Ghosts of War (31 page)

P
ulling my turn on radio watch, all I got from Retro was
no change
. He'd now been watching the building for close to ten hours, and nothing exciting had happened. I killed the time watching the BBC in our suite, and saw the beginnings of the television broadcasting of the events our intelligence community already knew. Kurt had called earlier with a report that added serious urgency to our mission: The Russians were attempting to surround our forces in Ukraine.

From the small den, I heard Jennifer ask, “Do we really need a sniper rifle?”

Knuckles replied, “Depends on what Retro says, but keep it out just in case.”

Sorting through equipment, they were preparing for an assault on the bed-down we'd located for Mikhail and his merry band of men. We'd tracked them from the church to a broken-down commie tenement house right next to the boundary of the old Jewish Ghetto on Walicow Street, and because of its location, it was looking like the best place to interdict them.

Retro and Veep had given us photos of the sedan they were using, and the rest of the team, split into three vehicles, picked it up and followed it from the church to the tenement. I'd left Aaron watching the squalid building for the short term, and had returned to pick up Retro and Veep. I'd given them a surveillance kit, then swapped them out with Aaron.

While I was positive this was the viper's nest and that our wait last night had paid off, Retro wasn't so sure and recommended we develop the situation a little further. He had some good points:

First, Mikhail had been sandwiched in the back, between two men who could only be described as paid muscle. The older man had driven, and the passenger seat had remained empty.

Second, and more important, Retro pointed out that if you were going to a tenement house for planning, why meet up in a church first? Why not just linkup in the tenement? If it really was the safe house, why meet in public first?

In his mind, it smelled a little, and maybe we were misreading the whole thing. His thoughts made sense, but I still believed this was the final stage before an attack. Maybe Mikhail had chosen to sit in back to discuss whatever they were planning, using a map or computer as he did so. And maybe he didn't know where the tenement was and had tasked them to find a secure area, planning a linkup meeting beforehand to take him there. Or maybe
he'd
found the tenement, but didn't know the men he'd eventually use and wanted to vet them first before taking
them
there.

Retro's comments held weight, though, and I'd decided to watch for a little while instead of rolling right in, hopefully gaining a little clarity on what was happening. That choice had become moot after Kurt's call.

While we were establishing a static observation post, I'd had Jennifer and Shoshana locate the first hotel she could find with a suite large enough for us to plan and prepare in. She'd settled on the InterContinental Warsaw, only about four minutes away. She'd given Aaron and me the room number, and we'd left Veep and Retro for the static surveillance, letting them figure out how they'd do it. Retro—who had earned his callsign because he was a miser and habitually wore clothes that were years out of date—would blend in fine. Veep would have to learn on the fly.

We'd checked in and had begun the mundane work of mission planning, shuttling the equipment up from the Rock Star bird—suppressed break-down rifles in .300 Blackout, Glock 27s, miniature
battering rams, various electronic devices, you name it—and then had settled in to wait for information from our observation post.

And then Kurt had called on the VPN.

I was surprised, because it was my responsibility to initiate contact with him, not the other way around, but I learned quickly why he'd done so. Things had changed, and not for the better. When the screen cleared, I'd thought he had the flu. He looked like he hadn't slept for a week. He ignored any perfunctory questions about the team, digging right into the mission.

“What's your status?”

“We found the bed-down, but we want to develop more.” I explained what we'd seen, and the competing theories of what it meant, ending with, “Bottom line, if they stay, we can hit it, but we might still be wrong, missing the operational team.”

Kurt said, “Story of my life. But it's irrelevant now. We can't risk losing Mikhail. Hit them tonight.”

Which took me aback. I said, “Sir?”

Kurt rubbed his eyes and said, “This isn't a developmental target anymore.”

I said, “Sir, you realize that this operation is bigger than we thought, right? This isn't a single strike. This is more like a full-blown conspiracy. We need to sort it out.”

He sounded weary. He said, “Pike, the United States's path is getting beyond our ability to control. Tensions are high, and all it will take is a single spark.”

“What's going on?”

“The Russians cleared the airfield at Donetsk. The rebels have held it forever, but it was literally destroyed in the initial fighting and useless without a lot of work. It's why we jumped into the Severodonetsk airport instead. We saw them working on it, and now we're watching them fly in armor. A BMP battalion so far, but they're still coming in. It's to the west of the airfield we seized, which means they have a
lodgment behind our own and can cut off our supply lines. They're creating an encirclement around the two brigades we have in-country.”

“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.”

T
he 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 that?”

“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.”