Politika

FORTY-TWO

The American compound rose up out of the darkness like a silent fortress, but its air of solidness and protection was a mere illusion. There were ten buildings, none of them more than two stories tall, and a concrete wall running around the perimeter. Gregor knew there were infrared beams and sensors running along the top of the wall that would sound an alarm if anyone breached their security. He also knew those infrared beams and sensors were going to do those inside no good at all.

There was one gate in the wall nearest them. Wide enough to permit two trucks to pass through at the same time, the reinforced metal gates swung open past small guard booths mounted on either side.

A typical American setup, Gregor thought. Within, there would be only a handful of poorly armed security guards, and maybe a score or two of technicians. None of them would be a match for him and his team.

As planned, the four BTR-40s came to a halt fifty yards from the metal gates, well beyond the perimeter of light cast by the spots set along the wall. Their headlights were already off, and all the team members had their night vision goggles in place.

Gregor looked over at Nikita. “Get ready, Nikki,” he said.

She looked at him silently for a moment and then nodded. Climbing onto the back of the armored personnel carrier, she went to the M-38 82mm mortar bolted to the floor and made her final sighting adjustments.

She waited a moment longer, giving the passengers of the other three BTR-40s time to get ready, and then fired off the first of her rounds. An instant later, three rocket-propelled grenades arced through the night, streaking toward the metal gate.

Nikki didn’t stay around to watch. As soon as she fired, she dove back into the already moving vehicle, plucking an RPG for herself from the back as she did so.

The peace and stillness of the quiet night erupted in sudden death and destruction. One grenade impacted directly on the metal gates, blasting them off their hinges and flinging them farther into the compound. Two other grenades hit the two guard shacks, cutting off any communication and killing the guards within. Nikita, however, hadn’t aimed at the gate or the guard shacks. She’d had a trickier shot, lifting her mortar shell high above the wall and dropping it directly onto the roof of the building that housed the generator. It was their only shot at taking out the Americans’ communications completely — and even though Gregor knew the Americans had no one to call, still he believed in taking no unnecessary chances.

Nikki’s shot was perfect. Gregor smiled to himself and, closing the fifty yards quickly, he plunged through the debris left behind by the grenades, ignoring whatever damage he might be doing to his tires and the underside of his carrier. His team had already identified the motor pool inside the compound. They planned to leave that untouched, except for any personnel who might be working or hiding in there, and if their own vehicles were damaged they would simply ride out on stolen Jeeps once their mission was accomplished.

The personnel carriers went through the gates single file, Gregor in the lead, then Gilea’s four men in the next two, and the last members of his personal team in the final vehicle. Once inside, each of the four veered off, heading to their preplanned corners of the compound. When they were all in position, they turned and started heading toward the building in the center — the low, concrete building with the satellite uplink equipment mounted on the roof — firing as they went.

There was no resistance. Gregor hadn’t expected much, but he’d expected more than the Americans managed. A couple of security guards were cut down early, caught out in the open with confusion on their faces and fear in their eyes, but beyond those two it appeared that all the remaining personnel were holed up in their prefab apartment buildings, keeping their heads down and hoping to just survive this onslaught.

Unfortunately for them, Gregor’s orders were to the contrary.

As they passed each building, Gregor’s team sent a grenade into the doorway, causing additional destruction and sealing the survivors within. His mission priority was the satellite uplink building. Once that was destroyed, he would be able to devote his full attention to the rest of the compound.

The only building that slowed Gregor down at all was the one where the Americans kept their small supply of firearms. Two of his BTR-40s converged on that building and paused long enough to level it with grenades. Then, turning down the sensitivity on his night vision goggles, Gregor Sadov resumed his methodical advance toward the command and control section of the compound.

Max Blackburn was on the phone with Alan Jacobs, the head of security at the compound, when the link went dead. Max and his team had been out following leads and were on their way back to the compound. Alan had called him the moment the power went out. No one really suspected there was anything devious or deliberate about the power outage, but standard protocol was to maintain an open line until the problem was identified and solved. Blackburn and his security detail were on their way back to the compound already — except for Vince Scull who had stayed behind to check on a few loose ends — but when the call came in he’d told his driver to speed up a bit.

Max did not hang up when the phone went dead against his ear. Instead, he kept the line open and turned to Meg. They were in the back of a covered truck, the kind used to haul produce from small local farms into the nearby towns for sale, bouncing along on the local equivalent of a road.

