by Dale Brown
The M4 went dry. Rapidly, he hit the mag release, let the empty fall out, and slapped in another full magazine. Immediately, he opened fire again. At the same time, he felt as though his mind had split in half, with one part fully occupied by the need to find and kill the enemy . . . and the other busy weighing different tactical options. Breaking contact and falling back up the hill was a nonstarter. As soon as the Russians got into these rocks, they’d have all the advantages superior numbers and training could provide. And with Leffert and Sims wounded, he didn’t have enough able-bodied troops left to maneuver to the right or left in the hope of taking those Spetsnaz bastards in the flank again.
“Which leaves what, Nick?” Flynn muttered, squeezing off more shots and feeling his M4 thud back repeatedly against his shoulder. “Pray . . . and hope for luck? Real good plan there, genius.” But then again, he thought grimly, what other options did he really have?
In the narrow, brush-choked gully around the other side of the spur hill, Torvald Pedersen heard the sudden crackle of automatic-weapons fire when Flynn and the others sprang their ambush. The noise only grew in intensity as more and more rifles and machine guns joined the fray. Startled by the explosion of noise where there had been only silence and the hiss of the wind, he sat bolt upright, ignoring the stab of pain from his fractured leg. “Holy shit! You guys hear that? There’s one big, mother-humping battle going on!” He grabbed Rafael Sanchez by the shoulder. “Rafe! We’ve gotta go help the rest of the team.”
The big New Mexican nodded slowly, but then he frowned. “Yeah, but the captain told us to stay put.”
“Maybe we should call in and ask for new orders?” Boyd suggested from the other side. He’d unslung his own M4 and was crouched at the lip of the shallow gully, watching the north. Dozens of split-second flashes brightened the night sky along the crest of the hill above them.
“Can’t,” Sanchez reminded them. “The captain ordered radio silence, remember?”
Pedersen nodded. “Exactly! Which is why we need to use our initiative, just like they trained us to do. Right?” he demanded.
Boyd pulled at his jaw. “Yeah, you’re right.” But then he waved a hand out across the open expanse of snow. “Trouble is, crossing that valley right now looks a lot like suicide to me. If just one bad guy pops up and catches us out there without any cover, we’re fucking toast.”
“That’s why we stick to this streambed,” Pedersen argued. A frozen stream ran along the middle of the shallow, brush-lined depression. It snaked down into the valley and then swung north.
“The sled won’t make it through that rough ground,” Sanchez said. “And you’ve got a busted leg.”
Pedersen grinned up at him. “That’s why you’re going to sling me over your shoulder again, big guy.” He lifted his weapon. “And my rifle, too, this time.” As the team’s designated marksman, Pedersen carried an M14 Enhanced Battle Rifle—a vastly modified and improved version of the old 7.62mm weapon last used in the field by U.S. troops in South Vietnam. When equipped with a telescopic sight, it had an effective range of more than eight hundred yards.
Spetsnaz Major Gennady Korenev risked a quick look up at the hill towering above them and ducked back again. More enemy rounds snapped through the air just over his head. Little geysers of snow and frozen clumps of earth erupted behind him. He scowled. The Americans were better shots than he’d imagined. And, barricaded in their improvised fortress of stone up there on that damned spur, they had a tremendous advantage over his handful of survivors. All he and his troops could make out were the deadly flashes stabbing out of that boulder field—as their rifle and machine-gun fire swept the valley and this barren slope from end to end.
He glanced to his left and then shook his head. There was no way to gain any ground there. Primakov and most of the men on that flank had been killed or badly wounded in the first few seconds of this firefight. That left a shift to the right. He belly-crawled over that way, careful to keep his head below the little hummock of ground that was his only piece of cover. One of his commandos was there, periodically popping up to pepper the rocks above them with short bursts from his AKM assault rifle.
“Hot work, Vanya,” he murmured.
The soldier spat to one side, sliding another curved thirty-round magazine into his rifle. “Worse than Syria,” he agreed.
