by Baen Books
I couldn't see much in the dark, especially with the pall of dust and smoke from the explosion that was settling over the woods. But I could just make out the shapes picking themselves up off the ground, a little faster than we were managing. We'd been closer to the blast. I didn't want to just start hosing down the woods without knowing what my targets were, but we were not in a good place. I brought the rifle to my shoulder, trying to focus on the sights, though this was going to be point shooting more than anything else.
I still hesitated. I just couldn't see. Decades of conditioning were cautioning me about shooting at any target I wasn't sure of. So I held my fire, even as the dark shapes of men started to approach out of the shadows and smoke. J.D. and Ivan would follow my lead; neither one was easily stampeded, as much as J.D. might seem a little hyper from time to time.
Four figures loomed out of the dark. Two of them were big dudes, the lead one carrying what looked like a G3, which was presently pointed in my general direction. Which was a problem, except that I had my AKM pointed at his face at the same time.
I couldn't see many details in the dark, but I could tell that this was no Armenian militiaman. I didn't know what kind of people Anders had around him, but the general circumstances suggested that he was either one of Anders' or he was competition. If he was competition, I really didn't want to shoot him. Okay, maybe I wanted to shoot him a little bit.
Before either one of us could decide whether or not to pull the trigger, a long burst of machine gun fire from the north ripped through the trees, driving us all back into the dirt.
It was really turning into that kind of night.
In moments, at least two more guns had opened up, rounds going past overhead with hard, painful snaps and smacking into trees with heavy thuds. They were hitting close enough that they had to have some pretty good night optics; they weren't just hosing down the woods.
Flat on my belly, I scrambled behind a tree, which promptly started getting chewed up by bullets. Green tracers were skipping by, and, in a rather surreal moment, I saw one only a few feet in front of me spinning on the ground, like some kind of deadly firework.
Looking to my right and left, I saw that Ivan and J.D. had managed to take cover, though J.D. was holding his arm as if he'd gotten hit. We had a momentary breather, but it couldn't last. We were pinned down, with little hope of suppressing machine guns with our little 7.62x39 rifles, and it was only a matter of time before more shooters closed in under cover of that withering storm of metal and finished us off. We had to get out of there.
Looking toward the unknowns that we'd almost started shooting at before the machine guns opened up, I could just make out their shapes huddled behind trees and flat to the ground, not unlike us. Whoever they were, they weren't on Anders' side. Either that, or Anders' mooks were way more incompetent than I had any business hoping.
Getting Ivan's and J.D.'s attention, I pointed to the south, the way we'd come and, helpfully, pretty much straight away from the machine gun fire. Fire superiority was out, so we were going to have to break contact the old-fashioned guerrilla way. We were going to have to get down in the dirt and do a lot of crawling.
Gripping my rifle with one hand, I managed to turn myself around even in the very, very small space that constituted the slowly eroding cover of the tree I was huddled behind, and started skull-dragging my way away from the fire. Rocks and roots dug into my cheek and hands, and leaves and grass seemed to slip and slide under my boots as I pushed and dragged myself over the ground, but as much as high-crawling might have been easier, the continued hiss and snap of rounds going by all too closely overhead was a great reminder of why that would be a bad idea.
The canvas AK chest rig that's been ubiquitous in the Eastern Bloc since the rifle first entered service with the Soviets is a thin, minimalist piece of gear, that doesn't add much bulk beyond that of the magazines themselves. It was still lifting me way too far up off the ground, especially as I actually felt a round go by only inches over my head.
Inch by inch, yard by painful yard, we got some distance. After a while, the machine gun fire let up, and I could hear a few voices calling back and forth in Russian from back by the wreckage of the target house. Somehow, I didn't think that they were the unknowns we'd almost collided with; either they were dead or they'd evaded like we had. At that moment, I didn't care.
A painfully long five hundred yards away, I finally got up on a knee behind a tree. There was a fair bit of forest between us and the flashlights that were now shining through the trees near the ruins of the target. We weren't safe yet, but we had some cover and concealment. I lifted my radio and called Carlos.
“Carlos, we're clear, break off and meet us at the rally point.”
No reply.
I checked the radio as best I could in the dark. It was on, and I was pretty sure it was still on the right channel. “Carlos, this is Frank. If you can hear me, get to the rally point. We're moving now.” There was still no answer, but we couldn't stay where we were, and trying to get to Carlos' position would mean crossing an open field and exposing ourselves while still well within the effective range of those PKMs or whatever the machine gunners had been shooting at us.
A Russian-accented voice came over the radio. “Hello, Frank. I am afraid Carlos cannot answer. Do not worry, though. You will see him very soon.”
With a muttered curse, I switched the radio off. There would be time to mourn Carlos, and plot vengeance for his death, later. I couldn't afford to forget that we were still in a very bad tactical position, and we needed to get out of it without doing anything stupid, or we'd be just as dead as Carlos.
We were far enough from the enemy that we could start moving somewhat normally. Of course, with the NKDA everywhere, we'd have to be even more careful getting back into town and to the safe house with our camouflage and hardware. Everyone within twenty miles would have heard that shitstorm.
