Iron Wolf (40 page)

F
ORWARD
E
CHELON
S
UPPLY
L
AAGER,

20
TH
G
UARDS
A
RMY,

E
AST OF
S
ARNY,
U
KRAINE

L
ATER THAT EVENING

Lieutenant General Polivanov and his logistics officers had taken great pains when positioning their supply units. It was vital that their reserve stocks of fuel, ammunition, and spare parts be positioned close enough to the fighting troops to allow rapid replenishment. But it was equally imperative to make sure their vulnerable supply convoys were parked far enough back to be safe from enemy artillery or rocket fire. In this case, the 20th Guards Army had decided to set up its forward supply echelon just off the main highway—about thirty kilometers east of the planned battlefield.

Dozens of tanker trucks and lumbering ammunition carriers sprawled across a wide expanse of open cropland. Several small rivers cut through this part of western Ukraine, flowing north into the boggy tangle of the Pripyat Marshes. To make the naturally soggy ground cultivable, drainage ditches ran through the fields, disappearing into concrete-lined culverts wherever farm roads crossed them. A platoon of three T-72 tanks, a detachment of mobile 9K35 Strela-10 SAM launchers, and two companies of motor-rifle troops mounted in BTR-80s provided protection for the widely scattered trucks and fuel tankers. It would have been easier to guard them if they were packed in hub to hub—but that would have been an open invitation to disaster if Polish planes broke through and bombed the truck park. Like so much else in war, finding the right balance between concentration to guard against one threat and dispersal against another was never easy.

In the growing darkness near the edge of the truck park, little groups of drivers gathered. Some of them shared cigarettes and swigs from carefully hoarded bottles. Everyone watched their army's
massed artillery batter the Poles. Hundreds of flashes lit the western horizon, stabbing skyward in a continuous ripple of lightning and thunder. Smoke from the dozens of 122mm Grad rockets screaming westward blotted out the first stars. The ground shook and danced and trembled—quivering under the distant impact as powerful high-explosive rounds ripped and tore at the earth.

One of the drivers shook his head in wonder. “Poor dumb bastard Poles,” he commented. “They won't last long.”

“True,” another agreed. Gloomily, he cadged a light and took a meditative puff on a foul-smelling cigarette before going on. “But then it's no more rest for you and me, tonight, eh? Every stinking tank commander and gun captain in the whole fucking army will be screaming his head off: ‘Where is my fuel, Ivan?' and ‘Bring me more shells, Dmitri!' And then once the trucks are empty, it'll be ‘Off you go to the depots in Mother Russia, boys. But hurry back to the front with another load! Don't dillydally. Just eat and piss in your cabs while you're driving, can't you?' ”

There were murmurs of disgruntled agreement and muttered laughs at this cynical depiction of their usual routine.

Curled up under the water flowing through a culvert on the northern edge of the truck park, Wayne Macomber listened with half an ear to his CID's running translation of the Russian driver's sardonic monologue and snorted in derision. REMFs were pretty much alike the world over, he decided. No one said driving a fuel tanker or ammo truck was an easy job, but at least they weren't shot at or shelled on a daily basis. A sudden, lopsided grin flashed across his face. Well, not usually, anyway.

The rest of his attention was fully absorbed in making sense out of the data flooding in from the robot's multiple sensors. One after the other, he pinpointed the prowling T-72s and other vehicles guarding the laager—feeding them into a program that would prioritize targets. As much as he disliked squeezing himself into this damned steel can, he had to admit that direct mental access to its computers made battle prep a hell of a lot faster and more efficient.

Maybe too easy, Whack thought somberly, and not for the first time. Christ, he mused, imagine pulling off this stunt like a regular grunt, lying half drowned in the stinking, muddy water swirling through this pitch-dark, cramped culvert. God knows he'd done crazy shit like that before during his time in the U.S. Air Force's Special Operations Command. Riding inside this CID cockpit was a piece of cake compared to that. But he couldn't shake the nagging worry that every time he sealed himself inside one of these war robots, he risked losing something—a connection to the sweat and blood and agony of real combat. When the CID's computer systems finished meshing with his nervous system, who was really in charge, the man or the machine?

