Commander-In-Chief (58 page)

“Havoc Six for Shitty-Kitty. You got eyes on that location?”

“Copy, we see vehicle movement in the fog at the end of those tracers.”

“At my command I need you to fire off a volley of TOWs at the two lead tanks. Havoc Two, are your Javelins set?”

“Ready to rock, sir.”

“Fire on my order.” There was a moment’s delay, then the command came: “Fire!”

From the farmhouse two kilometers from the river, the sky to the east flashed too many times for Belanger to count. He saw the streaks of light of multiple Javelins, but because the TOW missiles raced along a wire-guided path close to the ground, he was unable to follow them across the undulating landscape between his position and the bridge.

One long, single bright red flash illuminated the fog near the cemetery. The lieutenant colonel knew multiple targets were being hit multiple times, but it looked like one long detonation from where he stood.

Then dozens of low booms from the explosions finally reached him at Darkhorse command.

His radio came alive. “Darkhorse Six, this is Havoc on battalion tac. It looks like the T-14s’ reactive armor went off. Only the Javelins’ two tanks were destroyed. None of the TOWs hit their targets—they were all destroyed in flight by the Russians’ antimissile system. Break . . . There are a pair of T-14s still alive. They are moving to engage.”

Now Belanger saw tracer rounds coming out of the village on the other side of the Neris, streaking over the woods and into Havoc’s position.

“This is Havoc Two! We’re taking fire!”

Belanger pressed down on the radio call button and ordered Havoc 6 to move his men. “Displace to your secondary defensive positions on our side of the river.”

Just then, Belanger heard a clatter of heavy gunfire two
hundred meters from the farmhouse he was using as his CP. The enemy’s reconnaissance element had found his secondary machine guns, manned by his Headquarters and Service Company.

He heard the H&S commander calling for 81-millimeter mortar fire on the Russian recon-element men who were dismounting from their troop carriers, and Vandal company acknowledging that high-explosive rounds would soon be on the way.

More Javelins were fired at the Russian tanks at the cemetery, but again the tanks survived the onslaught by using automatic antiair missiles and reactive armor that detonated in front of the inbound missiles, destroying them before impact.

The radio reported T-90 tanks appearing at the cemetery as well, farther away than the T-14s. The sounds of battle, both near and far, made Belanger’s adrenaline pump, but he had to keep cool, continue directing his forces.

“Sir, this is Havoc, be advised: Those tanks are pushing across the bridge, we’re not set up yet. Permission to drop a shitload of smoke.”

“Copy. I’ll get Vandal on the net to take your call for fire.” Belanger couldn’t lose that bridge. Early Sentinel had said the point of penetration was at the bridge, and it had been right. Now it was up to him to do his work and hold it.

He heard three quick
whump
s in succession, followed by five distinctive
crack
s.

Enemy tanks main gun,
thought Belanger.
Shit.

•   •   •

T
he battle raged all around for a dozen minutes more, until Belanger got a call he’d been expecting for more than five of those minutes.

“Darkhorse Six, this is Havoc Six. We’re out of Javelins. The
enemy is sending more tanks. I am taking casualties. Their 120-millimeter guns are working over my positions. Sir, I have only AT-4s and SMAWs left and I don’t think they are going to do shit against the T-90s.”

“Roger. Stand by.” Belanger knew that AT-4 rockets and shoulder-launched multipurpose assault weapons would be highly potent against a multitude of armored threats out there, but the Russian tanks were just too big and high-tech to be threatened by either of the weapons. He turned to his fires officer, who confirmed that they were firing continuous 120-millimeter smoke and high explosive onto the far shore of the Neris, but it wouldn’t do a thing to the remaining T-90s except slow down their advance.

Belanger realized he needed to get his reserves moving into position to help Lima.

He pulled his radio back to his mouth. “Sledgehammer Six, Sledgehammer Six, this is Darkhorse.”

“Sir, Sledge Six, I read your mind. I’m Oscar Mike already,” said the company commander, clearly itching to get into the fight. “With your go, we can make the bridge in five mikes with the tanks and put the main guns into action.”

“Go now!”

“Roger, on the way. Hooorah!” said the commanding officer of Kilo. Belanger knew only a U.S. Marine in a Humvee could get excited charging into the teeth of the lion. At least he knew he’d guide those M1A1 tanks into a good position.

Havoc then called on the battalion net. “Darkhorse Four, I am retrograding out of the woods now. I need medevac for a lot of my men. I can self-lift them to the medical exchange point, but no further. I need you to take them. These enemy tanks just keep coming.”

