by Peter Nealen
I stayed down, my lungs burning, hoping and praying that Jack and I had been the only ones still on the deck, as the helo made two more passes. The darkness was starting to gather around the edges of my vision as the second pass ended, and I had to risk it. It was a choice between maybe getting shot or certainly drowning, so I broke the surface and gasped for air.
Apparently, Baumgartner had decided that getting away with their prize was more important than killing me, because even as I ducked one more desultory burst, the helos were winging away, back toward the ocean. All that was left on the ground was wreckage, fire, and death.
I dragged myself up out of the bloody pool and onto the deck, gasping for air, every fiber of my body aching. Alek grabbed me by my plate carrier, dragging me away from the pool, while the rest fanned out to set up security. It was more reflex than anything else; our targets were dead or captured, and our competition was gone.
It had not been a good day.
Chapter 29
We had just gotten back to the airfield and loaded the bodies onto the DC-3 when Bates called via the secure app.
I just stared at the phone for a few seconds. We’d gotten cleaned up; even at a private field, a bunch of filthy, camouflage-painted, blood-spattered shooters in kit and weapons was going to attract attention. We were getting a few looks as it was, but we were separated enough from anyone else on the field that they couldn’t make out much detail, or see what we were carrying onto the plane.
We’d lost ten men in that fiasco. Jack and Tommy had died in the house. Sid had been the gunner on the trucks killed by the helo door gunner. Another seven of the newer guys, none of whom I had really known, had died when another door gunner had swept the treeline where the support by fire element had been set. A good chunk of Tim’s team was simply gone.
After letting the phone buzz in my hand for what seemed like an eternity, I answered it. “Yeah.” I was faintly surprised at how hoarse my own voice was.
“I’m sending you a photo,” Bates said without preamble. “Tell me if you recognize the man in the center.” A moment later, the phone dinged in my ear, indicating that a message had been delivered.
I pulled up the picture. There were three men, all in camouflage field gear, standing on a pile of rubble and grinning at the camera. From the trees in the background, I guessed it had been taken in Ukraine or one of the Baltics.
I zoomed in on the man in the center. He was older than the other two, with a squarish head and craggy, pock-marked features. He was clean-shaven and his hair was cropped short, but it was showing gray in the temples.
He looked vaguely familiar, but it took a few moments of study before it got through my fatigue- and grief-fogged brain to realize that I’d seen Baumgartner dragging that very man onto the helo on the lawn, just after he’d shot Jack in the head. “Who is he?” I asked.
“Was he there at the meeting?” Bates asked instead of replying. He must have picked the recognition out of my voice.
“He was,” I answered heavily.
“Was he among the dead?”
“No,” I said. “He’s alive, or at least he was when Baumgartner loaded him on a stealth helo and flew away.”
There was a brief pause. I had the sudden impression that Bates was rattled, and that was disturbing all by itself. If anyone in this entire clusterfuck had always remained utterly unflappable, it had been The Broker.
“His name is Dmitri Timofeyevich Sokolov,” he replied finally. “And if he’s meeting with faction leaders, then things have gotten worse than I’d feared.”
“That still doesn’t answer my question,” I said. “Who the fuck is Dmitri Timofeyevich Sokolov?”
“He’s MGB,” Bates replied. The MGB was the agency formed by the reunion of the FSB and SVR, the Russian domestic and foreign intelligence services. It was the successor of the KGB in more ways than one. “Some members of my network have started calling him ‘The Harbinger.’ While he never has an official cover, where he pops up, there are usually Little Green Men in the background, and I’m not referring to the kind who come in flying saucers.”
I needed no explanation of the term. “Little Green Men” had been a euphemism for Russian unconventional forces for decades. They weren’t always necessarily Spetsnaz; they’d been funneling entire infantry units into target countries as “volunteers” for years. But if this guy was MGB, and in the States, then his backup probably was a Spetsnaz unit.
Which just made this entire nightmare oh, so much better.
