by Dale Brown
Neither of them noticed the dark blue panel van idling across the square. Or the two men sitting inside its darkened interior.
“There,” one of them said, nudging his companion and pointing through the dirty windshield. “That’s the one we want.”
The other man leaned forward to get a better look, squinting slightly. He flashed a penlight down at the sheaf of black-and-white surveillance photos in his lap and then nodded. “You’re right. That’s our target for sure.” He grinned nastily, slipping a syringe out of his coat pocket. “Talk about easy. I almost feel guilty getting paid for this job.”
The first man snorted. “Sure you do.” Then, reaching down, he put the van in gear. “Just make sure there’s no fuss or bother. The boss wants this one delivered specially gift-wrapped to the customer.”
NEAR KONOTOP,
RUSSIAN-OCCUPIED EASTERN UKRAINE
THE NEXT NIGHT
Captain Kazimierz Janik swam slowly up out of what seemed to be a very dark, bottomless pit. Unseen waves sloshed against him, bouncing him against its stony sides in an odd, jerky rhythm. A low, dull roar filled his ears, growing louder every second. His head ached abominably.
With an effort, he pried his eyes open. He was not swimming in a dark, lightless pit, he realized groggily. Instead, he was sitting on a rough bench in the back of a canvas-roofed truck, crowded in among a number of other men. It was pitch-dark outside and pouring rain, but he could see just enough out the open back to guess the truck was bumping and swaying along a rough, rutted country road. There were no signs of streetlights or houses.
What the hell was going on? he wondered. His last conscious memory was saying good night to Nadia Rozek and that tall, broad-shouldered American. Had he been so drunk that he’d climbed up into the back of this truck and then passed out? Or had someone scooped him off the pavement after he lost consciousness? Was this all part of a practical joke being played on him by the other guys in his unit?
Janik looked down at the clothes he was wearing. Irregular blotches of darker and lighter shapes swam and rippled in his fogged eyesight. Camouflage battle dress, he realized stupidly—finding it difficult to focus. What had happened to his other clothes, to the dress uniform he’d been wearing at the restaurant? Just how long had he been wandering around in a drunken stupor?
Fighting against the mind-numbing drowsiness that still clouded his thoughts, the young Polish Special Forces captain looked up at the six other men crammed in the back of the truck with him. Most of them were wearing camouflage uniforms, too. But unlike him, they were all armed, cradling M4 carbines and other weapons. Their watchful eyes met his puzzled gaze without any discernible expression. Worse yet, he didn’t recognize any of them.
Christ, Janik thought wildly, what was this? Who were these men? He opened his mouth to ask.
And then closed it abruptly when the grim-faced man sitting across from him swung the muzzle of his rifle around to aim straight at his chest. The other man nodded coldly. No talking, he mouthed silently.
With a jolt, the truck veered off the rutted country road and turned onto a city street. They were passing between blacked-out buildings now, lit only sporadically by flickering streetlamps.
Brakes squealed softly as the truck slowed and then stopped.
“Out,” the man pointing the rifle at him growled.
Awkwardly, Janik obeyed, clambering out over the tailgate of the truck. The others did the same, forming up in a loose huddle. Driving rain slanted down out of the sky, pelting the cracked and broken pavement. A door creaked open on one of the neighboring buildings and several more men poured out onto the street.
These new arrivals wore dark-hued civilian clothing, and they were also armed to the teeth—most with Russian-made small arms. Their leader, a lean, wiry man with a gruesomely scarred face, carried an AK-74M assault rifle gripped in his capable-looking hands. Still struggling against the gray haze clouding his mind, Janik stared at the scarred man. There was nothing in the man’s eyes, he thought, beginning to be even more afraid. No emotion, no fear, no anger . . . nothing human at all. Just a look of cold, ruthless calculation.
Death, Kazimierez Janik realized with horror. I am looking on Death.
Through the darkness and pouring rain, Fedir Kravchenko saw the young Polish Special Forces officer turn white. He nodded once to the men grouped behind their captive. Silently, they spread a tarp across the wet pavement and backed away.
