THE BIG SHOW
The entire valley grew eerily quiet, just the whispers of the falling snow and the branches rustling slightly in the wind. It seemed as though the birds and other animals had gone silent, anticipating what would happen. The phone beeped, and the comm operator connected him directly to General Mitchell. “Sir, canisters are away.”
“Excellent work, Captain. Stand by. I’m ordering the kinetic strike now.”
Lex flicked his gaze up into the dark, snow-filled sky, and while he couldn’t see them, he imagined the twelve rods of tungsten blasting off from their space-based orbital platform via their rocket motors. They’d plunge toward the atmosphere until gravity accelerated them to thirty-six thousand feet per second as they headed for a collision course with the Earth’s crust—or more precisely Fort Levski. Each rod packed all the destructive effects of an Earth-penetrating nuclear weapon.
One rod would wreak havoc.
Twelve would devastate the entire valley . . .
Lex wouldn’t have to imagine that part. He and his men had a front-row seat.
NOVELS BY TOM CLANCY
The Hunt for Red October
Red Storm Rising
Patriot Games
The Cardinal of the Kremlin
Clear and Present Danger
The Sum of All Fears
Without Remorse
Debt of Honor
Executive Orders
Rainbow Six
The Bear and the Dragon
Red Rabbit
The Teeth of the Tiger
Dead or Alive
(written with Grant Blackwood)
Against All Enemies
(written with Peter Telep)
Locked On
(written with Mark Greaney)
Threat Vector
(written with Mark Greaney)
SSN: Strategies of Submarine Warfare
NONFICTION
Submarine: A Guided Tour Inside a Nuclear Warship
Armored Cav: A Guided Tour of an Armored Cavalry Regiment
Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Air Force Combat Wing
Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit
Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force
Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier
Special Forces: A Guided Tour of U.S. Army Special Forces
Into the Storm: A Study in Command
(written with General Fred Franks, Jr., Ret., and Tony Koltz)
Every Man a Tiger
(written with General Chuck Horner, Ret., and Tony Koltz)
Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces
(written with General Carl Stiner, Ret., and Tony Koltz)
Battle Ready
(written with General Tony Zinni, Ret., and Tony Koltz)
Tom Clancy’s HAWX
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon
Ghost Recon
Combat Ops
Choke Point
Tom Clancy’s EndWar
EndWar
The Hunted
The Missing
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell
Splinter Cell
Operation Barracuda
Checkmate
Fallout
Conviction
Endgame
CREATED BY TOM CLANCY AND STEVE PIECZENIK
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center
Op-Center
Mirror Image
Games of State
Acts of War
Balance of Power
State of Siege
Divide and Conquer
Line of Control
Mission of Honor
Sea of Fire
Call to Treason
War of Eagles
Tom Clancy’s Net Force
Net Force
Hidden Agendas
Night Moves
Breaking Point
Point of Impact
CyberNation
State of War
Changing of the Guard
Springboard
The Archimedes Effect
CREATED BY TOM CLANCY AND MARTIN GREENBERG
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays
Politika
ruthless.com
Shadow Watch
Bio-Strike
Cold War
Cutting Edge
Zero Hour
Wild Card
WRITTEN BY
PETER TELEP
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
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TOM CLANCY’S ENDWAR®: THE MISSING
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with Ubisoft Entertainment SARL
Copyright © 2013 Ubisoft Entertainment. All rights reserved.
EndWar, Tom Clancy’s, Ubisoft, and the Ubisoft logo are trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the U.S. and/or other countries.
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eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-61598-0
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Berkley premium edition / September 2013
Cover art courtesy of Ubisoft.
Interior text design by Kristin del Rosario.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
PRELUDE TO WAR
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
&nbs
p; THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SEVEN
FORTY-EIGHT
FORTY-NINE
FIFTY
FIFTY-ONE
FIFTY-THREE
FIFTY-FOUR
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’m deeply indebted to a great number of people who have contributed their expertise to this manuscript:
Mr. James Ide, chief warrant officer, U.S. Navy (Ret.), has continued his work as my first reader, researcher, and collaborator—from concept to outline to polished manuscript. He is a true friend and a skilled writer and has kept me honest for many years.
