by Ian Slater
What neither Tibbet nor Freeman knew was that by calling in every IOU they had, as well as offering U.S. currency bonuses on the spot, Mikhail Abramov, Viktor Beria, and Sergei Cherkashin had obtained an ad hoc force of 480 troops, which were being ferried in by four high-T-tailed Ilyushin-P transports, each of the planes’ four big D-30 KP engines controlled by updated computer avionics, so that landing on the relatively short ABC runway was virtually hands-off despite the snowfall.
In much the same way, for the first time in out-of-country operations, two of the Marine Expeditionary Unit’s JSFs, the first fighter piloted by McCain’s Chipper Armstrong, the other by Rhino Manowski, set down as instructed by Tibbet’s enciphered ground-to-air communication once radio silence had been broken in the Russian helo attack. While Armstrong’s JSF put down on a slab of frozen marsh by Freeman’s wood, Manowski landed his plane by another “wood island,” as it were, nearer Tibbet, who had now reached cover just outside the perimeter where a platoon of second-wave marines were coming under sustained rocket-propelled-grenade, heavy machine gun, and AK-47 fire. But in the whiteout, this enfilade from the unseen Russian defenders was more smoke than fire, with only a small percentage of the Russian infantry defenders having the use of IR scopes and sights, the weather forecasters having disappointed them as well as the Americans. Amid the cacophony of rotor slap and battle, Freeman was writing quickly on his knee pad, sketching out a plan of attack using Ilya’s map, gambling on his hunch that Ilya’s map of a route through the minefield would be accurate because it had clearly been Ilya’s intention to lure all of the Americans into the tunnel at one end and bottle them up in a killing zone.
“Johnny,” Freeman called out to Lee. “Encrypt this and send to Jack Tibbet: ‘ABC H-block—’”
“Hang on, General,” cut in Lee, uncharacteristic alarm in his voice. Freeman recognized it as Lee’s “computer down” tone, as Johnny’s ungloved hands tapped the foldout keypad again with the same results. “Nothing’s going through, sir. Like it’s frozen.”
“Maybe it is,” said Choir, his voice all but lost to a sudden surge of fighting all down the line.
“All right,” said Freeman, obviously annoyed but unfazed, writing quickly on his blood-spattered knee pad. “Johnny, try the encrypted function again.” Lee did, and it didn’t work. “We only have PL, General.”
“All right, dammit, plain language’ll have to do. Contact Tibbet’s HQ and explain about the tunnels’ approximate location. But obviously we can’t give him any tactical information and we haven’t much time. So while you’re messaging his HQ, Johnny, I’ll see what I can do — dig up a trick or two from the old days — in a follow-up PL message.”
In all his time with Douglas Freeman, Aussie had never seen the general’s hands move so fast — like a Vegas dealer’s — and within five minutes, during which time Lee was radioing Tibbet’s HQ, the general tore off a message sheet, telling Johnny, “Send the following.”
WYFWBAANGHARIUNNEOENOLTDDVONKMLHWME-
DYEMNIIRRLOEEOTPPDUUGBTEEEICROOHNTTD-
KEOTITHEGFCDHTRERAOETOEAMRMRIOFXNOOBUVGUIC
USLSEOSTETEEA.
The din of the battle soon reached an apogee, then dramatically fell off, the snow drifting, piling up, under a bone-freezing wind that was howling down from the Zapadnyy Siniy only a few miles to the west.
“Are we going in, General?” Aussie asked.
“No option,” pronounced Freeman firmly. “We attack.” He had one eye on Johnny Lee who, though the biting wind was freezing his hands, was forcing himself to focus so as not to screw up the burst message to Tibbet. Any pause by Johnny would count as a “space” in the train of letters; a missing 0 or 1 in a binary message would jumble the sequence and thus scramble the message.
“Signature?” Lee asked the general.
Freeman thought of his favorite president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “All we have to fear is fear itself. We’ll use FDR,” he told Lee.
Johnny was blowing on his fingers and flexing them. “Signature within or without, sir?” he asked Freeman.
“Within.”
