Iron Wolf

by Dale Brown

  All things considered, the wiry, middle-aged Shenzen native suspected, his masters in Beijing probably thought the trade-off a bargain. China had no immediate need to confront Moscow militarily or politically. For now, they shared a general interest in further weakening the United States and the West as a whole. But the day was bound to come, in five years or ten or twenty, when it would be necessary to establish which nation—Russia or the People’s Republic of China—was the real dominant world power.

  Qin opened one of the encrypted files on his laptop and began sorting through a series of digital photos recently supplied by one of his paid Ukrainian informants. Taken at Konotop before Russian reinforcements arrived to secure the ruined base, they showed close-ups of wrecked aircraft and armored cars. Further enhancement and analysis should give the ministry significant clues to the types of new weapons used by the Poles. He attached them into the middle of his most recent report and began typing a quick summary.

  Suddenly his office door burst open—smashed off its hinges by a battering ram. Armed men in Militsiya uniforms poured in through the doorway. “Hands on your head! Get your hands on your head! Now!” they screamed.

  Qin barely had time to close and seal the file before the policemen were on top of him. Roughly, they dragged him away from his desk and slammed him back against the nearest wall. “What is this!” he demanded. “How dare you invade my—”

  “Shut the fuck up, Slant-Eye!” one of them growled, shoving the muzzle of his submachine gun up under his chin. “No talking.”

  “At ease, Yuri,” a smooth, cultured voice said. “There is no need for such violence.”

  Gritting his teeth against the pain from strained muscles in his back and shoulders, Qin looked up. A tall, square-jawed man with short gray hair looked down at him. The other man wore a police uniform with the three stars of a colonel on his shoulder boards. He also wore the insignia of Ukraine’s State Security Service on his sleeve.

  “I apologize for this intrusion, Major Qin,” the Ukrainian said softly. “But I have my orders.”

  Qin felt cold. This Ukrainian counterintelligence officer knew his service rank. Which meant his cover was irretrievably blown.

  Another man, this one in jeans and a brown leather jacket, leaned over Qin’s laptop. After a moment’s study, he spun the computer around and plugged a small thumb drive into one of its USB ports. The thumb drive clicked and whirred quietly for a moment and then a tiny light turned green. He took the drive out. Satisfied, he turned toward the State Security colonel. “We’re set. No problems.”

  Qin looked at them in disbelief. “You cannot simply steal information from my computer like that! Not without a warrant from one of your courts.”

  “Steal?” the colonel said, pretending to be shocked. He shook his head. “My dear Major, we aren’t stealing anything.” He nodded toward the man in the brown leather jacket. “My colleague there has only added a few files to your machine. Nothing of significance to you personally. Merely a few payment vouchers for unusual services and equipment acquired here and in Warsaw. Anyone reading them will believe the Ukrainian terrorists who’ve been attacking the Russians were trained and funded by your country.”

  “What?” Qin stammered. “But my country is not doing any such thing!”

  “True,” the other man agreed easily. “But my client in Moscow wants Chinese fingerprints on this affair. Your fingerprints, my dear Major Qin.”

  Qin felt sick. “How can a Ukrainian intelligence officer have a client in Russia?”

  The colonel smiled. “I’m afraid that you are operating under a misapprehension.” He brushed a hand down the fabric of his uniform jacket. “This is not real. And I am not employed by the Ukrainian government.”

  His eyes went cold. He nodded toward the men gripping Qin’s arms. “Dispose of him.”

  Qin was still screaming when they threw him out the window of his office.

  THE PENTAGON,

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  A SHORT TIME LATER

  General Timothy Spelling looked across his desk at his top aide, U.S. Marine Corps Brigadier General Rowland Hall. “The Russians have moved tactical ballistic missile units up to their border? How solid is this intel, Row?”

  “It’s pretty solid, sir,” Hall told him. “We’ve got clear satellite pictures of some Iskander-type launchers on the move into the woods east of Kaliningrad.”

