The Sniper and the Wolf

26

Dokka Umarov sat around a smoky daytime campfire in a mountain forest, meeting with a group of commanders from the unrecognized Islamist Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Even though the forty-nine-year-old Islamist militant enjoyed a certain amount of protection from “corporate” elements within the Russian government, he was careful never to remain in one place for very long. The Tenth Independent Spetsnaz Brigade of the Russian army wanted him dead, and it would stop at very little to take him out if it ever succeeded in nailing down his exact location long enough to coordinate an attack.

As the self-proclaimed emir of the unrecognized Caucasus Emirate, he was known to his Chechen supporters by his Arabized name: Dokka Abu Usman. To the Russian people, however, he was better known as “Russia’s Bin Laden,” owing to his many terrorist attacks against Russian civilians and Russian military targets. In 2014 he had even vowed to prevent the Sochi Olympic Games through acts of terror — an unrealized threat that was later regarded by many as a feeble attempt to draw additional Islamist militants to his cause.

Since then, he and his commanders had devised a more feasible strategy. They would blow up three separate pumping stations along the Georgian stretch of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, a bold plan with three primary objectives:

Disabling the BTC would immediately disrupt Western economies by driving oil prices even higher than they already were. In addition, it would set the United States and Russian governments immediately at odds. For it was no secret that Russia was distressed by the fact that Western powers were enjoying unfettered access to oil fields beneath the Caspian Sea, and this was at least a partial reason for its 2008 invasion of Georgia via the Roki Tunnel, a three-thousand-yard underpass running beneath the North Caucasus Mountains. The third and most important objective of sabotaging the pipeline was to inspire an authentic insurgency, finally uniting Chechen Islamists under a single banner within the region.

Umarov had recently learned from his coconspirators inside the GRU — corporate men who desired renewed friction between Russia and the United States in order generate more military spending — that Spetsnaz operator Andrei Yeshevsky had been killed in Paris by the now-infamous Gil Shannon. Umarov knew of Shannon as the elite American sniper who had somehow managed to survive a coordinated Chechen — Al Qaeda attack on his Montana home the previous summer.

“What does this mean for us, Dokka?” asked Umarov’s second in command, Anzor Basayev. “Will we have Spetsnaz support if Kovalenko and his men are dead as well?”

“Kovalenko is still alive.” Umarov was Caucasian, light skinned with a long, deep beard. He always dressed in camouflage, much the way Bin Laden had chosen to dress, though Umarov was not an Arab and therefore never wore a turban.

“He’d better be,” said one of the Ichkeria commanders. “We’re going to need Spetsnaz operators. Our own men don’t have the necessary training to infiltrate the pumping stations.”

Unconcerned, Umarov drew patiently from a Russian cigarette, saying, “There are plenty of Zapad men available if we need them.”

The Special Battalion Zapad of western Chechnya was the sister battalion to the vaunted Chechen Vostok Battalion of Eastern Chechnya, which had been sent to the Crimean Peninsula in the aftermath of the Ukrainian Revolution in February 2014. Both battalions were Spetsnaz, and both were composed of ethnic Chechens, but the Zapad Battalion had recently been disbanded, with many of its operators “released” from the Russian army due to concerns over their loyalty to the Russian Federation. A large number of these former Spetsnaz men had since become like Japanese ronin: disavowed mercenaries, guns for hire.

“I don’t like the idea of using mercenaries,” remarked another, lighting a cigarette of his own with a smoldering stick from the campfire. “They’re expensive, and it’s impossible to know where their loyalties lie. With Yeshevsky dead, Kovalenko’s the only man left with personal knowledge of the pumping stations.”

Umarov was accustomed to these common equivocations. Prevarication was the reason the Caucasus needed a single, undisputed leader, and a successful attack on the pipeline would bring him the requisite credibility and power. He almost had it now, but without an authentic insurgency, his troop numbers would remain too few. This was the most tragic aspect of the recent debacle in Paris. Umarov needed the Al Qaeda support that Yeshevsky had been sent there to negotiate for, and it would be months before another conference could be arranged.

In the meantime, the trick was to prevent his commanders from sensing his desperation. “I wouldn’t worry too much about their loyalty,” he said casually. “The Russian army has already turned them out. Who else are they going to fight for?”

“They should fight for Allah, not for money,” said Umarov’s nephew Lom. His name meant “lion.” He was a hard-minded, spirited Muslim at the age of twenty-eight with dark hair and eyes, his beard closely trimmed. A solid unit leader and tactician, he possessed nearly ten years of combat experience against the Russian army.

Umarov drew from the cigarette, eyeing his half sister’s youngest son, still in the process of determining the young man’s value as a counselor. “Is Allah personally putting food on your table, nephew? If he is, then you are the only man I know to be blessed in this manner. A soldier of Allah needs to feed himself, to feed his family, to put a roof over their heads. Allah provides the means for this, but He does not choose the method. War is the means, and it is our duty to employ whatever method of making that war we can. Whether the Zapad men know it or not, they will fight for Allah. I remind you again that nothing happens which is not His doing.”

Without rebuttal, Lom deferentially lowered his gaze to the fire, his calloused hands gripping the barrel of the AK-47 propped between his knees.

One by one, Umarov looked the rest of his commanders in the eye, allowing each man to feel the weight of his will. Then, sensing no significant disagreement, he smiled and remarked, “That being said, I sometimes wouldn’t mind if Allah chose to move a little faster in our favor.”

The men laughed dutifully, passing cigarettes to lighten the mood further. Then the sky began to shudder with the sudden roar of multiple turboshaft, rotary-winged aircraft.

