Ghosts of War

by Brad Taylor

  Palmer said, “You mean he briefed you on a plan that was already in motion. Getting permission after the fact.” He turned to the secretary of defense and said, “Did you really use his lack of experience to get what you wanted? No way could you get someone on the ground that quickly after you got permission.”

  Oglethorpe leaned into Palmer and said, “I had my orders, and you agreed to them. I was just getting final approval for the plan. And yes, it was already in motion.”

  “So what’s Russia going to do when NATO invades the Ukraine? Did you think of that?”

  Oglethorpe said, “It’s not about NATO. It’s all about the crash site. Humanitarian show of force, remember? No ally fingerprints are on it at all. It’s purely American, as the commander in chief ordered. NATO is aware, but not involved at all. And the Russians are being alerted that we’re coming.”

  Kurt saw the fracture occurring in the command team of the United States. Hannister was unused to the power he wielded, and it was showing. Kurt knew he had to short-circuit the schism before it devolved into personality clashes. “Sir, you gave the command. We need to see it through. Who was,” he looked at Palmer, “and who wasn’t read on to the plan is irrelevant now. Let’s deal with the facts.”

  Churlishly, Palmer said, “Okay, what are the facts?”

  Oglethorpe said, “After analysis, securing the launch site for the missiles was deemed irrelevant. The launcher is gone, as are the bodies. That left the crash site. Trying to get armor there would telegraph our intentions and only allow the enemy to prepare, if they so desired. We decided a vertical envelopment was the way to go.”

  Palmer said, “What the hell does that mean?”

  Kurt smiled, nodding at the secretary of defense. “Airborne operation. That’s pretty ballsy.”

  Palmer said, “You’re parachuting in? Why?”

  “We can’t sustain a force that far from friendly lines. We needed a lodgement. We found an airfield near Severodonetsk. It’s been in and out of Ukrainian hands, but was close enough to the crash site to allow us to use it as a lily pad for further operations.”

  “So you’re going to seize the airfield? And then what?”

  “Simultaneously, we’re going to seize the crash site. Two battalions of the 82nd Airborne are preparing to jump right now, but they only have light arms. Our orders were to make a statement, but not get anyone killed. So that requires firepower, which will be coming from the airfield twenty kilometers away instead of two thousand. The Ranger’s first battalion will seize the airfield, the 1st Stryker Brigade, 4th Infantry Division will flow in and reinforce the 82nd, and the heavy armor from the Marine’s Black Sea Rotational Force will arrive overland in twenty-four hours in case anyone wants to test us.”

  Hannister addressed the secretary of defense, “Given this new information, should we hold off?”

  Oglethorpe said, “Sir, as I said, I have pathfinder teams on the ground right now. They dropped out of an aircraft from thirty thousand feet. The only way back to us is with their feet. They can do it, but you’re risking them being compromised on the move, and paraded on television. They’ll be just as big of a catalyst as anything else.”

  Palmer said, “So you’ve committed us to a course of action we can’t extract from? What were you thinking?”

  Kurt had heard enough. “He’s executing United States policy with the least projected casualties, as ordered by the commander in chief. I wasn’t there, but I believe you were.”

  Palmer said nothing. Kurt continued, “Sir, what’s happening at the crash site is fine, but we’re putting our guys in a fire sack if something else triggers a fight. It was a good decision at the time, when we were dealing with just Russia, but now we’re not.”

  Hannister looked slightly lost. “Okay, okay. I have to convene a national security meeting in five minutes. What do I say? What’s the recommendation?”

  Palmer said, “Call it off. Before we are further committed.”

  Oglethorpe bristled, but Kurt beat him to the punch. “We’re already committed. Do you think the team on the ground’s life is less valuable than the ones flowing in? Jesus. Listen to yourself.”

  He turned to the president and said, “You can’t shut down the operation now, nor should you. That decision was correct. We need to show American resolve. This thing is in motion, and we need to manage it. Running now, based on what we know, will do nothing—because Putin doesn’t have the same information. He’ll see weakness, and so will our allies, especially after you’ve informed him we were coming.”