  “How many?”

  “That’s harder to pin down,” the Marine officer admitted. “But we figure at least one brigade. And probably more.” He frowned. “The Russians have done a really good job of hiding their launchers in among the trees. My personal bet is that we’re looking at at least a dozen launchers spread out over four or five hundred square miles, plus reloads. One thing is certain: they’ve put in a serious shitload of work shielding that whole area with layered air defenses. Right now, outside of Moscow proper, I don’t think there’s a more heavily defended locality in all of Russia. But that’s not all the bad news, I’m afraid.” He shook his head in disbelief. “The NSA say it’s picked up clear indications that the Russians have moved tactical nuclear warheads from their Zhukovka storage site into the same area.”

  “Good God,” Spelling muttered. “Gryzlov is fucking nuts.”

  “Should I put out an alert to NATO headquarters?” his aide asked.

  Spelling sighed. “No.”

  “Sir?”

  “President Barbeau has ordered us to cease all military and intelligence liaison with the Poles during this crisis,” Spelling said. “And since Poland is still officially part of NATO, any data we send to Brussels would get passed straight on to Warsaw—in direct violation of the president’s explicit orders. So we have to restrict this news to our own chain of command. Is that clear?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Hall muttered. “President Barbeau is fucking—” With an effort, the Marine general closed his mouth before he slid into expressing open contempt for the command in chief.

  “What you are going to do, Row, is put out an immediate and highly detailed alert to all potentially threatened U.S. commands in Europe and the Middle East,” the chairman of the Joint Chiefs said. “Include the location, estimated numbers, and defenses of those missile units, along with the possibility that the Russians may plan to arm them with tactical nukes.”

  “Yes, sir.” Hall hesitated. “But the NSA still doesn’t know how Scion or the Poles or whoever hacked into our computer systems. They could be reading our databases and our mail.”

  “General Hall,” Spelling said patiently, with the faintest possible hint of a smile on his otherwise stern face, “you’re not seriously proposing that I withhold vital intelligence information from our own forces . . . just because there’s an off chance that some other unauthorized group might pick up the same warning, are you?”

  This time the Marine brigadier general got it. He grinned and snapped a quick salute. “Understood, sir. I’ll send that alert out, pronto.”

  TWELVE

  A hero is one who knows how to hang on one minute longer.

  —NOVALIS, GERMAN POET

  HIGHWAY M07,

  WEST OF SARNY, UKRAINE

  THE NEXT DAY

  The muffled thump of distant mortars and the faint rattle of machine-gun fire echoed across open fields, clearings, and small thickets of trees. Columns of oily black smoke curled above the wreckage of armored cars and downed Kamov-60 scout helicopters. Gray and white trails crisscrossing the clear blue afternoon sky marked the firing of surface-to-air missiles at fleeting targets of opportunity—reconnaissance drones and other low-flying aircraft.

  Not far off the main highway, a clump of wheeled and tracked vehicles sheltered beneath camouflage netting. Slender whip antennas poked discreetly through the camouflage. Heavy T-90 tanks, mobile SAM launchers, and other armored vehicles ringed the forward command post.

  A BMP-3 turned off the road and clanked into cover. Its twin rear hatches popped open. Two Spetsnaz bodygu
ards jumped out, weapons ready. Behind them, Lieutenant General Mikhail Polivanov, commander of the 20th Guards Army, emerged. Seeing him, the little cluster of high-ranking Russian officers standing around a map table stiffened to attention and saluted.

  Polivanov, tall and barrel-chested, strode cheerfully toward his waiting field commanders and staff. “So, gentlemen, is it true? The Poles have stopped running?” he asked, rubbing his hands together.

  His operations chief, a major general, nodded. “It seems so, sir.” He led the way to the map table. “Our reconnaissance units report contact with elements of Polish armor and infantry forces several kilometers west of here.” He pointed at the map.

