Command Authority (34 page)

Present day

D
elta Force officer Barry Jankowski, call sign Midas, had survived the battle for the Lighthouse in Sevastopol, Ukraine, along with two of his operators and eleven other Americans. But unlike most of the security officers and CIA men who’d made it out of the Lighthouse alive, Midas and his boys were still in country.

For the past three days Midas had been in Cherkasy, a midsized city in Ukraine’s heartland, and the location of a large Ukrainian Army base that was home to the nation’s 25th Airborne Brigade.

Midas had lost friends at the Lighthouse, but like most military special operations personnel, he was not given time to grieve for them in the field. Yesterday afternoon, Jankowski had been a lieutenant colonel. But a call from Fort Bragg last night informed him he had been promoted to colonel, and not only was he the highest-ranking member of Joint Special Operations Command here in Ukraine, he was now the senior command authority of all U.S. and British forces in Ukraine for Operation Red Coal Carpet.

Midas had spent seventeen years in the military, first as a Ranger enlistee, then as a Mustang—a term given to an enlisted man who joins the officer ranks. He moved over to Delta six years prior, starting out as an assaulter and then graduating into the elite of the elite, a Delta Force recce troop.

Most U.S. military units used the term “recon” as an abbreviation for reconnaissance, but the founder of Delta Force, “Chargin’” Charlie Beckwith, had served as an exchange officer with the United Kingdom’s 22nd SAS Regiment in the 1960s. Beckwith had adopted many traits of the SAS into Delta, and Brits called reconnaissance “recce”—pronounced “wrecky”—so Delta followed suit.

Midas came from a Polish family; he grew up speaking both English and Polish at home, and he’d learned some Russian in college. He’d spent much of the past year here in Ukraine, and with his vast experience and understanding of the landscape, the enemy, and the Ukrainian military, he had been tapped by the Pentagon to lead operations on the ground.

In Sevastopol, Midas had run an Advance Force Operations cell, meaning he had direct control over only three other Delta men. For a lieutenant colonel, this was highly unusual, but given his language skills and his unique knowledge of the region, he had gone where he was needed. Now, just days later, he found himself in control of a force of 429 men. There were sixty operators and support personnel from Delta’s B Squadron, along with men from 5th Special Forces Group and 10th Special Forces Group, as well as a unit of British SAS commandos.

He also had a U.S. Army Ranger rifle platoon of forty men here on the base to provide site security.

Besides these assets, he had a few transport and scout helicopters from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, three Black Hawks, and six tiny MH-6 Little Birds for transporting his forces around.

And an hour earlier, Midas received delivery of a large addition to his air support. Four CIA Reaper drones flown out of Boryspil International Airport near Kiev were tasked to JSOC, and several Army helos arrived here in Cherkasy from Poland. These helos would be used principally for laser targeting, but Midas had been thinking outside the box on this, and he had sent word that he wanted one flight crew in particular to drop in on his operations center as soon as they settled into their new quarters.

Obviously, the Americans and the Brits were not alone. The Ukrainian military was in place along the border and held in reserve, and they were expecting a fight, but Midas was painfully aware how unprepared for it they were. He had spent the past month receiving reports of the poor state of equipment, training, and, most important, morale in the Ukrainian military. There had been widespread desertions and credible reports of spies and sabotage. More debilitating than this was a general sense from Ukrainian leaders far away from the border that if fighting started, NATO would swoop in and help them out, or at least enact painful sanctions against Russia that would force Volodin to stop his attack.

Midas had been a war fighter long enough to know the suits in Kiev were fooling themselves.

He had spent the morning in secure communications to individual Ukrainian commanders he knew around the region, stressing the fact that the 429 U.S. and UK troops here in country were pretty much all the help Ukraine was going to get.

His most recent conversation, which had ended just a minute earlier, went much like all the others. A Ukrainian artillery colonel told Midas, “If you know the Russians are coming, you need to attack them before they cross the border.”

Midas patiently replied that he and his 429 weren’t going to be invading Russia in this lifetime.

The colonel replied, “The Russians will attack with a few rusty tanks. They will fly overhead and drop bombs on airports we aren’t even using. They will sail their Black Sea fleet around and shell our beaches.”

“They will do more than that,” Midas replied somberly.

The colonel shouted back at the American, “Then I will die on my feet with a gun in my hand!”

Midas wondered about the last time the artillery colonel had held a firearm in his hand, but he didn’t ask.

As a JSOC officer, Barry “Midas” Jankowski had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he had advised militaries in the Philippines and Colombia.

Ukraine was the largest country he had ever operated in, with the biggest GDP and the most educated population.

But he’d never been in a more hopeless situation. His 429 men and women were pitted against somewhere in the neighborhood of 70,000 Russians poised near the border, ready to invade Ukraine. When the Russians invaded, his one and only hope was to use his few troops to assist the Ukrainians to be a force multiplier, not so Ukraine could win. Not so they could beat the Russians back over the border.