  Palmer said, “We’re about to put thousands of soldiers in the heart of Russian defenses. We go to war because someone else triggers, and they’re all dead. You want that?”

  “No, of course not. We just need to mitigate the risk.”

  Hannister, grasping at any hope he could, said, “How? What can I possibly do? We have nothing but a report of an attack.”

  Kurt said, “We have more than that. We have Pike Logan.”

  Palmer’s eyes popped open, and he raised a hand, about to go on a tirade. Kurt cut him off. “I asked for you men for a reason. The Oversight Council is defunct, but you were all members. Pike found the thread of the attack, and Pike can stop it. Let the Taskforce loose. Let me execute what it was designed for.”

  Hannister said nothing, looking at his circle of advisors, waiting on an opinion.

  Kerry said, “Given the options, it certainly couldn’t hurt. We go to war, I doubt anyone’s going to give a shit about that lunatic running around.”

  Oglethorpe smiled and winked at Kurt. He said, “That lunatic usually ends up fixing things. My assault force is in the air. My vote is, let him loose.”

  Hannister said, “What do you need?”

  “I need the Taskforce reinstated. I need command authority to execute an Omega operation. I need the ability to help you.”

  President Hannister said, “You have it.”

  Kurt smiled and said, “Thank you, sir. Gotta go. I have some work to do.”

  Kurt turned to leave, but Oglethorpe caught his arm. “I wasn’t kidding about the force in the air. They’ll hit the ground in less than two hours. And Palmer’s right. They can handle anything thrown at them from the rebel side, but if Russia sees them as a threat . . . if something triggers a fight . . . they’re all dead.”

  Kurt let a wolf smile slip out and said, “I understand. I wasn’t kidding about Pike, either. You do what you do best. Leave the rest to him.”

  43

  The MC-130 Combat Talon’s nap-of-the-earth flight was making Private First Class Joe Meglan airsick, but he would literally rather kill himself than admit it to anyone. The flight wasn’t that long, and he was sure he could hold his stomach in check until they landed.

  The interior was blacked out, the only illumination coming from pinprick LEDs, giving just enough light for him to barely make out the men to his left and right. He rolled his head around, taking deep breaths, and saw movement across the hull of the aircraft, where he knew the battalion command team was seated.

  Something was up.

  The word traveled left and right from their position, flowing out like ripples in a pond. He wondered what rock had been thrown to stir up the ripples. The loadmaster crouched next to the last man on their side, then came over to his side, shouting in his squad leader’s ear. The squad leader nodded, and leaned into Joe.

  “Runway’s fouled. We’re jumping. Five hundred feet.”

  The words didn’t make sense at first, because that wasn’t the plan. Jumping was just a contingency that he’d been told had little chance of happening, even as he was rigging up into his parachute. The airport was supposed to be in Ukrainian hands. Friendly hands. If the runway was fouled, didn’t that mean . . .

  The squad leader smacked his MICH helmet and said, “Pass it down, dumbass. We don’t have a lot o
f time.”

  He did so, his earlier airsickness completely forgotten as his sphincter tightened into a knot. A second thought entered his head: He was on the runway clearing team. If the runway was fouled, he was going to work, and he had no idea what that meant.

  While an airfield seizure sounded pretty much like any other assault, it wasn’t. Like a hostage rescue mission, it was an orchestra of violence with specific objectives that had to be accomplished in a minimum amount of time. The RCT—his platoon—was a unique element that trained and practiced to ensure that the runway was serviceable within thirty minutes of the first parachute splitting the sky.

  While others jumped out with the job of clearing objectives or securing key points, his task was arguably the most critical. All the other efforts meant nothing if the planes couldn’t land. If he failed, they’ll have just attacked and held a worthless piece of terrain. Any infantry unit could do that. Successfully seizing an airfield entailed the airfield functioning when you were done.