“Very well. All set to—” They heard the unmistakable whoosh of a fuel air explosive, the FAE bomb sending an enormous flash of orange through the snow that immediately turned to steam then to sheets of filigreed ice that cracked on the frozen marsh like shattered glass.
“All set to send burst transmission,” Lee informed Freeman.
“Send.”
“It’s gone, sir,” said Johnny, but he looked worried. Any transmission was easy to intercept. Cracking the code?
“Listen up!” Freeman told his fellow soldiers. “We’ve got the best outfit possible here, my team, a Hummer with four TOWs loaded and four in the rack, and a fire team par excellence, with Terrible Thomas and Killer Kegg.” There was a snort of laughter.
“What more could we ask for?” continued Freeman. “Soon as I get acknowledgment of this message, we find our way back to where Eddie got it, but we keep strictly this side of the GPS mine line. The snow will’ve buried any sign of booby traps, so even with this map showing where the exit from the three tunnels is we’re going to have to move slowly till we find the exit door. From the terrorist’s map, the door is like one of those used on an old house’s coal chute. The exit itself appears to be a steeply graded stairwell about eighty feet or more long, and it’s barely wide enough, if Johnny’s interpretation of this map is correct, for two men abreast.” He paused. “Though in this damn refrigerator I wouldn’t mind being next to a breast myself.”
“Hoo ha!” came the marine reply. Melissa Thomas’s smile was tired and patient, the smile of a woman who had heard much more gauche comments from grown-up boys.
Freeman became serious again. “This isn’t going to be a cakewalk but I’m confident we’ll be able to reach that exit door if this map is right, and remember the approach to it won’t be mined, otherwise it wouldn’t be a damned exit! Questions?”
Aussie asked about the entrance to the tunnel. If Freeman attacked the exit, wouldn’t ABC’s technicians be able to escape back out the entrance?
“Doesn’t matter if they do,” replied Freeman. “Right now we’re after the machinery more than the men.” He paused, checking that everyone was ready. “Right,” he said, “check your weapons. Remember, condoms on the barrels so snow doesn’t get up the spout and freeze the rifling. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Good.”
With the chaotic roar of the helos fading as quickly as it had begun, Freeman’s force moved off in the relative silence, broken here and there only by sporadic “blind man’s firing,” as Freeman called it. A hundred yards out, the marine corporal, sitting in the Hummer, could have sworn he heard a squeaking sound. He also knew hearing it was like watching clouds; you often see the image that the mind projects, and sometimes you hear noises that aren’t there, sounds born of imagination and the circumstances of the kind the corporal was encountering now in the conditions of war with the Russian terrorists, of whom he’d seen very few, except for those in the ill-fated BTR and the truck, wanting to kill every American they could find. The damp air all around was thick with the pungent smell of burning gasoline and high-explosive fumes rising slowly from those places in the minefield moat where more than forty Americans, their transport Stallion thrown off course by the Black Sharks, had perished as it hit the ground, its huge rotors cartwheeling and breaking up, the fuselage suddenly bursting into flame.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Abramov had been holding back his twenty T-90s behind the protection of the minefield that skirted ABC’s H-block and the thicket of Cherkashin’s anti-aircraft defenses until the weather abated and visibility improved enough to unleash his armor and make devastating use of his laser and infrared targeting. But he suspected now that he had made an error and waited too long. Initial reports coming into the H-block from Beria’s lone-sniper observers in reed hides at the edge of the minefield indicated that “white bears”
now outnumbered “brown,” which told Abramov, Beria, and Cherkashin that not only had a second wave of Americans arrived but that these new American arrivals were equipped with “snow whites,” or winter uniforms.
Then suddenly, and completely unexpectedly, Beria burst into Abramov’s office, waving a piece of yellow paper of the size ABC had given Ramon, who had so successfully led ABC’s Spetsnaz commando group in the attack on the American’s DARPA ALPHA base.
“God exists!” Beria bellowed to a startled Abramov. “Mikhail, I bring you a gift!”
“What in hell are you talking about?” asked the tank commander, looking up grumpily at the diminutive Beria, whose chin seemed barely to clear the top of Abramov’s huge metal desk.
