Commander-In-Chief (53 page)

As was often the case with late-breaking news, the truth was quite different from the reality. By seven a.m. at the airport terminal and tower, Russian troops were overpowered after a firefight with a combined force of ARAS federal counterterror operators and a company of elite military Special Purpose Unit troops. The Russians had better training, as well as solid defensive positions, but the Lithuanians had the advantage in sheer numbers and equipment, as well as massive amounts of tear gas.

Twenty-one of the Russians were killed in the three-hour-long battle, compared with forty-five Lithuanians, most in the initial attack and a disastrous counterattack conducted by well-motivated but outclassed airport security staff.

The airport remained closed for most of the day due to damage to the radars on the roof of the terminal as well as the persistent cloud of tear gas that hung in the stairwells of the control tower, but once the Russians lost control of the facility, the Russian troop transports circling to the east over Belarus were forced to return to the airport in Smolensk with their airborne troops.

The Spetsnaz operation to temporarily hold choke points throughout the capital city had fared better than the airport operation. Here, more than forty men reached their objective waypoints, causing pandemonium during the morning rush hour as small-scale
gun battles between Russian Alpha Group and Lithuanian police seemed to flare up all over the city.

But here again, the Russian operation fell short of its goals. The unit’s orders had been to spend two hours out in the streets creating chaos, and then melt away to a large wooded park in the north of the city, where a group of Serbian paramilitaries specially trained for the mission would be waiting with stolen vehicles, clothing, medical equipment, and other resupply. The Serbians had been infiltrated a week earlier with tourist visas, and as recently as twelve hours before the Russian military train arrived in the country, the Serbs had sent word that all was ready. But when the twenty-six surviving Russian special-operations troops arrived at their rally point in the parking lot next to the forest, they found only six Serbians in three vehicles, little in the way of supplies, and a story about how their mission had been undone by a police ambush the evening before where a dozen of their ranks had been killed or wounded.

As the remnants of the Russian and Serbian Spetsnaz men tried to exfiltrate the park, they were confronted by a company-sized element of Lithuanian Land Force volunteers, poorly trained and outfitted young men who had only numbers on their side.

In the ensuing bloodbath the combined Spetsnaz unit killed more than fifty men but suffered heavy losses itself. The few surviving Spetsnaz, all Russian, retreated bloody and broken into the park when their ammunition ran out.

L
ieutenant Colonel Rich Belanger had spent most of his first full day careening around in a light armored vehicle from his attached Light Armored Reconnaissance platoon, checking on all his Marines’ preparations. He stopped at his companies’ command posts to visit with each commander.

The CP of India Company, called “Diesel,” was an old farmhouse with the men dug in out front in the woods. The CP of Kilo Company, “Sledgehammer,” was in the rear in reserve with the tanks, ready to go into the counterattack when ordered. Lima Company, called “Havoc,” was south of the others, in the woods in ambush positions looking out onto the E28, the main east-west highway that conventional wisdom said the Russians would use to drive straight through to Vilnius.

The weapons company, who used the call sign “Vandal,” had their heavy M2 .50-caliber machine guns spread among the three companies and their 120-millimeter and 81-millimeter mortars well to the rear of the battalion, prepared to fire a hail of steel rain over the lines and onto the Russian advance. The Vandal
commander, during combat, would move into the Darkhorse combat command center, where he would control all his fires, including air and mortars. Also in the CP, Darkhorse’s intelligence officer had just gotten the satellite comm systems up and running, and was trying to download the latest intelligence from EUCOM.

By early afternoon, Lieutenant Colonel Belanger, whose call sign was “Darkhorse 6,” was confident his battalion was ready for a fight, but his concerns extended far beyond the twelve hundred men under his command. Small sporadic pockets of Lithuanian Land Force troops continued to surge forward, all over the eastern part of the country, without any real direction as far as he could discern from their attached exchange officers.

They moved around from south of Vilnius to halfway up to the Latvian border, and Belanger had been concerned he would be rushed into action only to be slowed down by having to push his way through roads clogged by their aging vehicles still trying to make it to the border regions or, even worse, by civilian refugees fleeing rearward in the face of the Russian advance.

And that was just one of his many burdens today. The USMC colonel in charge of him, the Black Sea Rotational Force commander, had tasked his intelligence officer with a lot of additional collection duties. Among the most pressing was keeping the BSRF regimental headquarters up-to-date with the latest information out of Vilnius.

All morning long and into the afternoon, Belanger’s intel officer passed word to the regiment back in Stuttgart about a force of enemy sappers who had snuck in on one of the cargo trains and set about conducting sabotage operations in the city.