I’m indebted to all the folks at Ubisoft who created the EndWar game, and to everyone else at the company, most notably Mr. Sam Strachman of Ubisoft Paris. Sam has worked with me on several other book projects, including Ghost Recon: Choke Point, and offered his keen advice, insights, and terrific sense of humor.
My agent, Mr. John Talbot, and editor, Mr. Tom Colgan, have supported and encouraged me for many years, and I’m truly grateful for yet another project we can share.
Finally, my wife, Nancy, and two lovely daughters, Lauren and Kendall, challenged me to finish this novel before the Mayan calendar ran out (just in case).
Be convinced that to be happy means to be free and that to be free means to be brave. Therefore do not take lightly the perils of war.
—THUCYDIDES (460–395 B.C.)
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
—PLATO (428–348 B.C.)
PRELUDE TO WAR . . .
The unthinkable happens in 2016. A nuclear exchange in the Middle East kills six million people and cripples the world’s oil supply. Crude oil prices spike at eight hundred dollars a barrel.
One year later, the threat of worldwide nuclear war is eliminated when the United States and Europe deploy a comprehensive space-based antiballistic missile shield. Russia soon follows with an advanced missile defense system of its own. Intercontinental ballistic missiles are rendered obsolete.
Russia becomes the world’s primary supplier of energy and experiences a massive economic boom. With its newfound riches, Russia quickly reestablishes itself as a major superpower and restores her military might.
Western Europe, with the notable exceptions of the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland, unifies to create the European Federation. This new nation is destined to be a formidable twenty-first-century superpower.
In 2020, the United States is on the verge of finishing construction on the Freedom Star, a controversial orbital military platform that will upset the balance of world power. The European Federation withdraws from NATO in protest.
Tensions between the European Federation, the United States, and Russia build. Russia invades Canada in an attempt to seize the oil sands and is thwarted by the United States. Smaller scale air, sea, and ground conflicts continue but threaten to escalate into an all-out conflict, sapping the resources of every nation and tearing apart the planet.
The EndWar has begun.
ONE
Caucasus Mountains
Near North Ossetia, Russia
November 2022
Major Stephanie Halverson jerked the side stick controller, guiding her F-35B Joint Strike Fighter in a hard right turn, the pressure suit tightening around her hips against the agonizing g-forces.
Her pulse raced. Surface-to-air missiles were locking on. Identification: Russian S-500, the latest and most potent mobile SAM system in the world, with radars capable of tracking more than three hundred individual targets and engaging twenty simultaneously.
Screw this, she thought. I’m breaking radio silence. “Neptune Command, this is Siren. I’ve got multiple SAMs inbound! What the hell’s going on?”
Earlier in the evening she’d launched from Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, was in-air refueled just prior to leaving Turkish airspace, some 200 miles from her target, and had bridged the 720 miles to North Ossetia in the blink of an eye.
“Neptune, this is Siren, do you read me?”
The Sixth Fleet tactical air commander on board the aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush CVN-77 loitering off the coast of Cyprus did not respond.
Swearing, Halverson released IR flares and clouds of white-hot chaff—countermeasures that might save her from one or two of the missiles, but secondary beeps indicated that more SAMs were being launched.
Jesus God, how many now? Glowing in her Helmet-Mounted Display System were infrared and wireframe representations of the mountain range, the suspected SAM sites below, and the military cargo train about to cross the new bridge towering over the broad expanse of Darial Gorge.
Superimposed against this scene were six inbound missiles, each one’s speed and trajectory marked by scrolling numbers beside the yellow squares on her screen.
A proximity alert beeped above the missile warning, and in its cool, emotionless voice, the computer delivered the bad news:
More missiles were now locked on her heat signature. The computer IDed them as Vympel R-84s, two pairs, each with thirty kilograms of HE—enough to easily blast apart her aircraft. The pilots who’d express-mailed them were smiling behind their visors and muttering, “Do svidaniya.”
