EndWar e-1

by Tom Clancy

  “I will take your suit,” said Pravota, wincing over his zipper cuffs.

  “She’s not offering,” snapped McAllen.

  “That’s right,” Halverson growled.

  McAllen turned back to her. “So, is this rescue everything you dreamed it would be?”

  She glanced away. “They killed everyone at my base. Killed my wingman. Killed this poor family who was trying to help me. Damn, Sergeant. If you didn’t pick me up, I would be dead by now. Don’t sell yourself too short.”

  “Thanks. I just, uh, I’m not thrilled by the prospect of two more hours of hiking.”

  “Me neither. And can I ask? Why are we dragging along this guy?” She flicked a dark glance in Pravota’s direction. “Why didn’t we leave him back at the chopper? Or just shoot him and be done with it.”

  “A POW’s a bonus in my book. And he’s an officer. Not sure my boys will ever get a crack at capturing an officer again.”

  She grinned crookedly. “I’m sorry I interfered in your little professional development project.”

  Her sarcasm stung. “Hey, relax. We’ll get you out of here.” McAllen leaned forward to brush snow from his boot.

  A shot rang out, punched into the tree trunk at his shoulder.

  He threw himself forward and cried, “Get down!”

  They were finally rolling into downtown Calgary, Ninth Avenue Southwest, and Staff Sergeant Marc Rakken signaled his rifle squad seated inside the Stryker to make their final gear checks.

  Navy SEALs already in the city had asked that at least one Stryker platoon enter Calgary Tower, a tall column of concrete supporting a huge, conical-shaped observation deck. The tower was the city’s most identifiable landmark, and it had been seized by several squads of Spetsnaz troops who were using it as an observation post.

  After all, the tower was famous for offering the best views of Calgary, and those Russians knew it’d only be a matter of time before someone entered to flush them out.

  And with no way to escape, they also knew they would be fighting to the death.

  As Rakken sat there, waiting for the platoon to pull up outside the tower, he nervously flexed his gloved fingers. It had been an exhaustingly long ride. With some shuffling after the bombs had gone off during their trip up 95, his platoon was now spread among three Strykers, down a squad, and certainly a little demoralized.

  Still, no more bombs had gone off after the initial ones, and their road march had proceeded without incident. Thorough searches of every vehicle had turned up nothing. Most of the officers were convinced that the bombs in question had been cleverly disguised as Stryker parts.

  Hassa and Appleman were on the intercom, discussing two civilian choppers that for some reason had been allowed to circle overhead, when Appleman suddenly broke off and said, “All right, Sergeant. We’re here. Get ready!”

  The Stryker rumbled to a halt, the ramp lowered, and Rakken and his men charged outside, onto the street, then up and onto the sidewalk—

  Where they were suddenly accosted by their company commander, Captain Chuck Welch, who was joined by a group of five civilians, two women, three men, all middle-aged and being fitted into body armor by two vehicle gunners from the master sergeant’s platoon. They each carried a heavy backpack.

  “Sergeant Rakken, these folks have just put down and it’s your job to get them up and into that tower.”

  “Yes, sir.” Rakken’s confused expression was hard to conceal. “But sir, they know we’re coming. Power’s been cut. No elevators. Got like eight hundred stairs to climb. They’ll probably gas us, drop grenades, and—”

  “You need to get them up top. Period. Do you read me, Sergeant?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We’re putting snipers in the building next door, see if we can take some of them out from there, lob some flash bangs and gas inside the deck. We’re going for a surgical removal here with minimal damage to the tower itself. Let me repeat: minimal damage. They’ve made that clear.”

  Rakken pursed his lips, gestured the captain away from the civilians. “Sir, what’s going on?”

  The captain sighed. “I got orders to get these folks up top and not destroy this beautiful landmark. I don’t know any more than you right now. Off the record? Take a look at these people. Geeks with backpacks, heading up into a tower heavily defended by Russians. Think they might be looking for something?”

