Commander-In-Chief (57 page)

He’d just taken a sip of coffee when he heard an unmistakable thud on the aft deck of the boat. More curious than concerned, he flipped on the autopilot, scanned the water ahead for a moment, then went to investigate.

He had just passed through the rear cockpit door when he felt something grab him from above. A line from one of the sails had been lowered around his neck, and now it choked him as whoever held on to it pulled him so hard his feet left the deck.

Straight ahead of him, at the stern of the boat and just in front of the dinghy, he saw a woman with auburn hair unfasten a parachute harness. She already had a pistol in her hand, and she raised it at Clark.

Clark struggled with the line around his throat, and while he lurched his head back, trying in vain to break the hold, he saw a
man lying on the flying bridge just above him, reaching over with the line and heaving it with all his might.

The woman said, “Who else is on board?”

Clark couldn’t have replied if he wanted to, he just held on to the line digging into his throat, trying to keep his airway open. For one brief moment he reached down to his cargo pocket trying to pull his Glock, but the auburn-haired woman recognized what he was doing, so she stepped forward and removed the pistol before he could get to it. She racked the slide, ensuring there was a round in the chamber, then pointed it at Clark’s face. “How many more of you on board?”

Clark’s hands went back to the line, clawing into his own skin to get some relief from the pressure against his windpipe. He was seconds from losing consciousness. He’d left the SIG in the cockpit, and he couldn’t reach the knife on his ankle.

From nowhere, Noah Walker appeared in the cockpit just behind Clark, his eyes wide with terror when he saw the woman who had kidnapped him days earlier.

Martina Jaeger saw the kid and rolled her eyes. She took a step to the side and raised Clark’s Glock pistol toward the boy; she didn’t give a shit if the Russians wanted him alive anymore, because clearly the Russians couldn’t manage one
fucking
aspect of this operation.

Her gun arm reached by Clark, a foot from his left shoulder, and when he saw this he kicked with both feet, swinging as hard to his left as he could. He dropped both hands from the noose strangling him to death, and these hands fired out toward the Glock, surprising the woman aiming at the boy.

Clark grabbed the woman’s wrists, yanked back and torqued them around, and shoved the hands and the pistol they held under the lip of the flying bridge above him, slamming the barrel into the
ceiling of the cockpit directly under the big man lying there above him holding the line around his neck.

The force of the impact between the pistol barrel and the cockpit ceiling caused the woman’s finger on the trigger to jerk, and the weapon fired, point-blank, into the ceiling. The bullet went through the wood, into the flying bridge, and directly into the chest of the man lying there holding the sail line around Clark’s neck.

The big man released his hold and Clark dropped to the ground, still holding the woman’s wrists, controlling the gun only enough to keep it away from him and the boy.

Noah disappeared down the companionway.

Clark and Martina wrestled on the aft deck, but only until the big man above them called out in a hoarse shout,
“Ik ben neergeschoten!”
I’ve been shot!

Martina Jaeger let go of the gun and stood, raced up the ladder to the flying bridge, and knelt over her brother.

It took Clark nearly half a minute to stand back up, since he could still barely breathe. When he stood he raised the Glock and saw the blood dripping into the cockpit through the bullet hole in the ceiling.

Above, the woman knelt over the wounded man, sobbing hysterically and then screaming in rage.

What the hell? Are these two assassins a couple?

Clark couldn’t see her, he could only hear her. He had no idea if there was a gun up there, so he retreated into the cockpit, directly below her.

Kate appeared in the companionway now, and tried to come up on deck, but Clark sent her back down, told her to take Noah back into the stateroom and lock the door.

This wasn’t over.

Clark knew he could fire through the ceiling again, and perhaps
hit the woman, but if he missed he would go a long way toward revealing his exact location. Instead he moved out of the port side of the cockpit and tried to sneak a look above. Just as he did so, he saw the woman standing with a silver automatic pistol in her hands. Clark ducked back into the cockpit as a shot rang out. He had his Glock in his hand and pointed up at the ceiling, but he still didn’t dare fire up into the flying bridge above him, because she could easily return fire and kill him. He was a sitting duck below her.

As he considered retreating down to the saloon, the woman fired down, sending bullets into the sofa of the cockpit.

Clark aimed at the origin of the shots and opened fire now, dumping round after round straight up through the lacquered wood.

