Thunder Run (Maelstrom Rising Book 6)

by Peter Nealen

  It was getting close to midnight as we started to get close to our pre-planned extract point. The birds were supposed to be holding station about forty klicks north, flying racetracks around Ścinewa. We were still closer to the target than our insert point had been, but that had been deliberate. The extract LZ, on the south side of the woods where we’d spent the previous day, was still outside the envelope of possible EDC anti-aircraft emplacements.

  We weren’t alone, though.

  “Golf Lima Ten, India Quebec Five.” Bradshaw’s voice was hoarse; he and his section hadn’t been inside, but they’d covered almost as much ground as we had. “We’ve got company to the southeast.”

  Looking back, I saw what he was talking about. The react forces from the cordon around Wroclaw had spread out across the fields around the stricken headquarters, and were still actively searching for us. And their wheeled Boxer IFVs could move faster than we could on foot.

  Right then, I could just make out a pair of the armored vehicles, about a klick behind us, coming out of Rakoszyce. They were heading in our general direction, too, though weren’t coming straight at us yet.

  That was a problem. Because we might be able to hide from the Boxers, but the birds wouldn’t. And the heavy machineguns these two appeared to have mounted would go through one of our S-70s long-ways.

  “Tango Alpha Four Seven, Golf Lima Ten. We are ten minutes out from the LZ, but be advised, we have armored vehicles approximately one klick immediately to our southeast. Requesting close air.”

  “Golf Lima Ten, this is Whiskey Six Four.” Once again, Gene Keck was coming to our rescue. “Mark your position and stand by.”

  “Strobes on.” It was a risk. IR strobes had become standard marking for friendlies back during the Global War on Terror, but with the enemy using night vision, it could also be a massive “Here I Am” sign. We’d just have to try to shield the strobes from the Boxers.

  “Thirty seconds. Get your heads down.” I could already hear the growl of the AH-1Z Vipers as they came in over the treetops.

  The Boxers opened fire, but they were a day late, a dollar short, and out of range.

  Rockets streaked in from the Vipers’ wings, tracing streaks of fire through the night, and hammered into the Boxers and their surroundings with heavy thuds and bright flashes in the night. Smoke and dust were flung into the air by the explosions, and one of the Boxers was burning in the next few seconds. The other one popped smoke and tried to retreat into the town behind it, but the Vipers swooped in, 20mm rotary cannons hammering.

  “Golf Lima Ten, India Quebec Five, this is Tango Alpha Four Seven. One minute out.”

  We got up and kept moving, while Gene and his Dash Two hammered the pursuing patrols. A minute later, the S-70s came in over the treetops, flared, and lowered themselves to the LZ. The rotors traced hazy circles of light in my NVGs, the static discharge creating a halo over the dark forms of the helicopters themselves.

  I met Bradshaw at the lead bird. “You guys are going first.” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the growl of the engines and the whipping wind from the rotor wash. “We stayed out on the perimeter and didn’t do much. We’ll hold until the birds can get back.”

  “You sure?” Somehow, it didn’t sit right with me, leaving Bradshaw and his boys behind to watch our backs. Sure, that was kind of their role as a trail section, but I also knew some of what Tyler Bradshaw had done in Nitra, never mind Gdansk and after.

  It’s hard to explain what I was feeling. Sure, we’d just stuck our heads inside the lion’s mouth and damned near gotten them bitten off, but still, I didn’t want to be the first ones off the field. But Bradshaw saw it coming, shook his head, and grabbed me by the shoulder, yelling in my ear.

  “Don’t argue with me, Matt. This was always the plan. Get on the damned bird.”

  I finally acquiesced, and Bradshaw trotted back out to where his section had set up a perimeter, down in the prone in the field, facing outboard, watching the approaches. Keck’s Vipers were still working the enemy over around Rakoszyce, circling wider as they hunted for new prey. I ducked my head, checked that everyone else was aboard, and clambered onto the helicopter. I gave the crew chief a thumbs up, and a few seconds later, we were pulling for the sky.

