LITMIR.BIZ

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positioned along important passes through the steep mountains to keep a careful watch on the despised Russians to the north, and the equally distrusted Chinese to the east. Every other country along its borders could be safely ignored, as they lacked the technological ability to seriously threaten Kazakhstan.

      Once they’d finished their tea, Alisher refilled the mugs this time, while Meirjan checked the steadily beeping radar screens. The noise would most likely drive most civilians mad, but to a soldier it was the beautiful music of peace. The rainy skies above the valley were empty of any aircraft, rockets or incoming missiles. Although why in the name of God anybody would want to invade the isolated valley, the sergeant had no idea whatsoever. But it was his job to guard the place, not ponder the intricacies of international politics.

      “Anything coming our way?” Alisher asked, passing his sergeant a steaming mug and reclaiming his seat.

      “Not in the sky,” Meirjan stated confidently.

      “So, tell me about your pet project,” Alisher asked. They needed to talk about something to pass the time.

      “Are you really interested?” Meirjan asked, arching an eyebrow.

      Alisher gave a polite smile. “No, just bored.”

      Sgt. Meirjan shrugged. “Fair enough. I found the parts stuffed in a truck, ready to be hauled back to Moscow.” He rose from his chair and walked to the main console. Set among the array of standard circular screens was a hexagonal one tinted a dark blue. Luminous arms swept around the circular screens as the dish mounted on the roof steadily rotated, but on the hexagonal screen a luminous bar moved up and down in counterpoint.

      “Can’t be very important if they left it behind,” Alisher stated with a sniff. “Strange looking thing.”

      “The Soviets also left behind several thousand working nuclear weapons,” Meirjan reminded him brusquely.

      The private snorted. “True enough. How does it work?”

      “By combing an active radar beam with a passive sonic receiver, sort of like sonar.”

      “What is that for, flying submarines?”

      Glancing sideways, Meirjan frowned. “My guess is that the Soviets wanted something to detect American stealth bombers by the noise of their engines.”

      “Oh. Kind of useless in the rain, isn’t it?”

      Reluctantly, Meirjan began to agree, when suddenly the blue screen started to blare a warning tone. Stepping closer, he frowned as a pair of small objects appeared on the blue screen. They were coming in low, arching around the huge Soviet factories just like birds, but moving way too fast.

      “What are those, Sarge?” Alisher asked curiously, taking a sip from the mug.

      “Don’t know yet,” Meirjan growled, dropping into a chair and adjusting the controls. The Doppler radar screens were clear of any airborne traffic. But the stealth radar clearly showed incoming craft. Wiping a hand across the blue screen to dislodge anything on the glass, he blinked as more objects appeared out of nowhere. Two were diving straight for the SAM—surface-to-air missile—bunkers, whereas another pair was going to the fuel depot, and the rest were heading for the radar dishes hidden on the mountainside…and the disguised listening station.

      “Those look like ARMs,” Alisher said slowly, setting down his mug. It missed the table and noisily crashed to the floor. Neither soldier noticed.

      “Yes, they do,” Meirjan muttered, trying to fine-tune the controls.

      “Is…is this another intelligence test for the new guy?” Alisher asked, a surge of hope in his voice. “Like that bucket of steam the colonel asked me to get last week, or that hoop snake you wanted me to kill?”

      “Maybe…” Meirjan said hesitantly, a hand poised above the alarm button. The Doppler radar was still clear. The logical explanation was that these weird blips were merely a glitch in the software, or better yet, just a practical joke from one of the other watch officers stationed at the post during the day. He relaxed a little at that thought. Yes, of course. What else could they be? That made a lot more sense than a salvo of antiradar missiles appearing out of thin air!

      Just then, the first pair of blips reached a radar dish on the nearby mountainside. Immediately, that screen went blank, the foggy window facing that direction brightened with a flash, and there came the sound of a distant explosion.

      “Those are missiles!” Meirjan snarled, flipping the red toggle switch.

      Instantly, a howling siren cut loose outside, and whole sections of the control board came alive as the SAM bunkers, and electric miniguns hidden in the forest, cycled into action. But Meirjan bitterly cursed as their targeting systems swung harmlessly past the salvo of incoming missiles. Sweet Jesus, they couldn’t find them! Every radar screen was clean and green; only the experimental stuff registered the enemy ARMs.

      His heart pounding wildly, Meirjan briefly glanced at the exit door. Then he spit a virulent oath and tore the cover off the control board to try and jury-rig a connection between the Soviet X-radar and the defensive-fire control system. With luck, it would take only a few moments….

      “Red flag! Red flag! HQ, this is forty-seven, we have hostiles,” Alisher crisply said into a microphone, his hands quickly adjusting the controls on the old radio. “Repeat, we have—”

      Just then, the entire universe became filled with white-hot pain for the two soldiers, but it lasted for only a second.

      SPREADING RAPIDLY across the misty sky, the missiles slammed into the open concrete bunkers, detonating all of the surface-to-air missiles in the honeycomb launcher. The roiling explosion ripped the fortification apart, setting off the rest of the missiles, supposedly safe behind a fireproof wall. The combination blast ripped the night apart, the halo of shrapnel spreading out for ten thousand yards.

      As sleepy soldiers stumbled about the barracks, grabbing boots and Kalashnikov assault rifles, another machine crashed to the ground directly before the front door, the explosion blocking the entrance. Then two more crashed in through the glass windows and detonated in midair. The fiery blast blew a hurricane of body parts out the windows only an instant before the massive stores of ammunition in the basement levels were triggered.

      The roof was designed to withstand a direct hit from World War II artillery shells, but the new bricks walls weren’t and they actually bulged out slightly before shattering into total annihilation. Chunks of men, masonry and machines sprayed across the landscape, the civilian cars in the nearby parking lot peppered by steaming pieces of their former owners.

      Only moments later, the remaining four SAM bunkers were obliterated, closely followed by the fuel depot, the rooftop Gatling guns, the main armory, and then a parking garage draped in heavy canvas. Briefly, the array of T-80 tanks, and a hundred other assorted military vehicles were exposed to the elements before the winged machines streaked in through the open sides of the structure to slam directly into the armored door protecting the massive stores of shells for the military behemoths.

      Accelerating constantly, the first flying machine slammed full-force into the resilient barrier, merely denting it slightly and setting off a howling alarm. Then a second one hit, widening the dent into a breech, and the third punched through the seriously weakened door. As it fell aside, three more of the black machines swooped inside, moving almost too fast to see. A startled corporal wildly fired his AK-101 at the bizarre invader flying by his post, but missed it completely.

      “Hello, headquarters?” a lieutenant sputtered into a telephone. “This is Oskemen Valley, and we are under attack by—”

      Reaching the main storeroom, the machines found their targets, held a brief electronic conference and then promptly exploded. A deadly halo of burning thermite and stainless-steel buckshot filled the interior, killing a dozen more soldiers and rupturing thousands of rounds of assorted ammunition stored for the mothballed Soviet tanks. The first series of explosions ripped away the fireproof curtains and set off the sprinklers. Then the hammering concussion and

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