by Brad Taylor
Simon:
He fucking should be. I couldn’t have asked for a better target, but he’s a dead man walking now. He just doesn’t realize it. Will he continue? What do you think?
Mikhail:
I gave him instructions for a meeting in Poland. I think he’ll be there. I gave him a lot of cheering about how proud the motherland was of him. I’ll do your meet first, get the stuff, then go meet him. After that, we’re done, no offense.
Simon:
I understand. But we still have the business here, yes?
Mikhail:
Headed to meet my diamond guy now. I’ll set up the transfer of the gold for tomorrow. You should have it by tomorrow afternoon. Minus my payment, of course.
Simon:
Of course. And now I’ll get to spend my earnings.
Mikhail:
I don’t know about that. The firestorm you’re stirring up may protect you from Putin, but it won’t from the devastation of another world war. You should take a look at the pictures of Warsaw from the forties, then try to figure out where you’d spend your gold in that destruction.
Simon:
Let me worry about that. The Americans will quit if there is a coup. I know them. They aren’t the Nazis.
Mikhail:
You sure? You see the news? They aren’t fucking around, and both of those guys have nukes.
Simon turned to his car and the conversation on the video ended. I said, “What the hell was that all about? What’s the US doing?”
Shoshana opened the door to go to her car and said, “I don’t know, but that first meeting is irrelevant. Mikhail just said he’s going to discuss the transfer of the gold. The next one is key—and that’s you. Don’t worry about the United States right now. They aren’t going to start World War Three in the next few hours.”
I tapped the screen and said, “I don’t know about that. People seem to forget that kindly Uncle Sam also has brass knuckles.”
Knuckles came on, saying, “Simon to the north—Aaron, that’s you. Mikhail to the south. Pike, you’ll have him in two minutes.”
Shoshana said, “We’ll talk about it at the hotel tonight,” then closed the door, starting her coordination with Aaron for their follow and leaving me wondering what was occurring one country away.
33
The rolling metal coffin hit a particularly nasty pothole, and Felix Byrd slammed his head against the steel. Ordinarily, this would have caused serious pain, but this time, his skull was protected by an old-school Kevlar helmet. He glanced around to see if anyone else in the LAV had noticed, but if they had, they gave no indication that it was something to laugh at.
Bouncing around inside the armored LAV, Felix desperately tried to make his body movements match the rhythms of the vehicle, feeling nothing like the calm of the young men to his left and right. Some were actually sleeping, a feat he would later describe as surreal.
A senior member of the United States National Transportation Safety Board, he and two others had been flown over to Europe to inspect the crash of Air Force One.
At first, Felix had been incensed that there would only be three inspectors, knowing that many more would be required. He’d demanded a full team, complete with forensic capability, and had been rebuffed. He’d assumed it was because of some idiotic budget thing, right up until he’d met his ride to the site: a platoon of armored vehicles from the Marine Corps 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion. Detailed to the Black Sea Rotational Force, they’d been training security forces in Latvia when they’d gotten the call, and Felix began to understand the reason for the size of his team. Security of the force had taken a backseat to the inspection itself.
Felix had been to many, many different crash sites, but never wearing body armor, and he should have known that no budget restrictions on earth would prevent a full investigation of the murder of the president of the United States and the destruction of the United States’s flagship aircraft. He was dealing with restrictions that no money could overcome. Only the young men to his left and right could do that, and the thought scared Felix to death.
The Ukrainian government had given them permission to travel to the crash, but all understood that the proclamation was nothing but hollow words once they reached the east. The initial penetration across the border had been fine, but the rebels held the east, and they maintained that nobody was to enter “their” area—Kiev and its Western puppets be damned. A test was coming one way or another.
First Lieutenant Dane Raintree understood this better than the three NTSB members in the back. Unlike most of the junior officers in his battalion, he had experience in combat, and knew that this had the chance of becoming a shooting war. Something different from Afghanistan and Iraq. A real, holy-shit slugfest.
He was the executive officer for his company, and had heard the deliberations during the war-gaming sessions. When the mission had come down the brass had worried extensively about a show of force that would cause the very thing they didn’t want: a fight to the death. They’d settled on a single platoon for the mission, but in so doing, they were placing the future of national security in the hands of a second lieutenant who had no experience at all. Luckily, the commander of first platoon had just rotated home for a death in the family, leaving a slot open. A command billet that needed to be filled. And Raintree was chosen, both because of his proven intellect and because he’d been the last platoon leader of that unit and had served with them in combat. He knew the men, and he had the experience to—in the words of his battalion commander—not do something stupid.
He’d been told that he was to reach the crash site and secure it, period. The unspoken command was that he would fight his way through, if necessary. Which caused him no small amount of angst. He had over thirty men’s lives in his hands, and only the assurances from his commander that whatever he did would be justified. He’d seen how that played out in Afghanistan, but his commander had provided ample firepower for a fight nonetheless.
