Iron Wolf (26 page)

Martindale took that in silently, chewing what he seen and heard over mentally for several moments. At last, he looked up at the bigger man with a very serious expression on his face. “Something occurs to me, Major.”

“Sir?”

“If what you've told me about Brad McLanahan's accomplishments with the Iron Wolf Squadron's air crews is true, maybe it's about time you stopped calling him just a
kid
.”

Now it was Whack Macomber's turn to think. Finally, he nodded solemnly. “You know, Mr. President, I think you're absolutely right.”

U F
UKIERA
R
ESTAURANT,
O
LD
T
OWN

M
ARKETPLACE,

W
ARSAW,
P
OLAND

S
EVERAL DAYS LATER

Discreet waiters circulated behind the elegantly uniformed officers seated at the long, white-tablecloth-covered table dominating the private dining room. Deftly, they removed plates with the scattered leftovers from a traditional feast—potato pancakes slathered in red caviar, boiled eggs, and onions; prawns swimming in olive oil, garlic, and sweet peppers; salmon steamed with spices and vegetables; veal cutlets served with quail eggs and cucumber salad; and beef tenderloin in a wine-and-wild-mushroom sauce atop potato noodles. Behind them came beaming waitresses carrying trays piled high with desserts, including parfaits with pistachio meringues and orange sauce, mouth-watering cheese cakes, and piping-hot slices of fresh-baked apple pie topped with ice cream and cinnamon. And finally, still more servers trooped in, bringing in armloads of bottles of fine wine, craft beer, and vodka.

Seated at the head of the table, with Brad McLanahan on her right, Captain Nadia Rozek waited until the restaurant staff finished their work and withdrew, closing the door behind them. Then, smiling, she pushed back her chair and rose, only slightly unsteadily, to her feet. She raised her wineglass. “Comrades, fellow soldiers, and friends! A toast!
Do Eskadry
Å»
elazny Wilk!
To the Iron Wolf Squadron!”

With dazzling grins, the assembled officers—men and women of the Polish Special Forces assigned to liaison duty and members of the Iron Wolf Squadron itself—jumped to their own feet. The Poles wore their regulation dress uniforms, while the Iron Wolf pilots were clad in their rifle-green jackets, shirts, and ties, though without the give-away robotic wolf's-head squadron patch.

“The Iron Wolf Squadron!” they murmured, echoing her toast. They drained their glasses and refilled them. This celebratory dinner and its associated weekend leave in Warsaw was the payoff for the past weeks of hard work, long hours of study, and rigorous training and practice. It marked their transition to operational status.

Through the warm haze created by great food, plentiful liquor, and budding camaraderie, Brad McLanahan turned to Nadia, raising his own glass. “To Poland!” He searched back through his memory of the various articles he'd been reading about this country. The Poles were a proud people and it was essential that he get this right. And then, almost without effort, the phrase he needed leaped into his mind.
“Za wolno
ść
nasz
ą
i wasz
ą
!”
he said, making sure he pronounced the words properly. “For our freedom and yours!”

It was the traditional slogan of Polish exiles, driven from their homeland, when they fought as soldiers to help liberate others around the world.

With an approving roar, the Poles and their new Iron Wolf allies repeated the toast and drank deep.

Nadia glowed with delight. “That was perfect,” she murmured, leaning over to kiss him on both cheeks. And then, to Brad's surprise and pleasure, she kissed him again, this time full on the lips. Her blue-gray eyes sparkled impishly.

His breath caught in his throat.

More toasts followed, one after another in a freely flowing river of wine, beer, vodka, and sentiment. The Poles, it seemed, were determined to send their new Iron Wolf Squadron comrades back to the base at Powidz with memories—and hangovers—they would long remember.

Brad, after studying the playful expression on Nadia's lovely face, fought hard to stay in control. He confined himself to sips, rather than knocking back a fresh glass with each new tribute to the squadron and its Polish comrades. If her innermost thoughts and feelings were really moving in the direction he hoped they were, he decided that he definitely did not want the phrase “drunk and incapable” attached to his name tonight.

