The Moscow Offensive

Twelve

Kevin Martindale finished reading the intelligence report prepared by his top Scion analysts. With a frown, he flipped the manila folder closed, revealing the red security designations stamped on its cover, Nazbardziej Tajne, Nie Kopiować in Polish and Most Secret, Do Not Copy in English. Then he looked up, suddenly aware of the awkward silence.

Four others sat around the conference table: Brad and Patrick McLanahan, Whack Macomber, and Nadia Rozek. They were the key members of the joint Polish — Iron Wolf command team. And all of them were watching him with equally serious expressions.

He opened his mouth to begin. “I suppose—”

“If you really say, ‘I suppose you are all wondering why I have called you here,’ I will personally shoot you in the kneecap,” Nadia interrupted bluntly.

“And then I’ll break the other one with my bare hands, sir,” Macomber promised. He nodded toward the folder. “We know you’re dying to fill us in on what your guys uncovered at Bataysk, so let’s just cut to the chase, okay?”

Outwardly, both Brad and his father winced. But neither could completely hide his amusement.

Martindale forced himself to smile. There were moments when he wished these people didn’t take so much pleasure in baiting him. Then again, he guessed they’d earned the right by repeatedly risking their lives at his request. And, he supposed, he did have the occasional tendency to pontificate. Maybe you couldn’t spend years in politics and the White House — even in the unconventional way he’d played his part as president — without catching the disease.

“Very well, Colonel,” he said calmly. “You’re quite right. This”—he tapped the Scion intelligence report—“confirms our earlier speculation. Certainly as far as the Twenty-Second Spetsnaz Brigade is concerned.”

“You telling me their combat readiness really is collapsing?” Brad asked. The younger man could not hide his skepticism. No one who’d gone up against Russia’s elite special forces troops in battle could ever take them lightly.

Martindale nodded. “My best intelligence analysts have gone over every file Kerr and Cartwright retrieved from the Bataysk database and there’s no other possible conclusion. The Twenty-Second has been hollowed out.”

“Hollowed out how?”

“Over the past several months, some of its most experienced platoon and company leaders, scouts, snipers, demolition, and language specialists have requested permission to resign from active duty in the armed forces.”

“You say some,” Nadia said carefully. She looked at Martindale. “How many… exactly?”

“Fifty-two,” he said. “All of them with top-notch fitness reports.”

Whack Macomber whistled. “You’re right. Having that many of your best people dump out on you like that would leave a hell of a mark on any military unit. But in a commando outfit?” He shook his head. “That brigade’s fucked.”

Martindale nodded.

On the surface, the resignation of fifty-two officers and senior enlisted men didn’t seem like much — not out of a force with a total strength of thirteen hundred soldiers. But this was a case where quality counted for a lot more than raw numbers. In any military organization, a relative handful of natural leaders created the unit cohesion that was essential to combat effectiveness. That was especially true in the special forces, where so much depended on skill, initiative, and courage at the individual and small-unit level. In wartime, as casualties mounted, new leaders might emerge amid the stress of battle. In a peacetime army, with all its inherent bureaucratic sluggishness, it was much harder to rebuild a leadership cadre once it was lost.

“And the Russian high command is just sitting back and letting those guys leave?” Brad asked in astonishment.

“‘Just sitting back’ would imply a level of passivity which does not exist,” Martindale said quietly.

“Meaning what?”

“Far from fighting these resignation requests, Moscow actually expedited them. In fact, when the brigade commander, a Colonel Andreyev, filed a protest with his superior officers, he was threatened with disciplinary action for daring to stand in the way of any officer or soldier who wanted to return to civilian life.”

Patrick McLanahan’s frown was plain through the clear visor of his LEAF life-support helmet. “Tactics, marksmanship, and demolitions?” He shook his head in disbelief. “Those aren’t skill sets in high demand in the civilian world.”

“Not in ordinary civilian life, no,” Martindale said, with a thin, humorless smile. “But that’s not where these men are actually heading.”

There was a momentary silence around the table.

Finally, Brad sighed. “Okay, I’ll bite. Where are these Spetsnaz soldiers really going?”

“Fortunately, the Russian armed forces, like all government bureaucracies, amasses paperwork — even if in digital form — like a ship accumulates barnacles,” Martindale explained. “The records my agents captured include copies of every request for separation made by every departing officer and enlisted man. All of them report that they’ve been offered employment by a company called Razresheniye Konfliktov Uslugi.”

Nadia raised an eyebrow. “Conflict Resolution Services?” she translated automatically.

“Which is what? In real life?” Macomber wondered.

“That’s still an open question, Colonel,” Martindale said flatly. “My people haven’t been able to learn anything of substance about this company. Russian commercial databases show only its name, without any details about its financing, officers, facilities, or operations.”

“Then this Conflict Resolution Services is a dummy corporation, nothing more than a shell,” Nadia said coldly.

“Yes. And one almost certainly established by the Russian government for its own purposes, or perhaps more accurately, for Gennadiy Gryzlov’s purposes,” Martindale agreed. He smiled wryly. “Since I have some small experience of my own in setting up clandestine enterprises along those same lines, the pattern is unfortunately familiar to me.”

His smile disappeared. “But that’s not the only information we’ve gleaned from the Twenty-Second Brigade’s files.” He looked around the table again. “Like all Spetsnaz units, its armories included significant quantities of Western small arms, ammunition, and other hardware — probably for use in covert operations against NATO or other American allies.”

