Introductions completed, Bolan outlined to the assembled team the mission they would be expected to fulfill: to enter the Chechen Republic and secure the release of the Americans who were caught in the middle of the stand-off between the Chechen rebels and the Russian military, which was, as he spoke, advancing on Argun-Martan.
“So we work for the American government, then,” Bulgarin stated rather than asked.
“This isn’t a U.S.-sponsored mission,” Bolan said firmly. “I’ve been hired by a private concern to put together a team to execute this mission.” He wasn’t going to directly implicate the mining consortium whose duplicity had landed the survey team in this situation, but a hint or two wouldn’t hurt if any of the team chose to open their mouths, for whatever reason.
“Whatever you say,” Bulgarin replied with heavy irony.
“Hey, scarface, cut the shit,” Vassilev piped up. “Who cares who bankrolls this job? It’s a big job, no matter what. Let Cooper outline it without the wisecracks.”
This outburst extracted some amusement from the assembled team. Vassilev bowed to his comrades and gestured to Bolan to continue. Bulgarin glared at him, but held his peace.
Bolan used the tablet to call up plans and diagrams of the town, which had been provided by Stony Man Farm. The layout of the land around the edge of the Caucasus, and the territory along the river, were displayed; and the points of entry to the town and the possible strongholds of the rebels were shown. The movement of the Russian tank detachment was displayed. Anything that was known about the Chechen National Socialists was available, though that amounted to little.
Occasionally one of the men would chip in his opinion.
“This group—they are either very new or very small. I have never heard of them,” Krilov remarked. “Many of the groups in Chechnya have been in existence since the first war. Not these. And the way they take their own people as hostage to the Russians? Why? Do they think they will be martyrs and this will inspire Chechnya to rise? Pah—” he gestured dismissively “—they are fools, no more than that.”
“That may be true,” Vishniev mused, “but does it not make them all the more dangerous? If they are this reckless, then they may make it easier to get into the town, but they will fight even when it seems pointless, and if they continue then they invite attack from outside, and this will be bad for us.”
“Attack from outside is inevitable,” Bulgarin added, his previous high-handed attitude for the moment dropped. “The president sends Azhkov. I have served under this man, and he is no time-waster. He will issue an ultimatum and will be eagerly counting the seconds until he can start to attack. He is not a man who likes to travel and not arrive, if you see what I mean. He likes the sound of a raging cannon.”
Bolan nodded. “Then we know what we face, gentlemen. Entering the territory and attaining the target area is something over which we have some control, and will therefore be the part of the mission that we can feel confident about. Our problem will be time and the erratic nature of the two opposing forces that we have to work between.”
“I trust you have a strategy for this?” Dostoyevsky said slowly.
“Gentlemen, do you think Mr. Cooper would get this group together if he didn’t know what he was doing?” Grimaldi asked with a smile. “Of course he has a strategy. Take it away, Sarge.”
Bolan grinned. “I have two scenarios, extrapolated from the information available, and for each of them there is a battle plan. Listen carefully, gentlemen, for we have—” he checked his watch “—an hour before we need to leave. There will be equipment and transport ready for us at the airfield. Now....”
* * *
AN UNMARKED LIMO took them from the hotel to the airfield where Dragonslayer stood waiting for takeoff. They disembarked and took their places in the chopper, where ordnance supplied with one of Bolan’s war chests and procured through a local contact, was waiting for them.
Before taking off, the mercenaries looked through the ordnance supplied. The guns were mostly assault rifles and SMGs, with some smaller weapons and a few larger. The grenades were flash, concussion, CS and white phosphorous, Willie Petes, with no shrapnel—working within the kinds of enclosed spaces that strategic projections gave them, these would be too risky to the civilians they had been assigned to protect. Explosives were packed, as were some Claymore mines to lay down on their retreat and slow the enemy should they be pursued. For each man there was also a blacksuit, gas mask, a pair of night-vision goggles and enough rounds of ammunition to ensure a good supply even if they sparked off a minor war.
“You are well prepared, Cooper,” Basayev remarked. “I wonder if you think this will be even more difficult than you suspect. I wonder if you think we have no chance of getting out in one piece.”
Bolan eyed the wiry fighter. “Any mission is a fifty-fifty prospect. Lady Luck can screw up any plan. What you do is try to even the odds and stack them your way as much as possible. You think I’ve been selling you a line, then you know where the door is. You’ll be paid for your time so far.”
“You’d go a man short?” Basayev asked, sizing up the soldier.
“Better five men at a hundred percent than six when you’re carrying one who isn’t.”
Basayev shrugged. “For the money, I’m committed. I just don’t like to be lied to when it’s my ass on the line.”
“My ass, too,” Bolan replied. “It’s fair enough to ask questions. As long as you accept the answers, that is.”
“Then we understand each other,” Basayev said. “I suggest your monkey—” he grinned at Grimaldi “—get this bird in the air. The sooner we get there, the sooner we get back and the sooner I get to spend this cash you’re paying me, right?”