A new set of sensor readings impinged on his consciousness, breaking him out his nanosecond funk. Bright green thermal images showed a group of twenty to thirty men moving up under the cover of the woods about a kilometer away. They appeared to be armed with a mix of rifles, machine guns, mortars, and RPGs. Save the philosophy-seminar bullshit for your next bar crawl, he told himself. Stick to the business at hand, even if it means using an armor-encased hand.

“CID Two to CID One and support team,” Macomber radioed, simultaneously relaying the sensor data to the other Iron Wolf units. “Looks like we've got some uninvited guests at this little party.”

“I see them, Whack,” Patrick McLanahan said. His robot was concealed on the other side of the highway.

“Copy that,” Ian Schofield echoed. The Canadian and several of his recon troopers were in position in the same woods these new guys were prowling through. “They're moving up to the tree line about two hundred meters to my left.”

“Are you at risk, Captain?” Macomber asked.

“Not unless they step on some of my lads,” Schofield said. “We're rather well hidden among the undergrowth and fallen timber here.”

“Can you get anyone closer to them without being spotted?”

“No problem,” Schofield said, without hesitation. “Do you want them eliminated?”

“Negative,” Patrick radioed back. “If they're hostiles, they can't stop us. And if they're friendlies, we don't need their help. But we do need a read on exactly who they are and what the hell they're doing here.”

Fedir Kravchenko dropped prone at the edge of the woods. Faint lights glowed out in the fields ahead, dimly illuminating the shapes of large Russian trucks and fuel tankers. The ground under his belly rippled and quivered, transmitting the repeated seismic shocks inflicted by hundreds of artillery shells and rockets still tearing the earth far away to the west.

He grimaced, reminded too vividly of the suffering inflicted on his old battalion three years ago by those same Russian guns. But any trace of lingering guilt at luring those weapons into action against the Poles was drowned by a sense of deep satisfaction. Once the so-called Free World had stood idly by and watched Moscow slaughter his countrymen. Now, though, the United States and the others would have to act against Russia's invasion forces. Continued indifference and cowardice could not be an option—not when tanks and artillery barrages were crushing the soldiers of a NATO ally.

More partisans crawled into position on either side. Pavlo Lytvyn lay next to him, studying the Russian supply laager through the scope of his SVD Dragunov sniper rifle. Several of Kravchenko's men readied RPG-18 and RPG-22 launchers. On either flank, teams worked fast to set up a pair of RPK-74 light machine guns. A few meters back behind the main body, a four-man weapons team strained and sweated, connecting the separate components of their 82mm mortar—its heavy barrel, base plate, and bipod. The rest of his platoon-sized force carried AK-74 assault rifles, though two men had 40mm grenade launchers fitted to their weapons.

A massive squat shape clanked slowly down a farm lane several hundred meters away. Its long-gunned turret whined ceaselessly back and forth, in a strange parody of an elephant suspiciously sniffing the night air.

“T-72,” Lytvyn hissed. “The gunner must be using his thermal sight to look for hidden enemies.”

“Like us,” Kravchenko murmured.

The big man nodded grimly. “The longer we wait, the more likely that one of those other Russian bastards will run a scan along this stretch of woods. And then we're screwed.”

“Which is why we're not waiting,” Kravchenko told him. He glanced back at the rest of his men. “Listen up,” he growled. “Remember your orders. Don't waste time firing at those Russian tanks or their APCs. Hit the soft-sided vehicles, the fuel tankers and ammunition trucks. Follow the plan. This is a hit-and-run attack. We fire for thirty seconds, do as much damage as we can, and then we run! Head for the rally point as fast as you can once I blow the whistle! Don't keep shooting too long! Our country needs live fighters, not dead heroes.”

Pale faces nodded in the darkness.

Lytvyn gave him a skeptical look. Kravchenko shrugged. More than half of these raw, inexperienced partisan recruits were likely to die tonight. But he had nothing to gain from pointing out the obvious. Their sole duty to Ukraine was to kill as many Russians as possible, at any cost. Losing a handful of supply trucks would not seriously hurt the 20th Guards Army, but it would remind Polivanov and his thugs that they were deep in hostile territory. And every soldier, every tank, they deployed to guard their rear areas against future attacks was one less soldier, one less tank, available for battle at the front. Besides, any partisan who survived this raid would be a veteran—hardened to danger and ready for even more daring and complicated missions.

