by Tom Clancy
“No, I don’t believe that. I think… I think you are attracted to me.”
“You’re a sick bastard.”
“No, I think you are attracted to me because I have control over you. And you like that. You are always in control. And it’s so hard, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be better to let me take care of everything? Maybe we can work together. Maybe there’s still hope for you and I.”
She rolled her eyes and thumbed off the call.
But she was trembling, visibly trembling. He was under her skin again, coursing through her veins like a poison.
She wanted to kill him.
Because maybe… he was right.
“We’ll split up and flank them,” said Black Bear over the radio. He looked up at Sergeant Raymond McAllen. “I’ll need you guys up top.”
McAllen nodded, but he had other plans.
Sergeant Rule had gone to another back door and had spotted a chopper on the ground, just behind the fire crew’s garage. The pilot and co-pilot were still inside, the rotors spinning. McAllen wasn’t sure if they were having a technical problem or just waiting to pick up troops, but he didn’t care. All he saw was an enemy bird worth capturing and taking back into enemy territory to pick up that fighter pilot.
Better to fly in with a big red star tattooed on their butts instead of a bull’s-eye.
But he was still torn between helping out these SF guys and the mission.
Oh, damn, he had to go with the mission; it came down from The Man himself.
He had to do… what he had to do. The apologies would come later, if these guys made it out.
“Khaki, you think you can fly that thing?”
The pilot made a face. “Don’t insult me. If it’s got a rotor, I can fly it.”
“All right,” McAllen said, eyeing the entire group. “We make a run for the garage. I don’t think they can see us from this angle. Then from the garage we move to the bird.” McAllen looked once more at Khaki. “Will a couple of holes in the canopy be a big deal?”
“Don’t chance that. Just show ’em a grenade and get ’em to open up.”
“All right then. Palladino? Gutierrez? You set up outside to cover.”
The sniper and medic nodded.
“Let’s go!”
During the 1970s there was a secret military research facility near Leningrad, where according to some former Soviet chemical weapons scientists Kolokol-1 was developed. The drug took effect within a few seconds and left victims unconscious for two to six hours.
In 2002, Chechen terrorists took a large number of hostages in an incident known as the Moscow theater siege. Kolokol-1 was used against them; however, large doses of the drug might have contributed to the deaths of more than one hundred of the eight hundred hostages.
Intelligence gathered from Russian Federation defectors between 2018 and 2020 indicated that the Russians had made further refinements to the incapacitating agent in order to make it “more safe,” though they had thus far not used it against civilian populations.
Consequently, Vatz felt a deep sense of dread as he and Captain Godfrey stepped over the soldier they had killed with the grenade and headed down to the ground floor of the town hall, where they found the mayor and half a dozen other town leaders lying on the floor, a beer can-size canister still emitting gas beside them.
They checked for pulses. “Still alive over here,” said Godfrey, voice muffled through his mask.
“Here, too.”
“Looks like they’re hitting them where they find them with small concentrations.”
“Good. We may not need our masks outside.”
They hustled out of the building, rushed around to the corner, both slamming themselves against the wall as two Spetsnaz troops wearing masks rounded the opposite corner themselves.
Vatz caught the first one with his rifle, rounds stitching up the soldier’s armor and reaching his head.
But the second troop was already firing, his rounds drumming into Vatz’s armored chassis and knocking him off his feet.
Captain Godfrey stormed forward, unleashing a vicious salvo, drawing within a couple meters of the guy until the Russian went down, blood spraying inside the mask.
With his chest sore from all the fire, the wind still knocked out of him, Vatz pushed himself up on his elbows, blinked hard.
Just as Captain Godfrey sank to his knees, then fell forward, his rifle clacking to the frozen pavement.
Wrenching off his mask, Vatz got shakily to his feet and staggered forward, reaching the captain. He rolled Godfrey onto his back, removed the mask.
“Captain… sir…”
Vatz undid the quick release straps of Godfrey’s armor, tossed the vest aside, saw the two bullet holes in the captain’s neck, another just under his earlobe.
