by Dalton Fury
“I thought we weren’t going loud?” Slapshot asked. “Intel value, wasn’t it?”
Kolt tried to make sense of the scene. Digger, still naked, was on his back. He had one of the Russians in what looked like a solid rear naked choke, obviously holding pressure on his larynx as the Russian flapped his hands wildly, desperate for oxygen. Digger’s left leg was wrapped around the Russian’s waist, just over his half-limp penis and hairy, white thighs. His right stub leg, pointing skyward, provided leverage as he locked in the choke.
Close by, Slapshot’s target was facedown and lights out. Slapshot had just finished flex-tying the man’s wrists behind his back and was moving down to the Russian’s ankles.
“He dead?” Kolt asked, hoping he wasn’t the only one that had used lethal force. After all, the whole capture idea was his.
“I pistol-whipped him.”
Kolt shook his head, half in disbelief, half in amazement, before breaking the spell and moving to help Digger. Slapshot threw Kolt two flex ties, which Kolt used to fasten the other sleeping Russian’s ankles. Digger rolled out of the way, letting Kolt turn the guy over and secure his wrists.
“Get dressed, brother,” Kolt said. “That was legend right there.”
“Bite me, Racer,” Digger said, unable to hide his relief that the ruse actually worked. “You owe me big-time.”
“Indeed,” Kolt said as he watched Digger hop out of the headlight’s footprint and back to the tailgate.
Kolt turned to Olga, happy to see her alive. She had pulled her pants up and was leaning over Dmitry, her hand under his neck, checking for a pulse, not wanting to give up on her fellow operative just yet.
“These are Starinov’s babies,” Olga said.
“Who?” Kolt asked.
“Colonel Starinov. He is the grandfather of Russian special forces.”
“Spetsnaz?” Kolt asked. “For sure?”
Olga collected herself and stood up. She noticed her cap on the ground and knelt like a woman to retrieve it, bending at the knees and not the waist. With one hand she whipped her hair into a bun and slipped the blue-and-white conductor’s hat back on her head, taking a long second to position it just right.
Kolt watched her every move, impressed by her demeanor and composure with Dmitry’s blood-puddled body so close. Kolt assumed the two Alfa operatives were tight, at least as compatriots, maybe more.
“We gotta get going, boss,” Slapshot said. “We taking these two with us?”
Kolt let the question sink in for a moment, until his thoughts were interrupted by Olga walking toward him.
She kneeled next to the Russian soldier Digger had napped out and reached toward his head, grabbing a piece of two-inch-wide orange-and-black ribbon attached to the soldier’s left shoulder epaulet. She rubbed the knot between her fingers to untie it.
“The Order of St. George,” she said, holding the ten-inch-or-so-long ribbon in the air. “Russia’s nationalist pride. All Spetsnaz wear one when the Kremlin declares war.”
Olga handed the ribbon to Kolt. He studied it for a few seconds before sharing with Slapshot.
“If you wear one of these the locals know you’re Russian special forces?” Slapshot asked.
“Yes,” Olga said, not taking her dark eyes off of the defenseless Russian sprawled at her side. “Even the traitors, Ukrainians who are pro-Russian separatists, are afraid of them.”
Kolt stood, holstered his blaster, and started toward Dmitry’s body. “No debate. We’re taking everyone. Even the dead.”
Kolt grabbed Dmitry by the left arm and rolled him over on his back.
“NO!” Slapshot yelled.
Kolt turned, surprised by his mate’s disregard for noise discipline, but intrigued by what he was yelling about. It was too late.
Two-handing a knife, Olga lifted it out of the back of the neck of the Russian she had pulled the St. George’s ribbon from. She spoke in Russian, saying something poetic for sure, certainly laced with vengeance and horror for Dmitry’s death.
Slapshot jumped in to grab her.
“Slap!” Kolt said. “At ease!”
Slapshot froze, looked hard at Kolt, then, understanding, stepped back.
Olga turned to lock eyes with Kolt, but only for a moment before turning back around. She raised the knife with both hands high in the air, like a wounded woman possessed, and slammed the bloody blade down like she was swinging a sledgehammer at the pivotboard of a traveling carnival.
