by Joe Buff
No silo crews on those lethal machines.
“Kurzin, Sniper One,” an edgy voice called.
“One,” Kurzin responded, “go.”
“An Mi-Twenty-four-F is circling the complex. A second is searching the woods.”
“Kurzin, roger, out.” The air now stank of sickly sweet helicopter turbine exhaust.
“Extra precautions for the shift change?” Nyurba asked.
“Not a favorable development. Satellites never saw this sort of thing tied in to crew rotations.”
Nyurba heard another engine sound, different in quality. Heavy vehicles were climbing the road from the base to the complex — the only paved route in the area.
“That’s our cue,” Kurzin said tightly. Nyurba’s heart began to pound. They and eight men stepped out into the middle of the road, their special forces equipment and Spetsnaz insignia conspicuous. Some wore cloth shoulder patches, others large enameled-metal breast badges; the main feature on the insignia was a pack of vicious wolves. Kurzin and Nyurba were both dressed as lieutenant colonels — hefty rank.
Instead of a UAZik jeep, or supply trucks, a BTR-70 eight-wheeled armored car tore around the curve at fifty miles per hour, top speed, painted dark green with black patches. Behind it immediately followed another, identical BTR-70. The front of each as it came on was a steeply sloping wave deflector; the BTRs were amphibious. On the roof, just behind the driving compartment, was a small conical turret with a thick machine gun barrel. Nyurba knew this was a 14.5 millimeter weapon — bigger than.50 caliber, it could tear right through engine blocks of soft-skinned vehicles, even disable other armored cars. The twin gasoline engines of each BTR strained hard.
He and Kurzin stood their ground and raised an arm for them to stop. Since when do they change silo crews using armored cars? The first BTR’s driver saw them and blew his air horn. He wasn’t slowing.
“Back!” Kurzin shouted. Both drivers swerved to get out of their way. Each nimble BTR-70 had a triangular-shaped door in its side through which infantry could dismount. As the armored cars roared past, Nyurba had time to see rifle barrels sticking from the gun ports in their passenger compartments.
Before Kurzin could order his men to take cover, the BTRs were gone, around a bend, their engines still roaring as they raced toward the missile complex, leaving trails of sooty, pungent smoke.
“They’re in one hell of a hurry,” Kurzin said.
“At least they didn’t shoot at us,” Nyurba said.
“Of course not. They think we’re friendlies.”
“What do we do?”
“See what happens next. Sniper One, Kurzin, do you copy?”
“Kurzin, Sniper One, affirmative.”
“Situation report.”
“Helicopters behaving as before.”
“Any sign they’ve seen you?” The four snipers were out in the open. Effectively invisible to other men on the ground who weren’t too close, they might still be noticed from the air if their camouflage wasn’t perfect, or they cast eye-catching shadows from the low sun.
“Negative…. Wait one. Two BTR-Seventies now arriving.”
“Confirmed. They passed us. What are they doing?”
“Wait one…. They’ve pulled up at the gate to the complex…. The gate system is opening…. One BTR has moved through the gate. It appears to be starting a roving patrol inside the complex. Six troops have dismounted from the other…. They’ve walked through the gate, and they appear to be reinforcing the guards.”
“What’s that BTR doing?”
“It’s…. Oh crap. It’s starting a roving patrol of the defoliated strip.”
“Sniper One, can all observers withdraw to the treeline?”
“Er, negative. If we move we’ll be seen from the air.”
“If you don’t move you’ll get run over.”
“We could trust to luck that the BTR misses us. The cleared zone is half a kilometer wide. Visibility from within that type of vehicle isn’t terrific.”
“Do you see silo crews being rotated?”
“Negative. No indication that new silo crews have arrived.”
“Wait one. Kurzin out.”
“Maybe they’re prepping the area,” Nyurba said, “and the fresh silo crews will come next. We can still set up our roadblock and waylay the crews and interrogate them.”
“Kurzin, Sniper One!”
“Sniper One, I said wait one.”
