The Gotland Deception

Chapter Thirteen: Blackjacks

A white-hot flash lit the tree canopy for a fraction of a second — like a camera strobe on full burn. A beat later, thunder rolled across the hills, low and steady. The first fat drops of rain fell, pattering against pine needles and striking Mercer’s gear with soft, hollow taps.

The forest stank of churned loam, ozone, and cordite from the blank rounds fired in earlier drills. Wet bark. Sweat. Pine oil. The layered scent of training.

Captain Alex Mercer lay prone beneath a tangle of low-hanging branches, rain bleeding off the brim of his boonie hat. A thin flicker danced across the bottom of his visor as his AR-HUD recalibrated for low light. His view lit up in a pale green overlay — terrain lines, unit icons, and simulated hazard markers.

He didn’t blink.

Ahead, the gravel road twisted through a natural cut in the ridge. First Platoon’s kill zone. Everything about the approach screamed textbook, which made him more interested in what they couldn’t see.

“They’ll be in position any second now,” murmured Sergeant First Class Victor “Vic” Santana beside him. The Bronx native spoke low, the mic on his chin strap picking up just enough to route to their fireteam net.

Vic flicked water off the laminated terrain sheet mounted to his forearm. His gloved hand hovered near a tablet — connected wirelessly to the TES-X training network, the Army’s next-gen combat simulator that synced their weapons, sensors, and helmets into one real-time kill grid.

“Shame about the rain,” he muttered.

Mercer’s eyes didn’t move. “If it ain’t raining, we ain’t training.”

Vic grunted. “Yeah, well. I’d kill for one op where my ass stays dry.”

The radio on the wet ground between them chirped.

“Valkyrie-7, Valkyrie-13. Movement on the road. I count six. Over.”

Staff Sergeant Cole Travis. Calm as ever. His voice fed straight through Mercer’s earpiece via the secure comms channel. The visor’s heads-up display marked his transmission with a soft amber ping.

Vic keyed his response. “Valkyrie One-Three, Valkyrie One-Seven. Solid copy. Call when the tail clears the zone. Out.”

Then he slid through the mud and pine needles toward First Lieutenant Reid Matthis, who crouched five meters back. Mercer didn’t need to hear the whispered exchange.

This wasn’t about control — it was about watching the plan collapse.

Mercer had briefed none of them on the full scenario. They thought this was a lane ambush. Simple. Predictable. But while First Platoon watched the road, Third and Fourth Platoons were already maneuvering, creeping up the high ground on their right and sloping low around their rear.

TES-X emitters mounted to rifles, haptic recoil modules, and infrared target sensors on their vests would all feed real-time telemetry back to his command tablet. This wasn’t about who got lucky shots — it was about squad cohesion, comms discipline, and how fast they could adapt when things went sideways.

AR overlays would soon simulate the impact zones of artillery and drone strikes, force players to react to suppressive fire and partial casualties. The system would lock out weapons and “wound” soldiers with temporary loss of motion in affected limbs. Total immersion.

He didn’t smile.

The test was already underway. They just didn’t know it yet.

Mercer adjusted his visor, zooming in on the heat bloom of six bodies moving through the trees.

Let’s see if Matthis figures it out in time.

The rain hadn’t let up, and now it hissed off the tree canopy like oil on a skillet. Visibility dropped. Sound carried weird through the wet.

First Lieutenant Reid Matthis lay behind a moss-covered stump, visor pulled low as his HUD tracked First Squad from Second Platoon moving into the kill zone.

They were good. Disciplined. Their TES-X signals painted them in clean blue icons, spacing tight, heads on a swivel. Their rifles — sim-modified M7s — registered hot, ready to “fire” laser pulses synced with their recoil modules and blank adapters.

Everything was proceeding perfectly.

Which was what worried him.

He narrowed his eyes. “Where the hell are the other squads?”

Only six signals. First Squad, clearly. The rest of Second Platoon — Second, Third, and Weapons Squads — should be stacked along the southern ridge, blocking escape. But no movement. No pings. No sound.

“Vic,” Matthis said, voice low. “Where’s the rest of Spectre?”

Vic frowned. Glanced at his forearm tablet. Nothing.

Matthis’s stomach twisted.

Something was off.

Vic tapped his mic. “All Spectre elements, report status.”

Silence.

Then—

“Contact front!”

Gunfire erupted.

Crack-crack-crack — not real rounds, but the TES-X blank rifles thundering like they meant it. Lasers streaked through the air, visible only through the HUD as faint red trails. Half of First Squad lit up — vests chirping, visors flashing damage overlays.

“Oh crap — they see us!” someone shouted.

“Back up, back —!”

Matthis twisted to Vic. “It’s a feint — Spectre’s bait. We’ve been made!”