  We’d bought some time. Now, hopefully, we’d have a chance to use it.

  Chapter 20

  We got back to Gdansk early in the morning. We’d needed to pause at Poznań to regroup and wait for the multiple trips it took to get everyone out, but aside from a few minor wounds—and one machinegunner in Tomas Obregado’s infantry section who was about to get hazed until he understood the meaning of “hold your fire unless absolutely necessary”—we’d all made it out in one piece.

  I didn’t sleep until after the debrief and gear reset. I was seriously dragging by the time I finally allowed myself to lie down, about half an hour after I’d finally prevailed on Scott to hit the hay.

  Still, I didn’t sleep well. Despite my exhaustion, my brain refused to shut down. As soon as I went flat, my mind started racing a mile a minute, almost immediately heading down dark paths of dread and foreboding about the near future.

  Would the DC flunkies convince the Army to turn on us? There was certainly no love lost there, and our Letter of Marque and Reprisal, issued after we got out of Slovakia and got the word out about the atrocities that had taken place there, was more an alliance of convenience and a common enemy than anything else. The Triarii existed because the Federal Government no longer served the interests of the people where we operated. We’d been in Slovakia in the first place because Colonel Santiago had refused to write off a hostage the powers that be had already decided to sacrifice.

  What would happen if they turned on us? Where could we go? Could we even get out and seek asylum with the Poles before we were overrun?

  Even if we could, I suspected that if the US Army turned on us, they’d probably abandon the Poles and work out some arrangement with the EDC—probably with the Russian boogieman as their justification—and then it would only be a matter of time before we’d be crushed along with them.

  All through the tossing and turning and thinking and the nightmares that haunted me once I finally did get to sleep was the question, nagging and accusing, of whether I just didn’t want peace.

  Of course I did, I told myself, and the accusing voices in the dark behind my eyelids. But there’s a difference between an honorable peace, a real peace, and a de facto surrender that sold your allies down the river. And if an accommodation was met with the EDC, I had a good idea—based on what we’d seen in Slovakia—what would happen to the Poles.

  The days of just trying to force a point of view through media manipulation and money and social pressure were over. Those techniques were still there, but the fact that they hadn’t worked in the long run, that they’d gotten stiffer and stiffer pushback, had led to this. Now gaslighting and pressure was backed up by naked force.

  If they can’t pressure you, they’ll just kill you.

  Exhaustion finally won out, and I descended into a restless sleep, where faceless enemies pursued me through endless, twisting alleyways.

  ***

  Needless to say, when I finally got up in the early afternoon and found out that Gutierrez and Hartrick had called a Triarii leadership meeting at 1800 that night, I wasn’t exactly what you might call “well rested.”

  I kind of staggered around the team house, got some chow, swallowed some stale coffee—despite the fact it was the middle of the afternoon. I probably wasn’t going to get back to the rack until late, anyway, not with a meeting going at 1800.

  That only added to the ominous feeling nagging at the back of my mind.

  Scott sat down across from me as I nursed the bitter cup. The coffee around the fort wasn’t great to begin with, and I hadn’t wanted to waste any by throwing out what was left and just making a new pot. I was regretting that decision, but I was too hard-headed—and too sleep-deprived—to chang
e my mind.

  “So, big powwow up in the head shed tonight.” Scott’s face was as bland as his voice when I looked up from the coffee cup. He had drawn his PR-15, unloaded it, and was field stripping it. Not because it needed cleaning. We’d cleaned weapons once we’d gotten back, and we hadn’t even taken pistols on the hit on the EDC headquarters. But just for something to do with his hands.

  Scott wasn’t usually the fidgety type. Usually, when he needed something to do, he drew or played his harmonica—having been unable to get his guitar to Europe. Something was bugging him. And I thought I knew what.

  “I don’t know any more than you do, brother.” I took another sip and stifled a grimace at the bitterness. Again, being hard-headed, I refused to put anything else in it. Coffee should be drunk as black as the devil’s heart.

