Iron Wolf (35 page)

O
FFICE OF THE
P
RESIDENT,

B
ELWEDER
P
ALACE,
W
ARSAW

T
HAT SAME TIME

Polish President Piotr Wilk sat alone in his private office. Conferring with the representatives of the Iron Wolf Squadron and some of his senior military commanders via video links imposed some additional security risk in these days of widespread hacking, but it was still safer than gathering in person. Now that the battle had been joined, a roomful of high-ranking military and political leaders was nothing more than a juicy target for Russian bombs or cruise missiles.

He looked across the array of five serious faces displayed on his monitor—the two Americans, Brad McLanahan and President Kevin Martindale, and three Poles, two of them major generals, Tadeusz Stasiak and Milosz Domanski, and the last a colonel in the air force, Pawe
ł
Kasperek. Stasiak and Domanski commanded the two Polish task forces assembling to meet the oncoming Russian 6th and 20th Guards Armies. Kasperek, the commander of Poland's 3rd Tactical Squadron, was the young officer he'd tasked with coordinating the country's F-16s with the Iron Wolf Squadron's XF-111s and drones.

“I congratulate you on the success of your first raids, gentlemen,” Wilk said to Brad and Martindale. “The results achieved by your forces surpassed anything I imagined possible.”

“Thank you, Mr. President,” Martindale replied. “I think we batted the Russian bear across the back of the head rather nicely.” He smiled wryly. “Of course, now we've really pissed him off.”

Wilk matched the gray-haired American's crooked grin with one of his own. “That much was inevitable. What matters more is how this first defeat affects Moscow's strategy. I assume it is unlikely to make our friend Gryzlov more cautious.”

“Probably not on the ground,” Martindale agreed. “As far as he's concerned, his armies outnumber yours so heavily that the sooner they move into contact, the sooner he wins.”

“And in the air?”

“If Gryzlov is dumb enough to keep basing aircraft within our striking range, we'll keep clobbering them on the ground,” Brad McLanahan said confidently. “But I don't think he's that dumb. Now that we've given him a bloody nose, he's likely to pull his aviation regiments back out of our reach.”

“Which would still leave us heavily outnumbered in the sky,” Wilk commented.

Brad nodded. “Yes, sir.” Then he shrugged. “But we'll still have significantly degraded Russia's air capability—especially its air-to-ground strike capability, which was our primary objective. For example, pushing those Su-25 Frogfoots back to Russian bases makes them a lot less effective. Their unrefueled combat radius is only three hundred and seventy-five kilometers. If Grzylov pulls them back to safety, they'll have to fly three times that far just to reach the battlefield.” He inclined his head toward the two Polish Army officers. “Which will make life a heck of a lot easier for your armor formations.”

Wilk nodded. Russia's Su-25 Frogfoots were aging, but still effective, close air support planes. Roughly equivalent to the American A-10 Thunderbolt, they were designed to smash tank forces using 30mm cannons, rockets, missiles, and laser-guided bombs. Reducing the threat of attack from the Su-25s would allow his field commanders to use their Leopard 2, T-72, and Polish-manufactured PT-91 main battle tanks more aggressively.

“Anyway, if the Russians do abandon their forward air bases, the Iron Wolf Squadron is ready to move to Phases Two and Three of our plan,” Brad continued. “But obviously we won't initiate any serious action until everybody else is set.”

“Excellent,” Wilk said.

“There is one further consideration, sir,” Colonel Kasperek said, speaking up plainly. “Neither Brad nor I believe Gryzlov or his air commanders will stay passive—even if they do pull their air units back to better-defended bases.”

“You think they will launch a retaliatory strike?” Wilk asked.
He'd known Pawe
ł
Kasperek since the other man had flown MiG-29s under his command as a young lieutenant. Kasperek was a very good pilot, and an even better tactician.

“We do,” the colonel said bluntly. “And soon. Perhaps within the next several hours.”

“And are your F-16s ready to meet such an attack?”

“Yes, sir,” Kasperek said. “We have prepared a number of different plans, depending on what the Russians throw at us.” He hesitated, looking somber. “But our losses may be high. Very high, if we are unlucky, or if we have miscalculated.”

“That is likely,” Wilk agreed quietly. “Look, Pawe
ł
, chance and error are always a part of war. You can try to minimize their effects, but you cannot erase them. Not entirely.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” the younger man said. His expression was still very grave.

Wilk studied him for one more moment. “Listen carefully, Colonel. If you are forced to choose between losing your entire squadron and allowing the Russians through to bomb some of our cities, even Warsaw itself, you
must
preserve as many of your planes and pilots as possible. We have been bombed before. Many times. If necessary, we can rebuild. But we need an intact air force to have any chance of surviving this war. So, no death and glory flights, eh? You understand?”

