by Bart Gauvin
The Spetsnaz officer applied slow pressure to the rifle’s trigger mechanism, feeling the weight of the pull give way just so, just the way he had practiced it thousands of times over the years, just the way he had done when he had hunted Mujahedeen in Afghanistan and protesters in Kiev. He took in a breath, let it out, then allowed his finger to squeeze the trigger back.
The round exploded out of the rifle’s barrel. Before it had traveled halfway toward its target, it was followed by a second bullet from the other sniper, and already Okhotnik’s semi-automatic rifle had chambered a second round, ready for a third target.
The commander was just turning away when Laub saw him spin backwards and crumple to the ground. Confused, Laub ducked as the report of the rifle shot washed over them. Then another officer dropped. As a second crack echoed in the cold, Laub knew instantly and screamed out, “SNIPER!”
It was too late. Laub never heard the third shot. The bullet slammed into his temple just below the helmet rim, and all went dark.
Okhotnik watched as four Su-24 bombers swept over the hapless column from north to south. Dozens of armored vehicles were trapped and in the open, packed together and waiting to be destroyed along the confining ribbon of the E6. He smirked, more than satisfied with his work.
The bombers began releasing their RBK-500 cluster bombs, first over the rear of the convoy, spacing them out so as to hit as many of the close-packed vehicles as they could. Through his scope Okhotnik saw the bombs work as, at a certain altitude, the outer panels of the weapons spun off and showered hundreds of anti-armor bomblets onto the vehicles below, detonating in firecracker strings of sparking explosions that sent shards of jagged, white hot metal through the thin top armor of Leopard tanks and M109 howitzers as easily as through the canvas tops of trucks.
Along the embattled column, fuel tanks exploded, ammunition cooked off, and the surviving Norwegian soldiers attempted to escape. Some tried to scramble up the icy cliff face on one side of the road while others slid, fell really, down to the small coves at the fjӧrd’s edge. A Norwegian shoulder launched missile shot up to harass the bombers, but a bomblet had exploded next to its launcher just as the soldier had squeezed the trigger, and the weapon went wild, missing badly. It was tragically impressive to Okhotnik as he watched the crew of a Bofors gun bring their piece into action on the crowded roadway, only to see them disappear in a hail of sparking cluster bomblets as the Fencers released bomb after bomb down the entire length of the column.
In a few moments the bombers were gone, winging south over Alta. The effect of their attack was devastating. They left in their wake dozens of disabled and burning vehicles. Minutes later, a flight of smaller MiG-27 fighter-bombers appeared overhead to work over what was left of the column with rockets. When these finished, less than a quarter of the battalion’s vehicles remained operable and, working or not, they were still trapped on the E6 between cliffs, water, and fire. The men of the battalion had fared little better, with hundreds of soldiers lying dead or dying among the wrecks. Okhotnik and his men were packed up now, quickly and silently moving away from the columns of thin black smoke wafting into the frigid sky. The armored might of the Norwegian Army in the Far North left in smoldering ruins. There would be no relief for any Norwegians farther north than this, the Olympian Spetsnaz team had seen to that.
CHAPTER 84
1215 EST, Sunday 13 February 1994
1615 Zulu
US Coast Guard Sandy Hook Station, Ft. Hancock, New Jersey
ABBY SAVAGE APPLIED gentle downward pressure to the collective and descended towards the small patch of grass behind the Sandy Hook Coast Guard Station, nudging left to avoid the blue-painted water tower that loomed over the improvised landing zone. The area where she had elected to put down was small, tiny by most standards, but Abby knew her abilities. She also knew the value of face-to-face coordination in confused situations like this.
The Sea King’s wheels settled down onto the grass, its rotors spinning mere yards from the water tower on one side and the watch center’s parking lot on the other. Savage could see a Coast Guard officer standing on the pavement, ducking his bare head away from the downdraft of the aircraft’s big rotor.