  “Didn’t think you did. But that doesn’t preclude a bit of barracks speculation, now does it?” He looked up at me as he finished breaking the PR-15 down. We had all practiced to about that level of proficiency, where we didn’t even have to look at what we were doing. When there really aren’t any movies to watch, and few books in English to read, you find other ways to pass the time. Despite the desperation of the last few months, we’d had time to kill. There’s always down time in a war. It might not be always quite the classic ratio of boredom to sheer terror, but there’s a lot more waiting than there is fighting.

  “Spit it out, Scott. Something’s eating you.” I finally gave up and put the coffee cup down.

  He grimaced and looked down at the floor. “I don’t think I’m special in that regard.” He finally put the pieces of the pistol aside and looked up at me, his elbows on his knees. “What the hell are we gonna do if DC decides this was all a ‘misunderstanding?’ And what if they decide to make us the scapegoats for it?”

  “I think it’s way too late for that.” Was I really that confident, or was I trying to convince myself? “There are too many dead, and this assault on Wroclaw proves that the EDC’s not interested in negotiating. Last I heard—and, granted, I’m not getting the up-to-the-minute reports from Settar’s hotel room—they haven’t even answered State’s overtures. That tells me that they figure they’re committed.” I smiled coldly. “Besides, why would they negotiate? They’ve got more of an advantage here, on home ground, than we do. Things are still in Mad Max land back home. Our supply chain is way too long and too thin. We’ve got limited forces, and they’re already expanding. And if they take Poland and humiliate the US, they’ve got a buffer between them and Russia, and the EDC takes over as the new leader of the Western world. What’s left of it, anyway.” The fact that the EDC’s elites, like many of the elites in the US, despised the “Western world” was an irony that was not lost on me. “Besides, the fact of that Letter of Marque and Reprisal is going to make it awfully hard to sweep us under the rug.”

  He shook his head. “We’re still in a hell of a crack.” He looked away.

  “We’ve been in a hell of a crack since we joined this outfit, brother.” I clapped him on the shoulder. It didn’t feel all that natural, trying to find the bright side in all this. But I had to, for my team’s sake. A team leader who’s always the Voice of Doom isn’t helping his team any.

  Because if there’s no hope, no matter how cynical and jaded you kind of have to be in this line of work, then there’s no reason to fight. And then we’d let everyone down.

  “How many of the rest of the team are asking these questions?” I knew some of them would voice them to me. Some wouldn’t. But Scott, being the assistant team leader, would know. He was good at that. He might be a bit of a nerd, but he was also pretty good at reading people.

  “I think we all are, if we’re being honest.” He glanced out the window. There wasn’t much to see there, just the trees that were almost fully leafed out, but he wasn’t really looking at the window or the trees. “We all hear the same updates. And that little dust-up with the Army boys and girls the other day didn’t make anybody rest any easier.”

  “No, it didn’t.” That had been worrying. Time heals all wounds, they say, but that can go more than one direction. And it’s often the case that people hate those who are most like them more than they hate somebody who’s a lot different. Just look at the fights between national and international socialists, or Sunni and Shi’a Muslims.

  “Even Jordan’s muttering about the same things we are.” He looked up at me with a little bit of a chuckle. “He almost sounds like Rueben these days.”

  I snorted. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

  Scott laughed. “Neither did he.”

  I looked at my watch and grimaced. “I’d better head up there. Fifteen minutes prior, and all that.”

  He glanced at his own. “Meaning fifteen minutes prior to fifteen minutes prior?”

  I stood up and stretched. “If everybody’s going to be in that TOC, I’m getting a chair before I end up leaning against the wall. Believe me, this is entirely about me being lazy because I didn’t sleep enough this morning.”

  Okay, that wasn’t entirely honest. I was hoping to pick up some extra information before the meeting started. Hartrick and Gutierrez were far from the kind of leaders who kept their subordinates in the dark, but in a big meeting, there’s always some tidbit that gets left out.

  Good team leaders are also good spies when around the TOC.

  Slinging my OBR—since we had our weapons on us at all times—I got up and headed out the door, turning toward the old bunker that was the TOC.