Briefly, the younger air-force officer looked stubborn, prepared to argue against this order. After all, no one joined Poland's military to allow an enemy to kill their fellow Poles without a fight. But faced by his commander in chief's steady gaze, he grudgingly nodded.

“Very good,” Wilk said. He switched his gaze to the two Polish Army officers. “Well, gentlemen? General Stasiak? Are your troops ready?”

Major General Tadeusz Stasiak, older and heavier-set than his counterpart, Milosz Domanski, nodded confidently. “My units are moving into position on schedule, Mr. President.” Stasiak commanded the vast majority of Poland's hastily mobilized ground forces—the 11th Armored Cavalry Division, the 12th Mechanized
Division, and two-thirds of the 16th Mechanized Division. These troops were rapidly deploying along the Polish border with Belarus and digging in. Their job was to stop the Russian 6th Army cold, blocking one prong of Gryzlov's two-pronged invasion force. Given their numbers, which were close to those of the Russians advancing on them, and the advantages of fighting defensively on their own home ground, Stasiak's men had a good chance of success.

“And you, Milosz?” Wilk asked. “Are your officers and men prepared? Do they understand their mission?”

Domanski, as tall and wiry as Stasiak was short and stout, didn't hesitate. “Yes, sir.” He grinned at the two Americans. “Though after seeing what these Iron Wolves can do, my boys are a lot less likely to see our role as a form of noble and patriotic suicide.”

Wilk snorted. “Let us hope so!”

By training and temperament, Milosz Domanski was a cavalryman—though one thoroughly schooled in the tactics of modern armored warfare. He had a well-earned reputation as a bold, intelligent, and innovative military thinker and leader. That was good, because the mission assigned to him by Poland's war plan would demand every ounce of skill, dash, and daring.

To confront Russia's 20th Guards Army—a formation with more than fifty thousand troops and hundreds of heavy tanks and artillery pieces—Domanski had been given one armored brigade and one independent rifle brigade. Which meant he and his soldiers faced odds of more than ten to one. According to conventional military thinking, that kind of disparity was a recipe for inevitable defeat and destruction. But Domanski's mission was not conventional.

Stasiak's much larger force had no choice but to accept a head-on defensive battle with the invading Russians. Advancing against them into Belarus was politically impossible, since Poland wanted to avoid giving Moscow's puppet government in Minsk any more reasons to join the war openly.

Domanski's soldiers, though, had the freedom to maneuver beyond the frontier. Military weakness forced Ukraine's pro-Western government to allow the Russians free passage through its remain
ing territory, but that same weakness gave them every excuse to let the Poles do the same. And that, in turn, meant the general's troops and tanks could wage a fast-moving war of hit and run against the advancing 20th Guards Army—working in tandem with the Iron Wolf Squadron's cybernetic war machines and aircraft.

With luck and skill, they could buy Poland time she would not otherwise have. Though, Wilk admitted grimly to himself, he still wasn't able to see a good outcome, no matter how much delay they were able to impose on the Russians. If he could have counted on NATO and American reinforcements, prolonging the war would make good sense. But could he justify the likely cost in blood and treasure only to delay the inevitable?

“Cheer up, Mr. President,” Martindale said, obviously reading his dour mood. “We're in the position of that thief condemned to death by the king. The one who begged for a year of life so that he could teach the king's horse to sing.”

Wilk raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

Martindale smiled. “When someone told him he was crazy, the thief laughed and said: Who knows what will happen in a year? Perhaps I will die. Or maybe the king will die—”

“Or perhaps the horse will learn to sing,” Brad finished for him. The tall, young American showed his teeth in a defiant grin. “Well, that's our job, Mr. President. That's why you hired the Iron Wolf Squadron. We're here to teach that stubborn, damned nag to sit up and sing.”

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

—
V
INCENT VAN
G
OGH,
D
UTCH ARTIST

E
AST OF
K
ALININGRAD,
R
USSIA

L
ATER THAT DAY

Dozens of huge, mobile Iskander-M and R-500 missile launchers, transporters, command vehicles, and maintenance trucks rumbled slowly along the rutted logging trails and narrow backcountry roads ninety kilometers east of the city of Kaliningrad, moving bumper-to-bumper under the direction of heavily armed Russian military policemen. As the convoys rolled through the dense pine forest, staff officers waved individual groups of vehicles off into clearings already covered by layers of camouflage netting. The Iskander brigade contained twelve forty-ton missile vehicles, each able to fire two missiles in rapid succession. One by one, the launcher units, each accompanied by other trucks carrying extra missiles and support and command vehicles, rolled into precisely calculated positions and halted.

