Ghosts of War (17 page)

S
hoshana began breaking out the separate components, saying, “Give me your computer, quickly.”

I handed her the tablet we had tested earlier, asking, “What is it?”

She said, “It's the other part of the system,” and she called Aaron, speaking in rushed Hebrew. She took the tablet, then manipulated it until it was slaved to the control unit. I asked, “Bluetooth?”

She handed me the toy copter and said, “Yes. Hold this out the window in the palm of your hand.”

I did so, and its rotors began turning, startling me with a little hurricane force of wind. It took off, a giant bumblebee flying into the air. In seconds, it was out of sight.

I turned to her, watching her manipulate the joystick, and saw what the bird saw, the land being eaten up as it flew toward the memorial park. The detail was impressive for such a small drone. Embarrassingly enough, I'd seen nothing like it in all my time working with James Bond stuff.
Taskforce R&D guys are getting an ass-chewing over this.

“Did your command invent that?”

“No. It's called a Black Hornet, and it's made in Norway. We just modified it to work with the lipreader software. The original has both a thermal camera and a normal one. We ditched those because we needed a better lens and had no need for thermal.”

Knuckles came on. “What's the call?”

“Stand by. . . . Shoshana is working some magic.”

“What's that mean?”

I glanced at the screen and saw a bird's-eye view of Knuckles sitting on a bench. I said, “Looking at you now. Which way did he go?”

He glanced around, seeing nothing, then said, “Straight up the stairs. He didn't deviate. I think he's headed to the monument on the top.”

To Shoshana, I said, “Will you break link? How much distance can you get?”

“Over a kilometer. We're good on that. Time is the killer. I only have twenty-five minutes of flight time.”

Knuckles fell from view as the drone went higher into the air, focusing on the monument. Shoshana did a slow circle around it, then said, “There he is. And he's with someone.”

She zoomed the lens and I recognized Mikhail, standing just inside the overhang of the monument. A pillar stood between the drone and whomever he was talking with. Shoshana slid the drone sideways and the second man came into view, a burly guy with a two-toned face, the upper tanned, the lower white. It took a second to realize why.
He just shaved off a beard.

Shoshana said, “Are you getting feed?”

I looked at my tablet and said, “Yes.”

“Hit record.”

I did so, and the computer began working its algorithms as it took in what the two men were saying. I could see the gestures the men made, but wouldn't get a readout until we were through. The burly guy looked agitated, and Mikhail was matching his temper. Whatever was going on, with Knuckles's report about an argument with Simon and now this, something clearly wasn't going right for them.

The meeting lasted a little less than ten minutes, and ended with Mikhail handing the other man a slip of paper, then clapping him on the back. When they separated, Mikhail retraced his steps and the other man went in the opposite direction, leaving the park from another exit. We stayed on Mikhail.

I stopped the recording and keyed the radio, “Knuckles, Koko, meeting's over. Mikhail's headed back your way.”

“How are you seeing that?”

“I told you. Shoshana magic.”

Jennifer came on, apparently not appreciating my jokes. “Knuckles, this is Koko. The Israelis have a drone.”

Knuckles said, “So I'm free to go? I'd prefer he didn't see me twice.”

“No. We'll track him, but we only have about ten minutes of flying time left. I don't want to lose eyes-on because our technology failed.”

Jennifer said, “Aaron has one over here as well. We can launch it when you run low.”

I thought about that for a second, and then decided against it. “Good idea, but Knuckles stays. We have no way to recharge these things in the car, and we might need yours later.”

I got a roger from the team, and said to Shoshana, “Where is he?”

“Coming down the steps now. He'll be in view of Knuckles in seconds.”

And sure enough, Knuckles said, “I have eyes-on. He's walking back to the house,” then, “Break—break, Simon just exited the building. Moving to the Beemer parked out front.”

Shoshana worked the drone and, off the net, said, “Get ready to record. They're going to talk.”

Sure enough, Mikhail shouted from across the street, then jogged toward Simon. Shoshana waited until Mikhail linked up before zooming in on their faces. She said, “Hit it,” and I did.

