“Yeah,” said Tyce, “and it’s only a matter of time before they start combing the area.”
“I’d like to be more than one step ahead. This feels like we cut it a little close.” Tyce gave a signal, and they gathered their rifles and radios and hiked over the mountain to the civilian Jeep Wrangler they’d stashed for their own getaway.
CHAPTER 9
Russian Pentagon
Washington, D.C.
“I don’t understand the report, Captain Shenkov,” said
General Kolikoff sternly into the satellite radio handset. One of the majors turned a computer monitor toward Kolikoff, showing him the live UAV feed over the Omni Homestead.
There was a delay, then the radio emitted a pinging sound, and Shenkov’s voice came in slightly garbled by the encryption devices that scrambled their signals. “They have been gone only a few hours . . . maybe less. Hard to tell. All the resort personnel are gone, too. We’ve interviewed some locals, but most are not talking.”
Kolikoff watched his three majors crowding around the UAV screen. They could see Captain Shenkov’s vehicles parked at the hotel and were watching some of his men milling around like it was a football game.
Only thing we’re missing is popcorn, thought Kolikoff.
UAVs back in headquarters were dangerous. Staff personnel stayed glued to it, expectant, wanting to see some kind of action. It was rare to have a UAV up when and where you actually needed it, and when it did catch a firefight, it didn’t tell the whole picture. Kolikoff much preferred to talk to someone on the ground.
“Listen, Shenkov, I need you to take the time to send me a solid report. How did this go so badly? The SPETS-VTOR calculated a seventy percent certainty that the signals in that location were coming from a large insurgent base of operations. How could they vanish so quickly?”
Kolikoff watched the majors staring transfixed, like moths, at the screen. Damn machines can outthink half my officers. Hell of a way to run a war.
Fort Morgan, Colorado
“Major Uintergrin, sir . . .”
The major had piles of paperwork spread neatly in front of him across the foldout desk. Uintergrin’s roomette compartment was quite comfortable, by Russian standards. He carefully screwed the cap back onto his fountain pen and slowly turned toward the door to see one of his chemical soldiers standing there looking quite agitated.
“Yes. What is it?”
“Sir, we didn’t want to wake the colonel. That is, we know you’ve given specific orders to inform you first, err . . . not to disturb him of any . . . well, issues.”
“Yes.”
“Well, sir . . .” the kid stammered.
Uintergrin could now see two other soldiers behind the first, both dancing nervously on their feet. He smiled a bit. He liked the fear factor. Served to keep the men in line, and insured he received any reports before his idiot Colonel.
“Out with it, man,” Uintergrin barked.
“Sir, we’ve detected a . . . a . . . leak.”
“Son of a . . .” Uintergrin stood quickly, tossing his papers onto his otherwise meticulously organized desk and grabbing his cap. “Show me this instant.”
Uintergrin followed the three soldiers back through the train past the dining car—which was full of Russian soldiers having a smoke, all of whom stiffened and moved aside as he approached—through the passenger cars, all stuffed to the brim with soldiers in various stages of undress, laughing, and playing cards. Their chatter stopped as he entered a car and turned to murmurs once he’d gone. He and the three soldiers passed the observation car, too, where several soldiers had the entrance barred and locked. On spotting Uintergrin through the glass window, they unlocked the metal door.
The guard chief saluted him snappily and began to give a report: “Sergeant of the guard reports the guests are—”
“Not now,” said Uintergrin, pushing past them and to the back of the car. There, he and the chemical soldier donned orange hazmat suits over their uniforms and carefully inspected each other for leaks before opening the door. They closed and locked the observation car behind them. Here, the cold air rushed freely through the passageway to the baggage compartment as the train rushed forward at almost sixty miles per hour, chilling the men even in their rubber suits. The synthetic, flexible fabric that usually kept the heat in between cars had been stripped away, making a kind of open-air breezeway between the observation car and what had once been the baggage compartment.
