Escalation

by Peter Nealen

  The man studied me. “Where are the others?” he asked. His English, while accented, was clear and precise.

  “They’re waiting in the woods for me to make contact,” I said. “Just descending on a town that’s been surrounded by the EDC didn’t seem like a good idea. We might get taken for the bad guys if we did that.” The hackles were going up on the back of my neck as I anticipated another mortar barrage. They had to have drones up that could see this little palaver. “Now, can you either take me to your commander, or just shoot me and get it over with?”

  The bigger man said something in Slovak, and the smaller man replied quickly, without taking his eyes off me. “Very well, American,” he said. “Come with us.” He glanced at the trees, but none of the Nationalists were wearing NVGs, so he couldn’t see the rest of the team hunkered down in there.

  I didn’t glance back. Scott would hold their position. I still had my radio, though it was currently turned off. I could make contact if I had to.

  I just hoped that this went smoothly enough that they weren’t still stuck in there when the sun came up.

  ***

  They escorted me back into the trees and along the back sides of a row of houses before coming to a technical that might have started its life as a Nissan or Toyota pickup, but had been extensively up-armored with welded sheet-steel, with a vz. 59 machinegun on a swing-mount bolted to the cab. The smaller man, who wasn’t pointing his rifle precisely at me anymore, waved at me to get in the back. That he did it with his off hand and not his weapon, I took as a good sign.

  I’d barely settled on the tailgate before the gunner banged on the top of the cab with the butt of his knife, and we were rolling. The driver wasn’t playing around, either. He gunned it, and if the vehicle hadn’t been weighed down with all the improvised armor, I might have gotten thrown off the tailgate. As it was, I had to grab onto the edge of the bed to make sure I stayed in place.

  It was a fast but winding trip into Vrbovè. The place had been half-smashed by the artillery and air strikes the night before. Entire houses had been blasted to rubble, some of them collapsed into the street, which was also cratered in places. As we twisted our way through the wreckage, however, I thought I saw more of the somewhat deliberate rearranging of the debris that we’d seen in the outer neighborhood. As we passed a machinegun nest burrowed into one of the piles of smashed bricks, I was sure of it. A few blocks down, two technicals had been stashed in the wreckage of a pair of houses, flanking the main road from the west. The Nationalists hadn’t turtled after the hammering they’d taken. They’d been industrious, improving their positions in the wake of the destruction visited on them by the EDC.

  I might have gotten glimpses of rocket batteries and mobile AA guns, but I noticed that every time I thought I did, we went the other way. The driver was being careful. Which was a pretty good trick, when you considered the fact that the whole town was less than four klicks square.

  When we finally stopped, it was near the center of town; I could tell because the church steeple was still standing. The place had taken a pasting, and there was a massive hole blown in the church roof. I crossed myself briefly as I got off, and I could tell the short guy noticed. He waved me toward the light-colored building on the north side of the street, where a Slovak flag still waved defiantly. The windows had been covered over and sandbags stacked against the bottom of the wall. It looked like an artillery shell had clipped the corner of the roof before burying itself in the storefront next door and detonating. There wasn’t a lot of that store left; the entire front of the building had collapsed.

  The door was shut, but the little man banged on it with his rifle. A muffled voice yelled in Slovak from inside, and he replied in kind. After a moment, the door creaked open, letting a bit of red light out into the street. It was the only light source for a hundred yards, at least. The little man waved me inside, and I ducked through the door as he followed.

  The entryway of what looked like it had been the police station had been turned into a defensive strongpoint. Sandbags formed two fighting positions at right angles to each other, aimed in at the door. The Nationalist fighters behind the sandbags were standing, one wearing a Slovak Army uniform, the other in civilian clothes, both holding older CZ vz. 58 rifles. There was a spotlight, currently dark, pointed at the door. They didn’t have night vision, so they’d blind the enemy while simultaneously letting them see their targets, at least until the spotlight got shot out.

