The Best Defense

by Todd A. Stone

  “You two are acting like my parents when they would argue. We kids would ask what was going on and they’d both say ‘nothing’. It was crazy-making, seeing them eaten up with worry and then be told everything was okay.”

  Denight glanced over at Val, who nodded.

  “There’s a another scenario,” Denight said, turning to Christine. “The first assumes those Special Security guys on the hill are our allies. The second assumes they’re hostile.”

  Val picked up where Denight stopped. “In that scenario, Lieutenant, their unit, either independently or as a vanguard for a larger force, is targeting us for an attack.”

  “But the Russians are our allies,” Christine objected.

  “That’s an assumption,” said Val. “If you assume that, then the first possibility is the most likely.”

  “But if you assume that there is an enemy out there,” Denight said, “then those guys watching us are the most likely candidates.” He looked away for a few seconds, as if caught up in a memory. “Assuming that the enemy is there and is watching and is capable of action is a damn sight less costly than doing nothing.”

  “So what do we do now?” asked Christine.

  “We keep doing what we’re doing—only more so.”

  Commander’s office

  Infernesk munitions depot

  Val wadded the eleventh draft of her defense order into a ball, tossed it at her office waste can, and missed. The crumpled paper landed on the floor alongside ten other tries. She warmed her coffee from the carafe on her desk, then picked up her pen to begin attempt number twelve.

  Denight knocked on the door and let himself in.

  “Tell me I’m not crazy, Sergeant Major,” Val said quietly, her eyes locked onto his. “Tell me this isn’t all in my head.”

  Denight stared back, unblinking. A long moment passed.

  “No, Ma’am. It’s not all in your head. They’re coming for us. There are too many indicators. The Russians are methodical and precise.”

  Val looked at him quizzically.

  “Penetration of the target area—that’s us—by deep planted agents, and those agents take risks, like our ‘janitor’ did, only when they feel the payoff is so high and the target’s reaction time so short that risks are justified.”

  Val nodded.

  “Then there’s those guys on the hill,” Denight continued. “Near, but not close-in, reconnaissance of the objective. Next would come some kind of probing attack to feel out our defenses, then finally the main attack, aimed at a weak point identified during that recon. It’s coming, all right. If it were Charlie, I’d say in seventy-two hours, maybe a week at the outside. With this enemy though, I can’t be sure.”

  Val stared silently out her office window. Then she snapped her fingers as the answer came to her.

  “Sergeant Major, those Special Security goons that are watching us from the inn have to know what’s up. It’s time we got them to tell us.”

  Denight jumped up out of his chair and rubbed his hands together in near glee.

  “Hot damn! Now you’re talking, Ma’am. I knew you’d see it my way. You just let me get my hands on those yardbirds and I’ll make them sing. You want to know what kind of force we’re facing? No problem. After an hour or so with me they’ll give us the unit roster.”

  Val smiled. “Now that’s an interesting thought, Sergeant Major. So tell me, after we kidnap two—or more—elite members of the Russian Army, and you ‘persuade’ them to talk, what do we do with them?”

  “We hold them as prisoners of war until we can evacuate them to higher.”

  “Ignoring the fact that these people are officially our allies and that CENTCOM is compromised, what then?”

  “Uhh...”

  “I’ll tell you what then, Sergeant Major. Then a higher headquarters that doesn’t believe anything is wrong sends the MPs to arrest us both for kidnapping. The Russians file an official protest. Their plan—whatever it is—goes on hold temporarily—and they wait for a better time while we first get relieved and then thrown in jail.”

  Val shook her head. “We need them to tell us what they know, but your way, straight up the middle, won’t do it. They’ll lie, they’ll resist, and they’ll stall. By the time we get the information we need, the court system will be hauling us off to a couple of padded cells.” Val stared thoughtfully out the window, then scribbled notes on the legal pad.

  “If I can’t get the straight poop out of them,” Denight said, “who will?”