Five minutes later the Kilo Company commander came back
over the net. “Havoc Six, this is Sledge Six. I have the fight. You boys get out of there. The T-90s will be on your heels smelling blood and I’ll fuck them up!”

Belanger stood over the map now, and worked out with his weapons company commander a final firing solution for the 81- and 120-millimeter mortars. He knew they needed a hellacious amount of smoke both to get Havoc out and to obscure Sledgehammer’s tanks as they moved into position to the west of the bridge.

If they could just clobber a platoon of enemy tanks, Belanger knew, he could get the Russians to grind their advance to a halt. No one, not even the Russians, could stomach losing one full platoon at a pop. It would make the enemy back out of the area and regroup, hopefully buying enough time for Belanger to reposition and rearm.

“Sir, this is Sledge. We see T-90s on Havoc’s heels. They have spread out and are leaving the cemetery, coming this way, but my attached tankers are ready.”

“Okay, you are clear to fire.”

“Copy, rounds on the way.”

Belanger listened. There was a terrible pause, and he imagined they had again lost the targets in the fog, or maybe the smoke had drifted.

Then a
crack
, then
crack-crack-crack
.

The tank battle went back and forth for a full minute in the distance, and while this was happening, the H&S Company commander reported that all four Russian BTR-90 reconnaissance vehicles had been knocked out, along with the forty troops. He was transporting multiple wounded of his own back to the battalion aid station.

Finally, Sledgehammer 6 called in. “Darkhorse Six, this is Sledge Six. I have three burning Russian tanks, and a fourth that stopped but has no movement. Say again, four T-90s are down.
Break . . . The rest are backing out of the cemetery! Their explosive reactive armor is no good against our tanks’ main gun rounds. Sir, permission to advance and counterattack.”

“Roger, clear to advance. But no further than our side of the bridge. Hit them till you can’t see them in retreat any longer.”

“Copy that, sir.”

Belanger looked around the CP one more time. In the red light of their battle lanterns, with the grip of fatigue setting in, the men looked like zombies, but they had done it. And more important, they were ready for more.

Belanger left the second story of the farmhouse with Sergeant Major Garcia minutes later, mounted up in their Humvee, and headed to the battalion aid station. He knew the “docs,” as they affectionately called their Navy corpsmen, would be working frantically on all the wounded from Kilo and Lima companies, but he hoped his other Navy personnel, namely the chaplains, wouldn’t be performing any last rites.

His hope was in vain, as he knew it would be. You don’t battle tanks without taking losses.

T
erry Walker had been told nothing about his family’s escape, but he could see the panic on the faces of Limonov and Kozlov, and he knew something had happened. He sat at his computer, making his trades, sending billions of dollars into invisible accounts, quite possibly for the Russian president. But while he did this he kept one eye on the Russians, trying to figure out what was going on.

Soon the four security officers were taken aside by Kozlov, and then they moved out into the hallway. He didn’t know what they were doing at first, but when he asked to go to the bathroom Kozlov himself drew his pistol, then led Walker down the hall, past the four men, all of whom had their guns out and trained on the elevator and stairs.

He’d asked Limonov what was up, but the Russian bean counter would not speak to him at all. He just chewed his fingers and made his trades, argued with Kozlov in Russian, and looked like he might have an aneurysm at any moment.

When it was time to leave for the day, all seven men moved
down the stairs and out to the vehicles. Walker walked in the middle of the group; he was the only man without a gun.

As soon as one of the security men put his key in the door of one of the Land Rovers, laser beams shined lines of red light from several directions. The security men raised their pistols high; then the men began spinning and dropping to the ground, one after another.

All four were dead in under two seconds; flashes of light across the parking lot were the only indicator of the source of fire, but Walker hadn’t heard a single gunshot. He dove to the ground. Above him Kozlov fired a single shot before he too tumbled facedown onto the parking lot.

Walker lay next to the man, their eyes locked together, Kozlov’s empty with death.

Limonov tried to run, but pieces of the parking lot kicked up in front of him and he stopped, raised his hands. Limonov’s chest was covered by the red dots of lasers.

Walker shut his eyes and prayed this was the end of the horror.

•   •   •

S
oon after he opened them, he sat with his wife and son on a sofa in a luxury Gulfstream jet. The three could not hold one another tight enough, and Walker promised the very serious men on the aircraft with him that he would answer any question, provide any assistance, or reveal any detail to the world that they wanted from him. He’d leave the BVIs and never return; he just didn’t want to have anything to do with the man tied to a chair at the front of the cabin.

Jack Ryan, Jr., sat in front of Andrei Limonov. Limonov might have been able to recognize the President’s son, it happened from time to time, after all, but the Russian wore a blindfold.