He checked the captain for a carotid pulse, got one: weak and thready but there.
“Band-Aid, this is Bali, over?”
The team’s senior medical sergeant, Jac Sasaki, answered, his voice tense, gunfire echoing behind him. “Bali, I can hardly hear you, over?”
“I need you here, south side town hall. Berserker Six is down, over.”
“What? I can’t hear you.”
“Berserker Six is down!” Vatz repeated his location.
“Roger that! On my way!” cried the medic.
Vatz switched channels to call Warrant Officer Samson. “Black Bear, this is Bali, over.”
“Bali, this is Black Bear, make it quick!”
“Berserker Six got hit. He’s still alive. I say again, Berserker Six was hit. Got Band-Aid on the way.”
“Roger that, Bali. I’ll notify Zodiac Six and coordinate with him. Looks like they’re spreading out now, some heading for the neighborhoods. We need to take out as many as we can, right here, right now, before they all turn into snipers, over.”
“Roger that, and they’re using gas. Looks nonlethal, over.”
“Yeah, what they call nonlethal just kills you slower. Tell you what. You stay put. I’ll send over a truck.”
“Roger that, standing by. Bali, out.”
Vatz checked Godfrey’s neck again for a pulse, put his ear to the man’s mouth, listening.
They wouldn’t need Band-Aid now.
He swore, and dragged Godfrey’s body to the side of the building.
The guy was a good captain, not the usual token officer sent to do his time with an ODA, then go on to lead brigades. He’d really wanted to learn. And hell, he wasn’t even thirty years old yet.
Band-Aid called on the radio to say he was almost there. Vatz didn’t stop him. They’d pair up, get down in the alley between the town hall and another office building, and remain there until Black Bear’s truck arrived.
The sounds of whomping rotors kept Vatz tight to the wall. He looked up, saw one of the civilian birds banking overhead at just two hundred feet.
Just behind it came one of the Ka-29s, narrowing the gap, its four-barreled machine gun blazing until the civilian bird’s tail rotor was chewed apart by 7.63 mm rounds, its engine beginning to smoke, fuel leaking from its tanks.
But then a glorious sight from the ground: a Javelin missile rose to cut across the blue midday sky, its exhaust plume trailing.
Before Vatz could fully turn his head, the Ka-29 burst apart, the fireball so close that Vatz knew he had to get out of there. He shoved arms beneath Godfrey’s armpits and dragged the captain’s body toward the back of the building to escape the secondary explosions.
Good thing he did. The debris was already crashing down along the wall, and just as the larger parts of the helo’s fuselage hit with echoing concussions and multiple booms, Band-Aid hustled up and dropped down to the captain.
The medic was a Japanese-American with a sparse beard who never seemed relaxed, always “on.” He dropped his medical bag, about to get to work. “How long has he been unconscious?”
“He’s dead.”
“Aw, hell. I liked him.”
“Just move up front
, look for Black Bear’s truck. They’re coming for us.”
“You got it, Sergeant.”
Vatz glanced once more at the fallen captain. And once again, it was always somebody else.
Cursed? Lucky? He didn’t want to think about it anymore. He wanted to close his eyes and sleep.
And for just a second, he did just that.
There in the darkness of a dark, damp alley in Moscow lay his old friend Zack with a gaping bullet hole in his head.
Zack’s eyes snapped open. “Vatz, man, it’s not so bad here. If you want, we could hang out.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re just delaying the inevitable. Those boys from the Tenth probably won’t get here in time. Maybe you’ll weaken this recon force, but once their BMPs come rolling down, you guys are all dead. Unless, of course, you run for it.”
“We won’t leave these people.”
“I know. So I guess I’ll be seeing you soon.”
“Sergeant!”
Vatz took a deep breath, heard the sound of an engine.
“Sergeant?” cried Band-Aid.
Vatz snapped awake with a chill. He immediately hoisted the captain in a fireman’s carry, then rushed around the corner, toward the street, where a pickup truck was waiting.