“I’m getting out to talk to him,” Abby said into her intercom. Then she unplugged her helmet’s umbilical, stood, and worked her way out of the cockpit between her own seat and Buck’s. Abby’s crew chief, waiting in the cargo compartment, opened the side door and she hopped down onto the ground.
She jogged across the grass towards the Coastie, awkward in her bulky anti-exposure flight suit and helmet. The man jogged towards her and they met at the edge of the parking lot.
“Lieutenant Savage, Fleet Angels,” Abby introduced herself over the noise of her aircraft’s rotors.
“Commander Ingalls,” the other man returned the greeting. Abby was pleased to note that the Coastie recovered quickly from the realization that she was female and said simply: “Am I glad to see you!”
The man was obviously weighed down by concern. Ingalls’ dark eyebrows were pinched in a frown, and his regulation mustache twitched as he spoke. Abby got right down to business, “Sir,” she shouted through the swirling downdraft, “I’ve got four Sea Kings to put at your disposal. The other three are already heading out over the harbor. We topped off fuel at McGuire, so we’re ready to do what you need us to. Just tell me where you want us.”
Ingalls nodded. “I want you all working the Queen Elizabeth 2 wreck. It’s our biggest problem,” he explained. “With you there I can use our local helicopters on some of the nearer rescue sites. FEMA has set up a frequency for air traffic control. The cruise ship is pretty far offshore, and there are hundreds of people in the water and in rafts, over a thousand actually.” He handed her a piece of paper. “Coordinates to the wreck, and the air traffic control frequency.”
Abby winced inside her helmet. That many people in the North Atlantic in February? This isn’t going to end well for a lot of them.
“Roger sir,” Abby answered, “My Sea Kings can fit two dozen rescues per trip. Where do you want us to take them?”
“We’ve got a rescue center set up at Montauk Beach,” Ingalls shouted over the engines. “You can deliver them there. Ambulances will be standing by to take them to local hospitals. You can refuel at Gabreski as necessary. They’re expecting you.”
“Okay,” Abby nodded, “anything else?”
Ingalls shook his head, then stuck out his hand. Abby took it, and the Coast Guard officer said, “Good luck, and thanks!”
“We’ll get as many as we can for you, sir!” Abby assured him. She released his hand, turned, and jogged back to her bird. It would be a forty-minute flight from here out to the disaster off the southeast tip of Long Island.
Volkhov studied the police cruiser parked lengthwise across the two-lane road leading to the Coast Guard station with disgust. The cruiser, along with its officer and a pair of Coast Guardsmen, sat two hundred meters ahead, directly astride his team’s route to their target.
His casual reconnaissance of the site several days earlier, posing as a lost tourist trying to find the nearby World War One-era coastal artillery forts, had amazed him with how lax the security of this site actually was. He’d been able to drive right past the front of the enemy command center without being challenged by a single soul.
Now, things didn’t look so easy. Volkhov sat in the front passenger seat of the cursed van, hours late to attack his target. A few minutes ago, a large helicopter had flown overhead in the direction of the command center, and Volkhov was sure that boded nothing good for his mission. Still, his professional pride mandated that he not be the weak link in the plan he had such an integral part in coordinating.
Volkhov decided that the task would not be that much more difficult. He saw only one police officer with the cruiser, his gray uniform and peaked cap distinct from the two Coast Guardsmen
in blue dungarees and baseball caps. Only one of the three men even held a rifle. Volkhov made his decision.
“Slushat menya,” he ordered the other men in the van. Listen to me. He proceeded to outline the adjusted plan to his team.
The others nodded, and in moments his men were moving. The van backed up until it was out of sight of the American guards. Then the team’s sniper slipped out with his American .303 deer rifle and disappeared to the left into the coastal scrub that lined the western side of the Sandy Hook peninsula. Volkhov waited five minutes, then nodded to the driver. It was time.
Slowly, the van rolled forward towards the roadblock. As it drew closer, the three Americans looked up at the approaching vehicle, though none of them seemed particularly concerned. When the van was within fifty meters, Volkhov gave the order, “Go!”