CCRRAACK!

Kravchenko swung back, startled by the unearthly, earsplitting sound. His eyes widened in surprise. There, on the far side of the Russian truck park, a T-72 tank sat motionless, engulfed in crackling flames. Closer in, the coughing roar of a heavy-caliber autocannon firing short, aimed bursts echoed over the pulsing, continuous rumble of the distant Russian artillery barrage. A BTR-80 ground
to a halt. Smoke and fire boiled out through huge holes torn in its thin steel armor.

For more than a minute, Kravchenko lay frozen, watching in growing astonishment as more and more Russian vehicles blew up or were ripped to pieces. Antitank missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, and glowing incendiary rounds streaked across the laager, wreaking death and destruction. Slowly, a twisted grin writhed across his maimed face. Somebody had beaten him to the punch.

Eyes alight with maniacal delight, he saw metal-hulled fuel tankers and canvas-sided trucks set ablaze. Explosions rippled across the fields, sending shards of jagged metal screaming in all directions. Clumps of panic-stricken Russian soldiers turned to flee—and were ripped apart by rapid bursts of machine-gun fire.

“
Matir Bozha
. . . Mother of God,” Lytvyn muttered, pointing toward a lithe gray and black shape stalking through the growing tangle of wrecked and burning vehicles and mangled dead men. It moved with eerie, murderous, machinelike precision—firing different weapons in every direction. “What is that devil?”

Kravchenko studied the creature hungrily. “That, Pavlo,” he murmured with deep satisfaction, “is what all our attacks on the Russians were designed to conjure.” He grinned. “And now it is time for us to vanish. Our work tonight is being done for us—and done well.” Rising to one knee, he blew a series of soft, piercing notes on his command whistle.

Quickly, in ones and twos and teams, the Ukrainian partisans gathered their weapons and gear and melted away into the darkness under the trees. They drifted past the motionless, ghillie-suited figures of Captain Schofield and Sergeant Davis without spotting the two Iron Wolf scouts. Nor did Kravchenko or any of his men notice the tiny low-light cameras and directional microphones rigged to capture their faces and speech.

Early-morning sunlight cast long shadows across a landscape left churned, blasted, and burning by last night's unrelenting artillery
barrage. Craters stained with acrid explosive residues carpeted once-fertile fields. Long stretches of the M07 highway had been smashed into slabs of broken concrete and asphalt. Patches of woodland were now jumbled heaps of shattered stumps and shrapnel-splintered branches. Fires smoldered everywhere.

Lieutenant General Mikhail Polivanov cautiously clambered out of the BMP-3 he used as a mobile command vehicle. His bodyguards, weapons ready, stayed close to him, tensely observing the ruined countryside. Both of them looked grim and nervous. There were too many potential hiding places for stay-behind Polish snipers in this shell-torn setting.

Ignoring them, Polivanov made his way gingerly across the debris-strewn ground to where a group of his army's officers and combat engineers stood studying two burned-out hulks—one a Leopard 2 tank, the other an eight-wheeled Polish APC, of the type they called a Wolverine. Heavy chains linked the two wrecks. Off to one side, blood-soaked blankets covered a row of mangled corpses.

An engineer officer saluted at his approach. “Sir!”

Polivanov gestured toward the pair of wrecked Polish vehicles. “What's the story here?”

The engineer nodded toward the Leopard 2. “One of our shells must have knocked a tread off that tank. The Polish infantry squad from that APC was trying to rig up a tow. From the look of things, they were all caught outside when our next salvo of 122mm rockets struck this area.”

Polivanov winced, imagining the carnage. He sighed and turned away. “What a waste,” he muttered.

One of his junior staff officers nodded sagely. “Those Polish soldiers were brave, but foolish.”

“Idiot!” Polivanov snapped, scowling deeply. “I'm not referring to the enemy, Iosif. I'm talking about last night's little show by us.”

“Sir?”

“We fired off more than ten thousand shells and rockets—a whole unit of fire for every gun and rocket launcher we deployed,” the Russian general said heavily. “And for what?” He waved a hand
around the artillery-blasted countryside. “To blow holes in empty Ukrainian farmland?”