TWENTY-NINE
Sergeant Raymond McAllen, Sergeant Scott Rule, and Khaki rushed up to the idling Ka-29. McAllen held up the grenade, as Khaki had suggested.
Meanwhile, Rule was on the other side of the helo, pointing his weapon at the co-pilot on the other side of the canopy.
Both pilots were in their late fifties and seemed more annoyed than scared. They raised their hands, and McAllen motioned for the pilot to go to the back, open the bay door.
“You smell that?” cried Khaki. “That’s fuel.”
The pilot reached for the side door and inched it open, just as McAllen seized it, glanced up, and aimed his SIG P220 pistol, screaming in Russian, “Don’t move!”
With a gun to his head, the pilot was most accommodating, and McAllen climbed up into the helo, took the pilot’s sidearm from his holster, then motioned him back toward the cockpit.
“Something’s wrong with this helo,” hollered Khaki.
McAllen ignored him for now. “Rule, get everybody else in here,” he ordered his assistant. “Khaki, come on up, get in the co-pilot’s seat. But I don’t think you’re flying.”
After ordering the co-pilot to turn over his sidearm, McAllen moved back, allowing Khaki into the cockpit. The co-pilot vacated his chair and slowly headed into the troop compartment, Khaki’s pistol trained on him until Rule got back inside and took over.
McAllen and Khaki donned headsets, then Khaki spoke quickly to the pilot in Russian, his language skills even better than McAllen’s. In fact, the two spoke so quickly that McAllen only picked up a word here and there.
“All right, he doesn’t care, he’ll fly us where we want to go so long as we don’t shoot them, but it’s no coincidence they were just sitting here.”
“How bad?”
“He says they’re having trouble with the gear. And there’s an electrical problem along with a fuel leak somewhere. Remember, these Russians have some new gear, but the old stuff is very old.”
“So we just got into a flying bomb.”
“Pretty much.”
McAllen lowered his voice, even though he didn’t need to. “Don’t tell the other guys.”
Khaki winked and said, “We’re screwed.”
“Less screwed than before. At least we got a ride now. How’s the fuel?”
“They filled it up before leaving Behchoko, but we’ll find out just how bad this leak is.”
McAllen spoke slowly to the pilot, asking him more about the fuel problem.
The pilot threw up his hands, shrugged.
Bastard wasn’t telling.
“It’s about a two-hour ride up to your pilot’s last known coordinates,” said Khaki. “We might make it there, but if we don’t refuel, this won’t be our ride home.”
“Just get us there. My CO’s working on the rest.”
Friskis, Gutierrez, Palladino, and Szymanski piled into the bird, and Rule shut the door behind them.
Then the assistant team leader rushed up, slapped a hand on McAllen’s shoulder, and shouted in his ear, “Do we have to take the co-pilot?”
“No, you’re right. Good call. Ditch him.” While Rule took care of that, McAllen ordered the pilot to take off.
The rotors began to kick up as Rule shoved the co-pilot outside, then slammed shut the door.
After jogging a few yards away, the co-pilot whirled around and raised his middle fingers.
“He’s not happy!” Rule cried.
“He’s lucky we didn’t shoot him,” added McAllen.
As the engine began to roar even louder, and the floor began to vibrate, McAllen grabbed onto the back of the pilot’s seat as the gear left the ground.
“This helo is a piece of crap!” shouted Rule.
McAllen smiled darkly. “But it’s all ours!”
While Khaki ordered the pilot to bank away and head north, McAllen wrestled with the idea that they could use the helo and its weaponry to assist the SF guys.
What a surprise that would be, seeing a Ka-29 swoop down to take out Spetsnaz infantrymen on the ground, not Canadians and Americans.
But they didn’t have the fuel, might need the weapons later on, and there was always the chance that they could be accidentally taken out.
So there it was. Despite the pure, unadulterated frustration, they would stick to the plan.
Of course, those Special Forces boys weren’t about to let him live down that decision. “Outlaw One, this is Black Bear, over!”