He looked white from terror, so Jack decided to play on his fears.

Jack said, “Limonov, you’ve got no choice. You are done.”

Limonov licked his dry lips. “Actually, I do have a choice. To me this is quite simple. I am infinitely more afraid of Valeri Volodin than I am of Jack Ryan.”

Jack was momentarily stunned. Then he realized the man was talking about his father.

He recovered and said, “You misunderstand the situation. We aren’t taking you to the USA. You aren’t going to Guantánamo. You are going home. Back to Moscow.”

Limonov’s chin rose slightly, and Jack thought he detected a tremble in his lip. “I don’t understand.”

“No? I bet you’ll figure it out. We’re going to plop your ass in the middle of Red Square the same morning the news gets out that a top Russian financier with Kremlin ties has been in the BVIs moving eight billion, and you have turned over the account numbers to American Feds.”

“What? Wait, that’s not what happened. I didn’t give you anything!”

Jack leaned forward. “Your boss might own the press in Russia, but he doesn’t own it all over the world. It won’t take any time for Volodin to learn what happened here, or maybe I should say our
version
of what happened. No matter the circumstances, what do you think he’ll do with you?”

Clark had been listening from across the cabin, but he stepped over for a moment and leaned down, just behind the Russian’s left ear. “No, Limonov, don’t even bother to think, because you can’t imagine it. Volodin has spent decades learning the best ways to exact payback on those who fail him, and I’m pretty certain when he finds out the U.S. has access to his money, he’s going to be a lot more pissed off than he’s ever been.”

Clark said, “Your end will be a fucking horror movie, pal. And
your death will be the best thing that ever happened to you in your whole life.”

“No!”

“If you will work with us, give us the accounts and the details of your network, you will be protected. If you don’t . . . well, like I said, it’s back to Moscow for you. This time next week someone will be digging your eye out with a pair of tongs.”

Limonov just nodded slowly. “Take me to America. I’ll tell you about Volodin’s money.”

Ryan looked to the back of the plane and gave the others a thumbs-up. Nobody was going to Moscow, but the threat had served its purpose.

•   •   •

T
he USS
James Greer
(DDG-102) sailed south at twenty-two knots. The ship was rigged for quiet but the relatively high speed negated much of the hard work the engineering department put in to keep the vessel stealthy. The twin screws of the Arleigh Burke–class destroyer were designed to reduce noise, even when under significant power, but at twenty knots, those with ears in the ocean ahead would be able to tell something was coming.

Commander Scott Hagen knew he was taking a calculated risk with his tactics, but he thought it worth the gamble. After days patrolling Lithuanian waters, essentially taking the place of the significant portion of Lithuania’s Navy that had been sunk in a two-and-a-half-hour period earlier in the week, he had finally received approval to patrol out into the open sea. As soon as these orders came through from the Sixth Fleet commander, he sent both of his MH-60 Romeo Sea Hawk helicopters out in front of him to clear the way, and he ordered his engine room to give him the highest speed they could manage without rendering the towed array
completely ineffective. Doctrine would have him picking his way a lot more slowly and carefully—as it was, the SQS-53 hull-mounted sonar’s effective range was cut by two-thirds—but Hagen saw tonight’s objective less as a typical sub search and more as a race against time, so he pushed on.

He also had a strong suspicion he knew where danger prowled in the Baltic, and it was dead ahead, out of range of his vessel, at least for a short while longer.

Thirty miles south of the
James Greer
, the Polish Navy was in a fight right this minute, and although the Poles seemed to think they had the upper hand, as far as Hagen was concerned, they just had a tiger by the tail.

For the first few days of the conflict the Poles had stayed in their own waters, but the northern coast of Poland lived and died on the basis of its Baltic seaports, and ever since the submarine warfare kicked off with the sinking of the Maltese cargo ship
Granite
, few ships of any type had dared enter the southeastern sector of the Baltic Sea. Seeing the economic imperative of opening their coast back to commerce, the Polish government ordered its navy out to ensure the safety of ship traffic.

They sent a search-and-attack unit—a collection of integrated surface vessels and aircraft with antisubmarine warfare capability—out to comb the waters west of Kaliningrad in search of the Russian submarines. An Orkan-class fast attack boat had been positioned to the east of the rest of the group. Above it, one of Poland’s Mi-14 helos with antisubmarine dipping capability had detected an undersea contact but had not been able to designate it as a threat with any confidence, so the Orkan began moving closer to join the helo in the hunt.

Without warning, a pair of torpedoes were launched from the location of the possible contact, and though the captain of the
Orkan managed to avoid one of them with evasive maneuvers, the second inbound Type 53-65 blew his small boat all the way out of the water, killing every last one of the thirty-two on board.