“If Sokolov’s in country,” Bates continued, “then he’s got chaos on his mind. It’s what he does, not unlike your friend Xi Shang down in Mexico. The difference is, the Chinese wanted to see the chaos in Mexico continue so that they could take economic advantage, getting natural resources on the cheap. The Russians want to see the US descend into chaos in order to bring their primary geo-strategic rival to its knees.”
I was about to ask what this had to do with the factions, but stopped myself. I already knew.
There hasn’t been a civil war in history that hasn’t been a fucking playground for outside actors, particularly those with some animosity toward the country tearing its own guts out at the time. We’d already seen it with the tide of Mexican fighters coming north across the border to join the Aztlanistas. That the Russians were joining the play was, perhaps, old news. They’d certainly fed both Right and Left with their propaganda for years, depending on who was in power at the time. I suddenly suspected I knew just who had set off the series of bombs that had really gotten the rioters stirred up.
“You’re certain that Baumgartner took him?” Bates asked into the silence.
“Yeah,” I answered, my throat a little tight. “I looked him in the face, just as he put a bullet through Jack’s skull.”
“I’m sorry,” he said gravely. “I hadn’t heard yet how bad the butcher’s bill was.”
“Bad,” was all I said. Any temptation to lash out at Bates had been dispelled a long time ago, when he’d pointed out that he’d been in the game, out in the weeds of the underworld, killing and losing people, a lot longer than any of the rest of us.
“I’ll let you bury your dead,” he said. “But stand ready. Now that we know Sokolov is in the country, and alive, we’ll have to move quickly. The fact that Baumgartner took him suggests that he hasn’t made an offer to ‘Marius’ yet. But I imagine that even if he had made a deal with ‘Sulla,’ he’d be making the same offer to ‘Marius.’ Chaos is what he’s after, not one faction coming out on top of the other.” He sighed. “I take it there was no way to track Baumgartner’s strike force?”
“No,” I replied. “They were flying MH-Xs. Without air assets on station to track them visually, there’s no way of telling where they went.”
“Oh, there are ways, now that I know that,” Bates replied. “Time to do some digging. We have to find out where Baumgartner took Sokolov and take him out of the picture. But that’s my area of expertise. Stay on your toes. I’ll be in touch.”
Fifteen hours later, we landed at Southwestern Oregon Regional Airport, in North Bend. It had just rained, and the skies were clearing, though the tarmac was still wet.
Logan was waiting with half a dozen mechanics, a replacement flight crew, and a fuel truck. We weren’t staying in North Bend, but crossing half the Pacific had been a long haul for the venerable old DC-3, and the bird needed a serious once-over before continuing on.
Most of us got off the plane to stretch, as well as to provide security. No place in the US was considered safe territory anymore. Our own home had become a non-permissive environment. While we might look like a handful of men just stretching their legs after a long flight, everyone had a pistol on him, and there was a lot heavier firepower close at hand, stashed in innocuous-looking duffels.
I breathed deeply of the chilly, damp air, but stared blindly at the lush greenery of the Pacific Northwest coast. My mind’s eye was still on the body bags stacked in the back of the plane.
None of us had had any illusions about the dangers of our line of work. Any ideas of immortality had been beaten out of all of us long ago, when we’d worn the uniform and fought in far-off places. But burying friends never gets any easier.
Jim. Lee. Ben. Jack. Tommy. Sid. I realized that as much as I’d wanted to hold out hope, Little Bob had been missing for so long, nearly five months, that I was now assuming he was dead.
Were any of us going to survive this?
The phone buzzed and broke my reverie. It was Mia.
“Jeff, are you on the ground?” she asked, as soon as I answered. She sounded a little breathless.
“Yeah,” I replied. “What’s up?”
“I think I’ve found Little Bob,” she told me. “If it’s really him, he’s in South Dakota. How fast can you get here?”
“It’s going to be most of another day, I think,” I replied. “The bird needs maintenance and fuel.”