Uintergrin led the way and knocked vigorously on the next car. There was no window to this car, only a large steel door with a heavy bar lock. After a few moments, the big steel door slid open, and another chemical soldier, likewise dressed in a hazmat suit, ushered them in. He slammed the door behind them and without a word led them through a portable military decontamination chamber, then to the rear of the compartment, where plastic barrels and several steel crates were stacked and held securely to the floor with metal straps. The soldier held an electronic chemical “sniffer” up to one of the crates. The machine registered green, but as they approached more closely, the lights turned yellow. He placed it next to a steel crate. The lights turned red, and a beeping alarm, barely audible to the men in the suits, went off.
Major Uintergrin nodded and ushered the men to follow him out. They closed the door, hosed themselves off, and changed out of the suits, then went into the observation car.
“What do we do, sir?”
“Toss the box,” said Uintergrin.
“Just throw it over, out into the countryside?”
“Yes. We have plenty of the pralidoxime chloride. More than enough for us.”
“What about the men of the 8th Guards? They will be in the sludge zone fighting the 10th Mountain men when we release the chemicals. Without a robust supply of the antidote, they will be killed along with the enemy.”
“They will be fine. We should still have enough, as long as we don’t have any more leaks.”
“Leaks . . . leaks from what? Antidote for what?” came a voice in broken Russian. A man who had been sitting reading a book in one of the observation car’s lounge seats—Mike, his name was—stood up and came over to Uintergrin and the men.
“None of your business,” snapped Uintergrin, “Remain calm and relax until we reach New York. You have nothing to do with this.”
“I might not, but I know that the kid you brought with me from the ADX has something to do with the reason you keep putting on those chemical suits when you go back there.”
“Mr. Mike, none of that is your concern. You just stay comfy and stay out of the way until we reach New York.”
“You know, there was a time when your country needed me, very badly—the intelligence I supplied to you from deep inside the FBI shaped Russian operations globally for almost a decade. I was an important man in your country.”
“And now? Now what? Now you are nothing to me. My government has agreed to get you out of jail and out of the country. I suppose we owe you that, but you have nothing to do with my other missions, and you will stay out of the way.”
“I had a direct line to the Chairman—”
“And now you have a direct line to me. Each time you try my patience, I grow less interested in ferrying around a traitor.”
The man bristled at the accusation. “I will bring this up with your colonel—”
“You will shut your fat trap,” snapped Uintergrin. “And if you don’t . . . you might just get lost on the way. I really don’t think my government would miss you. Your usefulness to us has come and gone. Feel free to bring anything up to the colonel you like. I am sure you’ll find out that he does nothing without my say-so, anyhow.”
Uintergrin realized he’d said too much. The soldiers in the compartment were very familiar with the broken relationship between their colonel and Major Uintergrin, but they’d never heard it directly from the man himself. Still, if it was open insubordination, there was very little they would do about it except gossip. They’d all watc
hed the two men interact, and they knew Uintergrin was really the one who wielded the power.
“Now,” Uintergrin continued, more calmly, “I suggest you go back to reading your Lenin or Trotsky or whatever is making you dream of the halcyon days of the Soviet Union. I have much more pressing issues to deal with.”
Uintergrin pushed Mike back and strode confidently from the car and back to his quarters.
* * *
At just past eight the next morning, the train left Colorado and entered Kansas, and Colonel Karataev stepped into Uintergrin’s compartment. He was wearing a pajama top and sweatpants and sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup.
He entered and looked over Uintergrin’s shoulder. “Are all those chemical equations for the mixtures?”
“No,” said Uintergrin without looking up.
“Ah, okay.” The Colonel fell silent and watched Uintergrin scribbling on several charts. Uintergrin circled an Upstate New York rail depot on a map and measured the distance to another point with a ruler.
“I heard some commotion last night outside my quarters. Anything we need to worry about?”
“ No.”
