Iron Wolf (12 page)

T
RAINING AND
S
TORAGE
D
EPOT,

U
NITED
A
RMED
F
ORCES OF
N
OVOROSSIYA,

S
OUTH OF
D
ONETSK,
U
KRAINE

T
HAT SAME TIME

Sited forty kilometers south of the industrial city of Donetsk, the Russian-allied separatist base served several purposes. Its location, near the junction of several country roads, made it easier for the rebels and their Russian military “advisers” to terrorize, tax, and otherwise dominate the surrounding villages and farms. In addition, the base—set among wheat fields and orchards—made a good training site. Drafts of new recruits, mostly drawn from the urban streets of Donetsk and Luhansk, were taught the basics, discipline, small-arms marksmanship, and open-field combat tactics, before being sent on to active-duty units for more advanced training. Finally, the compound was a storage depot for RPGs, shoulder-launched SAMs, and other heavy weapons, including a battery of the BM-21 Grad launchers whose 122mm rockets had proved so deadly during the 2014 “hot war.”

The separatist rebels and their Russian masters felt secure behind a minefield and a barrier made up of long coils of barbed wire. A heavy metal mesh gate offered the only way in or out past the defenses—and it was flanked by solid earth-and-log bunkers bristling with machine guns and antitank weapons.

They were about to learn an old lesson of war. Fortifications were only as effective as the soldiers who manned them. And static defenses were no match for a determined enemy given the time to prepare an assault.

Thirty meters from the western perimeter of the camp, Fedir Kravchenko slithered cautiously through tufts of tall grass growing
among brown stalks of dead wheat and tangled weeds. He followed a narrow, winding path marked out by torn pieces of reflective tape. Before the Russians and their lackeys built their base, this fertile patch of ground had been planted in wheat. Now it was sown with antipersonnel mines.

Kravchenko moved slowly, allowing his eyes to pick out the faint glimmer from each piece of tape and then confirming what he saw by touch. It was almost completely dark. The new moon had set hours before and now there were only the stars speckling the night sky. Beyond the barbed wire, a few moving red sparks glowed.

Sentries smoking cigarettes, the Ukrainian decided. His mouth twisted in disgust. Amateurs.

He crawled out into a more open patch of ground, only a few meters from the wire. The tape-marked path had ended. He moved to the side, clearing the way for the other men coming up behind him.

Pavlo Lytvyn loomed up at his shoulder. Leaning in close, the big man showed him the bayonet he held in his right hand and shook his head emphatically three times.
No more mines,
Kravchenko translated. Lytvyn was one of the men he'd selected to lead the three partisan assault teams through the minefield, probing for mines hidden among the grass and wheat with nothing more sophisticated than their fingers and bayonets.

As more and more dark-clad men came crawling out into the safer ground in front of the wire, he motioned them to deploy to the left and right. He collared the last two, both of whom were hauling heavy packs. Moving carefully and cautiously, they opened their packs and began screwing together threaded sections of explosives-packed pipe—assembling improvised Bangalore torpedoes that should blow holes in the separatist barbed-wire entanglement when they were detonated.

Kravchenko pulled a small, handheld radio out of his equipment vest. He pushed the power on and inserted a tiny earpiece. A soft hiss marked an open channel. He clicked the transmit button three times and then waited.

Two faint clicks came back.

Kravchenko switched the radio off and put it away. Gently, he tapped Lytvyn's shoulder, signaling the bigger man that they were ready.

Off in the distance, they heard the dull growling roar of a heavy truck motor. It was drawing nearer.

Teeth clenched against constant pain, Hennadiy Vovk reached out with his good hand and shoved the dump truck's gearshift down, slowing its 330-horsepower diesel engine. His prosthetic hook was firmly anchored to the steering wheel. Sweat trickled from under his cap. His last dose of morphine had worn off about an hour ago. He had another ampule, but he couldn't risk fogging his mind with painkillers. Nor slowing his reflexes. Not now.

Cranking the wheel to the right, Vovk turned off the paved road. He drove slowly up a rough dirt track, heading toward the Russian separatist base. There, caught in the dump truck's headlights, he could make out the metal mesh gate closing off the entrance. The hummocky shapes of camouflaged bunkers loomed up in the shadows on either side of the track.

Several uniformed guards were visible near the gate, already unslinging Russian-supplied assault rifles. Another waved a handheld flashlight from side to side, signaling him to stop.