The van stopped. The side door slid open and one of the Spetsnaz soldiers stepped out, a small tube slung over his shoulder. Almost casually he snapped out the telescopic extension of the weapon and lifted the tube to his shoulder, aiming it at the police cruiser. Only then did the three men at the roadblock begin to react, but it was too late.
The M72 anti-armor rocket exploded out of its launcher and streaked into the cruiser with a loud WHUMP. The destruction the rocket caused to the police vehicle was actually quite underwhelming. The molten slug formed by the high explosive warhead, designed to pierce the armor of main battle tanks, went straight into one side of the car and splattered the interior with white hot beads of liquid metal. The force of the impact blew out the cruiser’s windows and set some of the interior of the car on fire, but it was no Hollywood car-flipping fireball like Volkhov had seen on those ridiculous American action movies.
More importantly, the impact of the rocket caused the three Americans, who were slow to respond, to duck away. Their delay was fatal. Volkhov was already out of the van. He and the man who’d fired the rocket advanced, stubby assault rifles at their shoulders firing controlled bursts towards the roadblock, and dropped the three Americans in quick succession.
The driver pressed the accelerator to the floor, and the van roared forward. With fifty meters to build up speed, the vehicle rammed the police cruiser out of the way before hanging a left towards the command center. Volkhov and his counterpart sprinted in its wake. After several dozen meters they broke off to the right and crossed some tennis courts towards the parking lot at the rear of the Coast Guard building. Volkhov’s subconscious again registered but ignored an input, this time the rumbling sound of vehicle engines from somewhere behind him. They needed to move fast.
The three remaining men of the team tumbled out of the van, now only two dozen meters from the front entrance of the command center, assault carbines at their shoulders and satchels of grenades slung at their sides. These three would assault the front door of the building, killing anyone they found and tossing grenades into each room for good measure. Volkhov and his compatriot would cover the rear entrance to the watch center, dealing with anyone who tried to escape out the back. Eliminating this command post and, more importantly, the people who manned it, would add one more obstacle for the Americans to overcome in their efforts to reopen their most important harbor.
The front door of the command center opened and another police officer emerged, his sidearm in hand. He was raising it towards the assault group when a shot from the sniper, crumpled him in the doorway. From behind the police officer, a blue uniformed Coast Guardsman fired two shots from his pistol, forcing one of the assaulters to take cover. Another shot from the sniper splintered the door frame next to the American’s head, and he ducked. The police officer’s legs disappeared as he was dragged inside.
By now Volkhov and his partner were in position, training their weapons at the rear entrance over the hood and trunk of a parked car. That was the moment when the he could no longer ignore the rumble of engines behind him, and when his improvised plan began to fall apart.
Sergeant First Class Bert Martinez yanked back the charging handle on his M60 machinegun as the four M113 personnel carriers of 2nd Platoon, Bravo Company, 1-114 Infantry Regiment, New Jersey National Guard, careened left past the burning police cruiser onto the access road for Sandy Hook Coast Guard watch center, their mission: to protect it. Martinez swayed in his hatch as his vehicle, fourth in the order of march, clanked on its treads at full speed around the turn.
Martinez hadn’t been happy about their mission up to this point. Taking his platoon’s four boxy APCs over miles of suburban New Jersey roads and highways was never fun, and he did not enjoy the surprised and fearful looks of his fellow citizens, looking up at him and his loaded machinegun as the convoy clanked past. Now, though, he was glad they had the guns mounted and ready when they were needed.
Rolling up the road traversing the spine of Sandy Hook, expecting a quiet stretch at the end of the long drive, Martinez’s experienced ears had registered the distinctive wump of an anti-tank rocket, something he’d heard many times before, but only once in combat. He immediately grabbed the hand mic for his vehicle’s radio and called Lieutenant Kirby in the lead track, urging the young officer to pick up the pace. The lieutenant had complied immediately, and the four armored vehicles surged north up the road.