In addition to the four LAVs with their Bushmaster 25mm chain guns—weapons that could shred anything short of a tank—he was being tracked by not one, but two armed Predators and a flight of A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft. He knew he could handle anything the rebels had. He just wasn’t sure he could handle the fallout, if push came to shove. He wondered if his commander had the clout to protect him.
They bounced down the highway, running straight east, now deep into the Luhansk Oblast—rebel-controlled territory—when he received a call from his platoon sergeant, the same one he’d served with, before he’d become the executive officer. A man he trusted explicitly. Riding in the lead LAV, running point into Ukraine against established doctrine, his gunny knew how dangerous the mission was—not in individual gunfights per se, but in how those gunfights could escalate into a lot of dead Marines who had yet to deploy to Europe.
“Wolfpack one-six, this is Wolfpack one-seven. I got a checkpoint ahead.”
The entire convoy slowed at the call. Raintree started working the video feeds from the Predators overhead and saw a makeshift barricade with men left and right, all holding small arms. No anti-armor capability. The convoy jagged to a stop, a bull looking at the cape, wondering.
Raintree said, “I see no anti-armor. What do you have?”
“Same. But they don’t need it. We pull up, Lord knows what will happen. We can’t talk to them without exposing ourselves.”
Meaning, some backwoods asshole from Ukraine could take it upon himself to shoot. They were secure inside the steel of the LAV, but they couldn’t get past the checkpoint without talking. They had the permission of the Ukraini
an government to be here, but that mattered little in Luhansk.
Raintree felt the pressure, felt the same debilitating choices of many Marines before him, about to make a decision that could alter the course of his nation. But he had his orders, and he had a dead president beyond. Truthfully, he was sick of being pushed around. Tired of cowering to a bunch of inbred rebels just because they believed America wouldn’t unleash its power.
Fuck that.
“Wolfpack one-seven, ignore them. Continue forward.”
“Sir, I can’t ignore them. They’ve blocked the road.”
“Are you saying you can’t get through the roadblock with a LAV?”
“Well, no . . . just that it’s . . . it’s going to make a statement.”
Raintree smiled and said, “Then let’s make a statement.”
And so thirty tons of steel blew through the first checkpoint as if it didn’t exist, ripping across the raggedy-assed barricade like a chainsaw, all inside hearing the desultory fire of the small arms pinging off the vehicle’s armor as if that had a hope of stopping the juggernaut that was America.
They rolled forward for another thirty kilometers before they reached the next checkpoint, this one apparently positioned specifically to prevent their advance. The Predator feed showed an anti-armor ambush, with defense in depth using weapons designed to puncture the steel of the LAV. Someone had been calling ahead. Raintree slowed the convoy to a stop. It was decision time for a person higher than him.
He called on the satellite radio, explaining what he had to his front to a man monitoring the command net, honestly believing he would be told to turn around.
He waited. And waited. Then heard the voice of his commander saying the last thing he expected.
“This is Wolfpack one-six actual. Eliminate the threat. Continue the mission.”
His mouth dropped open. He looked back at the men in the LAV, and they saw on his face that something different was happening here. No questions from higher about collateral damage. No discussions regarding civilians or other blowback. No back-and-forth like they’d experienced in Afghanistan, even as the rounds were firing.
He said, “Sir? Say again?”
“Wolfpack one-six, this is straight from the commander in chief. Eliminate the threat.”
A savage smile spread across his face at the words. The most powerful man in the United States had his back, allowing him to be a Marine. “Roger all.”
High above them, floating like bloated castoffs from an experiment, were two A-10 close air support aircraft. Built during the Cold War, they were created for one purpose: killing Soviet tanks. Neither sleek fighter nor long-range nuclear bomber, they were bastard children for a fight that had never happened. The Air Force had tried repeatedly to kill them, preferring to spend the money on more expensive next-generation fighters and bombers, but outcry from the men on the ground had stymied them at every turn.
A titanium bathtub built around a 30mm rotary cannon that fired depleted uranium shells, it could shred any armor in existence, and it was built to fly low and slow, slugging it out right above the ground—and survive. Affectionately called the Warthog, it lived up to its nickname, both in appearance and in capability. It was ugly and ferocious. Designed for tank battles on the plains of Europe, it had proven just as adept at close air support in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Every other airframe in the US Air Force was dedicated to a mission that defined that service’s reason for existence, be it air superiority or counterforce nuclear targeting. No other platform was dedicated to the man on the ground, and no other was as loved by the grunt.
The two aircraft circled lazily in a cloudless sky, as if they were executing a waiting maneuver for an airshow. Tracking back and forth, they showed no indication of the death they held.
For the first time since their initial radio check, Raintree called them. “Joker, Joker, this is Wolfpack one-six. Got a problem in front of me.”
“Wolfpack, this is Joker, I got ’em. What do you want me to do?”
“Eliminate the threat.”