More vehicles, launchers, and command trucks belonging to long-range S-300 and S-400 SAM battalions were already deployed in a wide ring around these new tactical ballistic missile and cruise missile sites. Close-in protection was provided by detachments of Tor-M1 30mm gun and short-range SAM units.

Another convoy of large armored trucks, this one even more heavily guarded by grim-faced Spetsnaz troops, followed the Iskander brigade. These trucks turned off onto a side road and drove deep into the heart of the newly created missile complex. There, in another camouflaged clearing, specialist crews waited to off-load their cargoes of tactical nuclear warheads into a new bunker dug deep into the Russian soil.

Gennadiy Gryzlov was keeping all of his options open. If his conventional forces failed to defeat the Poles, he would still possess the power to turn Poland into a ravaged, radioactive wasteland with a brutal, lightning-fast tactical ballistic and cruise missile strike.

O
VER
B
ELARUS

T
HAT NIGHT

Twenty Su-34 fighter bombers streaked low over the fields and forests of eastern Belarus, flying just high enough to clear trees and power lines. Three big KAB-1500L laser-guided bombs hung from the center-line and inner-wing hardpoints on each aircraft. Two of the fifteen-hundred-kilogram bombs were bunker-busters, designed to penetrate up to two meters of reinforced concrete and then explode with devastating power. The third KAB-1500L carried by each Su-34 was a highly lethal thermobaric bomb. It contained two small explosive charges and a large container of highly toxic and flammable fuel. Once the bomb was dropped, its first charge would detonate at a preset height, splitting the fuel container. As a mist of dispersed fuel drifted down, the weapon's second charge would go off, igniting the fuel cloud in a massive explosion. The KAB-1500's thermobaric warhead was designed to create a searing fireball with a radius of one hundred and fifty meters, while its powerful, lung-rupturing shock wave would kill anyone caught within five hundred meters of the blast.

In effect, the two squadrons of Su-34s were carrying enough precision-guided explosives to turn much of the historic city center of Warsaw into a sea of shattered, burned-out ruins. Two Kh-31 antiradiation missiles and a pair of long-range, radar-guided R-77E antiair missiles on the outer-wing pylons completed their armament load.

Strapped into the darkened cockpit of one of the lead fighter-bombers, Major Viktor Zelin firmly held the Su-34 on course as it bounced and juddered through turbulent pockets of warmer and colder air. He blinked away a droplet of sweat trickling down from under his helmet. Without the terrain-avoidance and terrain-following capabilities ordinarily provided by his aircraft's Leninets B-004 phased-array radar, flying this low seemed like madness. But
their orders were to go in without radar until they were almost right on top of their planned targets.

The brass said flying without active radars would help ensure surprise. Maybe so, he thought gloomily. Then again, the generals and politicians who'd ordered this stunt were sitting around knocking back vodka in cushy operations rooms back in Voronezh and Moscow. They weren't the ones who would pay the price for any nasty surprises.

Abruptly, Zelin pulled back on the stick, climbing just high enough to clear the onion-domed top of a little village church that suddenly appeared right in front of them.
“Eto piz`dets!”
he grumbled. “This is fucked up! First, Voronezh wants us to go in practically blind. And then we're not even carrying enough air-to-air missiles to scare off one Polish F-16, let alone tangle with their whole damned air force.”

Beside him, his navigation and weapons officer, Captain Nikolai Starikov, smiled tightly. The major was a superb pilot, but he was never really happy until he found something to bitch about. “Mixing it up with the Poles is what those Su-35s out ahead of us are for,” he said calmly. “And the boys on the Beriev have
their
eyes open. They'll let us know if anyone's heading our way.”

“They'd better,” Zelin said darkly.

Another twenty Su-35 fighters were flying about twenty kilometers ahead of them, ready to zoom farther ahead and bounce any Polish planes that tried to intercept the raid. Technically, Russia could have committed many more combat aircraft to this mission, but not without significantly reducing its ability to effectively command the attack force. The big, four-engine Beriev A-100 Airborne Early Warning and Control plane flying at medium altitude was a huge improvement on the old A-50 “Mainstay,” which had been limited to controlling just ten to twelve fighters or strike planes at a time. But there were still limits on how many planes the fifteen systems operators aboard the A-100 could handle.

In this case, the calculation was that the Poles would have trouble getting more than a handful of their best fighters off the ground be
fore the Russian strike force was already on its way home—leaving Warsaw ablaze behind them. But even if they reacted faster than predicted, their F-16s and even older MiG-29s were no match for Russia's Su-35s, at least not in a beyond-visual-range missile shootout.

“Beriev reports no airborne contacts yet,” Starikov said, listening intently to information radioed by the controllers aboard the AWACS plane. He glanced down at the digital map on his MFD. It used data from their inertial navigation and GPS receivers to show their current position. “Thirty minutes to beginning of attack run.”