  The short man brushed past them, waving as the one in the camouflage uniform saluted. I followed, since he seemed to expect me to. He turned sharply right, and we headed down the hallway.

  Three doors down, he stopped and knocked. A murmur came from inside, and he turned and beckoned to me as he stepped through the door.

  The office had been turned into a command center. The walls were lined with more sandbags, and there were wires running from several military-style radios up into a hole that had been knocked in the ceiling. Work lights had been set up, and I had to squint in the sudden brightness. With the window behind the building blocked off with sandbags, the Nationalists weren’t quite so worried about light discipline in here. And the work lights probably made it easier to read the maps spread out on the desk in the center of the room.

  The man standing at the desk was young, younger than me. He looked up, his face clean-shaven and slightly pudgy. His pale blue eyes weren’t friendly, either. He straightened up as the small man said something to him in Slovak. I caught “American” in there somewhere.

  He studied me for a moment. I know I wasn’t exactly a friendly face; I still had camouflage paint on, and my hands were down at my sides but slightly cocked; I was really feeling the absence of my rifle right about then, and I was ready to grab just about anything to defend myself if this turned into a fight. Of course, they hadn’t relieved me of my knife, but they hadn’t thoroughly searched me, either. Which also could be a good sign.

  “Who are you?” the blue-eyed man asked, as the shorter man took up a position off to my right, leaning against the sandbags on the wall.

  “My name’s Bowen,” I told him. It only made some sense to be honest with potential allies. “I’m part of a special unit that was deployed to rescue the American that the Kosovars took hostage a few weeks ago.”

  “And what do you want from us?” the man demanded. “We will not surrender to Americans any more than we will to the French and German bastardi who unleashed the black-asses on our people.”

  “What do you know about what happened down south a few nights ago?” I asked.

  “I know that the so-called ‘peacekeepers’ began attacking every one of our positions they could find,” he replied bitterly, “and massacring anyone who lived nearby.”

  “I know,” I said grimly. “We saw what they did in Kuchyňa.” His expression flickered a little at that. The shadow of a frown touched his face.

  “And no,” I continued, “we weren’t a part of it. We were already on the run.” I proceeded to describe the destruction of FOB Keystone and the fights we’d had with the EDC and their proxy militias since then. “It seems that Slovenský Grob convinced the EDC that the US wasn’t going to play along with their plan to pacify Slovakia,” I said. “So, they decided to take us off the board. I’d think that would be nuts, but we haven’t been able to make contact with anyone in the United States for days. Which means they hit our comm systems hard enough that they were confident no one back home would find out.” I spread my hands. “Whatever you might think about Washington’s policies about Slovakia, we have a common enemy now.”

  He just stared at me impassively for a long moment. I like to think that I’m a pretty cool customer most of the time; I’ve been in some pretty hairy situations, ranging from Africa and the Middle East to some of the nastiest urban war zones Stateside. But I was sweating. And it wasn’t that warm in that room.

  As I watched the man, I knew that I wasn’t getting anywhere. I’d seen that look before.
It wasn’t disbelief, not quite. It was a closed-off, not quite hostile, but distinctly unfriendly look. He didn’t give a damn if we were the last Americans in Slovakia. He’d already known what he was going to do as soon as he’d heard that I was an American, before I’d even begun to tell our story.

  With a sick twisting in my guts, I struggled to keep my hands still as my mouth went dry and my mind switched into “who am I going to kill first” mode. I still had my knife, after all. And unless they shot me in the head, I could still cut a couple throats and take some of them with me.

  Damn, this was a bad idea. But I hadn’t had the imagination to think up another one, and nobody else had, either.

  But before the command center turned into the scene of a short but bloody brawl, there was some commotion behind me, and someone else stepped into the room.

  I stepped back and half-turned. I hadn’t had my back to the door; I’d moved as soon as I’d entered to avoid that. But I needed to take another step to get out of the newcomer’s way.

