EndWar e-1, Page 2

  I was with my buddy Zack.

  Vatz reached out, wanting to touch the man’s cheek, when the captain’s voice boomed in his ear: “Vortex, this is Victor Six. We’re nearing the pickup zone, taking heavy fire, over!”

  Vatz just breathed.

  “Vortex, this is Victor Six, over!”

  “Uh, Victor Six, this is Vortex.”

  “Taking heavy fire!”

  “Roger that, Victor Six. We got those other guys but lost Volcano, over.”

  The captain’s tone shifted. He swore then said, “Just rally on us now!”

  Watching Zack die right there in the street got under Vatz’s skin, that impenetrable Special Forces skin. And suddenly, he wasn’t thirty-two years old anymore but just about eight, propelled by utter fear as he raced down the alley. He came out, glanced around, and began to hear the heavy whomping of the chopper. But it was accompanied by another sound, a whirling alarmlike noise that droned on.

  He was at full sprint alongside the parking garage now, the chopper just on the other side, the alarm growing louder; and as he rounded the corner, he saw what was happening: a Russian BMP-3 was rolling up and blasting the team with its Long-Range Acoustical device. The sound was so loud that you couldn’t help but cover your ears while the enemy gunned you down.

  They hadn’t opened fire with their big guns because they wanted their colonel back alive. But that didn’t stop five or six dismounts from putting more selective rifle fire on the team, just as they reached the chopper’s open bay doors.

  The chopper’s two door gunners did what they could, firing wildly, but they couldn’t concentrate with that sound blaring in their ears. No helmets or plugs would help.

  Vatz wasn’t sure if he’d taken a round or not as he came in from the other side of the bird and launched himself into the air, crashing into the bay, someone shrieking in agony as the helicopter tipped its nose forward and suddenly took off, the gunfire still pinging off the fuselage.

  The BMP-3 crew cut loose with their 7.62 mm machine guns, deciding that they’d take the risk and bring down the bird. But the team’s pilot descended quickly to the other side of the garage, out of the line of fire, then suddenly banked right and headed back east, keeping low, weaving between buildings, heading for the front lines, for Joint Strike Force-held ground, for safety.

  As he looked around the bay, entirely out of breath and bleary-eyed, Vatz realized that only Gerard, Barnes, one medic, and one engineer were onboard, along with Doletskaya.

  “Where’s everyone else? Where are they?”

  The captain shook his head.

  Barnes and the medic were no longer moving, and the engineer was clutching his leg, shot in the femoral artery and bleeding all over the bay floor.

  Just then Gerard pulled open his bloody jacket and lifted his shirt, revealing a pair of dark holes in his chest. He wouldn’t make it, and neither would the engineer.

  “We need help!” Vatz cried to one of the door gunners.

  The guy ignored him, tending to his own shoulder wound.

  Gritting his teeth, Vatz pushed himself over to the Russian, wrenched up the man’s visor, and grabbed him by the neck. “Are you worth it, you bastard?”

  The Russian stared up with vacant eyes.

  Vatz glanced back at the remains of his team, then glared at the colonel once more and screamed, “Are you worth it?”

  TWO

  “Obviously you don’t remember my father,” said General Sergei Izotov as he rose from his office chair. “He was a division commander and hero of the Motherland in World War II. To imply that there is a lack of intelligence in my family is going much too far.”

  Izotov felt certain that there was only one man in all of Russia who would take such a tone with President Vsevolod Vsevolodovich Kapalkin. He was not that man, but the chance that he might not survive such a conversation was not the point.

  He would not allow Kapalkin to insult him or his family, no matter the cost. And he could not believe the insult had come from a man whose own father was a low-level functionary in the KGB, a man whose own fortune was amassed through smuggling personal computers, blue jeans, and other luxury items while attending university. How dare Kapalkin take such a tone with him!

  Perhaps he would not survive the conversation!

