by Peter Nealen
I glanced over my shoulder as we got to the fence, to see that Chris was right behind us, dragging Landau’s husband with him. “Three down in the house,” I told Jordan as we got to the fence.
“Two more out front. That leaves one that we know of.” He kept his weapon trained on the corner.
“And he’s probably yelling for help.” I turned to Landau, who was starting to come around, though I still had a firm grip on her upper arm. “Frau Landau, you need to listen to me very carefully. The cars are about seventy-five meters that way.” I tilted my head rather than let go of her or my Rattler. “We can get there in about thirty seconds, and then we can be gone before anyone else comes after you.”
She blinked. “How do I know I can trust you? You killed three men in my house!”
“Yes, we did. We killed three men who came in shooting and murdered your security guards.” We didn’t have time to have this debate in the backyard, but short of throwing her over my shoulders and carrying her, kicking and screaming, to the vehicles, I didn’t have much choice.
But that point seemed to have hit home. She probably had no idea who had just tried to kill her, but I had a sneaking suspicion, just based on the weapons. Heckler & Koch never sold MP7s to civilians, and if we were there on behalf of the US government, that sort of narrowed the list of suspects down.
She glanced back at her husband, who was pale as a sheet and gaping like a fish. He wasn’t going to be much help. Finally, she nodded. “Let’s go.”
I helped her over the fence, and then we were pushing through the hedge and out onto the path. Chris and the husband followed, with Jordan and Tony taking up the rear.
It took less than thirty seconds to get to the cars, get in, and get moving. Behind us, blue lights had started flashing, and the whooping European sirens echoed across the lake. But by the time the Politiet arrived, we were long gone.
***
“There’s our ride.”
I looked up and spotted the pair of RHIBs after a couple seconds of scanning, about a hundred yards past the surf zone and coming in fast. The Rigid Hulled Inflatable Boats were nearly invisible, even with my NVGs on, except for their wakes. They were blacked out and the moon wasn’t supposed to come up for another hour.
The escape from Copenhagen and the subsequent drive across Zealand had been almost anticlimactic after the brief firefight in the Landaus’ house. There’d been no sign of pursuit, no alerts over the radio that we’d heard. In fact, aside from a single report, we didn’t hear anything about six bodies being found in a high-profile German ex-pat politician’s house, with said German ex-pat missing.
Neither Landau nor her husband had said a word on the drive. They were clearly still traumatized. In fact, it was getting worse as they got a little distance from what had happened, and the adrenaline wore off. Landau herself had started shaking like a leaf after the first mile or two, and her husband hadn’t been much comfort to her, being in not much better shape.
I hoped that we had good intel—I didn’t expect that Landau would take my theory at face value—about who had tried to kill or kidnap her. I suspected Euro Defense Corps, or even German KSK subordinated to the EDC. That might be enough to turn her.
The RHIBs slowed just outside the surf zone, and an IR light blinked three times. I sent one flash back from my NVGs’ illuminator, and got another one in return. Then their engines surged, and they powered in through the surf to scrape their keels on the beach.
“Come on, Frau Landau. That’s our ride. You’re safe now.”
The look she gave the boats told me she wasn’t convinced, but she came on down to the beach with us anyway.
Chapter 9
We hadn’t seen Landau or her husband—whose name I’d never caught—since we’d handed them off to the Navy and the political minders aboard the USS Cape St. George. That wasn’t surprising, and frankly, I was just as glad to get them off our hands. Landau had made some dutifully grateful noises about our rescue, but it had looked and sounded like every syllable had hurt coming out.
If I were being entirely objective, I could kind of understand. She’d just been put in what she had to consider an untenable position—after years of backing the “United Europe” idea, and complaining about the United States’ political intransigence and backwardness, despite years of left-wing administrations, she was now being forced by circumstances to aid the US in attacking the current defenders of her favored idea of Europe, no matter how much she disliked them. Reality hurts sometimes, and it was going to be especially painful for her.