Kravchenko lifted his AK-74. He saw their prisoner’s eyes widen and nodded again. “You have my apologies, Captain,” he said quietly, in Polish. “But your unfortunate fate will serve a greater purpose, both for your country and for mine.”
“No, wait—” Janik stammered, raising his hands.
Kravchenko shot him twice, once in the stomach and a second time in the chest.
The young Pole went down in a heap. He was dead in seconds.
“Wrap him up in the tarp,” the Ukrainian told his men calmly. “And bring him with us.” He checked his watch. They had half an hour to drive the ten kilometers to the rendezvous point where Lytvyn and the rest of his command waited. Plenty of time, he decided, especially since this miserable weather seemed to be persuading the Russians to stick close to their existing checkpoints and fortified compounds.
KONOTOP AIRFIELD PERIMETER
A SHORT TIME LATER
Pavlo Lyvtyn crouched next to the rusting chain-link fence. Topped by newer rolls of razor wire, the barrier stretched away into the rain-drenched countryside on either side, finally disappearing into the darkness. When the Russians had seized this old Ukrainian airfield as a base for their own planes, they must have strengthened its defenses. But if so, the additions weren’t immediately obvious. The big man frowned.
“Trouble?” Kravchenko murmured.
Lytvyn shrugged. “Those Russian bastards aren’t stupid. They’ve probably wired this fence into a sensor net. Which means they’ll know we’re coming as soon as we make our first cut.”
“Yes, they will,” Kravchenko agreed. He eyed the bigger man. “You know the plan.”
“I know the plan,” the big man growled. He shook his head. “It just seems like a hell of a lot of trouble to go through in order to fail in the end.”
A thin, humorless smile flashed across Kravchenko’s maimed face. “Ah, but Pavlo, in this case, failure is the plan.” He tapped Lytvyn on the shoulder. “So cut the damned fence and let’s get on with it!”
Grumbling under his breath, the big man set to work with a pair of bolt cutters, quickly slicing a wide opening in the rusting airfield perimeter fence. There were no audible alarms, but lights began flicking on across the distant compound, illuminating hangars, aircraft shelters, and sandbagged guard posts.
Kravchenko whirled to the partisans kneeling behind him. “Go! Go!”
Silently, they scrambled to their feet and poured through the opening. The Ukrainian major and his bigger subordinate came right behind them, followed by another four-man party hauling the tarp-wrapped corpse of the Polish Special Forces captain.
Beyond the fence, hand signals sent the attackers fanning out through the tall, rain-soaked grass. Pavlo Lytvyn led one group off to the right. The men carrying Janik’s body went with him.
Kravchenko led the rest to the left. Besides riflemen, his group included a two-man team equipped with an 84mm Carl Gustav recoilless rifle. One partisan carried the launcher. The other lugged a haversack filled with two high-explosive and two antitank rounds.
The staccato rattle of automatic weapons fire echoed across the airfield. Lytvyn’s men were engaging Russian sentries outside the control tower and hangars at long range—firing short bursts and then dashing to new positions before the outgunned and outnumbered sentries could zero in on them.
Kravchenko’s group dropped prone in the wet grass beside a long concrete runway. They were about three hundred meters away from two newly constructed aircraft shelters. He wriggled forward to get a better look through
his night-vision binoculars. These temporary Russian shelters weren’t hardened against air attack. Built out of lightweight metal and Kevlar fabric, they offered some protection against fragments and small-caliber rounds. Really, though, they were mostly designed to let mechanics and technicians to perform maintenance work on aircraft in all weather conditions.
Like this hard, drenching rain, the Ukrainian thought, baring his teeth in a fierce predatory grin. From the amount of light leaking out of both shelters, the Russian ground crews were busy tonight—readying two Su-25SM ground-attack aircraft for tomorrow’s scheduled patrols over the so-called Zone of Protection.
He glanced over at the Carl Gustav team. “Load with high explosive, antitank. Your target is the shelter on the right.”
The loader nodded, tugging one of the two HEAT rounds out of his haversack. He slid the round into the recoilless rifle’s breech and dogged it shut. The gunner went prone, aiming across the tarmac. “Ready!”
