by Peter Nealen
Seeing us, Rybàr waved me over to where he spread a map out. He looked like he was going to spread it on the Alligator’s hood, but reconsidered after glancing at the rainwater still beaded on the metal. He just held it up for me to see.
“We are almost within secure Slovak territory,” he said. I noticed he didn’t say “Nationalist territory.” Of course, he wouldn’t. The Nationalists believed they were defending Slovakia against foreign invaders and domestic enemies. “We have not yet reached the front lines, but we will soon. Notice the skies are clear?” He pointed at the clouds above us. “We have six batteries of S-125 SAMs around Nitra. The enemy learned the hard way not to try to hit us with airstrikes, at least not from helicopters or Tornadoes.” I imagined the newer Typhoons were going to create bigger problems, but the Tornadoes were ancient, and intel said that the EDC might have about fifty in flying condition. That earlier thought about the EDC being worried about casualties was going to go triple for their fast movers.
Intel hadn’t suggested that the Nationalists—or even the Slovak Army—had those kind of air defenses. But I had a sneaking suspicion, based on Skalickỳ’s apparent loyalties, as to just where the old SAM systems had come from.
“I have another favor to ask of you, my friend,” he said. “You and your team are the most mobile and best-trained for infiltration. We are having communications difficulties; the enemy is close, and has been jamming our radio transmissions more intensely around Nitra. They have had the city surrounded on three sides for the last three months.
“I need you to move in and make contact with our outer defenses and coordinate our entry into Nitra.” He grinned jovially. I must have looked more than a little skeptical. “I am not asking you to go alone. I am sending Sỳkora with you again.” He waved and called out in Slovak, and the young man—who looked a lot younger in daylight—came around the back of the Alligator. He nodded, and I returned it, wordlessly.
I didn’t say that Sỳkora had almost blown up my team. That hadn’t been entirely his fault, after all.
“I need you to hurry,” Rybàr said grimly. “Some of my outriders have spotted drones at high altitude, outside of our countermeasure range. There are already ground forces moving toward us; I think the only reason they have not yet engaged us is that they are uncertain, and wary.” He pointed toward the road to the north. “I take it you saw the hulks up there?”
I nodded. There had been three burned-out EBRC Jaguars up on the highway. At least, two of them had been recognizable as Jaguars. The third had been little more than mangled metal half in and half out of a massive crater blown in the side of the road.
He ran his finger down a line on the map. “This route should be reasonably secure. Unless matters have deteriorated further, there should be a scout unit here, in Dolnè Lefantovce. Sỳkora knows the passwords.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. “I know that I am asking a great deal from you,” he said. “You are not Slovak; this is not your cause. But we cannot help you unless we get into Nitra. You have seen the resources my cell has at its disposal now. Once we are inside the city, we can rest, and plan our next move.”
Which had been my entire line of thought, going along with this plan. Heading for Nitra was kind of going in the wrong direction, unless we were heading back to Hungary. The Hungarians might take our stray American soldiers under their wings, but Poland was where the bulk of the other Brigade Combat Team of US Army Europe was stationed.
But we wouldn’t make it to Poland alone, on foot, and with steadily decreasing supplies, not to mention a serious dearth of firepower. The Nationalists were our best hope.
Not that there wouldn’t be griping. I could hear David and Jordan already, and I hadn’t even told them yet.
“We’ll get on the road in the next couple of minutes,” I told Rybàr. I looked at Sỳkora. “It’s gonna be a tight fit, so get in where you can.”
Rybàr just nodded, and slapped me on the shoulder. Sỳkora looked a little nervous, but slung his Bren 805 and stepped up to join me. Together, we headed back to the team.
If this works, I might actually get a night’s sleep tonight. I wasn’t sure what that was even going to feel like.
Granted, I wasn’t going to get my hopes up until we were inside Nitra, under cover, and someplace dry.
