The corridors were dark and the chemical’s glow near gone. They missed a turn and doubled back.
“I’m confused, Ma’am,” Censky said as they came to an intersection. “How did we get here, which way do we go?”
“Never mind what’s behind, we keep going this way,” Christine replied, pointing down a passageway. The four shuffled forward.
How did we get here, Christine asked herself, just how in hell did we get here?
~*~
Goddamn them, Val cursed inside, they just keep coming. The Russians were smarter now, combining methods.
She’d lost one position when the Russians used smoke—yes, Val cursed, smoke, even inside the tunnels’ stale air—to screen their movements and lay down a withering covering fire.
A second position went down when the Russians shot out the lights, then crawled up and jumped her soldiers as they did before.
A third fought the Russians back, but another soldier came back with one arm sliced to ribbons from a close-in bayonet fight.
Tampier was holding them off, barely, but still holding, in the personnel entrance. But Val knew that soon the Russians would have access to the side and connecting tunnels.
If they’re smart they’ll use them to infiltrate behind us, she reasoned, to find a seam and make their numbers tell.
~*~
Val still had twelve soldiers she used as the fire brigade, sending them to patch up breakthrough after breakthrough. But they were wearing down.
Of her original eighty-eight soldiers, she counted fifty-three fighting, some of them not whole. Six women lay in the makeshift intensive care ward, and four more bodies lay on the other side of that ward’s door.
By now CENTCOM, and surely the Joint Chiefs and the President, knew something was deadly wrong at Infernesk. By now some kind of relief force should be on their way.
They must be on their way. It was only a matter of time.
Get here, she thought, get here.
For the first time she let herself worry.
What if they don’t make it?
Chapter Eighteen
Level 1, “The basement”
Infernesk Munitions Depot
In the gloom the four women walked, rifles at the ready. Only a few of the tunnels’ emergency lamps worked, and those few turned what power aging Russian cold war emergency batteries or a sputtering, running-at-half-speed-lest-it-fail-completely generator could give into a fragile light. The chemical lights helped a little, but there were no bright spots, only some not quite as dark as others.
“This is not gonna be fun.”
“It hasn’t been fun yet.”
“Lugging all those wounded down to the next level is gonna be even less fun than this hasn’t been.”
“Whatever. The Major wants to fall back down to the next floor and we have to evacuate the wounded first. So we go back, give the medics the word, and get a couple of hours of carrying wounded instead of being shot at. Or dodging grenades. Or getting knifed. Be thankful you’re not on the front line.”
“What front line? They’ve worked their way into the side tunnels and vents and they’re all over the place. Two people over on the personnel entrance side got into it with them when they went back for more ammo.”
“We should be okay this far back.”
They each heard it, the faint but distinctive ping of the spoon-like handle spinning off an incoming grenade. They flattened, but the tight passage offered no place to hide. Two more bombs followed the first, then fire swept the hallway.
The Russians came around the corner, two covering, two checking the bodies. The rest remained behind.
“Got them. Shame. They were such pretty girls. Nice hair.”
“Grenades are not good for the complexion. “
“These four don’t care about complexions or hairstyles anymore.” He looked down at the bodies. “We should have taken them prisoner. We had them, we could have.”
“No prisoners, Captain Stanev’s orders.”
“Not the captain’s, Dimonokov’s.”
“How do you know?”
“The lieutenant back there. He said Dimonokov relieved Stanev; put him under arrest. Something about not being aggressive enough. Anyway, do you think our captain would send us on an infiltrate, search, and kill everybody mission like this?”
“It doesn’t matter who said it, we do it. Or maybe we end up like Captain Stanev.”
“Not me.”
“Or me.” They waved the squad forward.
~*~
Room by room, corridor by corridor, the Russians pushed Val’s garrison back. Each corner, each foot of tunnel cost both sides. Russians penetrated through side corridors and came in behind American positions. Cut off groups of Americans, trying to work their way back, struck down entire Russian assault squads from the rear. Americans and Russians alike fired each other’s weapons, some to deceive the other, some because they took weapons and ammunition from the dead, Russian or American, to supplement or replace their own.
Val’s fifty-three fighters of several hours earlier quickly shrank to forty-one. From what she could tell, there were at least ten times that number of Russians pushing her back.
She leaned against a corridor wall and drained the last drops of water from her canteen, exhausted from leading the latest counterattack against a breakthrough. As the noise of someone approaching behind her cut through the fatigue, she and her small group of messengers went flat into the shadows, rifles trained on the noise.
“Halt! Who goes there?”
“Sullivan and Grimshaw. Medics.”
“Come forward,” said Val as she stood up. The two grimy soldiers walked listlessly into the small circle of light, their eyes on the floor.
“We’re ready to drop to the next level. What’s the status of evacuating the wounded?”
They offered no answer.
“I said, ‘what’s the status of the evacuation?’”
Val saw one of them begin to shake, then drop to his knees and begin to sob. His buddy bent over and put his arm over his shoulder.
“It’s okay, Sully, it’s okay. We couldn’t have helped. You know we couldn’t have.”
“Will someone tell me what in hell is going on?”