He keyed to Travis. “Reorient west! Collapse fire onto—”

Too late.

Third Platoon surged from the underbrush — Reapers, full force, rifles glowing with laser strobes as they stormed up the flank.

Matthis’s squads scattered.

Simulated fire lit the ridge. Digital overlays mapped out where suppression fire was hitting. One AR indicator showed a virtual grenade go off in their rear element — two blue icons blinked red, disabled by system rules.

“Smoke! Now!” Matthis barked.

Vic yanked the pin on a 2033 smoke canister — thermal and IR-dampening, designed for both cover and AR masking — and lobbed it toward the right slope.

Pop-hissss.

A thick fog bloomed, churning like ghost vapor as rain pushed it sideways.

“Reaper elements closing from the south!” someone shouted.

Matthis spun. “Fourth Platoon — damn, they’re pinching us!”

Red icons flooded the HUD. Gravediggers. They were coming hard, simulating mortar splash with visual overlays that forced his men into scatter movement. Their AI was working perfectly — smart fire arcs forced breaks in Matthis’s cohesion.

He didn’t hesitate.

“Fall back! Move! Use the smoke — bound back to Delta!”

They moved — some tagged “wounded,” limping as motion feedback slowed their lower limbs, others “dead,” visors blacked out, watching helplessly from the ground.

Matthis stayed behind, herding the rest, rifle at the ready.

His test wasn’t whether he could win.

It was whether he could lead in the chaos.

And Mercer was watching.

The scent of wet canvas, hot plastic from field servers, and burned cordite clung to the TOC like smoke in a barbershop. The rain hadn’t let up. It beat against the roof in steady rhythms — background noise for the after-action debrief.

Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Brenner stood with arms crossed, an unreadable expression on his face. Combat fatigues soaked around the cuffs, boots caked in Italian mud. His eyes tracked Mercer first, then shifted to First Lieutenant Matthis, who stood at parade rest, helmet under his arm, uniform streaked with grime and sweat.

“You trained him well, Captain,” Brenner said without preamble. “Held it together when the op flipped. Got his people out. That’s what I like to see.”

Matthis opened his mouth to speak, then hesitated. He cleared his throat. “Respectfully, sir, it was Vic — Sergeant Santana — and the squad leaders are the ones who ran the platoon out of that meat grinder. I just held the leash.”

Mercer gave a faint smirk behind him, arms folded. Brenner chuckled, eyes never leaving Matthis.

“Good answer. You taught him well,” he said, glancing over at Mercer. “He already knows it’s the NCOs who run the platoon, not the officers.”

Mercer met the battalion commander’s gaze. Held it for a beat. “He’ll make us proud, sir.”

Brenner nodded once. That was all it took.

The room fell into silence for a moment. Then Brenner’s jaw flexed. He dropped his hands to his hips, a shift in weight punctuating what was coming next.

“I just got a warning order.” His voice dropped a register. “Division’s flagging our battalion for forward posture in the Baltics. Could be tied to a big exercise spinning up around the first of May.”

Mercer’s eyes narrowed. Matthis shifted his grip on his helmet but didn’t speak.

“Nothing’s official yet,” Brenner continued. “But if this goes the way it smells, we’re wheels-up with a reinforced task force. Could be Poland. Could be Gotland.”

Silence returned, heavier this time.

“I’ll put you in for that Ranger School slot,” Brenner added, looking at Matthis. “But if this deployment drops, I can’t guarantee it sticks. You might lose the date.”

Matthis gave a single nod. “Understood, sir.”

“I’ll fight to hold it or get you a new slot down the line if it gets scrubbed. Your packet’s strong. You’ve earned it.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Brenner nodded again. No salutes, no more words. He stepped back out into the rain, alone.

Mercer looked at Matthis, then turned back to his field monitors. Outside, the storm deepened.

The next war wasn’t coming. It was already moving. He could feel it in his bones.

The room was cold, the lights dimmed to half, and the soft hum of the HVAC filled the silence between spoken words. Rows of officers in MultiCam uniforms filled the seats — company commanders, battalion staff, and brigade planners. Most had flown back from field training less than thirty-six hours ago. Tired and exhausted.

Brigadier General Carter Ashford stood at the front, flanked by a pair of intel officers from the S2 and a large operations display screen dividing the world into three theaters — Eastern Europe, the Russian Far East, and the North Pacific.

“This isn’t routine,” Ashford began, voice clipped, his West Point cadence sharpened with combat-seasoned restraint. “What you’re about to see is classified, SECRET-NOFORN. No one is to discuss this with anyone outside of this room.”

