Dispatches

by Steven Konkoly

  Dispatches

  Book Four in The Perseid Collapse Series

  A Novel by Steven Konkoly

  Copyright Information

  © 2015 Stribling Media. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Stribling Media.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About Dispatches

  PART I “BIG PICTURE” Winter 2019-2020

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  PART II “LITTLE PICTURE” Late April 2020

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Dedication

  To my family for their tireless support and love.

  Acknowledgments

  To the usual suspects. You know exactly who you are. Thank you!

  About the Author

  Steven Konkoly graduated from the United States Naval Academy and served as a naval officer for eight years in various roles within the Navy and Marine Corps. He lives near the coast in southern Maine, where he writes full time.

  His first novel, The Jakarta Pandemic, reached readers in 2010, followed by four novels in the Black Flagged series: Black Flagged (2011), Black Flagged Redux (2012), Black Flagged Apex (2012) and Black Flagged Vektor (2013). The Perseid Collapse (2013), book one in The Perseid Collapse Series, signaled his return to the post-apocalyptic genre, followed shortly by Event Horizon (2014) and Point of Crisis (2014).

  Please visit Steven’s blog for updates and information regarding all his works:

  StevenKonkoly.com

  About Dispatches

  After finishing Point of Crisis, I thought The Perseid Collapse series was finished. I couldn’t have been more mistaken. As I walked away from the series, glancing fondly over my shoulder, two main themes emerged from emails, reviews and blog comments. 1.) What’s happening in the world outside of New England? 2.) I can’t wait to see what happens to the Fletchers after the winter.

  I tried to keep walking, but eventually I turned around and stared at these loose ends. Ideas formed, and before I knew it, a new concept emerged. One that would address both themes voiced by readers. The format for this concept changed several times, ultimately resulting in a hybrid novel. Essentially two stories in one.

  Dispatches is broken into two parts. Big Picture and Little Picture. Big Picture takes readers across the globe, to conflicts arising in the absence of the United States’ foreign presence. Of course, America is not out of the fight—she’s just taking a quieter, more satisfying role in the unfolding events. Little Picture pulls you back to Maine, to once again walk in Alex Fletcher’s shoes (and many others), as the Fletcher crew is once again faced with drastic choices that will ultimately decide their fate.

  There’s another reason The Perseid Collapse series isn’t finished. Right now, more than a dozen talented authors have released novellas based in The Perseid Collapse series’ world, taking the series to new heights. You read that correctly. The series is far from over—thanks to Amazon’s Kindle Worlds program.

  VISIT MY KINDLE WORLDS WEBPAGE to purchase the novellas, read about the authors currently involved and learn how you can contribute a story.

  But first, Happy Reading!

  PART I

  “BIG PICTURE”

  Winter 2019-2020

  “Meet the New Soviets. Same as the Old Soviets”

  Chapter 1

  Narva, Estonia

  Late November 2019

  Colonel Egon Saar drifted to sleep in his seat, his head snapping up to greet the same digital screen he’d stared at for the past several hours. He checked his watch, already knowing the time. Zero-two hundred. Two in the damn morning and the Russians were still playing games across the river.

  “Let’s get this over with already,” he mumbled.

  His artillery battalion had been moved to Narva two weeks earlier, based on NATO satellite intelligence suggesting a buildup of Russian armor units east of the Luga River. Three days ago, Estonian agents in Kingisepp reported T-14 “Armata” tanks crossing the Luga. He hadn’t slept since receiving that message. The presence of T-14s, Moscow’s latest generation main battle tank, meant one thing. Invasion was imminent, spearheaded by the Moscow-based, elite 4th Independent Tank Brigade. The Estonian Defense Forces assembled in the vicinity of Narva would be little more than a speed bump on the road to Tallinn for a Russian tank brigade.

  He prayed his wife had listened and taken the kids to Stockholm. If they hadn’t left by now, they might never get out. The Russian invasion would undoubtedly be combined with an air and naval blockade of Tallinn, cutting off any possible means of escape. Unfortunately, he had no way of knowing if they had left the country. Saar had surrendered his cell phone before deploying. It was better not knowing, because there was nothing he could do to help them.

  He’d said goodbye in their apartment, a few blocks from the main gate to the sprawling Estonian Defense Force base in Tapa—fighting off tears his children couldn’t fully understand. His wife knew there was little chance that he would return. She had heard enough about Russian artillery from him to know that he’d be among the first casualties. Kissing them goodbye for the last time was the hardest thing he’d ever done.

  The Russians would pay a dear price for this.