The party went on until well after midnight, ending only when the exhausted restaurant staff finally coaxed their mostly inebriated and entirely cheerful guests out into the cool night air. Even then the songs and boisterous laughter continued for a while longer, echoing off the cobblestones and Baroque-style buildings of the marketplace square. Then, almost reluctantly, the group of officers broke up with loud good-byes, handshakes, and embraces—with groups and pairs and individuals drifting slowly apart as they made their separate ways through the darkened streets of Warsaw's historic Old Town.

To his great delight, Brad found himself walking with his arm snugly around Nadia Rozek's trim waist as they parted from the others. Smiling to herself, she leaned in against his shoulder.

“
Dobranoc!
Good night, Nadia! And you, too, Mr. American!” they heard a slightly slurred voice say happily. Still clinging to each other, they turned around to see one of the other Polish Special Forces officers, Captain Kazimierz Janik, beaming at them.

“Where you off to, Kazimierz?” Nadia asked.

“My girlfriend's place,” Janik murmured happily. “Her roommate is a flight attendant and away in New York or London or somewhere. For hours and hours. Or maybe days! Which is good luck for me, eh?”

“Indeed,” Nadia agreed, suppressing her own grin. “Well, good hunting, Kazimierz.”

“Thanks!” The young Polish officer eyed them owlishly. “And yourselves on this fine night? Where are you headed?”

“I thought I would take Mr. McLanahan on a walking tour of the Old Town,” Nadia said blandly. “To show him the sights.”

“That is a great idea!” Janik agreed equably. “Good night, again!” With a final wave, he turned and walked off across the square, humming to himself.

“So, where exactly are you really leading me?” Brad asked quietly, feeling greatly daring.

“Well, I
do
have a flat here in the Old Town,” Nadia said, with an enchanting smile that set his pulse racing. “So we will have to walk there.”

“And what about
your
roommate?” Brad asked, through lips that were suddenly dry. “Is she still in town or away, too?”

Nadia laughed softly. “Fortunately for you,” she said with another impish look in her bright eyes, “I do not have a roommate.”

Neither of them noticed the dark blue panel van idling across the square. Or the two men sitting inside its darkened interior.

“There,” one of them said, nudging his companion and pointing through the dirty windshield. “That's the one we want.”

The other man leaned forward to get a better look, squinting slightly. He flashed a penlight down at the sheaf of black-and-white surveillance photos in his lap and then nodded. “You're right. That's our target for sure.” He grinned nastily, slipping a syringe out of his coat pocket. “Talk about easy. I almost feel guilty getting paid for this job.”

The first man snorted. “Sure you do.” Then, reaching down, he put the van in gear. “Just make sure there's no fuss or bother. The boss wants this one delivered specially gift-wrapped to the customer.”

N
EAR
K
ONOTOP,

R
USSIAN-
O
CCUPIED
E
ASTERN
U
KRAINE

T
HE NEXT NIGHT

Captain Kazimierz Janik swam slowly up out of what seemed to be a very dark, bottomless pit. Unseen waves sloshed against him, bouncing him against its stony sides in an odd, jerky rhythm. A low, dull roar filled his ears, growing louder every second. His head ached abominably.

With an effort, he pried his eyes open. He was not swimming in a dark, lightless pit, he realized groggily. Instead, he was sitting on a rough bench in the back of a canvas-roofed truck, crowded in among a number of other men. It was pitch-dark outside and pouring rain, but he could see just enough out the open back to guess the truck was bumping and swaying along a rough, rutted country road. There were no signs of streetlights or houses.

What the hell was going on? he wondered. His last conscious memory was saying good night to Nadia Rozek and that tall, broad-shouldered American. Had he been so drunk that he'd climbed up into the back of this truck and then passed out? Or had someone scooped him off the pavement after he lost consciousness? Was this all part of a practical joke being played on him by the other guys in his unit?

Janik looked down at the clothes he was wearing. Irregular blotches of darker and lighter shapes swam and rippled in his fogged eyesight. Camouflage battle dress, he realized stupidly—finding it difficult to focus. What had happened to his other clothes, to the dress uniform he'd been wearing at the restaurant? Just how long
had
he been wandering around in a drunken stupor?