After nine shots he heard the woman’s pistol fall and bounce on the flying bridge above him. He ceased fire, listened as carefully as his assaulted eardrums would let him. Seconds later the woman fell off the bridge and onto the foredeck, slamming hard on her side. Clark kept his pistol on her as he approached, but soon he lowered it. She was unarmed, lying on her back with a gunshot to her stomach, and two more in her legs. Tears ran freely from her eyes, and blood filled her mouth.

Clark knelt down, laid the Glock on the deck behind him, well out of her reach, and lifted her by the head.

She looked up at Clark, blinked away tears. “Help me, sir. Please. I beg you.”

Clark didn’t know if there was much he could do, but he lowered her head back down and pulled out his emergency medical kit. There would be more first-aid supplies somewhere on the boat, but he didn’t want to take a chance looking for them. He opened a thick wad of bandages to put pressure on her stomach, then looked to the woman, saw her looking back at him through the tears. Clearly she
realized she was being helped by the man she had just tried to kill, and she seemed surprised by this, but happy.

“Thank you, kind sir. Thank you so—”

Her eyes flitted away from Clark, focused to a point over his shoulder.

The eyes widened now. “No!”

Clark spun around on his knees. Above and behind him he saw Kate Walker, standing with the Glock pistol in her hand, leveled coolly at the wounded woman on the deck of the
Spinnaker II
.

“No one threatens my child and lives. No one.”

She fired once; the gun jerked and sprayed smoke and fire. Clark ducked down low, falling away from the wounded woman onto the deck. When he looked back, he saw that Kate had shot the woman high in the chest. Her eyes remained open, locked on the Australian mother standing above her, while a low, guttural gurgle came from deep in her throat.

Her eyes rolled back in her head and her breathing stilled.

“Give me the gun, Kate,” Clark said, holding his hand out for the pistol.

She did as he asked, then turned away, went back to the cockpit, and sat down on the sofa.

R
ich Belanger stood on the second-floor balcony of the small farmhouse he’d chosen as his command post, feeling the cold, wet night blowing across his exposed skin. On his right was his sergeant major, and both men held binoculars to their eyes. They peered off into the dark, in the direction Early Sentinel had predicted for the Russian armor advance.

There wasn’t much to see. Although there was a moon above broken clouds, most of the scene at ground level was obscured in the predawn by a heavy fog bank coming off the river basin and from the soggy fields all around them.

“What do you think, sir?” Sergeant Major Garcia broke the silence in a hushed voice.

Belanger replied, “This isn’t the location I would have picked. We’ve got good ground to protect, but our view of the village on the other side of the river is going to suck, even when the fog clears.”

“It’s a little late to move,” the sergeant major said. They’d spent the last four hours getting into position and digging in.

Belanger kept peering through the glass. “Couldn’t if I wanted
to. This Early Sentinel voodoo told us to come here and do this, and my orders are to follow Early Sentinel, even if that means driving off a cliff.”

“Don’t worry, sir. If Early Sentinel turns out to be a complete clusterfuck and we all get caught up in a Slavic meat grinder, I bet that computer can write a nice letter home for all our loved ones.”

“You always make me feel better, Garcia.”

Sergeant Major Garcia had been in the Marine Corps longer than Belanger, and was the oldest man in the battalion. He’d seen many commanders in his time, and his duty was always to remind them of the price of making a poor tactical decision. The sergeant major had been around Belanger enough to joke easily with him about everything from the ubiquitous Marine Corps equipment shortages to their Marines’ personal quirks. But when the sergeant major took his eyes away from the binos, he saw that his chief was really struggling with the issues at hand.

“What’s bugging you, sir?”

“Yesterday when we met the Russians at the border, their rockets pushed us back before we could engage. Since then our Harriers and F-18s have come through for us, and we think they’ve knocked out a lot of the enemy’s capability to hit us at real distance. The Russians are stalled in the south because of U.S. and Polish air mostly. But we don’t have air up here for the next hour. If the Russians figure that out, they’ll come and they’ll come hard.”

“That bridge is a bottleneck,” Garcia said. “They’d only try to cross if they thought they were clear of opposition.”

Belanger nodded. “That’s what I was thinking.”

Early Sentinel had told them to focus their fire on a patch of woods to the north and on the two-lane bridge to the northeast. This put them in the town of Punžonys, Lithuania. Its sister village of Punžionys, with an
i
, lay across the Neris River to the east. The
heavy bogs in the area made the ground soft, and the thick pine forests gave the infantry a distinct advantage. Belanger had walked through as much of the forest as he could during the day, and he and his operations officer had spent four hours personally inspecting every fighting position of the two companies dug in behind the wood line around him.