  He removed his headset, stood up in the cramped command vehicle, and weaved through the equipment operators, pulling his headset cable with him. A small coffee station stood on the map table, rigged directly to the armored personnel carrier’s electrical system. Besides the heating system, the coffee maker represented their only luxury in the field. A gust of wind buffeted the thirteen-ton vehicle, barely audible through the armored hull. Conditions outside were miserable. Positioned in a thick forest on the bluffs northeast of Narva, his artillery battalion was exposed to the bitter northerly winds sweeping off the Gulf of Finland.

  The weather didn’t matter to the men and women of his artillery battalion. They were all tucked inside heated vehicles. The battalion consisted of twelve self-propelled ARCHER systems and three times that many support vehicles. Not a single soldier in his unit needed to be outside in the subfreezing temperature. The same couldn’t be said about the infantry battalion guarding his position. Their perimeter extended several hundred meters in every direction, consisting of observation posts, machine-gun nests and squad-sized rapid response teams—huddled in shallow holes carved out of the frozen ground. They were miserable.

  “Colonel, I’ve lost the ARTHUR feed,” said the operator next to him.

  Colonel Saar turned his attention to one of the screens behind him. ARTHUR, or Artillery Hunting Radar, r
epresented their only chance of detecting an incoming artillery attack. Since his battalion’s artillery batteries were the only viable threat to Russian tanks crossing the Narva River, he fully expected to be the focus of an intense artillery strike at the outset of hostilities.

  “Get a report from them immediately,” said Saar.

  A few seconds later, the operator lifted the headset above his ears. “I think we’re being jammed.”

  Saar pressed one of the buttons connected to his headset. “Vortex, this is Thunder actual. Lost contact with Watchtower.”

  When he released the button, a shrill, oscillating sound filled his ears, causing him to throw the headset onto the map table. They were most definitely being jammed. Somewhere high above the cloud layer on the Russian side of the border, several aircraft were flooding his battalion’s radio frequency spectrum with “noise,” rendering digital communication impossible. He started the stopwatch function on his sports watch.

  “Contact battalion spotters via landline. I want to know what’s happening in Narva.”

  “Colonel, spotters report heavy small-arms fire at the Narva Bridge.

  “Which side?” demanded Saar.

  “Ours!”

  “Copy,” said Saar, contemplating the situation.

  The Russians had probably sent a sizable Spetsnaz force to secure the western bridgehead. There was only one course of action left, and Saar needed to act immediately to give it any chance of success.

  “Transmit over landline to battery commanders. Execute Fire Plan Alfa X-ray. Expend all rounds.”

  The sergeant stared at him for a moment before quickly lowering his headset to pass Saar’s command. “Alfa X-ray” was a northern-front battle plan devised several days earlier under the direction of his commanding officer, Brigadier General Lepp. It wouldn’t prevent the Russian invasion, but it would buy Tallinn some time to petition NATO. Not that NATO was in much of a position to help. They had been completely unprepared for the sudden withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Europe.

  “Battery commanders have acknowledged the order, sir.”

  Saar nodded before grabbing his combat helmet hanging on his seat. “I suggest everyone gears up.”

  He didn’t need to elaborate. The combined firepower of an entire Russian artillery brigade would be leveled against them. There wouldn’t be much left of his battalion after the Russians’ first salvos. Before he’d finished snapping his chinstrap, the vehicle shook from a hollow crunching sound—the first of his battalion’s two hundred and fifty-two high-explosive artillery rounds had been fired.

  The command vehicle continued to rattle and drum as the ARCHER Artillery Systems fired shell after shell into the night sky.

  ARCHER was a fully automated, self-contained system utilizing a preloaded magazine drum filled with twenty-one artillery shells. The 155 mm field gun could fire the entire magazine in less than a minute in salvo mode, nearly quadrupling the sustained firing rate of conventional artillery pieces. Fire plan Alpha X-ray’s success depended on this unique capability. By his best guess, the first enemy rockets would strike Saar’s battalion in less than—he glanced at his watch—forty seconds. He needed to empty the battalion’s guns before the rockets struck.

  Fire Plan Alpha X-ray had two components, split between the battalion’s twelve ARCHER units. When initiated by the gun commander seated in each ARCHER vehicle, the system’s fire control computer took over and delivered the ordnance according to the plan. The first eight rounds fired from each gun would target the two vehicle bridges spanning the Narva River, focusing most of the barrage on the solidly constructed Tallinn-St. Petersburg Highway (E20) Bridge.

  Twenty of the ninety-six precision-guided shells would hit the smaller bridge south of Ivangorod. Shutting down these crossings would either force the 4th Independent Tank Brigade one hundred and eighty kilometers south to press their attack into Estonia, or stall them outside of Narva—until Russian combat engineers figured out how to get the brigade’s tanks across the river. Not all of the Russian tanks would make the trip across.

  The remaining one hundred and fifty-six shells would arc over Narva, targeting a six-mile stretch of the Tallinn-St. Petersburg highway. Each specialty projectile carried two self-guided sub munitions, which independently detected and attacked enemy tanks or armored personnel carriers below. In practice, the smart munitions yielded a seven out of eight hit ratio, putting two hundred and seventy-three Russian tanks at risk of destruction.