  Everyone in his squad and platoon had practiced the RCT procedures over and over, the command throwing every conceivable contingency at them. Bulldozers, railroad ties, Chevy station wagons, random debris, you name it. The team could hotwire just about anything in existence, and if they couldn’t, they knew how to disable the clutch to push obstacles out of the way by brute force. Joe Meglan knew none of this. He’d finished Ranger Assessment and Selection only three weeks prior, just in time for a deployment to Afghanistan. That was what his platoon had focused on, and now he was about to jump into the black night, over Europe, and execute a maneuver he’d never rehearsed.

  He was jerked out of his thoughts by the right-side troop door opening, the wind blasting into the hold, the night sky huge and close. His platoon sergeant began conducting safety checks of the frame, acting as the primary jumpmaster, and it hit home. We’re going to jump.

  The time passed swiftly, and before he knew it, the six-minute call was made, then the command to get ready, the familiar orders for the airborne operation bringing a sense of normalcy and calm. This was something he knew about. The command for outboard personnel was given, and he staggered upright under the load of his parachute and over a hundred pounds of gear slung between his legs.

  The other commands followed, a monotony of calls until the final one, each like a comforting shout-out from a friend, Meglan following along with every other shooter on the plane. A familiar blanket reminding him he was just one bit on the cog of the finest light infantry force on God’s green earth.

  Hook up! . . . Check static lines! . . . Check equipment! . . . Sound off for equipment check!

  The man to his rear slapped his thigh, screaming, Okay! And he did the same to his squad leader. The squad leader relayed to the jumpmaster, and they waited on the one-minute warning. His squad leader turned back, knowing Meglan was adrift. He shouted, “Just find the rally point, then listen to whoever’s there. Monkey see, monkey do. It’s easy. We’ll handle the hard stuff.”

  Meglan nodded, relieved, then shouted, “Will this count as a combat jump?”

  His squad leader laughed and turned around without answering, disappointing Meglan. In his mind, if he was jumping into the unknown, he deserved credit for it, and—while no Ranger would ever admit it—every one of them coveted the small mustard stain on their jump wings signifying a combat jump. This operation was a little half and half, though. No declaration of hostilities, and no firm knowledge if anything below was actually hostile.

  The one-minute warning came and went, then the jumpmaster gave the final, electrifying command: Stand in the door!

  And the snake of jumpers shuffled forward, Meglan second in the stick, mashed together like cattle in a car, his squad leader facing the open maw of the night. Meglan kept his eyes glued to the red light above the door, willing it to go green. This was the worst for him. The waiting. The adrenaline coursing through his body making him feel like he was going to explode. Come on, come on, come ON. And it did. He saw the light turn green, then heard “GO!”, and his squad leader disappeared into the night.

  He slapped his static line at the jumpmaster and forcefully exited, feeling the wind tear into him, counting out loud, “One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousuuuuh—”

  His groin was snatched upward, his canopy blossoming over his head, the silence now deafening.

  He barely had time to check his airspace for other jumpers before he saw the ground rushing up. He dropped his ruck on its lowering line a second before it hit, then slammed into the ground, performing a pathetic landing fall.

  He rapidly shucked his chute and put his M4 into operation, lowering his night observation goggles and scanning for the hordes of enemy he expected to find. He saw nothing but parachutes landing all around and Air Force combat controllers zipping left and right on minibikes that had been parachuted in, each with a predetermined mission that belied the chaos.

  He derigged his ruck, threw it on his back, and began jogging to the rally point, located at the juncture where the taxiway met the actual runway.

  He arrived to find his squad leader had beaten him there, and was relieved he wouldn’t be working with a team he didn’t even know. Four other members of the squad approached at the same time, and the squad leader said, “C Co and the command group have linked up with Ukrainian military in the terminal. They’re coordinating for help in clearing the tarmac, but we’re not waiting. Let’s go. Straight down the runway. We’re eating into our thirty.”