“Crap.” I could almost see her bite her lip as she thought. “I’m going to go ahead and go out there and try to link up with him, or at least get some feel for the lay of the land,” she said after a moment. “I’ll send you a more concrete location once I know more.”
“Be careful, okay?” I said, suddenly worried. I was slightly surprised at just how worried I was at the thought of her going into unknown territory by herself, after Little Bob had inexplicably disappeared and showed up in another state five months later. “Nowhere is safe these days.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m a big girl, remember? I can take care of myself. Just be ready to come running when I call, okay?”
“I’ll be on my way as fast as I can,” I told her.
There was a long, somewhat awkward pause, as I tried to think of something else to say. I was sure there was plenty of operational information that we needed to exchange, but right at that moment, all I could think of was the intensity of my fear of something happening to her, and I didn’t know how to say it.
She didn’t seem to have much to add, either. “I’m sorry about Jack and the others,” she said. “I’ve got to go, but we’ll talk when you get back, I mean, if you need to. Okay?”
“Okay,” I answered. There was a lump in my throat, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of our dead or because of her. “Watch yourself.”
“I will.” She hesitated, as if she wanted to say something else, then just said, “I’ll send a location when I’ve got it nailed down a bit better. Bye.”
I stared down at the phone after she hung up, then shoved it in my pocket and turned to see if I could help Logan and the boys get the bird reset. As tired as I was, I needed something to do.
We got back to Wyoming and The Ranch. It was fairly secure; Ventner had assigned some of his lower-tier contractors, mostly the newer guys with less combat zone experience, to back Brett up and keep an eye on The Ranch itself. We were a valuable asset to certain people now, and the Cicero Group was sparing no expense to make sure there wasn’t a repeat of the Task Force incident.
It’s nice to be appreciated.
The guys on exterior patrol had to be hating life. It was February, and while it was starting to thaw at times, we were still pretty high up, and it got damned cold. And Joe Ventner wasn’t putting up with guys trying to stick to easily trafficked patrol routes, either, not after Baumgartner’s demonstrated field prowess. Some of the patrols could use snowmobiles, but a lot of them were stuck snowshoeing over steep hills, often in bitter winds and blowing snow.
The static defenses on The Ranch had been noticeably beefed up, too. There were more bunkers at the gates, and more obstacles on the way in. There were fighting positions along likely avenues of approach, away from the roads. The Ranch was beginning to look like a fortress. When one considered that we were, for all intents and purposes, in the middle of a civil war, that was not inappropriate.
We got the bodies unloaded, and conducted a mass funeral for all of them. It was more than some of our fallen had gotten. And I kept worrying, because while I had a location, there had been no further word from Mia or Little Bob for the last thirty-six hours.
“I’m going to Rapid City,” I told Tom. “And I’m taking the team with me.”
He looked up from his desk. The retired Colonel had never looked like a spring chicken; he was older than most of us by at least a decade, and his chain-smoking didn’t help, either. But he looked like he’d aged another ten years in the months since Jim had been murdered.
“Still nothing?” he asked.
I shook my head. “She should have contacted me by now. Something’s up.”
“Go.” He didn’t ask questions. There was a chance to get Little Bob back, and Mia had become one of us.
He didn’t even say anything about my anxiety about her. That was to his credit. Alek had given me a little ribbing about it, though mainly to try to get me to stop brooding.
I’d barely stepped out of the room when my phone buzzed. It was Mia.
“Talk to me,” I said, as soon as I’d answered.
“I know that was you in Hawaii, Stone,” Baumgartner said conversationally. My blood ran cold as I stopped dead in the doorway. I could feel Tom’s eyes on my back, but I didn’t turn around. “You cost me some good men, and damned near fucked my mission. I figure it’s only fair if I fuck you over in return.
“I’m taking good care of your buddy and your girlfriend,” he continued, and I could hear the humorless grin in his voice. “You’ll be happy to know that Sampson’s doing pretty good, considering the shitty medical care he’s gotten since he got torn up. Of course, that’s a state of affairs that’s not going to last, unless you come here and try to stop me.” He laughed. “See you soon.” Then he hung up.