Grimshaw pulled out his canteen and forced Sullivan to drink. “We went forward to check out some wounded on the other side of the level,” he said as he stuffed the canteen back in its carrier and stood. “When we got back to the infirmary everybody was dead. Grenade fragments. Multiple bullet wounds. The bastards hit them; they didn’t have a chance.”
Steady, Macintyre, Val told herself, steady. They were out of the fight anyway. Most of them would have died soon without medical attention. It’s not the end of the world. Don’t let it throw you, that’s just what they want. Keep going, keep up the front.
Christine and the four soldiers she’d taken with her to rig the warhead arrived completely unnoticed.
“Mission accomplished, Ma’am. We rigged the demo in my area like you wanted. Our tech and two walking wounded are guarding it.” She saw the two medics. “Hey, Sullivan, what’s Sergeant Hawthorne’s status? The other aidman said she should recover if you guys kept her stabilized.”
Again Sullivan’s shoulders heaved.
“Lieutenant Tampier,” Val said quietly, trying to take control, “Sergeant Hawthorne didn’t make it.”
Christine’s head swiveled first toward Sullivan, then at Grimshaw. “But you guys said...”
“Nobody made it,” wailed out Sullivan. “Nobody made it! They’re all dead, all dead! They came in and killed them! And we weren’t there to stop it!”
“Sully,” pleaded Grimshaw.
“All right, enough.” Val commanded. As much as she hurt she knew she was still in charge, still responsible. She still had a mission. Christine stood white-faced, the realization beginning to sink in. “Tampier, you get back to your people on the personnel entrance side and get ready to leapfrog them back.
You get a detachment to clear the way in front of you to the entrance to the next level. Have them check the freight elevator shaft very closely. We put it out of commission, but the Russians may have infiltrated. Begin movement back in twenty minutes. Got it?”
Christine just stood there.
“Snap out of it! Got it, Lieutenant!?”
Christine Tampier shoved the horror into a closet in her mind and locked it away.
“Yes, Ma’am. Got it, Ma’am. Wilco.”
She looked at her watch as she and the soldiers who’d helped her rig the mechanical ambush cautiously worked their way through the side tunnels. Her mind wandered as they closed on the thin line of soldiers ahead. Time has a way of getting away from you underground, she thought. Life has a way of slipping away.
A few steps and a few minutes later she was giving orders to fall back. As the security team passed her to clear the way in front of them, Christine settled into the business of managing the retreat.
~*~
“Go, go, go!!” Christine bellowed. “Down the stairs, let’s move, people!” She shoved all but the four women who covered their descent to the next level through the doorway. Satisfied they were clear she dug her whistle from her pocket and blew it twice. The next instant the tunnel rang as six Claymore mines detonated, then four soldiers came clomping through the dark.
“How close are they?”
“Very, Ma’am, but the Claymores will make them think twice.”
“Let’s get down there, then.”
As they ran down the stairs, Christine wondered how long it would take the Russians to force their way in. Her soldiers had disabled and booby-trapped the personnel and freight elevators. The stairway she was on was mined and every rifle they owned trained on its entrance. But they’d done the same above, and now the Russians owned it. Along with all those soldiers lost.
Got to hold, Christine thought, got to. We just got to hold.
Chapter Nineteen
Infernesk Munitions Depot
The exhausted soldiers of First Company, Special Security Regiment 23 heard the hum in the sky, but could not pinpoint its source. First it came from the south, then very quickly it seemed to be everywhere above them.
Then they saw the planes.
Troop bay
Aircraft C6006
Vicinity Infernesk
The jumpmaster checked that his own safety line was secure and opened the side door of the lumbering C17’s troop hold. The cold blast of air washed over him and down the cavernous compartment, chilling the waiting lines of Army Rangers with their parachutes’ static lines hooked to the steel cable overhead.
He put his head out the door, into a two-hundred-mile per hour slipstream, and looked down.
Village of Infernesk. Castle Infernesk. Farm fields. Woods.
A smoldering depot.
He pulled his head, felt the plane slow. A light glowed on the cabin wall—the pilot had picked up the guidance beacon on the ground.
The engines’ roar made hearing impossible, but the jump sequence mandated that he yell. He pushed the first Ranger forward.
“Stand in the door!”
Half walking, half waddling under the weight of parachute, combat gear, reserve chute, and rucksack lashed so it hung from his waist, a young soldier with camouflage grease paint on his face took his place in the door. His compatriots closed up behind him.
Over the door, a green light came on.
“Go!”
The first Ranger fell into open space.
“Go! Go! Go!
The jumpmaster shoved the remaining 171 paratroopers out as fast as they could shuffle their way forward.
Jumpmasters on four other C17s did the same.
Main gate
Infernesk Munitions Depot
Almost two miles outside of the depot’s main gate, six Apache helicopters rose like phantoms to just above treetop level as a jet-black USAF Special Operation C130 ‘Spectre’ aircraft climbed into a steep orbit. Seconds later, Infernesk Depot’s two guard towers disintegrated as the first volley of Hellfire missiles struck them. The second volley splintered what was left of the wooden barracks. In near panic, what was left of First Company took only a few seconds to clear the burning rubble and move into the open, sprinting back toward the central area buildings.