I was sure she’d get over it once she was in charge, though I also suspected she’d complain about the manner in which she was put in charge for decades to come.
If the plan worked.
We were stuck aboard the Cape St. George for several days. Ostensibly, we could have hitched an Osprey ride from the USS Abraham Lincoln back to Gdansk, but they were running ops—or so we were told—and ferrying Triarii was pretty low on the priority list.
So, we hunkered down in our assigned compartment, trying to stay out of the way and avoid encountering any Navy officers. The Navy had been notoriously politically correct since before I’d been a Marine, and to say that the Triarii were not likely to be welcome among them was putting it mildly.
After all, we were a non-governmental military organization that had set out from the get-go to stand up for law and order in the face of what amounted to a domestic insurgency. We’d fought People’s Revolutionary Action, the Soldados de Aztlan, New Black Kingdom Revolutionaries, and a baker’s dozen other such groups, all of which were hands-off to a certain segment of the political spectrum. That made us villains, never mind the fact that we’d put the hurt on the Fourth Reich and more than a few similar groups as well.
We were Americans, first and foremost. We were trying to maintain some degree of stability in the places where we operated. Our job was to protect the people who’d been written off as politically inexpedient. But that didn’t sit well with the pols, most of whom had been enriching themselves enormously for years by stoking the fires we were trying to put out.
So, we kept our heads down. We only ever left the compartment to go to the gym and the galley. And that was always in pairs.
The gym was pretty well-equipped, more so than I’d expected aboard a cruiser. Of course, on the couple of MEUs I’d floated with, I’d always been on the Big Deck, first the USS Boxer and then the USS Makin Atoll.
Most of us were somewhere between absolute minimalists and heavy lifters. While David was still a runner, and we all had to maintain some long-range endurance, none of us were nearly as fast as we used to be.
So, we were mostly using the dumbbells, pullup bar, and the trap bar. Lifting on ship was always a challenge. The deck never stays completely level, so the load shifts and tilts as the ship rolls on the waves. It can be great for stabilization work, but if you’re not ready for it, it can really suck.
I was halfway through a push-pull workout. It was pretty straightforward. A set of pullups was followed by a set of pushups. Granted, I’d started messing with the regular formula a while back, and the pullups were mostly “archer pullups,” with one arm kept straight out to one side, pulling toward the other, and the pushups were done using only one arm at a time. The shifting weight as the Cape St. George rolled on the waves just made it more challenging.
Tony was deadlifting with the trap bar. Tony was a big guy, and there was an unholy amount of weight on that bar. The rest of the team had already cycled through. We were trying to keep a low profile, and taking over the cruiser’s small gym wouldn’t exactly accomplish that goal. Most of the last couple of days, though, it had seemed like we were being overly cautious. There were rarely enough people in the gym to crowd us, even if we’d all gone in at the same time.
But as I got down off the bar, I saw a couple of young men who didn’t look like the rest of the Cape St. George’s sailors come in. Most of those kids had been wearing Navy blue an
d gold. These guys were in UDT shorts and skintight black t-shirts. They were also in considerably better shape than all but a few sailors who were obviously powerlifters. One had fairly short black hair, the other’s was blond, well out of regs, and wavy. Both wore mustaches, though it looked like the blond guy had just started growing his.
They watched us for a moment. Both of us were in civilian shorts and t-shirts, noticeably older than either of them, and still in pretty good shape. I had a fair bit of gray in my otherwise dark red hair and goatee, and while Tony’s hair was still black, the lines around his eyes had deepened considerably in the last year. But I was as lean and hard as I’d ever been, and Tony was a bear of a man who looked like he could crush your skull if he ever got his hands on you.
He probably could.
I had these two kids tagged as NSW. I knew there was a SEAL Team Two platoon in the Carrier Strike Group. And these guys had Naval Special Warfare written all over them.
They kept watching us curiously as they got ready to work out. Tony and I ignored them as best we could.
It wasn’t enough, though, as the blond kid came over after a couple of minutes, as I got up off the deck.