“Shoot!” Kravchenko hissed.
KA-WHUUMMP!
The Carl Gustav fired with a blinding flash and backblast—hurling the antitank round downrange at nearly three hundred meters per second. It hit the Russian aircraft shelter squarely, tore through the Kevlar fabric like a white-hot knife through butter, and exploded inside. Bits and pieces of the Su-25’s shattered fuselage pinwheeled out of the burning, collapsing structure. Moments later, stored fuel, 30mm cannon rounds, and ground-to-air rockets went up, cooking off in a rippling series of explosions that strobed across the surrounding tarmac.
“Let’s go!” Kravchenko yelled to the men closest to him. They jumped up and followed him toward the hole in the perimeter fence. He dragged his whistle out and blew a series of short, sharp blasts, relaying the same withdrawal order to Lytvyn’s group.
Abruptly, clumps of dirt and torn grass sprayed up across the ground behind the running partisans, traversing from right to left as the guards near the control tower brought a light machine gun into action. The Russians were finally waking up, Kravchenko thought. And about time, too. But given the range and the driving rain, it would be almost impossible for them to hit anything.
Still, those machine-gun rounds were coming close enough to make the next part of his plan plausible. “Drop the Carl Gustav launcher,” he snapped to the recoilless rifle crew. “Keep the rounds.”
The gunner nodded reluctantly, tossing the heavy tube aside into the long grass for the Russians to find later.
When they regrouped outside the fence, Kravchenko looked for Lytvyn. As usual, the big man was the last man out. “Anybody hit, Pavlo?” he demanded.
“No one,” Lyvtyn replied.
“Except for poor Captain Janik, you mean,” Kravchenko corrected him with a crooked smile.
“Except for him,” the big man acknowledged drily. “We dumped his body back near where we opened fire on the sentries.”
Kravchenko’s smile turned more genuine. “Very good. I’m sure the Russians will find what their prize has in his pockets very . . . clarifying.”
NORTHERN OUTSKIRTS OF KONOTOP
LATER THAT NIGHT
Using his rain poncho as an improvised tent to hide the beam of his flashlight, Spetsnaz Captain Timur Pelevin peered down at the bloodstained scrap of paper found on the terrorist killed at Konotop Airfield a few hours ago. Besides an abandoned Swedish-made recoilless rifle, it was the one piece of evidence the rattled garrison had recovered from the battlefield. The dead man’s comrades had apparently stripped him of everything else before escaping. His lips moved as he haltingly converted the Roman characters of the street address to more familiar Cyrillic letters. “Zelena Street, number seven,” he murmured.
He switched off the flashlight, waited several seconds for his eyes to readjust to darkness, and flipped the poncho back up. His two senior lieutenants were crouched nearby, waiting for his orders. “Looks like those air-force intelligence pricks got it right, for once,” he told them, pointing up the darkened street. “Our target is that fourth house on the right.”
They turned to follow his gesture. Even through the rain, they could make out the shape of a small, low-roofed detached building. Like the rest of the houses on this little street, it had a tiny garden plot out back and a separate, bedraggled-looking tool and storage shed.
“We need to hit that terrorist safe house hard and fast,” Pelevin stressed. “If they don’t realize what their dead guy had on him, we could still take them by surprise.”
One of the lieutenants raised an eyebrow. “And if the terrorists have booby-trapped the place?”
“Then it will be a very bad day for Mama Pelevin,” the Spetsnaz captain grunted. “But just for that, you go first, Yury.”
The lieutenant grinned tightly. “In that case, I withdraw my suggestion.”
“Too late,” Pelevin told him. “But don’t worry, I’ll be right behind you.” He studied the faint, glowing numbers on his watch. “Get your men in position, gentlemen. You have five minutes.”
Silently, carefully, the highly trained Russian commandos fanned out around the darkened house—ghosting across little fields and backyards and wriggling through gaps in run-down fences. They advanced in pairs, with one soldier always providing cover while his partner moved.
Before Pelevin’s stipulated five minutes were up, he and his men were ready, with assault teams positioned at the front and rear doors and snipers covering the windows.