But that would come later. Our rally point was out in the weeds, for obvious reasons. Getting to my feet, I led out, rifle at the ready. J.D. and Ivan fell in behind me silently.
None of us said a word, but we knew each other well enough not to have to. There was a lot of retribution brewing for the disaster that this night had turned into.
#
It was morning by the time we got back to the safe house. We'd had to dodge several NKDA patrols, who were predictably stirred up by the explosion and the gunfire. They were far too close to the front line to take a roaring gunfight right outside the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic's capitol city lightly. We'd had to stash the weapons and gear under the seats of the old, broken-down UAZ that we'd paid entirely too many dram to the Russians' contacts for, and even stripped down and stuffed our filthy cammies in over them, donning simple work clothes in their place and frantically trying to scrub the camouflage face paint off.
If we had gotten stopped, we'd probably have been screwed. We were pretty obviously not locals, and not Russians, which would have immediately put us under suspicion. But we had managed to get into town and to the safe house before the mad scramble had managed to lock down the streets. The Armenians weren't quite the most professional or quick-reacting army I'd ever seen, and that worked in our favor.
We dragged the gear inside in a couple of duffel bags, dumped them on the floor in the kitchen, and stood around the table for a moment. Nobody said a word for a long time.
“I don't suppose there's much of a chance we could retrieve his body?” J.D. asked.
I just shook my head. Any chance at it would almost certainly be a trap. That Russian bastard was trying to goad us into doing something stupid on the radio; he could probably be trusted to be waiting for us to try something like that.
It was something we'd all had to come to terms with, over the years. We were mercenaries working for a shadowy, pseudo-governmental paramilitary/spy organization, in various places where Americans in general usually weren't welcome, never mind well-armed paramilitary operatives. If things went
sideways, nobody was coming for us. If we went down, we'd be buried where we fell, if we got a burial at all. It sucked, but it was the nature of the game.
“So, what do we do now?” Ivan asked. “Element of surprise is lost. And now there are only three of us.”
“I'm not sure we ever really had the element of surprise in the first place,” I said. “That was an ambush, no two ways about it.”
“You think someone leaked that we were coming?” Ivan asked.
“Possible,” I said. “More likely, to my thinking, is that Anders dangled it in front of our employers to draw out anyone hunting him.”
“And just our shit luck,” J.D. put in, “that the Organization sent a handful of expendable contractors to do the job.”
“Maybe,” I said. I was getting a bit of a nasty suspicion about the whole thing. J.D. looked at me and frowned.
“You think that Forsyth sent us in there to hit the tripwire for him?” he asked quietly, after a moment.
“I think it's entirely possible,” I replied. “It would go a good way toward explaining his insistence on haste and as little preparation as possible. Though I don't know why they felt the need to drag us halfway across the continent for it.”
“Question still stands,” Ivan said. It must have been the strain; his accent had gotten really thick, even while his voice was as stolid and unemotional as ever. “What do we do now?”
“It might be a good time to start looking at one or another of our fallback options,” J.D. mused.
“We'd have to be damned good and sure that our employers think we all died,” I pointed out. “And that's pretty hard to do. Remember Tarasov?”
Nikolai Tarasov had been one of our targets, a Mafia Avtoritet who had done a lot of work through the Crossroads. The Organization had marked him, and he had apparently been assassinated in Vladivostok. Except that he'd faked it, and somehow the Organization had tracked him down and put us on him. We'd found him in the Crossroads, followed him to Belyashi, and put a bullet in his head behind a barn that had looked like it belonged in the tenth century. The Organization had ways of finding people. And if we all vanished at this juncture, Forsyth was likely to get suspicious and start digging. “Live and let live” was not in the Organization's vocabulary.
“We don't have the resources here to pull a vanishing act,” I pointed out. “And on top of that, we don't just have Forsyth to worry about. Anders and whoever that Russian bastard was know we're looking for them now, and they'll be looking for us.”
“Not to mention whoever the hell that other team was,” J.D. pointed out.
I looked over at him. So, I hadn't been the only one to notice that they didn't fit. A small team moving toward the same target we'd been after, that had been taken under fire by the same machine gunners who had been trying to kill us. Again, unless Anders' mooks were way, way more incompetent than I thought they were—and nothing about that ambush suggested that they were—those guys were working for somebody else. The only question was, who?
Then I shook my head. They were the least of our worries. My guess was that they were another team sent after Anders, which made them competition, but not necessarily more of a threat than that. “We'll keep an eye out for them, but we've got bigger fish to fry. Obviously, the intel Forsyth gave us was crap. We lost Carlos, and Anders now knows we're here. Which means he's going to be hunting us, not to mention the fact that the NKDA is going to be on heightened alert after last night. We try to run, we're probably going to get rolled up, especially if we try to fly—presuming that the same Russians who flew us in here aren't in cahoots with the Russians that Anders had waiting in the trees.
“I think our best bet is going to be to lie low and watch for an opportunity to ambush Anders, take him on the move. If we can take him out, Forsyth might just send enough support to get us out of here in one piece.”
