Ghosts of War

by Brad Taylor

  “What are we doing?”

  “We had a Marine armor battalion in Kiev. They’ve now gone forward, and we’ve repositioned some artillery. It’s not enough to protect them if Russia is determined to attack, but hopefully it’ll be enough to give the Russians pause about offensive action. We are on the cusp of a major fight, and if it culminates, we’re going to lose.”

  Lose? I had never heard those words spoken about the United States’s might in the entire time I had been in the US military. I wasn’t even sure I’d heard correctly. I said, “What do you mean?”

  “I mean this is about to be a shooting war, and not like Iraq or Afghanistan, where we owned the monopoly of violence. We go to war here, with what we’ve got, and we’re going to lose. We’re trying to build up, but it won’t happen quickly enough. Those brigades will be wiped out, and Russia will roll through, taking the Baltic states without much of a fight. We can’t stop them.”

  “What about NATO?”

  “They just don’t have the combat power. They can keep the Russians from overrunning Europe—mainly through stretching out the Russian supply lines—but they can’t prevent a massacre in the ring states bordering Russia. We don’t think Russia wants that, but we’re reaching critical mass where it won’t matter what anyone wants. We’re working the issue here, tamping down the trigger, but if those fucks you’re chasing do anything, we won’t be able to stop the outcome.”

  I took that in, sitting in a hotel surrounded by residents who had no idea how close they were to fleeing for their lives. Wondering if the people in Warsaw in 1939 had been just as unknowing. I said, “So hit Mikhail tonight, regardless?”

  Kurt rubbed his eyes and said, “Yeah. Hit them. Hard. But not hard enough to trigger your own international incident. The last thing we need is a conspiracy theory spreading in Poland that Russian sleeper cells have invaded. The Poles are on a hair trigger.”

  I said, “Sir . . . you’re putting me in a tough spot here. I mean, it’s looking pretty optimal for an assault—but it might not be.”

  He nodded, saying, “I know. Take them off the board.”

  I said, “Roger all, sir, but if I get this done, President Hannister had better buy me a beer at a place of my choosing.”

  He laughed and said, “You prevent World War Three, and I think I can arrange that.”

  63

  The time had passed slowly for Mikhail. The man guarding him had shown no inclination to talk, and in fact had only moved once, to turn on small battery-powered lanterns once the sun had set. Mikhail had asked for food, and then water, and had been ignored both times. He was about to try again when he heard movement outside the room. The guard heard it too and went outside, closing the door behind him.

  Mikhail strained to hear what was happening. Conversation floated through the door. Greetings, then murmured discussions. The interrogators had arrived.

  Left alone in the room, Mikhail frantically began to work the handcuff on his wrist. He’d been trained on defeating restraints, and had jammed his hand forward when the cuff began to close on his wrist, driving it up into the meatier part of his arm, but he hadn’t gained much space. He checked the other end, finding the bed frame solid. Whoever had made the frame had intended it to outlast the concrete of the building. The iron would require a welder to get through.

  He stood as far as he could, stretching out, reaching toward the dresser for his phone. If he could get it, he could call the Night Wolves. They were currently in the suburb of Praga just across the Vistula River, sitting and waiting on the briefcase here in the apartment. He could let those suicidal maniacs shoot it out with the Russian intelligence men. It wasn’t a perfect solution, since he’d probably get shot in the crossfire, but it was better than waiting for Russian interrogators to peel him open.

  He came a foot short from the dresser. He stretched forward, and the bed refused to move. He tore the skin on his wrist and gave up. His mind running through options, he focused on the window above the bed. He leaned toward it, now stretching in the opposite direction, and saw a rusting fire escape. He hoped it was as sturdy as the bed, but with his luck, it would be made of low-grade steel and would collapse at the lightest touch.