  He was a big man, burly and white-haired. A thick mustache bristled above his lip, and he was wearing a Slovak Army field jacket, though stripped of insignia. He pinned me with a pale blue stare from within a mass of wrinkles that was remarkably similar to the younger man’s as he stepped around the desk, then turned that same basilisk glare on the younger man, who stepped aside, his mouth working tightly.

  The big man leaned on the desk on massive, gnarled knuckles as he turned his eyes back on me. “What is your name and rank?” he asked.

  “My name is Matthew Bowen,” I told him. Something had changed. I could feel the shift in the dynamic in that room. Whoever this old guy was, he wasn’t somebody to screw around with. The other Nationalist fighters respected him. “My organization doesn’t use conventional rank structures, but I am a team leader for a ten-man special operations team.”

  “Matthew,” he said. His voice was deep and heavy, with a rasp that sounded like decades of cigarettes and slivovica. “My name is Jaroslav Rybàr. Tell me what you are doing here.”

  I repeated much the same story I’d told the younger man. Rybàr listened carefully, his face expressionless. I had no idea what he was thinking as he listened, but somehow, I felt that I was on somewhat firmer ground than I had been with the young buck. Somewhat.

  No sooner had I finished speaking than the younger man spoke up with a rapid-fire stream of Slovak that I probably couldn’t have followed even if I’d managed to study the language in any depth beyond a handful of phrases on the “pointy-talky” card that was stuffed in my chest rig. Rybàr turned his head slightly to listen, though his eyes remained fixed on me.

  “My associate Skalickỳ,” Rybàr said, nodding toward the younger man, “reminds me that there have been infiltration attempts before. He is right. Do you have any proof of your story?”

  “None beyond the men I have outside of town, and the bodies lying in what’s left of FOB Keystone,” I said. “Not to mention the smoking hulks of three armored vehicles just below Vyoskà peak.”

  He watched me thoughtfully for another long moment. Skalickỳ started to say something else, but Rybàr raised a massive paw of a hand and he fell silent. “How many men do you have?” he asked, in the same low, rumbling monotone. His English was excellent, far better than Skalickỳ’s.

  “About sixty left,” I replied. “But we’re getting low on food, and, more importantly, ammunition. We’ve been running or fighting with what we can carry on our backs for a week.”

  “You are not American Army,” Rybàr observed.

  “No,” I replied. “I’m not. I am part of a special unit.”

  “Here for a hostage rescue mission, as you said,” he rumbled. “Tell me, who was the hostage, and who was holding him?”

  “He was an American soldier, being held by the Kosovars,” I said. “We found him just before all hell broke loose. He’s still with us.”

  “You came into this country to fight the Kosovars?” he asked, though I was pretty sure that I’d made that clear enough already.

  “And anyone else holding Americans hostage,” I answered. There might have been some bitterness that had crept into my voice. I was tired. “Especially since the Army was on lockdown after Slovenský Grob.”

  “Indeed,” Rybàr said. He looked down at the map, the first time he’d taken his eyes off me since he’d bulled Skalickỳ out of the way. I didn’t know if it was a good sign or a bad one. I was having a much harder time reading this ancient bear of a man than I’d had with Skalickỳ.

  He looked up. “We could use sixty more men,” he said. “But bringing them into Vrbovè will be difficult. The enemy has us surrounded, as you have seen. It was no small feat that you got as close as you did.”

  Skalickỳ started to protest in Slovak again, but Rybàr cut him off curtly. He stared at Rybàr for a moment, glared pure venom at me, then stalked out of the room.

  “Filip is young,” Rybàr explained. His tone had changed, subtly. “As the West presses to destroy our sovereignty, he has begun to listen to the voices calling for us to turn to Moscow for help. He is not alone.”

  Something about the tone of his voice made me ask, “How old were you when the Soviets invaded?”

