Warrior Class

by Dale Brown

  "I just wanted to check," Wendy said bitterly. "Because I'm sure you're not doing this to learn how to be a better person or help contribute to your world. Since the only other reason to do something is to have fun, and you're obviously not having fun, I'm confused. Why are you doing this?" And Wendy took her screaming son and walked toward the police vans, where she submitted to having a policewoman take Bradley out of her arms. She was handcuffed behind her back, searched from head to foot, and seated in the front seat of the van beside the policewoman and her son.

  Tenill Samson wanted to go after her, steer her and Bradley away from the confusion and lights and noise, but he could not make his feet move. His world was unraveling. First the President of the United States, then the Russians, and now the press

  blows the doors off his command; his deputy commander engineers a one-man war against the Russians and against a powerful Russian mafioso; now he helps the Government bust a private company accused of attacking the Russians.

  He had no idea what was going to happen next.

  But one thing was certain: Patrick McLanahan was a fighter, a warrior, and he was continuing to fight. And so far, he was winning. Maybe not every battle, maybe not even most of them-but he was winning. Terrill Samson sure as heck couldn't call himself a winner right now.

  Somehow, he had to find a way to make himself a winner.

  Over the Black Sea Several months later

  "There they are, sir," one of the lookouts radioed. "They look like Russian helicopters. Mil Mi-14s, long-range land-based helicopters. No markings on them."

  "What in hell do they want?" the ship's captain, Sergei Trevnikov, muttered nervously, restlessly peering at the helicopters through his binoculars. He hoped they were just joyriding or patrolling, since there was no place for helicopters that big to set down on his ship. "Still no response on hailing frequencies or aviation emergency channels?"

  "No, sir."

  "Pasasi zalupu!" Trevnikov swore. Trevnikov was the skipper of the Russian oil tanker Ustinov, a privately owned tanker based out of Novorossijsk carrying almost a million barrels of crude oil bound for the big new oil terminal at Burgas, Bulgaria. He was accustomed to supply, medical, and VIP helicopters coming out to the ship all the time, but these three helicopters were unidentified, unannounced, and definitely unwanted.

  "Quickly, have the quartermaster break out rifles and side arms," Trevnikov ordered. He switched channels on his radio to the Black Sea emergency distress frequency. "Russian Federation Navy, Russian Federation Navy, Russian Federation Navy, this is the Russian flag tanker vessel Ustinov on emergency channel, under way ninety-eight kilometers north of Zonguldak, Turkey, heading west on transit approach to the

  Metyorgaz terminal at Burgas. Three military helicopters are approaching us from the north. They appear to be Russianmade military Mi-14 helicopters. They are unidentified and are not responding to our hails. We request immediate assistance. Over."

  It took several calls, but moments later a Russian Federation Navy radio operator sent the captain over to another channel. "Tanker Ustinov, we read you loud and clear," the radioman said. "Are you in danger at this time?"

  "Danger? Da, byt v glubokay zhopi! Yes, I'm in deep shit! I think these bastards mean to board us! They are maneuvering in on our bow right now."

  "We acknowledge, Ustinov," the Russian radio operator said. "We are passing along your request for assistance at this time. Maintain a watch on this channel and advise of any hostile action. Over."

  "What should we do in the meantime? Suck our thumbs? Should we stop?"

  "Command suggests you comply with their instructions to avoid any damage to your vessel that will render you dead in the water or unable to maintain steerageway," the radio operator replied. "Are you laden at this time?"

  "Hell, yes, we're laden-we have a million barrels of crude oil on board!" Trevnikov shouted. He paused, decided, and then added, "We are a Metyorgaz vessel. Do you understand? Metyorgaz. Check our records-you'll learn who owns this vessel and all the oil in it. I suggest you tell that to your superiors, and you had better do it quick."

  It was indeed quick. Only a few minutes later, a different voice came on the radio. "Tanker Ustinov, this is Commander Boriskov, commander of the destroyer Besstrashny, Seventyninth Destroyer Group, Novorossijsk," came the announcement. "We copy you are being interdicted by unidentified military helicopters in treaty waters. Describe any markings you see and any weapons visible."

