A call went over their low-powered radios. The signal strength was dialed all the way down so it couldn’t be intercepted by the Russians. Couldn’t even be heard outside the valley.
“Weapons actual,” came the broadcast, which was Diaz’s call sign. “Air sentry reports seeing some black spots on the horizon. Direction, southeasterly.”
The fine hairs on the back of Diaz’s neck stood up, and at once she swiveled her gun to train it in that direction. Her eyes rapidly scanned the horizon above the Allegheny mountaintops looking for any sight of aircraft. There had been a lot of SPOTREPs, including a fair number of high-flying aircraft. On the ground it was mostly farmers or truckers speeding along the barren road. Spotting ground targets didn’t worry her, but the Russians commanded the American airspace now, and when they flew over, there was little the Americans could do other than hide.
“Copy. Scanning now.” Diaz tried to discern anything, but the intermittent ground haze and the predawn sparkle off the dew on the grass and trees made it difficult to spot anything moving.
Even though she didn’t see anything, Diaz was a good leader, and she trusted her gunners enough to go into action. “Halt and gimme a herringbone,” she said. The convoy halted in the requested herringbone. Every odd vehicle pulled off the road to the left, and the evens went right. Each vehicle was responsible for finding its own cover—a tree, barn, anything that broke up the pattern. It was an old tactic to mitigate any possible air threat. It spread the convoy out, made them less visible and less vulnerable. A holdover tactic left from the last time the U.S. fought another force that actually had enough aircraft to seize the skies.
A Russian missile or smart bomb fired from an experienced pilot could still ruin your day. Though the Russians invasion may have started with relatively green troops, after months of fighting in uncontested skies, their pilots were now beginning to understand the freedom of action their American counterparts had enjoyed in Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf Wars, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. There weren’t even any active-duty U.S. pilots left alive who had ever experienced the harsher times at war when Germany and Japan had had enough airpower to force Americans to run for cover and hunker down in trenches. This wouldn’t be the last war, and tactics were evolving rapidly.
* * *
The sniper watched the convoy scatter off the road. Something had spooked them; maybe the jets had been spotted. Too late to call them and rectify it now. She flicked a switch on the rifle’s barrel, which flipped the night optic to the side, leaving the magnified day sight. Dawn had started to break and night optics were no longer necessary. She remained completely camouflaged and wasn’t about to turn to see the aircraft. It had taken six hours of infiltration and setup to prepare a perfect sniper’s nest, and it was “go-time.”
She had already chosen her targets. Unconsciously, she rubbed her thumb over the red handkerchief for luck. It was time to begin her cyclic breathing.
Odin . . . dva . . . tri . . . she counted to herself as she inhaled, still tracking the lead three vehicles. Each was frantically trying to take cover, but it didn’t matter; any tree, fence, or hedge was still well within her range.
A clump of blond hair, wet with dew and sweat, broke free from under her boonie hat. She ignored it, too deep in concentration.
. . . chetyre . . . pyat’ . . . shest’. On “six,” she breathed out and paused for a moment to let her crosshairs settle directly on the head of the driver of the lead vehicle. Then she lightly squeezed the trigger. The sniper rifle jolted upward. The combination muzzle brake and silencer meant barely a sound escaped. Just a loud clack, almost like a gate closing. The large caliber 9.5×77mm 375-grain bullet pierced the vehicle’s windshield at 3,050 feet per second and continued into the driver’s skull without deviating from its course.
The sniper registered the hit, though it was hard to discern. There was frantic commotion near the vehicle, but she was already moving her rifle on to the next target and had begun her counting on an inhale. The third vehicle in the convoy was the ripest target. There were four men outside the vehicle staring up at the approaching planes, conversing and not moving around. They were confident in their camouflage and looked to be making a plan. Moving and active targets always presented ballistics problems. One of the men was pointing and looked to be giving orders. A team leader. She chose him.
She continued to breathe slowly and in a relaxed fashion until her count again hit shest’. Then she paused briefly and calmly squeezed off another round.