“Crocodiles!” one of the security men shouted, and everyone sprang to their feet. The security detail grabbed up their PKM light machine guns and RPG-7s, scrambling to take up firing positions among the rocks and hardwoods.

Lom slung his AK-47, ducking into a nearby cave to reemerge with an Igla-S MANPADS (man-portable air-defense system). The Igla was a shoulder-fired, 72 mm antiaircraft missile with an effective range of twenty thousand feet, and it was the only one in camp.

“Do not miss!” shouted Umarov.

Lom gave his uncle a menacing grin and scrambled off up the craggy slope toward the summit, where there would be no trees to hinder his shot.

Three giant Russian Mi-24 “Hind” helicopter gunships roared over the camp in a tight V formation, their crocodile camouflage schemes and sky blue underbellies clearly visible through the bare tree limbs.

“One of them is a PN,” Basayev observed as the helos flew on out of sight. He was referring to the latest and deadliest night-attack variant of the heavily armed aircraft. He looked at Umarov. “We’re betrayed, Dokka. Your friends in the GRU have turned their backs on us.”

“No.” Umarov shook his head, tossing the cigarette into the fire. “The Tenth ISB has reconnaissance units operating in this region. We must have been observed over the past couple of days.” He stalked off through the trees, where his forty fighters were rapidly digging in, calling out to them: “We’re in for a fight! Spetsnaz will be hitting the ground to the west, but they won’t attack until the crocodiles have returned to soften us up with rockets and cannon fire. Do not waste your RPGs on moving aircraft — but if one should be foolish enough to hover, hit it in the tail or high in the fuselage near the engine!”

Often referred to as a “flying tank” by Russian pilots, the Mi-24 was the most heavily armored helicopter in the world, its flight crew shielded within a titanium “bathtub” strong enough to protect them from 37 mm cannon shells. By design, the Hind — as it was referred to among NATO forces — could transport eight Spetsnaz troops in addition to its heavy load of ordinance, which included but was not limited to a 12.7 mm Yak-B minigun in a chin turret, up to four unguided free-fall bombs, and forty 80 mm rockets mounted on the helicopter’s stub wings.

Four hundred meters to the west, the flight of three Hinds touched down in the tall grass near a shallow river just long enough to off-load twenty-four heavily armed Spetsnaz operators of the Tenth Independent Spetsnaz Brigade. The great birds of prey then lifted back into the air, resumed formation, and flew off again to begin their attack run on Umarov’s camp.

Captain Smirnov, piloting the hi-tech Mi-24PN, was the flight leader at the point of the V. His aircraft carried a load-out of four five-hundred-pound iron bombs and a double-barreled 30 mm GSh-30k auto-cannon pod-mounted to the right of the cockpit. His job was to shock and devastate the enemy by dropping the five-hundred-pounders right in their midst. He would then provide support with the 30 mm auto-cannon while his wingmen, flying Mi-24Ds, hammered whatever remained of the encampment. Each 24D was loaded out with a Yak-B minigun and a pair of 80 mm rocket pods of twenty rockets each.

After the helos had expended the bulk of their ordnance, the Spetsnaz men would move in and mop up any survivors, their chief responsibility being the retrieval of Dokka Umarov’s remains.

Smirnov spoke to his wingmen over the radio: “Keep it tight on approach. By now, they know we’ve off-loaded ground troops, so we’ll make it look like we’re leaving. No firing until after my bombs have hit. Then break right and left. We’ll stand off at three different points and pound them to dust. Stay alert for RPGs and be ready to take evasive action.”

Lom crouched low on the rocky outcrop that overlooked the encampment below, watching the Hinds rise up from the valley floor to the west and come rumbling back in his direction. The bright sun glinted off their bubbled canopies, each deadly machine bristling with weaponry. His target was obvious: the shiny new Mi-24PN at the point of the formation, its load of four five-hundred-pound bombs evident even at four hundred meters. He would have to knock the machine from the sky before it could overfly the encampment; otherwise his compatriots below would be devastated.

Though the Hind was already within range, Lom knew it was equipped with improved countermeasures, so he decided to wait until the last possible second. He would be firing from a position about one hundred feet below the flight of helos as they approached from his right, and the missile would home in on the infrared heat signature of the Hind’s twin turboshaft engines. The Mi-24PN had a cooler heat signature than the 24Ds, however, and Lom didn’t want the missile locking onto either of the older aircraft.

He’d shot down an Mi-24D the year before, killing ten Russian soldiers, but he’d used an older MANPADS to do it — a Strela-3 — so he could rely on previous experience only to a point. Living in the mountains and fighting with black-market weaponry made it difficult to stay in step with rapidly emerging technologies.

Through his FLIR (forward-looking infrared) targeting system Smirnov could see the images of the Chechens hurriedly preparing their fighting positions among the trees and the rocks as he swept toward the target area. He chuckled over the net to his copilot, “Like shooting fish in a barrel. Five seconds…”

Then he heard the dreaded warning buzzer, and the instrument panel lit up with red lights flashing in the Cyrillic alphabet: РАКЕТЫ ВОЗДУХ=ЗЕМЛЯ. Surface-to-air missile.

He cut a startled glance out the left side of his canopy, just managing to glimpse the vapor trail of the missile streaking upward toward him at 1,300 miles per hour.

Detonating an instant before impact, the warhead’s directed-energy fragmentation blast utterly devastated the engine compartment of the Hind, severing three of five control rods to throw the rotor completely out of balance, causing it to cant backward and slice off the aircraft’s tail. The helo exploded midair, falling out of the sky along with its bomb load nearly a hundred yards shy of the enemy encampment, erupting against the forest floor in a giant secondary explosion that shook the earth for a quarter mile in every direction.