Belanger didn’t really trust that the computer program had put them in the right spot, but if it had, he felt they were ready.

The Darkhorse forward operations center had brewed some coffee using the farmer’s stove and an old coffeepot they had scrounged. All the locals had fled, leaving everything in place, including weak, flavorless coffee. A lance corporal brought a mug each for Belanger and Garcia on the balcony. Belanger took a sip and called out to the lance corporal as he headed back toward the kitchen. “I should have you court-martialed for this shit.”

The nineteen-year-old saw the half-smile on his lieutenant colonel’s face, and he left the balcony knowing his life wasn’t over just yet.

Belanger stepped back inside and looked at the Blue Force Tracker computer map of the area. The terrain seemed right. The bridge between Punžonys and Punžionys appeared capable of holding heavy armor, but the small villages lay at no major intersection. Regardless, if the intel was correct, there might be a hell of a lot of tanks and fighting vehicles headed into their lines somewhere, and soon.

Belanger knew his job seemed complicated, with a thousand moving parts. But at its essence, his responsibility was very simple. He was here to kill tanks.

And
that
, he was certain, he could do.

A Javelin system, operated by one Marine, weighed upward of fifty pounds. It was “fire and forget,” unlike the TOW system,
which was wire-guided and required the operator to guide it all the way into the target. That made the TOW gunners vulnerable the entire time they engaged the enemy tank.

Belanger had positioned Lima Company, code-named “Havoc,” in two engagement areas at the bridge east of Punžonys. One on the east side of the bridge, and another on the west. He put India Company, code-named “Diesel,” on opposite sides of a rail bridge farther to the south of the villages on the Neris.

The weapons company, call sign “Vandal,” had spread their combined anti-armor teams, CAAT-1 and CAAT-2, out between the various positions, and Vandal mortars were far enough back to drop shells in both villages as well as east of the river.

Belanger had his engineers laying mines and both his rifle companies rushing like hell to form ambush positions at the moment, but there was little for him to do now except wait.

He forced himself to drink the full mug of coffee while he stood over his map. Just as he put the empty mug on a table, his radio man called out to him. “Sir, you have Diesel Six on the net.”

“Okay, thanks.” Belanger walked over to the radio room and picked up the handset. “Six” was the commander of the unit, in this case the captain in charge of Lima Company, the force Belanger had positioned well to the south of the villages, near the rail bridge.

“Diesel Six, this is Darkhorse Six, send your traffic.”

“Copy, sir. We’re seeing movement along our phase line Jenna.”

Belanger stretched the handset back to the intelligence officer’s map. The intel officer was pointing out the area Diesel 6 was talking about.

“Copy, Diesel, looking at it now. I have no friendlies at that location. Havoc, concur?”

A new voice came over the radio. “Roger, sir, this is Havoc Six,
we’re still getting all elements into place on the east side of the bridge.”

This was followed by new radio traffic.

“Darkhorse Six, Diesel Six. My lead platoon is telling me they are hearing the sound of armor coming from near Punžonys . . . or Punžionys . . . whatever, sir, the village with an
i
, up near Havoc’s sector.”

“Shit,” said Belanger. He directed his response to Havoc 6. “Havoc, I don’t care how well your positions are set on the east side. Get to the far side of the bridge and prepare your ambush. The enemy is on his way.” He pointed to the operations officer and weapons commander to get ready to start battle tracking.

The enemy attack was on.

•   •   •

M
inutes later a report came from the team setting their ambush on the eastern side of the river. “Havoc Six, this is Havoc Two. I have a SPOTREP to follow. I identify a reconnaissance element of four BTR-90s and approximately forty, that is four-zero, troops moving through the eastern village, inbound my vicinity from phase line Jenna to phase line Hanna.”

BTR-90s were armored troop carriers. The fact there were forty troops on foot around the vehicles told Belanger they had dismounted to patrol through the little village and across the bridge, looking for enemy positions or booby traps. He looked out the window at the predawn while he spoke into his radio. “Havoc Six. I want you to let that force pass through you.”

“Sir?”

“Your cover in the woods adjacent to the bridge will prevent him from seeing your positions. He’s going to recon the bridge, then mount up and push west. I want to draw in the tanks. I want their
report to go back to their commander clean. Let them say they just seized the Punžonys bridge.”