Chapter 23
The Nationalists in Dolnè Lefantovce weren’t being particularly sneaky. There were two UAZs with mounted vz. 59 machineguns sitting right by the side of the road coming from the north. They could easily be pulled back into the trees, but apparently the scout force was confident enough in their artillery and SAM cover that they weren’t too worried.
They probably should have been; if the EDC and their cronies could take out an American FOB, these guys wouldn’t be much more than a speed bump.
Still, it provided us with a little advance warning that we were coming up on the rendezvous, so we stopped the vehicles and got out.
“Cocky bastards, aren’t they?” Scott muttered as he joined me near the hood of my truck.
“Yeah,” I replied, watching the two vehicles. They hadn’t opened fire on us, at least, which either meant that they were under some decent fire discipline, or else they weren’t sure whether we were friend or foe, and didn’t want to light up other Nationalists. The fact that we weren’t making any overtly hostile moves helped. “Just in case, I want you to keep Bravo back here to cover us,” I told him. “Dwight, too. If things go south, I want both of those vehicles lit up like a Christmas tree.”
“No worries,” Scott replied. “Try not to get shot.”
“No worries,” I repeated. I looked over at Sỳkora. “Ready?”
He nodded jerkily. I didn’t think he liked this situation. Not that there was all that much to like; making linkup with no comms and accompanied by foreign forces wasn’t what I’d call fun, either.
I looked around at the rest of my element, gathered in front of the vehicle, standing so as to appear as non-threatening as possible, and waved toward the two vehicles. Spread out in a short line, weapons pointed at the dirt, we moved forward, keeping our pace easy and relatively nonchalant. I say, “relatively,” because when you’ve been on the run and hunted for a week and a half, it gets hard to turn some things off.
We got closer to the two old Soviet UAZs, while the gunners and the men with rifles watched us. Most of them were in camouflage of some sort, ranging from old woodlands, to the Slovak pseudo-flecktarn, to American OCP/Multicam. The array of weapons was almost as eclectic. Fortunately, they weren’t pointing them at us just yet. The gunners had their hands on their weapons, which were leveled, rather than pointing at the sky, but they still weren’t pointed directly at us, not quite.
Sỳkora lifted a hand, keeping the other on his rifle, and said something in Slovak. After a moment, one of the soldiers, a burly man with a spare chin, lifted his own hand in greeting and replied in the same language.
By then we were barely fifty yards apart. Sỳkora stopped and rattled off a short speech in Slovak. The other man asked a question, and Sỳkora answered. The thickset man seemed to relax, his set expression breaking into a wide smile, and he spread his arms and said something jovially. It sounded like a greeting.
Sỳkora seemed to let out a sigh. He turned to me with a smile on his narrow face. “We are good,” he said. “They are waiting for the rest of us.”
I nodded, and keyed my radio. “Flat, Deacon. Tell the Big Hat that all’s well.” We were pretty sure our comms were secure, but broadcasting Rybàr’s name still might not be a great idea. Greg had come up with the nickname “Big Hat” for him. It had stuck, even though I had yet to actually see Rybàr wear a hat.
“Roger,” came Bradshaw’s faint, scratchy reply. The bad guys really were cranking up the EM jamming around Nitra, if our radios were having a hard time getting through it, even this far away. After a long pause, he came back. “We’re moving.”
I glanced up at the sky, then shook the d
ouble-chinned man’s meaty hand. I’d still feel a lot more comfortable once we got into Nitra.
***
At least, that had been my thought. Once we were actually there, that changed a bit.
We rolled into Nitra as one big convoy, having been held at the edge of the outer defenses by our escort of BOV armored vehicles.
Technically, we staged in Dražovce before moving southeast toward Nitra itself. But the scars of war were already visible. Several of the houses had been bombed or shelled, and smoke was rising from parts of the big Land Rover factory on the other side of the highway. Even as we started down the road toward Zobor and Nitra itself, artillery batteries on the hill above opened fire, the distant thumps of the reports muted in comparison to the ripping passage of the shells overhead.
