Battlefield Russia

From Georgia, With Love

The weather had recently turned cold and miserable in the relatively sleepy seaside town of Makhachkala. Major Gogaza pulled another cigarette out from his pack, stopping briefly while he cupped his hands against the wind to light it. He took a long pull to make sure the tobacco stayed lit. Gogaza let the smoke fill his lungs and reveled in the feeling as his body absorbed the nicotine. Then he continued his leisurely walk near the trainyard. Looking past the fence, he saw the petrol tanks and the network of pipes that connected them to the offshore oil rigs in the Caspian Sea.

Major Gogaza made a mental note of the security around the facility, noting the pair of soldiers casually walking a German shepherd along the perimeter. The fence itself was nothing too remarkable — a single-layer fence roughly six feet in height with three strings of barbed wire in a forked pattern on the top. It was designed to look tough, but it wouldn’t keep an intruder out. Returning his gaze to the sidewalk and street he was meandering down, Gogaza spotted a small coffee shop and decided this would be a good place to stop and observe the guard schedule for a while.

Seeing an empty seat next to the front window, he slipped into the café and placed his windbreaker on the chair, along with a copy of the local paper. He then placed an order for a macchiato and a local baked delicacy and settled into his seat to read the daily paper. Gogaza spent a total of 72 minutes there. To be safe, he ordered a refill on the macchiato and downed a second pastry. While he was there, he noted that a pair of guards walked past the perimeter with a dog roughly twenty minutes apart. He stayed long enough to see four pairs of guards and dogs walk past the fence at nearly the exact same interval, with almost no variation.

Major Gogaza smiled to himself. “These guys are either bored or sloppy,” he thought.

After leaving the café, Gogaza took a very meandering route back to the house that had been rented for his team to use for this operation. The structure was dilapidated, but it would serve its purpose of not attracting attention to the ten Georgian Special Operations soldiers who were staying in it.

Three days went by as Major Gogaza’s team surveilled the target of their operation. They developed a series of plans and discussed everything that could go wrong with each scenario. Then they constructed and ran through the alternative plans. It became clear that the best way for them to gain entry into the facility and accomplish their mission in the stated timeframe was for them to cut a hole in the fence near a section of shrubs on the northern side of the facility, then move quickly to place their explosives at the base of the storage tanks. A separate two-man team would infiltrate at a different point and look to blow up the pumping station to the pipeline.

Gogaza pointed to three of his team members. “You three will need to stay behind to provide sniper overwatch on this small crest,” he ordered, pointing to a map. “It has a perfect vantage point to observe the fence we will be breaching.”

“Yes, Sir,” they responded.

“That gives us two snipers and one spotter,” Major Gogaza continued. “If all goes according to plan, we will destroy the pumping facility, three million barrels of oil, and a critical junction in the pipeline. That will put a serious dent in the Russian petroleum business.”

They all smiled, excited to be a part of degrading the Russian capability to support this horrible war.

The night air was cool. Cloud cover obscured the moon, which, for Major Gogaza’s team, couldn’t have turned out any better. They had driven to a small dirt road that was less than a few hundred meters from the perimeter fence they had chosen to infiltrate. All of them did a mic check to make sure that their throat radios were operational; they could clearly hear each other whispering as if they were talking right next to each other in a normal tone of voice. Then his men adjusted their night vision goggles before they exited the two vans. The special operators quietly snuck out of the vehicles and moved quickly and stealthily through the small trees and underbrush until they reached the fence.

The two-man team that was going to gain entry further down the perimeter drove their vehicle down the road another two kilometers until they reached their own infiltration point. Once there, they would wait for their overwatch team to let them know it was safe to cut the fence and move to place their explosives near the pumping terminal.

While Major Gogaza desperately wanted to penetrate the facility with his men, he knew he could serve them better by staying with the sniper team and managing the small surveillance drone they had brought with them. When the rest of the team got close to the fence line, he and the sniper team split off from the rest of the group.

Once they reached the hill, the snipers immediately unslung their packs and went to work setting up their rifles and other equipment. They removed the thermal-resistant blankets they would cover themselves with to prevent their body heat from showing up on any infrared or thermal security cameras. Before Gogaza crawled under one of the large blankets with his sniper team, he pulled the small surveillance drone out of the backpack, quickly unfolding it and turning the power on. Once the system check was complete and the drone was paired with the controller, he turned the little engine on, pulled his arm back and threw it for all his worth into the air.

The drone took off and established a circular holding pattern until Major Gogaza took direct control of it. With their eye in the sky in place, he crawled under the safety of the blanket. Flicking the night vision camera on, Gogaza quickly found the roving guard patrols. From what he could see, there were four roving patrols that moved around the perimeter of the fence.

Once the first patrol passed, he contacted his operators. “Cut the fence and begin to infiltrate the storage tank facility,” he ordered.

They needed twenty to thirty minutes to place enough charges inside the tank farm to make sure the entire facility went up. If all went according to plan, his team would also place multiple charges at a lot of the oil pipeline terminal sections, which would tear apart the actual pipeline shutoff junctions. That would in turn cause petrol to continue to flow past the destroyed sections of the pipe, into the raging inferno they were about to create. With any luck, this fire would rage for days if not weeks, depriving the Russians of a critical fuel source.

