Spymaster

CHAPTER 73

Harvath tightened his grip on Tretyakov, just as a barrage of gunfire erupted around them.

“Contact left! Contact left!” Sloane yelled.

Somehow, somewhere in the woods, the Russians had spotted them. Immediately, the team returned fire.

“Move! Move! Move!” Harvath ordered.

Everyone, including Tretyakov, kicked it into gear.

The wild, indiscriminate shooting seemed to be coming from every direction. The Russians were not only undisciplined, but were also going to end up killing one of their own.

At that moment, Harvath heard a cry from Tretyakov’s duct-taped mouth and saw him drop. He had been shot in the back of the leg.

Slinging his weapon, Harvath helped him back up and forced him to keep moving. It was obvious that the Russian soldiers weren’t planning on taking any prisoners.

Whether they knew Tretyakov was with them was immaterial. They were throwing so much lead in their direction that there was no way they could expect anyone to survive.

Raising his Rattler in his right hand, Harvath fired off a burst to their three o’clock.

The soldiers pursuing them from that side responded, and Tretyakov was shot again — this time in his upper arm.

“Fuck!” grunted Harvath.

They needed to find cover fast, or they were all going to be cut to ribbons. There were just too many guns on the other side of this fight.

Through the branches up ahead, Harvath spotted what looked like the remnants of an old stone foundation — maybe from a caretaker’s cottage or a previous lodge of some sort.

“There!” Harvath shouted, directing his team to it.

They all scrambled or leaped over the foundation wall. Harvath helped Tretyakov as Chase and Sloane laid down cover fire.

Finally getting up and over, Tretyakov landed hard on the other side, followed by Harvath.

“If I had known we were going to be taking on the whole Russian Army,” said Staelin as he changed magazines, “I would have brought along a little more ammo.”

Like Tretyakov, Harvath’s exfil plan was shot to shit. All the work Haney and Barton had done staging dry suits, full face mask SCUBA gear, and propulsion devices was out the window.

Even if they could get to all of it, it was highly unlikely they could successfully transport Tretyakov, underwater, to the Polish side of the lake where the boat was waiting.

He was going to have to come up with another plan. And right now, there was only one plan he could think of. Activating his radio, he hailed Barton.

“What the hell is that for?” Jasinski asked, as the SEAL flipped open the Storm case and removed a Mark 48 belt-fed machine gun.

“It’s for you,” he replied, quickly attaching it to its mount. “Did they teach you how to load and fire one of these things in the Polish Army?”

“What are you trying to do, start a war?”

“Actually,” he replied as he opened three ammo cans and then fired up the engine, “I’m trying to stop one.”

Down the lake, they could hear the withering fire that Harvath and the rest of the team were under.

Hailing Haney over the radio, Barton said, “Good to go, on your mark.”

“Roger that,” Haney replied, “stand by.”

The SEAL looked back at Jasinski through his night vision. He could see that she hadn’t yet loaded the weapon. “If we don’t go, the Russians are going to kill them.”

When she still didn’t do anything, he pushed past her, loaded a belt of 7.62 ammunition, and charged the Mark 48.

When Haney’s voice came back over the radio and said, “Now!” Barton told Jasinski to hold on as he pushed the throttle all the way forward.

The engine of the Rigid Inflatable Boat roared to life as they raced down the water toward the buoys and the demarcation line between Poland and Kaliningrad.

The closer they got, the louder the gunfire became. Barton prayed that they would make it there in time.

Up ahead on the western shore of the lake, he could see the Polish side of the border crossing. He could only imagine what the officers there were thinking as the gun battle raged across the water from them.

“Time to turn out the lights, Mike,” said Barton, as he could see the buoy line rapidly approaching up ahead.

“Five seconds,” Haney replied.

And like clockwork, five seconds later there was a detonation at the electrical substation, followed by smaller detonations at the generators that provided backup power for the Polish border crossing.

At the buoys, Barton stopped only long enough to use a pair of bolt cutters to sever the line, before once again throwing the throttles all the way forward.

“Norseman,” Barton said over the radio. “We are inbound to you. Sixty seconds.”

The soldiers, having zeroed in on the position of Harvath and the team, had discovered some semblance of discipline and were pushing in with a coordinated attack in order to flank them.

“We’re not going to have sixty seconds,” he replied over his radio. “We’re low on ammo and about to get overrun. Tossing out strobes. Hit them as hard as you can.”

With that, Harvath activated two IR strobe lights and tossed them as far as he could in the direction of each advancing group of soldiers.

Harvath, Ashby, Palmer, and Staelin then took turns trying to hold them off. They were all on their last rifle magazines.

Barton had the RIB moving as fast as it would go. Approaching the shoreline of the campground, they could see muzzle flashes in all directions. It was absolute bedlam.

Then, through the chaos, they pinpointed the strobes. There were at least fifty Russian soldiers advancing on the team’s position.

Barton swung the boat to the side and slowed so that Jasinski could strafe the Russians.

“Light them up!” he yelled.

For a moment, she paused. But before he could repeat the command, she opened up with the Mark 48 and swung it back and forth, cutting down every Russian in sight and littering the woods near the beach with their dead bodies.

Back behind the stone foundation, Harvath and the team hunkered down as the heavy rounds from the machine gun crackled all around them.

When Jasinski had run the weapon dry, Barton came back over the radio and told the team to keep their heads down — they were reloading and about to make another pass. Seconds later, the Mark 48 lit up the woods again.

When Barton came back over the radio, he said, “On the beach in twenty seconds.”

Transitioning to his pistol, Harvath looked at the team and said, “Time to go.”

Staelin transitioned to his pistol as well and helped get Tretyakov to his feet and down to the shoreline.

There was sporadic gunfire, as more Russians came through the woods, but Sloane and Chase handled it, dispatching several more soldiers.

By the time they got to the water, Barton was already there.

Loading Tretyakov, Harvath climbed in, followed by Staelin. Chase and Sloane helped push the RIB off the shore, and then hopped in and joined the rest of the team.

As Barton punched the throttle, Staelin began applying pressure to Tretyakov’s wounds. Harvath offered to take over on the Mark 48, but Jasinski waved him off. Going hot, she lit up the Kaliningrad shoreline one last time as the RIB disappeared into the darkness toward the freedom of Poland.