Tyce picked up his rook and started to move it, saying, “Rook to”—The general gave another of his not-so-subtle headshakes. Tyce sighed heavily and moved the piece anyway—“B-eight.”
“You’re nothing if not persistent,” the general said. Then, perhaps trying to ease the inevitability of Tyce’s now-looming loss, he said, “You do realize you are the richest Marine in the history of the world. That gold—”
Tyce laughed. “Most poisonous substance known to man.” He pushed back from the table and stood up. The sudden motion woke Trigger, who leapt up and followed Tyce on his short walk over to the fridge, where he grabbed two beers, and back. When Tyce returned to his seat, Trigger snorted a few times to indicate his displeasure at being awakened for nothing of substance, then curled back up on the small office rug.
Tyce was pretty strict about the troops not drinking while on duty, but he turned a blind eye at other times as long as the NCOs kept everyone in line. It was now well past midnight, and he was pretty sure there were no more duties that needed his attention tonight. Things had gotten pretty peaceful over the past few weeks in their new command post. He handed a beer to the general, who popped it open and took a small sip, sighing with satisfaction.
“I figure that you’re well enough now to have a beer,” Tyce said.
The general seemed to eye him up with his white, sightless pupils, then said, “Or you know, like I do, that alcohol conflicts with my new medication, which could double or even triple the effects of the alcohol, giving you the advantage on the chessboard.”
“The thought never even crossed my mind, General.” Tyce laughed. “But it won’t be the first time a Marine out-drank a soldier so he could beat his ass.”
They both laughed now. Tyce was grateful for the banter, but mostly he was just grateful for the general’s wisdom about all manner of things. “You know us Marines are half sailor. Our service was started in a tavern.”
A radio operator looked in through the doorway, seemingly reluctant to interfere with the chess game. Nevertheless, he stepped in after clearing his throat and said, “Hey, sir. There’s a call for you on the mine company’s telephone.”
“Okay,” said Tyce, quickly hiding his beer. “Be there in a minute.” Then he added, “Can you find out who it is?”
The Marine acknowledged and went back to the radio room. Tyce could hear him talking over the phone.
The general shook his head and let out a tsk-tsk. Tyce was used to the general’s persona and knew this to mean he was about to execute the killing blow. He reached out to pick up a piece.
Before the general could finish his move, the Marine came in again. “Hey, sir. The guy says he’s Eagle six. Said you would know what that meant.”
Tyce looked up him in astonishment. “Eagle six?”
The general stopped mid-move and sucked air through tight lips. “There is only one Eagle six.”
“Gotta be a joke,” Tyce said, jumping up from his seat and spilling his beer, waking Trigger as he raced into the other room.
Trigger woofed toward Tyce through the doorway, then came over and rubbed up against the general, who reached down and scratched him on the crown of his furry head and stroked his ears. The general turned toward Trigger and said, “Rook to A-six.” He moved his piece, then said, “And I believe with that, my loyal canine friend, your boss has just lost the game.” He patiently petted Trigger and waited for Tyce to return. He had become extremely attuned to any sounds, even though before his blindness his hearing had been declining with age, and he listened with interest to the conversation unfolding in the next room.
“This is Colonel Asher . . . Yes? I mean, yes, sir . . . I am listening closely, sir . . . Yes, we caught a handful of Russian soldiers too. I can do—I mean, the 150th can do that, sir . . . It’s just—you have to understand, we all heard you were dead, Mr. President.”
CHAPTER 41
Russian Pentagon
Washington, D.C.
General Kolikoff sat in the back of the morning’s operations and intelligence briefing in silence. Major Pavel was droning on about the 8th Guards’ setbacks against the 10th Mountain Division in New York. Such negative effects were to be expected after their last mission failure, but they seemed to be occurring noticeably sooner than he would have expected. Kolikoff reflected on the past several days of operations. There was more to the train affair that Tympkin was not willing to divulge. Perhaps he’d get more from Captain Shenkov’s men once they were able to limp back to base.
