Anvil

by Dirk Patton

  Jessica caught her breath when the last word went through her head. Mark? No, it wasn’t possible. With an internal groan, she forced herself to acknowledge that it was possible. And if it was Mark, that meant she was the leak. But what had she told him, if anything?

  Their relationship was relatively young and still in the phase that was ruled by physical passion. She went to sleep each night thinking about the things he did to her, let her do to him, and woke up with a smile on her face. But what had she told him? It was hard to remember, difficult to separate the things she had said when the majority of their encounters were limited to heart pounding sex.

  Setting aside their trysts and focusing, she felt a hot flush of guilt when she remembered having made off the cuff comments to Mark about her work. She had told him the general area that Major Chase was in south of Mountain Home, and a short time later the Russians had been searching for him in precisely that area.

  Thinking back, she remembered several other little bits of information she’d shared. None of them had been specific, but certainly were enough to compromise Major Chase’s escape. Guilt turned to anger, burning until there was a ball of white hot fury in her chest. Her suspicions weren’t proof, but the seed of doubt had been planted in her head.

  “Start working on getting in.”

  Jessica was so wrapped up in her thoughts about Mark that she was startled when Lieutenant Hunt spoke directly behind her. She jumped in her seat and let out with an involuntary squeak of fright, drawing the attention of everyone in the room.

  “Are you alright, Petty Officer?” Hunt asked, taken aback by her reaction.

  “Yes, sir. I’m fine. Was just lost in thought and didn’t hear you walk up. Sorry, sir. I’ll get on it right away,” she said, lowering her head and concentrating on not meeting any of the eyes that were looking at her.

  Working quickly, she began looking for a back door around the password prompt. She knew it would be there, was confident she’d find it. Once she did she would be able to start working on defeating the layers of security that were almost certainly in place to protect the new satellite.

  Jessica worked for several minutes, but was distracted. Thoughts of Mark tumbled through her head and the pain of her suspicions gnawed at her like a cancer. Finally, she sighed, acknowledging she was too distracted at the moment to be trying to hack into a heavily secured system. Knowing there was only one thing she could do, she secured her terminal and walked over to where Lieutenant Hunt was wrapping up a phone call.

  “Sir, can we speak in private?” Jessica asked when he replaced the handset.

  He looked momentarily surprised, then nodded. Standing, he led the way to a small, secure conference room and closed the door behind them. He took a seat at the head of the table, but Jessica remained standing, staring at a large map of the western hemisphere that was attached to the far wall.

  “Petty Officer?” Hunt prompted after several moments of uncomfortable silence.

  Jessica turned and he could see the moisture in her eyes. Moving slowly, she took a seat at the opposite end of the table and began telling him about the call from Major Chase and what she’d done since receiving the information. He listened attentively, letting her speak without interruption.

  “This isn’t good,” he breathed when she was done. “Is there anything else you need to tell me?”

  “No, sir. That’s all of it.”

  “Stay put. Don’t move,” he said, standing and walking out of the conference room.

  He closed the door behind him and since there were no windows looking into the working area of the unit, a security feature, Jessica was left feeling as if she were already in prison. It was close to five minutes before Hunt returned, a legal pad and pen in hand.

  “Here,” he said, placing the items on the table in front of her. “I want you to write down everything you just told me. Don’t leave anything out. There’s someone from NIS on the way to talk to you.”

  He was referring to the Naval Intelligence Service. Jessica nodded, picking up the pen after wiping tears from her eyes. Hunt looked like he wanted to say something else, but after a long pause left the room, pulling the door softly shut.

  23

  The BTR slowly wheeled around the base of a large hill, bouncing over mounds that weren’t much smaller than the one we were using for cover. I didn’t think the driver or gunner had spotted us yet as there wasn’t any fire coming our way, but it was probably only a matter of time. I took a couple of seconds to glance over the men around me, hoping someone had something capable of penetrating the Russian vehicle’s armor. I didn’t really expect to get that lucky, and I didn’t.