“Who are you guys with, man? I haven’t seen you aboard before.” His voice was friendly enough. SEALs have a bit of a reputation for arrogance, and some of them have earned it. And not in a good way. But while I didn’t have much use for their command or some of their number, not all of them were assholes. In fact, as with most organizations, the assholes were the minority.
But given our status, we were still going to be standoffish.
“We’re consultants.” I was breathing hard enough that it wasn’t difficult to keep my answer short and succinct. That had been my fifth set.
Tony had let the bar down and turned to watch us, his face blank, his eyes unreadable.
The kid frowned a little. “Consultants, huh?” Then the light switch came on, and he nodded. “Oh, yeah. Huh. Kinda surprised we didn’t hear anything about you guys coming aboard.”
There were any number of possibilities that could have come to his mind. He probably thought we were JSOC or some CIA paramilitary group. Or, come to think of it, the SEALs had been involved in the French nuclear op. They might have been aware that the Triarii were running ops concurrent with the US mil.
“You guys mind if we work in?” He waved toward the pullup bar.
I waved him toward it. “Be my guest.”
Tony and I stayed for about another twenty minutes. The two SEALs tried to make small talk between sets, but our responses were generally monosyllabic, and they backed off. They were “vanilla” SEALs, but they’d been around long enough to know not to ask questions. Though I caught the dark-haired kid—and boy, did both of them look like kids to me—giving us curious glances from time to time.
As several regular sailors came in, Tony and I took our leave. We exchanged nods with the SEALs and left, as the sailors stared.
***
We finally got back to Gdansk, to find that not much had changed while we’d been gone.
“Let me get this straight.” I paused on the way into the TOC. That was Gutierrez’s voice, and he sounded like he was in the middle of something. As I stepped around the corner, I saw that, in fact, he was facing General Reeves across the map table. Reeves was in uniform but had his cap off, and he was leaning on the table, looking disgusted.
“She still thinks this is a good idea? Fucking ‘Seven Days to the River Rhine’ from Poland instead of East Germany?” Gutierrez usually sounded a lot more calm, cool, and collected than that, especially when he was talking to senior Army officers. I frowned a little. This was odd.
Reeves looked down at the tabletop and sighed. “The whole plan was worked out before they ever left Norfolk. She’s fucking married to it. They think they’ve seen through all the contingencies, including heightened resistance in Germany.” He shook his head without looking up. “They’re convinced that since we haven’t seen another big push from the Corps since the fall, that they’re played out. That they shot their load trying for Gdansk, and now they’re ready to fall.”
Gutierrez had seen me come in. “Is that the impression you got in Germany a couple months back, Matt?”
Reeves looked over at me, and I was shocked at how old the man had gotten in just the last few months. There were deep bags under his eyes, and I could have sworn that his hairline had receded since I’d last seen him. Granted, I don’t think I’d ever been this close to him before. We weren’t all that chummy with the Army, outside of the 10th Special Forces Group guys under Major Tierce.
Well, Gutierrez had called me out, so I stepped up to the table. “No, it wasn’t. Their conventional main force units have been focused on mopping up Vogt’s attempted coup, but that was almost three months ago. And we already knew that they were preparing for more of an irregular offensive, which is why the power’s been going down in Warsaw and Poznan for the last month, never mind the riots, assassinations, and other sabotage.”
“And, we’ve got drone footage of more main force units moving toward the border again, along with Armee de Terre and Bundeswehr auxiliaries.” Gutierrez pointed to several red markers near Görlitz. “If she thinks that’s ‘played out,’ she’s got another think coming. They know that three divisions just arrived in-country, and that more supplies and equipment are coming in every week. They also know that that supply chain is hardly limitless.” That was an understatement. With the state of things back home even before we’d deployed to Slovakia, I was frankly surprised that we’d been able to mobilize three divisions. I still wondered just how patchwork the 1st and 2nd Infantry Divisions were. “With their nuclear deterrent gone, they’ve got precious few options, and somehow I doubt that surrender is on their list. They’re sure they’re right, after all.”