  "They are big fucking transport helicopters," Trevnikov replied. Now the Russian Navy was doing something. Mention "Metyorgaz" to them, and they all start quaking in their boots. No one, not even the Russian Federation Navy, wants

  to fuck with Pavel Kazakov. "I don't see any markings or weapons."

  "We acknowledge. Patrol and action aircraft and vessels are under way," the commander said. "We recommend you reverse course if able and do not give permission to be boarded."

  "Well, no shit," Trevnikov said. "But I will miss my offload slot if I come about." The new Metyorgaz terminal at Burgas, Bulgaria, which had just opened, was one of the largest and finest in all of Eastern Europe. The new Metyorgaz pipeline from Burgas to Vlore, Albania, was cutting the cost of transporting petroleum to markets in Western Europe by thirty percent at least, which meant huge profits for all users. As a result, the Burgas terminal was always booked, and reserved slots could be held open only for very short periods of time. A delay of even six or seven hours could mean sitting at anchor in the Black Sea for days waiting for another slot. "Can't you send a fighter jet out here to scare these bastards away?"

  "We are readying armed aircraft at this time," the Navy commander said, "but it will take them some time to reach your position. You will help us by reversing course. Acknowledge."

  "All right, all right," Trevnikov said. To his helmsman, he ordered, "Helm, hard about." He liked giving that order, because it took big tankers like the Ustinov, over two hundred meters long and over one hundred and fifty thousand tons, almost an hour and about thirty kilometers to execute a course reversal. "I am executing a heading change, coming to starboard to heading zero- six-zero," Trevnikov radioed.

  "Very well," the Navy guy said. "Where are these helicopters now?"

  Trevnikov searched the horizon and followed his bridge crew's pointing fingers. "About two hundred meters off my bow," he replied on the radio. "They are carrying fuel tanks. They look like torpedoes, but they are fuel tanks. My men tell me they are Mi- 14 transport helicopters. They are approaching amidships ... wait! I see ropes! They are throwing ropes down from the helicopters ... they are rappelling down from the he-

  licopters! Soldiers! Commandos! They are invading my ship with commandos! About eight from each helicopter! They are on my deck, moving toward the wheelhouse! There are commandos on my ship!"

  "Remain calm, Captain," the Russian navy commander said. "Our patrol aircraft is less than ten minutes out, we are dispatching jet aircraft, and we have

  a warship about two hours away. Can you secure the bridge?"

  "Against commandos? For two hours? Are you insane?" Trevnikov ordered the doors shut and barred. He had no illusions that he could put up any kind of defense against them, but he was determined to try. He had his crew members take cover in front of the helmsman's console, where they had good cover and could see both bridge wing doors, and he secured and locked the two weather doors and the inside passageway door. Four of his crew members were armed, two with automatic rifles and the other two with automatic pistols.

  Ten minutes later, the steel weather door on the port side of the bridge blew open. To the captain's surprise, a lone, unarmed figure stepped into the doorway. "Open fire!" the captain shouted. All four men began firing as fast as they could. The figure simply stood there ... and stood there. He never went down. They must have emptied eighty rounds on him-he was less than ten meters away-but he did not go down.

  "Astanavleevat'sya! " the officer shouted in very poor Russian, with a d
efinite Western accent. "Gyde deerektaram ? " "Who are you?" the captain shouted in Russian. The air

  was thick and hazy with the smell of burnt gunpowder. Did they have blanks or noisemakers in their guns? Why didn't he go down ... ? "What do you want?" To his men, he said in a low but urgent voice, "Reload quickly, dammit!"

  "Gyde deerektaram ? " the figure repeated.

  "Speak English-your Russian is giving me a headache," Trevnikov shouted, now in English. "I am the captain. What in hell do you want on my ship?" At that moment, the starboardside weather door blew open too, and just like the first, another figure stood, unarmed, in the doorway. One crew member with a rifle opened fire, emptying a thirty-round magazine on

  him in five seconds-but like the first, he did not go down. The first armored terrorist just stood there, calmly observing while his partner was shot at with a rifle. "Who are you?" the captain repeated, his eyes bugging out in sheer terror now. "What do you want?"

  "I want you to shut up and do as you are told," the first commando replied. "Drop your weapons and no one will get hurt, I promise."

