Red Metal

by Mark Greaney

  This was overkill for the task at hand. Every living thing on or in the mine and the hill itself would be wiped out, a radioactive cloud would hang over the area, and radioactive isotopes would cover the hill, the rubble, and the rock itself.

  Borbikov took the handset of the fire control radio and had a radioman tune it so he could transmit to all Russian forces in theater. When this was done, he pressed the talk button. “All forces, this is Colonel Yuri Borbikov, acting commander. All units are to withdraw to initial staging positions as quickly as possible. Make haste—inbound Russian attack aircraft are fifteen minutes out. Confirm.”

  All three regiments responded that they understood the order.

  Borbikov put the handset down and stood there, looking to the south. He couldn’t see the hill in the darkness but, he told himself in a moment of dark humor, he sure as hell would very soon.

  The artillery captain walked up to him. “Sir . . . will fifteen minutes be enough time for our forces to get clear of the fallout zone?”

  “Plenty of time,” he said, still looking into the night hanging over the jungle around him.

  “Shall we wait for confirmation that all forces have returned to staging areas before firing?”

  In a dismissive tone Borbikov said, “No time for that. The Yankees will suspect danger the moment we go into full retreat from the hill. They won’t know what’s coming for them, but they’ll know something’s coming for them. I’d love to let them sweat that out longer, but I don’t want them to harden their defenses.”

  “But, respectfully, sir, how the hell can they build enough sandbags to stop a nuclear fire?”

  Borbikov turned to the shorter man now. “In thirteen minutes I will give the order to fire your guns, Captain. If you won’t comply, I’ll have my Spetsnaz men pull the fucking lanyards, and you’ll return to Russia in shackles.”

  The captain seemed to mull this over. Finally he said, “We will, of course, comply with your order.”

  A long row of BTRs appeared out of the jungle to the east, then rolled to a stop just behind the three Spetsnaz vehicles parked in the middle of the road. Men climbed out and began walking over toward the fire control area at the center of the six guns.

  Borbikov said, “The rest of my men,” then turned away, ambled over to one of the artillery pieces, put his hand on the warm steel of the open breech, and looked at the shell lying there, ready for its short flight south.

  Finally he turned back to the new arrivals.

  The first man to step into the fire control area, just twenty meters away from Borbikov, was Colonel General Boris Lazar. The sixty-four-year-old stormed up into the grouping of massive weapons of war, with several bandages around his face and neck and an arm in a splint. The wounds only served to amplify the anger on his face. He looked around, his eyes searching until he spotted Colonel Borbikov, who remained at the open breech of the 152, staring in the general’s direction.

  Borbikov looked like he’d been poleaxed. After a few breaths he said, “General, good to see you, sir.”

  Lazar said, “Back from the dead, you might say.”

  Borbikov stammered something unintelligible, melting under the general’s gaze. Colonel Kir stepped up next to Lazar. He limped heavily off his right leg; white bandages covered his forehead and left leg.

  Kir and Lazar both eyed Borbikov a moment more, surveyed the situation, and immediately walked closer.

  As soon as Lazar stepped up to Borbikov, he said, “You’re insane. You’d shell your own countrymen?”

  Borbikov said, “I gave the order to withdraw.”

  Lazar shook his head in utter disgust. “You will surrender yourself immediately, Colonel. You are under house arrest.”

  Borbikov stood tall, looming over the smaller general. “Nyet. You have no cause. I had every right to assume command.” Then he yelled for one of the Spetsnaz security men. “Captain Osolodkin!”

  Men appeared from the darkness, but they were not Spetsnaz. They were the paratroop commander and survivors of his unit, all armed with weapons at the ready.

  Lieutenant Colonel Fedulov was filthy from combat. Blood was smeared across the ammo rack on his chest, and his eyes showed nothing but malevolence at the Spetsnaz officer in front of him.

  “Ah, good. Fedulov,” Borbikov said, a little confused but hiding it. “Lieutenant Colonel, you will arrest Kir and Lazar immediately.”