Clack went the silenced, high-tech rifle, and another bullet zipped through the air.
It didn’t miss. She had never missed. In training, maybe, but not in real life.
This one caught the pointing man in the neck. A neck shot maximized the effect of sowing chaos and fear. It worked. The man grasped his neck in horror, a stream of red blood spewing from the wound and spraying the other men.
From the corner of her eye, she could see the panicked rush of the soldiers around the stricken man, but she was already scanning the crosshairs back to where she’d mentally tagged the second vehicle in the convoy.
At first, she couldn’t find the target, but then the bright red muzzle flash of a heavy machine gun drew her attention. It was concealed behind a wooden fence, but she could make out a figure on top of the vehicle talking over a radio, yelling at the vehicle crew and brazenly firing the machine gun. From her distance of about five hundred meters, she imagined she could hear the shouted call of “sniper” over the radio, and she enjoyed the confusion she was causing. She grinned but remained focused.
Ah, their unit’s leader, she thought, an optimum target.
Her calculations were precise. She knew she had just enough time for one final shot. She counted upward again. Odin . . . dva . . . and fixed on her target. This time was going to be a head shot.
. . . tri . . .
Now she could see through her rifle’s scope that the gunner was a woman.
. . . chetyre . . .
Unusual for the Americans to have a female leader. The sniper was all about strong women proving their worth in today’s sexist world.
Oh well, she thought. She still needs to die.
She continued, but right as she hit pyat’, the roar of rocket launchers behind and above her interrupted the count.
“Vy, zhirnye zhopy! You giant fat-asses!” she shouted at the top of her lungs without looking up, her concentration all but broken by the jets’ early arrival.
Clack! She squeezed the trigger out of her cycle anyhow.
Her brain registered a hit on the target as she was engulfed in smoke and fire from the MiG-35UB’s exploding 122mm rockets.
The first jet streaked overhead now, dropping a load of low-release drag bombs. She could actually see the bombs falling off the aircraft and sailing toward the vehicles, twirling like dozens of maple tree spinners in a late fall breeze. Fifty feet from the ground, they each cracked open, becoming a shower of bomblets that rained down onto the U.S. vehicles. The hundreds of ensuing explosions carpeted the ground in fire. Then the second jet began its gun and bomb run, its own 122mm rockets hammering along the length of the convoy and adding to the cacophony and death.
Grebanyye piloty! she thought. Fucking pilots! The bright lights from the explosions blinded her, and she cursed loudly as she hastily collected up her equipment.
The second jet’s bombs would come very soon. It was time to duck, then go. The pair of aircraft had mistimed their attack run, and now it was apparent they were going to be sloppy in delivering their ordnance, too. With the air alive with explosions, she kept to a crouch and was hefting the big Orsis T-5000 rifle in front of her, bending to grab her drag bag, when a deafening blast and massive blow knocked her off her feet, flinging the rifle from her grasp. It felt like someone had smashed a sledgehammer against a steel pole in her hands. Clods of earth flew through the air around her. She lay flat on her back, her hand and arm numb and her head buzzing from the concussion.
> Fuckers! The pilots were off by more than six hundred meters. She didn’t have a lot of time to be angry or to dissect the forensics of what had gone wrong, but she was certain it was their fault.
Covered in mud and frozen dirt, she rolled to her elbows and looked herself over. With no visible wounds, but still partially flashblinded, she used the bright explosions to look for her rifle. A meter away, she saw it. A piece of bomb shrapnel had slammed into it, peeling the barrel away from the wooden stock. Her precious rifle was ruined. Her heart skipped a beat at its loss—and not, as might be expected, out of fear at how close the pilots had come to killing her.
She calmed down considerably when a light from some secondary vehicle detonations confirmed that her red hammer-and-sickle handkerchief was still securely tied around the splintered rifle’s buttstock.