Korenev raised himself up slightly, high enough to scan the terrain to the west and southwest through his night vision binoculars. Farther out across the valley floor, he could see the dark line of a streambed snaking across the open ground. There was good cover there, he judged, but it was too far away, more than three hundred meters. If he tried to redeploy his men there, the Americans would cut them down before they’d run off even a quarter of the distance.
Instead, he angled his binoculars, sweeping the hillside as it curved around to the southwest. And then, for the first time since the Americans had ambushed them, he felt a faint stirring of optimism. There was a fold on the surface of the hill there, within easy reach from this position. It looked like a patch of dead ground to him, one that offered a comparatively sheltered approach up the side of the spur. Assault troops moving up that dead ground ought to be able to get into the rocks on the Americans’ left flank without being fired on.
He thumped his fist into the snow in sudden excitement and turned toward the other Spetsnaz commando. “Vanya! We’ve got those bastards! I see—” And a 7.62mm rifle round moving at more than 850 meters a second hit Korenev in the right side of his head, punched through his helmet, and tore out the other side in a spray of blood, brain matter, and splintered skull. He flopped over into the snow, killed instantly.
The surviving Russian whirled around and opened fire on full automatic, hosing down the distant streambed around where he thought that shot must have come from. He could see snow and bits of torn brush pinwheeling away as his bullets tore at the ground. His eyes narrowed as he leaned into the burst. Accuracy was important, but there were times when you needed to throw lead downrange, hoping to get lucky . . . or to at least make the enemy eat dirt.
His AKM stopped firing when it ran through its thirtieth round. Quickly, the Spetsnaz soldier grabbed for another magazine. But before he could reload, he slumped forward, hit high in the chest by another American bullet that penetrated his body armor.
Three hundred yards away, Torvald Pedersen lowered his M14 and spat out a mouthful of gravel and twigs. “Geez, that was close.” He pulled his eye away from the scope and glanced toward Sanchez and Boyd with a grin. “But I got both of those bastards. Did you see them—”
His smile froze. Boyd was dead, lying facedown on the lip of the streambed. Sanchez, ashen-faced, had slid back down a few feet. He was fumbling to stuff a field dressing into the gaping hole blown in his upper arm.
“Ah, hell,” Pedersen muttered. He sighted back through the rifle scope. From what he could see, there weren’t many Russians still moving. But from here, he could draw a bead on every last one of the sons of bitches. He tracked left a little, settled his sights on a new target, breathed out, and very, very gently, squeezed the trigger.
Out on the valley floor, another Spetsnaz commando went down.
Flynn climbed slowly to his feet. The staccato rattle of gunfire and the sharp crack of exploding grenades had finally stopped. But now the sounds of war had been replaced by eerie moans rising from the horribly wounded men—both American and Russian alike—sprawled across the hillside or huddled among the rocks.
Still holding his light machine gun, Hynes came over. “What do we do now, Captain?” he asked. “We sure kicked the shit out of those guys, but they kicked the shit out of us, too.”
Flynn nodded wearily. His best guess was that only three or four of the Russian Spetsnaz troops were alive, though badly wounded. They were certainly in no condition to keep fighting. The rest were dead.
His tactical radio crackled suddenly to life. “Sir, I know you said not to use this thing, but I’ve got a situation
down here,” he heard Pedersen say. “Boyd is dead. And Rafe’s hurt pretty bad. And I can’t make it far on my own with this doggone busted leg.”
Flynn keyed his mike. “Roger that, Private. Hang tight. We’ll come get you.”
Hynes whistled softly in dismay. “Jesus, sir. Boyd and Sims makes two dead. And with Leffert and Sanchez wounded, that just leaves six of us on our feet.”
Flynn sighed. “Five, PFC. Sergeant Takirak is dead, too.”
The other man’s eyes widened in shock. “The sarge? Killed? How?”