“Copy. What are my instructions after that?”

“Well . . . if I’m right, then you get to be the first Marine on this continent to kill a bunch of Russian tanks.”

“Copy, sir,” said Havoc 6, sounding less enthusiastic for the second task than he did for the first.

Another call came over the radio now. Belanger knew it was going to be a morning full of interrogatives and orders. “Darkhorse Six, this is Reckless Six.” It was the Headquarters and Service Company commander, but the captain was an infantryman, and he was being tasked with all sorts of odd jobs today.

“Go ahead, Reckless.”

“Copy, sir. Me and the engineering-O just finished laying all the mines. I think in broad daylight they’ll be visible, but for now, they are set up where you wanted them.”

“Okay, good work. Get back through friendly lines. I want you manning fifty-cals and ready to deal with dismounts.”

“Copy. Reckless Six out.”

Minutes later the lead rifle company commander came back over the net. “Darkhorse, this is Havoc Six, be advised, the enemy recon has passed our positions and is over the bridge. They mounted back up in the BTR-90s and are headed your way. Also, we hear those tanks now. They are near the cemetery on the east side of the river. Northeast of the bridge.”

There was no way Belanger would have known to look toward the little cemetery on the far side of the Neris. There were so many other places in the area that seemed to offer a better approach for Russian armor. It occurred to him that if this sighting was, in fact, enemy tank contact, then Early Sentinel had already proven its worth in the field.

Just then the same voice came over the battalion tactical net. “Break, break. All stations off the net. Flash report, this is Havoc Six. Confirmed. Positive ID on enemy armor . . . and they are
not
T-90s. They are fucking T-14s! Say again . . . Russian T-14s!”

No one had faced T-14s in combat; the T-14 was a brand-new tank and its capabilities weren’t fully known by NATO forces. One of the weapons had famously broken down the first time the tank had been revealed to the world in a May Day parade through Red Square, but Rich Belanger knew better than to hope Russia’s new fifth-generation tank would just stall out and die at its first contact with the enemy.

“Copy, Havoc. How many?”

“Three . . . Negative. Four. I think there are also T-90s behind them. They are still in the village of Punžionys and I can’t say numbers yet.”

Belanger called his India Company commander: “Diesel, are there tanks in your zone as well?”

“Negative, sir. Not sure this rail bridge can hold the T-14s, but we’re tracking and our ambush positions are set.”

Belanger thought over the picture of the entire battle space quickly. “Okay, Havoc, listen up. I want you to kill those T-14s using volley fire. Make sure your CAAT team uses their TOWs in conjunction with your Javelins. If these assholes disappear off their radios it will make the Russian commander halt and think over his situation. When that happens you will move all your forces to our side of the river, and occupy your final engagement positions. Acknowledge.”

“Roger, Darkhorse, I copy all.”

Belanger tuned his second radio to Havoc company’s net. He had given the order, and now, as if tuning in to the big game, he would listen in as the India Company commander and his men did the job.

Havoc’s lead gunner was armed with M27 machine guns. The
M27 was an awesome weapon against troops in the open, but it wouldn’t scratch the paint off a Russian main battle tank.

“Havoc One, what’s your range to the lead T-14?” the company commander asked Lieutenant Munyon, his first platoon commander.

“Havoc Six, they sound like eight-zero-zero distance. But sir, I’m dealing with a
lot
of fog here.”

“You’ve got tracers in your M27?” the captain asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Nail that fucking tank, Devil Dog. Light the way for the antitank guys. ATs, are you all copying my traffic?”

The antitank platoon commander took to the radio now. “Sir, this is Shitty-Kitty. Roger on all. I can’t see much in this fog with my thermals, but if they can reach out and touch the target with tracer fire we’ll take the shots.”

Belanger ran to the balcony. His sergeant major was already out there, pointing off to the east. From their elevated location in the farmhouse the two might have seen out to the northern bridge in perfect conditions, but the darkness and fog ensured they couldn’t make out anything at that distance now.

Within seconds, however, Belanger saw a bright red streak of light shoot across and toward the village on the other side of the woods in the distance. It looked like it was impacting near the cemetery on the far side of the Neris. Another red streak followed shortly behind it. The report of the machine gun rolled across the countryside and back to them in a loud burp.

The tracers began arcing skyward after impacting with metal near the cemetery. Belanger knew they were raking the tanks with lead.