Iron Wolf

by Dale Brown

  Which gave Voronov all the more reason to keep a close eye on this particular arms control post. Sited at the busiest border crossing between Poland and Ukraine, it was just the place the Poles might use for clandestine shipments to Kiev.

  “The Starovoitove arms control station is in sight,” the helicopter pilot reported. He reduced collective and pulled back on his cyclic joystick to begin slowing the Ansat. He keyed his mike. “Opekun flight, clear us into the landing zone. Acknowledge.”

  Another voice crackled through their headphones. “Understood, Lead. Guardian flight complying. Out.”

  Two narrow-bodied Ansat-2RC light helicopter gunships flashed past and descended, spiraling into orbit ahead at low altitude. The pilot and gunner aboard each helicopter were using their nose-mounted infrared sensors to scan for potential threats. If anyone was concealed in the surrounding forests, their heat signature would stand out against the cooler vegetation.

  Voronov looked through the windscreen. They were coming up on the Bug River, a shallow, meandering waterway that marked the border between Poland and Ukraine. Two bridges spanned the river, one for the Lublin-Kiev railroad and the other for the E373 highway. Sunlight glinted off slanted glass and metal roofs, pinpointing the twin checkpoints where the Poles and Ukrainians conducted their own hunt for illegal immigrants, cigarettes, drugs, and other contraband.

  Long lines of semitrailer trucks and cars were backed up on the highway in both directions, waiting for clearance across the frontier. More vehicles filled the large lots adjacent to each customs and border inspection plaza or were parked nose to tail along the various connector roads.

  The OSCE had erected three plain, prefabricated buildings just beyond the Ukrainian border crossing. One was a headquarters and communications center. Another provided living quarters for the twenty Romanian and Belarusian arms inspectors. The third building, larger than the others and the only one surrounded by a barbed-wire-topped fence, served both as a storage area for any confiscated weapons and an armory. There were no other defenses.

  Voronov’s thick lips pursed in disgust. This was his second inspection of the Starovoitove Station in the past twelve months and nothing had changed. The Romanian military police captain and his Belarusian counterpart refused to consider fortifying their post, insisting that maintaining good relations with the locals required a more open approach. Good relations with the Poles and the Ukrainians? Kakaya yerunda, the general thought. What bullshit!

  Then he shrugged. Their carelessness about their own safety wasn’t his problem.

  “Lead, this is Opekun One,” the senior gunship pilot radioed. “You are clear to land.”

  The driver of a huge MZKT Volant truck parked along the road watched the Russian utility helicopter fly low overhead and flare in for a landing next to the OSCE headquarters. His refrigerated semitrailer carried the logo of a Donetsk-based frozen foods company.

  He leaned forward and spoke softly into an intercom rigged between the cab and its trailer. “Our fat friend is arriving.”

  “And the two whores keeping him company?”

  “Still circling, but I think they’ll follow him in soon,” the driver said, peering through his windshield to watch the two shark-nosed Ansat gunships orbiting over the border checkpoint.

  “Very good,” the voice from the trailer said. “Keep me informed.”

  Less than two hundred meters away, the helicopter carrying Voronov settled smoothly onto the landing pad. Its twin turboshaft engines spun down and stopped. Four soldiers in light blue berets, bulky body armor, and pixelated camouflage uniforms jumped out, bending low to clear the slowing rotors. Each carried a compact 9mm Bizon submachine gun. They fanned out across the pad, staying between the helicopter and the group of unarmed Romanian and Belarusian arms control monitors already lined up to greet their distinguished visitor.

  Those were Voronov’s Spetsnaz bodyguards, the truck driver realized. The Russian lieutenant general was a cautious man. Then he snorted softly. But perhaps not cautious enough.

  Two Russian junior officers, clearly military aides, followed the bodyguards. They snapped to attention as Voronov himself clambered out of the helicopter cockpit and dropped heavily onto the tarmac. Straightening up, the general marched forward to exchange salutes with the two young officers assigned to command the OSCE station. Decked out in his full dress uniform, complete with peaked cap, jangling medals, and highly polished black boots, the burly, thickset Russian looked more like an overstuffed toy soldier than a cold-blooded killer.

  If so, his looks were deceiving, the truck driver decided grimly. Both directly and indirectly, the commander of the 20th Guards Army was responsible for thousands of deaths.