  “On what charge?”

  “They have failed to reach the objectives established for them by the southern command headquarters.”

  “Pytor,” the general said to Fedulov now. “Do you remember when I first took you to the range? When we went to learn assault tactics with your new platoon?”

  “Yes, Comrade General.”

  “What did I teach you about loyalty?”

  “Sir, you said, ‘Loyalty to the men comes first. Loyalty to the unit is next. Loyalty to Russia is the last hope when the other two have failed.’”

  “Good. Pytor, I need you and your men to seize Colonel Borbikov, just as you did the other Spetsnaz forces. He will be returned to Moscow and charged with insubordination.”

  “Very well, Comrade General.”

  Borbikov turned to Lazar now. “Sir. We can win this! Right now! We shell that hill with these rounds and wipe out all the defenders, and destroy the West’s ability to exploit the site.”

  “Everyone’s ability to exploit the site, you mean.”

  Borbikov nodded. “If you like, yes! It is not optimal, but it will be a tactical improvement over our comparative relationship with the West. Even you must see that, General!”

  “I’m not starting a nuclear war over African rocks.”

  “The Americans won’t engage in nuclear war just because we use tactical nucle—”

  Lazar shouted, his voice pounding even the deadened ears of the artillery crews. “Tell me all about what the Americans will do, Borbikov! Please! Your track record for predicting their actions has been exemplary. Tell me, young Yuri, was the American invasion of Belarus all part of a master plan about which I was unaware? Do you even know that Sabaneyev has been taken into custody by the United States Army? He’s finished. He’ll be tried for war crimes, no doubt, and convicted, no doubt, and every dirty thing we’ve done in Europe to achieve victory here in Africa will be revealed.”

  Before Borbikov could answer, Lazar turned to the artillery commander. “Remove the device from the breech, Captain.”

  “Yes, Comrade General.” The man began doing so, while the paratroopers moved toward Borbikov.

  Red Metal had been the perfect plan; Borbikov still believed this fully. If the two generals had just obeyed their orders, if Sabaneyev had skirted around Wrocław, and if Lazar had sped up his movement from the port, then the situation would be totally different.

  The colonel shouted, “You will be arrested as soon as we return, Comrade General! You have failed in your mission. I will speak to Anatoly Rivkin personally about what has happened here. You will be shot for not implementing your orders.”

  Lazar smiled, surprising everyone. “They can shoot me. But not until I end this madness. I will reach out to the Americans and sue for peace.”

  Eyes turned back to Borbikov, everyone expecting anger, fury, or at least some sort of rejoinder, but he merely stared at the burly general. No words came, but the rage in his eyes was penetrating.

  Lazar looked at the paratroopers. “Take him away.” He turned to confer with the artillery captain and Colonel Kir.

  The Spetsnaz colonel’s shoulders slumped, and he was braced by two paratroopers who knew better than to put their hands on him. He began walking toward their vehicle, and they remained at his sides, their rifles hanging in front of their torsos with the barrels pointed down.

  After no more than three or four steps, Yuri Borbikov reached out and grabbed the rif
le on his right with both hands. He yanked the sling over the head of the younger man and swung it around toward the general and the men standing with him, no more than ten meters away.

  Lazar was facing Kir and the captain, but they both saw the movement, though only Colonel Kir responded to the danger.

  He lunged forward on his good leg, threw himself between the AK-12 rifle and Colonel General Boris Lazar.

  A burst of automatic gunfire pounded the air. Kir took the brunt of the 7.62mm rounds, his body bucking and his arms flying up.

  The second paratrooper swung his weapon around and opened fire into Borbikov’s back at contact distance. The first rounds slammed into the colonel’s body armor, but the last few took him in the lower back and hips. Exit wounds blew out his front and he dropped the rifle and fell on his face.

  Colonel Dmitry Kir lay dead, and the artillery captain had been shot in the left forearm and was rolling in the trampled grass.

  General Boris Lazar stood there, with no new injuries, although he was momentarily dazed by what had just happened.