She slid to her knees with some effort and tried to rub some sensation back into her right hand and arm. She switched to her offhand and carefully untied the handkerchief, shoving it through the ghillie jacket into her bra and against her breasts. She gingerly pulled the small backpack over her good arm, stood while keeping a low profile, and snuck off through the thick grass, abandoning the rifle and her heavy drag bag. She took the third of three preplanned escape routes she had ID’d upon entering into her position. It was the one that remained the most hidden from the convoy’s view.
But no one from the convoy saw her. They were fully preoccupied with burning and dying.
CHAPTER 2
Russian Pentagon
Washington, D.C.
One-star general Viktor Kolikoff tapped the computer monitor in front of him with the tip of his ballpoint pen. The loud tap-tap-tap made most in the room turn back to face him. Kolikoff was an exceedingly shrewd man, and they’d all come to dread his sniping during briefings. He always appeared at random in the back seats in their new headquarters, the Pentagon’s so-called Iron Room.
Major Pitor Pavel was oblivious to the distraction and continued giving his morning intelligence briefing. “As you can see, the SPETS-VTOR predicts four or five more weeks of bloody battle in the eastern . . . Adirondack . . . Mountains . . .” His rate of speech slowed as he finally registered the noise. He turned around and realized the room was no longer paying attention, focused instead on his boss’s incessant tapping.
Kolikoff launched in. “Major Pavel, we are already two months into the fight, and the 10th Mountain Division continues to hold out. Why?”
“Um, well . . . because that’s what the SPETS-VTOR computer says they will do.” Pavel said, using the name of the Russian uber computer.
SPETS-VTOR was actually an abbreviation for Spet-sial’ nyy Schetchik Vtorzheniy, which meant Special Invasion Calculating Machine. Developed in total secrecy, even from the rest of the Russian government, it had calculated several small battles with precision, including the half-invasion of the Ukraine. The biggest obstacle had always been the West barring Russia from purchasing the best and newest military-grade computer technologies from the best producers in the world. Without good computers, the plans it produced were innovative and strong, but two-dimensional. Every time they had tried to purchase the massive servers they needed, the West had blocked or embargoed the sales. Until a few years ago, that is, when General Tympkin had taken the program over. Kolikoff was saved from obscurity and found a way for Tympkin to beef up the computing power without getting noticed by the West, and even getting by the other Russian generals—who, for good reason, didn’t trust Tympkin.
Kolikoff was the one who had come up with the idea to add civilian PlayStations. It was panned as ridiculous by most, but he had demonstrated to Tympkin that the devices had the absolute fastest and most modern computing power. His captains had secured the devices and secured themselves promotions at the same time. Then, devices meant to give their user fast, fun, and detailed war games could just as easily be turned to calculate fast and detailed war plans. What was there to lose? They were a cheap and simple alternative. When they were daisy-chained to the old German and Russian computers that formed the core of the SPETS-VTOR, Russia finally had computing power just below that of its Western military supercomputer counterparts. And thus Kolikoff figured out a way to fool the West.
From then on, Kolikoff had been given full autonomy, and Tympkin tossed him an endless stream of global strategic challenges to chew on. Mostly, General Tympkin saw Kolikoff ’s work as a way to advance himself and gain access to the top brass by giving them in turn what they wanted: some great battle plans. Instead, the leaders saw a path to rid themselves of their old archnemesis, the United States, once and for all. The timing and the plan fell smoothly into the lap of a more-than-willing dictator. It was the perfect storm: a stainless and sublime battle plan, a narrow but irrefutably foolproof window during which to act, and a megalomaniacal Russian warlord who wanted nothing more than to see the U.S. in flames. A despot who saw the whole thing as a chance for him to finally ascend to his rightful place in history and liberate his nation from the perceived tyranny imposed by the Western superpower who had blocked their every global move for decades. Even Tympkin was surprised; he’d expected a promotion for his ingenuity, and instead they gave him a green light.