Finally, the intelligence officer called Belanger in his LAV C2 as he was touring the company engagement areas and suggested Lithuanian army reports had begun to coincide with the news reports
they’d been watching on the Internet and CNN. Only a few Russian saboteurs remained; they had been flushed out and into the woods north of the city. Their infiltration game in Lithuania appeared to be over.

On television the Lithuanian government displayed a couple dozen Russian prisoners standing outside at the airport. Heads down in defeat, arms zip-tied behind their backs.

Belanger took one look at them and knew they were Alpha Group men, the best Russia had to offer. While most laypeople in Lithuania took their victory over the Russian commando unit as a sign that their nation could take anything the Russians had to dish out, the Marine lieutenant colonel had a more sober take on the news.

The fact the Russians had a hundred Alpha Group men they could sacrifice on what looked to be little more than a suicide mission into the center of Lithuania before the war even kicked off told Belanger that Russia had thousands of different GRU and Interior Ministry Spetsnaz troops to work with on the front lines. Troops he was certain to meet in the next hours or days, because he knew there were a lot more of those black-clad bastards just over the border in front of him.

Word came down through intel channels that some analysts at the Pentagon had identified a stretch of Belarusan border almost seventy-five kilometers long where the Russian army was mustering; this was likely where they would breach the border. Any farther north or south and they would find themselves away from trafficable roads, or too far from Vilnius, their main objective in the country.

Within this expanse there were four main arteries bisecting the border, and while Russian tanks didn’t need to adhere to roads to attack, their truck-bound infantry, their supply, and the Russian heavy artillery would necessarily proceed on one or more of these
roads, so it stood to reason the attack would emanate from one of these areas. Without the infantry, artillery, and a steady source of supply, the tanks would have a tough time in the thick forests and broken fields of Lithuania.

This narrowed down the location of the attack even further, Belanger and his intel officer surmised. To the extent Belanger had divided Darkhorse Battalion into three self-sufficient sections and placed them in three distinct locations near the four roads, they were prepared.

One rifle company could not stop a division-strength Russian invasion, of course, but Belanger had to have someone ready to engage the enemy while the intelligence officers checked the satellite data and confirmed this
was
, in fact, the spearhead of the Russian invasion, so the rest of his forces could maneuver onto the Russian advance.

The call he had been expecting for twelve hours finally came from EUCOM at dusk. Overhead platform surveillance of enemy troops in Belarus indicated a push to the border was under way, and it was happening in two places simultaneously: on the other side of the border from the Lithuanian town of Magunai in the north, and straight along highway E28, which led from Minsk to Vilnius.

Instantly Lieutenant Colonel Belanger knew his battalion would have to fight on two fronts, fifty kilometers apart. He dreaded it, but he would have to split his forces.

One half of all Lithuania’s meager resistance force was already largely set up at the E28 at the crossing; it was Belarus’s closest point to Vilnius, so the area was already defended by Land Force soldiers with World War II–era 105-millimeter howitzers, a few newer 155-millimeter howitzers from Germany, and dozens of mortars of different sizes. There were thousands of troops already
in trenches, and sandbagged emplacements along the roads, but the space was wide-open enough for Russian tanks to use the fields and pastures to make their way toward the capital.

Belanger knew they could mow right over the Lithuanians unless the defenders received a lot of help from Darkhorse.

No, the local defense wasn’t sufficient, but Belanger kept his India Company, along with a platoon from his weapons company and a few tanks and Cobra helicopter gunships, in the south at the predefined locations given to him from the EARLY SENTINEL deployment program. Each antitank missile, each mortar, each heavy machine gun, and each rifle squad was assigned a ten-digit grid and an azimuth of fire. Fighting holes were dug, equipment was moved under cover, and machine-gun and heavy-weapon range cards were drawn up to support integrated defenses.

Kilo and Lima infantry companies, and some heavy guns and antitank rockets and missiles from the weapons company, were ordered north to Magunai, where they were given defensive positions throughout the city and in the nearby farms and forests. Lima was in front, within sight of the Belarusan border, and Kilo stayed to the southwest, ready as Belanger’s counterattack force, or to race all the way down to help India if absolutely necessary.

Belanger’s intel officer identified that the expected northern breach zone for the Russians was virtually undefended by Lithuania, so the Marines would have to do the lion’s share of the work to stop the Russian attack.

Belanger moved his forward command post into a supporting position behind his Lima Company, then ordered forward air controllers, plus a few JTACs—joint terminal attack controllers, scrounged from other units—to be split among all his company’s strong-point defensive locations.