“Negative, negative. More troops have dismounted from BTR outside of gates. Troops are walking with vehicle as it proceeds. Troops are prodding underbrush with AK-Seventy-fours with fixed bayonets.”
“Shit.”
“Concur, sir,” Sniper One answered.
Kurzin turned to Nyurba. “Ideas?”
“It depends on what’s going on.”
“They’re searching for us is what’s going on.”
“Maybe not, sir. It could be Commodore Fuller’s trick with his decoy finally made its way through the Strategic Rocket Forces bureaucracy. They might be reacting to that, regionwide, not to specific information on us, here, now.”
“Days later?”
“It’s Russia, sir. Or maybe they just found Carter’s ice floe with the scars from spikes and mooring ropes.”
“Or spotted our tracks in the tundra, and all real units are accounted for.” Noise from the Hind-Fs emphasized his remark.
Nyurba blanched. “I don’t think new silo crews will come soon.” The on-duty crews, inside the bunkers, had food and water for thirty days. Time was definitely on the Russians’ side.
“All snipers, Kurzin, are any of you likely to be detected within one hour if you hold your present positions?”
“Kurzin, Sniper One, not sure.”
“Kurzin, Two, very risky, Colonel.”
“Kurzin, Three, one hour is touch and go.”
“Kurzin, Four, iffy, sir.”
“What should they do if they’re caught?” Nyurba asked. “Try to claim they’re part of the heightened security?”
Kurzin was fuming. “On their own? Suspicious Russians won’t buy it. Where did they come from? What unit and where’s the rest of it? Who’s their commander? Why were they there from well before this alert got sounded? If they’re guarding the complex, why are they all facing toward the complex? They can’t reveal themselves. And we need them to support our assault!”
“Understood, sir.”
“Kurzin, Sniper Three,” came over the headset in a barely audible whisper. “They just passed me. One guy’s bayonet missed my nose by an inch. They’re using a widening-box search pattern. Next go-round, they have me for sure.”
“All snipers, sit tight. We’ll take the pressure off you.” Kurzin shouted for the entire squadron to come out on the road. “Fix bayonets!” He told the men with grenade launchers clipped to their rifles to load dual-purpose high-explosive fragmentation grenades; unlike older AKs, the bayonet lug was to the right side of the Abakan’s muzzle, not underneath, so that bayonets and grenade launchers could be used at the same time.
“Uphill! Route-march formation! To the complex, now, run!”
Seventy-six commandos with their heavy packs and weapons began to charge up the road in a column, four abreast.
“Look sharp, for God’s sake,” Kurzin bellowed. “You’re supposed to be an elite! I want to see some arrogance!”
“Sir,” Nyurba gasped between heavy breaths at the head of the column, “what are your intentions?”
“We’re more reinforcements. Spetsnaz. For the complex.”
“On foot?”
“Our trucks broke down.”
“What trucks?”
“Let’s pray the Russians don’t ask until it’s too late.”
“What if a helicopter”—pant—“or a BTR”—pant—“goes looking for broken-down trucks?”
“What do you think?”
“They won’t know to”—pant—“before we arrive.”
“Therefore?”
“Good.” Kurzin halted abruptly, but waved for his men to keep going. “Squadron, Kurzin, contingency plan Khah is now in effect as rehearsed.” Khah was the Cyrillic letter X. “We lie and cheat and fight and blast our way in as best we can. Follow my lead and take cues from your officers. Out.” He ran faster than ever, then turned to Nyurba. “Issue your orders!”
Nyurba ran more slowly, to let each platoon pass him by, to address and steady them separately, and also to catch his breath. The men were younger than him, in better shape. Their boots thudded on the pavement; equipment jangled; backpacks bounced.
“Antitank rocketeers, up!” Nyurba shouted. “Antiaircraft missileers, up!” The preassigned men shouldered their AN-94s by the slings. They pulled long tubes from their packs, with aiming and trigger gear attached. Some had protruding, bulbous shaped-charge rocket warheads — reloadable RPG-27 Tavulgas. Other tubes had protective caps — disposable supersonic SA-16 Gimlets. They held these as their primary weapons, and blended in with the rest of the company rushing up the road.