Five minutes into the operation, they spotted their first sign of trouble. One of his team leaders contacted Gogaza. “OP1, Alpha Two has eyes on two tangos with a dog moving toward my position. I’m going to be spotted. Please advise if you’re able to neutralize the dog. I’ll take out the tangos.”

Major Gogaza cursed under his breath. “That’s a good copy. OP1 will neutralize the dog. Stand by,” he replied. He gently nudged the sniper to his left, who had already zeroed in on Alpha Two’s position and found the tangos and the dog.

Despite using a silenced rifle, the sniper’s shot was still audible when he fired. Because of the range needed for this situation, he could not use subsonic rounds, which meant the silencer could only partially muffle the sound.

Major Gogaza suddenly felt nervous and exposed. “At least the infiltration team on the ground is in a range to use their subsonic rounds,” he thought.

The sniper’s round successfully struck the German shepherd center mass, killing it instantly. Before either guard could react to what had happened, the operators of Alpha team appeared from behind one of the fuel tanks and fired short bursts from their silenced rifles, hitting both guards in the chest and killing them before they could fire a shot or alert their comrades to the attack that was underway.

Knowing their cover was blown, Major Gogaza called an audible and changed the attack plans. “Alpha, move immediately to place your charges on the pipe control junction now! Bravo, find one more fuel tank to place your explosives on and head back to the rally point. Charley, get your charges placed on the pumping station ASAP and then meet back at the rally point. How copy?”

One by one, the three teams reported in and raced to get their explosives rigged. Then, to Gogaza’s dismay, the drone detected several additional guards exiting a small building, heading toward his Alpha team’s location, probably to investigate the single gunshot they’d heard.

“Alpha, you have six tangos heading toward you. Set your charges and get the hell out of there!” he said urgently.

He watched nervously as the guards fanned out and moved toward the pipe control junction.

Gogaza keyed his mic. “OP1, OP2, you guys are going to have to cover them on the way out.” The two snipers used their foot to tap, letting him know they understood and were standing by.

It was killing Gogaza to watch everything take place over a drone feed and not be on the ground with his men. He’d been in Special Forces his entire military career, and he lived for missions like this. Sadly, rank and command meant he was spending more time doing activities like this than actually being the shooter directly on the ground.

His radio crackled ever so slightly. “This is Charley. Explosives have been set. Exfilling now. Will meet at rally point.”

“Thank God, at least the pump station is rigged to blow,” thought Gogaza. Now they just had to get their other two teams out.

To his surprise, the guards that were headed toward Alpha were either walking slowly or just completely missed them as they made their mad dash to the fence line. In either case, both Alpha and Bravo teams made it out of the facility before the second perimeter guard patrol got near them. Then, as he and the rest of the teams packed up their gear and headed to the van, they all heard the facility alarm go off.

Gogaza sighed. “They must have found the bodies,” he realized.

“Blow the charges now, and let’s go,” he ordered as they all piled into the van. It was time to go meet Charley at the rally point and then head to their exfil point and hope their ride out of Dagestan was still possible.

As the alarms of the facility vibrated in the air, the darkness of night was broken by a brilliant flash and a thunderous boom. The first petrol storage tank had exploded. This initial blast was quickly followed by several more glorious explosions. Within minutes, close to a dozen more tanks had blown up. The night sky turned to day as the roaring flames now reached thirty or forty meters high into the sky.

Major Gogaza’s team sped along the side road even faster. The perimeter of the flames would only increase, and they had to pick up Charley Team before they too were engulfed.

A mischievous smile spread across Gogaza’s face. If the guards had survived the immediate attack and managed not to be thrown to their deaths by the shockwaves, they would surely be much more interested in trying to live or finding a way to stop the flames than in catching him.

A few seconds later, Gogaza’s van twisted to a stop, kicking up dirt. Charley Team jumped in and they closed the door. They would all be drinking that night.

Warrant Officer Third Class Tiberius Petre held the 120mm mortar round over the top of the mortar tube, waiting for the order to release. Within seconds of indicating he was ready, his commander, Major Constantine Prezan, gave the order to him and the two other mortar teams. Tiberius dutifully dropped the mortar round and bent down to grab the next one.

Thump, thump, thump.

The mortars shot out of their tubes and headed toward one of the largest oil depots in Russia. Seconds after the first mortar fired, Tiberius dropped the second round in and repeated the process as quickly as he could until all his rounds were spent. In the span of three minutes, the three mortar teams had managed to fire off 36 mortars into the tank farms, causing many of them to explode. Soon, the fires and explosions were ripping across the nearby facilities. Within twenty minutes, the entire area was torn asunder as millions of barrels of petrol and the refineries nearby were reduced to a burning inferno.

Tiberius swelled with pride. With his mission complete, it was now time for them to work their way back to their safe houses and see what other mischief headquarters had in store for them.