Olga retracted the knife from the neck, repeated her deep-seated verbal hatred, and struck again.
And again, and again.
TEN
Sonchon, North Korea
Kang Pang Su powered up the teletypewriter, knowing his life as he knew it was coming to an end. It should have been more shocking, he thought, but everyone had their breaking point. His had come slowly over the decades until he simply couldn’t take any more.
A message blinked onto the screen—DISPLAY ERROR/POWER. Kang sat back. Now that he’d made up his mind, would he be thwarted by a technical malfunction? Forcing himself to remain calm, Kang reached behind the teletypewriter, feeling for the 1985 operator’s manual taped to the back. He yanked it off, and turned to the back section.
Yes, turn the RTTY off and retest the initiation sequence.
Kang reached for the red toggle switch to power down the device, but before he did, he noticed an odd message display.
ERROR 143.
Kang quickly thumbed to the back of the manual and ran his right index finger down the two-page list of error codes until he found the number 143. Out to the right the noun nomenclature read SYMBOLIC INPUT POWER—UNCONDITIONAL ABORT.
Oh my!
Again, Kang froze in confusion, unsure what to do. He instinctively looked back toward the window, then through the kitchen to the door in the distance as he thought it over. He looked up at the old wall clock, positioned just below the Workers’ Party–distributed portraits of the Great Leader, Kim Jong Il, and the Dear Leader, Kim Il Sung. He had to get moving, had to get the message off.
Power! That’s it. It must be.
Kang reached for the RTTY, rotating it 180 degrees to see the rear connections. He touched both terminals, feeling for slack in the connections. Nothing.
Kang pushed himself to his feet and moved back to the window, pausing to quickly look outside at the makeshift antenna, ensuring the radial poles buried just below the dirt hadn’t been disturbed. It was the same garden spot where his mother buried the kimchi bowls in the winter so they would stay cold but not frozen.
Things looked in order.
Kang followed the thirty-foot antenna made from metal fence pieces and barbed wire from the ground to its apex, finding nothing odd or disturbed. Satisfied, he returned to the front door, opened it, and stepped outside, gingerly slipping back into his loafers. Forgetting to close the door, Kang stepped off the low porch and walked around the drab wall of the aged and gray house, hugging the side and trying to conceal his movements using the sporadic bushes off to the side.
Kang reached the power pole just six or seven feet from the wall, and followed the white power cable from the hole under the tiled roof across the open space and down the pole until it reached the breaker box. Kang looked closely; nothing out of order to the naked eye. He looked around the immediate area, searching for a stick to protect him from the hot line. Finding one that might do, an old soiled garden hoe, he delicately touched the ends of the wire, immediately realizing one of the wires was obviously loose.
No time to fix this!
Kang again found the end of the power cable, gently jamming the wooden side of the garden tool up and into the old wooden box, attempting to connect the cables enough to provide enough power to operate the RTTY. He let go of the stick cautiously, ensuring it held, before returning to the RTTY and the open space in the ondol flooring.
Back kneeling on the dingy pillow, Kang wheeled the brown metal RTTY back around to face the screen and keyboard. Wait
ing for him was the message he had prayed for.
OUTPUT1
Attacking the olive drab keys with eight fat fingers, Kang banged out the required character string RYRYRYRY needed to test five-level teleprinters. Known as Baudot, this stressful test sequence for electromechanical teleprinters forces the switching between the two characters. Repeated over and over, it outputs a carrier wave that regularly and rapidly shifts back and forth in frequency, allowing for testing of signal polarity.
The test took only a few seconds and Kang found the keys again to craft his message, not forgetting to properly front it with BOM, beginning of message, generating green 5-bit characters every time he pressed a key.
