Thunder Run (Maelstrom Rising Book 6)

by Peter Nealen

“Of course they were. The Russkies have been playing both sides against the middle for forever.” Gutierrez looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. “I expect that the EDC thinks they played the Russians this time, but who knows?”

  “’The enemy of my enemy is my friend,’ at least until he’s not.” It didn’t surprise me. The EDC had been holding the Russians up as the great boogieman for some time, but the unexpected pushback from the Poles, Hungarians, and Americans trapped in the crossfire presented them with a boogieman much closer to home.

  Especially since we’d wiped out their nuclear deterrent a few months before.

  “The Poles are stuck between a rock and a hard place.” Gutierrez leaned on the table, looking around at all of us. “The new conscript divisions, which are mostly equipped with some of the old Warsaw Pact caches—bet a lot of people didn’t realize those were still around—are already heading for the Kaliningrad border. We’re trying to convince Malinowski that they need to hold the line there and stay focused on Germany, but the Poles have an old, old hate-on for the Russians.”

  “What do we do?” I was looking at Hartrick.

  “We’re still trying to figure that out. Phones are down, and the Army comms are jammed solid. I sent a runner to find Reeves, but for the moment, we’re standing by.”

  I frowned. “The phones are down?”

  Gutierrez nodded, a thin, humorless smile creasing his features. “Yeah. Across the board.” He looked up at me and raised an eyebrow. “Guess who has a controlling interest in the phone company?”

  A chorus of groans went around the table. “The Chinese.” It wasn’t a question.

  Gutierrez nodded. “They don’t outright own it, which is largely why it’s flown under the radar. But China Investment Group, it turns out, has a majority share in the biggest network in the country. The same network that is now down, hard.”

  “And the Army decided it was more convenient to use cell phones for regular comms than radios.” Disgust dripped from Shane Tucker’s voice.

  “Naturally. Most of them are more comfortable with phones than radios these days, anyway.” Gutierrez just sounded tired. “Like I said, we’ve sent a runner to Reeves’ CP. We’ll see what he says when he comes back.”

  Even though we didn’t have any specific mission yet, we started planning anyway. It wasn’t as if we had much else to do—though it was getting late, we were all quite familiar with sleep deprivation—and Triarii weren’t exactly the type to sit around waiting for somebody to tell us what to do.

  We had a few options sketched out by the time the next intel update came in, thanks to the Poles. We still hadn’t heard anything from the Army. That silence was getting ominous, the longer it went on.

  “It looks like the Russians have almost reached Gołdap.” A glance at the map confirmed that they’d nearly penetrated clear to Kaliningrad. “Damn. They’ve got almost the entire 65 corridor secured. It looks like they sent almost half of the 20th Guards Combined Arms Army in from Belarus.” The 20th Guards had become the most regular “guest” force in Belarus, which was still nominally independent, but thoroughly under the Russian thumb.

  I couldn’t help but think back to the Territorial Defense troops we’d helped train, and how they might have fared against a fast, combined arms onslaught along such a narrow corridor. With enough time and warning, they might have been able to set up a defense in depth, but they were still amateurs, and this sounded like it had come with all the suddenness of a lightning bolt. It didn’t sound good.

  Gutierrez’s next words confirmed my hunch. “A couple of Territorial Defense units tried to stand their ground. They got plastered. The rest fell back and screamed for the Land Forces. It sounds like there’s a defense set up on the road outside of Gołdap, but they’re mainly there to allow for evacuation.” He frowned as he kept reading. “Wroclaw is looking every bit as serious; EDC operatives have control of most of the government offices, and the city is mostly surrounded by what looks like the EDC 2nd Division.”

  “Any word on what the Poles are planning?” Hartrick was watching Gutierrez as he kept reading.

  But Gutierrez didn’t answer. At least, not in so many words. He suddenly put the update down on the map table and straightened. “I need to try to get in to see Malinowski.” He turned toward the door. “Keep planning, and be ready to move fast when the word comes down. And if that runner gets back, make sure I get word.”

  I traded glances with Hartrick. It was hard to shake the feeling that everything was coming apart all at once.

  But we’d been through worse. None of this was as bad as being alone and unafraid in the middle of Slovakia, towing Army survivors who didn’t trust us any more than we trusted them, surrounded by enemies, and unsure if the Nationalists were going to prove to be friend or foe when we finally made contact.

  There had always been a shadow over the Triarii’s efforts, a feeling that we were just fighting a long defeat and only delaying the inevitable. Some of that was simply because of the constant cultural and legal erosion we’d all been watching unfold for our entire lives. Some of it came from the constant drumbeat of “the march of history” that we’d also been bombarded with since we’d been children.

  That shadow was back, with a vengeance. We’d built a decent rapport with the Army since Slovakia, but that was with those who had already been stationed here, the boys and girls who had fought for Gdansk, had seen the enemy up close and seen combat. The newcomers outnumbered them, and they didn’t have the same perspective.

  And it was looking more and more like their commander and the government officials who had come along were diametrically opposed to everything we had fought for over the last year.