  “We’re going to hit them with the thing they least expect. This, Sergeant Major, is women’s work.”

  A very confused Denight paced around the room while his commander wrote.

  Unit Supply Room

  Infernesk Munitions Depot

  There was no one in sight when Denight opened the door to the unit supply and storage area, but that wasn’t unusual. The NCO in charge of everything from rifle cleaning kits to bed sheets often busied herself in the back, sorting, rearranging, and performing unauthorized repairs on equipment so old and so worn that it should have been turned in a long time ago. Yet Sgt. Yvonne Stoinevy, like Denight, knew that to turn it in was to go without, for the depot’s equipment budget—of which she was also keeper—held only a pittance for replacements.

  She’s not a half-bad supply sergeant, Denight said to himself as he ran his eyes over the rows of neatly stacked equipment. Part horse trader and part grease monkey.

  “Stoinevy,” Denight roared, “get the hell out here.”

  “Wait one.” A moment later Stoinevy emerged from the back, her face streaked and hands half-covered with an oily black grime. “Just doing a little maintenance on one of the winches,” she said as she fished a rag out of a pile. “It would take us six months to get it back from direct support maintenance if we turned it in.”

  “Stop what you’re doing and get the things on this list.” He held the folded paper over the supply room’s counter.

  Yvonne wiped her face, then cleaned the top layer of oil off her hands. She took the list from him, looked it over, then looked him over.

  “This shit sure ain’t issue. Just what kind of kinky party are you planning in the headquarters?”

  Denight blushed three shades of red. “Goddamnit, everybody’s a comedian. The commander made up that list, and she wants the stuff yesterday. You control our PX issue, you go find the stuff out of the allocation we get and bring it to her office.”

  She looked over the list again. “You know the sizes?”

  “No, I don’t know the damn sizes. I don’t wear any of that shit.”

  “I should hope not, Sergeant Major. Hmm.” She stopped to force back a smile. “The major, huh?” Stoinevy asked with mock innocence. “What exactly do you think she means by ‘provocative’?”

  “I haven’t the faintest fucking idea what she means!” he roared as he pounded the counter in front of him. “You’re a supply sergeant, you supply this shit! It’s for the major, and the lieutenant, and Horowitz, Krauss, and Dailey.”

  “Okay, okay, Sergeant Major.” She grinned at his embarrassment. “I can figure their sizes. I’ll handle it.”

  “Roger that. And fast. Now I gotta go check training again.” He turned and left, slamming the door on his way out.

  Inn Castle Infernesk

  “We look like American sluts,” Christine said.

  “Let’s hope some looks are universal,” said Val.

  The inn’s bar area was small. At a table near the door, two big men with military haircuts and ill-fitting civilian clothes tossed back vodka.

  The men leered the five women as they walked in. They women eyed them back.

  The blonde one winked at Christine.

  I’m gonna puke, Christine thought as she smiled.

  ~*~

  He’d been waiting for almost three hours in the stairwell down the hallway from room 202, when finally Denight heard the door swing open. He glanced quickly over his shoulder, saw the women exit, then m
ade his way downstairs to the inn’s parking lot. Less than a minute later he had the sedan at the inn’s door. With the calm precision of a drill team, Val, Christine, and sergeants Krauss, Horowitz, and Dailey slid in. A second sedan with their back-up fell in behind as Denight cleared the parking lot.

  “What did you get,” Denight asked, “from your first attempt at undercover work?”

  “If it was my first attempt, Sergeant Major,” Val replied curtly, “I probably wouldn’t have gotten anything. As it is, we got two very drunk and very gullible Special Security Intel troops—Alexi Muptsky and Ilia Dorvenko—passed out on their beds. We got that they are in direct support of a regiment of the Special Security, one which will pay the depot a visit to ‘protect us’ from something or someone. We got enough to do some planning.” She glanced over her shoulder.

  “It was that easy, Ma’am? What about the language differences?”

  Her sentences were clipped and her voice clear and flat to hold back the anger.