  One after another, the two Russian helicopter gunships settled onto the far end of the pad and cut their engines.

  Trailed by his Spetsnaz bodyguards, Voronov and his hosts moved off toward the headquarters building. Behind them, the other Romanian and Belarusian arms control monitors dispersed, with some heading for their posts at the Ukrainian customs plaza and others to their off-duty living quarters. Voronov’s pilot climbed out of the Ansat-U’s cockpit and stretched, easing shoulders cramped during the long flight.

  The truck driver clicked the intercom again. “The whores are in bed. It’s time.” Then Pavlo Lytvyn popped open the cab door and dropped lightly onto the grass verge running along the road. He carried an AKS-74U carbine wrapped in a lightweight windbreaker.

  Inside the semitrailer, Fedir Kravchenko stood up. He turned to the others crowding its otherwise empty interior. A quick, warped grin flitted across his scarred face. “Right. Keep it nice and easy, boys. You’re just getting some fresh air, remember? Stretching your legs during a short break from a long drive, eh?”

  His men nodded. Most wore the set, grim expressions of those who had already killed enemies in battle and seen friends and comrades die. A few of the youngest, those without combat experience, looked pale but determined.

  He unlatched one of the heavy back doors and stood aside. “Then off you go. Remember the plan. Follow your orders. And good luck!”

  They filed out past him, ambling along the road toward OSCE post in scattered ones and twos. A few had leather jackets thrown over their shoulders to hide slung submachine guns—a mix of Israeli-designed UZIs, older Czech-made Skorpions, and newer Polish PM-84s. Others carried duffel bags carefully unzipped to allow quick access to the assault rifles and other weapons stashed inside.

  Kravchenko was the last one out. Appreciatively, he slapped the thick insulation that had hidden them from the thermal sensors carried by the Russian helicopters. Voronov’s flying guard dogs had gotten lazy, he thought. They’d switched on their high-tech IR gear and switched off their brains.

  Pavlo Lytvyn joined him and together they strolled along the edge of the highway, bitching amicably and loudly about the lousy roads and the extortionate price of petrol.

  Fifty meters from the front entrance to the OSCE headquarters building, Kravchenko knelt down, pretending to tie a shoelace. He risked a glance ahead. The Russian general’s bodyguards were bunched around the door, joking and smoking cigarettes.

  Sloppy, the Ukrainian thought coldly. With their boss safely tucked away inside that building, those supposedly elite commandos were acting as though they were off duty until it was time to escort the general back to his helicopter. He looked up at Lytvyn. “Everything set?”

  The bigger man nodded, his eyes roving along the highway and around the OSCE compound. Their strike force was in position—carefully dispersed around the perimeter of their target. Some were prone in a drainage ditch that paralleled the road. Others crouched behind trees or had concealed themselves among the vehicles parked next to the compound’s buildings, white official SUVs assigned to the joint Romanian and Belarusian arms control team.

  “Rozkryty peklo,” Kravchenko said stonily. “Unleash hell.”

  Still down on one knee, Kravchenko reached into his jacket pocket
and pulled out a metal egg shape. It was a Russian-made RGN offensive fragmentation grenade. Without hesitating, he pulled the pin, making sure to keep a tight grip on the arming lever. Then he stood up and started walking steadily toward Voronov’s bodyguards, holding the grenade low at his side.

  Lyvtyn walked beside him, now grousing loudly about the crummy food at their last rest stop. “So I told that stupid cow of a waitress if I wanted to die of food poisoning, I’d eat my wife’s cooking. I wouldn’t pay fifty hryvnias for your slop!”

  Kravchenko forced a laugh.

  Forty-five meters.

  His right hand ached from the strain of holding the grenade lever closed. A droplet of sweat stung his one good eye. Impatiently, he blinked it away.

  They were forty meters away.

  One of the Spetsnaz soldiers, turning away from his friends to light another cigarette, finally noticed them. Startled, he stared at the two Ukrainians for a long moment and then hurriedly nudged his closest comrade.

  “Stoi! Hold it!” this one shouted, unslinging his submachine gun.

  Thirty-five meters. Close enough.

  Still moving, Kravchenko hurled the grenade toward the bunched-up Russian bodyguards. As it flew through the air, the arming lever popped off in a hissing shower of sparks and smoke.

