The Best Defense

by Todd A. Stone

  He looked down and sneered at Alexi. “Unlike others.”

  Alexi turned away from the body and tried to pull himself together.

  “I am sorry for the gun. My sources told me that General Roskotovitch would soon be inspecting your facility. It appeared to me—I did not know what to think.”

  “Coming to my command, eh?” He had received no official notice of such a visit. It was the last piece Viktor needed to decide that Alexi fully intended for him to be dead. Roskotovitch would arrive at a leaderless Master Warrior School and shut it down.

  But Roskotovitch was in Alexi’s pocket.

  Viktor grabbed Alexi by the lapels, slammed him against the wall, and held him there.

  “You will tell me everything,” Viktor said.

  “There is nothing to tell.”

  Viktor shook him so hard, Alexi’s neck almost snapped.

  “Talk!”

  Alexi talked. When he was done, Viktor let go. Alexi dropped into a heap. He sobbed on the floor until Viktor could stand it no longer. He hauled Alexi to his feet.

  “Alexi, look at me,” Viktor commanded. “Tell me what you see.”

  Alexi started to say “My brother,” but stopped. Viktor loomed over him by nearly a head, and Alexi thought that he had somehow grown since their last meeting. Muscles bulged beneath his suit, but there were also odd rolls of fat matched by puffiness in his face. The unnatural yellow of Viktor’s skin was clear even in the dim light, yet Alexi noticed that his forehead was flushed. His left eye twitched at the corner, and both were dark, bloodshot, and sunk deep in their sockets. Viktor’s nostrils flared with each breath. Spittle had formed in the corners of his mouth, much like a mad dog’s.

  Viktor grew impatient. “You see a Master Warrior, that is what you see! You see Russia’s savior, that is what you see!” His chest heaved. “Your greed has brought you to ruin, yet out of the ashes of your failure, my success will rise. I have already begun what needs to begin! Let the money run out, let Roskotovitch come.”

  Viktor slid his knife from inside his coat. There would be the fire Alexi had planned, Viktor thought, and bodies would be found. Two bodies would mean the assassin had perished along with his victim. Viktor felt sure that someone in the local police had already been paid off to quickly deem the deaths accidental—Alexi would have seen to that. To sacrifice the home was regrettable, but necessary. And it would perish as a good household should—in service to the Motherland. What was the loss of brick and board in pursuit of a goal? What was the loss of life in realizing a dream?

  “Viktor,” Alexi pleaded, “let us be friends.”

  In one smooth, practiced motion, Viktor stepped forward and slashed below Alexi’s chin. Blood spurted from the open artery. Alexi gurgled and clawed air as he fell.

  The Pentagon

  Office of the Army Representative

  Joint Threat Reduction Action Committee

  Ambrose put down the phone. Orders from the Secretary of the Army were orders, even if they originated in some politician’s office. It was the way the game was played.

  He knew he’d have to comply.

  And he knew that Jimmy Grimes, thinking he had saved his career, had just torpedoed it. Ambrose decided to give him something insignificant to do—maybe get those airspace usage permissions done—and then find him a nice home.

  Recruiting duty in Utah sounded ideal. There was no way Grimes had any more political capital to spend to fight him.

  Now the hard part.

  He called Val into his office and had her close the door.

  “Major Macintyre, you are being reassigned to command the Infernesk Special Munitions Depot effective in forty eight hours. The Personnel Management Office has already cut the orders. The unclassified paperwork reads that you’re assigned to Headquarters, Central Command. The classified amendments send you to Infernesk. There will be no mutual change of command ceremony because McRyen is already being escorted out of country—and out of the Army.”

  Val’s mouth dropped open. Then she slowly, bitterly shook her head.

  “God damn the bastard at PERSCOM who did this.”

  “PERSCOM didn’t make this assignment. I did.”

  She stared at him, eyes filled with astonishment, betrayal, and rage.

  “I don’t like it,” Ambrose said, “and I know you don’t either. However, there will shortly be every nuke the former Soviet satellite states used to own at Infernesk. I can’t think of a better officer to handle the mess.”