The conversation was brief, but the image was crystal clear. If we didn't get a recording out of this, it was the software's fault, not the camera angle.

The two men shook hands, then Simon opened his car door. I punched the tablet to stop the recording and initiated the translation software, saying, “Get that drone back here. You've got Simon when he leaves.”

Looking at her tablet, she said, “Mikhail is moving to a car as well. We're both going into motion.”

I called it out to the other teams, telling Knuckles the bird was off and to give a time and direction when the two targets departed. I said, “We need to get that drone back. We're about to move.”

I saw something hit the hood and she said, “It's here.”

My tablet vibrated, telling me the computer had done its work, and the meeting on the hill began to play on the screen. Unfortunately, it was absolute gobbledygook, like the tablet was giving us what Charlie Brown's cartoon teacher said. “What the hell is this thing doing?”

She took it and said, “Wrong language. They weren't speaking Yiddish.”

“That's just great. What good was any of that, then?”

She began to fast-forward the video, saying, “We send it back if we need to. We have a whole day of surveillance in front of us. Might not have anything to do with the Torah anyway.”

She reached the meeting with Simon and hit play. Miraculously, the short conversation appeared correctly. Shoshana said, “Speaking Yiddish now.”

Simon turned to his car and the conversation on the video ended. I said, “What the hell was that all about? What's the US doing?”

Shoshana opened the door to go to her car and said, “I don't know, but that first meeting is irrelevant. Mikhail just said he's going to discuss the transfer of the gold. The next one is key—and that's you. Don't worry about the United States right now. They aren't going to start World War Three in the next few hours.”

I tapped the screen and said, “I don't know about that. People seem to forget that kindly Uncle Sam also has brass knuckles.”

Knuckles came on, saying, “Simon to the north—Aaron, that's you. Mikhail to the south. Pike, you'll have him in two minutes.”

Shoshana said, “We'll talk about it at the hotel tonight,” then closed the door, starting her coordination with Aaron for their follow and leaving me wondering what was occurring one country away.

T
he rolling metal coffin hit a particularly nasty pothole, and Felix Byrd slammed his head against the steel. Ordinarily, this would have caused serious pain, but this time, his skull was protected by an old-school Kevlar helmet. He glanced around to see if anyone else in the LAV had noticed, but if they had, they gave no indication that it was something to laugh at.

Bouncing around inside the armored LAV, Felix desperately tried to make his body movements match the rhythms of the vehicle, feeling nothing like the calm of the young men to his left and right. Some were actually sleeping, a feat he would later describe as surreal.

A senior member of the United States National Transportation Safety Board, he and two others had been flown over to Europe to inspect the crash of Air Force One.

At first, Felix had been incensed that there would only be three inspectors, knowing that many more would be required. He'd demanded a full team, complete with forensic capability, and had been rebuffed. He'd assumed it was because of some idiotic budget thing, right up until he'd met his ride to the site: a platoon of armored vehicles from the Marine Corps 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion. Detailed to the Black Sea Rotational Force, they'd been training security forces in Latvia when they'd gotten the call, and Felix began to understand the reason for the size of his team. Security of the force had taken a backseat to the inspection itself.

Felix had been to many, many different crash sites, but never wearing body armor, and he should have known that no budget
restrictions on earth would prevent a full investigation of the murder of the president of the United States and the destruction of the United States's flagship aircraft. He was dealing with restrictions that no money could overcome. Only the young men to his left and right could do that, and the thought scared Felix to death.

The Ukrainian government had given them permission to travel to the crash, but all understood that the proclamation was nothing but hollow words once they reached the east. The initial penetration across the border had been fine, but the rebels held the east, and they maintained that nobody was to enter “their” area—Kiev and its Western puppets be damned. A test was coming one way or another.

First Lieutenant Dane Raintree understood this better than the three NTSB members in the back. Unlike most of the junior officers in his battalion, he had experience in combat, and knew that this had the chance of becoming a shooting war. Something different from Afghanistan and Iraq. A real, holy-shit slugfest.

