Covert One 6 - The Moscow Vector by Robert Ludlum Read Free Book Online Page B

darkness.

Chapter
Four
    Near Bryansk, Russia
    Four twin-tailed Su-34 fighter-bombers roared low over the rolling, wooded hills west of Bryansk. Advanced onboard radar systems allowed the attack aircraft to fly just high enough to clear the tallest trees and power pylons in the area. Streams of incandescent flares designed to decoy heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles blazed in their wake, wafting slowly downward toward the snow-covered ground.
    Suddenly the Su-34s popped up, briefly gaining altitude while their onboard systems acquired multiple targets, transferred the data to their weapons, and calculated release points. Seconds later a cloud of precision-guided bombs and missiles fell away from beneath their wings and plunged onward toward the distant forest below. Instantly the four jets broke hard right, again diving for the deck to shake off any hostile radars as they exited the strike area
    and vanished to the north.
    Behind them the woods began exploding, erupting in huge pillars of blinding orange and red flame. Shattered trees were thrown high into the air, tumbling end over end for hundreds of meters before crashing back to earth.
    Billowing clouds of smoke and lighter debris drifted downwind.
    Nearly a dozen high-ranking Russian army and air force officers stood on the roof of an old concrete bunker dug into the forward slope of a nearby ridge, watching intently through binoculars. More than one hundred heavily armed airborne assault troops wearing snow smocks and bodv armor were deployed along the ridge, guarding the generals. Command and electronics vans were set up behind the bunker, well hidden among the trees beneath Infrared-resistant camouflage netting. Newly laid fiber-optic cables snaked awav through the forest, feeding back to a secure communications network.
    To help preserve complete operational and strategic secrecy for this special set of maneuvers, dubbed WINTER CROWN, all radio, cellular, or standard landline transmissions were being severely restricted.
    An army colonel, listening intently through a headset, turned to the short, slender man standing beside him. Alone among all the observers crowded onto the bunker roof, this man wore civilian clothes. He was snug in a plain black overcoat and scarf. The wind ruffled his sparse brown hair. “The exercise computers report all simulated enemy artillery batteries and mobile fire control radars destroyed, sir,” the colonel told him quietly.
    Russian president Viktor Dudarev nodded calmly, still watching through his binoculars. “Very good,” he murmured.
    A new wave of sleek ground-attack aircraft—ultramodern Su-39s—raced low over the nearest hills with their powerful turbojet engines howling. They flashed past the bunker at high speed, flying down the wide valley below the ridge. Hundreds of unguided rockets rippled out from the pods slung beneath their wings, streaking onward on trails of smoke and fire. The whole eastern edge of the forest vanished in a rolling series of thunderous explosions.
    “All enemy SAM teams have been either suppressed or eliminated entirely,” the colonel reported.
    The Russian leader nodded again. He swung his binoculars to the left, peering east down the valley. There, in a growing clatter of rotor blades, came a stream of mottled gray-black-and-white helicopters, Mi-17 troop transports, each carrying a team of Spetsnaz commandos. Moving at more than two hundred kilometers an hour, the fleet of winter-camouflaged helicopters swept by the bunker and vanished into the thick smoke clouds now rising above the bomb and rocket-shattered forest.
    Dudarev glanced at the colonel, “Well?” he demanded.
    “Our special-action forces have penetrated the enemy front lines and are en route toward their primary targets —headquarters units, fuel depots, long-range missile complexes, and the like,” his military aide, Colonel Piotr Kirichenko, confirmed, after listening closely to the reports streaming through his headset. He