The headquarters platoon, with the Air Force missile technicians and computer hacker specialists, came next to last for better protection — they were the least expendable men. The last platoon was rear guard. Nyurba double-checked that he could hear no engine sounds from the direction of the support base, and the Hind-Fs weren’t coming.
“Antitank mines across the road, right here, from shoulder to shoulder! Same thing in the cutting for the power lines!”
One squad of ten men broke off from the rear platoon, then split in half. A group darted into the forest, the short distance to the lane cut by the Russians for their high-tension towers. The group on the road emptied their packs of mines — flat, round, menacing things. They lay them in a zigzag across the road, armed them, and carefully armed the antitamper booby traps. Camouflaged a concrete color, and put down just past a bend in the road, they’d be hard to see and easy to hit.
The other group would do this in the weeds by the power lines — that lane through the pines was the only alternate route, for tracked vehicles, up to the silos. It was easier to block off, since the pylons themselves made good obstacles.
Nyurba, satisfied, ran ahead. The miners would reunite as quickly as possible on the road. Their backpacks lightened, they ought to catch up during the three miles to the missile complex. In the meantime, they’d seem to any witnesses like the stragglers inevitable on a military training run.
With the mines emplaced, no more BTRs or troop trucks or tanks would get through for a little while.
Chapter 22
The fake Spetsnaz company dashed within sight of the missile complex’s guard towers, with Kurzin in the lead and Nyurba running with the headquarters platoon; Nyurba and the SERT Seabees were among the nonexpendable specialists now. The security troops in the nearest guard towers trained their machine guns. Kurzin waved, then pointed at his shoulder patch and held up his AN-94—a distinctive-looking weapon used almost exclusively by Spetsnaz. Then he ran even faster toward the gate. Nyurba could see the high-voltage wires strung on ceramic insulators along the sides of each chain-link fence; their tops were festooned with razor wire. The mines between them — probably a mix of antipersonnel and antitank — were buried in the earth. The BTR-70 within the complex drove nearer and began to pace Kurzin’s people as they ran along the road. Its turret machine gun, and the rifles sticking through ports in the passenger compartment, aimed their way; the other BTR was on the far side of the complex, continuing to patrol the defoliated strip where Kurzin’s snipers desperately hoped to stay hidden.
One of the Hind-Fs flew overhead and noisily buzzed the commandos. The roving chin-mounted cannon’s muzzle never once left Kurzin’s column. Nyurba waited to see that threatening cannon begin to spit flame, but the helicopter kept circling as if to herd and corner the strangers, from warily inside the minimum arming range of antiaircraft missiles. The other Hind-F examined the site’s outer border, the big square treeline.
The guards inside the gate looked very sharp now. The machine gun in the sandbags trained back and forth along the ragged formation of breathless, sweating commandos.
A sergeant among the guards confronted Kurzin through the three fence gates that sealed the complex from the road. He saw Kurzin’s rank and insignia. Nyurba thought the man was suspicious, surprised, and impressed all at once.
“Kto vy?” the sergeant shouted above the noise of the helicopters. Who are you?
“Armiya Spetsnaz. Vy slenoy?” Army Spetsnaz. Are you blind?
“We’re on alert, sir. We can’t let you in.” Relations between the Russian Army and Strategic Rocket Forces varied from jealous to apathetic, but any lieutenant colonel was hard to ignore.
“We know about the alert!” Kurzin barked. “We’re on a field training exercise. We were ordered to come as reinforcements.” The two services’ radios were incompatible, so this claim was safe to make.
“The support base never heard of you.” The man must have already phoned.
Kurzin sputtered in disbelief at such defiance of his authority. “They wouldn’t have, would they? Use your head!”
“I suppose not, Colonel.” The sergeant shrugged.
“Is your alert for real or a drill?”
“They never say it’s a drill before it’s over, sir.”
A lieutenant came out of the guard shack. The sergeant was visibly glad to pass the buck.