  “Sir, I…”

  Ambrose raised his hand to cut her off. This is one of the toughest times, he thought, when you send them out to do a hellishly tough mission. He’d learned the subtle danger of being sentimental. Sentiment wasn’t needed now—clear advice based on his experience and his intuition was. He was sorry he couldn’t force her to take that advice, but felt a little comfort that Val was a woman who would at least consider it.

  “There’s not much of time,” Ambrose said, “so I’m going to keep you from wasting what little there is. You’ll find a bag of shit when you get to Infernesk, because a shitbag’s been in charge of the place. Take charge quickly and forcefully, which you should find absolutely no problem, especially the ‘forcefully’ part. With that much sensitive material in one place, it’ll act as a magnet—security has to come first. You’ll get a classified briefing shortly. It’ll tell you little or nothing, because there’s little or nothing to tell. But they will tell you that there’s a US Army training detachment in Kazakhstan. Their cover is that they train and advise the Kazak Army and conduct liaison with the Infernesk depot. In reality, the Agency and our office have people there that do more than train. And remember that no matter whose country those weapons are in, they’re still United States Government Property and that they are on US government property. And they’re nukes. That’s all.”

  There was nothing for Val to do but salute, leave, and then go to back to the women’s room and cry.

  The call from Wolfe raised her spirits, but only a little.

  1255 Reading Road, Apartment 109

  Alexandria, Virginia

  Dinner was awkward—both Val and Wolfe fumbled attempts at conversation, and both repeatedly denied that something else was on their minds. They’d ordered a bottle of wine, then to give themselves something to do other than talk, they ordered another.

  They took the third to Val’s apartment. The alcohol mixed with their fear of conversation and their unspoken desire to be intimate. Wolfe cradled her head in his hands and kissed her. Never letting go, she guided him to her bedroom. Clothes fell to the floor, and flesh said what words could not. They made love until their spent bodies would respond no more.

  ~*~

  Two A.M. found Val at her kitchen table, wrapped in a kimono from her tour in Korea and alone except for her thoughts and a steaming mug of tea. In the early morning quiet she heard Wolfe—asleep in her bedroom—turn over. In the post-sex silence they’d simultaneously confessed their respective assignments to Russia.

  She sipped her tea. They’d figured out the geography and agreed to meet halfway between their two new duty stations. Given the nature and pace of their jobs, Val felt they’d be lucky to steal a weekend together every couple of months—maybe. So they would be together, but apart. It seemed it had always been that way. At Fort Bragg, Wolfe would disappear without warning, off to wherever his Special Forces or Delta Force missions took him. She stopped counting the times they’d held each other and kissed in passing, with Val deploying to support an XVIII Airborne Corps training exercise or contingency mission, and Wolfe returning from another I-can’t-tell-you-where-or-what classified operation.

  She’d joked that they’d ‘fought the same wars together—separately’. It was true: Kosovo. Saudi. Afghanistan. Even their tour in Korea, the deployment to Haiti, and their stint at the Pentagon.

  And now Russia.

  Val wondered if Wolfe would ever slow down, if he’d ever put down a rifle or take of
f a parachute long enough to feel. The life he lived, Wolfe told her, was what he wanted. He said it was who he was. She remembered an article where a psychologist wrote that the traits that made the toughest field soldiers so effective often made them impossible to live with. She thought there was a lot of truth to that.

  She also thought about the pot calling the kettle black.

  As she contemplated their past and their future, she heard his footsteps and so wasn’t surprised when she felt his hand on her shoulder.

  “Looks like you got lot on your mind.”

  She reached up and took his hand. “Yours too.”

  Wolfe gently squeezed her shoulder. “If you get in trouble, I’ll be there.”

  “I know how to command a unit.”

  “Never said you didn’t—although I wouldn’t want to serve under you. You’d be too damn hard to work for. But I worry about you.”