BOM. MTNG 38th NEXT—
Kang stopped typing at the sound of the knock at the door. Someone must have seen him outside, either before he hid the bicycle inside, or maybe when he checked the power cable connection. Kang knew he didn’t have time to put the RTTY away and make the last train out before the electricity shut off. No, it would take too long to even politely dismiss any of his neighbors bringing fresh radish and turnip kimchi to simply mask their nosiness. And if his visitors were government men, or a few of the four million Worker-Peasant Red Guard paramilitaries, he would need much more time to properly sterilize the ondol flooring and return it to its natural state.
Ignore it, keep typing, send the message. It’s your last chance!
Kang continued hacking, finishing the message, his nerves forcing him to backspace twice to correct, just as a second and distinctly louder and longer knock was heard at the door.
MTNG 38th NEXT WED. SOS. SEEGHAR. EOM.
Kang hit Enter twice, initiating the Send sequence.
Damn it! The noise!
Kang had forgotten about the noise the RTTY makes as it begins to transmit, and reached for the tubular silver volume slide. He slid it down, from level five to zero.
A third knock.
Kang yanked the pillow from under his knees and placed it over the face of the RTTY. Chancing a power failure again, he lifted the teleprinter up and gently placed it back into its hiding place. Looking one last time at the front door, he shoved the flat stone back into place and refastened the golden lacquer paper.
“Yes, I’m coming, please wait.”
* * *
Kolt, struggling to keep his forefinger following the correct road on his map, didn’t realize they had arrived at the safe house until Olga brought the truck to a shuddering halt. They’d commandeered the vehicle the three Spetsnaz troops had been using, an Ural-315 general utility truck, to replace their destroyed truck. Kolt motioned for Olga to kill the lights.
“Keep the engine running,” he said, grabbing his .45 from its position between his legs and bringing it up to just below the dash. “We have no idea who’s here.”
Kolt was pissed, but mostly at himself. He’d told Olga not to drive straight up to the house, but to stop a quarter mile out. Obviously, he should have told her again. He studied the aged two-story brick building and burnt-out vehicles in the surrounding area. The war had clearly run over this place. He counted three holes in the wall facing him, most likely from RPGs. The front corner of the structure was completely gone, leaving a ten-foot-wide gap clogged with rubble and wood beams hanging down from the second floor. Every window he could see was shattered. The place looked abandoned, which was good. If his team were inside, they were practicing excellent light discipline.
It was still dark, which normally worked to Kolt’s advantage, but after their run-in with Spetsnaz he found himself wanting more than the artificial kind provided by SureFire.
“I check,” Olga said, apparently reading his mind.
Kolt grabbed her arm before she could step out of the cab of the truck. “Stand by, I’ll join you.” He turned and saw Slapshot staring at him through the rear window. Kolt slid the glass panels back. “I fucked up. We’re too close.”
“You want us to take a look?” Slapshot asked.
“Just cover us from either side of the truck. We’ll go to the door. If it goes south, don’t be strangers,” he said.
“We’ll try to discriminate, but,” Slapshot said, lightening the mood a bit.
A knock on Kolt’s window startled him and he swung his auto pistol up and to the right. Trip Griffin was staring back at him, his smile evaporating as he stared at the business end of the 1911.
Kolt quickly lowered his pistol and reengaged the thumb safety.
“Welcome to Ukraine,” Trip said.
ELEVEN
Kolt stood inside the living room of the war-torn safe house and tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Three bodies were laid out on a filthy blue and gray carpet in the center of the room. Placed abreast of each other, the bodies were dress right dress, maybe an inch between them. They were two Delta snipers and a 24th Special Tactics Squadron combat controller. Each one was wrapped tight with the red, white, and blue of a full-size American flag and then inside an olive green plastic Skedco litter, the kind infantry troops use to drag their casualties.
Kolt took a few steps closer to the bodies and took a knee. It was the last thing he expected to see upon arriving at the safe house. He didn’t know the details, at least not enough to determine what, if anything, could have been done differently. On occasion, they’d lose an Eagle on a hit, usually by some freak accident, a lucky rabbit round, or something unseen and uncontrollable. Kolt knew losing a mate left the survivors feeling one of two ways. Either they’d be stuffing more frags in their assault vests and topping off mags, or they’d dump their kit in a pile and mentally shut down for a while. Losing one guy on a hit was tragic enough, but three guys in one hit was entirely uncommon.