She flicked her glance from the radar scope to a databar indicating that four Sukhoi Su-35 long-range Interceptors bearing 281 degrees were, in fact, streaking toward her. The two lead fighters had fired their Vympels.
She studied the SAMs and the air-to-air missiles, their numbers and ETAs, and held her breath.
The enormity of the moment was almost too much to bear. She was one pilot with ten missiles on her back. She shuddered and thought, I’m dead.
But damn it, this wasn’t her fault. The mission was supposed to be reconnaissance only, a solo test flight into enemy territory of the AN/AST Radar Warping System and Algorithm (RWSA), along with its associated software. The RWSA’s lightning-fast onboard computers were supposed to absorb and amplify an enemy’s radar beam and return it at a deflected angle. The idea was based on the planet Mercury’s so-called orbital wobble when its orbital line of sight neared the sun. Einstein, in his general relativity theory, deduced that the massive gravitational field of the sun bent Mercury’s reflected light beam, tricking an earthbound observer to see the tiny planet along a bearing where it didn’t actually exist. Similarly, the new radar warping device was supposed to cause enemy fire control radars to calculate distorted missile/gun firing points in space-time where Halverson did not exist.
In layman’s terms, they were supposed to be shooting at her ghost, if they detected her at all. Had Einstein been wrong? Or was this new toy’s software just corrupt?
The alarms kept beeping, reminding her that there was a lot more at stake than just one plane and one pilot.
The Radar Warping System was being prepared for the Joint Strike Force’s latest prototype: the X-2A Wraith, a sixth-generation fighter and reconnaissance jet designed by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works in California. The Wraith was capable of reaching speeds of Mach 6, or nearly 4,600 miles per hour, and Halverson ought to know: She was the Wraith program’s chief test pilot. She could never be more proud, because the Wraith was a piece of military hardware that would change the entire scope of the war. No nation could match its speed, stealth, or firepower.
And only a select few knew about it, its coming-out party mere weeks away.
With clouds of expanding chaff blooming behind her fighter, Halverson pulled up hard, panting into a helmet shaped like an insect’s head, the oxygen line hissing as her shoulders were pinned to the seat.
Wait a minute.
She thought about what she was flying, her fighter’s range of capabilitie
s. She’d almost forgotten this wasn’t another prototype like the ones she’d been testing for the past year between combat missions in Europe.
She looked to the train. To the radar scope. To the Russian Interceptors closing in . . .
The F-35B Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) fighter variant could hover like a helicopter via its shift-driven lift fan. The contra-rotating fan with twenty thousand pounds of lift was located just behind the cockpit and built within the fuselage.
That was it. Crazy idea. Insane.
Probably her only hope.
Still no response from Neptune. She knew the protocol. She was on her own now, responsible for doing what was necessary to ensure that her aircraft and its prototype equipment did not fall into enemy hands.
The waning moon flashed across her cockpit as she came around, then shoved the stick forward, diving straight for the maglev train, her speed, distance, and bearing all calculated and displayed against the infrared images of her sensors. The gorge and bridge grew brighter, shifting from a pale green to an almost blue-silver.
Somewhere behind her, two of the SAMs exploded in her chaff, just as she released another cloud, then rolled right, fully inverted, and dove at an even steeper angle, the sky flickering at her shoulders.
She came upright, then glanced down between her legs, the sensors allowing her to stare right through the fuselage at a computer-generated image of the train below.
Throttling up, the Pratt & Whitney afterburning turbofan roaring, she painted the center of the bridge with her laser, then fired—
A single wingtip-mounted Sidewinder exploded away from her jet, tendrils of smoke glistening in saffron light. She had two such laser-guided Sidewinders onboard and could use them to strike hardened targets, as opposed to the usual air-to-air ordnance she carried. Given that this was a recon mission and her load-out was light, she was lucky to have the ability to hit a hardened surface target.
Flying now like an old kamikaze pilot about to swoop down and T-bone the train’s lead car, Halverson gasped as the tracks ahead of the train exploded, metal twisting like spaghetti at irregular angles, the maglev train barreling toward the wreckage, its operators already seeing what was happening and slamming on the brakes.