  Frowning in concentration, Polivanov bent forward, studying the terrain it showed. Even after almost three days of rapid and unopposed movement, the bulk of his tanks and troops were still two hundred kilometers east of the Polish frontier. His army’s scouts had first bumped into Polish recon units earlier that morning—lured into an ambush that had cost him a handful of wheeled BTRs and Tigr 4x4s. But since then the Poles had been steadily falling back, not bothering to make a fight of it even when the ground favored a defense.

  “What is their estimated strength?” he asked.

  His operations chief spread his hands. “That is difficult to say, sir. The Poles appear to be well dug in and camouflaged. Getting close enough to their positions to make an accurate count is difficult. Casualties among our scouts have been heavy. But our best estimate is that we face at least two battalions of tanks—including some of their German-manufactured Leopard 2s—and perhaps another battalion or so of mechanized infantry.”

  Polivanov grinned at him. “That is good news, Eduard! Very good news!”

  The other man stared back. “Sir?”

  Polivanov clapped him on the shoulder. “Cheer up, man. Don’t you see? If the Poles are digging in that solidly, and if they’re present in those numbers, then they’ve decided to make a first stand here. I was half afraid they’d keep dancing about in front of us, wheeling in and out to skirmish with our columns like Cossacks.” He shook his head. “But that’s at least a full brigade out there, according to your scouts. And no one plays hit-and-run games with that many troops.”

  “The Poles could still be trying to delay us,” his operations chief warned. “If we deploy for a deliberate attack, we give them time to assemble more troops against us. But if we try to rush them now, without adequate preparation, this blocking force is strong enough to give us a real bloody nose.”

  “Indeed it is,” Polivanov agreed, still smiling. “Which means my Polish counterpart has just made his first serious mistake.” Seeing the bewildered looks on their faces, he explained. “Our primary objective is the destruction of Poland’s armed forces, gentlemen. It is not the occupation of Polish territory for territory’s sake. Once we eliminate their soldiers, everything else is ours.”

  He laid his hand on the map. “If they fight us here with only a brigade, we will destroy that brigade. And then we’ll advance west against an enemy made that much weaker—an enemy already demoralized by defeat. If, instead, the Poles send more troops to oppose us, they make our task later that much easier.” He shook his head. “No, gentlemen, we will do this properly. Our foes may think they have experience of war. But who have they fought lately? Only a handful of half-naked savages in Iraq or Afghanistan!”

  Heads nodded at that. The Poles made much of their combat record against Islamist extremists in those two desolate, faraway countries. But those had been police actions fought alongside the Americans and other NATO allies—low-level counterinsurgency campaigns waged against ill-equipped guerrillas and terrorists. The lessons learned from those little wars would be of no use in understanding what it took to stand up against masses of Russian main battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and artillery.

  Polivanov’s smile grew broader. “We will teach these amateurs what modern war is really like. No matter how deep they dig in, we will first pulverize them with fire and then obliterate them with shock action.”

  “We could hit the Poles with air strikes first,” his operations chief suggested. “If the air force cut the roads behind them with bombs, they would be trapped and unable to reinforce or to flee. And then another wave of our fighter-bombers could smash their defenses from the air as we advance.”

  For the first time, Polivanov’s smile faded slightly. “Moscow does not want to commit the air force to further offensive action—not while our flying comrades are still trying to figure out what went wrong last night.” He shrugged. “They’ve sworn they’ll keep Polish combat aircraft off our backs, but, for now, this war is all ours.”

  “So we bring up the guns,” another of his officers realized.

  “That’s right, Iosif,” Polivanov agreed. “And our rocket batteries.” He looked around the circle of his subordinates. “Shake out your leading tank and motor-rifle brigades into combat formations on either side of the highway, gentlemen. And bring up the artillery. I want the guns up far enough to pound every square meter the Poles hold.” He traced deployment zones on the map. “Once everything is set, we’ll blow the hell out of them with a massive barrage and then send the tanks and infantry forward to finish the job.”