  Izotov glared at the president, who stared back at him from the computer screen. Kapalkin’s pronounced jaw, penetrating eyes, and impeccably combed hair stripped a decade off his fifty-four years, as did his daily exercise regime of swimming, which kept his waist narrow, his shoulders broad.

  The president began to shake his head. “I’ll say it again. I’m shocked that your Spetsnaz and security units allowed such a breach. And now they have Doletskaya.”

  “We were addressing the breach, but they had help from the inside.”

  “Which is even more disturbing. And now you tell me the colonel’s chip has been deactivated by the Americans? We can’t kill him? If Doletskaya talks—”

  “I think he will hold out for as long as possible. But it won’t matter either way. There’s nothing those cowboys can do to stop us. The wheels are already in motion. And I will plug this leak.”

  “General, I want to believe you’re right. But then again, I believed your security was the best in the world.”

  Izotov snorted. “I’m right. Believe it.”

  President Kapalkin considered that. A smile nicked the corners of his lips as he glanced away at another screen. “The Americans are beginning to pull out of Moscow. It seems Major Noskov is having more success than you are at the moment.”

  Izotov discerned a dismissal in the president’s tone. “At the moment the major is doing quite well for himself and his unit, but we, too, will succeed. Spasibo, Vsevolod Vsevolodovich. Thank you.”

  The president nodded, and Izotov broke the link. Then he whirled around and smote a fist on the table, highly unlike him.

  He wanted to call someone, vent his anger, but he had no real friends, just a shifting coterie of allies. Even his spartanly furnished office seemed to taunt him, to remind him that despite all the blood, sweat, and tears, there were still men like Kapalkin who would dismiss his sacrifices as cavalierly as they would a waiter.

  What had he become?

  The rumors had spread among his subordinates that he only slept one or two hours per day, that he was perhaps part machine, constructed by the government itself. Sometimes he felt that way.

  And oh, he had served that government well, in the first and second Chechen wars, twice a hero back then. He had commanded the 6th Spetsnaz Brigade from 1998 to 2006, and was head of the Vozdushno-Desantnye Voyska (VDV), the Russian Airborne Troops, from 2007 to 2012. In 2012, he had assumed his post at the GRU and for the past eight years had expanded the directorate’s power and purpose.

  But had he focused too much on the work?

  His subordinates even questioned his wife’s death, wondered if he was somehow involved.

  He would speak of it to no one, purge all thoughts of it from his mind.

  He returned to his seat, leaned forward toward the computer screen, and reminded himself of the dream he shared with his subordinates, the dream he shared with the president:

  There could be only one superpower. And he would do everything he could to ensure that.

  Why? To restore the Motherland to greatness. To achieve a level of personal power nearly unimaginable.

  And to be like his hero, Stalin, who never wore a personal sidearm yet boldly thrust out his chest against the Nazis. Stalin would know how to bring the European Federation and the American Joint Strike Force to their knees.

  At sixty-one, there weren’t many things left in this world that truly moved General Sergei Izotov.

  War was one of them.

  And while agonizing at times, it was still terribly fun.

  THREE

  Major Alice Dennison, USMC, wanted to speak to the prisoner herself, so she had caught a flight to Helsinki, where he wa
s being temporarily housed at Vantaa Prison before being sent to Guantánamo Bay.

  Two well-armed rifle squads of European Federation Enforcers Corps troops had been dispatched to reinforce security at the prison, and two sergeants stood at the gate, unflinching in the morning rain.

  But as Dennison exited her armored SUV, their expressions shifted, eyes playing over her face and drifting down to her legs, despite the trench coat.

  She was used to the ogling but never tolerated it. Her glare sent their gazes straight ahead, and she offered them a crisp and official-sounding, “Good morning.”

  “Morning, ma’am,” they said in unison with thick accents.

  Dennison was escorted into the building by a trio of heavily armed Joint Strike Force military police, along with a pair of her own personal security guards dressed in civilian clothes.

  After passing through four separate checkpoints, they reached the small, ten-by-ten interrogation room.