In the circling Hercules C130 ‘Spectre’ gunship, the Russians plainly showed up on the targeting console as red hotspots. Assured by Wolfe’s observers that all Americans were underground, the weapons station operator punched a button and loosed a stream of 7.62 mini gunfire. He thought the hotspots seemed to cover every square inch of the depot’s parade ground. Seconds later, so did the stream of mini gunfire, placing a bullet roughly every square inch.
Marshall Wolfe was through the depot’s wire before the C130’s engine noise had faded. Above him, the sky was filled with green nylon circles floating gently to earth.
~*~
Wolfe led the Rangers forward, bypassing pockets of resistance and leaving the depot’s outlying buildings for later, pushing his troops toward the central area. In the Russian command post, Wolfe and the lead squads found an unconscious and bloody Cpt. Karl Stanev, the outlet for Dimonokov’s rage, tied to a chair. Nearby was the Special Security aid station. Next to him was the body of a senior sergeant, three bullet holes in his chest. The nametag read ‘Steglyr’.
There was little the Ranger medics and surgeons could do for most of the Special Security casualties. Fueled by their chemical-laced bodies, wildfire infections had deteriorated beyond treatment.
Wolfe decided to postpone the search for Russian holdouts. While the Rangers secured the area around the headquarters and tunnel entrances, Wolfe shoved three companies of Ranger infantry down the two entrances. Like the rooms and alleyways of a city, the tunnels threatened to swallow up the American Rangers. With no information on the whereabouts of either force in the tunnel complex, it was maddeningly slow going.
Well trained in combat in built-up areas, the Rangers went carefully, feeling their way down without knowing the location of friendly or enemy forces. They did know, however, that once the Russians found themselves pinned between two forces, they might well decide to sell themselves dearly.
“Be cautious,” the officers advised their men as they left the light of the surface and descended into the tunnels’ darkness. “Be thorough, be sure.”
In the gloom of the passageways it was an unnecessary warning.
Level 1, “The basement”
On the second storage level, Val knew nothing of the Americans trying to find her and her soldiers. She knew only that another four of her garrison were down. The Russians pressed as hard as ever. Christine had been rendered unconscious for several minutes by another grenade blast. Over half of those still pulling triggers were walking wounded, patched up and put back into the line because there was no one to replace them. They were firing single shots now, low on ammo and exhausted after the days’ battles.
Two soldiers passed her, dragging a body.
“Who’s that?’
“Sergeant Stoinevy, Ma’am.”
“How bad?”
“She’s dead.” They tugged the body until they turned the corner.
She bit her lip, and though she’d never smoked, Val longed for a cigarette. Runners came and went with reports of casualties, ammo status, and ground lost, retaken and lost again. By marking on her sketch map Hite and Elmore helped Val keep track of who was where.
The map became a confusing swirl, the battle developing in a way she hadn’t anticipated. Everywhere her troops turned there were Russians. The only way out seemed down—and still they followed.
Down and out with our backs to the wall, thought Val. She felt panic tugging. She turned to her runners.
“You two take the map and hold court over there for a minute. Mark down what comes in. I need some space to think.”
It doesn’t make sense, Val puzzled. They should be orienting on finding the weapons,
not on eliminating us. She took a moment to quiet her mind. Then, from reports and from where they were taking the most casualties, Val pieced the puzzle together. Above ground the seamless web had absorbed the bulky shock of the Russians’ attack. Giving only when it had stretched too near breaking, the woven defensive lines had dissipated the enemy’s overwhelming strength. The Americans had concentrated, dispersed, and concentrated again, each concentration knocking their enemy off balance.
The same was true below ground, Val realized, at least initially. Although the Russians had punched through both the personnel and cargo entrances at the same time, the maze of passageways and rooms had siphoned off a squad here and a platoon there. The garrison concentrated, the Russians dissipated—and the result was a costly room-to-room advance. Yet as the Americans’ numbers dropped and they gave ground, the Special Security focused on where the fire was. If they were oriented on grabbing the nukes, then it should have been an easy matter for them to hold us off and seek out the storage areas, she told herself. That’s what I counted on, and we would have stung them until they bled dry.
But they hadn’t. Instead they were coming after the American, almost like the nukes didn’t matter. Almost like it’s personal.
“Bingo!”
“What, Ma’am?” Hite asked, looking up from the map. He noticed his commander was nodding to herself. “You need something?”
“Nope. Keep working.”
She sensed she’d locked onto the truth, and the realization shook her. It is personal—it’s us they’re after. And I fell for it. I’ve tried so hard to keep from losing I’ve lost sight of winning.
“Give me the map.” The check marks confirmed her read. Everywhere the Russians had gone, she had sent someone to block them. Damn. She took a deep breath. No more fighting a bunch of little, personal battles. It’s time to get back to the business of winning. I guess, Val said to herself, it’s time to start being a real bitch and get this show on the road. This time it would be different. This time it was her show, and hers alone.
The Best Defense Page 28