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  A sudden and nearby thump made him whirl.

  Grenade. Right there.

  He sprang up, knew that if he ran backward, they’d simply gun him down.

  So he did what any other red-blooded American fighter pilot would do: he ran directly at the troops, screaming and firing.

  The grenade exploded behind him, knocking him to his chest. That was when the first stabs of pain came, when he realized he’d been shot—and not just once.

  He glanced up at the Russians, cursed as one came over, raised his pistol.

  Stephanie’s voice was coming from the radio. He should have told her how he felt, should have told her what she meant to him.

  But at least now, at the end, he had that music, that sweet music of her crying out.

  As Major Stephanie Halverson lifted off, her eyes burned with the knowledge that Jake was dead.

  She’d been monitoring the radio, had listened to his last transmission. She wanted more than anything to streak back there and finish off the men who had killed him. But it was too late now.

  The skies above the Northwest Territories were alive with incoming transports and fighters, and Halverson and the other three pilots training at Igloo Base had been tasked with getting up there and intercepting as many as possible, all while attempting to evade detection from those fighters.

  There would be no dogfight—just a standoff surgical removal of those lumbering AN-130s.

  But she could barely keep her thoughts focused on the task. She kept telling herself that she shouldn’t have been so distant from him, that she could sense how he’d felt about her, that she, too, had felt the same.

  She raced into the heavens, going supersonic, moving into her standoff position to begin launching missiles at the cargo planes, now at 28,450 feet and descending rapidly.

  A check of the 130s’ range revealed they were about fifteen kilometers away, within the Sidewinder’s killing zone. Her electronic countermeasures—including the jamming of enemy radar systems—were fully engaged.

  And her first two missiles were locked on.

  Her wingman, Captain Lisa Johansson, call sign Sapphire, announced that she, too, was locked up and ready to fire. The other two JSF fighters were already engaging the enemy.

  Halverson opened her mouth to give the order—

  Just as the alarms went off in her cockpit.

  Incoming enemy missiles launched from Sukhoi SU- 35 long-range interceptors. She already had the angle of arrival.

  The computer identified the missiles as Vympel R-84s, the latest incarnation of Russia’s short-range, air-to-air missile, considered by most combat pilots to be one of the world’s most formidable weapons.

  “Sapphire, abort missile launch! We got incoming. Check countermeasures. IR flares and chaff! Evade!”

  SEVENTEEN

  In February 2006, the Marine Corps Special Operation Command (MARSOC) was activated, which in effect made Force Recon Marines an official part of the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) team along with the other special operations units—SEALS, Rangers, Army Special Forces, and Special Tactics teams. MARSOC was fully constituted in 2010 and became part of the Joint Strike Force at that time as well.

  Consequently, when the Russians began their move into Canada, MARSOC was among the first to get the call.

  And that particular call had funneled down through command to one Staff Sergeant Raymond McAllen, who was now sprinting back to his two-story barracks to get packed up and get the hell out of Southern California, bound for the Northwest Territories, more than two thousand miles away.

  Elements of the 13th Marine Corps Expeditionary Unit (MEU) were being deployed from Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton up to Alberta. They were pumped full of lightning and ready to crack and boom onto the scene. The only thing missing from all the excitement was Jonesy.

  And his absence was sorely felt by the five remaining members of the Force Recon team: McAllen, Palladino, Szymanski, Friskis, and Gutierrez.

  Five minutes prior, McAllen and the rest of the Outlaws had been listening to their company commander, Colonel Stack, going over the warning order; the CO singled out McAllen’s team to spearhead the company’s reconnaissance operations.

  Marine Corps brass, along with the JSF, believed that the Russians would move a large ground force, maybe even a couple of brigades, into several areas of Alberta. They would take the town of High Level and use it as a staging area, and would also move down Highway 63 in the eastern part of Alberta toward Fort McMurray and the Athabasca Oil Sands north of “Fort Mac.”