Near the end of the brief, two men in dark suits arrived and sat in the back. They waited patiently until the briefing was over, then walked over to Kolikoff.
“General Viktor Kolikoff?” one said.
“Yes, that’s me.”
They both flashed badges. “We’ve been sent by the Kremlin to ask some questions about your most recent operations,” the first man said. Kolikoff ’s eyes grew wide. “Can you fill us in on a certain hijacked train?”
The other said, “Who, exactly, authorized the mission?”
“And what do you know about sixty million U.S. dollars in gold?”
Near New River Gorge, West Virginia
Georgia-Blue walked up to the 150th’s new armory, which was set up in the mine’s cavernous old tool room. Giant hydraulic jacks and pipes still hung on the walls, and hundreds of meters of spooled cable were stacked against a wall. Blue was a known regular in the armory, well respected by the men there—mostly due to his uncanny shooting skills, but also because of his friendly, polite nature and deep knowledge of all things marksmanship.
“Hey, sir,” said Blue as he approached the locked gate.
The Marine armory chief was too busy filling out paperwork to look up. “You don’t gotta keep calling me sir, Mr. Blue. In fact, I think most of the men have been calling you sir.”
Blue flushed a bright red hue and felt thankful the man didn’t look up. “I’d rather y’all didn’t. Watching Colonel Tyce and the others, I’m pretty sure I ain’t built to make an officer’s decisions.” For the briefest of instants, Blue’s heart skipped a beat, and a wave of guilt passed over him. “Least, not regularly.”
The armory chief finally looked up, unlocked the steel fence-like door, and let Blue in. “We worked on your rifle trigger for you, like you asked,” he said, leading Blue through. “Your sear spring was pretty old, but nothing major. The boys replaced it with a non-OEM. You’re gonna need to replace your ejector pin soon, though.” He shut and locked the door behind them.
He led Blue to a side storage room that had become the unit headquarters’ weapons storage room. Many weapons were left behind and destroyed in the Russian attack on their command post back at the Tucker County High School, but what remained still needed to be cared for and maintained between missions. Colonel Asher had also asked the units to store weapons for troops not on duty, patrol, or alert status after the locals had started to complain that the troops had practically hunted the forests clean of all deer, bear, and rabbit. He didn’t have enough ammo for the men to be wasting bullets on filling their plates and had made the unpopular decision in order to, as he had said, “save some ammo for the Russians.”
In the back room, two Marines were sitting on stools in front of a long, low workbench, busily repairing a heavy machine gun damaged in the last battle. The armory chief told the men to assist Blue, then headed back to the front to complete his paperwork. The men opened up the weapons cabinet, pulled out Blue’s Weatherby Mark V Deluxe, and handed it to him to inspect. Blue took the rifle lovingly in his hands and looked it over, then found a clear spot on the table and began to disassemble and clean it with rags and gun oil.
Blue knew all the weapons in the armory almost as well as the men there did. He looked around as he was cleaning his own rifle and was surprised to notice the unit’s Barrett M1A2 .50 cal sniper rifle was missing. Blue frowned and stared for a moment at that one empty spot among all the unit’s other sniper rifles. The snipers always to
ok him when they went out for training, and all their other rifles were there, where they belonged. He was about to ask someone if it too was destroyed in the attack on the school when the armory chief poked his head back in.
“Oh hey, Mister Blue, just one more thing. My boys had a helluva time getting all that gunk out of your Weatherby. I understand you and the top brass must have a good reason to be firing blanks through the rifle, but could you let us know next time you’re gonna use blank ammo? It causes a lot of carbon buildup in the chamber and inside the trigger mechanism. My boys had to go to town on it with the chemicals and the solvents before they could even get to the fixes it needed. I don’t mind repairing your rifle, but I’m low on solvent, so let me know when you’re gonna use blanks again, deal?”
“Blanks?” said Blue, genuinely baffled.