  His operations chief checked his watch. “That will take some hours, sir. Siting the artillery could take until dark. Perhaps even longer.”

  “It can’t be helped,” Polivanov said. He shrugged again. “If I have to trade time for more dead Poles, I’ll do it gladly.”

  Several hundred meters in front of their prepared defenses, a small band of Polish soldiers crouched beside the burned-out wreck of a Russian BTR-80. They were here to guard their commander, who had insisted on coming forward himself to see what the Russians were doing.

  Major General Milosz Domanski lay propped up on his elbows among the rows of tread- and tire-flattened stalks of corn, studying his enemy’s movements through binoculars. Thick clouds of dust hung over the distant woods, fields, and little villages, gradually spreading north and south as columns of Russian tanks and BMP infantry fighting vehicles deployed off the highway. He narrowed his eyes. From the amount of dust they were churning up, he would guess the Russians were swinging at least three full brigades into attack formations.

  Another officer wriggled forward to join him. “We have new reports from those Iron Wolf scouts, sir.”

  “And?”

  “Captain Schofield says the enemy is deploying large groups of self-propelled guns, towed howitzers, and Grad rocket launchers close behind their motor-rifle troops. He counts more than two hundred artillery pieces, so far—with more coming up the highway all the time.”

  Domanski grinned. “The Russians are buying it. Polivanov is setting up for a deliberate attack.”

  “And wasting all that precious fuel?” his subordinate mused. Main battle tanks like the T-72s and T-90s burned through more than two liters of diesel fuel for every kilometer they drove—and a lot more when moving off-road. The T-80s still in the Russian inventory were even bigger fuel hogs.

  “It’s not just the fuel, or even the added wear and tear on their tank treads and engines,” Domanski said. He lowered his binoculars. “Polivanov is following doctrine to the letter. Which means he’s going to hammer us with his guns first.”

  “Two-hundred-plus artillery pieces firing six to eight high-explosive rounds a minute is going to make this a very uncomfortable place, General,” the younger officer murmured.

  Domanski nodded. “So it will, Krystian.” He clapped the younger man on the shoulder. “All the more reason to follow our plan, eh? Let the Russians blow the hell out of a few square kilometers of empty Ukrainian soil while we watch the fireworks from a good safe distance back down the road.”

  “Not entirely empty soil,” the other man reminded him. “Once the shelling starts, our screening forces are going to take casualties.”

  The Polish general sighed. That was true enough. Although his Russian opposi
te number might be acting as though he were a prisoner of his nation’s military doctrine right now, he wasn’t an idiot. The Russians would keep probing his defenses right up to the last possible moment. And if their recon troops penetrated far enough to see that the Poles had pulled back, Polivanov would call off his planned barrage—saving all those thousands of precious shells for another battle.

  To keep the enemy in the dark, a few of his troops—elements of the 1st “Varsovian” Armored Brigade and the 21st Podhale Rifles Brigade—would have to hold their ground, continuing to destroy or drive off Russian scouting parties with tank and guided-missile fire. But no matter how well dispersed they were or how fast they retreated when the time came, some of those Leopard 2 tanks and KTO Wolverine armored personnel carriers were going to take hits. Which meant a number of young Poles under his command were going to die tonight.

  Domanski’s mouth tightened. So be it. But that was all the more reason to make sure the Russians paid even more dearly for their “victory.”

  FORWARD ECHELON SUPPLY LAAGER,

  20TH GUARDS ARMY,

  EAST OF SARNY, UKRAINE

  LATER THAT EVENING

  Lieutenant General Polivanov and his logistics officers had taken great pains when positioning their supply units. It was vital that their reserve stocks of fuel, ammunition, and spare parts be positioned close enough to the fighting troops to allow rapid replenishment. But it was equally imperative to make sure their vulnerable supply convoys were parked far enough back to be safe from enemy artillery or rocket fire. In this case, the 20th Guards Army had decided to set up its forward supply echelon just off the main highway—about thirty kilometers east of the planned battlefield.