  The JSF had already sent in a team of six of their best interrogators, and they had already spent more than ten hours questioning Colonel Pavel Doletskaya.

  Joint Strike Force doctrine gave the interrogators twenty-one approaches to “convince” prisoners of war to divulge critical intelligence. The approaches were designed to exploit the prisoner’s personal history, morality, sense of duty, love of country, relationships with comrades, and even his sense of futility. Carefully applied in the correct combinations, the approaches were said to work on nearly everyone.

  But during the flight over, Dennison had learned that Doletskaya had given up nothing. He made no attempt to invent information or misdirect the interrogators. He simply refused to cooperate and demanded that the consequences of such refusal be carried out immediately.

  “Hello, Major,” came a voice from behind her.

  The lead interrogator, Charles Shakura, proffered his large hand and introduced himself. He was an impressive-looking black man despite his tattered business attire and the dull haze in his eyes.

  “Nothing new since we last spoke?”

  He shook his head and sighed in disgust. “I haven’t been given authority to use enhanced measures.”

  “We’ll go there, but only if it’s absolutely necessary. I want to speak to him now.” She headed toward the door, while Shakura motioned to one of the guards to unlock it.

  Dennison stepped into the room, closed the door behind her.

  The colonel sat at the head of a small, steel table bolted to the floor and kept his head lowered.

  He had a graying crew cut, and from what she could tell from beneath his straight jacket, a barrel chest and thick arms. His face was flushed, the white stubble of a beard tracing his mouth. He was, in most respects, a beautiful man, a predator with his wings clipped.

  “Colonel, look at me.”

  Slowly, his head rose, and his semi-vacant eyes began to focus, grow brighter. He spoke with a Russian accent, but his English was excellent: “Major Dennison, the most famous executive officer of the Joint Strike Force. And one of the youngest. You are more beautiful than all of the photos and videos I’ve studied. They do you no justice. How old are you? Twenty-nine?”

  “What’s going on up in the Amundsen Gulf?”

  “You are thirty-four. I know how old you are. And such a beautiful young woman given such a terrible job.”

  Dennison spoke through her teeth. “What’s going on up there?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What is Operation 2659? Who is Snegurochka?”

  “Major, if you came to ask me those painfully obvious questions, you’ve wasted your time. Don’t you want to know more about your adversary? Doesn’t it fascinate you that I am here, in the flesh? I’ve studied you for a very long time. I know everything. Your father was an Air Force pilot. You went to Virginia Military Institute, graduated the class of 2005.”

  “Two thousand four,” she corrected.

  He smiled. “Of course. And then you went to the United States Naval Academy, got your B.S. in systems engineering, graduated summa cum laude. Very impressive. You’ve been in U.S. Naval intelligence and logistics and went on to serve in the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Command. I even know you were handpicked by General Scott Mitchell to join the JSF. Your favorite ice cream flavor is rocky road. And you watch that romantic comedy with… I don’t remember the actor’s name. You watch that over and over. Too many times.”

  Her face twisted into a deep frown. “I didn’t know I had a Russian stalker.”

  “Stalker? Of course not. Details are my god. Know your enemy, keep him close, study him, learn his weaknesses, exploit them, then bring him down — if you want to call that stalking. I call it hunting.”

  “You’re planning another attack. And you’re going to tell us all about it.”

  “Please, Major. We know where this will go and how it will end. Fly home. Forget all about me.”

  She narrowed her gaze. “I’m going to get authorization to use enhanced methods to interrogate you. Do you know what that means?”

  “This is where you promise to torture me, but it never comes because there are too many bleeding hearts in your government. If we had captured you, I would have already strip-searched you — and taken my time with that. And then we would stick a long needle in your arm. Do you know what SP-18 is?”

  “I thought it was seventeen.”