  Kravchenko and Lytvyn threw themselves flat.

  The grenade hit the pavement right in the middle of the Russians and went off in a blinding flash. Ninety-seven grams of RDX explosive hurled jagged shards of aluminum outward at more than two thousand meters per second. All four soldiers were knocked down. Fragments that hit their body armor failed to penetrate the titanium and hard carbide boron ceramic chest- and backplates. Fragments that hit arms, legs, faces, or skulls punched through in a gruesome spray of blood and bits of shattered bone.

  Before the echoes of the blast faded, the two Ukrainians were up and running toward the headquarters building. Lytvyn tossed his windbreaker aside and opened fire with his AKS carbine on the move, hammering the fallen Spetsnaz troops with short bursts. Hunks of bullet-shattered concrete danced and skittered away. Kravchenko drew a Makarov pistol from his shoulder holster and thumbed the safety off.

  Off to their right, a rifle cracked—dropping the pilot of Voronov’s helicopter with a single shot.

  Across the pad, twin turboshaft engines whined shrilly as the crews of both Ansat gunships went for emergency starts. Slowly at first and then faster, their rotors started turning.

  Two of Kravchenko’s men broke cover and dashed to the edge of the tarmac. They carried RPG-22 antitank rocket launchers. Both men stopped, braced, and fired almost simultaneously. Finned, rocket-propelled grenades streaked across the pad and slammed into the gunships.

  The Ansat-2RCs blew up, torn apart by the RPG warheads and the detonation of their own fuel and ammunition. Twisted pieces of rotor and fuselage spiraled outward. Clouds of oily black smoke lit by fire boiled away from the heaps of blazing wreckage.

  Pavlo Lytvyn charged into the OSCE headquarters building without slowing down. Kravchenko followed him.

  Two ashen-faced Russian officers spun away from the windows looking out across the helicopter landing pad. They frantically clawed for the pistols holstered at their sides.

  Lytvyn shot them at point-blank range and moved on down the central corridor.

  The wide hallway ended in a door marked BIROU DE COMANDă and KAMANDA OFIS—“Command Office” in Romanian and Belarusian.

  The big man kicked the door open and slid inside, moving sideways to cover the three stunned men—the two young officers who commanded this OSCE post and Lieutenant General Mikhail Voronov—grouped behind a large conference table covered with official documents and maps. He settled the stock of the AKS firmly against his shoulder. “Stay very still, gentlemen. And, please, keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Fedir Kravchenko entered the room. He heard the shocked, indrawn breaths when they saw the mutilated left side of his face. Kiev’s best plastic surgeons had done their utmost to repair the damage, but there hadn’t been much left for them to work with.

  He moved behind Voronov and the others, deftly relieving them of their sidearms. He tossed the pistols across the room and stepped back a pace.

  “What do you want from us?” one of the two OSCE officers asked stiffly, keeping his eyes locked on the unwavering muzzle of Lytvyn’s carbine.

  “From you? Nothing,” Kravchenko said. He shrugged. “We are not your enemies. Once we’re done here, you will be released safe and sound. Why, with a bit of luck, none of your men have even had their hair mussed.”

  “Then I suppose you want me as your hostage,” Voronov growled.

  With a faint smile, Kravchenko raised his Makarov and shot the Russian in the back of the head. “Wrong, General,” he said quietly. “Dead men are useless as hostages.”

  Two minutes later, he led his strike team at a steady lope northwest across the tarmac. Skirting the burning Russian helicopters, they entered the forest, heading toward the Bug River several hundred meters away.

  “You know those arms inspectors are going to start screaming for help over their cell phones any second now,” Pavlo Lytvyn said.

  “Yes, I know.” Kravchenko nodded. He glanced at his subordinate with another quick, humorless grin. “In fact, I’m counting on it.”

  OFFICE OF DR. HUNTER “BOOMER”

  NOBLE, CHIEF OF AEROSPACE

  ENGINEERING, SKYMASTERS, INC.,

  BATTLE MOUNTAIN, NEVADA

  “Thanks, guys!” Brad said cheerfully to the stone-faced corporate security guards who had just ushered him into the office. “I probably would have gotten lost without you.”

  The tall, lanky man sitting on the other side of the desk frowned. “Put him in a chair and get out,” he told the guards. “I’ll handle this.”