“It was a fool’s plan in the first place,” Trip Griffin said, breaking the silence. “We should have waited for better intel.”
“What happened?” Slapshot asked.
“Jackal’s op car hit a land mine during the exfil.”
Kolt gritted his teeth. It was a tough break to lose their sniper team.
“What about Marzban’s courier?” Kolt asked, immediately regretting the comment. Kolt didn’t intend to be insensitive to the casualties, and felt a pang of guilt in his throat. If his men fingered him as a commander more concerned about the mission than the men, his first operation with his new squadron would only get more difficult.
“Slotted him. But that ain’t the half of it. Marzban was there, too,” Trip said.
Kolt looked at Trip. “Intel only had the courier.”
“Yeah, well, they got part of it right. He had extra muscle with him. When we realized it was him, he was already making a run for it. I’m sure I tagged him; Dealer shot, too. He probably has two bullets in him.”
“Dealer?”
“One of the SEALs,” Trip said. “They had the cordon.”
Kolt paused for a second. He knew who Dealer was, but was surprised to hear his name. Kolt knew Colonel Webber had never said anything about the SEALs tagging along on this mission.
“Any word on him?” Kolt asked, hoping something positive had come from three KIAs on a failed mission.
Trip shook his head. “Last we saw of him he was holding his belly. He jumped in a dark-colored sedan and bolted.”
“The Iranian scientists?” Kolt asked. “Any sign of them?”
“None,” Trip said. “They weren’t there.”
“Marzban’s got a girlfriend,” Kolt said. Again, he caught himself, hoping his tone wasn’t too snippy.
“No,” Trip said, “bitch was probably behind the wheel.”
Kolt took his eyes from Trip’s dirty face and disheveled hair and looked down at the three corpses lying on the floor behind him.
“Who are they?” Kolt asked, a knot forming in his stomach.
“Philly and Max,” Trip said, “and our new combat controller, Carson. His first time out with us.”
Mother Fuckers!
Even the impetuous Kolt Raynor knew it wasn’t worth Marzban, not dead or alive. Bu
t he knew he wouldn’t turn off the mission because of casualties. The Ukraine in 2014 was not Somalia in 1993, where after too many special operators were lost, weak-kneed politicians pulled the plug, aborting the original mission before it could be realized.
A different time, a different place.
Marzban Tehrani wasn’t simply stealing from a United Nations food distribution center to cement his power base. He was the pivot point for North Korea’s miniature nuclear warhead program, responsible for smuggling nuclear scientists from his home in Iran, across Europe into Russia, and on to Pyongyang.
“Same route you took in?” Kolt asked. He stood back up, wanting to refocus.
“Yeah, the other routes were blocked. Separatists had the place locked down.”
“Dumb luck on the infil?”
“Pressure-plated mine. We missed it going in.”
“Damn. Why did you guys launch if the intel was weak?” Kolt asked, careful not to sound as if he was second-guessing their decision to execute, especially since he hadn’t been there to help.
“Hell, sir,” Trip said, “I don’t really know. I guess because it was written that way on the sync matrix.”
“Sync matrix?” Kolt asked, surprised at Trip’s comment. “Even if the intel wasn’t actionable or vetted?”
“Yeah, seems like we always do it that way,” Trip said, “at least when Lieutenant Colonel Mahoney was our commander.”
“Sync matrices don’t think, don’t process, and don’t audible,” Kolt said, looking Trip dead in the eye.
Trip didn’t respond, just turned slightly and looked down at the three bodies on the floor. Kolt wasn’t sure if the comment even registered with Trip or if he was too shell-shocked to comprehend it.
Kolt bit his tongue, felt the pointed stares from Slapshot and Digger, and took a deep breath. He looked at them both, read their minds, and let it go for now.
“Where’d you guys score those digs?” Trip asked, as if he finally broke out of his trance and noticed the oddball uniforms Kolt, Slapshot, and Digger were wearing. He pointed with both thumbs at his own chest. “We thought this was the Ukrainian uniform?”