Martinez’s eyes scanned the three bodies next to the burning police cruiser as the team blazed past. Holding onto the pistol grip of his machinegun, he reached down into the vehicle and grabbed the hand mic again. “Bravo Two-Six, this is Two-Five,” he called to his platoon leader, “we may want to slow down, get our dismounts out, over.”
There was no answer. Craning his neck, Martinez could see up to the front of the column, where Lieutenant Kirby was standing up in the hatch of own his track, riding towards the watch station at full speed, like an old-fashioned cavalry charge or something. He was about to depress the talk button on his hand mic again when he heard Kirby’s young, excited voice yell over the radio, “This is Two-Six, follow me!”
The platoon sergeant heard a pop off to his left over the roar of the engines and looked that way. When he looked back, the hatch of the platoon leader’s track was empty and the lead M113 was rolling to a stop.
Martinez didn’t know what had happened to the LT, but he did know that someone needed to take charge of this mess.
“All stations, this is Two-Five,” he ordered into his radio, “fan out! Two-One, swing around to the right through those tennis courts and secure the back of the building. Everyone else, drop ramps and set up three-sixty security. I think we have a sniper out there.”
Immediately the two M113s ahead of Martinez turned off the road, the second one pulling to the left of the platoon leader’s track, and the third tearing across the green tennis courts to the right. Martinez directed his own driver to pull up to the right of the LT’s vehicle. Ahead, he saw a beat-up white van about twenty yards from the front of the Coast Guard station. He didn’t see anyone near it at first, but then a man in civilian clothes stepped out from behind the vehicle.
Martinez saw immediately that the man held an assault weapon. The old NCO dropped down behind his machinegun as the gunman brought his own weapon up to his shoulder. Both men fired at the same time. Martinez heard rounds slam into the sloped frontal armor of his APC, splintering the wooden “trim vane” at the same time that he saw his own five-round burst stitch up the other man’s torso, dropping him where he stood.
The sergeant didn’t waste time with pleasantries. Keeping his eyes behind the gun, he shifted his aim slightly towards the white van. The M60 thundered again as Martinez pumped three long, ten-round bursts into the other vehicle, riddling it with seven-point-six-two millimeter slugs. By the time Martinez ceased fire, the rear ramps of all four of the APCs were down and the citizen soldiers of the platoon were pouring out, their M16 rifles at the ready.
“Behind the van!” Martinez shouted to the nearest squad leader, a man who owned a plumbing business when he wasn’t playin
g soldier. The man nodded and, without hesitating, advanced slowly towards the van at the head of a wedge formed by the other members of his squad.
Then Martinez heard another pop, followed by a scream from his left. Looking that way, he saw another one of his soldiers writhing on the ground, grasping at his knee.
“AHHH!” the man kept yelling, then, “He got me! I saw him, over there in the brush! He got me!” The man took his hand away from the bloody mess of his knee long enough to point southward, towards the coastal shrub on the landward side of the peninsula.
Martinez didn’t see what the wounded man did, but he quickly rotated the ring-mounted machinegun until it was pointing over the left side of the track, then let loose a long burst from the M60, spraying the brush from one end to another while two soldiers dragged the wounded man hissing and cursing back to the cover of an M113.
“Third Squad,” Martinez shouted, “get over into that brush and flush that sniper out!”
The platoon sergeant turned his attention back towards the van, where the plumber’s squad was converging. Another gunman darted out from the far side of the vehicle, trying to bring his weapon around. He died in a fusillade from half a dozen M16s. A few seconds later the plumber squad leader gave a thumbs up signal back towards his sergeant.
Martinez, continuing to cover the squad moving towards the sniper, heard firing erupt behind him, from the back side of the watch center. He snatched up his radio with his non-firing hand. “Two-One, this is Two-Five, what’s going on, over?”
After a few moments the First Squad leader, a middle school history teacher, called back, “We’ve got a leaker to the north, boss. There were two of them. We got one, but the other scooted. Two of my people are wounded,” there was a pause, then the squad leader came back, “Not bad, though. Both of them are good. Want me to chase, over?”