“
Ostanovka!
Halt!” one of the guards yelled, stepping forward with a hand held up palm out.

Vovk braked, stamping down hard on the pedal with his right foot. His left leg ended in a stump just below the knee. More agony flamed through his damaged body. He hissed out through his teeth, fighting off the pain.

“You there!” an angry voice snapped. “What the devil are you doing here?”

The truck driver looked up. Two of the guards had moved right up to the side of dump truck, peering into the darkened cab. Four or five others, eyes slitted against the glare of his headlights, were aiming their assault rifles at the windshield.

“Hey, easy there, Comrade,” Vovk stammered, keeping his good hand in view. “I've got a load of coal for the Vuhlehirska Power Station. But I must have gotten turned around somewhere.” He forced a shaky laugh. “It's damned dark out here.”

One of the guards scowled. “You are way fucking lost, idiot. Vuhlehirska is at least thirty kilometers from here. Back that way.” He gestured off to the north.

The other guard was staring at Vovk's prosthetic hook and missing left leg. “Jesus, what a cripple,” he sneered. “How'd you lose them, gimp? In a crash because of your shitty driving?”

Suddenly Vovk felt perfectly calm, perfectly at peace. He smiled broadly at the soldier who'd taunted him. “Oh, no,” he said gently. “It wasn't an accident. You bastards took them from me three years ago.”

Before they could react, he reached out and tripped a switch rigged up on the dump truck's dashboard. Twenty kilograms of Russian-made PVV-5A plastic explosive planted beneath the left fuel tank detonated. In a blinding flash of searing white light, an enormous blast ripped through the huge KrAZ dump truck, obliterating it in a single split second. The guards, gate, and nearby bunkers vanished in that same instant, torn to shreds by the huge explosion. Hurled outward by the blast, jagged shards of smoking metal rained down across the compound. This deadly hailstorm of shrapnel killed even more Russian-allied separatist soldiers.

O
VER
E
ASTERN
U
KRAINE

T
HAT SAME TIME

One hundred kilometers to the north, a pair of Russian Sukhoi-24M2 fighter-bombers orbited at ten thousand meters. Assigned to patrol over the separatist-controlled regions of eastern Ukraine, they had already been on station for two hours. None of the four Russian airmen aboard the two planes was particularly happy with their mission. Su-24M2s were high-speed, low-level strike aircraft, modeled on the American-made F-111. Slated for eventual replacement as more of the newer and more capable Su-34s entered Russia's inventory, they were not designed for high-altitude routine surveillance. Besides that, the crews found the routine mind-numbingly dull.

Their protests were ignored. Given the Kremlin's new insistence on maintaining constant armed patrols over Belarus and this part of Ukraine, the commanders of Russia's air force were forced to use every plane in their inventory—whether perfectly suited to the mission or not. It was the only way they could avoid burning through engines and flight crews faster than was wise.

The lead Su-24 was banking, turning onto the next leg of its fuel-conserving racetrack holding pattern, when an enormous flash lit the sky to the south, briefly turning night into day.

“
What the hell?
Did you see that, Stepan?” the pilot, Captain Leonid Davydov, radioed his wingman.

“See what?”

“Some sort of explosion to the south. A big one,” Davydov said.

“Negative,” Captain Stepan Nikolayev reported. There was a pause. “Lieutenant Orlov and I both had our heads down, checking some of the engine readouts.”

“Do you have trouble?”

“Maybe,” Nikolayev admitted. “The second-stage turbine pressures on our number two engine are fluctuating a lot more than I would like.”

Davydov swore under his breath. Even with all the upgrades added to this model, Su-24s were forty-plus-year-old airframes and their Lyulka AL-21F3 turbojet engines were even older technology. And no matter how much maintenance their ground crews did, things were bound to go wrong eventually. Engine failures were high up among the leading accident causes for any military aircraft, especially in Russia's aging Su-24 fleet.

He keyed his mike. “Right. Now listen to me, Stepan. Don't screw around with this. Break off and head for the barn. Belinsky and I will fly the rest of the mission on our own. Got it?”

“Understood,” Nikolayev said reluctantly. “Heading for home now.”

Davydov looked aft out of the canopy and saw the other Su-24M2 curving away, flying east. He glanced back at his weapons officer, Lieutenant Yuri Belinsky. “Well, there goes our foursome for vint.”

Belinsky smiled dutifully. The Russian card game
vint,
similar to bridge, was a passion for his commanding officer. “That's a real shame, Captain.”