  “The last time I told you that, you said you were a big boy and could take care of yourself.”

  A long moment passed. Wolfe took his hand from her shoulder and softly stroked her hair. Val softened, then pushed the chair back and faced him. His hand traced the curves of her shoulders and ribs down to the kimono’s belt. In one movement, he tugged it loose and slipped the garment off her shoulders. As the kimono hit the floor, Wolfe put one arm around her shoulders, put the other behind her bare knees, and hoisted a very naked Val Macintyre into his arms. Her arms wrapped around his neck, she giggled all the way to the bedroom.

  Commander’s Quarters

  Special Security Regiment 23

  Master Warrior School

  Ditchnesk, Russia

  He sat facing a closed door in a windowless room with white walls and floors. A wide white bench, its top just below waist height, stood behind him. Though the space was unfamiliar, he was nonetheless comfortable. He knew the door must soon open, and as he thought so it did.

  She entered to stand before him. The woman was tall and strikingly beautiful. Long, straight, golden-blonde hair fell past her shoulders. Two perfect doe eyes looked pleadingly at him. Her skin, he knew just by sight, was the ultimate in softness, smoothness, and warmth. She wore a sheer, thigh-length white robe. Beneath it he could see her breasts, large and full, pressing their pinkness against the fabric. His gaze ran down her flat belly, past curved hips to where golden curls of pubic hair were barely visible through the thin material.

  At just the right moment—when he had looked at her enough but not too much—she undid her sash. The robe fell to her feet and seemed to disappear. Taking one step forward, she stepped on top of a small pedestal. He hadn’t noticed it before. She turned slowly, submitting herself to his inspection. His eyes traced the curves of her buttocks. As if sensing his eyes, she ran her fingertips over her thighs, her painted nails a vivid red against the white of her skin.

  She stepped down and knelt before him. He stood, noticing for the first time that he wore a deep burgundy robe. She rose, and obedient to his silent command, went to the bench, which he now saw had shackles at the bottom of each leg. She bent and fixed her ankles in place, spreading her legs wide. She had to stretch to get her hips up over the bench’s edge, and in doing so exposed herself even more to him. Then she lay back and passed first one arm, then the other, over her head and down until her wrists, too, were cuffed close to the floor.

  She lay there waiting for him. In that moment he both loved and hated her, felt both like beating her senseless and surrendering to his desire to sink into her warmth. He stepped forward between her legs, pulled open his robe, reached out to part her thighs…

  The dream shattered and he sat up in bed, his body and mind lashed by exhaustion and anxiety. The bedclothes were sweated through.

  He believed the dreams to be his one weakness, and he hated himself for it.

  His mind was sharp from years of study, mastering all that three universities and every volume of his father’s collected research had offered. His body was toughened from many, many field exercises, from years of vigorous exercise, and from his experiments where subject and researcher were one. He had long ago given over his soul to his life’s work.

  But like his outbursts of rage and mood swings, the dreams occurred more frequently now. He quelled them, mentally shoving them aside with his warrior’s will. They were side effects of the hormones, he told himself, nothing that training and discipline could not easily contain. He had given blood for his work. Now that blood, enhanced by a precise blend of hormones and chemical gene manipulators, was the serum given to those he called his chosen. They would be Master Warriors of one mind, of one will. That the serum was not yet perfect was no matter. He was close, and he would not allow sex-shop fantasies to derail the work of a lifetime and the heritage of a nation.

  The tumbler on his beside table was half full of vodka. He drained it and closed his eyes.

  Chapter Five

  Central Area Parade Ground

  Infernesk Special Munitions Depot

  “Dee-tachment, attennn-shun!”

  To witness the official arrival of their new boss, the American garrison of the Infernesk Special Munitions Depot stood at attention on the small parade ground in the depot’s central area.

  “Preesennt, arms!”

  Responding to Denight’s bellowed commands, the women and men in the formation brought their right hands up until their fingertips just touched the front rim of their helmets. They counted in their ranks eighty-five men and women, including their new commander, Major Val Macintyre.