  Once the security personnel were gone, Brad looked across the desk with a wry grin. “Hey, Boomer! Long time no see.”

  Hunter “Boomer” Noble shook his head in disgust. “Christ, Brad. I thought you had a handle on that dumb-ass McLanahan temper of yours. And then you pull a stunt like this?” He leaned forward. “Do you have any idea of the kind of money Sky Masters is going to have to lay out to keep this son of a bitch Carson from filing criminal assault charges against you?”

  “A lot?” Brad guessed.

  “Yes, a lot,” Boomer said. “As in free tuition for his courses and probably at least a six-figure, tax-free settlement.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah. Ouch,” Boomer agreed. He sighed. “Look, I went to bat for you with Richter and Kaddiri for this internship. They admired your dad, but they didn’t always see eye to eye with him. And they are not going to be real happy to hear that his son shares his less appealing qualities.”

  Brad nodded. As chief executive officer and chairman of the board respectively, Jason Richter and Helen Kaddiri ran Sky Masters as a tight-knit team. They didn’t exactly manage business matters with a nakedly iron hand, but there was definitely a touch of something hard and inflexible inside the velvet glove. According to the corporate rumor mill, they were also a heck of a lot more than mere business associates, but nobody had any hard evidence of a romantic affair.

  “Sorry, Boomer,” he said, trying to put a little sincere contriteness into his voice. In truth, he was genuinely sorry. Despite the long hours and lack of pay, this internship at Sky Masters had been a dream come true. In two months, he had picked up more about the subjects he really loved—flying, aerospace technology, and tactics—than he could ever have learned in four years at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs or at Cal Poly–San Luis Obispo, where he was a student of aerospace engineering.

  “I bet you really are,” Boomer said. He shook his head again. “But you still couldn’t stop yourself from going apeshit crazy on that asshole.”

  “I was provoked,” Brad pointed out.

  “Maybe by the letter of the law,” Boomer agreed. “Too bad that’s not the w
ay the corporate world works, even here at Sky Masters.”

  “Which means what exactly?” Brad prompted.

  “Which means you’re out,” Boomer told him. “Canned. Axed. Terminated with prejudice. Pick your own favorite phrase.” He sighed again. “Look, Brad, ordinarily I don’t do shit for someone I’m firing, especially not some jackass intern. But I respected your dad a hell of a lot . . . so I’m giving you a onetime severance package.” He tossed a manila folder across the desk. “There. Don’t waste it.”

  Brad flipped open the folder and found himself staring at his passport, a plane ticket to Mexico, and several thousand dollars in cash. Caught by surprise, he looked up at Boomer.

  “Go spend some time hanging out on the beach with the señoritas and get your head screwed on straight, before you restart school,” the other man said. “Just don’t plan on blowing the next forty years playing around in the sand, okay?”

  This time Brad caught the twinkle in Boomer’s eye. Forty years in the desert. EXODUS. Right. Now he knew who had relayed his father’s signal through the simulator program. He grinned back across the desk. “I’ll be a good boy, Dr. Noble,” he said. “I promise I won’t cause any more trouble.”

  “See that you don’t,” Hunter Noble said with a wry smile. He cocked his head to one side. “But I hope you won’t mind if I don’t hold my breath on that promise of yours. Because I sure don’t hear any ice freezing over down in hell.”

  TWO

  Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.

  —NAPOLEON HILL, AMERICAN AUTHOR

  OVER UKRAINE

  THIRTY MINUTES LATER

  Two Russian Air Force Su-34 fighter-bombers in black, white, and light blue camouflage streaked west, flying low over the flat Ukrainian countryside. Precision-guided bombs, antiradiation missiles, and air-to-air missiles hung from their external hardpoints.

  The lead pilot, Major Viktor Zelin, caught sight of smoke from the wrecked helicopters rising on the horizon. He throttled back as he banked into a hard turn and climbed—a maneuver copied by his wingman, flying in loose formation aft and about two kilometers off his right wing. He craned his neck to get a quick look at the Starovoitove station as it flashed below, catching a fleeting glimpse of flashing blue lights on the highway and around the OSCE post. It looked like the Ukrainian police were on the scene, he thought. Nu i chto? Well, so what? What good were ordinary policemen going to do against a murderous terrorist gang? Especially one that was probably made up of their bastard countrymen?