The invasion went forward, and the plan had worked. They’d plugged their SPETS-VTOR into the Pentagon and now had a supercomputer the likes of which the world had never seen. In recent weeks, Kolikoff and his team had been attempting to transition the bulky machine from its original purpose of calculating a shock invasion to providing useful data on fighting what had quickly turned into a protracted counterinsurgency of remnant U.S. military forces and an armed and angry citizenry.
Kolikoff continued his tirade. “You’re failing to take something vital into account. What else could be contributing to the stiffening of the 10th Mountain’s resistance?”
“They found some more ammo?” Pavel answered dimly.
“What, just lying around?” Kolikoff said scornfully. “Unlikely. But they do have more ammo. Why?”
Majors Ivan Drugov and Danilo Quico had already been snoozing in back when General Kolikoff had arrived, and now they tried to hide. The two majors were comrades in arms with Pavel, but they also knew when to remain silent. They could see Pavel’s cause that morning was a sinking ship, and the last thing they wanted to do was to get into Kolikoff’s debate cross fire. They’d learned it was usually best just to be quiet and let Kolikoff lead them down the primrose path to whatever conclusion he was trying to make. As intelligent as Kolikoff ’s input always was, his reasoning usually shot well over their heads.
“Sir, I can just say that we plugged all the variables into the SPETS-VTOR, and this is what it tells us,” Pavel said.
Even though he tried to sound confident, Major Pavel regularly fell short. Nonetheless, he sometimes recognized his own inadequacies and was the smartest of the three.
The only one that showed any real promise, thought Kolikoff. The understanding that he had to teach them how to work the SPETS-VTOR if he didn’t want to remain a one-man show was the only thing that stopped him from firing the lot of them.
He sighed heavily, speaking patiently, like a father to a child. “The SPETS-VTOR is only as good as its user. It can not interpret data that is flawed. You still must think, Pavel.”
He waited, but seeing that there would be no flashes of brilliance forthcoming from any of his majors, he added, “Pavel . . . what is thirty miles from Fort Drum?”
Pavel turned back at the giant map on the large projected computer screen, squinted his eyes, and tapped his forefinger against his teeth in thought.
“Take your finger from your mouth and point to the map, man,” said Kolikoff, his temper showing through.
There were chuckles around the room from the officers of the other headquarters organizations.
Pavel pointed to Fort Drum.
“Move your finger up, Pavel,” said Kolikoff.
Pavel’s finger traced a path north, past the Lake Ontario ba
ys and into Canada, leaving a wet smudge on the big projected map.
“What is there, Major?”
“Canada, Comrade General . . .”
It was pretty clear Pavel didn’t get the fact that Canada was the most likely source of weapons and ammo. Kolikoff wasn’t even certain the man understood Canada was a separate country.
“Okay. That’s enough for today,” said Kolikoff. “Reconvene tomorrow for another intelligence and operations update. You are dismissed.” The assembled men let out a collective sigh, then stood and milled around. Kolikoff worked on one of the SPETS-VTOR terminals while he listened to the officers talk about girls and the few bars and discos that had apparently opened in downtown D.C.
Things are becoming too routine, thought Kolikoff. With the invasion behind us, the staff is becoming increasingly complacent with a comfortable occupation. Meanwhile, out there, our combatant forces are slowly losing ground to a growing insurgency.
Dugway Military Proving Grounds
Salt Lake City, Utah
The forklift operator stopped and idled the engine but remained bolt upright in the operator’s seat. His eyes, one of them swelling up fast, were fixed on the two men working the loading dock’s crane. The forklift operator was dressed haphazardly in pajama bottoms, a winter parka, and snow boots. He had been ripped out of his bed only thirty minutes prior and ordered at gunpoint to follow. Now, he was trying with all his might not to look at the men who stood nearby with rifles trained on him and the two guys on the crane. The last time he had turned to stare at them, he’d received a pistol across his face from an angry Russian officer. An officer wearing black leather gloves and an odd pair of octagonal glasses. He was determined not to further provoke anyone’s ire, especially the black-gloved officer supervising everything.
The Kill Box Page 3