“Call in,” he said to her, giving her Jacob’s direct dial.

“Trouble?” she asked, already punching in the number. Standard protocol was to not record any numbers in speed dial, and to always clear the last number in redial memory after completing a call.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe.”

Meg pressed Send and then lifted the phone to her ear. “It’s ringing,” she said after a moment.

Max leaned forward. “Step on it,” he said to the driver.

Meg looked at him, a quizzical expression on her face. Blackburn hadn’t even waited for anyone to answer before reacting.

“There’s trouble,” Max said. “You should have gotten a busy signal. The fact that you didn’t means that the primary phone lines are down.” Turning his head, he called back to Lee “Seal” Johnson, the team’s radio expert. “Use the TAC-Sat,” he said. “I want satellite communication established with the compound, and I want it now. Something’s happening there, and I need to know what it is.”

“It’s no good, sir,” Johnson said after a moment. “The satellite’s responding, but the ground station isn’t.”

Blackburn nodded, his lips pressed into a grim line. “How long until we get back there?”

“Ten minutes, sir,” the driver said.

Blackburn shook his head. He knew all too well just how long ten minutes could be in a firefight. “Make it five,” he said.

“But, sir. The axles won’t take—”

“I don’t give a damn about the axles,” he snapped, “or the ruts in the road. I care about the people who are being attacked back at that compound, and who are relying on us to protect them — which we can’t do from here. Get us back there in five minutes. That’s an order.”

“Yes, sir,” the driver said. “Five minutes.”

Blackburn nodded, then turned away and began issuing orders to his team. They had five minutes to get ready, five minutes to prepare for a battle against an unknown adversary, against unknown numbers and unknown firepower.

Five minutes — an eternity for those back at the compound, but not nearly as long as Blackburn would have liked for his team.

Gregor’s men had run into some trouble. Nothing they couldn’t handle, but it had slowed them down more than he liked.

He had expected the guards to be unarmed, but as Gregor’s team approached the pillbox building in the heart of the compound, their armored vehicles illuminated by the fires burning around them, they ran into some small arms fire coming from gun ports in all four sides. From the sounds, the guards didn’t have anything bigger than.38-caliber, but that wasn’t what worried him. If the personnel in any of the apartment buildings also had weapons, Gregor and his men could be caught in a deadly crossfire before they accomplished their mission.

This was the point where the battle plan went to hell. Up until now, everything had gone like clockwork — which was especially pleasing considering how little time they’d had to prepare. But now it was time to improvise.

Reaching down, he grabbed the headlight knob and gave it a quick yank. At the same moment, he stomped on the switch on the floor, flipping the lights to bright.

“Get ready, Nikki,” he said, pulling hard on the hand brake.

Diving out of the still moving BTR-40, he rolled a couple of feet, being careful to stay in the zone of darkness created behind the bright headlights. Coming up to one knee, he sharpened the focus on his goggles, raised his rifle, rested his elbow on his left knee, and sighted carefully on the nearest gun port.

He could see the face of a frightened guard staring down over the barrel of what looked like a 9mm Beretta. A nice weapon, but pretty much useless under these conditions.

Gregor took a deep breath, let some of it out, and then, holding the rest of it to calm the slight shake of his rifle, he gently squeezed off a single shot.

Even with his goggles, he couldn’t see the bullet hit home. He was still riding the recoil of his shot when it struck, but a moment later he could see that the gun port was empty, and there were no more shots coming from this side.

A moment later he saw Nikki fire off another round from the BTR-40’s mortar, dropping it squarely on the roof of the pillbox. The remaining gunfire fell silent, and the rest of Gregor’s team opened up with their own grenade launchers. Within minutes the little white building was little more than a burning ruin.

Gregor turned to his team and gave the order to fan out. With their primary objective accomplished, their orders were to search for any survivors and to neutralize them.

Using hand signals, he motioned the three members of his personal team to hang back slightly. This part of their job wasn’t war. It was simple murder, and he’d be happy to let Gilea’s men do most of it.

Max Blackburn could see the flames as they drew near the compound. He was leaning forward in the back of the truck, trying to will the driver to go faster. Beside him, Megan had gone still and silent as the impact of what they were seeing hit home.

“My God,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.

Max didn’t say anything. He merely clenched his fists tighter.