Raintree expected some questions, or at least an exclamation of surprise. What he got was a voice with all the emotion of a man talking about taking out the garbage. “Roger that. Understand take out the threat. Hold your position. Coming in north to south.”
Raintree said, “Roger all. Smoke those assholes.”
The two birds rolled out into an attack run perpendicular to the travel of the convoy, lining up their targets in a neat row. Less than a hundred meters off the deck, they unleashed the guns. Sounding like God was ripping a giant piece of canvas, the rotating cannon devastated the earth, shredding man and machine alike, the screams lost in the noise of the destruction.
The men on the ground, of course, couldn’t pinpoint the difference when the aircraft went from lazily tracing arcs in the sky to turning into a killing machine. They couldn’t be faulted for that. They had no way of knowing that American policy had had a seismic shift from just a day before. Having learned from past US actions, they believed that the threat of violence alone was enough to stop the convoy from advancing. They didn’t understand they were in danger until the awful sound of the guns ripped them apart, teaching a final lesson in global politics.
The convoy began rolling again, and after that display, nobody came close to them. The word spread swiftly—try to stop the Americans, and you will be slaughtered. For once, the United States was serious. Further checkpoints were dismantled, with rebel formations fading into the wood line, none wanting to face the firepower that the small platoon held in the palm of their hand.
Lieutenant Raintree reached the crash site an hour later, a desolate gouge in the earth two football fields long, the terrain littered with rubble from the aircraft, brightly colored bits of cloth flapping amid burned steel. He positioned his men into a security formation around the site as best he could, telling Felix his team had six hours.
He called a SITREP to his higher, then sagged in his seat, happy they’d had no fight he couldn’t handle. He glanced in the rear and saw the empty body bags, reminding him of the reason he’d come. The crash investigation was important, but it wasn’t the primary mission. He keyed the radio and deployed the body recovery team. Their task was to retrieve the mortal remains of the president of the United States. He remained in constant contact with the other LAVs and the airpower overhead, thinking of nothing but the security of his men, spending a nerve-racking six hours on the ground deep in hostile territory.
He was but a small fish in a big pond, and he didn’t realize that Russia had taken notice of his actions. Had seen the willingness to use force.
34
I watched Jennifer crunch through the peanuts on the table, patiently waiting for the Israelis to show up. She caught me looking and said, “What? They’re part of the room package. You can get a sandwich if you want.”
I laughed and said, “You getting points off this room, too?”
We were currently in the business lounge of our hotel, chowing down on free peanuts and beer. After our horrendous flight over, with both of us stuck in the middle of the airplane for what seemed like an eternity, Jennifer had become obsessed with frequent flyer miles, continually locating any hotel that would give her points toward her elusive goal of having enough to get upgraded on our next flight. Which was why we were staying at the Grand River Hotel on River Park, right next to the Danube.
She grinned and said, “You won’t think it’s funny when I go home in style.”
I saw the door to the lounge open, and Knuckles came in, freshly scrubbed from a shower. He went straight to the bar and pulled a Stella, then sauntered over.
“Nice lounge. How much extra did this cost?”
I just shook my head. Jennifer said, “It’s not ‘extra.’ It’s part of the package I found.”
“Are the Israelis fronting the cost
for this?”
She slid her eyes sideways, reaching for more peanuts. “Well . . . no. I had to upgrade. But it’s going to be worth it.”
He looked at me and I rolled my eyes. Knuckles asked, “You have your own room?” She nodded. “You spent the night in it yet?” I saw a tiny tinge of red in her face, and knew why. Outside of storing her suitcase, her room hadn’t been used at all. He said, “That’s what I figured. If you’re going to sleep in Pike’s room, why don’t you cancel yours and then get the Israelis to pay for the upgrade? It’ll probably be cheaper for them.”
Surprised that he hadn’t used the revelation to poke fun at her, she considered the suggestion and said, “That’s a great idea! Pike, you’ll need to cancel your reservation. If I do, I’ll lose all my points.”
“No way. Not doing it.”
“Why? We aren’t on a Taskforce operation. We don’t need to worry about the fraternization issue. Who cares what the Israelis think?”
She was really getting fired up about the idea, running through her head how she was going to get points and come in cheaper. I said, “So I have to sacrifice to get you upgraded to business class?”
She popped a peanut in her mouth and said, “That’s not the way to look at it. We’re saving Grolier Recovery Services money. It’s business.”
Knuckles laughed and said, “Sort of like saving money on a new pair of shoes you don’t need because they’re on sale.”
She ignored him, saying, “I’ll cancel your damn reservation. Just move your stuff to my room.”
I said, “Or what?”
She arched an eyebrow and said, “Or nothing. Just that that’s where I’ll be sleeping from now on. By myself, if that’s what your stubborn brain wishes.”
Knuckles gave a low whistle and said, “Game. Set. Match. Shoshana should have been here for that expert display of relationship manipulation.”