  He knelt down and took Kir’s head in his hands. “My poor Dmitry.” After seconds of silence, he looked up to the paratroopers. “Secure the artillery shells. I want them placed back in their cases and put in my command vehicle. You will accompany me back to the command post.”

  The artillery crews followed their orders without question or hesitation.

  Boris Lazar had that effect on his men.

  CHAPTER 82

  SLONIM, BELARUS

  2 JANUARY

  Lieutenant Colonel Tom Grant slouched back in the large leather office chair and kicked his feet up on the huge oak desk. His boots were filthy, caked with mud that flaked off and soiled the documents and map overlays. His tanker uniform was covered in oil, grease, and gunpowder, and stiff with sweat and bloodstains. Grant had not looked in a mirror in a week, and he purposefully avoided his reflection, worried that his haggard appearance might only serve to exhaust him even more. But even without looking, he knew his face would be completely smeared with carbon dust from the gas discharge emitted every time his tank had fired its main gun.

  He looked around the well-appointed office. Someone had said this building was the command post for the Belarusian 11th Guards Mechanized Brigade, but all the soldiers had melted away during and just after the fighting here.

  He kicked his feet off the broad wooden desk and leaned forward now, his eyes locking on a silver box on the desktop. A Belarusian armored unit symbol was emblazoned on the front above an inscription in Cyrillic, indecipherable to the American from Ohio. He flipped it open and found an ornamental lined-cloth interior and twenty cigars. He drew one out of the humidor; the sweet scent of aged brandy and tobacco instantly filled the air. He held the cigar to his nose.

  Master Sergeants Kellogg and Wolfram almost didn’t stop as they walked down the hallway of the captured garrison headquarters. They saw the lieutenant colonel as they passed the doorway, then backed up and entered the room, looking around in amazement at the elegant office.

  “Hey, boss,” Kellogg said. Grant didn’t look up; he was pulling open desk drawers, looking for a lighter. “The NATO prisoners are all getting checked out in the infirmary here. They want you to come down so they can thank you personally. Lots of generals and admirals in that mix, so . . .”

  Grant still searched the desk.

  “. . . you might want to think about doing that.”

  Still no response from the lieutenant colonel.

  “Or not.” Kellogg waited a moment, cleared his throat, then said, “Also, we have a final tally on the captured Russian equipment. The Bumerangs and tanks are all operational, but half the shit is out of gas, and more than half the vehicles were Winchester on ammo.” He paused to smile. “These bastards did not predict us chasin’ their asses into Belarus.”

  Wolfram laughed at this, but Grant made no reply. Instead he just bit the end off the cigar crudely and spit it on the floor.

  “We have the rest of the reports when you’re ready to come and review them.” Again Grant made no response. Kellogg looked around the room in the silence for a second, then said, “Of course, you might just want to hang out in here for a bit. This office is pretty cool.”

  Grant found a heavy steel lighter in a drawer and hefted it with a little smile, then flicked the flint wheel. The carefully crafted lighter’s wick burst in a soft red and yellow flame.

  Kellogg now said, “And that general is downstairs. Sabadudad . . . something like that. Have you seen that asshole? Looks like a movie star. Course, he also looks scared shitless, though he’s putting on a tough face. Anyway, his translator says he’s ready to surrender to you.”

  Grant touched the flame of the lighter to the tip of the cigar and leaned back in the chair. His Army-issue M9 bayonet scraped along the leather, cutting a deep gash. Uncaring, he looked up at the ceiling and puffed the cigar, savoring the richness of the brandy flavoring. He pointed to the silver box and only now did he speak.

  “Gents, help yourselves. There’s enough in there to pass around to some of our NCOs. God knows they deserve it.”

  Grant pocketed the lighter in the breast pocket of his winter tanker jacket as both master sergeants rushed forward, grabbed fistfuls of cigars out of the humidor, and stuffed them in their drop pouches.