He was the executive officer for his company, and had heard the deliberations during the war-gaming sessions. When the mission had come down the brass had worried extensively about a show of force that would cause the very thing they didn't want: a fight to the death. They'd settled on a single platoon for the mission, but in so doing, they were placing the future of national security in the hands of a second lieutenant who had no experience at all. Luckily, the commander of first platoon had just rotated home for a death in the family, leaving a slot open. A command billet that needed to be filled. And Raintree was chosen, both because of his proven intellect and because he'd been the last platoon leader of that unit and had served with them in combat. He knew the men, and he had the experience to—in the words of his battalion commander—not do something stupid.

He'd been told that he was to reach the crash site and secure it, period. The unspoken command was that he would fight his way through, if necessary. Which caused him no small amount of angst.
He had over thirty men's lives in his hands, and only the assurances from his commander that whatever he did would be justified. He'd seen how that played out in Afghanistan, but his commander had provided ample firepower for a fight nonetheless.

In addition to the four LAVs with their Bushmaster 25mm chain guns—weapons that could shred anything short of a tank—he was being tracked by not one, but two armed Predators and a flight of A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft. He knew he could handle anything the rebels had. He just wasn't sure he could handle the fallout, if push came to shove. He wondered if his commander had the clout to protect him.

They bounced down the highway, running straight east, now deep into the Luhansk Oblast—rebel-controlled territory—when he received a call from his platoon sergeant, the same one he'd served with, before he'd become the executive officer. A man he trusted explicitly. Riding in the lead LAV, running point into Ukraine against established doctrine, his gunny knew how dangerous the mission was—not in individual gunfights per se, but in how those gunfights could escalate into a lot of dead Marines who had yet to deploy to Europe.

“Wolfpack one-six, this is Wolfpack one-seven. I got a checkpoint ahead.”

The entire convoy slowed at the call. Raintree started working the video feeds from the Predators overhead and saw a makeshift barricade with men left and right, all holding small arms. No anti-armor capability. The convoy jagged to a stop, a bull looking at the cape, wondering.

Raintree said, “I see no anti-armor. What do you have?”

“Same. But they don't need it. We pull up, Lord knows what will happen. We can't talk to them without exposing ourselves.”

Meaning, some backwoods asshole from Ukraine could take it upon himself to shoot. They were secure inside the steel of the LAV, but they couldn't get past the checkpoint without talking. They had
the permission of the Ukrainian government to be here, but that mattered little in Luhansk.

Raintree felt the pressure, felt the same debilitating choices of many Marines before him, about to make a decision that could alter the course of his nation. But he had his orders, and he had a dead president beyond. Truthfully, he was sick of being pushed around. Tired of cowering to a bunch of inbred rebels just because they believed America wouldn't unleash its power.

Fuck that.

“Wolfpack one-seven, ignore them. Continue forward.”

“Sir, I can't ignore them. They've blocked the road.”

“Are you saying you can't get through the roadblock with a LAV?”

“Well, no . . . just that it's . . . it's going to make a statement.”

Raintree smiled and said, “Then let's make a statement.”

And so thirty tons of steel blew through the first checkpoint as if it didn't exist, ripping across the raggedy-assed barricade like a chainsaw, all inside hearing the desultory fire of the small arms pinging off the vehicle's armor as if that had a hope of stopping the juggernaut that was America.

They rolled forward for another thirty kilometers before they reached the next checkpoint, this one apparently positioned specifically to prevent their advance. The Predator feed showed an anti-armor ambush, with defense in depth using weapons designed to puncture the steel of the LAV. Someone had been calling ahead. Raintree slowed the convoy to a stop. It was decision time for a person higher than him.

He called on the satellite radio, explaining what he had to his front to a man monitoring the command net, honestly believing he would be told to turn around.

He waited. And waited. Then heard the voice of his commander saying the last thing he expected.

“This is Wolfpack one-six actual. Eliminate the threat. Continue the mission.”