  He stared at me levelly, but there was something like respect in his eyes. “I was ten years old,” he said grimly. “I will be cold in my grave before I ever trust a Russian.” He looked down at the map again. “As I said, we can use your men, Matthew,” he said. “But I should tell you that we are going to have to either break out of Vrbovè or die in place here. We put up enough of a fight to keep the French and Germans from taking the town so far, but our own supplies are dwindling.” He pinned me with a stare. “We can help each other, but it will require your people to help us break out. That means attacking the cordon that the EDC has put around Vrbovè, to open a gap that we can escape through.”

  That might be a tall order. “As I said, we’re getting low on ammo,” I told him carefully. I didn’t want to shoot our delicate alliance in the foot, but I had to lay the cards out on the table. “And we don’t have any anti-armor weapons. I’m not sure how much of a hole we can punch.” Not to mention that I’m not sure half of Killian’s kids are up to it.

  But Rybàr didn’t need to hear that. Not right then.

  “You did not come in here alone,” he said. “There was too much gunfire out in the no-man’s land. How many of your men are still out there?”

  “Nine,” I replied. “The rest of my team.”

  He nodded. “Call them in,” he said. “I will call our outer defensive positions and tell them to let them through. The recognition signal will be four flashes, answered by two.” So, apparently, they did have some NVGs. “We do have some Matadors and RPG-75s, and enough ammunition to give you some. What caliber are you using?”

  “7.62 NATO,” I told him, as I turned my radio on. He nodded.

  “We can spare some.” He cracked a grin under his mustache. “After all, if your attack fails, then we might not get out either, eh?”

  I tried to smile in return as I reached for my transmit button, but it was more of a grimace. I had sudden visions of a clever trap. We attack the cordon, get hammered, and then the Nationalists skedaddle and leave us in the breeze.

  We’d linked up with the Nationalists, but right at that moment, I couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t a case of “out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

  Chapter 19

  I was topping off the last of my magazines as I heard a vehicle rumble outside, and the door to the police station open. There was some commotion, but I finished thumbing the last 7.62 rounds in before stuffing the mag back into its pouch in my chest rig and turning to greet the rest of my team.

  Rybàr had been as good as his word, offering me a crate of 7.62x51 ammunition as soon as I had called Scott and told him to move up and contact the outer defenses, with the assigned recognition signal. Apparently, that, at least, hadn’t been a trap. The team wa
s hustling into the police station, weapons slung, apparently unharmed. Scott handed me my OBR as I stepped out of the command center to meet them.

  “Well, it was hairy, but I think we just conducted our first proper partisan linkup,” he said. “We talked about this sort of thing for years in Recon, but I don’t think we ever did it.”

  I just nodded as I took my rifle back and clipped the sling back on. I hadn’t taken it off; it was looped around my shoulders underneath my ghillie hood-over. I pointed to the stack of ammo crates and Matador 90mm anti-tank launchers stacked in one of the side offices, that had been stripped and converted into an arms room. “Everybody top off,” I said, before turning back to Scott. “Come on,” I said, nodding toward the command center. “We’ve got a lot to figure out.”

  He and I stepped through. Skalickỳ had rejoined us, though he was standing behind Rybàr with his arms folded, his face wooden. He still didn’t like it, but he wasn’t willing to cross Rybàr. Whoever Rybàr was, he had some weight behind him. Given that he was in his mid-seventies, that was saying something.

  Rybàr himself was leaning over the map of Vrbovè and the surrounding area. There were markers on the map for the various EDC and allied units surrounding the town. I hadn’t had a chance to really study their dispositions in detail before, but as I looked, the picture became clear.

  Most of the enemy were concentrating on the roads, with the exception of what looked like two platoons of armor to the south. We’d already run afoul of the cluster of mech infantry squatting on the road leading toward Prašnìk, and had given them a bloody nose. But they apparently were backed up by AMX-10s, which would present more of a challenge. Of course, they’d been further bloodied by the IED that had blown up one of those vehicles, so they were at reduced strength, and, hopefully, rattled by the night’s losses.