Tom was on his feet behind me. “Baumgartner?” he asked. He had remarkably keen hearing, for a former infantryman.
I just nodded.
“What are you going to do?” he asked. Tom had changed over the years, becoming more of a hands-off administrator and facilitator. There had been a time when he would have taken charge and started planning right then. Instead, he was trusting me to make the call.
I couldn’t help but wonder at that, just a little. Tom and I had butted heads more than once, though rarely over courses of action. It had more been a contest of wills, him being the former officer and Leader Of Men, I just a disgruntled NCO and trigger puller, but I’d refused to let him dictate shit I already knew how to do. We’d reached a truce, even a meeting of the minds and mutual trust, to the point that now he was trusting me to make the right call, despite my emotional involvement in the situation. This after the near thing that had been Pueblo.
“I’m going to Rapid City,” I said quietly. “I’m going to kill him and get Mia and Little Bob back.”
“It’s Baumgartner,” he pointed out.
“I know.” I knew it was an ambush, a trap baited with the lives of my friend and a woman I realized I cared about a lot more than I’d known. And it had been laid by Baumgartner, a man who scared the living shit out of me.
“I’m calling Eddie and Ross,” he said. “You go do your prep and get on the road. They’ll be right behind you.”
I finally turned back to look at him. His face was as cold and composed as ever.
“Taking Baumgartner out of the picture is a strategic move,” he said quietly. “At least, that’s what I’ll tell Renton if he raises a stink over this. Between you and me, our people are more important. But Baumgartner’s a bonus.”
I just nodded. There wasn’t much more to say. As I turned to leave, already planning the loadout and sending a mass message to the rest of the team, Tom called, “And Jeff? Watch your ass. We can’t afford to lose many more shooters.”
Baumgartner was probably hoping that we’d go in guns blazing, in a daring, kinetic, midnight raid to rescue our people. I was sure that he already had his defenses arranged to make that a losing proposition. So, I wasn’t going to cater to his expectations.
If the ma
n had a weakness, I was hoping and praying it was overconfidence. He was a preternaturally fast and accurate shot, and by his reputation, something of a physical mutant, with nearly inhuman strength, agility, and endurance. So far, he’d been utterly professional in his mission planning and preparation. But all I needed was one opening.
Baumgartner might have been in an SMU, and killed more people than cancer. But I’d slaughtered my way through pirates, terrorists, mercenaries, narcos, and special operators for the last several years. I figured he was still thinking of me as just another grunt, far below his SMU credentials. I hoped he was still thinking of me that way.
Mia had sent us the address of a farm to the southeast of Rapid City itself. Baumgartner hadn’t indicated that he’d moved, and I knew that he wouldn’t have. He wanted us to find him.
The first day’s reconnaissance confirmed it. While Baumgartner didn’t show his face, nor did we see sign of Mia or Little Bob, there were definitely more people around the farm than was normal, all men in their late twenties to early forties, fit and watchful, noticeably not doing farm work, and never far from what could be a concealed rifle.
We used a couple of Aeroseeker drones first. We’d first used the small quadrotors in Djibouti, and they were a useful little tool. Of course, one of them got shot down after lingering over the farm for only about ten minutes. The second one didn’t last thirty seconds after it got spotted.
But we got enough of a picture to know we were on the right track. Unfortunately, we couldn’t do too thorough a recon; they’d spot us eventually, especially given how close we’d have to get, and Baumgartner wasn’t going to wait around forever. He was going to kill Mia and Little Bob sooner or later, though I figured I could count on him waiting until he contacted me first.
At least, I hoped he would. It was possible that they were already dead, and he just wanted to draw us in. It wasn’t a possibility I wanted to dwell on.
He was going to expect an attack at night, probably around 0300 in the morning. Hell, there really wasn’t a good time when I could expect Baumgartner’s guard to be down; all times of the day or night were going to be equally dangerous.