  “It was that easy. They all speak English these days, and seduction is the same in any language. We put on something slinky, painted our faces, showed a little leg and gave them a lot of booze, and we got it all on tape. It doesn’t take Mata Hari, Sergeant Major. And I got a real bad taste in my mouth.”

  The rest of the ride back toward the depot was tense and silent. To Denight—who with his hair and eyebrows dyed gray to give the impression of age and weakness had “pulled security” by waiting in the hallway to insure that no one disturbed Val and her crew—it seemed that there would be much to discuss. Yet the women were quiet, and after Val explained the nature and timing of the threats, she and the others fell into silent brooding, speaking only to ask for more tissues to wipe the thick makeup off their faces.

  “You’ve just pulled off a successful, high-risk operation,” Denight said when at last the silence grew too heavy. “Instead of celebrating, or even discussing the action, you act like you just came back from your best friend’s funeral. Now who’s going to ‘fess up with what’s up, or do I have to give you the third degree? Major?”

  “Oh, nothing, Sergeant Major. Just thinking.”

  “More accurate would be ‘just being eaten alive’. Now what’s up?”

  He looked in the rear view mirror and caught Christine’s eye. She just shrugged and stared out the window.

  “I’ll tell you, Sergeant Major,” Claire Horowitz spat out, “though I doubt you’ll understand. Every one of us has trained for years to be a professional, to get what we want by our wits and skills and just plain hard work. It’s not supposed to be how we look, it’s supposed to be how we do our jobs that counts—you know, competency? And this time it clearly wasn’t. I feel, and I think everybody here does, that it’s pretty damn sorry and pretty damn cheapening when it’s not our competency, but how big our boobs are, that gets us what we want.”

  “Something like that,” chimed in Christine.

  “I’m still not sure I understand,” said Denight. “You identified the enemy’s vulnerabilities and exploited them. Not much wrong with that.”

  “It’s like the only way for a woman to win,” Josie Dailey added, “is to be a dumb blonde.”

  They rode quietly for a few more moments, then Val shook her head. She looked over her shoulder into the back seat, studied Horowitz, shook her head again, then turned back to the front.

  “Sergeant Horowitz?”

  “Yes, Ma’am?”

  “I can assure you that your boobs were not a decisive factor in this mission.”

  “What’s wrong with my…?”

  The others roared, and Denight blushed.

  “Ladies,” Val began, now that the air had been cleared, “before we get a chance to replay those tapes, lets cross-check our information. What training did the blonde scumbag—Dorvenko—say he’d participated in? Lieutenant, take notes. Sergeant Dailey, you first...”

  Chapter Nine

  Access Road #2

  Infernesk Munitions Depot

  Val found Denight placing booby traps between the buildings.

  “You just don’t get it,” Val said, shaking her head, “do you, Sergeant Major?”

  “Get what?”

  “This defense plan of ours. You just don’t see the problem, do you?”

  “No, Goddamnit, Ma’am, I don’t,” he shot back, angered at the change he felt was coming. “Every section’s got a place to dig in along an avenue of approach. We fortify the area around the perimeter and we keep ‘em out. It’s a straight-up, no-fancy-stuff perimeter defense. It’s a bunch of grunts holding a piece of ground. What’s the problem with that? If I’ve done it once, I’ve done it a hundred times, and I have done it a hundred times.”

  “That’s part of the problem. You’ve done it a hundred times. So have the Russians. A straight-up defense with green troops against an enemy who can do straight-up assaults in their sleep. We’re playing their game instead of making them play ours.”

  “This unit, and I use the term loosely, isn’t trained well enough to do anything fancy. We’ll be lucky if they get all the holes dug in time. The ground’s hard as hell around here.”

  “You mean ‘these women’, and women have generally less upper body strength and endurance than men, so it’ll take them even longer to dig in.”

  “You’re right. We’d better start tonight.”