  Scrambling through the dirt, shoving legs and feet out of my way, I moved to where I could get a look at the BTR’s supporting ground troops as well as the main body of advancing enemy. The news wasn’t good. We were cut off. The only good news here was that it looked as if Dutch had gotten the main body of the company out of the area just in time.

  Mortars were still falling around us. Fortunately, they didn’t have us zeroed. They were close enough to make us duck and press our bodies against the ground, but they weren’t close enough for us to be taking shrapnel. Yet. It was only a matter of time before the Russians began making adjustments and dropped one right in the middle of us.

  The two Rangers had spread apart and were set up to start sending defensive fire. They were holding off as long as possible, not wanting the BTR to spot us and open up with its 30 mm canon. The Corporal and surviving Private were sheltering with one of the Rangers while the Apache pilot worked to stop the blood flowing from his gunner’s leg wound.

  More Russians were approaching than I could count. We needed artillery and air support or we weren’t going to last more than five minutes. Keeping my head down, I dialed in the channel for the artillery battery. The fire mission I’d called in a few minutes ago had stopped, and I needed these guys back in the battle.

  After several unanswered calls, I cursed and switched to the frequency I’d heard the Air Force using. The channel was flooded with orders being issued and pilots shouting over screaming engines. I broke in, transmitting a distress call. It took several attempts before a calm voice with a heavy Georgia accent answered, asking me to identify myself.

  Turning to the Corporal, I grabbed his arm and shouted to be heard over the blast of a detonating mortar bomb that was way too close for comfort.

  “What Company are you with?”

  “Alpha Company, third platoon,” he shouted back.

  I relayed this info over the radio, and requested immediate air support to our east and south. I was told to “stand by” and screamed that we didn’t have time to wait. A mortar dropped on the top of the hill screening us from the Russians, the blast deafening and stunning us. Dirt and rocks rained down, covering everyone in a thick layer of dirt.

  Ears ringing, I looked around and saw the Apache pilot sitting up. He had thrown his body across the gunner’s face to protect it from the dirt cascading down. He paused when he saw the man’s eyes, reaching out to find the pulse in his neck. He didn’t find one, looking up and shaking his head when he saw me watching.

  The Private chose that moment to break, leaping to his feet and running into the open. He was heading west, running hard, panic lending wings to his feet. A hundred yards away was a short bluff overlooking a narrow channel that had been carved by water during rainstorms. I had already seen it, and dismissed it as crossing that much open ground was suicide.

  He had covered a third of the distance before the Russians saw him and swung a machine gun in his direction. The gunner tracked him for several steps, the bullets striking the ground all around him. But none of them hit and he kept running. He was two thirds of the way to safety, and I was starting to think he might actually make it.

  There were three loud, rapid reports from the BTR, smoke swirling around the muzzle of its canon before the wind whipped it away. The three shells arrived on target in fast succes
sion. An area the size of a small house disappeared in the blasts and I lost sight of the fleeing man.

  The wind was freshening and quickly cleared the dust and smoke. I looked for the Private, but couldn’t find him in the churned soil. There were a couple of things that could have been body parts, or maybe they were just rocks, but he was gone. I didn’t feel sorry for him because his panic induced sprint had given our precise location to the Russians. A moment later there was more firing by the BTR and shells began tearing up the ground all around our hill.

  The blasts were brutal, the mortar drawing in tighter until we were completely bracketed. There was a scream to my left an instant after a particularly close strike from one of the BTR’s shells, but I wasn’t about to raise my head off the ground to see who had been hit.

  The ringing in my ears was subsiding and I thought I could hear a voice in my earpiece over the near constant crump of exploding munitions. Pressing it tighter, I listened, relief flooding over me when the radio call was from a pilot that had been redirected to my location.

  “… pop smoke and call it.” I heard.