  Much to McAllen’s chagrin, his new assistant team leader, Sergeant Scott Rule, had to open his dumb-ass mouth and ask what was meant by “oil sands.” The CO loved to hear himself talk and loved to impress everyone with his attention to details, whether they put you to sleep or not. That he didn’t have a PowerPoint presentation was the only saving grace.

  So they got the one-minute lecture about oil sands, a mixture of crude bitumen (a semisolid form of crude oil), silica sand, clay minerals, and water. The CO even knew that the bitumen was used by the aboriginals back in the day to waterproof their canoes.

  Point was, the oil sands could be turned into real, usable oil, and the Russians wanted control of all the reserves.

  But they wouldn’t get them—not if United States Marines stood in their path.

  Once McAllen and his boys arrived in Alberta, they would chopper way up Highway 63, establish a reconnaissance post, deploy two robo-soldiers that would be controlled by human operators, and confirm where lead elements of the enemy force were heading.

  They were a small piece of a much larger defensive dubbed Operation Slay the Dragon by the JSF, an operation that included all branches of the U.S. and European Federation armed forces, with the Euros focusing on the major city of Edmonton.

  Now, back in his barracks, a shirtless Sergeant Rule approached McAllen, cocked a brow, all pierced nipples and twenty tattoos. “Hey, Ray, you got a minute?”

  “If this is about what we discussed earlier—”

  “Look, man, you set me straight. I’m so squared away that if you brush against me, my corners will cut you.”

  “Nice.”

  “But I’ll never be Jonesy. Nobody will. Just want you to know that I’m giving you a hundred and ten percent. Always.”

  “We’ll see how long it takes for you to create your own shadow. And I hope it’s a pretty long one. The other thing is, I got about eight, nine years on you. In my book, that makes me old school.” McAllen reached out and flicked one of Rule’s nipple rings. “Maybe the Corps’s gotten a little soft on this crap since you hide them under your shirt, but I haven’t.”

  “I’ll remove them, Sergeant—if they bother you that much.”

  “I just want to be sure we’re on the same page.”

  “We are. Good. Now don’t forget to pack an extra sock.”

  “Huh?”

  “Our suits have all those fancy micro-climate conditioning subsystems, but if the suit fails, you and your family jewels will be glad you got that sock. Trust me.”

  Rule grinned. “I hear that, Sergeant.”

  McAllen turned and looked the man straight in the eye, then proffered his hand. “The last time I met the Russians, they couldn’t help but fall to their knees and bleed.”

  “I hope I have the same effect on them.”

  They shook firmly, then Rule rushed off to pack.

  McAllen returned to inventorying his gear. He fetched a picture of himself and Jonesy from his footlocker and slipped it into his ruck. They’d been pretty drunk that night, and Jonesy had been the one to get McAllen home. He was like that. Dependable beyond belief. And McAllen had to get it into his head that though no one could replace Jonesy, he had to give Sergeant Rule, nipple rings and all, a chance.

  At least the spirit of Jonesy would be heading up into the Great White North, along with the spirit of the Corps.

  Whenever they went into battle, every man who ha
d ever been a Marine went with them.

  With white-hot chaff flashing beside her wings, Major Stephanie Halverson took her F-35B fighter into another dive, rolling as she did so, then banked sharply to the right, cutting a deep chamfer in the air.

  Her pressure suit compensated for what would’ve been excruciating g-forces, keeping the blood from pooling in her legs, yet still she felt the usual and sometimes even welcome discomfort.

  One missile took the bait and exploded somewhere above her; she didn’t waste time to check its exact location because the other one was still locked on.

  Utilizing all of the jet’s sensors and the helmet-mounted display, Halverson was able to look down through her knees, through the actual structure of the aircraft, and spot the missile coming up from below.

  She punched the chaff again.

  Then killed the engine and let the fighter drop away like an unlucky mallard during hunting season.

  The only problem was, the missile had been designed to “see” whole images rather than just single points of infrared radiation like the heat from her engine.