“Where’s Cherkashin?” Beria inquired loudly, looking about the map room adjoining Abramov’s office.
“He’s busy,” said Abramov brusquely, clearly irritated by Beria’s exuberance, which was in marked contrast to his own bad mood and anger at himself for not having committed his tanks earlier. It had been his dream to avenge the one humiliating defeat his Siberian Sixth had suffered.
Abramov had been smart enough this time around, or so he had told himself, to not let his tanks loose when Bird Rescue’s Cobra gunships had shown up in the first wave. His intel group had assured him the Cobra attack helos would not return in the terrible weather. The gunships simply were not equipped with sufficiently good avionics, given the distance between the U.S. fleet and Lake Khanka. Furthermore, his perimeter snipers had been told that if the Cobras did risk a second wave, they would, like any other helo, be vulnerable when refueling from bladders dropped by the cargo-hauling Stallions. Any in-flight refueling was deemed to be “out of the question” during the blizzard. Cherkashin’s air defense had assured Abramov that such a delicate maneuver required visuals as well as outstanding instrument flying by the Cobra’s two-man crew and the tanker’s pilot in what the Russians referred to as a “Tit and Sucker” maneuver. But Abramov’s G-2, his intelligence chief, had confirmed that there were reports by coastwatchers of American helos refueling in the air.
Beria had placed the yellow sheet of paper, which was also the color used for radio intercepts, on Abramov’s desk, waving his hand side to side as if to clear the room of the smoke from the ultraexpensive Diplomaticos No. 2 cigar, one of which Abramov always had on the go, ever since ABC’s massive profits had enabled the tank commander to buy the very best Havana cigars.
“What’s this?” Abramov asked, picking up the yellow intercept strip unenthusiastically. Beria strode to the window, momentarily struggling with the latch, and letting in a draft of the frigid air, glancing at Abramov’s snow-covered main battle tanks surrounded by Cherkashin’s twelve multibarreled ZSU anti-aircraft units and a score of Igla MANPAD teams. Beria thanked his lucky stars, that, as much as Moscow wanted ABC destroyed, the Russian president simply could not allow any foreigners, especially Americans, to bomb Russian soil, rebel or otherwise. For the Russian president to allow anyone, especially Americans, to bomb would risk enraging even those Russians who, though opposed to the terrorist activities of ABC, could not tolerate foreign bombs falling on the Motherland. It was a visceral reaction born of the collective trauma of Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa, the massive and savage invasion of Mother Russia, when Hitler’s Luftwaffe had sent in the Nazis’ Screaming Stuka dive-bombers to pulverize Russian defenses and terrify the civilian population.
Looking out the window as Abramov scanned the yellow page, an excited Beria was reveling in ABC’s double good fortune. First, in how Moscow, by securing a “no-bombing” agreement with the U.S. president in dealing with ABC, had in effect rendered ABC’s H-block and minefield off-limits to American aircraft and now ABC’s second lucky break, which had come in the form of an intercepted transcript of a message between the American General Freeman and the marine commander, Colonel Tibbet.
“The Americans,” said Beria, coming back to the desk, his finger tapping the yellow sheet of paper, “think they are the only ones with state-of-the-art computer scanners?”
“So,” said Abramov, still not convinced, “you have intercepted a line of letters. What’s it mean?”
“Our intel boys are working as fast as they can. They think it’s a letter-for-letter code. You know, each letter stands in for another letter. So when you put ‘B’ it could be ‘A’ or ‘C.’ We’re running the parameters now.”
“Why isn’t it encrypted?” asked Abramov brusquely. Digitized?”
Beria shrugged. “Not every squad carries an encrypter. Maybe their encrypter wasn’t working.”
“Huh,” said Abramov. “It looks too easy.”
“Well, then,” countered Beria. “What does it say?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Abramov, taking a long, clenched-teeth drag on his Diplomaticos. “I’ve just seen it this second, haven’t I?”
“Our boys’ll crack it,” said Beria confidently, taking back the yellow strip.