  He frantically studied the bed frame, looking for a weakness. He found none. He heard the door to the room open and whirled around, seeing two new men entering. One was short, about five foot four, with eyes set close together, making him look like a ferret. The other was of average height, but obese, his gut spilling out over his belt. Hunched over, his manacled hand preventing him from standing upright, Mikhail warily stared at them.

  The obese man said, “Don’t bother attempting to escape. We made sure to find a secure place. Don’t make this hard on yourself. Sit down.”

  He did so, causing the old bedsprings to groan in protest.

  The short man surveyed the top of the dresser, flipping through Mikhail’s passport. He turned and said, “Israeli. That is a surprise. How do you speak Russian?”

  Mikhail said, “I learned it in school.”

  “And what school would that be?”

  Mikhail remained mute.

  The man lashed out, smacking him in the face, saying, “This isn’t a give-and-take. It’s only a take. You need to understand that early.”

  —

  I called Retro as soon as I hung up with Kurt, saying, “We’re going in tonight. Give me an assault plan.”

  He said, “Pike, I haven’t seen anything since they entered. We’re going in without any further information. What’s driving the change?”

  I ignored the question. “Have you seen enough to get us to the apartment they’re in? Without any reconnaissance from the team? Can you get an assault force to the door?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a target package built. Veep’s sending it now, but like I said, I don’t know anything more than I did when you dropped us off. What’s happening?”

  I told him what I’d learned. The bottom line was, we were assaulting tonight, and like the good soldier he was, he didn’t question. I ended with, “Can you get us in?”

  All he said was, “That depends. Are they designated a hostile force?”

  The definition of that term held a specific weight, much more than the benign words would indicate. In the law of land warfare, it meant we didn’t need to discriminate when we found a target. We didn’t need to determine if the individual was friend or foe, as we did with hostage rescue. For all practical purposes, it made the apartment like fighting the Germans in World War II: See someone in a German uniform, and you could kill him. The difference here was that nobody was wearing a uniform—which is why someone had to make the official call that the force we were going against was hostile. And Kurt had done so.

  Knuckles came in, holding another laptop. He said, “Got the target package. From thermal, it looks like one on the first-floor landing, the rest inside the apartment. Third floor, south tower.”

  I nodded and said, “That still accurate, Retro?”

  “Yes. Two of them are in a kitchen next to the courtyard window, neither of them Mikhail. You get me the Punisher, from my position I can definitely eliminate one, possibly both, depending on reaction time. I can’t get a shot at the guy inside the landing.”

  The Punisher was a custom long-gun built on the AR platform in 6.5 Creedmoor, a round with extreme accuracy that could reach out past a thousand yards. It broke down at the stock, making it portable, and was muffled by a Gemtech Dagger suppressor, leaving only the supersonic crack of the bullet to worry about. It was a bit of overkill, given the distance between Retro and the target, but with its surgical precision and our need to ensure one-shot placement, I’d get it to him.

  Knuckles said, “Punisher’s already packed for transport, along with a .300 Blackout for Veep.”

  I said, “Okay, Retro, be prepared to linkup in an hour. You got a spot for t
hat?”

  “Yeah. There’s a disco just up Walicow called Club 70. It’s hopping right now, with people spilling into the street. Pull into the parking lot on the south side. I’ll send Veep to meet you there.”

  “Atmospherics?”

  “Good. Everyone here is a squatter, and there sure as shit aren’t any phone lines. Nobody’s going to interfere. You keep it at least halfway quiet, and we can be in and out without trouble.”

  “Okay, give us thirty and I’ll call—” He interrupted me. “Break, break, Pike, another vehicle just rolled up. Two men exited. They aren’t dressed like the squatters here, and nobody in this place could afford a car.”

  I waited for a moment, and he came back on. “The landing guard just came outside and talked to them, then they went in. The vehicle’s staged just outside the courtyard. It’s a van. I think they’re packing up to leave.”

  Crap. “Okay. We’re rolling. I’ll radio when we leave the parking lot. It’s about five minutes to you. Keep eyes on, then start Veep moving to linkup when I call.”