•   •   •

B
y nine p.m. the Marines of India Company in the southern positions got word through their Lithuanian counterparts that they were seeing a mass of lights over the border from hundreds of vehicles. To the north, near Lima’s zone and near Belanger’s command post, they were able to see a wide glow over the rolling farmland as the Russian armor moved into position.

Belanger himself stood in the third-story science lab of a shuttered elementary school in Magunai, as close to the front lines as any battlefield commander could possibly be. The lead elements of his battalion, his scout snipers, were in Prienai, one mile to the east, but his main force was spread out in the streets and houses and shops and out into the farmland of the tiny hamlet all around him. His heavy and medium mortars were a kilometer down a gravel road behind him, set behind a copse of trees.

Right in front of Darkhorse, intelligence estimates suggested there could be as many as eighty Russian T-90s, each complete with state-of-the-art targeting computers, night and thermal vision, explosive reactive armor, and sights that could see well out to ten kilometers. Belanger had studied anti-Soviet doctrine, and in the coming fight he was going to need all the information those old men in his Marine antiarmor schools had taught him. Most of those old-timers had fought in the Gulf War against second-generation T-72s. Hell, he’d seen a load of T-72s himself while fighting insurgents in Iraq, but they were all burnt out and picked clean by the Bedouins.

Belanger realized he had one thing in his favor, though. The same thing that had saved the bacon of his Army brothers in Bastogne. Amazing U.S. and coalition air support. Harriers, F-18s, and
Cobra and Apache gunships were his for the tasking. And now, as the light grew in the east, he was fucking
certain
he would have a lot of work for them to do very soon.

A voice came over the radio set from his radioman’s backpack.

“Havoc Six, Banshee Two, over?”

Belanger had been looking at a digital map with his operations officer, but he turned when he heard the call. Belanger knew Banshee Two was one of his best scout sniper teams, headed by Sergeant McFarland. They were positioned in a grove of trees next to an open field two kilometers from Lima Company’s defensive positions in Prienai and a kilometer from his present spot in the forward command post.

Lima Company’s commander was a captain named Ludlow, whose call sign was Havoc. Belanger listened to Ludlow’s reply.

“Banshee Two, Havoc. Go for Six actual.”

“Roger. Interrogative: Request Six actual confirm no friendly air-breathers southwest of phase line Red.”

“Roger, Banshee, this is Six actual. I copy and confirm. Darkhorse-fires states all friendly aviation remains staged at their FARPs or on strip alert.” The Lima Company commander was confirming all friendly helos were in their forward-area rearming points and the jets were ready for takeoff on the runways.

“Copy. In that case, be advised. Contact, enemy UAV. UAV travels east over phase line White. Will cross phase line Red in about three mikes. Altitude six hundred MSL. Rate of march approximately twenty-five kph.”

Belanger listened while Ludlow asked a few more questions about the UAV. Its behavior, whether or not it was large enough to be armed or if it was enemy reconnaissance only.

After a few minutes of conversation, Belanger gave a long sigh
of frustration, and took the headset from his radio operator. “Banshee Two, this is Darkhorse. Can you engage with SASR?” he said, referring to the snipers’ M82 .50-caliber sniper rifle.

“Negative, sir. Its rate of march is too fast. Suggest either one of our crew-serveds or a Stinger. Otherwise it’ll have free visual on all Lima Company’s friendly positions in about two mikes.”

Belanger said, “Banshee Two, Darkhorse copies all. Continue your mission, scan and report activity in your zone on this net. Break, break, Vandal Three, this is Darkhorse Six.”

Vandal Three was the machine-gun section assigned to India Company.

“Go for Vandal Three,” came the voice of the machine-gun section leader.

Belanger asked, “You have eyes on that UAV?”

“That’s A-firm, Darkhorse.”

Belanger did not hesitate. “Kill it.”

Belanger actually thought he could hear a smile on the face of his machine gunner as he responded over the radio. “Vandal Three copies all. Engaging; time now.”

The deep-throated thumping of the M2 echoed through the woods and into the village. It fired in short five-round bursts. Paused. Then fired again. Belanger couldn’t see the shooting, but with his twenty years of experience he knew the gunner was using the linked four-in-one tracers in the five-round bursts to get a lead on the target. That kind of fire discipline is what he’d always preached to his company and platoon commanders. He thought for a minute, trying to remember who would be behind that weapon. He knew all his men pretty well, but there were so many, sometimes it took him a while to remember.