“Leave it,” Abramov told the infantry general. “I’ll peruse it as well. Meanwhile our met officer says this snow’s going to turn to rain. A layer of mist’ll be moving from north of the lake down toward us, but it should be clear enough that I’ll be able to go out and attack with my armor. Americans’ll have nothing comparable. Biggest things they can haul under those Super Stallions of theirs are Hummers and light howitzers, and the most they’re ferrying in are two of the howitzers, otherwise they couldn’t have carried the required troops’ weight to make up the second wave.
“Don’t worry, Mikhail,” Beria said. “Your T-90s’ll eat those marines alive once the weather—”
“I know that!” snapped Abramov, his tobacco-stained teeth in a snarl. “The point is to let my boys loose when the worst of the weather lifts but there’s still enough mist to give us cover as we speed through our minefield’s exits. We’ll have to move fast before the Americans rush the minefield exit, which isn’t visible now but will be once they backtrack our tread marks. I want your infantry to be ready, Viktor, to watch my flanks.”
“Ready? They’ve been ready, waiting all around the perimeter, dug in until they can move en masse. My God, haven’t you heard them firing?”
“I’ve heard a lot of noise,” retorted Abramov. “But we’re still frozen in position. We’ll see who’s been firing accurately when we can see what the hell’s going on. We’re still in the fog of battle, Viktor. Same as the Americans.”
“Don’t complain about the snow, Mikhail. It’s what’s buying us time against the American force. Once your armor rolls out we’ll flush them out for you. Grease your treads with their guts.”
Abramov had no doubt he’d mash the Americans, though he might lose a few of his T-90s and 122 mm mobile missile launchers. These were still firing spasmodically at very low altitude to sweep the snow-filled air of any American helo caught in the critically vulnerable hovering position, disgorging men and matériel. Abramov looked down again at the long string of letters on the yellow sheet.
“Don’t worry,” Beria assured him. “Our intel comrades are working the permutations and combinations now. They’ll crack it soon.”
“‘Soon,’” said Abramov, “better be before the weather clears.”
“They’ll crack it,” Beria promised.
Abramov looked at his watch. “Rain is predicted in thirty minutes. Then it tapers to showers.”
“Ah, you can’t always trust those weather people, Mikhail,” opined Beria. “Look how it was supposed to be low overcast, maybe showers, then what do we get dumped on us? Tons of snow. A veritable blizzard, Comrade.”
“That’s because we’re so near the mountains,” Abramov told him. “You know how quickly things change.”
Beria wasn’t convinced, though as he left Abramov’s office he recalled how, contrary to public opinion, weather forecasting was now 87.8 percent accurate, even in seaports as far away as Vladivostok and Vancouver. And so, when he found Cherkashin in the map room, he told him that M
ikhail was probably right about the optimistic weather forecast. But the normally garrulous air force commander was in no mood for optimism. He was furious that the snow had effectively grounded the two MiG-29s promised him by his brother-in-law in Spassk-Dalni East.
“Sergei,” Beria assured him, “you won’t need the two Fulcrums. You’ve given us good anti-aircraft fire already. Now it’s our turn.”
Cherkashin, his white mane in disarray, stared at Beria. The infantry commander’s optimism annoyed him. War was so unpredictable that few of those in it had any clear idea of how it would turn out.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
As the helo, Marine One, descended gracefully to the south lawn of the White House, the president of the United States confessed to National Security Adviser Prenty and his press secretary that he’d made a mistake in agreeing to come back from Camp David. The line of protestors was much longer than Marte Price had reported. “They bus them in,” said the press secretary.
“Who,” asked Eleanor Prenty, “buses in protestors against us tracking down terrorists?”
“Those people,” replied the press secretary, “who don’t think America should make unilateral decisions about sending our armed forces into other countries.”
The president felt the gentle touchdown. “And what do you think?” the president asked his press secretary.
“I think you did the right thing, Mr. President. So long as terrorists think they can hit us and run to sanctuary, we have to go into the sanctuaries.”
“Well said.”
The president stepped down from the chopper, returned the marine’s salute, and, slipping his tie back under his suit jacket, felt the hardness of the bulletproof vest beneath. He gave a presidential wave to both the protesters and those, including a group from Idaho, who were holding signs up supporting the “Bird Rescue” intervention.