  64

  The weasel-eyed man set the passport on the dresser and picked up Mikhail’s cell phone. He nodded to the obese one and they left the room. Mikhail knew why. They were going to analyze it first, then build a list of questions off what they found.

  Mikhail spent the next ten minutes looking for something he could exploit, searching the bed frame for a rusted bolt or gap, examining each link of the handcuff, and testing whether he could remove his hand. His efforts ended with him ripping his skin enough to draw blood, but the bones of his hands prevented further movement.

  He was considering shattering them with the frame of the bed, turning his hand to jelly, when the door opened again. This time, the fat man held a roll of duct tape, and Weasel-Eyes was carrying a satchel. He said, “Interesting mix of information on that cell phone, but nothing on Simon’s location.”

  He opened the satchel, and Mikhail saw several syringes, full of liquid. The man nodded to his partner, and the fat man stripped out several lengths of duct tape, draping them onto the dresser. Mikhail outwardly showed fear, but felt some hope.

  Please let me out of the handcuffs.

  The weasel placed a wooden chair in the center of the room, withdrew a Makarov pistol, and centered it on Mikhail. Fatman released Mikhail from the handcuffs and sat him in the chair, saying, “The procedures we’re going to do don’t work well with you chained.” He smiled and said, “The metal could become a threat to your life, and we can’t have that. Hold your wrists out.”

  Mikhail did so, absolutely not resisting. He put his hands together as if he were praying, palms facing each other, fingers extended out.

  The man strapped the duct tape around Mikhail’s wrists. Mikhail remained still to ensure that none of the folds tucked under, leaving the wrapping pure, and he succeeded. Now he had an out.

  Duct tape was an effective restraint that had been used on many, many terrorist victims. In Israel, they’d once found an operative wrapped in duct tape and shot in the back of the head. The Mossad had set out to defeat the restraint. To give a man some ability to escape. After some research, they’d found a way. When wrapped around the arms at the wrist, with the hands together, it could be broken as easily as the captor tearing the strip of tape to perform the wrap. The key was that there could be no folds, no underwraps or contortions in the binding. If someone wrapped the arms leaving the edges clean, as if they were simply wrapping the tape back onto the roll, it could be torn using leverage.

  Mikhail had been forced to practice the escape over and over, hating it at the time, but now silently thanking his instructors.

  The satchel man showed Mikhail the syringes and said, “I would like to use these right from the beginning, but unfortunately, it has a tendency to fry your brain. Once I have the information, I have no capability to go back. I’ll get what you know, but I have to ask the right questions, and I’m not even sure what they are at this point, which leaves me in a quandary. I must have Simon. Failure here will bring me the same fate I’m bringing you.”

  Mikhail started to say something, and the man held out his hand. “No. Don’t bother. I have done this many times. You can tell me all you know freely, but I can’t trust it. You know that. I have to be sure.”

  —

  I gave orders on the fly, which would seem to be risky, but really wasn’t that much of an issue, because this wasn’t a complex operation. Our primary problem was the guard on the first floor. We needed to eliminate him before he could alert the others in the apartment. If we did that, we could initiate the assault with Retro’s sniper shot, overwhelm them with violence of action, and capture Mikhail alive. Although that was truly a side note.

  If he chose to fight, he’d be dead. Simple as that.

  I said, “Aaron, Knuckles and I will assault. Jennifer drives for exfil. Shoshana provides rear security. I’ll go in singleton, taking out the man on the landing. Once he’s down, we’ll flow to the third floor.” I looked at Shoshana. “You come in with them, and remain behind on the landing.”

  She said, “I should go in first.”

  I started to snap at her but she interrupted me, saying, “You won’t get within five feet of that landing before the guard calls you in. Even if you kill him, the damage will be done. I can reach him without that. I’m no threat. He’ll think I belong there.”

  What she said made perfect sense, on the surface. I said, “You sure?”