“Okay, sounds good,” said the colonel, continuing to try to engage in small talk. “The boys found some more movies. Even some old war pics. Have you heard of The Good Soldier, or something?”
“No,” said Uintergrin.
The colonel could see his major was busy. “Well, I’ll be in my quarters if you need me,” said the colonel, drinking his coffee.
“Okay,” said Uintergrin, not once turning around to acknowledge his superior.
Tucker County High School
West Virginia
Victoria opened the exam room door and handed First Sergeant Hull a small prescription slip for a pharmacy in Elkins, West Virginia, she had made a deal with.
“Mostly don’t scratch at the area,” she said. Then, realizing there were people walking past, she quickly added, “Shingles are totally normal, First Sergeant, even at your young age.”
She didn’t need to mention it, but she also knew that even with a war going on, people would talk. Especially in such a small unit, and especially overhearing people’s private medical diagnoses. There were no secrets that stayed secret long in a tight unit. Just that morning she had to tell two of her medical personnel to stop gabbing about some barracks romance that had developed.
“Thanks, ma’am. No way to get this from your pharmacy, or whatever we’re calling it?”
“Nope. Not until I restock somehow,” said Victoria.
The 150th had taken over the Tucker County High School as their new base of operations. The school was perfect: the classrooms became barracks; the principal’s office was both Tyce’s headquarters and Victoria’s medical facility; the gym was an excellent unit exercise area. For the most part they were invisible from Russian aircraft, and the school’s remote location allowed them the ability to send out patrols freely and remain unnoticed.
“But they have our requests for medicine, and they’ll work with us, though it’s slow. They have to hide any missing medicine from the Russians. By the way, are you any relation to the old navy admiral?”
“Matter of fact, yes,” said First Sergeant Hull. “I’m the dark sheep, the only guy in the family not to go into the navy. I owe you a family story next visit.” Hull thanked her and walked off.
Victoria saw Petty Officer Stacey Van Andersson outside her office talking to Mr. Blue.
Blue was remarking on some kind of sniper rifle, his specialty. “So you want to shoot the Weatherby Mark V?”
“No, I prefer something bigger than yours. What I’d really like to fire is the Barrett .50 cal. That one makes really big holes in things.” Stacey giggled, but Blue didn’t seem to get the joke and remained impassive.
“Oh, I guess I’d rather have something that was accurate,” he said.
Stacey just stared at him. Blue didn’t have anything further to offer—he rarely had this much to say—so he nodded uncomfortably to both women and walked away.
Victoria hadn’t wanted to interrupt, but the conversation between the unlikely match seemed to be over. She touched Stacey on the shoulder before she could walk away.
“Hey, sailor, welcome aboard by the way. I heard we had some new personnel arrive. You been avoiding the only other Naval personnel in the unit?” Victoria asked Stacey cheerily.
Stacey turned, a look of anger briefly flashing across her face, but it quickly passed. “No. I’ve been busy merging minds with the headquarters intelligence people and didn’t want to bother the administrative and medical peeps.”
If there was an insult there, Victoria didn’t pause to address it. “Got it. Well, why don’t you come in?” She stepped back and motioned for Stacey to come into her exam room.
“Um, I actually have to leave the comp—”
“I insist,” Victoria interrupted. Then, seeing Stacey looking for another way out of the situation, she added, “If I have to make it an order, Petty Off icer, I’m glad to.” She gave the other woman a pleasant but authoritative smile.
Stacey entered the exam room stiffly and sat down hard on the school nurse’s exam table. For the most part, the room was laid out exactly as Victoria was used to in a naval hospital and had come with a ready stock of the things she needed for the usual bumps and bruises, of which the troops had gotten plenty over the past few days in their new hideout.
Victoria closed the door and turned to face Stacey. “So, you doin’ okay?” she asked, crossing her arms under her chest.