  ***

  “All right, settle down. We got everybody?” Gutierrez looked over the room. The TOC, ordinarily dark and a little damp and chilly, since it was an ancient, partially-underground fortification that dated from the Second World War, was crowded and getting stuffy. Every Grex Luporum team leader, every infantry section leader, every one of Modine’s troop leaders, and all the aviation leadership was gathered in the suddenly too-small TOC.

  One by one, the senior leaders gave a thumbs up. Everybody was there who was supposed to be there.

  “Okay, here’s the deal. Following the intel our Grex Luporum teams brought out of Germany, the seven-day rush to Belgium has been tabled.” Something like a sigh of relief went around the room. “It should never have been brought up in the first place, but Settar finally had to admit that it isn’t workable, not when there are battalion-sized detachments of EDC troops, Bundeswehr, Armee de Terre, and Ejercito de Tierra scattered across the country after the coup. Naturally, she’s cussing the coup plotters about it, but it was a dumb idea to begin with. Even the Soviets who first thought it up were crazy.”

  He pointed to the easel next to him. No PowerPoints here. The brief was on printed maps and handwritten notes on paper. The map that was currently up showed blue arrows moving from Italy and Poland into France and Germany, with a third going up around Denmark and down toward the Netherlands and Belgium.

  “This is going to sound a lot like the strike on the French nuclear arsenal. Right now, the plan is to make it look like the original thrust across Germany is the main effort.” He pointed to the big blue arrow aimed at Berlin. “Berlin will be the obvious target, and that’s going to be the biggest push. Settar’s not happy about it, but there aren’t many other options. So, the bulk of the 1st and 2nd Infantry Divisions, what’s left of 7th BCT, and the 1st Armored Division, along with most of the Polish 12th Mechanized and 11th Armored Divisions, will push across the line around Swiebodzin.”

  He looked around the room, meeting eyes as he went. “Due to the current political situation on the ground, no Triarii units will be directly attached to that push.”

  His words were met with silence, but that was mostly because nobody had to ask why. The little altercation between David, Tony, and Tucker’s guys on one side, and the Army LT and his followers on the other hadn’t been the only such near-brawl lately. The combat guys seemed to be mostly avoiding us, but it was clear that their leadership was using every opportunity to talk shit about
us. If the political angle wouldn’t work—which it mostly wouldn’t with combat arms, despite years and years of attempted brainwashing via PowerPoint and online classes—then they’d call us mercenaries and non-hackers who had snuck in because we were greedy, who wouldn’t stick because you can’t spend a paycheck if you’re dead.

  I’d heard it before. I’d heard my own command say it about the contractors working nearby when we’d been in Africa on the MEU. Some guys just don’t listen. Some start to believe it after a while. Others aren’t sure what to think, but figure that mingling with the “mercs” isn’t a good idea.

  It made for a bad time if regulars and contractors—or Triarii, who are a different breed altogether—find themselves in a situation where their lives depend on working together.

  “Reeves has expressed his willingness to have some of our elements working with 7th BCT, but after some discussion, we decided that it would be a bad call. He’d face backlash from his command over it, and it could put some of his men and women in an untenable position, depending on Settar’s reaction. So, a select group of infantry sections, Modine’s armor, and most of our air will be supporting the Poles on the flanks, with some spoiling attacks farther north and south to further obfuscate our intentions.”

  He turned his pointer to the arrow swinging around the Alps from Italy. “The southern push will be entirely 173rd Airborne and the 22nd MEU. We have zero input or presence on that one. Their target will be European Defense Corps headquarters at Strasbourg.”

  Finally, he shifted his pointer to the north. “This is the real main effort, and this we will be central to. All three Grex Luporum Teams, with their infantry trail sections, will be committed, along with two platoons from SEAL Team Two, a platoon from GROM’s B Squadron, and the 26th MEU.”

  His pointer followed the arrow up, around Jutland, and down toward the north coast of Western Europe. “Your target, gentlemen, will be the European Defense Council itself.”