“Enemy action,” Flynn said tiredly. That was true enough, for a certain definition of “enemy,” he thought. This still wasn’t the right time to break the news that Takirak had actually been a GRU deep-cover agent. The moment for that would come later, when they were all safe—and after he’d had a chance to brief Alaskan Command’s counterintelligence people. Takirak must have been running a network of other spies. To keep them from bolting for safety before they could be pinpointed and arrested, it was vital to keep the information about his death and real identity tightly held.
“So what’s the plan, sir?” Hynes asked somberly.
“We need to get that satellite connection working and contact JBER,” Flynn told him. “We need medevac ASAP for our injured guys and for our prisoners. No one who’s been wounded will last long in this cold.”
Hynes took a deep breath. “That ain’t happening, sir.” He jerked a thumb toward the boulder field. “Sims had the radio with him. It took a bunch of splinters when that Russian grenade went off.”
“Well . . .” Flynn thought about swearing and then just shrugged. There just weren’t enough cuss words in the English language to cover this situation.
From farther up the slope, Vucovich suddenly shouted. “Hey, Captain! Look at that!”
Flynn lifted his head and stared toward where the other man was pointing. There, off to the east, a flickering orange glow lit the darkness. Something was on fire out there, some miles away. Something where nothing should be. The isolated clumps of dwarf willows and spruce trees in this part of the world did not burn down in the icy, arctic winters. Not naturally anyway.
His eyes narrowed. One more damned mystery, he thought angrily. And probably one connected to that dead Russian general they’d been tracking before this battle erupted. He scuffed furiously at the snow with his boot cap. What the hell was he supposed to do now? They were dozens of miles from the nearest possible help, with no way to communicate with anyone. But if he didn’t do something soon, every injured man now in his charge was going to die—from either shock, their wounds, or the brutal, bone-chilling cold.
Thinking hard, Flynn walked down the slope to where the first of the Russians had fallen. He squatted down beside the dead man, noticing again how similar their uniforms and gear looked to that worn by his own troops. From a distance and in the dark, there was almost no way to tell them apart. His eyes widened slightly as the ghost of an idea wafted into his mind. Maybe there was a way he could solve several of his problems . . . with one risky move.
Suddenly excited, he straightened up. “Vucovich,” he snapped. “You and Santarelli and Kim start gathering up all the wounded. Heat up some MREs and get some food into them.” He whirled toward Hynes. “Put that MG down and grab a couple of those Russian weapons. You’re coming with me.”
Hynes stared at him. “Where to, sir? Where are we going?”
Flynn grinned at him. “We’re going to arrange a ride out of this hellhole, PFC.”
Thirty-Eight
Sharapovo Command Bunker, outside Moscow
That Same Time
Ferociously, Piotr Zhdanov ground out another cigarette. He fumbled the pack out of his jacket pocket. It was empty. Angrily, he balled it up and tossed it aside. From behind, one of his aides diffidently offered him a fresh pack. He waved it away. As it was, the inside of his mouth tasted like dust and ashes.
He glared across the table at Lieutenant General Rogozin and the head of the GRU, Aleksandr Ivashin. “Well?” he demanded. “Still nothing?”
Helplessly, both men shrugged. As yet, there were no new reports—either from the Spetsnaz raiding party they’d sent into Alaska, or from the stolen stealth bomber to confirm that it was headed back to Russia, now that they’d paid the ransom demanded for its release. Their last news from Major Korenev indicated that his troops had landed deep in enemy territory and were ready to pursue, intercept, and destroy the ragtag American security unit ahead of them. Nothing at all had been heard from Petrov or his mysterious backers.
A soft chime came from the computer at Rogozin’s place. The general leaned forward, reading the alert he’d just been forwarded. “Our satellites have received a new secure message from the PAK-DA stealth bomber,” he reported.
Zhdanov breathed out. “Finally.” He thrust a finger at the Air Force commander. “Put it up on-screen, Yvgeny.”
With a nod, Rogozin signaled the colonel in charge of the underground command center’s audiovisuals. The large wall screen flickered to life.
