Page 98 of Gryphon

The flame raced toward them so fast that they both shoved back into the couch to get away from it. But it roiled and dissipated before reaching the camera itself.

“Well, that’ll take a while to clean up.” Mike wondered how pissed the Russians would be over that. Someone had crashed a 737 inside the Roki Tunnel. In revenge, would Russia send a full invasion force through that tunnel—once it reopened—to rampage across South Ossetia and into Georgia?

“That’s not a fire.”

Mike waved a hand at the screen as if to ask what she was missing.

“No, Mike. Remember what I used to do—explosives specialist. That’s not a ruptured central wing tank and a blast of flame. Look at the initial delay, then how it flashed and faded in a single massive pulse,” she pointed at the replay. Then she tipped her head, thinking hard.

He did his best not to admire the line of her neck. He was only here at the team house until he found the energy to pack everything. Then he’d leave. Sure. That sounded like a plan.

“The Georgian Air Force still flies the old Sukhoi Su-25KM Scorpion jets, right?”

As if he’d know. Talking to herself, she didn’t wait for his answer.

“That means they have a stock of FAB-500s. Or at least the FAB-250s. Call it five hundred kilos, a half ton of high explosive…”

She leaned forward intently as they again reran the tongue of flame shooting out of the tunnel that still looked to him like a tongue of flame. Though he couldn’t stop his own reaction, she didn’t lean away when the burst of flame shot toward them.

“Nope. Not enough. A pair of the FAB-500s, a full tonne of bomb, or a quad of the 250s. Same-same. That matches. No, Mike,” she turned back to him as if the conversation was no longer one-sided. “That’s not fire. It’s enough explosive to cave in a whole section of the tunnel. Maybe even— Oh, wait, that’s only what came out this end. It’s a tunnel, so call it two metric tonnes, as half shot toward Russia. Bet that surprised the living daylights out of them at the other end. The Roki Tunnel is almost four kilometers long, we need Jeremy or Miranda to run the calcs. The overpressure of the blast wave traveling as high as Mach 4 and compressing a four-kilometer-long tunnel of air would be nothing short of catastrophic.”

“Going to be closed a while?”

Holly snorted. “Easier to dig a new tunnel than recover that mess. The last time it was damaged, it took them two and a half years to fix, and that was merely a bit of shelling at one end, not a deep blast like this one.”

Flames continued to pour out the near end, but now rose like a fire instead of shooting out like an explosion.

It cut off abruptly when the tunnel end collapsed into a pile of rubble and the conflagration became trapped inside. The contained heat would melt or fracture whole sections of the interior, causing more cave-ins and leaving what remained unstable. It would be easier and safer to cut a fresh tunnel.

“I’ll be buggered,” Holly whispered in wonder. “He did it.”

That’s when Mike recalled the look between Max and Holly as they observed the abandoned Air Georgia planes. Combined with the technology used on the Unmanned Little Bird that had attacked the Karlstad…

Mike laughed aloud.

“What?”

“Général Pierre Vachon. Remember he was still there at the end, when we got back to the conference in Reykjavik.”

“Sure, he debriefed us to make sure all the strings were tied into a knot no mere mortal soul could ever unravel. And I thought the Australian military’s methods were convoluted. I bow to the NATO masters of changing reality to keep peace.”

“Right,” Mike nodded. “I also heard him in the bar asking Jeremy all about the AACUS unit. It’s a hundred-pound plug-and-play box that turns a normal helicopter into an autonomous remote controlled one like the one that attacked the Swedish ship. Think maybe he helped Georgia slip one into an old 737 along with those bombs you mentioned?”

Holly looked from him to the screen, and began grinning like a fool.

“I’d guess that no one died crashing that plane. And I’d wager both NATO and Georgia are very glad to have that particular passage well plugged.”

If they moved quickly, Georgia would be able to push through South Ossetia before Russia could reinforce the area using the much slower capabilities of an airlift. And it was winter, the tortuous Roki Pass that twisted over the Caucasus Mountains almost a full mile above the tunnel would still be snowbound for months to come. Plenty of time to fortify that as well.

Holly slung her arms about his neck and plastered a hard kiss of pure joy on him. “Madder than a passel of baby dingoes, but they bloody well did it.”

They had.

And maybe they’d found what he’d been missing: hope.

If Georgia stood against the Russian bear, others might fight its expansion as well. This one act would ripple from Georgia to Sweden, leaving no one untouched. He and Holly held hands as they turned back to watch the broadcast.

Hope. Even a glimmer went such a long way.

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