As Grimaldi lifted the chopper into the air, Bolan settled into his seat and wondered if having to accept what he could get at short notice for such a mission would be the worst situation he had ever been forced into. Looking back at the motley crew of Russians, Chechens and the Georgian, he could see not so much a group of guns for hire who could work together as a team, as a disparate group of misfits who were soldiers of fortune for no other reason than their temperaments would allow for nothing else.
That was going to make this even more of a difficult mission than he had envisioned.
Chapter Ten
Captain Daman Tankian had a name that caused him, with his knowledge of the English language, to smile wryly at his fate. That a military man with the first syllable of his last name should end up in a tank regiment was an irony that was not lost on him, even though he knew it would sail right over the head of the man who sat beside him, sourly staring out the window with a face that resembled nothing less than a slab of condemned meat.
General Sergei Azhkov was not an easy man to get to know, or even to get on with in the most superficial of ways, but since Tankian had joined the regiment he had found that beneath the old warrior’s teak veneer there lurked a keener mind than many would give him credit for. His reputation was purely for being a hard, driven soldier. The truth was, the general had a keen interest in military and social history, and as Tankian was a graduate of Moscow University in pre-Soviet history, he had found a mutual interest that the general had cautiously breached before opening up a little more.
“General, the men are billeted and the hardware is being overhauled, ready for the morning. Are there any other orders before I stand down?”
“Yes. There is a bottle in my briefcase. Pour yourself one and pour one for me,” the general said in a flat voice. “You are off duty as far as I am concerned, Daman. All is ready for the final push tomorrow morning.”
“You say that as though we rode to defeat rather than victory,” Tankian remarked as he took two metal cups from the general’s bag, along with a quart of vodka.
Azhkov snorted. “What is victory?”
Tankian shrugged. “An interesting question, Sergei.” He handed the general his vodka. “I doubt the president would appreciate such philosophical niceties. However, I would assume that a victory in his eyes would be the routing of the rebel forces, even if it entailed leveling the town.”
“Indeed. A show of force. Put the rebels in their place. As long, of course, as the Americans are saved. Which, if we adopt the kind of tactic favored by our leader, is a highly unlikely eventuality...to say the least.” The general screwed up his face and shook his head before downing his vodka.
“I would hazard, Sergei, that from the way you say this, you believe that the latter is what our president would like to happen.”
“He did not say so directly, of course,” Azhkov replied, being as circumspect as his superior before continuing. “The rebels have good reason to be so bold. This is tied up with our foreign friends, though how is not something I know for certain. I do know that having all of them out of the way may give our leader opportunity to establish martial law.”
“And under cover of this, he will be able to find out what was going on, and so profit from it,” Tankian mused, pouring another measure for them both. “But the United Nations, driven as they are by American interests, will demand accountability for any casualties, no matter how incidental, or indeed accidental, they may be to the main mission.”
Azhkov took the cup from his captain. “Someone will have to be the head on the block. What better way to settle old scores? I believe that, as the phrase goes, many chickens will be coming home to roost, and that an ignominious retirement and a disparaging footnote in history await me.”
“Unless we can persuade the rebels to give up their hostages—that is what they are, after all—or find a way of outflanking them.”
The teak face split into a grin that was as ugly as it was sardonic. Azhkov moved over to a table set in the middle of the barracks room. He used his cup to indicate the road along the river, with Argun-Martan set dead center.
“River on one side, mountain on the other. If we had infantry, then we may be able to send men to infiltrate and cut off any route of retreat. As things stand, we have been detailed to this end of the route, with no way to get our vehicles around without being seen. We cannot flank or pincer these guys. Now if another tank regiment had been sent to cover this section of road,” he stated, banging down his cup on the far side of the town, “then we would be in a position of some strength. Instead, we roll in like it was Hungary 1956 and meet the same opprobrium.”
“The Chechens do not even have to defend the town if they do not wish to. They can retreat, let us raze it in their wake and they win a propaganda victory.”
Azhkov gestured dismissively. “They retreat and they are bombed on the road. Simple. They are fair game once they leave the civilians behind. The point is that we are the scapegoats because we have been put in that position. Like a magician, sleight of hand, smoke and mirrors...”
“Everyone looks to the tank commander who razes an innocent town and kills civilians and foreign nationals, while forgetting to ask questions about the rebels and what they had to bargain with?”
“Precisely, Daman,” the general said with sad resignation. He gestured to his cup. “Pour another. In fact, let us go in search of another bottle. Tomorrow we walk into a trap that they think they have laid, while in truth it has been laid for them. And we are the terrier sent into the rabbit hole. I would rather face this drunk than sober.”
“There is no way around this, Sergei?”
The general chuckled. “Not unless you believe in miracles.”
* * *
Dragonslayer TOOK THE eight-man party across Turkey and into Georgia. It was a lot of territory to cover, but Grimaldi had a plan. Keep low and under the radar, steering clear of major populated areas and relying on two arranged stops along the way to refuel and check the way ahead.