“Go ahead, Black Bear.”
“Is that you in that Russian helo, over?”
“Roger that. Sorry we couldn’t stick around for the cake, but I think your operators got it under control, over.”
“If this channel wasn’t being recorded, you know what I’d be telling you right now, don’t you?”
McAllen knew. And he’d probably say the same thing. “Understood. Outlaw One, out.”
“Don’t let it bother you, Sergeant,” said Khaki over the intercom. “Every player has his part.”
“Yeah, but you know, you can’t help but ask — what’s more important? One pilot? Or helping secure an entire town?”
“That’s not your question to answer.”
“No, but it’s still mine to ask.”
The driver of the pickup truck had introduced himself as Barry. He was three hundred and fifty pounds of flannel-clad Canadian hunter/firefighter, and he barreled down the street at sixty-plus miles per hour, with Vatz buckled into the passenger’s seat, Band-Aid jammed into the backseat.
Vatz had contacted the other four guys he had posted downtown, and they were already en route to the airport in another truck.
Meanwhile, some of Captain Rodriguez’s men were reconnoitering the roadblocks, while others attempted to fall back into the neighborhoods to see just where those Spetsnaz troops had moved. Rodriguez had said he’d already lost four men, and that he still hadn’t heard when the Tenth Mountain Division’s first troops would arrive from Grand Prairie.
They drove in silence for a minute, then Barry suddenly blurted, “This is like something out of a movie. I mean, this stuff doesn’t happen to folks like us.”
“Well, it does now,” said Vatz.
“I got a condo in Florida. What am I doing here?”
“Saving your town,” said Band-Aid.
“Speaking of which, I heard we destroyed all of their helicopters.”
“I didn’t hear that,” Vatz said.
“I also heard that a squad or two went off into the neighborhoods. They’re using gas.”
“What else did you hear?” asked Band-Aid.
“They shot down the two choppers we had up there.”
Vatz rubbed his eyes, and the tension in h
is shoulders began to loosen. “I saw one of our birds go down. But we also took out the helo that was after it.”
A crash and muffled thud made him snap up.
Suddenly, the truck was drifting to the left, cutting into the wrong lane and now racing toward a building.
Vatz glanced sidelong at Barry.
He’d been shot in the chest by a sniper, and blood had splattered all over the cab. A gaping hole had opened in the windshield.
Band-Aid was screaming that the round had missed him by a few inches. Most of the rear window was gone.
Before Vatz could grab the wheel, the truck plowed through the glass door and adjoining wall of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, cinder blocks and glass tumbling down onto the hood, crashing through the windshield and onto Vatz as he ducked, burying himself in the floorboard.
But the truck kept on moving, blasting through decks and counters until Vatz reached up through the debris on his lap and threw the gear into park, then switched off the engine.
“Jac, you all right?”
The medic came up from behind the seat. “I’m good. I’m good.”
Vatz lifted pieces of cinder block from his lap, opened his door, and forced himself outside, coughing.
Dust-filled beams of light shone in from the shattered entrance. With his rifle at the ready, Vatz moved shakily forward, along with Band-Aid.
“He’s out there, somewhere…”
“Only way to tell is to draw his fire,” said Band-Aid. “I’ll run across the street.”
“Hold up.” Vatz got on the radio to inform Black Bear what had happened.
“Too tied up now to send another truck, but I need you here! There’s a squad out there in the trees. Our snipers got them pinned down, but for how long I don’t know. We can’t move till we take them out. I need you here, over.”
“Roger that, on our way, out.”
Band-Aid frowned. “On our way?”
“Get back in the truck.”
“Damn, I like your style.” The medic rushed to the rear cab door, tugged it open, hopped inside.
Vatz yanked the driver’s door, reached in, and hauled Barry out of the seat. He dropped hard to the floor, and Vatz had to turn away. Sure, he’d seen his share of blood and gore, but all that blood and brain matter, coupled with the guy’s weight, was just too much.