“We know now, sir,” General Furzyenko said. “The Americans made the mistake of using their new toy with one of our fighters on his wingtip.”
“Obviously they were not concerned enough about our fighter to cancel their patrol or their attack,” Zevitin offered.
“It was what the Americans call an ‘operational test,’ sir,” air force chief of staff General Andrei Darzov said. A short, battle-worn air force bomber pilot, Darzov preferred his head shaved bald because he knew how it intimidated a lot of people, especially politicians and bureaucrats. He had visible burn scars on the left side of his neck and on his left hand, and the fourth and fifth fingers of his left hand were missing, all a result of injuries sustained in the bombing of Engels Air Base, Russia’s main bomber base, several years earlier, when he served as Forces of Long-Range Aviation division commander.
Darzov had wanted nothing short of bloody payback for the utter devastation wreaked on his headquarters during the sneak attack on Engels, and swore revenge on the American air commander who had planned and executed it…Lieutenant General Patrick McLanahan.
Under former military chief of staff turned president Anatoliy Gryzlov, who wanted revenge on the United States as badly as Darzov, he soon got his opportunity. Andrei Darzov was the architect of the plan just a year later to modify Russia’s long-range Tu-95 Bear, Tu-26 Backfire, and Tu-160 Blackjack bombers with aerial refueling probes to allow them the range to attack the United States. It was an audacious, ambitious plan that succeeded in destroying most of the United States’ long-range bombers and the control centers for over half of their land-based intercontinental ballistic nuclear-tipped missiles. The devastating assault killed over thirty thousand people and injured or sickened thousands more, and soon became known as the “American Holocaust.”
But Darzov hadn’t heard the last of his archenemy, Patrick McLanahan. When McLanahan’s counterattack destroyed almost an equivalent number of Russia’s most powerful silo-based and mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles, someone had to take the blame — other than the then-president of Russia, General Gryzlov, who had been killed during an American air strike on his Ryazan underground command center — and Darzov was it. He was blamed for making the decision to stage all of the Ilyushin-78 and Tupolev-16 tanker aircraft at one isolated air base in Siberia, Yakutsk, and for not providing enough security there, which allowed McLanahan and his Air Battle Force to take over the base and use the enormous amount of fuel stored there to be used by McLanahan’s bombers to hunt down and destroy Russia’s land-based nuclear deterrent force.
Darzov was demoted to one-star general and sent to Yakutsk to oversee the cleanup and eventual closing of that once-vital Siberian base — because in an attempt to destroy McLanahan’s bombers on the ground, Gryzlov had ordered Yakutsk attacked by low-yield nuclear weapons. While only four of the dozens of nuclear warheads penetrated McLanahan’s anti-missile shield around the base, and they were all high-altitude airbursts designed to minimize radioactive fallout, most of the base had been severely damaged, and the heart of it had been flattened and rendered uninhabitable. There was much speculation that the general staff hoped Darzov would become sick from the lingering radioactivity so they would be spared the chore of eliminating the popular, intelligent young general officer.
But not only did Darzov not die, he didn’t stay long in virtual exile in Siberia. Health-wise, Darzov and his loyal senior staff members survived by using the radioactivity decontamination equipment left behind by the Americans when they evacuated their personnel from Yakutsk. Career- and prestige-wise, he survived by not giving in to despair when it seemed like the entire world was against him.
With the financial and moral support of a young investment banker named Leonid Zevitin, Darzov rebuilt the base and soon made it operational again instead of preparing it for demolition and abandonment. The move revitalized Russia’s Siberian oil and gas industry, which relied on the base for much-needed support and supply, and the government raked in enormous amounts of revenue from Siberian oil, most sold to Japan and China through new pipelines. The young base commander garnered the attention and gratitude of Russia’s wealthiest and most successful investment banker, Leonid Zevitin. Thanks to Zevitin’s sponsorship, Darzov was brought back to Moscow, promoted to four-star general, and eventually picked as chief of staff of the air forces by newly elected president Zevitin.