“You really believe that?” J.D. asked.
I sighed. “Not really,” I admitted, “but it's a chance.”
The phone rang. I'd actually been expecting this earlier. When I looked at the number, it was simply “Unknown,” but I knew who it was.
“Your intel was shit,” I said, as soon I answered, without giving Forsyth time to say anything.
“Hardly,” he said dryly, apparently unfazed by my attitude. “If it had been, you'd have found nothing but an empty house. It's evident that you're on the right track.”
“So, you were watching.”
“Of course,” he replied. “We've had assets overhead ever since we determined that Anders was in Stepanakert. We saw the whole little drama, in real time.”
I bit off a bitter curse. They'd been sitting, fat and happy and safe, probably in some trailer in Nevada or somewhere, watching while Carlos died.
“Do you have anything useful for me,” I asked tightly, “or is this just a reminder that you're watching?”
“Consider it touching base, and an assurance that you're not on a wild goose chase,” he answered coolly. “I'm not calling the op off, if that's what you're hoping. However, check the email I sent the briefing packet to. I've attached some of the overhead footage.” I grimaced. We could watch Carlos die, since we hadn't seen it on the ground. “That other group on the ground is a concern.”
That got my attention. I'd presumed that if they weren't Anders' people, they must have been sent by the Organization. It would fit the “Need To Know” Nazis not to tell us about a backup team.
“I thought they were another team you'd sent,” I said. “You did say that this was an 'all hands' evolution.” Ivan and J.D. traded a glance before going back to watching me, Ivan impassive, J.D. with one eyebrow raised.
“Negative,” Forsyth said, ignoring my thinly veiled jab at our lack of support out here. For full court press, we were awfully alone, suggesting that more than just the intel Forsyth had given us was bullshit. “We don't know for sure who they are, though there are a couple of possibilities. We need you to keep an eye out for them. If they know about Anders, they might present a security leak that we need to plug as soon as possible. They are not your primary target, but if you can find out any information about them, we need to know.”
Well, that's just plumb gracious of you, I thought viciously. My team down by a quarter, not a word of condolence or promise of support, just another target to add to the deck. Asshole.
“Can we expect any more in the way of support?” I asked, trying to unclench my teeth before asking. “If you were watching, you know that we're down a man.”
“And that's unfortunate,” Forsyth said, utterly without feeling, “but at this time, we can't send anyone. Nagorno-Karabakh is getting more non-permissive. The Russians are starting to take a more active role in supporting the Armenians, and that means more eyes that could compromise us. Best to keep the footprint small.” A sarcastic edge entered his voice. “You should be fine, Mr. Dragic. I've read your file. You're a professional, after all.” He hung up before I could even ask for any additional information.
“Cocksucker,” I muttered, as I resisted the urge to throw the phone against the wall. If he was watching from his eye in the sky, he had to know more about Anders' movements than he'd told us. If that file he was supposedly sending didn't have that info, when this was all said and done, scary reputation or no, I was going to find Forsyth and put a bullet in him.
#
The imagery wasn't nearly as helpful as we might have hoped. The drone operator had tried to keep eyes on both the ambushers and the other mystery shooters, and as a result, lost both of them within a kilometer of the target site. The ambushers looked like they were heading in our direction, while the mystery shooters had headed for the hills to the northeast.
That was interesting. While I wasn't shifting fire—Anders and the Russian on the radio were still my main focus—that told me that they were either camping out in the woods or they had more resources in the area than we did. Or maybe they had a safe house with some distance from Stepanakert, which, g
iven more time to prepare, I might have done as well.
Leaving them aside, we were reasonably certain that Anders' people had gone into the southwest portion of the city. Somewhere. There were actually two semi-intact villages spread over the hills to the south, Kerkicahan and Haykavan. I say semi-intact because we'd all noticed that there were a lot of ruins scattered around Stepanakert. How much was because of shelling during the war, and how much was because of the Armenians ethnically cleansing the Azeris from the region, I didn't know. At that point in time, I didn't particularly care. The ruins might make decent observation sites, and probably wouldn't make for very good safe houses. We might be able to use them for recon, and we could probably safely write them off as Anders' local base of operations.
We'd start recon that afternoon, after we got a few hours sleep.
#
Even with only Ivan and me in the canvas-topped UAZ 469, dressed in the dark clothes that seemed to be the most common in the area, with the Suchkas under our seats, trying to stay low-profile in Kerkicahan was not an easy task.
The UAZ was a large part of the problem. While there were still a lot of ruins around the outskirts, central Stepanakert itself was a pretty modern city, with high-rises, parks, paved streets, sidewalks, and plenty of cars. Kerkicahan, while just outside, was an old-world village, not that far removed from the Middle Ages. The roads were unpaved dirt, most of the houses standing were stone or brick, though most of them had been re-roofed with corrugated sheet metal, and internal combustion engines were about as common as electricity. I saw a few carts and a few donkeys, but this place was Afghanistan poor. It wasn't all that strange to us; we were used to working in some of the poorest, shittiest parts of Eurasia. But it made it difficult to cruise the roads looking for a safe house.