  From there, it became almost boring. As he had no specific skills to apply, he pulled security while the others hot-wired the vehicles sabotaging the runway, watching them drive away before leapfrogging to the next obstacle. Occasionally, he was ordered to help push a baggage cart out of the landing path, but it was feeling routine. Like an exercise.

  And then he heard the sound of guns in the distance. Three hundred meters away, on the northern corner, someone was shooting. He heard the thump of a 203 grenade, saw tracers arcing into the sky. Then the AC-130 Spectre gunship lit up the night.

  Appearing exactly like a hose spraying fire on the ground, the 20mm Gatling cannon began its destruction. Cycling six thousand rounds a minute, the one in six tracers looked like a continuous stream, the rounds coming out so fast that the human eye couldn’t separate them. The pummeling began, and a giant fuel-air explosion at the receiving end whited out Meglan’s NODs.

  The entire squad froze what they were doing, looking in the distance.

  Jesus Christ. What the fuck was that?

  44

  Meglan waited for his headset to explode, but no reporting came through. Whoever was fighting wasn’t a part of his element, and they weren’t on his net. The squad leader listened for a moment, having the privileged rank to hear both the internal and command nets. He said, “Roger all. Still clearing,” then said to his team, “Come on. The longer we fuck around, the longer it’ll take to get some firepower in here.”

  They raced down the runway toward the last airport tractor, a baggage cart hooked behind it and straddling the tarmac. Meglan’s team leader said, “What’s happening?”

  “Somebody tried to penetrate the perimeter with a technical. B Co smoked them.”

  They reached the tractor and the squad leader said, “Meglan, a vehicle may have flanked them, avoiding a fight. There’s too much motion around here for the AC to pinpoint friendly from enemy. Keep your eyes out. But for fuck’s sake, discriminate. Last thing we need is for you to smoke a bunch of Ukrainian military coming out to help.”

  Meglan nodded, thinking, How will I tell the difference? He took a knee and faced down the tarmac, toward the north. The chaos still swirled, parachutes falling from the sky, everything painted an eerie green in his NODs. He caught movement, dimly, a hundred meters away. It was a truck, racing down the tarmac toward them. He shouted, “Contact. Vehicle inbound.”

  On
e of his teammates looked up and said, “It’s the Ukrainians. Hold your fire.”

  “Why are their headlights off?”

  His squad leader, furiously working to hotwire the tractor, failed to hear the discussion. He cursed at the man above him, “Get the damn light on here.”

  Meglan watched the truck approach, coming close enough to see camouflage uniforms in the cab. He kept his weapon on them, but waved his off-hand, trying to get them to see him with the lack of night vision. Trying to show he was a friendly.

  He shouted, “It’s still approaching.”

  Working on the stranded vehicle, nobody heard him. The tractor finally fired up, and the squad leader rose from under the footwell just as the pickup truck came within thirty feet. Meglan saw two people rise from the bed, bringing rifles to bear over the cab, aimed at his team.

  Later, he would say it seemed to happen in slow motion, and that he was sure he wouldn’t be quick enough. But he was.

  He rose, his entire world coalescing on the green dot in his sight. He saw the men in the cab screaming, the muzzles beginning to flash, then felt the rounds popping by his head. He ignored it all, focusing on the little green dot, the center of his world. He began firing controlled pairs, just as he’d been drilled in RASP.

  One—two, shift, one—two, shift to the driver, one—two, shift to the passenger, one—two. . . . he scanned for another target, and found none.

  The vehicle rolled past them, one man hanging over the side, his finger still in the trigger guard, the AK-47 dragging along the ground.

  Meglan tracked the truck with his rifle as it went past, looking for another threat and letting out his pent-up breath.

  The quiet returned, and the squad leader started reporting the contact, telling the command team to get a friend-or-foe signal on the Ukrainians. They searched the truck, moving it off the tarmac, confirming it wasn’t the Ukrainian military—and confirming Meglan’s skills.