His mouth dropped open. He looked back at the men in the LAV, and they saw on his face that something different was happening here. No questions from higher about collateral damage. No discussions regarding civilians or other blowback. No back-and-forth like they'd experienced in Afghanistan, even as the rounds were firing.

He said, “Sir? Say again?”

“Wolfpack one-six, this is straight from the commander in chief. Eliminate the threat.”

A savage smile spread across his face at the words. The most powerful man in the United States had his back, allowing him to be a Marine. “Roger all.”

High above them, floating like bloated castoffs from an experiment, were two A-10 close air support aircraft. Built during the Cold War, they were created for one purpose: killing Soviet tanks. Neither sleek fighter nor long-range nuclear bomber, they were bastard children for a fight that had never happened. The Air Force had tried repeatedly to kill them, preferring to spend the money on more expensive next-generation fighters and bombers, but outcry from the men on the ground had stymied them at every turn.

A titanium bathtub built around a 30mm rotary cannon that fired depleted uranium shells, it could shred any armor in existence, and it was built to fly low and slow, slugging it out right above the ground—and survive. Affectionately called the Warthog, it lived up to its nickname, both in appearance and in capability. It was ugly and ferocious. Designed for tank battles on the plains of Europe, it had proven just as adept at close air support in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Every other airframe in the US Air Force was dedicated to a mission that defined that service's reason for existence, be it air superiority or counterforce nuclear targeting. No other platform was
dedicated to the man on the ground, and no other was as loved by the grunt.

The two aircraft circled lazily in a cloudless sky, as if they were executing a waiting maneuver for an airshow. Tracking back and forth, they showed no indication of the death they held.

For the first time since their initial radio check, Raintree called them. “Joker, Joker, this is Wolfpack one-six. Got a problem in front of me.”

“Wolfpack, this is Joker, I got 'em. What do you want me to do?”

“Eliminate the threat.”

Raintree expected some questions, or at least an exclamation of surprise. What he got was a voice with all the emotion of a man talking about taking out the garbage. “Roger that. Understand take out the threat. Hold your position. Coming in north to south.”

Raintree said, “Roger all. Smoke those assholes.”

The two birds rolled out into an attack run perpendicular to the travel of the convoy, lining up their targets in a neat row. Less than a hundred meters off the deck, they unleashed the guns. Sounding like God was ripping a giant piece of canvas, the rotating cannon devastated the earth, shredding man and machine alike, the screams lost in the noise of the destruction.

The men on the ground, of course, couldn't pinpoint the difference when the aircraft went from lazily tracing arcs in the sky to turning into a killing machine. They couldn't be faulted for that. They had no way of knowing that American policy had had a seismic shift from just a day before. Having learned from past US actions, they believed that the threat of violence alone was enough to stop the convoy from advancing. They didn't understand they were in danger until the awful sound of the guns ripped them apart, teaching a final lesson in global politics.

The convoy began rolling again, and after that display, nobody came close to them. The word spread swiftly—try to stop the
Americans, and you will be slaughtered. For once, the United States was serious. Further checkpoints were dismantled, with rebel formations fading into the wood line, none wanting to face the firepower that the small platoon held in the palm of their hand.

Lieutenant Raintree reached the crash site an hour later, a desolate gouge in the earth two football fields long, the terrain littered with rubble from the aircraft, brightly colored bits of cloth flapping amid burned steel. He positioned his men into a security formation around the site as best he could, telling Felix his team had six hours.

He called a SITREP to his higher, then sagged in his seat, happy they'd had no fight he couldn't handle. He glanced in the rear and saw the empty body bags, reminding him of the reason he'd come. The crash investigation was important, but it wasn't the primary mission. He keyed the radio and deployed the body recovery team. Their task was to retrieve the mortal remains of the president of the United States. He remained in constant contact with the other LAVs and the airpower overhead, thinking of nothing but the security of his men, spending a nerve-racking six hours on the ground deep in hostile territory.

He was but a small fish in a big pond, and he didn't realize that Russia had taken notice of his actions. Had seen the willingness to use force.