  Rakken was no rocket scientist, but it didn’t take him more than a few seconds to blurt out the word: “Nukes?”

  Captain Welch gave him an ominous look. “They were circling overhead for thirty minutes before they put down. And they got carte blanche wherever they go. I asked for ID. They said they don’t have to show us anything. There was a JSF XO here to vouch for them.”

  “Damn.”

  “Good news is I’m issuing all of you MOPP 4 suits and Cross Coms, with access to a pair of small recon drones we’ll fly up each stairwell. They’ll walk point as you go up.”

  “Nice.”

  “Get your men over there, get on those masks and protective suits, and finish gearing up.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Captain Welch thrust out his hand. “Good luck, Sergeant.”

  Rakken shook hands, then his gaze swept up the tower, toward the top, reaching the impossibly high observation deck. He stood there a few seconds more, forgetting to breathe.

  Everything about this said: get those people up there, but you are expendable.

  Rakken had never felt more uncertain about an operation. But he couldn’t show that. “All right, Spartan team! Here’s what’s happening…”

  “Stay behind me!” shouted McAllen.

  “No, I see one right there,” cried Halverson. She knew that the next time that Spetsnaz troop behind the tree rolled out, she’d have him.

  And she wasn’t going to let Mr. Macho Marine rob her of a little payback.

  “Major, get your butt back here! We didn’t come this far to lose you now!”

  The Russian appeared, raised his rifle, and Halverson, who was armed with McAllen’s pistol, fired two shots, striking the Russian in the left cheek. He slumped. She ran—

  Right back behind McAllen’s position.

  “Jesus, lady!” he cried.

  “I ain’t no lady,” she shouted back. “Not today!” She dropped down at his side and said, “Two squads. I saw a few of them shifting to our flank.”

  “I know,” the sergeant said. Next to McAllen sat Pravota, who’d been gagged since he’d been screaming to the Russians after they’d fired their first shot.

  The rest of the Marines were out there, somewhere behind them, engaging more of the Russians. They must have been spotted by one of the chopper crews, who’d set down and dropped off their troopers.

  “Any chance of our ride coming a little early?” she asked him.

  “Yeah, right. Hold on.” He got on his radio, began talking to the others. Outlaw this guy, outlaw that guy. All Halverson wanted was to bail. Now. She’d drawn her blood, was ready to go home now.

  If it wasn’t too late.

  When he finished on the radio, he glanced sidelong at her and said, “We need to make a break for it. Ready?”

  She nodded.

  “Let’s go!”

  Major Alexei Noskov stood in the hatch of the BMP- 3K Rys, the reconnaissance version of the infantry vehicle equipped with a 30 mm gun and radar. His was the lead BMP of the entire battalion. And much to the chagrin of all the other officers, he’d insisted on riding at the tip of the spear.

  The other officers were afraid of him, aware of his contacts in Moscow, aware of his temper.

  Of his rumored insanity.

  He chuckled aloud as he glanced right toward the sun lowering on the horizon. He took in some meager warmth, then lifted his binoculars once again.

  The town of High Level stood just a kilometer away, with a pathetic roadblock strewn across the highway.

  Ignoring the order for communications silence he h
ad just given, he got back on the radio and cried, “Great soldiers of the Motherland, this is Werewolf. Tonight we expand our empire! Tonight we make Canada bow to Mother Russia!”

  He thrust his fist in the air, glanced back at the vehicle commander in the BMP behind him, who returned the fist.

  Good man. If he hadn’t, Noskov might’ve shot him.

  His smile grew even broader.

  Someone would write a history book about this battle. And Noskov would lean over that man’s shoulder, making sure NOSKOV was spelled correctly.

  “All right,” he said into the vehicle intercom. “When we draw close to the obstacle, we will shift to the embankment and let the engineers begin breaching operations.”

  “But, sir?” said the driver. “I thought you wanted us to blast on through. I thought you wanted the glory.”

  “Yes, but as I look at that obstacle now, I see a trap, not glory. The engineers will go in first.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you think me a coward?”