The highway was studded with roadblocks, both the prepared kind, with concrete barriers, sandbagged bunkers, and machineguns and RPGs in evidence, and also more ad hoc arrangements, mostly tipped-over semi-trailers. Some of those were so blackened and pocked with bullet holes that they must have already been the scene of some fighting.
Smoke was rising from the southern edge of Nitra, though the white, red, and blue edifice of the castle appeared untouched as we rolled across the bridge between Zobor and Nitra.
The roads were empty of any civilian traffic. I didn’t know if the Nationalists had evacuated the civilians before they’d strongpointed the city, a good three months before, but if they hadn’t, the locals were definitely keeping their heads down. The only vehicles we saw on the road on the way in were wheeled BOVs, tracked BVPs, T-72 tanks, and an eclectic bunch of retrofitted technicals. It looked like a good chunk of the Nationalists had come from the Slovak Army, and had brought a ton of equipment with them.
That presented some hope. From what I was seeing, Nitra was going to be one hell of a tough nut to crack. Hopefully, that meant that we’d have a day or two to rest and refit before making our way north.
But that hope seemed to be fading as we got deeper into the city. More and more of the armored vehicles we passed seemed to be either digging in or falling back to more secure positions. I didn’t pretend to know what was going on, but it looked an awful lot like the Nationalists were getting ready for one hell of a fight.
The defenses got thicker as we got closer to the castle itself. There were T-72s stationed on either side of the road as we turned up between the closely-packed buildings toward the castle, and more BOVs and technicals behind them. If the Nationalist headquarters was up there, they weren’t taking any chances with their defenses.
The column halted at the base of the low hill where the castle sat, and I saw Rybàr and Skalickỳ get out of their vehicles, met by a knot of fairly well-equipped men in Slovak camouflage and dark green berets. It seemed that a lot of the Nationalists hadn’t just come from the Army; they’d kept their uniforms and insignia. This was more division within the Slovak government than we’d been led to believe.
Rybàr looked back toward our vehicles as I got out. He waved at me to join him. I wasn’t quite close enough to make out Skalickỳ’s expression clearly, but he definitely didn’t look happy, just going by his body language. He probably would have preferred if we’d been cut loose after getting clear of Vrbovè.
I walked over to join them. “The rest of our fighters will be assigned to defensive positions within the city,” Rybàr said, turning to me as I approached. “We need you Americans to wait here, except for you and the other leaders. You will come with us to meet Generàlporučik Pokornỳ.” He pointed over his shoulder toward the castle. “We have much to discuss, and not much time. It seems that the EDC forces outside the city have been reinforced while we were on the move. The command group thinks that an offensive is imminent.”
I kept my expression carefully still. That was not what I wanted to hear. It sure as hell wouldn’t be what Warren and the rest of the ad hoc Army unit now under his command would want to hear, either. They hadn’t been particularly uppity, but they weren’t eager to come to grips with the enemy, and they all seemed to be moving slower and slower. I’d been too busy to notice much, but their morale was clearly dropping, and resentment was festering, even as we ran for our lives.
“I’ll get Bradshaw and Warren,” I said. “We need medical help for our wounded.”
His face went still for just a second. I felt a flash of anger. We’d fought beside them to break out of Vrbovè, and now he was going to hesitate when it came to giving medical aid to Americans who had helped his people.
But he nodded. “I will get my people on it,” he said. “Right now, we need to meet with Pokornỳ.”
It was probably as good as I was going to get. I nodded and turned back to find Bradshaw and Warren. Warren especially wasn’t going to like this. I wasn’t looking forward to that conversation.
***
Bradshaw was easy. He just nodded, issued some quick instructions to Watts, his assistant section leader, and came with me. Draven also just nodded and gave me a thumbs up. He’d stay back. Warren was a whole different proposition.
It took ten minutes of poking around the Army’s trucks before we found him. He’d apparently delegated well, because while a couple of his young Sergeants were supervising care of the wounded and checking gear, there was no sign of him anywhere.
As we went from truck to truck, I was looking around, getting angrier as I did. A glance at Bradshaw showed his jaw was tightening and he was watching the Army soldiers with narrowed eyes.