  So that Vympel R-84 with its “potato masher” fins had a decision to make: detonate its thirty kilograms of high explosive in the chaff or continue on to Halverson.

  With her breath held, she watched as the missile penetrated the chaff cloud—

  And kept on coming.

  She cursed, fired up the engine, then started straight for the cargo planes still glowing in her multifunction display.

  Okay, steady. Okay.

  She pressed a finger against the touch screen, viewing a much clearer, close-up image of the nearest aircraft. She tapped another button, and target designation and weapons status imagery appeared in her HMD. She closed in, the target now being automatically tracked, the crosshairs in her visor locking on the AN-130.

  If I get taken out of the fight, I’m bringing a couple of you with me.

  She tightened her fist, pressed the button.

  Missile away. She pressed again. Missile #2 streaked off a second behind the first.

  The radar alarm was still going off.

  And there it was, a glowing dot. You didn’t need a key to the display’s symbols to know what that one meant: death.

  “Sapphire, this is Siren, can’t shake my last missile, over.”

  “Yes, you can, Siren! Chaff again! Come on!”

  Aw, what the hell. She popped more chaff then broke into a diving roll that would have left most nuggets barfing in their helmets.

  And what kind of miracle was that? The damned missile took the bait and exploded in a beautiful conflagration, the dark clouds traced by flickering light.

  “Sister, I’m listening to you next time,” Halverson cried. “And here comes another pair of 130s. Let’s get ’em. I want to head back to Igloo empty, refuel, rearm, and do it all over again!”

  “Roger that!”

  Halverson shut her eyes for just a second.

  Jake, if you can hear me, then you know what I’m thinking . . .

  Major Alice Dennison couldn’t afford to leave her JSF command post in Tampa and was closely monitoring the data coming in to her from Alaska, where the 11th Air Force and 3rd Wing from Elmendorf and the 354th Fighter Wing from Eielson had scrambled to intercept the Russian transports, along with that handful of JSF fighters whose pilots had been training in the Northwest Territories.

  She couldn’t leave, but she shuddered with the desire to do so, to travel back to Gitmo and question Doletskaya again.

  However, she had arranged the next best thing—a video conference with the prisoner.

  And, despite her better judgment, she stole away to a private conference room for ten minutes to speak one last time with Colonel Pavel Doletskaya.

  She thought maybe she could put the demons to rest and begin to actually sleep.

  The colonel looked even more haggard than the last time she had seen him, gray stubble creeping across his chin, and it seemed an effort for him to keep his head upright. His eyes failed to focus, then finally he blinked and leaned forward, too close to the camera, then threw his head back and suddenly laughed.

  “Colonel, stop it.”

  After another few seconds, he composed himself and said, “I’m sorry, Major. I just . . . I can see that look in your eyes. So, are we happy with the information I gave you? Because you don’t look very happy.”

  “No, we’re perfectly fine with it.”

  His expression grew serious. “You’re bluffing.”

  “You cried like a baby, Colonel. I know exactly what Operation 2659 is and exactly who Snegurochka aka the snow maiden is, all right?”

  “So then, why have you interrupted my vacation?”

  Dennison took a deep breath. Yep, she was bluffing. She hadn’t learned a damned thing—the bastard was the most highly skilled and resistant prisoner the interrogators had ever encountered. In fact, at this point, they swore he knew nothing . . .

  But Dennison refused to believe that. “I just thought it would be in your best interests to formally defect. That way, you would enjoy the benefits of such a decision.”

  “You don’t know anything, do you. You ran 2659 through every database in the world, compared the number to other operations, thought it might be an address, a date, a model number for the memory chip of a computer. You’ve had experts from every government agency looking at it, people trained to study ciphers, even that agent from the CIA who swears he decrypted the messages on that statue outside the office in Langley. What’s it called? Kryptos? Yes . . . But you know nothing—or rather, you know that I know everything about you.”