  “No, sir. And my girlfriend back home in St. Petersburg thanks you for this.”

  “I’m sure she does. Now pull over.”

  Noskov waved on the BMPs carrying the engineers, those great heroes and saints who would roll out a carpet stained with blood.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Sergeant Nathan Vatz had left six of the Canadian hunters in charge of the roadblock team, and they had done a remarkably fine job organizing and positioning the men.

  Once the Russian engineers pulled up in front of the obstacle and got out to inspect the area, they received some immediate Canadian hospitality.

  From the piles of snow lining the embankment there suddenly emerged more than two hundred local boys, armed with shotguns, 22s, and grenades given to them by Vatz’s team. These rural boys had about as much heart and attitude as any men on earth.

  This was their land. Their country.

  The grandfathers of these invading Russians had fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and now their descendants would be taught the same lesson — that sheer numbers and technological superiority will still not triumph over a foe trying to protect his home. Never underestimate sheer force of will and the heart and courage to win.

  Vatz stared through his binoculars from his position about a half kilometer west atop the roof of a small gas station, watching as the Canadians brought down about fifty Russians, killing many of them at point-blank range. It was like medieval carnage out there.

  Grenades dropped into open hatches.

  Buckshot blasted into red-nosed faces.

  And Vatz could almost hear “O Canada,” the national anthem, playing in his ears as several BMPs lit up, smoke and flames pouring from their hatches.

  But then some of the other Spetsnaz vehicles behind the engineering team made their move. The drivers floored it, rolling hard and fast to plow through the long piles of cars.

  As they approached, their gun tubes flashed and boomed, sending 100 mm HE-FRAG (high explosive fragmentation) rounds at the roadblock. Pieces of flaming derby car debris sailed into the sky, taking flight like NASCAR racers forced into the wall and tumbling wildly.

  The BMP gunners opened up with their machine guns, chewing into those patriotic and ferocious hunters, the drivers continuing on at top speed — doing exactly what Vatz expected they would when faced with the ambush.

  And they were in for an even bigger surprise.

  “You seeing this?” Beethoven asked him. “I think they got six, maybe seven BMPs! Those boys are hardcore!”

  “They’re doing one hell of a job, but it’s a one-way trip. They knew it. You could see it in their eyes when we left. But that’s what they wanted.” Vatz got on the radio, told his pair of snipers posted on the rooftops nearby to lend a hand.

  The cracks of thunder commenced. And for some of the Russians, God was a bullet.

  Hallelujah.

  Vatz checked in with Black Bear, who had taken the other half of Berserker team to the neighborhoods to join Zodiac team in flushing out the remaining snipers — no small task — and they most certainly needed more time, which was being bought by Vatz and his group of hell raisers.

  The majority of the local force had been given to Vatz to delay the oncoming battalion, though a handful of residents were scattered throughout the town and remained within their homes, all at the ready.

  It was, of course, imperative that Vatz’s team remain alive so they could be the eyes and ears of the 10th Mountain Division as their first elements arrived. Soon. He hoped.

  “All right, here we go,” said Vatz, resuming his surveillance. “Suicide run.”

  The first few BMPs had blown a pretty deep hole in the obstacle, with only about ten cars left in their way. Two drove up side-by-side and began ramming the pile.

  Impatience was a beautiful thing, and the Russians behind exhibited that perfectly. They made the obvious choice of taking the paths of least resistance on either side of the road, unwilling to wait for the first two vehicles to open the lane. Those frustrated drivers assumed that the snow couldn’t be very deep, that their vehicles would make it across that terrain and they could return to the road behind the stretch of cars. Why blow through all those vehicles when you could go around them?

  If the Russian engineers had survived, they would have cautioned those drivers not to veer around any enemy obstacle.

  But the engineers were dead. And the recon troops inside those lead BMPs would join them for shots of vodka in the afterlife.

  Two BMPs had broken off from the convoy, one heading left around the pile of cars, one heading right.

  “Just like you said, Vatz,” muttered Beethoven. “Just like you said.”