“Hey, Sergeant,” I said, grabbing one of the NCOs by the arm. The guy must have been in his mid-twenties, but he looked a lot younger to me, for some reason. “You notice something wrong here?”
He looked around. Half of the soldiers seemed to still be on the trucks. Some had gotten out to check the wounded, supervised by Jordan, Reuben, and a couple of Bradshaw’s medics. Others were slumped against wheels or walls, helmets off and either talking quietly or zoning out.
When he didn’t seem to get it, I picked his M37 up off the ground where it had been leaning against a tire and shoved it into his hands. “You might think that we’re among friends, but you should have learned already that that can change any second. Get these kids up and on security. Now, where’s Chief Warren?”
He frowned. He clearly didn’t think there was any need to act like we were out in the field anymore; we were inside friendly lines. But if Rybàr was right, and we were in for a fight, there was no telling when it was going to start. This was no time to get complacent.
I could already tell that he wasn’t going to act on what I’d told him. If only because I was the one telling him, and whatever had happened in the last week, I was just some scruffy contractor or something. I wasn’t in his chain of command, so I couldn’t tell him what to do.
“He’s in his truck, over there,” he said, pointing. His vague finger-wave could have indicated about three different vehicles, but it was better than we had before, and I could tell that he’d been sorely tempted not to tell us that much.
“Thank you,” I gritted, and the two of us walked away. I could feel his eyes on my back as we went. I also noticed that I didn’t hear him ordering any of his soldiers up and onto security.
Damn, I hope these kids aren’t this stupid and intransigent if the EDC comes again.
Warren, it turned out, was in the last Land Rover, sitting in the back. And he was trying the radio. “Any American station this net, this is Chief Warrant Officer Warren,” he called, as I opened the door.
“Turn that off,” I told him.
He looked up at me. “We’ve got to keep trying,” he said. “It’s not in the open.”
“If the EDC could successfully jam the SINCGARS net, don’t you think they could listen in on it, too?” Bradshaw asked.
Warren frowned. “That shouldn’t be possible,” he said.
“Neither was jamming a frequency-hopping, encrypted net,” Bradshaw pointed out. “I’d be willing to bet that there’s some serious
cyber warfare involved. Hell, you’re an IT guy, aren’t you? Shouldn’t you be thinking of these things?”
“But, that’s a huge breach,” Warren said. “I mean, that’s not just a hacking job. That’s somebody actually leaking US crypto.”
“Look, Warren,” I said. “However it happened, it happened. We can’t trust the comms. And right now, we’ve got a meeting with the Nationalist muckety-mucks. And since you’re the ranking Army officer, you’re expected.”
He looked nervous. That seemed to be almost his default expression by then. “I don’t know,” he said. “What do they want to talk about?”
“From what Rybàr said, presumably the imminent attack on Nitra,” I said. “Apparently the EDC forces outside the city got reinforced over the last day.”
“Then I guess I should come,” he said reluctantly, as he got out of the Land Rover. “We’re going to need to get out soon if that’s coming.”
I didn’t tell him that I suspected it wasn’t going to be that easy. He’d find that out soon enough.
***
The castle was a mix of architectural and decorative styles from multiple centuries, but right at that moment, it was an armed camp.
Balconies had been turned into weapons platforms, windows were sandbagged, and armored vehicles squatted in the courtyard, including a pair of squat, tracked ZSU-23-4 Shilkas, self-propelled anti-aircraft platforms. Russian self-propelled anti-aircraft platforms. I hadn’t known that the Slovaks even had any.
As we passed the two vehicles with their quad 23mm guns, I remembered Skalickỳ’s insistence that the Russians would be better allies than Americans. I was starting to understand. And it wasn’t a good feeling.
In fact, that castle was starting to look less like shelter, and more like a trap.
But the Nationalist fighters moving purposefully around the fortifications, carrying crates of mortar rounds and SA-18 SAMs toward the tops of the walls, paid us little attention. We got a few looks, but they varied from blank to faintly frowning.