EPILOGUE
February 3, 1945
Berlin, Germany
Shredded Nazi flags still hung from the blasted Reich Chancellery building. The People’s Court and the Gestapo headquarters, along with pretty much everything near Oranien Strasse, had been mostly reduced to smoldering rubble. The explosions had leveled almost everything, and Goering’s promise that “no enemy bomber will ever reach the Ruhr” was an obvious lie. The tally was an unimaginable 1,000 heavy bombers. That figure, unlike quotes from the Reichsmarschall of the Luftwaffe, was believed. They had struck with impunity and they struck during daylight, demonstrating the power of the Allies coming onslaught.
Two men walked farther, past the blackened skeletal remains of a streetcar, wading through knee-deep water from a burst water main. Fire still raged from a building, pouring out of the upper-story windows while fire brigade men in heavy canvas cloaks and steel helms baring axes and hooks ran around trying to control the blaze.
A disheveled and pimple-faced, too-young policeman bade them to halt. Flashing their identity badges, the two men pushed past.
“Look,” said the younger man, “our building is intact, Doktor. Mostly.”
The doktor shook his head in disbelief but led them both inside, up the narrow, twisted stairs and into their offices. Shattered glass was everywhere. The outer windows had all burst inward with such shock that thousands of shards were embedded in the opposite walls. The sheer force from the overpressure of the bombing had been such that every interior door was blown from its hinges.
The men stepped over the remains and into what had once been their office. Inside, they surveyed the damage: papers and mechanical and electrical tools were strewn everywhere, but both machines seemed relatively unharmed. Of course, there was no power to confirm that the delicate array of wires and switches were still functional, but the outer casings looked intact.
“Nestor,” the doktor said in a dry, sullen voice. He stared at his young protégé a moment. “It is no longer safe for me to keep the rest of the team and their families here.”
“What will you do, Doktor?”
“Continue the program. Develop the next-generation computer. Perhaps it is time to finally use those vacuum tubes you seem to think so highly of.” He smiled briefly, but it quickly faded.
“What shall I do, Doktor?”
“You will remain here. You must continue to feed data to Von Braun, or all his wunderwaffe will fall from the sky. I am entrusting my greatest inventions to you.”
The older scientist, Doktor Konrad Zuse, inventor of the world’s first working computer, surveyed his apparatus one last time. He pulled a key from the drawer of a toppled wooden desk and unlocked the steel hatch of one of the machines. He ran his fingers lovingly over the wiring, the cold metal scaffolding, and harnesses, then closed the lid with a clang.
“Most importantly, never let them fall into Soviet hands. If they do . . . then God help us all.”
“They will turn them against Germany?”
“The Soviet behemoth will not stop now that it’s rolling. They will use our computers for exceedingly advanced military calculations against anyone who gets in their way,” said Doktor Zuse, prophetically.
Outside came the sounds of the enraged fire, then an earsplitting crack and crash, and both men turned in time to see the front wall of the building across the street collapse away.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks: To all my friends and family, who continue to encourage me in my new(ish) career in writing. Special thanks to my wife and kids for ensuring I have the time to write, but also for being forgiving when I’m truant in my number-one duty as husband and father. To my mom, for all their help, support, inspiration, and thoughtful recommendations. To my good friend and mentor, Mark Greaney. My incredible agent, Mr. Scott Miller, and the team at Trident Media. My author-mentors and pals: Captain Dale Dye, Marc Cameron, Mike Maden, and Sean Lynch—I’m humbled daily by the breadth of their writing knowledge and their willingness to impart it. To my comrades in arms: Josh Smith, Colonel Al Bryant, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Pinion, Lieutenant Colonel Ben Papas, Commander Scott Boros, Lieutenant Colonel (Select) Donnie Barbaree, Mr. Pete Frost, Josh Hood, and Ward Larson for their reviews and advice. To my fabulous editor Gary Goldstein and all the great folks at Kensington. To the amazing bookstores who aren’t afraid to support the little guys: Barbara Peters with The Poisoned Pen in Arizona, The Tattered Cover in Denver, and Novel a Bookstore in Memphis. As always, to my favorite writing haunt, the Elden Street Tea Shop. To my buddies and pals, the Cerratellis, the Hoang/Friedmans, the (O’)Scannells, the Westbrooks, and to the principal, administrators, and teachers of DTES. You guys all rock!