The captain took a deep breath and let it out softly, slowing his racing pulse. He keyed his radio. “One. Two. Three. Vkhodi! Go in!” he ordered.
Troopers wielding sledgehammers smashed in the doors and then spun away, allowing others to toss in flashbang grenades. Even before the ear-shattering noise and dizzying, kaleidoscopic bursts of light faded away, more Russian commandos poured in, with their weapons ready.
The house was empty.
Scowling, Pelevin waited while his soldiers rummaged through drawers and cupboards and closets. Everywhere they looked, they saw signs that whoever had been living here had left in a tearing hurry. There were plates tossed in the sink with food still on them. Suitcases that had been left half packed. Unmade beds, with dirty sheets trailing on the floor. But there were no weapons. And worse yet, no papers or documents that might identify the terrorists.
“Captain!” one of his men suddenly shouted from outside. “Come and take a look at this!”
Within minutes, Pelevin found himself poking around inside a dimly lit chamber dug right under the house. Cinder blocks lined the walls, but the floor was dirt. When it was first built, it must have been meant to serve as a root cellar, he decided. But now it was something else entirely.
It was an armory.
Several assault rifles leaned against the far wall. He pulled one out and looked it over. It was an American-made M4A1 carbine. So were the others. An open crate held boxes of 5.56mm ammunition and magazines. Others were full of grenades of various types, including Polish-manufactured RGZ-89 antipersonnel grenades. Stashed in the corner and loosely concealed by camouflage netting, he found a U.S.-built SINCGARS combat radio.
Frowning deeply, Pelevin turned back toward the ladder. This was above his level of expertise. It was time to call in a GRU investigative unit. Maybe they could figure out where the terrorists had acquired all this advanced military hardware.
Something gleaming on the dirt floor caught his eye. He knelt down. Someone’s muddy boot had tromped down on a plastic card, half burying it in the dirt.
Gingerly, the Spetsnaz officer pried the card out of the loose-packed earth. He studied it carefully in his flashlight beam. It was a photo identity card of some kind. And the face was familiar somehow. He took a short, sharp breath, surprised despite himself as he remembered where he had last seen this man’s image.
Sweating now, Pelevin haltingly read off the name and rank embossed on the ID.
JANIK, KAZIMIERZ
KAPITAN, JEDNOSTKA WOJSKOWA GROM
Mother of God, he thought,
turning pale. The terrorist who had been killed in tonight’s raid on a Russian-occupied airfield was a captain in Poland’s most elite Special Forces unit.
Still in shock, Pelevin scrambled up the ladder and grabbed his radioman. “Patch me through to General Zarubin! Now! Tell him this is urgent!”
NINE
Progress begins with the belief that what is necessary is possible.
—NORMAN COUSINS, AMERICAN JOURNALIST
THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING
Sergei Tarzarov walked toward President Gennadiy Gryzlov’s private office with the same unhurried stride that had served him well through decades of service at the highest levels of the Russian government. Long experience had taught him the value of a reputation for remaining eerily composed in the face of any crisis. His steady, almost unnaturally calm demeanor was famous for boosting the morale of trusted subordinates, soothing rattled political masters, and unnerving would-be internal enemies.
Inside his weary mind, though, where no one else could pry, Tarzarov felt as anxious as a plump, well-fed rabbit unexpectedly invited to a meal by a hungry tiger. News of the terrorist attack on the air base at Konotop seemed all too likely to send Gennadiy Gryzlov into yet another of those towering, destructive rages that Tarzarov found alternately terrifying and tiresome. For all the younger man’s admitted brilliance and charisma, his occasional temper tantrums that were worthy of a spoiled two-year-old brat were maddening. Certainly, they tested his chief of staff’s prized patience to the breaking point.
He paused outside the door. Ivan Ulanov, the president’s private secretary, looked haggard and bleary-eyed, but otherwise unmarked. That was one small positive sign, Tarzarov thought. In the not-so-distant past, Gryzlov had been known to physically take out his fury on defenseless underlings—sometimes to the point of sending them to discreet private medical clinics for emergency treatment.