  I kept my team updated by radio about every half hour, as we continued to work out general plans for contingencies as we thought of them. There really wasn’t much that the team could do at the moment, aside from make sure all their gear was prepped—which it always was, anyway—and study the terrain in the two separate AOs where we might be tasked out.

  Provided this didn’t go even more pear-shaped in the next few hours.

  I glanced at the clock. It was later than I’d thought. It was getting on toward 2200 hours. I turned back to the map.

  Just then, a young infantry Triarius named Rohmer charged through the door. “Where’s Hartrick?”

  Hartrick looked up. “Right here.”

  Rohmer looked like he wanted to salute, but he restrained himself. “Word from Gutierrez: he wants all three Grex Luporum teams and their trail infantry sections to move to the airfield, prepped for a greenside op. Brief will be at the airfield, but he did tell me to pass that they’re going to Wroclaw.”

  I was already halfway out the door.

  Chapter 18

  We hustled into the woods south of Sroda Slaska as the S-70s roared off into the night. Chris pushed in about ten yards, and then we hunkered down and went still and quiet, watching and listening for any sign that we’d been detected.

  We’d come in low and fast, and we were still almost ten klicks from the corridor that the EDC had forced through to Wroclaw. We were outside the presumed security envelope around their headquarters and primary supply line. They’d moved too fast to secure much of the countryside beyond the corridor along Highway A4. But good tactical habits are good habits for a reason, and we’d certainly had too much experience to slack on an op like this.

  I listened as the snarl of the helos’ rotors dwindled in the distance. No Modocs this time; this was purely a Triarii op, with no Army support at all.

  And that was a matter of concern. Just not one I had the time for at the moment.

  After ten minutes, I was confident that we were clear. There was no sign of the other teams around us. They’d spread out in different directions, effectively covering the approaches to the LZ. There should be several hundred yards between each team by now.

  But we still stayed in place. We weren’t the only pieces on the board this time. Those S
-70s would be back. And we had to be in position to respond if the enemy reacted to their return.

  The night got quiet, except for the distant rumble of artillery and the even more distant roar of clashing fast-movers in the sky above us. The fight for Wroclaw was still on.

  We wouldn’t get to it that night, but we were in position to profoundly affect how it ended.

  ***

  The infantry sections came in a couple hours later. We stayed on alert and talked them in via radio until we could link up by IR flashes. Then we set security and hunkered down in the woods for the day. Dawn wasn’t far off. We had inserted just after 0200, and while we probably could have simply gone into Sroda Slaska and linked up with the local Policja, we didn’t want to risk getting bogged down, or worse, having our presence leaked to the enemy.

  So, we waited.

  ***

  Things seemed to have calmed down as the day went on, but the updates we were getting via radio told us that that was only because the Poles and the small contingent of US Army, Slovak volunteers, and a few Hungarians had held their ground and the big EDC push had momentarily pulled back to their nearly-complete cordon around the city. The fight wasn’t over.

  I didn’t sleep much during the day. Between the occasional jet flyover and sporadic harassing artillery fire—which sounded like it was going in both directions—there were a lot of noises to wake me up. The tensions and uncertainty of the friendly situation as well as the enemy sit didn’t help, either.

  So, I was already tired when the sun went down and it came time to move. It still wasn’t as bad as Slovakia.

  That experience was going to be a bellwether for suffering, strain, and exhaustion for a long time. Possibly for the rest of my life.

  We had a long way to go, so we rucked up and got ready to move quickly and quietly. After I made sure that Bradshaw’s boys were set, I nodded to Chris, who returned the nod and turned to lead out. We’d have the woods for concealment for a while, but then we were going to have to be careful as the patch of forest gave way to fields and villages.

  We had to move fast, though. We only had so much darkness.

  ***

  The EDC’s Division headquarters was well back from the front. The interchange just outside of Kostomłoty was almost thirty klicks from Wroclaw, right at the outer edge of the Polish 155mm artillery’s effective range.

  “Security looks pretty tight.” Chris and I were in the prone in an irrigation ditch between fields, partially screened by some bushes growing in the low ground, watching the perimeter about three hundred yards away.

  He was right. The perimeter was held by what looked like a motorized rifle company, equipped with Puma infantry fighting vehicles. Those were going to be a problem; their thermal sights would pick us out easily if they were watching for us. Only very careful movement had kept us concealed. Even thermals can’t see through vegetation well.

  But it was going to make penetrating to the division HQ more than a little difficult. At least, it would if we were going to try a straight-up assault.

  Fortunately, the infantry sections had brought a few toys that should level the playing field a bit.

  I pulled a small IR laser, carefully coded beforehand, out of my vest. I could already hear the faint buzz behind me that announced our little helping hands’ approach.

  We’d encountered kamikaze drones in Nitra, Slovakia. They were a nightmare when you were the target. The tactical applications were pretty obvious, though.

  These weren’t nearly as sophisticated as the EDC’s drones. They were mostly cobbled together in electronics shops in Gdansk, and they were ugly as sin. They weren’t nearly as compact as the boomerang-shaped ones the EDC had been using, either. More glider than anything else, they were pushed by a single propeller, with a seeker head mounted on top of the glorified High Explosive Anti-Tank round nestled in the nose.