“What do you want, sir?” the lieutenant asked.
“I already told your sergeant. We were ordered here as reinforcements.”
“Where’s the rest of your unit?” Eighty men was small for an Army Spetsnaz company. One hundred thirty-five was the official size.
“We’re understrength,” Kurzin said. “Like everybody else.” He pointed around at the site defenses. “Seems to me you’re understrength too.”
The lieutenant looked insulted.
“What’s the scenario for this alert?” Kurzin demanded.
The lieutenant didn’t want to give out free information. “What were you told, sir?”
Nyurba knew that Kurzin needed to take a shot in the dark, and take real risk. What he said next had to sound genuine, but it could instead make the guards more cautious and distrusting.
“Raiders or rogues reported in the area. Intentions unknown, but this base is one obvious target.”
“Of course it would be.”
“We double-timed it to get here. If there’s a coup going on, don’t you think they’d start by seizing control of ICBMs?”
“What coup?”
“Look. Your defenses are flimsy. Where’s your antitank and antiaircraft weaponry?”
The lieutenant gestured at the two BTRs and the Hinds. The helicopters carried antiaircraft missiles among their mix of armaments. The men inside the BTRs might have antitank guided missiles — the BTRs’ roofs had launch rails for them, but Nyurba hadn’t seen any missiles on the rails. The Hinds did have their antitank rockets and cannon.
“Like I said, Lieutenant, flimsy. Your armored cars and guard towers need much more infantry support than you’ve got. Two helicopters are trying to do too much at once already. I’ve brought eighty men with all their weapons and tactical expertise. With all due respect, you’re garrison troops. We understand maneuver warfare. So will anyone attacking the base. And I don’t like standing here bunched up in the open.”
The lieutenant knew Kurzin made serious points. “We have our own reinforcements. At the support base.”
“How long before they show up? Our own trucks broke down. How many of theirs will even start?”
“Well…”
“We’re here now. And we have to assume this alert is real, correct?”
“Correct. So how do I know you aren’t part of this coup? With respect, sir, you Spetsnaz people are capable of anything.”
Everyone jumped at the sound of a sharp detonation. I
t came from the direction of the support base. Dark smoke began to rise above the trees. A vehicle had hit one of the mines — something coming up from the support base, as Kurzin and Nyurba had expected and intended. Guard troops and fake Spetsnaz stared. Flames shot high, above the treetops. There was another big eruption. The ground shook. A tank turret soared into the air, tumbling end over end, its long gun pointing wildly as the turret — itself belching flame and leaving an arc of smoke along its trajectory — crashed down in the woods.
“An ambush!” Kurzin shouted. “We didn’t do that, we’ve been standing right here in front of you wasting time. For the love of Mary, let us in so we can deploy!”
The lieutenant nodded to the sergeant, who told a private to open the gates. Electric motors hummed, gears whined, and the chain-link gates swung inward.
The two Hind-Fs flew off toward the ambush site.
Kurzin ordered his men into the complex. Then the guards closed the gate. The men dressed in Spetsnaz uniforms began to fan out to cover sectors of the perimeter — getting closer to the guard towers and the missile control bunker entrances.
A radio in the guard shack crackled. The lieutenant rushed in to answer it.
Nyurba heard his end of the short conversation. “What? Mines?”
The lieutenant turned to Kurzin. “You—”
Kurzin shot him in the face. The report of the AN-94 was loud. The pair of high-velocity bullets made the lieutenant’s head explode.
Kurzin opening fire was the signal for contingency plan Khah to roll into action. Men far enough into the complex for their rockets to cover the minimum arming distance in flight spun around, knelt, and fired RPG-27s at the guard shack and the machine gun nest. Nyurba and the headquarters company with him threw themselves flat. Each warhead had a pair of shaped charges, one behind the other, designed to get through the heaviest tanks equipped with external reactive armor — which blasted outward to break up the Mach-thirty jet of molten metal and superheated gases created by an antitank shaped charge. The first warhead charge sacrificed itself setting off such reactive armor; the second charge then penetrated the main armor underneath.