Fighting against the mind-numbing drowsiness that still clouded his thoughts, the young Polish Special Forces captain looked up at the six other men crammed in the back of the truck with him. Most of them were wearing camouflage uniforms, too. But unlike
him, they were all armed, cradling M4 carbines and other weapons. Their watchful eyes met his puzzled gaze without any discernible expression. Worse yet, he didn't recognize any of them.

Christ, Janik thought wildly, what was this? Who were these men? He opened his mouth to ask.

And then closed it abruptly when the grim-faced man sitting across from him swung the muzzle of his rifle around to aim straight at his chest. The other man nodded coldly.
No talking,
he mouthed silently.

With a jolt, the truck veered off the rutted country road and turned onto a city street. They were passing between blacked-out buildings now, lit only sporadically by flickering streetlamps.

Brakes squealed softly as the truck slowed and then stopped.

“Out,” the man pointing the rifle at him growled.

Awkwardly, Janik obeyed, clambering out over the tailgate of the truck. The others did the same, forming up in a loose huddle. Driving rain slanted down out of the sky, pelting the cracked and broken pavement. A door creaked open on one of the neighboring buildings and several more men poured out onto the street.

These new arrivals wore dark-hued civilian clothing, and they were also armed to the teeth—most with Russian-made small arms. Their leader, a lean, wiry man with a gruesomely scarred face, carried an AK-74M assault rifle gripped in his capable-looking hands. Still struggling against the gray haze clouding his mind, Janik stared at the scarred man. There was nothing in the man's eyes, he thought, beginning to be even more afraid. No emotion, no fear, no anger . . . nothing human at all. Just a look of cold, ruthless calculation.

Death, Kazimierez Janik realized with horror. I am looking on Death.

Through the darkness and pouring rain, Fedir Kravchenko saw the young Polish Special Forces officer turn white. He nodded once to the men grouped behind their captive. Silently, they spread a tarp across the wet pavement and backed away.

Kravchenko lifted his AK-74. He saw their prisoner's eyes widen and nodded again. “You have my apologies, Captain,” he said quietly, in Polish. “But your unfortunate fate will serve a greater purpose, both for your country and for mine.”

“No, wait—” Janik stammered, raising his hands.

Kravchenko shot him twice, once in the stomach and a second time in the chest.

The young Pole went down in a heap. He was dead in seconds.

“Wrap him up in the tarp,” the Ukrainian told his men calmly. “And bring him with us.” He checked his watch. They had half an hour to drive the ten kilometers to the rendezvous point where Lytvyn and the rest of his command waited. Plenty of time, he decided, especially since this miserable weather seemed to be persuading the Russians to stick close to their existing checkpoints and fortified compounds.

K
ONOTOP
A
IRFIELD
P
ERIMETER

A
SHORT TIME LATER

Pavlo Lyvtyn crouched next to the rusting chain-link fence. Topped by newer rolls of razor wire, the barrier stretched away into the rain-drenched countryside on either side, finally disappearing into the darkness. When the Russians had seized this old Ukrainian airfield as a base for their own planes, they must have strengthened its defenses. But if so, the additions weren't immediately obvious. The big man frowned.

“Trouble?” Kravchenko murmured.

Lytvyn shrugged. “Those Russian bastards aren't stupid. They've probably wired this fence into a sensor net. Which means they'll know we're coming as soon as we make our first cut.”

“Yes, they will,” Kravchenko agreed. He eyed the bigger man. “You know the plan.”

“I know the plan,” the big man growled. He shook his head. “It just seems like a hell of a lot of trouble to go through in order to fail in the end.”

A thin, humorless smile flashed across Kravchenko's maimed face. “Ah, but Pavlo, in this case, failure
is
the plan.” He tapped Lytvyn on the shoulder. “So cut the damned fence and let's get on with it!”