  “This is the new serum, more potent; but like the old, it’s tasteless, odorless, and has no side effects. Best of all, you would never remember our heart-to-heart talk. We use it on our own agents all the time, to ensure their loyalty. We would have what we want from you in one hour. I have been here a long time, twelve, fourteen hours? I do not know. They took my watch. And you have nothing after all that time, nothing except a team of dead soldiers, spies who deserved to die.”

  Dennison’s chest grew tight, her breath shallow. She stood and came around the table, leaned over, and got into the colonel’s face. “Those men gave their lives to bring you back here. Oh, you’re going to talk. But first, I suspect, you’re going to bleed. A lot.”

  “Like I said, you are a beautiful woman with a terrible job.” He laughed again, under his breath.

  Her fist connected with his nose, driving his head back, and she thought, My God, I just punched him, but there was no taking it back.

  The door swung open and the guards rushed in, followed by Shakura. “Major, please, we have strict orders not—”

  “I issued those orders,” she said, rubbing her knuckles.

  Doletskaya faced her, blood streaming over his mouth. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For allowing me to bleed for my Motherland.”

  She cursed at him.

  He smiled, blood filling the cracks of his teeth. “Major Dennison, you are apparently the only man here.”

  She regarded Shakura. “Clean him up. He’s off to Cuba.”

  “I’m sorry, Major,” said the colonel.

  She frowned.

  “I’m sorry we don’t have more time to talk.” The guards took the colonel by the arms and forced him to his feet. “I wanted to express my condolences about your mother,” he added quickly.

  “My mother?”

  “The cancer. And yes, I wanted to tell you that you should talk to your sister, that she is still your sister despite your political differences. And I wanted to tell you that it’s okay to cry, late at night, like you do sometimes when you eat all the ice cream. The rocky road. It’s okay.”

  She balled her hands into fists, glowered at him, flicked her glance to Shakura. “Get this… freak… out of here.”

  Doletskaya winked. “Dosvidaniya, Major.”

  Chills ripped across her shoulders as they shoved him out of the room, blood dripping from his chin.

  She trembled violently now, began to lose her breath.

  “Major?” called Shakura. “Are you all right?”

  She closed her eyes.

  Bared her teeth.

 
And inside, she screamed.

  FOUR

  “Oh, damn, Mick, we got only ten minutes till the Russians arrive.”

  Staff Sergeant Raymond McAllen, leader of a six-man USMC Force Reconnaissance team, didn’t need his assistant, Sergeant Terry Jones, to remind him of that. He’d set his stopwatch within a minute after the eighteen-man platoon fast-roped down into the valley as their Black Hawk had thundered off to seek cover until they called her back.

  “We got less time than that, Jonesy. But the crash site should be just over that ridge.”

  “Yeah, but it don’t look good. No contact from them. We don’t even know if this guy is still alive.”

  “Our job’s to find out. Come on!”

  The sun was beginning to set over the Sierra Maestra mountains in southern Cuba, and the shadows grew longer across slopes covered in mud from the midday rains. McAllen and his men had already shouldered their way through some dense jungle in sweltering, humid air, but they were almost at the site.

  And no, this wasn’t a run-of-the-mill TRAP (Tactical Recovery of Aircraft and Personnel) mission. Apparently, one of the passengers onboard the Learjet was a Russian colonel who’d been on his way to Guantánamo when the Russians had shot down his escort fighters. They’d also managed to strike a glancing blow to the jet, forcing it down into the mountains.

  Fortunately, McAllen and his entire Force Recon company had been engaged in a weeklong, live-fire training exercise at Gitmo and been able to respond within minutes of the call.

  Unfortunately, they’d been out in the field doing some physical training when the call had come, and they’d been forced to board the chopper with whatever they had, leaving behind their best high-tech toys — advanced body armor, weapons, and communications systems that were all part of the military’s Future Force Warrior program.

  They’d get by with just the conventional gear. McAllen believed that if you depended too much upon technology in the field, you’d become sloppy and soft, a kid at a convenience store who can’t make change, a Marine who can’t aim because the computer does it for him.