“The Americans have tipped their hand and revealed a new hypersonic air-to-ground weapon,” Furzyenko said. “It shows how overconfident they are, and that will be their weakness. Not only that, but they wasted a multimillion-dollar missile destroying a truck and homemade rocket worth a few dollars.”
“Seems to me they have every right to be overconfident, General — they can quickly and accurately destroy any target from two hundred miles away as easy as a child plinking a can with a.22 rifle from twenty meters away,” Zevitin said. Many of the generals knitted their eyebrows, as much in confusion at some of Zevitin’s Western terms as in struggling to understand his heavily accented Russian. “Plus, they did it right before our eyes, knowing we’d be watching and measuring the weapon’s performance. It was a demonstration for our benefit, as well as a very effective terror weapon against the Islamists.” Zevitin turned to Darzov. “What happened to the fighter that was shadowing the B-1 bomber, Andrei?”
“The pilot landed safely but with most of his plane’s electronic equipment completely disabled,” the air force chief of staff responded.
“How? Their terahertz weapon again?”
“Possibly, but the American so-called T-Ray weapon is a subatomic wide-area weapon that destroys electronic circuits at ranges exceeding six hundred kilometers,” Darzov replied. “No other stations reported any disruption. The pilot reported that as soon as he launched his missiles his fighter…simply shut itself down.”
“You mean, the missile shut itself down.”
“No, sir. The entire
“How is that possible?”
“The terahertz weapon may have been able to do it,” Darzov said. “We will not know until we look at the fighter computer’s error logs. But my guess would be that McLanahan has deployed his ‘netrusion’ system on the Dreamland bombers, and possibly all of his aircraft and spacecraft.”
“‘Netrusion’? What’s that?”
“The ability to ‘hack’ into an opponent’s computer systems through any sensor or antenna that receives digital signals,” Darzov explained. “We do not completely understand the process, but the bombers can transmit a signal that is picked up and processed like any other digital instruction or message. The enemy signal can be false radar targets, confusing coded messages, flight control inputs, or even electronic commands to aircraft systems…”
“Such as a shutdown order,” Zevitin said. He shook his head. “He conceivably could have commanded the MiG to fly straight down or around in circles — luckily he only ordered it to shut down. Must be nice to be so rich that you can build such wonderful toys to load up on your planes.” He nodded. “Looks like your old friend is still in the game, eh, General?”
“Yes, sir,” Darzov said. “Patrick McLanahan.” He smiled. “I will welcome a chance to take him on again and repay him for imprisoning my men and women, taking my base, and stealing my fuel. However, from what I understand, he may not be around much longer. The new administration does not like him at all.”
“If McLanahan had any political savvy, he’d have resigned the moment the new president took the oath of office,” Zevitin said. “Obviously that has not happened. Either McLanahan is more dedicated — or dumber — than we thought, or Gardner isn’t going to fire him, which means he might not be the buffoon we think he is.” He looked at the generals around him. “Forget about McLanahan and his high-tech toys that never get built — he’s the best they’ve got, but he’s only one man, and he’s squirreled away in that awful desert base in Nevada instead of in the White House now, which means no one has the opportunity to listen to him anymore.” To Truznyev, chief of the Federal Security Bureau, successor organization to the KGB, he asked, “What about your ‘adviser’ in Iran? Did you get him out?”
“What was left of him, yes, sir,” the FSB chief replied.
“Good. The last thing we need is some enterprising American or Persian investigator finding Russian clothing or weapons mixed in with a lot of Iranian body parts.”
“He was replaced with another agent,” Truznyev said. He turned angrily to Alexandra Hedrov, the foreign minister. “Giving those Hezbollah bastards weapons like the 9K89 is a waste of time and money, and hurt us in the long run. We should stop supplying them with such advanced missiles and let them go back to firing homemade