Grumbling under his breath, the big man set to work with a pair of bolt cutters, quickly slicing a wide opening in the rusting airfield perimeter fence. There were no audible alarms, but lights began flicking on across the distant compound, illuminating hangars, aircraft shelters, and sandbagged guard posts.

Kravchenko whirled to the partisans kneeling behind him. “Go! Go!”

Silently, they scrambled to their feet and poured through the opening. The Ukrainian major and his bigger subordinate came
right behind them, followed by another four-man party hauling the tarp-wrapped corpse of the Polish Special Forces captain.

Beyond the fence, hand signals sent the attackers fanning out through the tall, rain-soaked grass. Pavlo Lytvyn led one group off to the right. The men carrying Janik's body went with him.

Kravchenko led the rest to the left. Besides riflemen, his group included a two-man team equipped with an 84mm Carl Gustav recoilless rifle. One partisan carried the launcher. The other lugged a haversack filled with two high-explosive and two antitank rounds.

The staccato rattle of automatic weapons fire echoed across the airfield. Lytvyn's men were engaging Russian sentries outside the control tower and hangars at long range—firing short bursts and then dashing to new positions before the outgunned and outnumbered sentries could zero in on them.

Kravchenko's group dropped prone in the wet grass beside a long concrete runway. They were about three hundred meters away from two newly constructed aircraft shelters. He wriggled forward to get a better look through his night-vision binoculars. These temporary Russian shelters weren't hardened against air attack. Built out of lightweight metal and Kevlar fabric, they offered some protection against fragments and small-caliber rounds. Really, though, they were mostly designed to let mechanics and technicians to perform maintenance work on aircraft in all weather conditions.

Like this hard, drenching rain, the Ukrainian thought, baring his teeth in a fierce predatory grin. From the amount of light leaking out of both shelters, the Russian ground crews were busy tonight—readying two Su-25SM ground-attack aircraft for tomorrow's scheduled patrols over the so-called Zone of Protection.

He glanced over at the Carl Gustav team. “Load with high explosive, antitank. Your target is the shelter on the right.”

The loader nodded, tugging one of the two HEAT rounds out of his haversack. He slid the round into the recoilless rifle's breech and
dogged it shut. The gunner went prone, aiming across the tarmac. “Ready!”

“Shoot!” Kravchenko hissed.

KA-WHUUMMP!

The Carl Gustav fired with a blinding flash and backblast—hurling the antitank round downrange at nearly three hundred meters per second. It hit the Russian aircraft shelter squarely, tore through the Kevlar fabric like a white-hot knife through butter, and exploded inside. Bits and pieces of the Su-25's shattered fuselage pinwheeled out of the burning, collapsing structure. Moments later, stored fuel, 30mm cannon rounds, and ground-to-air rockets went up, cooking off in a rippling series of explosions that strobed across the surrounding tarmac.

“Let's go!” Kravchenko yelled to the men closest to him. They jumped up and followed him toward the hole in the perimeter fence. He dragged his whistle out and blew a series of short, sharp blasts, relaying the same withdrawal order to Lytvyn's group.

Abruptly, clumps of dirt and torn grass sprayed up across the ground behind the running partisans, traversing from right to left as the guards near the control tower brought a light machine gun into action. The Russians were finally waking up, Kravchenko thought. And about time, too. But given the range and the driving rain, it would be almost impossible for them to hit anything.

Still, those machine-gun rounds were coming close enough to make the next part of his plan plausible. “Drop the Carl Gustav launcher,” he snapped to the recoilless rifle crew. “Keep the rounds.”

The gunner nodded reluctantly, tossing the heavy tube aside into the long grass for the Russians to find later.

When they regrouped outside the fence, Kravchenko looked for Lytvyn. As usual, the big man was the last man out. “Anybody hit, Pavlo?” he demanded.

“No one,” Lyvtyn replied.

“Except for poor Captain Janik, you mean,” Kravchenko corrected him with a crooked smile.

“Except for him,” the big man acknowledged drily. “We dumped his body back near where we opened fire on the sentries.”

Kravchenko's smile turned more genuine. “Very good. I'm sure the Russians will find what their prize has in his pockets very . . . clarifying.”