  Vatz tensed.

  And almost in unison explosions lifted beneath both vehicles, destroying the forward wheels and tracks and stopping them as the clouds of fire obscured the area.

  All right, the secret was out: both sides of the obstacle were mined. But this was no ordinary minefield.

  The next two BMPs trundled up, started to swing wider around their burning counterparts, wider and wider, believing they could arc so far around that they would avoid the field.

  Those Russian drivers didn’t realize that the mines were communicating with each other and literally hopping into alternate positions to repair the first two breaches and keep the enemy within the kill zone, no matter how far they drifted off. Each mine was capable of two-sided mobility and able to maneuver up to ten meters with each hop. They were all being carefully monitored by one of the weapons sergeants on Vatz’s team, who sat in the back of a pickup truck parked below, reading data on the computer.

  If the enemy managed to jam the signals between each mine, the system would enter autonomous response mode and maintain minefield integrity for several more hours.

  Either way, the Russians had stumbled upon a convoy’s worst nightmare: a self-healing minefield that could only be breached by a continuous number of suicide runs and the unloading of a significant cache of ordnance.

  ODA 888 and their crew of Canadians could never wipe out an entire Spetsnaz battalion. Not this gentle few. But they sure as hell would delay them.

  “Now we’ve really stirred up the hornet’s nest,” said Beethoven.

  “Yeah, that’s the scary part.” Vatz keyed his mike. “This is Bali, everybody get ready to move.”

  A series of explosions rose on both sides of the obstacle, as all of the BMPs that had moved in began rolling backward, away from the fields to fire their main guns into the ground.

  Showers of rock, snow, and dirt whipped into clouds that began to blanket the entire area, the rounds themselves bursting into brilliant fireballs that flashed like heat lightning within the clouds.

  Vatz sniffed and crinkled his nose over all that ordnance going off, a smell that reminded him of Moscow.

  There were fifty mines on either side of the cars, and it would take those Russians a while to detonate them all, so long as the mines kept shift
ing to repair breaches.

  Meanwhile, the entire battalion would come to a halt. While they were most likely prepared to engage in conventional minefield breaching operations by using mine plows and MICLICs (mine clearing line charges) attached to long ropes and fired over the minefield to create a breaching lane, these measures were ineffective against the team’s high-tech surprise.

  The Spetsnaz officers riding out there had to be mighty upset. Vatz smiled as he imagined them growing flush and cursing at their subordinates.

  “All right, this is it. Time to fall back to our secondary position,” he told his men. “Move out!”

  “Your NEST team in Edmonton has narrowed their search to the legislature building,” said General Amadou de Bankolé. “But my Enforcers Corps commanders tell me that another Spetsnaz battalion is heading up from Red Deer — and they will roll directly into the downtown area.”

  “I understand, General,” said Becerra. “And let me emphasize that we truly appreciate all of the assistance the European Federation has provided to us in Edmonton.”

  “You can thank us, Mr. President. But it’s not enough. My troops dropped in light. They’ve engaged the Spetsnaz in the city, but at least a company-size force remains in and around that legislature building. My troops are facing heavy sniper fire. Our first attempt to secure the building has already failed. Furthermore, if that battalion from Red Deer reaches the downtown area, my troops on the ground — and your NEST team — won’t have a chance. They need more time, and I don’t have enough assets in place.”

  “General, you may not like me, but I’ve admired you. I read one of your articles on Hannibal Barca, and I’m well aware of your reputation as a strategist. You’re not telling me you can’t do it, are you?”

  He snorted. “Of course not.”

  “Then what is it you have in mind?”

  Sergeant Raymond McAllen was muttering a string of epithets as he and Major Stephanie Halverson charged through the forest, working directly between Rule and Gutierrez, who were laying down fire to cover them.

  He wasn’t swearing over the fact that the Russians had landed and had ambushed them. He just couldn’t believe that he’d forgotten about Pravota. Now they’d lost their prized POW, who was probably running off to rejoin his comrades.