  The math was encouraging, but Colonel Saar wouldn’t survive long enough to measure the effects of his plan against the Russian tank brigade. It didn’t matter. He’d done his duty for Estonia. The rest was up to God—and the British Aerospace engineers that designed the ammunition.

  Fifty-seven seconds after the Russians started jamming their communications, the sergeant seated next to him yelled triumphantly, “Spotters report multiple direct hits to the E20 Bridge! Too many to count!”

  “Excellent work! We did it!” yelled Saar, the pride of their accomplishment momentarily overshadowing the inevitable.

  He stole a glance at his watch. Sixty-two seconds. Saar never saw sixty-three. The first salvo of Russian 300 mm rockets exploded above the forest, showering his battalion with thousands of baseball-sized munitions. He heard the muted crackling of the first bomblets exploding in the trees, but nothing after that. His battalion essentially ceased to exist, along with most of the forest that sheltered it.

  Chapter 2

  Ferry Terminal D, Port of Tallin

  Tallin, Estonia

  Mari Saar pulled on her children’s overstuffed backpacks, reining them tight against her body. The three of them fought against the packed crowd as one shape, constantly expanding and contracting to press a few centimeters closer to the passenger gate. She should have known better than to try for one of the main Tallin passenger terminals, but her husband insisted that Terminal D had been reserved for military families. By the time she learned that plans to evacuate Estonian Defence Force dependents had been abandoned, it was too late to change plans. The buzzing swarm of panicked humanity surged in one direction—forward to the perceived safety of the ferries.

  Her son cried out, turning to look up at her with tear-soaked eyes. Erik had been accidentally kicked, knocked down and hit in the face dozens of times over the past three hours as Mari struggled to shield him with her arms. She could barely reach over them because of the size of their backpacks. They’d stuffed the school packs with cold-weather clothing, energy bars and bottles of water until she could barely work the zippers. Her husband, Egan, had stressed the importance of carrying everything they needed in backpacks. Traditional luggage would be the first thing to be abandoned or lost in the struggle at the terminal, he had warned them. He’d been right about everything, except for Terminal D. Now she was fighting for enough space so her children could breathe.

  At seven, Erik barely came up to her navel. Fortunately, Helina was taller and could somewhat hold her own, letting Mari focus on keeping her son off the ground. She wasn’t sure how much further Erik could continue like this. The look on his face told her not very long.

  “We’re almost there, sweetie,” she said, forcing a big smile.

  He pursed his lips and nodded, tears streaming down his dirty cheeks. Mari was glad that Erik couldn’t see over the crowd. An endless sea of wool hats, matted hair, backpacks and piggybacking children extended to the staircase leading to the third-floor departure gates. She dreaded the stairs. They almost didn’t make it up the last staircase. Helina kissed her fair-haired brother on the temple.

  “It’s fine, Erik. We’ll be out of here soon,” she said, pushing against a dirty black backpack that hovered inches from his face.

  “I miss Daddy,” he whimpered.

  “Daddy’s fine. He’ll join us in Stockholm,” said Helina, her eyes meeting Mari’s for a moment.

  They both knew the truth. Colonel Saar would undoubtedly be among the first Estonian soldier
s to fight the Russians.

  “Helina, how are you doing?” she said.

  “Fine, Mom, but I need to go to the bathroom,” said Helina.

  Mari didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t put any thought into how long they might be trapped, unable to move in any direction except forward. She scanned the yellow walls of the terminal, not spotting a bathroom nearby—not that it would have mattered. A few seconds later, her son looked back at her.

  “I have to go too,” he said. “Really bad.”

  “Soon, sweetie,” she said, rubbing his head through his gray hat. “Maybe it’s time to have something to eat. I’ll break open some candy.”

  His eyes lit up briefly as she dug into her coat pocket for the chocolate bar she had been parceling out to the kids for the past hour. She snapped off a large piece and handed it to Erik, breaking off another for Helina. Even at eleven years old, the allure of chocolate hadn’t worn off her daughter. The kids seemed placated for the moment, while she checked her smartphone for messages. Her parents had made it to Riga by car, though she wasn’t sure if that made things better or worse for them. They lived on the southern coast of Estonia, on the Bay of Riga, and Mari begged them to drive south immediately. At least Riga put them farther away from the Russian hordes. Nothing from Egan, which didn’t surprise her.

  The lights flickered in the terminal, followed by a sudden rumbling as military jets flew over the port. She hoped they were friendly jets, but somehow knew this was wishful thinking. The crowd pressed tighter around them, causing Erik to moan. His chocolate-stained mouth quivered as the smell of urine hit the air.