  These soldiers secured, serviced, and processed the tens of thousands of tons of crated conventional and nuclear ammunition stored at the depot. Some of these huge bullets were made to be fired from artillery pieces. Others fit on the business end of short-range surface-to-surface missiles. Still others had been designed to be planted in the ground, and when detonated leave a crater the size of a small stadium to impede an attacker’s advance.

  Of the treaties and agreements that had brought the munitions to their depot the soldiers knew little. They knew only that the truckloads of aging and deadly “special” munitions in green, banded metal boxes with “special” markings needed to be unloaded, inspected, logged in, serviced, and finally stored in an aging facility. It did, in fact, take the bulk of the garrison several days to move munitions off the parade ground where their formation now stood for the change of command ceremony.

  “Orrrder, arms!”

  She let her eyes wander over the depot’s buildings, which formed her horizon and her new command. Around her the office, repair, and storage buildings formed an unappealing hodgepodge of gray stone, peeling-paint covered wood, and faded metal. Beyond her hemmed-in sight more of those same buildings sprawled the equivalent of four city blocks square.

  Val scowled and turned her eyes to the formation. An Operations Section of a dozen-plus soldiers. A tall, defiant master sergeant in front of a military police platoon of thirty or so. An Administrative section of twenty, a sergeant first class out in front. An under strength special Engineer platoon, maybe another twenty soldiers. The hodgepodge that called itself headquarters section made up the rest. The soldiers stood in ragged lines, helmets half-cocked, their softness showing through the baggy uniforms.

  This is everything I never wanted in a command, Val thought bitterly. It can’t get any worse than this.

  She stepped forward and walked to the guidon bearer for the passing of the colors, the symbolic changing of command. With McRyen relieved and quietly ushered into civilian life, a perky and clearly unsure of herself lieutenant served as outgoing commander. As a clerk read the orders, the sergeant major took the depot’s guidon and handed it to Christine, who in turn handed it to Val. She was about to pass it back to the sergeant major when one of the troops let out a shrill scream. She turned her head to see three soldiers lying face down in the grass where they had pitched forward. Four others clustered around them, finally dragging them off.

  “Must have locked their knees,
” whispered the sergeant major as he took the guidon from Val and handed it back to its bearer. “Shuts off the blood flow and down they go.” He shrugged his shoulders in resignation.

  He didn’t have to say it, but Val saw it clearly in Denight’s barely stifled sneer.

  Just like a woman.

  I was wrong, she thought. It just got worse.

  Training Area 6

  Master Warrior School

  Ditchnesk, Russia

  From a treeline at the base of the hill, Captain Bruno Volodymr’s Second Company rose and charged forward en masse. Like a rising gray tide, the Special Security troops drove uphill towards the “enemy” emplacements, their AKM-104 automatic rifles blazing away. They had advanced twenty yards from their jump-off positions when explosions bracketed their line, followed by the deadly stutter of machine gun bullets passing overhead or angrily burrowing into the dirt around them.

  Although men fell, Volodymr’s line pressed on, crashing into and through a loosely strung barbed wire obstacle. As the human wave passed, it left the lifeless flotsam of three troopers entangled in the wire. On the objective proper, Volodymr’s assaulting of troops overran the defenders’ string of emplacements, spraying the bunkers and heaving grenades into open enemy positions.

  In the observation tower overlooking the attack lane, Stanev had seen enough. Disgusted, he turned away.

  “Come along, 2IC.” A lieutenant, second in command of Stanev’s company, followed him.

  The observation tower had been built on the side of the hill, and Stanev walked slowly down its steps to where a gaggle of training sergeants loitered at its base. One older NCO quietly held himself apart from the others, and Stanev recognized the gray-haired man as Steglyr, the senior operations sergeant. The rest of the cadre were smoking and laughing, waiting their turn to prod Stanev’s company through the unit live-fire assault course just as other cadre sergeants had prodded Volodymr’s. None of them moved to help the troopers hit during Volodymr’s attack.