Then Vronsky stopped dead, his mind racing. The 45th Guards Spetsnaz Regiment had just established an offensive cyber-warfare wing to look at how they might destroy enemy command and control through Distributed Denial of Services: infecting communications systems with a Trojan. Had they been beaten to it by NATO?

At that moment the alarm linked to the unattended ground-sensor monitor unit sounded. Razhumikin took one look. “Contact. Intruder. Spot position Bagratian, southeast corner of forest. Activate BORODINO now!”

Vronsky was running out of the door and pulling on his kit before Razhumikin had finished his sentence.

0100 hours, Sunday, July 9, 2017, Central European Time

0200 hours, Sunday, July 9, 2017, Eastern European Time

Over Wroclaw, Poland

AS ALWAYS, MAJOR Philip Bertinetti was struck by the pure joy of flying his F-16C multi-role fighter aircraft; small, nimble, with acceleration like a bullet, it felt as if he was wearing the aircraft rather than sitting in it. Today, though, he could feel a slight sluggishness from the additional weight of a full load of ordnance: a pair each of Sidewinder and AMRAAM air-to-air missiles for aerial combat, two GBU-31, Mark 84, 2,000-pound bombs fitted with the JDAM kit, which converted a “dumb” unguided bomb into an all-weather “smart” munition and was known as “the Hammer” for its destructive power, plus a HARM, High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile, for knocking out ground-based radars and a laser-guided Maverick missle for any other opportunity targets.

In addition, there was comfort in knowing that he could also rely on the 20 millimeter six-barrel cannon in the port wing, capable of a firing rate of 6,000 rounds per minute to help get him out of trouble, although, given the overall ammunition load, this would not last long.

Now he was once more heading to war, this time leading an eight-aircraft sortie from 510th Fighter Squadron—the “Buzzards.” Their mission: to conduct a low-level attack against the Voronezh radar system operating from the Pionersky Radar Station at the former Dnuyavka air base in Kaliningrad. Once they’d destroyed the radars, they would head back into Poland to refuel before returning to mount a CAP, a combat air patrol, to intercept and destroy the anticipated counter-attack from Russian aircraft against the airborne operation that was to follow them.

The “Buzzards” were part of a massive multinational air armada pouring into Kaliningrad from all over Central and Western Europe. Bertinetti knew that the largest sortie, a joint US Air-Force–Navy Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses, or SEAD, mission consisting of fifty aircraft, was already approaching its targets. The sortie was designed to look like a bombing raid on Kaliningrad and the base of the Russian Baltic Fleet at Baltiysk. However, it was, instead, fitted out with decoys, drones and HARMs, to overwhelm and destroy the air defenses protecting the approaches to the critical points: the Pionersky radar station and the nuclear missile sites at Yuzhny, Pravdinsk and Ozyorsk. Take them out and, in two bold strokes, Russia lost much of its offensive capability.