  It was her turn to get mad. “Sergeant Major, use your brain and your eyes! Can we outfight the Special Security in a one-on-one fight in open or wooded terrain? Can we out-muscle a bunch of Special Security goons hand to hand? How about running faster to reposition, can we go backwards faster than they can attack forwards? And just about every open inch of this depot is under observation—can we hide any of what we’re doing? Who has the deck stacked in their favor, us or them? Place your bet.”

  A hundred yards past the bunkers, just beyond the security fence, the trees of the forest formed a dark, black mass. You could hide a whole regiment in there easy, Denight thought, maybe two. Foot and a half high grass grew in the open spaces between the bunkers, those open spaces naturally funneling movement toward the central area.

  He let out a long, heavy sigh. “Them. So it’s hopeless. I guess I’d better devise an evacuation plan.” Inside him the feeling came back, the empty tiredness spreading and choking down the spark that had fired him the last few days.

  “It’s not hopeless,” she said quietly. “We don’t have to give in. Think about it this way. Suppose you had an infantry regiment and you had to clear this depot. Suppose you knew that inside it were a bunch of people, who knew every inch of it, who had fortified every room and every hallway. Suppose they just gave you the outside. Would you take the mission?”

  “Not until I’d pulled every trick in the book to try and get some other dumb sonofabitch to take it. Combat in a built-up area is just plain nasty—no, it’s the nastiest. I remember Hue. Damn place swallowed up whole companies at a time. It took us poor bastards forever to root Charlie out of there, and our guys got their asses shot up every time they turned a corner. Nobody knew shit about cityfighting then—we learned the hard way, and Charlie outsmarted us six times a day. He’d lay a trap and we’d just waltz into it dumber than shit. Same thing happened to the Rangers in Somalia. “

  “Well?”

  Denight looked first at the forest, then at the buildings, then back at the dark trees.

  “It just ain’t natural. Grunts like to fight in the woods.”

  “We’ll let them. And we’ll make them think that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

  In his mind a plan formed. Denight tried to fight it, but no matter how he twisted and dodged, it kept coming back to him. Cover from direct fire. Familiarity with the terrain. Interior lines of communication and resupply. Concealment of the preparations. Observation. The element of surprise. Finally, he gave in.

  “I’d still like to take these clowns on straight up.”

  “I know you would, Sergeant Major.
But that would be ineffective.” Val surprised herself at how much she sounded like Ambrose. “If we’re going to beat these guys, we’ll have to fight them on our terms, play to our strengths, not theirs. I want you to design the nastiest, most unorthodox of defenses. And find some places where you can put some of that really nasty stuff you learned in ‘Nam back to work.”

  Denight grinned, his fire coming back.

  “That will be a pleasure.”

  Commander’s office

  Special Security Regiment 23

  Ditchnesk, Russia.

  “You lied to them in your briefing, Viktorovich,” Steglyr said, “but you cannot lie to me.”

  “I stand for what is true and right and best for Russia,” Dimonokov said.

  “A rogue American unit has taken control of Infernesk’s nuclear munitions? The Mafiya control the Strategic Zone’s General Staff? Only we can save Russia from selling its soul by wresting control of the Infernesk depot from the maverick Americans? These are the facts?”

  “There is truth there, even if the facts differ.”

  “When and how are we to save Mother Russia and purge the Americans? We have no supporting troops, no artillery, no specialists.”

  “We will not need them. We have Master Warriors.”

  Conference Room

  Headquarters Building

  Infernesk Munitions Depot

  The depot’s leadership filled the cramped room, listening as their commander wound up her operations order. On the walls of the conference room a half-dozen poster-sized charts displayed the mission, task organization, key tasks, times, and dates for the next six days. A terrain model, with avenues of approach, likely objectives, and each section’s area of responsibility all outlined and labeled, sat squarely in the middle of the conference table.

  “...the time now is 08:03,” Val said as she finished up. “Synchronize your watches.”

  Christine, Denight, and the section NCOs stabbed buttons and twisted knobs until each timepiece read the same.