His team was ready. They had all seen the flames leaping into the night sky, and they all knew what those flames meant. All of them, even the driver, had their Kevlar on and their night vision goggles adjusted. They had their weapons prepared and their lines of fire planned out. They had received their orders and made all the plans they could. Now all they needed was a target and a chance for revenge.

Fifty yards out, their headlights off, Max ordered the driver to slow down and head around toward the back. This close to the compound, the road was finally smoothing out, and every part of him wanted to take that command back, wanted to tell the driver to drive even faster, but he knew he couldn’t. The personnel in that compound were counting on him — if any of them were still alive — and waltzing in there like an idiot and getting himself and his team killed wouldn’t do any of them any good.

No, as much as he would have liked to ride in like the cavalry, Blackburn knew he had to play this one by the book.

Slowing near the first corner, Blackburn motioned for four of his twelve-man team to jump off the truck. It would be up to them to get over the wall and take up positions with two men at each of the front corners. Four more would take up similar positions at the rear corner, and Blackburn, Megan, and the other three would come over the back wall, directly opposite the gate. The driver would stay with the truck.

Please, God, Blackburn thought, watching as the driver went around the first corner. He’d intended to pray for survivors, for God to let at least some of the Americans survive this night. But that’s not what formed in his head. Please, God, let them be there. Help me to make them pay for what they’ve done.

Beside him, Megan reached out and touched his hand, offering silent support, but he didn’t notice. He was too intent on the sounds of stray gunfire coming over the wall, and the visions of vengeance playing in his head.

Gregor heard the gunfire taper off and he smiled. A few more minutes and he’d recall the team.

“Good work tonight,” he said to Nikki. And he meant it, too. She had performed flawlessly, making all her shots clean and keeping her cool when things got hot. She was a good fighter, a good soldier, and he was pleased that she’d made it through this far.

To his right, he heard a single AKMS snap off two shots and then fall silent.

That was it, he thought. The last one. Reaching for the transmitter on his belt, he pressed the squawk button three times — short, long, short — giving the signal to join up at the motor pool, with the only undamaged building in the compound. Once his team joined up again, they would take the building, clean out any survivors, and then take whatever vehicles Gregor thought he could resell.

That was the plan. Gregor’s first clue that the plan had gone wrong was when a hand fell on his arm and the blade of a knife pressed against his throat.

Max was proud of his team. Like true professionals, they had turned off their emotions and were going about their jobs in complete silence and with utter proficiency. With tactics learned from the Army Rangers, the Special Forces, the Navy SEALs, and other SpecOps groups, they identified the enemy and took them out by ones and twos, all without firing a shot. What was even more surprising was that, ignoring the rage that had to be burning within them as brightly as the compound, they neutralized the attackers without firing a shot and, as far as Blackburn could tell, without killing a single one of the enemy. This was one band of terrorists that would live to see a trial.

Seeing the last two enemies in front of them, Max raised his hand, signaling for extra caution, and then moved forward. Megan was on his left, and the two of them were flanked by two other members of his team.

Under other circumstances, Blackburn might have played it more cautiously and let one of the others take the point. Then again, he might not have. He and Gordian had argued about this countless times, but the simple fact was that Max refused to consider that any member of his team, no matter how new or how young or how inexperienced, was less indispensable than he was himself. And he absolutely refused to send men in where he himself would not go.

Slipping forward on silent feet, he waited for the man’s hand to come off the radio at his belt, and then he acted, reaching forward and seizing the man’s arm with his right hand and laying a knife along his throat with his left hand. He didn’t say anything. He was more than half hoping the man would react, would start to fight, would do anything to give him a reason to use that knife.

Beside him, Megan wasn’t so nice. Stepping forward in tandem with him, her own short-bladed knife in her hand, she closed on the woman who was her target. Reversing her blade, she brought the hilt down hard on the base of the woman’s neck. The woman tumbled to the ground, unconscious, long, dark hair spilling out from beneath her helmet as she fell.

Too easy, Blackburn thought. He wanted blood. He wanted to pull the knife hard across the neck of the man he’d captured. But he couldn’t. He was a soldier, first and foremost, and though he worked for a company rather than a country, still he had a code to uphold.

Besides, someday this pain and rage would fade, and on that day he wanted to be able to live with himself.

He maintained control of the man he had captured until his men had secured him. Then he sheathed his blade and said, “Get them the hell out of here.”

Spinning away from them, he started the process of searching for survivors. It had been a long night already, and he knew that it was only going to get longer.