The screen shifted — zooming in to reveal the Leningrad Military District, a broad swath of northwestern Russia encompassing Saint Petersburg, Murmansk, and the surrounding Leningrad and Arkhangelsk Oblasts, stretching from the Barents Sea in the north to the Gulf of Finland in the west. Its reach hugged the Finnish border for over a thousand kilometers, ran along Lake Ladoga, and extended south along the borders of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Major transport corridors from Vologda and Moscow funneled directly into the district’s staging areas — now glowing red on the screen.

To the southwest, a smaller but highly sensitive zone lit up: Kaliningrad Oblast — a Russian exclave wedged between Lithuania and Poland, completely landlocked from Russia proper. “There’s no overland access to Kaliningrad,” Ashford noted. “Only way in is by sea or air. I’m going to hand things over to the S2 to bring us up to speed on the bigger picture of what’s going on and what this ‘exercise’” — he added air quotes — “actually looks like.”

He stepped back.

Major Grace Elliott, the brigade S2, stepped forward. Her voice was calm, clipped. “Bottom line up front: this isn’t just a training event. The scale and logistics footprint suggest it’s meant to prove they can surge fast — and sustain it.”

She tapped a control. The display zoomed on Kaliningrad’s coastal ports.

“Over the last ten days, we’ve seen a sharp increase in sealift traffic inbound to Kaliningrad, especially into Baltiysk and Kaliningrad Port. Cargo manifests are either sealed or falsified, but imagery shows military containers, vehicle crates, and radar assemblies being offloaded under security.”

A new frame snapped up — satellite stills of freshly cleared terrain, dirt berms, and defensive batteries under camo netting.

“They’re also building out new air-defense positions — likely short- and medium-range systems. Possibly Pantsir-S1 and S-400 being repositioned around key airfields. There’s movement at every known site.”

Elliott shifted the slide again — this time to a broader theater map showing European Russia.

“Same pattern north of Kaliningrad, across the Leningrad Military District. We’ve picked up increased activity at major airfields from Pushkin to Olenya — more sorties, more ground crew, more aircraft moving. On the surface, it’s a readiness drill. But it’s a big one.”

She paused. A final overlay filled the screen — a simplified representation of Russian and Chinese rail lines stretching from the Far East across the continent.

“We’re also watching a significant spike in Chinese rail and road traffic coming out of Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, feeding west into central Russia. Large convoys — armor, fuelers, containerized equipment — headed toward staging areas in Moscow and Leningrad Districts. This has been building for about two months.”

She looked out across the room.

“No way to know how long it took to prep that much equipment — but it didn’t happen overnight.”

She nodded once, then stepped back.

Ashford returned to the front, his tone flattened. “None of this changes our immediate orders — but you need to understand the environment we’re stepping into. This isn’t just Baltic theater noise anymore. It’s a full-spectrum, multifront show of force. NATO wants presence. Visibility. We’re part of that line. We’re not here to provoke. But we will be seen.”

Ashford turned to his S3, Lieutenant Colonel Tony “T. Z.” Zitrion, motioning for him to speak on the deployment orders the brigade just received. As he walked forward, the map behind them zoomed in again — Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia. Icons bloomed blue and amber as NATO units repositioned eastward. Sweden and Finland glowed green along the upper edge of the display.

“This is where we come into the picture,” T. Z. explained, his tone sharp, his piercing. “Washington, Tokyo, Seoul, and Brussels are spooked with the scale and scope of this exercise. SHAPE, and our Asian allies, are right to be suspicious after what happened in Ukraine in ’22. No one wants to be caught unprepared, so as a precaution, EUCOM, in coordination with our NATO allies, is going to temporarily reinforce the border regions where they plan to conduct their exercises.

“In short, NATO wants to establish an anti-access, area-denial capability over the Baltic Sea that can extend to include Kaliningrad and the northeastern NATO border. The land component of this JTF will consist of the US 173rd and the US forces that’ll comprise the A2/D2 element that’ll deploy to Gotland and Sweden proper — more on those units later. The rest of the JTF will consist of Swedish and Finnish local ground, air, and naval forces. Additional NATO naval assets will come in the form of German and Danish corvettes to augment the local Swedish and Finnish naval forces. Outside of local air assets, NATO will provide an air element from a Dutch F-35 squadron, and US AWACS support from England,” T. Z. explained as he stepped back to let Ashford close the briefing out.

“Look, I don’t have a crystal ball to tell you if this is just a training exercise and show of force by this new Pan-Eurasian Alliance or the prelude to some massive war that’s about to start.” Ashford paused to look his battalion commanders in the eye. “What I can tell you is this. Regardless of what happens, this is a great opportunity for us to do some hard-core training, and that’s how I intend to look at this until it materializes into something more. For now, prepare yourselves and get your commands ready to deploy. The first units are rotating north on the first of April. We’re to be in position and ready by the fifteenth. A lot has to happen between now and the end of March. Let’s show Big Army and everyone else why we’re the best. Dismissed.”