  She knew what I was asking. She said, “Yes, Nephilim. I’m sure. I know who I am. I’m no different than you.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. I asked, “And? What’s that mean?”

  “And you take a life only for the good. I have no problem killing here.”

  Whew. “Okay, but you’re not coming up with us. I need someone on the landing, and I’m not swapping out Aaron for you again.”

  “You’re just scared of me.”

  I nodded and said, “Yeah, yeah I am.”

  That brought a smile. I turned back to the group and said, “The apartment is the farthest to the west. Once Shoshana’s got her man down, we’ll move up the stairs and stack on it. I’ll call Retro, and when we hear the shot, we’ll breach. Knuckles, you got the Bam-Bam. Hostile force ROE. You see anyone besides Mikhail, take them out.”

  Knuckles said, “And Mikhail?”

  “You see him and he presents a threat, kill him too.”

  As I finished my sentence, Jennifer pulled into the small parking lot adjacent to Club 70, threading her way to the back. The club entrance on Walicow Street was crowded with young men and women either waiting to enter, or just hanging out, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. She parked in the corner where the club building met a wall and I said, “Stand by here. Listen close on the radio. When I call, you come running. Drive right into the courtyard and stage nose-out for exfil.”

  Knuckles said, “There’s Veep.”

  I glanced toward the club entrance and saw Nicholas Seacrest threading through the cars, a lit cigarette between his lips. I said, “Break out his pack.”

  Knuckles slid a duffel bag forward, saying, “All in there.”

  I pulled open the side door of the van and said, “Your dad know you smoke?”

  Veep smiled and said, “Just bummed it from a guy who asked me a question. Blending in.”

  I said, “You speak Polish?”

  “Uhh . . . no. That’s why I bummed the cigarette.”

  “Some blending.” He looked embarrassed, then realized I was just ribbing him. I slid the bag forward and said, “You got the Punisher in here for Retro and a 300 for you. How long will it take you to get back?”

  “No longer than four minutes. We found a stairwell that leads right to the roof. The only climbing is into a window on the back side of the building.”

  “Then get going. You call
set, and it’s showtime.”

  65

  Ignoring the command to remain silent, trying to buy time, Mikhail said, “I have no idea where Simon is. We do business occasionally. He asked me to make this purchase, and I agreed.”

  Weasel-Eyes turned to the side of the dresser and picked up the briefcase. He flipped open the latches, then turned it around, facing Mikhail. “Yes, I’m sure that’s true. You agreed to buy a deadly amount of radioactive waste just because he asked you to, and you have no idea what it’s for or how to get it to him.”

  Mikhail said, “I was supposed to pass it to another man, tomorrow. He’ll know where Simon’s located.”

  The man held up a finger, saying, “Unfortunately, I don’t believe you. We’ll have to start with the old methods. And they can be brutal.”

  He sat the briefcase down and pulled out a long, thin filleting knife. The fat man placed a digital recorder on the dresser, turning it on. The weasel with the knife said, “I ordinarily ask a couple of questions first, to establish a baseline, but after seeing your passport, I’m fairly sure that would be worthless.”

  He cut the buttons off Mikhail’s shirt, popping them slowly, one after another. He was halfway down when a muted crack split the air.

  —

  We waited for what seemed like an eternity, me looking out the window every five seconds to see if anyone was paying attention to us. They were not. Finally, Retro came on. “I’m set. Target acquired. Only one in the scope right now.”

  “And the guy on the landing?”

  “Still there.”

  I looked at Shoshana and she nodded. I said, “We’re rolling.”

  Aaron slid open the door. Knuckles grabbed our own duffel bag and stepped out. Shoshana and I followed. We reached the crowd and Shoshana slid her hand into mine. Just another couple of folks headed to the disco.

  We passed through the crowd without incident, then crossed the street, getting back into the darkness, all the lamps either shattered or burned out. Two blocks down and we were at the entrance to the courtyard, the van from the two unknowns blocking the view of anyone watching from the street.