The Poles also had another helo in the area, an SH-2G Super Seasprite. It locked on to the undersea contact, declared it hostile, and dropped a pair of Mark 46 torpedoes into the black water.

A Polish corvette received the data pulled from the integrated targeting system of the Seasprite helicopter, and it launched a pair of its own torpedoes at the target. With four weapons converging simultaneously at one target from two directions, the Kilo had little chance.

The sonar technicians on the
James Greer
heard the death of the Russian sub in their headsets, and even though they were still some twenty-six miles from the action, it felt like they were right there in the submarine with the doomed men.

While it was natural to empathize with the dying, every one of the sonar technicians on the
Greer
knew the horrific sounds in their headsets were the sounds of justice. The Russians had started this shit, after all, and they’d killed a lot of innocent people.

Commander Hagen played no part in the celebration. He stood in the CIC quietly while the overhead speakers and the digital dead-reckoning tracer table in front of him gave him the news about the kill of the Russian sub, and he thought about the other undersea threat out there, the second Kilo. In their previous attacks the two enemy vessels had worked in tandem, so he expected it was just a matter of moments before one of the two Oliver Hazard Perry–class frigates in the Polish SAU found out that the other Russian submarine was also here in the sea north of Gdańsk.

He also knew the only reason the Polish helo had detected the Kilo in the first place was that it had been moving into position,
preparing to fire on the Orkan, so Hagen wanted to be close enough to detect the other Kilo’s attack when it came.

Hagen was pleased to see that his USWE, or undersea warfare evaluator, on duty, Lieutenant Damon Hart, played no part in the brief celebration in the CIC. Instead, Hart loomed over the dead-reckoning tracer table, his eyes rapidly scanning the contacts and tracks, taking in headings, speeds, directions, and even coastline features.

The commander saw Weps was as focused on finding, fixing, and finishing that other Russian sub as he was.

Hagen shouldered up next to the young man and scanned the display himself now. As NATO members and close allies of the U.S., the Poles were on the same tactical data-exchange network as the U.S. Navy, and this made coordination between the two nations’ fleets and aircraft as seamless as Hagen could possibly hope for. The Northrop Grumman Link-16 network allowed every designated track of every surface or subsurface contact—friend, foe, civilian, or unknown—to be immediately shared with every allied system in the hunt. The Polish helos and ships, the American helos and ships, all had the same near-real-time visual understanding of the battle space, and they were all rendered on the digital map on the big table.

Lieutenant Hart glanced up quickly at his captain. “That other Kilo is out there, sir.”

“I know it is, Weps. The question is, will he attack this entire SAU while he’s alone?”

Hart said, “I sure as hell wouldn’t.” He followed that with a “Sir.”

“I wouldn’t, either, unless I got a little blue communications folder from Naples ordering me to. Remember, this isn’t just about the psychology of the Russian captain, or the conventional doctrine
of submarine warfare. This is about his orders. Politics is driving this fight. Not the military minds under the sea.”

Hart nodded. “The right move for him, if he is alone, would be to play it safe. If he doesn’t play it safe, if he does attack, it must mean there is another element to this fight I haven’t figured out yet.”

Just then, the ASW tactical air controller came over the speakers. “All stations. Casino One-Two is reporting passive broadband contact, bearing zero, zero, eight. Initial classification of contact is POSS-SUB, confidence level high.”

Hart said, “Designate Contact-Enemy Sub One-One.” A red V-shaped indicator showed up on his digital dead-reckoning tracer table a moment later, east of the Polish SAU and eight degrees off the starboard bow of the
Greer
. This went instantly to everyone on the Link-16 system, meaning all the Polish ships saw the contact from the MH-60 Romeo, as well. The allied vessels only had a single bearing, not enough to identify the track of the submarine.

Seconds later, Hart heard a voice in his headset. “USWE, Sonar. Polish contact designated Friendly Surface Zero Five has gone active sonar.”

“USWE, aye.” Hart looked up to his commander. “That’s one of the two Polish frigates, the
Generał Kościuszko
. He’s exposing himself to that Kilo.”

Seconds later the same voice said, “USWE, Sonar. Friendly Surface Zero Five has launched two torpedoes. Heading one, eight, eight.”

“USWE, aye. Are they acquiring?”

“Sonar, negative. Not yet.”

Hart and Hagen stood there, hoping like hell the Polish frigate took out the Kilo before it had a chance to fire back. Now that the frigate was actively pulsing the water hunting for echoes, the Kilo would have no difficulty launching Type 53-65s right at it.