When they made the first of their scheduled stops, there was some dissent in the chopper from those who wondered why, if the mission was so urgent, they would take time out.
“You guys ever hear that old proverb ‘less haste, more speed’?” Grimaldi asked them. “Nah, forget it. Listen, I need to keep this baby topped up and the reserves filled. Low flying takes its toll. While I get that done, I also get to check on the local conditions. It’ll get us there quicker, trust me.”
Bolan always did. While the mercenaries grumbled among themselves, the soldier went with Grimaldi to meet two men manning the fuel depot. They looked like brothers. Indeed that was what they were, ex-military men who had gone AWOL and underground when the USSR had crumbled, forming part of a pipeline that smuggled weapons and outside funds to rebel groups that had fought for independence during the dark days of flux. Since then, they had made a name for themselves as security consultants for any type of business. Bolan didn’t want to probe too deeply, but it was obvious from the access they had to information that some of the business concerns had links to the governments of several states in the region, including the Russians.
There was some aerial activity on the border of Georgia and Chechnya, but nothing more than usual. If there had been any leak in the activities of Grimaldi and Bolan, it had not so far reached the strategic air command of either Georgia or Russia. That much was good. It would enable the chopper to skip low across the territory and over the border with ease.
Once there, however, there were intimations of problems. Producing a laptop that was obviously wired into some places it shouldn’t be, the brothers brought up a series of exchanges between air crews and ground control showing that detachments of planes had landed at the nearest airfields to Argun-Martan, ready to skirt the mountains and take out the town.
“You reckon that mad man is just going to flatten the town?” Grimaldi asked Bolan.
“Subtlety isn’t his middle name, Jack. But he’s not that stupid as to use a sledgehammer.”
“Depends what kind of sledgehammer,” one of the brothers interjected in fractured English. “Listen to this.”
Another couple of clicks and they were listening to a series of communications with a tank regiment.
“That’s what I would have expected,” Bolan mused, “but—”
“Yeah, look,” the brother said, bringing up a map of the region. He indicated the area around the town and grimaced. “Boom, yeah?”
“Oh yeah,” Bolan agreed. He could see at a glance that the air strike would take place on the section of road not covered by the tank regiment. It was a setup, but who would it really benefit?
“Jack, these guys have been great, but we really need to move. When this goes down, then we need to get in, out and move fast.”
When they were in the air again, he said nothing to the combat crew. Time enough for that later. The key would be in infiltrating the town and arranging an extraction that would not put Dragonslayer in the middle of a dogfight, which mostly depended on how much time they had.
Time: the unknown quantity that was the soldier’s biggest nemesis, and one he was still considering when they made the second and final stop.
* * *
“ALEXEI, I AM WORRIED. Not enough fight, and I feel like a coiled spring. I need to release that tension or my headaches will start again. When will the Russians come?”
“Viktor, why do you wish for it so quickly? Can you not enjoy what we have begun here?”
“It is not that,” the giant said with a sigh. “I do not wish to head an empire like you, Alexei. I am just a soldier. Without that, I have nothing to stop the pain.”
Orlov did not know what to say. The giant had been his ally since they were children, and they had always had the same aim. But where Orlov had a dream to unite the nation and make it pure and great again, Adamenko was motivated on a much more primal level. Avenging Chechens against Russians was a simple matter for him of systematicall
y eradicating every Russian he came across. For the most part, those contrasting views of the same aim worked well together, but as Orlov looked out of mayor’s office onto the main street of Argun-Martan, he could see that the differences between them may cause problems.
Since Bargishev had helped him to get the people of the town on Orlov’s side, he had been content to let the mayor act as a kind of go-between, acting as his mouthpiece among the people as the few troops Orlov brought with him shored up the defenses of the town. It was vital that the citizens of the town be mobilized and organized into a defensive force. Orlov knew that an attack was inevitable. He had every confidence that his cards, when face up, would stop the Russians in their tracks. But first they would have to make those tracks, and when they did, the people had to be ready and protected.
Of course, Bargishev was not a trustworthy ally. The knowledge of how he attained his position and his willingness to bend to keep an eye on the main chance were ample proof of this. A Chechen National Socialist soldier was always with him, ostensibly for his protection: in truth, for Orlov’s.
As for the people of the town... As he watched them build defenses and gather the arms that they kept secreted in their homes, working together with his men to build a civilian army capable of holding off the Russians for as long as it took him to reveal his whip hand, he felt a swelling sense of pride that these were his people.
Unlike Viktor, Aleksandr Orlov did not look like a native Chechen, but he was as pure as any of the people on the streets below. At least, he would have been if not for the Russian soldier who had taken his mother while his comrades forced the man he still considered his true father to watch.
The fire of Chechen nationalism burned hard within him. His father and mother had suffered in the last days of the Soviet, as Glasnost allowed the troops to run riot before they were initially withdrawn from areas that were granted independence, only to have it cruelly snatched away all too soon. The wars had scarred the landscape and the psyche of the people, which in itself was a fragile thing that had only been allowed to rebuild since the death of Stalin.
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