Reeves nodded tiredly. “You’re preaching to the choir, Oscar.” His shoulders slumped. He glanced up at me, then looked back at Gutierrez. “But she outranks me, and she’s convinced that one spearhead offensive can end the war. Then everybody can get back to normal.” He shook his head and muttered, “Whatever the hell that means, anymore.”
Gutierrez’s expression was stony. In the back of the room, Hartrick’s was even more contemptuous. I knew why, and I kept my own face as carefully impassive as I could. I knew that only worked so well—I have what I’ve termed “resting mad dog face” at the best of times.
Because we were all thinking the same thing. “Back to normal” meant the same agenda with a nicer face. If the likes of Landau were in charge, I was sure the war would continue, just through the other means the Chinese liked to advocate for. They’d still try to strangle the Eastern European countries; they’d just do it more slowly. Economic, financial, and political warfare would take the place of bullets, tanks, bombs, and sabotage.
I think I preferred the more straightforward methods. Those were more easily answered in kind.
Furthermore, “back to normal” would probably end the brief rapprochement between the Triarii and the US government. If anything, I could see that equilibrium getting worse. Quickly.
Gutierrez looked down at the map, thinking. “What intel would change her mind?” His voice was quieter, more composed, more professional. “If we get teams into Germany on deep recon, what would make her rethink the plan?”
“Anything you can get.” Reeves pointed to the red markers. “Görlitz is only part of it. Right now, the plan is to stage and assault from Swiebodzin, so she’s not that worried about any massed forces to the south. Find out anything you can.” He winced. “I can’t send Tierce’s SF boys right now. She’s got them tasked out, though I’m damned if I know doing what. I’ve been shut out there.” For a moment, Reeves just looked defeated.
It was a far cry from the pompous, officious general we’d butted heads with over recon from Germany just before the offensive that had initially taken Gdansk. I honestly hadn’t really thought it possible that a man could learn and change h
is mind once he had stars. I’d apparently been proven wrong.
He straightened up, picking his patrol cap up off the table. “I’ll leave you gentlemen to have your meeting. Thanks for hearing me out, at least.” He stuck his hand out, and Gutierrez shook it. He nodded to the rest of us, turned, and walked out of the TOC with his back straight and his head held as high as he could, but you could still see the weariness in the set of his shoulders.
I frowned a little as I watched him leave. “Well, that was new.”
Gutierrez shook his head, still leaning on the map table. “Not as new as you might think. Reeves and I have been talking for a while now. We’ve all been through a lot since last fall. Now, he finds himself outranked and overruled by people who haven’t seen the elephant yet. Settar’s got a combat patch, but guess how much actual combat she’s ever seen.”
I snorted. I didn’t have to think very hard to come up with that guess.
“So, Reeves has suddenly found that we Triarii aren’t such bad guys, after all.” Gutierrez chuckled faintly. “In fact, I think he might come looking for a way in, one of these days.”
“That’d be something.” I leaned on the table. “First Warren, then Reeves.”
“Yeah. Warren.” His brow furrowed. “That’s going to be tricky. Having an Army Chief Warrant Officer get out and come join us is bound to ruffle some feathers.”
“Well, they shouldn’t have treated him like dirt, then.” I wasn’t sympathetic, but then I’ve been accused of being about as diplomatic as a brick through a plate glass window, so take that for what it’s worth.
“Yeah, I know, Matt, but we aren’t in a position to go sticking our thumbs in the Army’s eye right now.” Gutierrez was not amused by my bluntness. “We’re allies at the moment, regardless of what’s going on back home.”
“Roger that.” I subsided. That was hardly the hill to die on, especially with a renewal of the open war with France and Germany on the horizon. I looked down at the map. When I looked back up, I was as serious as a heart attack. “What do we do if Settar pushes this plan through and tries to cross Germany with three divisions in a week?”