“Damn it,” Zhdanov growled, seeing the face of Alexei Petrov materialize. He was again sitting in the futuristic-looking cockpit of the PAK-DA prototype. There was no conceivable circumstance in which the traitor could imagine he would return to Russia and survive the experience. Which meant that plane was still sitting on the ground inside the United States when this message had been recorded. And from the time stamp shown in the lower left-hand corner of the screen, that was less than five minutes ago.
“By now, you must have realized that I have no intention of returning this aircraft,” the image of Petrov said coldly, confirming the Russian president’s worst fears. “Sadly, our beloved Motherland—under your slovenly governance—is unworthy of such a gift.” His expression darkened. “For decades now, our nation has been in decline—with its demoralized population aging and increasingly infirm; its economic strength decaying; and its military power nothing more than a facade, a thin shield for the dying body behind it. What have you achieved since the Soviet Union, once the world’s mightiest superpower, crumbled to ruin?
“Nothing!” Petrov sneered. “You constantly boast about the ‘New Russia,’ but what do you have to back up such crowing? A population now only a third the size of the United States? And less than a tenth that of the People’s Republic of China? An economy in ruins, more dependent on oil than even the Arab kleptocracies?” He leaned closer to the camera so that almost all they could see was his contempt-filled face. “It is time, Zhdanov, that you and your bootlickers faced facts. You and all of your policies and plans are nothing but miserable, criminal failures.”
Zhdanov stared at the screen, scarcely able to believe what he was hearing. No one in the past two decades had dared to insult him so openly—at least, no one who expected to live outside the gray walls of a prison, if allowed to live at all. From the rigid, horrified silence around him, he knew others were thinking the same thing.
“But because I am a true Russian patriot,” Petrov continued, “I am offering you—unworthy though you are—a chance offered to no other Russian government since the fall of the Soviet Union: the opportunity to strip our most dangerous enemy, the United States, of most of its nuclear arsenal. The opportunity, moreover, to do so with minimal damage to our Motherland’s own military and industrial might.”
Zhdanov grimaced. What the hell was this madman talking about?
As if in answer, Petrov sat back again, allowing them to see the detailed map filling one of the stealth bomber’s large, sophisticated digital displays. It showed the interior of the United States. “This plan is code-named Vikhr, Whirlwind,” the traitor colonel said conversationally.
Whirlwind? Zhdanov darted a questioning glance at Rogozin. The general shrugged helplessly, as if to confirm this was nothing he’d ever heard of before, either.
On-screen, the recorded image of Alexei Petrov kept talking. “Very shortly, I will take off from this hidden airfield,” he told
them. “Once safely airborne, I will fly a stealthy course deep into American airspace.” He smiled grimly. “There, approximately five hours from now, I will launch the twelve long-range, nuclear-armed stealth cruise missiles that you, perhaps foolishly, have entrusted to my care.”
That drew startled gasps from around the room. All along, the prospect of a rogue commander in control of live nuclear weapons had been their worst nightmare—a fear that had faded only when it seemed Petrov was more interested in money than in sparking a nuclear holocaust.
“These missiles will be targeted on American military command and control centers in and around the Washington, D.C., area, their B-2 bomber base in Missouri, their B-52 bomber bases in Louisiana and North Dakota, and the U.S. Navy’s ballistic missile submarine bases at Kitsap, Washington, and Kings Bay, Georgia,” Petrov said calmly, apparently wholly unconcerned that he was announcing the probable deaths of hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of people, soldiers, airmen, sailors, and civilians alike. “They will be carefully timed to arrive and detonate simultaneously.”
Zhdanov saw Rogozin’s head nod slowly. What the colonel proposed was technically possible. It was simply a matter of setting the necessary navigation points so that missiles aimed at closer targets would fly somewhat longer, more circuitous paths to arrive at their chosen destinations. While that increased the chances that the Americans might detect some of the incoming attacks, the risk was minimal. Their ability to spot stealth weapons fired from so deep inside their national territory was negligible.