  They weren’t fast, but they were moderately stealthy, and their wingspan meant they could circle for a long time without using a whole lot of power. They still had sharply limited loiter time, but they’d do the trick.

  I picked out the nearest Puma and carefully put the dim IR laser on its upper hull. Anyone on NVGs would probably see the laser, but they still wouldn’t have much time to react, and the seeker head was even better than I’d had any business expecting from such a homegrown bit of tech. Once it was locked, it would require some radical maneuvering to throw it off.

  The buzz behind me intensified, and the shadow of the drone passed overhead, accelerating as it dove on the Puma. I switched off the laser before it drew too much attention.

  A few moments later, the drone hit.

  It impacted the Puma’s top armor with a flash and a puff of smoke. A fraction of a second later, the bang reached our ears. The smoke drifted away as the Puma started to burn.

  That certainly got their attention. IR weapon lasers flicked out across the fields and into the sky, searching for another drone or someone with a Carl Gustav.

  They weren’t going to spot anything without overhead surveillance, and that was going to have other things to focus on soon. The rest of the team was hunkered down flat in the ditch behind us, and we got even lower, that part of the night’s game over.

  A few minutes later, another drone hit off to the west, and another Puma burned fiercely. Then another struck close to the same spot. Tucker must have rapidly painted one target after another, letting the seekers do their tricks as he shifted targets. There was a time window for target acquisition of about thirty seconds, after which the drones were supposed to be “fire and forget.”

  Still, we stayed low and still. It wasn’t time yet.

  More impacts thundered around the perimeter. We had about ten of those drones, and we were going to use all of them. I waited until after the fifth one had gone off, somewhere down on the south side of the EDC perimeter, by which time the enemy should be in full duck-and-cover mode, and then I lifted my head.

  I didn’t speak. I just started crawling forward through the field. Chris was right behind me, and soon the rest of the team was moving.

  We didn’t take our time. Low-crawling three hundred yards is tough, and even tougher if you’re trying to cover that distance quickly. I was drenched in sweat, my heart pounding and my knees and elbows aching before I’d covered half the distance. But I kept going.

  The impacts had slowed. That was part of the plan. With only ten of the drones, we had to make the timing work, despite the likelihood that the enemy would keep their heads down for a while until they knew it was clear.

  Sometimes, fighting a First World military actually makes things easier. Especially when you’ve already observed that they have some of the same weaknesses as your own.

  Another drone hit, off to the south. And then a Mk 48 opened fire on the perimeter.

  One of the infantry sections was feeling confident. That hadn’t been part of the plan.

  The fire fell silent quickly, but the damage was done. We were still a good fifty yards outside the perimeter, and now the enemy knew that this wasn’t just an air strike or rocket attack.

  I looked up, scanning the perimeter. The burning Puma was directly in front of me, still about fifty yards away. The two to either side, with about a fifty-yard dispersion between them, were still quiescent, though their engines were running. They were buttoned up and their sights were trained on the sky, not the ground. But I still felt exposed as hell, especially as the alarm took on a different tone.

  Somebody had screwed up. I didn’t know who, and right then it didn’t matter. We had to adjust, and fast.

  There’s an old saying that goes, “When in doubt, attack.” So, we did.

  With fifty yards left to go, I heaved myself to my feet, got my rifle up, and sprinted toward the right side of the burning Puma.

  To their credit, the EDC troops had dug in, though not deeply. Apparently, the Polish artillery from near Wroclaw had been getting close enough that they had decided to dig some
fighting holes, just in case. Again, they were too shallow, and wouldn’t have done much against the drones in the first place, but they were trying.

  It’s weird, sometimes, what decades of up-armored, overly mechanized, overly technological operations can do to a military force. The basics get lost.

  I slowed as I plunged through the black smoke belching from the burning Puma, bringing the rifle up and shifting the small assault pack over my shoulder that carried our payload for the night’s op.

  The fighting hole behind the burning IFV was practically empty. The crew must still be inside the stricken vehicle. I shot the one man who stuck his head up as I came out of the smoke. He never even knew what had happened. The suppressed 7.62 round’s crack was lost in the crackle of flames from the vehicle next to me and the wail of alarms from the CP ahead.

  Then we were inside the perimeter, spreading out as we moved through the breach formed by the destroyed Puma.

  The command post was a maze of tents, command vehicles, comm trailers, and cargo containers. Several stacks of comm antennas stood against the glare of burning vehicles. The CP itself was easily picked out—that would be the bunkered-up stack of containers with all the satellite dishes on it.

  Funny how satcom still seemed to work for the EDC.

  I scanned to my right and left, but even as the alarms continued to whoop and react forces started to scramble in response to the ill-advised machinegun burst from the south, we appeared to have gone unnoticed. That was surprising, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. The EDC appeared to still be confused about what, exactly, was happening, so we needed to move fast and take full advantage.

  True professionals would scramble to cover all avenues of approach once they knew they were under ground attack. But the instinct, at least among eager young gunfighters, is always to run toward the fight they can see and hear. And it appeared that the EDC soldiers were doing just that. I saw figures in plate carriers and helmets, carrying rifles, running toward the south side of the perimeter.