“That’s not exactly news.” Macomber shrugged his massive shoulders. “Hell, our people do the same thing, only in reverse.” He showed his teeth in a quick, fierce grin. “Over the past couple of years, our Iron Wolf recon units have amassed a pretty good-sized collection of Russian assault rifles, grenades, RPGs, and other military gear. It’s SOP for any well-trained special forces outfit.”

“Yes, it is standard Spetsnaz operating procedure,” Martindale said, speaking with care and precision. “Which makes it all the more remarkable that those inventories of Western-style arms and equipment have now been completely zeroed out. Everything’s marked as ‘transferred for sale to state-approved buyers in the private sector.’”

“Which would be that so-called Conflict Resolution Services,” Brad guessed, with a sinking feeling.

“Undoubtedly.”

“What about Russia’s other elite units?” Patrick pressed. “Is the same thing happening to them?”

“It seems probable,” Martindale said. “Obviously, we can’t run the same kind of intelligence-gathering operations against more Spetsnaz and air-force units now, but it’s a safe bet that their troops, equipment, and pilots are also being acquired by this front company.”

“Well, that’s just fucking swell,” Macomber growled. “Gryzlov’s decided to recruit his own private mercenary army. He’s out there creating a Russian version of Scion and the Iron Wolf Squadron.”

Martindale looked pained. “Quite so, Colonel. And while imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, in this case, I could easily live without it.”

The hitchhiker trudging stolidly along the shoulder of eastbound Interstate 80 never even looked up at the cars and trucks slashing past him at speeds that were uniformly ten or fifteen or twenty miles an hour over the posted limit. The whirling, dust-laden gusts kicked up by their passage tore at his jeans, Army-surplus jacket, and faded black nylon backpack. Behind dark sunglasses, his eyes were narrowed to slits against the glare of the early-morning sun. His mouth felt gritty, as dry as the Kazakh Steppe in high summer.

The sudden deep blaaat of an air horn made him turn around.

A big truck, painted kelly green with gold stripes, thundered past and then pulled off the highway onto the shoulder. It braked to a full stop about a hundred yards ahead of him.

For a moment, the hitchhiker stood motionless, as if considering his options. Then he shrugged and plodded on over to the waiting big-rig. He came up on the cab’s right side and yanked the door open. Then, wearily, he climbed up inside and plopped back against the seat with a deep sigh.

“Long night?” the driver asked sympathetically.

“Oh, you could say that, Dobrynin,” former Spetsnaz captain Kirill Aristov said with a glare. He turned his head, hawked, and spat out onto the ground. “I think I’ve swallowed half of this damned Nevada desert in the past twelve hours.”

Nikolai Dobrynin chuckled, checked his mirrors, and then pulled back out onto the highway. “Where to next, sir?”

“Just keep heading east for now,” Aristov told him. “We’ll report in to Kurakin from Salt Lake City tonight. After that, who knows?” He shrugged. Orders from RKU’s chief had kept them on the hop for days, sending them rushing from place to place across the length and breadth of the U.S. to scout potential targets for Shakh i Mat, Operation Checkmate.

He closed his mouth on a powerful, jaw-cracking yawn. There were more and more moments when the details of this seemingly unending trek began to blur together in his travel-worn mind. The general had better give us time for a little R&R before the balloon goes up, he thought darkly. Or we’ll be too tired to take on even a couple of those American Girl Scouts peddling their overpriced cookies.

With an effort, Aristov forced himself to sit up straighter. At least Moscow had been right about their disguise. There were so many millions of commercial trucks coming and going on this country’s highways and byways that no one paid any real attention to them. It was the next best thing to being invisible.

He glanced at Dobrynin. “So what did you and the others learn while I was out there all night crawling around like a snake?”

While Aristov conducted an up-close and personal reconnaissance along the outer perimeter of Sky Master’s Battle Mountain facility, the rest of his team had spent the night parked at an isolated side road. Using the surveillance equipment built into their concealed hideout inside the big-rig’s trailer, they’d monitored radio signals, cell-phone and landline calls, and other electronic emissions from the American compound.

“Not much,” Dobrynin admitted. “Sky Masters has done an excellent job of screening its activities from nosy visitors like us. All radio and phone transmissions, whether from the air operations center or roving security patrols, are encrypted beyond our ability to decipher. We couldn’t pick up any signals from wireless computer networks, which means either they’re heavily shielded, or more likely, their networks are hardwired.”

“What about their airport radar?”

Dobrynin grimaced. “Extremely powerful. It’s certainly far more capable than any other system in regular civilian use.” He shrugged, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the road. “There’s obviously a lot going on inside those hangars and office buildings, sir. But short of getting one of our people on the inside, there’s no way to find out for sure.”

Aristov nodded. The other man’s assessment matched his own observations. He’d gotten close enough to the fence enclosing McLanahan Industrial Airport and the rest of the Sky Masters facility to identify a remarkable array of passive and active sensors guarding every centimeter. Sneaking through that perimeter would be an impossible task. In fact, nothing short of a full-on assault employing heavy weapons was likely to breach Sky Masters’ security.

A slow smile spread across his tired face. Which made it fortunate that was probably precisely what Major General Kurakin and President Gryzlov had in mind.