  The pilot wanted me to mark my position with a smoke grenade so he knew where to avoid as he came in. But that was a problem as I didn’t have one. I turned and shouted, coughing from the thick, acrid smoke produced by the exploding shells that had us pinned down. No one had one.

  “No smoke,” I shouted into the radio, lifting my head for half a second to get a look at the BTR. “We’re pinned down three hundred meters due north of the BTR.”

  The pilot told me to hold on and a few seconds later a pair of A-10s roared directly over our position. The lead one was already firing and as they banked away there was a large explosion from the direction of the Russian vehicle. Poking my head around I breathed a sigh when I saw it burning furiously.

  “Good shooting,” I shouted. “Now, to my east, half a klick. Get that fucking mortar and I owe you a beer.”

  This time I didn’t see the Warthogs until the sound of their guns firing helped me spot them. Their grey paint scheme blended well with the heavy clouds, hiding them from sight. The ground along the advancing Russians erupted, captured Hummers as well as infantry being shredded by the heavy slugs.

  The pair of jets banked away, dropping lower to stay close to the safety of the ground. They were turning, aligning for another strafing run when the trail of an air-to-air missile streaked in from the west. It was traveling almost impossibly fast, the lead pilot standing his aircraft on its wing and turning, trying to evade. But the missile was locked on and homed in, destroying the A-10 and sending flaming wreckage scattering across the terrain.

  The second jet changed course, turning away from the fireball that marked the grave of the first one. He jinked hard when a shoulder fired anti-aircraft missile screamed skyward from the rear of the Russian lines. The pilot dropped so low I was losing sight of the plane as hills and bluffs blocked my view, finally disappearing completely from sight. I didn’t see an explosion, so hoped he’d been successful in evading the missile.

  The Mortar had stopped firing and for the moment all we had to worry about was rifle and light machine gun fire. The shout I’d heard was the Ranger on the left and when I checked on him he was dead. A piece of shrapnel had pierced his chest. The Corporal was huddled behind the corpse, but at least he had his weapon up to cover that flank.

  Ahead, the BTR still burned and I could make out several bodies on the ground, but there were still nearly fifty Russians on foot that were pushing in on us. They had set up a couple of machine guns on the tops of hills and were using them to hose down our hiding spot while the rest of them dashed forward.

  The one surviving Ranger was firing, picking his targets, and dropping a running enemy with almost every pull of the trigger. I slapped the Corporal on his helmet and told him to start shooting. As he began firing, I pulled the rifle and spare magazines off the dead Ranger and tossed them to the Apache pilot. His right arm was broken, the hand dangling uselessly, but he pulled the rifle up to his left shoulder and joined the fight.

  The Russians kept advancing. Slowing as they drew inside a hundred and fifty yards and our fire became more accurate, but we didn’t stop them. To the west, Apaches had shown up and were harassing the larger force. But the Russians called in their own helicopters to counter and soon our air support was driven off, outnumbered three to one.

  They brought the machine gunners closer, first one then both opening up and putting out much more accurate fire due to the reduced range. The Corporal was killed when he raised up to change magazines, several slugs ripping his throat and chest open. That left one of the Rangers, an injured helicopter pilot and me.

  Behind us the battle was picking up. The rate of fire and the sounds of large caliber canons was drawing closer. I tried several times to use the radio, hoping for some artillery support, but it wasn’t working. The Ranger was also equipped with a comm unit that wasn’t working. The Russians were jamming the airwaves, disrupting our communications.

  On the horizon to the west an aerial dog fight was taking place between two large flights of helicopters. They were too far away for me to see much more than a basic outline and I couldn’t tell who was getting the worst of it. Not having time to watch, I focused on the approaching Russians, carefully picking targets.

  The surviving Ranger and I were finding an enemy soldier with almost every shot, but we weren’t firing very often. Machine gun fire was forcing us to stay behind cover, each getting to spot a target only when there was a lull in the incoming suppressive fire. The Apache pilot had settled for holding the rifle at the ready for when the Russians overran our position.