  Tom Grant said, “Tell that general I’ll accept his surrender when I’m good and ready. And let him know he’ll be flown to NATO HQ in Brussels to be tried for fucking war crimes. Let that shit sink in a bit. I’ll be down when I’m done with this cigar.”

  * * *

  • • •

  NORTH OF MRIMA HILL, KENYA

  1 JANUARY

  The sixteen LAVs rolled north down the hill in the late-morning sun along a dirt road cratered by war and littered with the burned-out hulks of Russian medium armor, shrapnel holes, and thin copper wires floating in the air, the detritus from fired Russian and U.S. anti-tank missiles. BTRs lay split open, all twisted metal, their insides spilling out onto the dirt-and-brush landscape.

  Smoke rose from vehicles and burning foliage, and a thick, ugly haze hung in the hot air.

  Several areas had already been marked by locals who returned after dawn this morning, trying in vain to reclaim their war-torn land. T-shirt flags and crooked sticks and other markings warned of where munitions had landed but not exploded.

  There were bodies on the road, and hanging out of vehicles, too; Connolly even saw two mangled Russian soldiers suspended in trees. Many corpses were burned beyond recognition.

  Connolly and Caster sat in the hatches of the LAV-C2 looking out at the wreckage strewn across the African plain.

  “What a fucking mess,” Connolly muttered to himself.

  He imagined nature would reclaim the land in just a few years, as it had done on battlefields throughout history. Not many would see it the way he saw it today, and he figured that was probably for the best.

  Now Caster spoke up. “What a fucking mess.”

  They passed the remains of a Marine M1A2 tank. Its turret had been blown off and a team of young Marines stripped down to their bare chests was trying to recover the crew’s remains to send back to their families.

  It took over forty-five minutes of driving through a horror show of destruction before the American convoy made it up to Jombo Hill.

  Connolly had to fight the urge to lift his carbine as they passed into the Russian perimeter at the base of the hill. Dozens of BTRs, all apparently still in fighting shape, were parked in clearings just off the road, and hundreds of troops could be seen among the trees. There were wounded among them, lying on the ground or on litters, or just standing there bandaged and shell-shocked.

  Most of the young men whom Connolly saw looked much the same as the young Marines at the front lines he’d seen behind him.

  The LAVs passed sandbag
ged machine-gun emplacements and a medical aid station, then stopped short of the Russian command tent. The general’s guidon hung out front and flapped in the early-morning breeze.

  Apollo Arc-Blanchette climbed out of his LAV and walked stiffly over to Connolly as the American exited his own vehicle. The Frenchman pointed at the rows of armored personnel carriers. “Those would make a nice target.”

  Connolly replied, “Yeah. If this doesn’t go as planned, then we’ll get right back to work blowing those motherfuckers up.”

  Apollo chuckled, then spoke softly. “Really? With what?”

  Both men knew the Americans and French were virtually out of tanks, helos, attack aircraft, and missiles.

  Connolly winked. Softly he said, “We’re bluffing here, Captain. I’m just trying to get into character.”

  A contingent of Russian junior officers approached Arc-Blanchette, Caster, Connolly, and the rest of the contingent of Americans, then ushered them into the large tent.

  It was dark inside, and all the radios and maps were covered with blankets, presumably to shield them from Western eyes. Connolly was pretty sure Major Griggs and his buddies at the NSA had detailed diagrams of every piece of equipment in here, but Connolly knew he would cover his gear if this meeting were taking place at the Marine regimental CP.

  A barrel-chested bald man in a field-worn camouflage uniform with the stars of a Russian colonel general sat at a table on the far side of the tent. Connolly recognized Boris Lazar from the photos in his dossier. Three colonels sat on either side of him, and Connolly checked the Cyrillic name tapes on all the uniforms to see if one was Borbikov.

  He couldn’t find the infamous colonel among them, and found himself disappointed he couldn’t look the bastard in the eye.

  A young translator, an infantry captain, stood at the end of the table and beckoned the Americans to sit. Caster was in the middle, with McHale on his left, Connolly and Apollo on his right.