“Now get busy and call in a report on that explosion I just saw,” the pilot ordered. “Find out if Vornezh Control knows what on earth is going on down there.”

T
RAINING AND
S
TORAGE
D
EPOT

T
HAT SAME TIME

Before the last shattering echoes of the truck-bomb blast faded, Kravchenko signaled the two partisans carrying their improvised Bangalore torpedoes forward. Bent low, they scuttled up to the edge of the barbed-wire entanglement, thrust the two lengths of pipe in under the wire, and raced back to the others—unreeling lengths of detonator cord as they ran.

“Down!” Kravchencko shouted to his assault teams. “Get your heads down!” He threw himself flat, pressing his face to the ground.

WHUUMMP! WHUUMMP!

Both Bangalores went off—shattering the darkness again. Smoke and dust boiled away along with tiny pieces of blackened and twisted wire.

Kravchenko got up on one knee, peering through the blast-created haze. The breaching charges had worked perfectly, blowing meter-wide gaps through the barbed-wire entanglement.

He jumped up, readying his AKS carbine. “Attack! Attack!” he yelled. “
Nemaye uv'yaznenykh!
No prisoners!
Take no prisoners!
”

“
Vbty! Vbty!
Kill! Kill!” his partisans roared, pouring through the gaps and into the heart of the enemy compound. Assault rifles stuttered and grenades went off with earsplitting cracks as they advanced—systematically clearing barracks buildings and huts. There were screams and panicked shouts from the bomb-stunned defenders, but no organized resistance.

Kravchenko and Lytvyn charged in right behind them, followed by ten more men. They skidded to a halt near one of the buildings, checking their bearings.

“Take your sapper team and blow the shit out of those damned Grads, Pavlo,” Kravchenko snapped. “You've got five minutes.”

Lytvyn nodded once and moved off at a trot, followed by five partisans carrying heavy backpacks stuffed full of satchel charges.
Destroying the deadly 122mm rocket launchers so prized by the separatists was one of their chief objectives.

But Kravchenko had other plans, too. With a sharp hand signal, he led the remaining partisans around the corner of the building and deeper into the enemy base. Crumpled bodies littered the ground, many clad only in T-shirts and their underwear. The Ukrainian smiled cruelly. His attack had caught the Russian-loving bastards in their sleep.

A dazed separatist soldier staggered out of the nearest barracks. Blood dripped from a deep gash on his forehead. He was unarmed.

Kravchenko raised his carbine, shot the reeling man twice at point-blank range, and jogged on without pausing. He had once remembered that these men were fellow Ukrainians—they could even be relatives, for all he knew—but the last time he had that thought seemed a very, very long time ago. Now they were just targets to be eliminated. They weren't even collaborators or turncoats to him anymore—they were just targets that had to be put down so he could accomplish his mission.

Another building loomed up out of the darkness. This one had no windows and its door was padlocked. The Ukrainian nodded. This was what he'd been looking for. He dropped to one knee, covering the others while they went to work with bolt cutters.

“We're in, Major!” he heard one of them yell.

And then the whole eastern edge of the compound lit up in a series of dazzling explosions that sent huge orange and red sheets of fire rippling skyward. The ground rocked.

“Nice work, Pavlo,” Kravchenko murmured. So much for the Grads.

He ducked through the low door of the building his team had broken into. It was a weapons storage bunker. The Ukrainian already had a flashlight out, waving the beam across wooden racks holding meter-and-a-half-long green tubes. Other racks held white-painted missiles. “Those are what we want,” he said. “Take as many as you can carry!”

One by one, his partisans grabbed 9K38 Igla “Needle” shoulder-
fired antiaircraft launchers and missiles and hurried back out into the burning compound. The fires set by the detonation of their truck bomb and by the big artillery rocket launchers Lytvyn had destroyed were spreading fast.

Outside the storage bunker, Kravchenko pulled out a whistle and blew three short, shrill blasts. That was the signal for his assault teams to break off their attack and fade back into the pitch-black countryside. Once away from the blazing, ruined base, they would break up into small groups and disperse.

By the time the Russians or their separatist lackeys managed to push an armored or truck-mounted reaction force out from Donetsk, the partisans would be long gone.

The Ukrainian raised his head, eyeing the night sky. No, there was only one enemy threat left that he had worried about.

Then he smiled to himself. And now he didn't really have to fear even that.