  "Ssat ya na nivo hat'el! " the executive officer shouted, and he raised his reloaded pistol at the first man, who had taken several steps toward the Russians. But before the XO could fire, they heard and felt a snap of electricity emanating from somewhere on the figure's body, and the XO flew backward, crumpled against the forward bulkhead, and lay jerking and twitching in muscle spasms on the deck.

  "Drop your weapons now!" the second figure ordered. They did, and they all stood. up from behind the console with their hands raised in surrender. More commandos ran in and quickly began to search the bridge crew. They quickly bound the bridge officers' hands behind their backs with nylon handcuffs, all but the captain, and led them away.

  "Your ship is now under my command," the first figure said in an electronically synthesized voice, like a robot's. The captain stared in disbelief at him. He was dressed head to toe in what appeared to be a thin gray outfit, with a ftill-face helmet and a thin molded backpack. There was not a mark on him from bullets or from anything else. The captain noticed small protrusions from his shoulders that looked like electrodesprobably the source of the shock beam that had disabled his executive officer.

  "You are hijacking an oil tanker? In the middle of the fucking Black Sea? Do you have any idea of what the hell you are doing?"

  "We'll see," the strange commando said. He began issuing orders to his men as they herded the bridge crew out. The second commando, dressed in the strange but obviously very effective body armor as well, departed the bridge.

  Trevnikov stepped closer to the masked commando. "Do you know who owns this vessel, asshole?"

  "Metyorgaz," the commando replied.

  11 And do you know who owns Metyorgaz?" "Metyor 11G."

  "And do you know-T'

  "I know perfectly well that Pavel Kazakov, the Russian gangster and drug

  lord, owns this vessel and all the oil in it," the commando said, with a hint of triumph in his voice. "But you won't be making any deliveries for him anymore."

  "That is not your first mistake today, aslayop," Trevnikov said. This time it was his turn to give the terrorist an evil smile. "But it could very well be your last. When Comrade Kazakov finds out some American commandos in silly dance costumes hijacked his tanker, he'll take great pleasure in roasting you all alive."

  "Don't count on it, sraka," the commando said. He took a plastic handcuff from a belt pouch behind his back and bound Trevnikov's hands behind his back himself, and he was led out of the bridge.

  Twenty minutes later, the terrorists had rounded up the entire crew and had them assembled on the bow with their hands on their heads. Two more helicopters soon arrived, carrying two dozen masked men, armed only with side arms, who took over the controls of the ship, plus several long crates and other supplies brought in slung under the helicopters. Soon the tanker Ustinov was heading south, toward Turkey.

  But they were not alone for long. Several minutes later, several more helicopters arrived: one belonging to a statecontrolled Turkish Radio and Television Corporation TV crew from Ankara, plus two Mil Mi- 14 Haze land-based marine assault helicopters belonging to the Russian Federation Naval Infantry.

  "Attention, commandos aboard the Ustinov, this is the Russian Federation Naval Infantry," the radio call came. "You have illegally commandeered a Russian Federation flag vessel on the high seas. We have orders to take control of the vessel. We order you to immediately surrender control of the vessel and all of you come out on deck in plain sight and with weapons on the deck." No reply. "Do not be a fool," the Russian commander went on. "We have a Russian Navy de-

  stroyer less than two hours away. You will not reach any shore before our destroyer reaches you." Still no reply. "Very well. Prepare to die."

  The Russian transport helicopters kept coming. They were within a mile of the Ustinov when suddenly a bright line of fire arced across the darkening evening sky from the mid-deck of the tanker. A missile struck one of the Russian Federation Navy helicopters, its engine exploded into a thousand pieces, and it plunged into the Black Sea. The other helicopter immediately reversed course and headed back to Russia. A Turkish Coast Guard helicopter, on the scene monitoring the tanker as it headed toward the Turkish coast, was on the crash scene immediately to help rescue survivors.