  Mortar fire resumed from the main body of the advance, and they damn near had us zeroed. The second shell that dropped rang my bell. The only good news was that its shrapnel missed all three of us. I felt like I was wrapped in heavy gauze, my senses dulled from the concussion of the blast and felt more than heard the beat of a rotor as a helicopter suddenly appeared behind me.

  Spinning, I began firing at the aircraft when I recognized a Russian Havoc attack helo. But, it’s well armored and my rifle bullets did nothing. The Apache pilot was screaming something at me that I couldn’t understand as he held the trigger down and emptied his rifle at the new arrival. His first couple of rounds were deflected off the ballistic windscreen, then the recoil from full auto lifted his rifle’s muzzle up and to the side, sending the remaining fire flying harmlessly off target.

  The Havoc just hung there, weapons staring back at us. It was no more than fifty yards away and we’d be dead before our brains even registered that it had fired a rocket or canon. With nowhere to run and nothing to effectively fight back, I let my rifle drop as thoughts of Katie ran through my head.

  Not the infected Katie, but the girl I’d married. I guess this was my life passing before my eyes. Not all of it, just the best part. The part I’d spent with her.

  24

  Jessica Simmons was angry. And frightened. But mostly she was pissed off. Waiting in the conference room as ordered by Lieutenant Hunt, she was apprehensive about what was coming. In less than ten minutes a Commander from Naval Intelligence had arrived with four large Marines in tow. He had walked into the room as the Marines took up positions to prevent anyone from entering or leaving.

  Jessica leapt to her feet and came to attention when he walked in. He looked at her with hooded eyes and tossed the legal pad she had used to write out her confession onto the polished table top.

  “I’m Commander Tillman,” he said in a somber tone. “Take a seat, Petty Officer.”

  He sat at the head of the table and began reading from the pad. Jessica lowered herself into a chair at the opposite end, back perfectly straight and hands folded in her lap. Tillman quickly read through the four, hand-written pages, then re-read them at a slower pace.

  “We have a problem, Petty Officer,” he said, pushing the legal pad to the side and leaning forward with his arms resting on the conf
erence table.

  “Yes, sir. We do,” she replied, meeting his accusing gaze.

  “You realize I have enough here already to refer you to NCIS for charges of espionage and treason.”

  Jessica was stunned into silence. This wasn’t what she’d expected. Sure, she’d spoken out of turn, revealing sensitive information. But treason? Espionage? She wasn’t the spy!

  “I’m not a spy, sir!” She said through clenched teeth. “I acknowledge I’ve made a mistake, but I’m not the one talking to the enemy.”

  “Semantics, Petty Officer. Revealing classified information to anyone not authorized to receive that information is a serious offense. And this is not a grey area. It’s very black and white, and with your clearance level you are very well aware of that.”

  “Sir, I’m more concerned with the information that has and is being relayed to the Russians. That’s why I came forward.”

  “You mean the information that you provided?”

  Tillman looked at her with raised eyebrows and a lump began to form in her stomach.

  “Yes, sir,” she answered, breaking eye contact and looking down at her hands for the first time.

  “What else have you told the Russians about?”

  “What else?” Jessica’s head snapped back up, her mouth open in surprise. “I haven’t told the Russians about anything! I made a mistake in talking about something I shouldn’t have, and that’s all it was. A mistake!”

  “A mistake. Is that how you’d categorize your relationship with Chief Petty Officer Hiram? A relationship that is clearly inappropriate and prohibited by Navy regulations?”

  Jessica sat staring at the man, stunned by the direction this was going. She alerts her CO to a breach in security and the possible dissemination of information to the enemy and this guy is sitting here talking about an inappropriate sexual relationship?

  “Sir, if you want to charge me with something, call me a lawyer and get on with it. I thought the bigger issue here would be the fact that it appears we have someone feeding intel to the enemy.”