  “Colonel, this is not a game. Do you have any idea how many innocent people are about to die?”

  “I do—even more so than you.”

  “Is it worth it?”

  “Oh, those kinds of questions give me a headache, Major. I want to know if you have redecorated your apartment recently. Maybe you have pulled up the rugs, decided to buy some new lights for the ceiling? Or maybe some new paintings?”

  “Operation 2659 is the invasion of Alberta. The snow maiden is the code name for an operative, a female operative who is part of or perhaps leading the mission.”

  “Yes, you knew that before we ever met. The Euros fed you that on a spoon. And since then, you’ve spent all your time reading fairy tales . . .”

  “This is your last chance, Colonel. Otherwise, you’re going to rot in prison for the rest of your life. You could defect, tell us what we need to know. You could work with us to bring a peaceful solution to this conflict.”

  “Do you want to be president of the United States? Because you sound so convincing.”

  “Did you murder Viktoria Antsyforov?”

  “No, she killed me.”

  “Colonel . . .”

  “This I will tell you. She was my mistress, a brilliant officer, but her ego and ambition got in the way. I did not kill her, but she made many enemies in the GRU.”

  “She was the snow maiden.”

  “Of course not, Colonel. You are.”

  Dennison snickered. “How am I part of your invasion plan?”

  “You are the one with the cold heart who is trying to stop it. You are the one we worried about most of all.”

  “I’m a JSF operations officer. I’m not chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I don’t wield that kind of power.”

  “You are more powerful than you know.”

  “Colonel, will you defect?”

  He took a deep breath, closed his eyes. “Good-bye, Major.”

  EIGHTEEN

  The USS Florida had surfaced once more, and Commander Jonathan Andreas stood in the sail, shuddering against the cold wind and holding the satellite phone to his ear, waiting for someone to answer.

  “Hello, Commander Andreas, this is COMPACFLT Duty Officer. Please hold for Admiral Stanton.”

  She already knew he was calling?

  He waited about twenty seconds, then a familiar voice jolted him. “Good morni
ng, Jon. It’s Donald Stanton.”

  “Uh, good morning,” he responded tentatively.

  “How much time can you give me?”

  Andreas glanced around at the black waves crashing against the equally black skin of his boat. “I’m comfortable with five to ten minutes, Admiral.”

  “Very well, then—”

  “But, uh, with all due respect, sir, can you tell me the title of that speech you gave in the old sub base auditorium last fourth of July?”

  “Oh, that one,” Stanton said with a slight chuckle. “That would be ‘101 Ways Chief Petty Officers Trick Admirals into Believing We Run the Navy.’ ”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Good man. Now I’ll talk fast. The Russians shot down the ELF and Comsat satellite, Michigan’s back online, and we have one SITREP from you that’s two days old. News doesn’t get any better. The Russians have begun moving a large force, perhaps two brigades, into the Northwest Territories, most likely headed for Alberta, for the cities, the oil reserves, the whole shebang. I’ve heard they’re running more sorties than they did in Paris. On top of that, the president ordered the destruction of the International Space Station, since the Russkies used it to shoot down our satellites and were preparing to strike other targets. Now you talk, Jon, I’ll listen.”

  Andreas’s mouth fell open, and it took a few seconds before he could launch into a capsule summary of his observations regarding the Russian task force, concluding with, “Sir, request permission to destroy those ships.”

  “Permission granted.”

  “There’s an opportunity at 0500, when they’ll engage in refueling ops. I’m going to seize it.”

  “Excellent. For now, though, get back under, stay safe, and make this your last voice call. We’ll start sending you traffic via the sat phone data link so you don’t need to transmit anything. I’m sure you’ve already surmised this phone is manned 24/7, and right now it’s the only working number on the Iridium system.”

  That explained how the duty officer knew who was calling when she answered the phone.

  “Aye-aye, sir. I’ll try to poke my nose up every two hours starting from the termination of this call.”