Keep reading for a special excerpt!
ASSAULT BY FIRE
by H. RIPLEY RAWLINGS
In the thrilling tradition of RED DAWN and THE DIRTY DOZEN, this action-packed page-turner from Lt. Col. Hunter Ripley “Rip” Rawlings IV brings together insider military expertise with riveting suspense, as special ops fighters must foil a surprise attack on American soil in a daring novel fans of Brad Thor and Tom Clancy will love!
ASSAULT BY SEA
U.S. Marine Tyce Asher knew his fighting days were over when he lost his leg in Iraq. He thought he’d never see action again—but when he hears secret espionage intel that a potential attack from Russia is imminent, Tyce knows he has to do everything he can to stop it.
ASSAULT BY LAND
With his history in the Middle East and connections to other veterans, Tyce is enlisted by Homeland Security to coordinate reserve fighters and special ops teams to help prepare the nation for an uncertain future . . .
ASSAULT BY FIRE
It is a full-fledged potential invasion orchestrated by a Russian military mastermind hellbent on destruction. With no time to lose, Tyce has to enlist every American he can find—seasoned vets, armchair warriors, backwoods hunters, even mountain moonshiners—to help protect their homeland.
Look for ASSAULT BY FIRE, on sale now.
PROLOGUE
When Premier of the Soviet Union Joseph V. Stalin died in 1954, the Russian Executive Command finally received permission from the presidium to alter the grand Soviet national military strategy from one focusing on the defense of Rodina (Mother Russia) to something completely new—one that could be summed up by saying that a series of lightning offenses are the best defense in the modern, nuclear era. In these new war plans, a successful invasion of Europe was given as a foregone conclusion. Russia was completely confident they held the upper hand on the Continent.
But the invasion of the continental United States, without the use of strategic nuclear arms, remained a vexing problem for Soviet military planners. Three major obstacles prevented the generals from supporting an invasion.
The following pages are an excerpt from the original Soviet War plan.
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
War Plan 90X-54 (Invasion of the United States)
Combined Assault of America
by Russian Ocean and Air Forces
Para 18-01
1. Invasion of the contiguous forty-eight United States by sea
is determined by the leading Soviet naval planners in Leningrad to be impractical at this time. Achieving our doctrinal and desirable five to one troop ratio via undetected large transport ships and across the Atlantic/Pacific oceans is not feasible with current technology.
2. Invasion of the United States is unlikely to be sustainable due to wanton and massive U.S. practice of private firearm ownership. The American Second Amendment means conflict within the continental United States will devolve rapidly and inevitably into a bloody house-to-house conflict. Insurgencies will consist chiefly of remnant military interspersed with willing, patriotic, and well-armed civilian insurgents—who will arise shortly after (or during) the planned Soviet “Assault Phases” and after our forces’ initial seizure of the U.S. coast(s).
3. The U.S. policy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) means an invasion would be costly, as any surviving U.S. nuclear force command and control architecture will retaliate with strategic nuclear weapons.
SOVIET MILITARY EXECUTIVE COMMAND CONCLUSIONS
Para 18-02
Any invasion of the U.S. will be cost prohibitive in both materials and personnel, and any estimates for victory in a land invasion of the continental United States offered to the Supreme Soviet in War Plan 90X-54 should remain marked as merely “feasible,” until the three listed factors can be removed or mitigated.
Finally, it is the estimate of my entire staff that invasion should only be considered in the event of an existential threat against Mother Russia herself.
The Kill Box Page 31