swore. More of the camouflage cloth panels had ripped loose. Still attached at one end, they flailed wildly in the blizzard. Straps that had tied the panels to overhead aluminum trusses whipped back and forth from the loose side of each panel. He grabbed Bondarovich’s shoulder and pointed upward, screaming into the other man’s ear to be heard over the shrieking wind. “Get your men! All of them! Bunin, too! If we don’t tie those damned panels back in place, this fucking storm will tear the whole shelter to pieces!” He shoved the ex-Spetsnaz soldier back toward the outside. “Move, damn it!”
The other man nodded anxiously. He turned and plunged back into the maelstrom outside.
Petrov scrambled up a ladder and out onto the PAK-DA bomber’s wing. His boots might damage a few sections of the plane’s advanced, radar-absorbent skin, but that was nothing compared to what would happen if the shelter came apart around it. Even an hour or two of exposure to subzero temperatures, hundred-kilometer winds, and blowing snow and ice could render the aircraft completely unflyable. Frantically, he grabbed for one end of a strap as it snapped through the air, and missed.
Again and again, he tried to get a hold on one of the flailing straps and failed. His face darkened in fury. To come so close to changing the world forever and then to be defeated by a wind-whipped piece of cloth? How his father must be laughing at him, he thought grimly. Laughing at him out of the icy depths of hell.
Twenty-Eight
Over the Brooks Range, Northern Alaska
A Short Time Later
Connor “Doc” McFadden eyed the green diamond in the center of his HUD. It marked the radar-designated position of the Tu-142 reconnaissance aircraft they were heading toward at high speed. Glowing numbers next to the diamond showed the range counting down fast. They were now only about forty nautical miles apart, less than two minutes out at their present closure rate. Time to slow that down a little, he thought, especially since the sky over this part of the mountains was a wall-to-wall winter storm front marked by masses of dark cumulonimbus clouds soaring tens of thousands of feet above the ground. Getting any kind of visual lock on that big Russian turboprop was going to be tough in the present circumstances—and it would be impossible if they blitzed right past each other at twelve hundred–plus knots.
“Casino Two, Lead,” he radioed to Cat Parilla. The lieutenant’s F-22 was positioned a few hundred yards off his right wing and about a thousand feet higher. Sometimes he could see her aircraft visually. Sometimes he couldn’t. Visibility dropped to near zero whenever they punched through one of the towering cloud masses. “Let’s rein it in some, to avoid an overshoot.”
“Copy that,” his wingman replied. “Getting to be kind of a rough ride up here, anyway.” Strong turbulence and winds were pummeling the two fighters, subjecting them to sudden jolts and buffets, especially inside the clouds.