  Darkness had fallen by the time the second wave arrived: a Russian Federation Navy Sukhoi-24 "Fencer" attack plane from Novorossijsk. The Su-24 carried two Kh-29 "Kedge" imaging-infrared guided air-to-surface missiles. It remained above fifteen thousand feet and kept its speed up to avoid being a target for shoulder-fired missiles from the hijackers on the ship. At a range of ten miles, the pilot was able to lock the stem of the Ustinov in his imaging-infrared telescopic sensor. His orders: shoot out the Ustinov's rudder and propeller and disable it. At a range of five miles, the Kh-29 was within range. The pilot unsafed his firing button ...

  ... and at that exact moment, the Su-24's right engine exploded in a ball of fire, and the crew ejected seconds before the whole plane exploded.

  It took another hour for a second Sukhoi-24 attack jet to reach the tanker, but it, too, disappeared from radar shortly before launching an attack on the tanker-and it, too, was well out of range of a man-portable antiaircraft missile. Several minutes later, one of the engines on a Russian Federation Navy Tupolev-95 maritime patrol and attack plane inbound toward the tanker was hit and destroyed by another missile, and the plane was forced to turn back.

  By then, the Russian Federation Navy destroyer Besstrashny, originally based in Ukraine but moved to Novorossijsk when the ship was transferred back to Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union, was close on the scene. The tac-

  tical action officers aboard the Russian destroyer had warned all air and surface traffic away from the area, and its Kamov Ka-27 helicopter had already been datalinking the tanker's exact position to the ship. There were several

  Turkish Coast Guard vessels in the vicinity, all coastal patrol vessels carrying light weapons-no threat to the Besstrashny, one of the largest warships in the Black Sea.

  The skipper met with the weapons officers and tactical action officer in the Combat Information Center. "When will we be within range of the Ustinov?" Captain Boriskov asked.

  "We are well within range of the 3M-82 Moskit, sir," the weapons officer responded. The Moskit was a large supersonic, radar-guided antiship missile.

  "I don't want to sink the damn ship, just disable it," the captain said.

  "Then all we have is the forward AK- 130 until we're within helicopter range," the TAO cut in.

  "What do we target? The rudder area? The props? Engineering?"

  "I suggest we hit the superstructure, sir," the TAO said. "Create some confusion, maybe kill a bunch of the terrorists, and send the naval infantry aboard to try to take control of the ship again. If we disable the ship's steering and propulsion systems, we could create an even larger disaster if we can't
stop the ship and it runs aground in Turkey."

  "Ask me if I care if it runs aground in Turkey," the captain sneered.

  "But if it did, it would be partially our fault-and that might be the terrorists' ultimate objective," one of the intelligence officers said. He lowered his voice, then added, "Remember who owns that ship and its cargo, sir."

  The skipper's face blanched. Pavel Kazakov.

  In the last several months, Pavel Kazakov had become one of the wealthiest, most well-known, and most talked-about men in the entire world. He'd already had an evil reputation that had made him simply dangerous. Now he had real, legitimate power behind him. His oil empire stretched from the Caspian to the Adriatic Sea. He was shipping more oil than half the members of OPEC, and he was doing it more cheaply and

  more efficiently than anyone could believe. Nations and corporations were becoming rich from him, which meant more and more nations were protecting and underwriting his ventures.

  His chief underwriter seemed to be the Russian Army itself. From Georgia in the east to Albania in the west, the Russian army maintained a continuous, ominous presence. Although Russian troops were not in Georgia itself, the Republic of Georgia knew that thousands of Russian troops were massed on its northern border, ready to invade if the government was unwilling or unable to control rival factional fighting in the Nagorno-Karabakh region that might affect Metyorgaz oiltransport operations. The Russian army was already cracking down on the cross-border movement of Muslim rebels between the province of Chechnya and Georgia, and they were not shy about crossing the border on occasion to pursue Muslim guerrillas. The Russian navy had also increased patrols on the Black Sea to protect increased tanker traffic.

  Most significantly, the Russian army was back in the Balkans with a force and presence unseen since World War H. Fifty thousand troops were stationed in eleven key bases in Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, the Serbian provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo, and Albania, ostensibly as "peacekeepers" enforcing United Nations resolutions. Their presence was centered around the new Metyorgaz pipeline route, so there was very little doubt about their real mission, but they also enforced United Nations resolutions and even abided by most NATO rules of engagement and operations orders, operating almost at will throughout the Balkans, from Slovenia to the Black Sea, from Hungary to the Greek border.