Victoria had been performing double duty as the battalion surgeon and counselor to the troops. Without an actual therapist with the unit, many of the small emotional issues the troops faced would otherwise go unanswered, and sometimes get worse—a legitimate problem, and the unit suddenly finding itself in more intimate quarters twenty-four seven added a lot of hair-raising new stresses.
“Yes. I’m fine,” Stacey answered curtly.
“Good.” Victoria could see Stacey was going to remain a closed case throughout the exam. She was used to it.
“When was your last breast exam?”
The question was blunt and instantly made things clinical, but Victoria also knew a certain sterile matter-of-factness was actually the only way to get some people to open up about their problems, both medical and psychological. Victoria needed to manage the care of the whole of the 150th. She also had an obligation to keep Tyce informed of the troops’ stress levels. It was something she’d done for her other military commanders over the years. She might be oathbound to hide the truly personal medical matters, but at least she could provide a temperature gauge for the unit. After all, Tyce needed to use all the tools he could to know when the constant high levels of stress in the unit were about to head through the roof, as Victoria sometimes described it to him. He couldn’t always do anything about it, but sometimes he shifted a worn-out platoon or company out of the patrolling and guard rotations and into training status. The little breathers seemed to help immensely.
“About a year ago.”
“Okay. I need you to keep them up, sound good?” said Victoria, pulling on Stacey’s wrist and checking her pulse.
Stacey bristled and pulled back her arm. “Look, if you medical types haven’t noticed, we’re in a war. I don’t have the ti—”
“So first of all, Petty Officer, it’s ma’am,” Victoria interrupted sharply. Now it was her turn to become gruff. “Second of all, we all have to take care of ourselves. Or, just like our rifles and machine guns, we’ll fail at the worst of times. It’s called Prev-Med. We’ve been practicing it for years.”
“Yes, ma’am, but there’s a time and a place.”
“You’re right. There is.” Victoria nodded. Then, leaning over, she grabbed a pair of purple nitrile gloves from a drawer and pulled them on. “And now is the time.”
“I get it . . . ma’am,” said Stacey, her eyes narrowing a bit. “I’ll make sure to let you know if I have any
health issues.”
“Good. Now, let me get a quick look at your eyes, ears, and throat.” Victoria pulled an exam scope and rolled the chair over to look into Stacey’s ears. She pulled down her lobe, then tried the small talk again. “Did you catch the basketball game between the army and Marines yesterday?”
“I played in the basketball game for the Marines yesterday . . . ma’am.”
Victoria pivoted Stacey’s head and peered into her other ear. “Oh, good. I’m glad you’re staying fit.”
“Yes. Yes, I am. I don’t mind saying it’s good to be around some athletic boys,” Stacey said. Then she added with a small smirk, “Do you happen to know if the colonel is seeing anyone?”
Victoria remained expressionless. “Can you tilt your head back, please?”
Stacey complied, still smiling, and Victoria pushed the scope first into one nostril, then the other—both times perhaps a little more roughly than was necessary. Victoria pulled Stacey’s chin downward and used a wooden tongue depressor and the scope to examine her throat.
Victoria sat back. “Hmmm . . . who did your tonsillectomy?”
“Uh, what?” Stacey said quickly. “It was done overseas. Why?”
“Well, frankly, they left a mess.” Victoria pulled back and prepared to check Stacey’s eyes.
“Oh,” Stacey said dryly.
“There’s a lot of scarring there. You must’ve bled a lot. Any long-term complications? Do you have any troubles breathing?”
“No.” It was clear Stacey was a woman who guarded her secrets closely and was not going to open up, or even warm up, anytime soon.
“Okay.” Victoria held up a penlight. “Stare at the light, please. Follow it with your eyes.” Victoria moved the pen, first checking Stacey’s blue eye. “You have very unusual eyes.”
“Yes,” said Stacey. Then she adding toyingly, “The boys seem to admire them. All kinds of boys. You know what I mean?”
The Kill Box Page 9