No. Their only chance at survival—
his only chance at survival
—hinged on slowing the Russians down, giving them more casualties and headaches than they bargained for in the hopes they would quit the attack.

He’d spent the past day setting up his Joint Operations Center here in Cherkasy with all the communications and intelligence personnel he needed to keep an unblinking eye on eastern Ukraine.

Midas did not control the CIA nonofficial cover assets in Ukraine, they were not part of Joint Special Operations Command, but he did have one more arrow in his quiver. At the Lighthouse he’d run into three men: Clark, Chavez, and Caruso. When he’d learned they weren’t CIA, DIA, NSA, or any other official acronym, he’d been ready to kick them back out the gate of his secure location, but all three of the men had proven their abilities and their allegiance in the battle for the CIA compound. After the air evac from Sevastopol, John Clark had told Midas he and his guys would be returning to Kiev, where they were watching over the organized-crime group that had infiltrated the country on behalf of the FSB. Clark also told Midas they were ready to help him, if and when he needed it.

It wasn’t exactly by the book—hell, Midas had no authority whatsoever to ask American civilians to assist him in his combat operations. But Midas liked knowing he had a few operators outside the military and intelligence chain of command he could call on if necessary.

Midas had a master’s degree in military science from American Military University. He’d learned much in his higher education that he’d found applicable on the ground, but he’d never found anything in school that more reflected the real world of combat than a quotation he’d picked up studying a nineteenth-century German field marshal named Helmuth von Moltke.

Moltke said, “Strategy is a system of expedients.”

Midas himself was from West Virginia, and he preferred plain talk, so his translation of Moltke’s quote was “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

When the Russians attacked, Midas expected things would turn unconventional very fast. Moltke’s more famous quote, “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy,” was another military truism. Once the Russians kicked off this party, Midas expected the meticulously planned Operation Red Coal Carpet to devolve into a situation where he and his team here in the Cherkasy JOC would just start winging it the best they could.

—

C
hief Warrant Officers Two Eric Conway and Andre Page walked across the Ukrainian military base on a bright and cool spring morning. They didn’t know their way around and neither of the men could read the Cyrillic signs, but they’d been told to head to the end of the helicopter flight line, turn left, and then keep walking till they saw the gate with the Americans guarding it.

Walking around base without their helmets, the two-man flight crew of the U.S. Army’s OH-58D Kiowa Warrior looked very much like two regular Army infantry soldiers. They did not wear flight suits; instead, the men wore tan, gray, and green uniforms under their SAPI (Small Arms Protective Insert) steel plates. They carried U.S. Army–issued Colt M4 rifles on slings around their chests along with Beretta M9 pistols on their hips, and extra rifle magazines hung in ammo racks over their body armor.

They passed a group of Ukrainian helicopter maintenance men who stopped them and shook their hands. None of these guys spoke much English, but they seemed happy to have the American forces here. Dre was black, which was about as rare here as Eric and Dre running into a Ukrainian back at their base in Kentucky, and consequently he drew fascinated stares from the young Ukrainian men.

Eric and Dre were polite, but they broke away from the group as quickly as possible, because their CO had ordered them over to a building on the opposite side of the base.

And they had no idea why.

After fighting in Estonia, Chief Warrant Officers Conway and Page returned to Poland, where they served in European Command. Their unit was part of a NATO detachment that trained with the Poles, and it was as interesting an assignment as either of them needed after the stress of combat in Estonia.

But just yesterday their company received the surprise news that they’d be heading to Ukraine. They assumed it had something to do with the attack on the Partnership for Peace office in Sevastopol that was all over the news, but other than a ton of idle conjecture by themselves and the other men in their company, they didn’t have any real idea what they would be doing here.

And they weren’t given much time to think about it. For the past twenty-four hours they had been prepping for their mission, and then they and their entire company, helicopters included, flew over from Poland in the back of two C-17s, arriving here in Cherkasy just an hour earlier.

During their walk across the Ukrainian base, Eric and Dre argued playfully about what was in store for them on the other side of the base. Neither thought they were in any trouble, but the fact they’d been separated from the rest of their company, just when everyone else was getting situated in the barracks and bedding down for a little relaxation after twenty-four hours of constant movement, was somewhat annoying.

They found the gate with the Americans, and they entered an area protected by men they recognized to be members of the 75th Ranger Regiment. They were elite soldiers, and Conway and Page normally didn’t have much direct contact with them, so Regiment studs were something of a novelty to see.

They next made their way across a row of small barracks with large garage-type doors that were open to let in fresh air. Inside one of the barracks, Conway and Page spied a group of men in camouflage with nonregulation haircuts and beards. They were unboxing some of their equipment, and one look at the haircuts and the gear told the two twenty-six-year-olds that these were Army Special Forces.

Page leaned over to Conway as they passed by. “Eric, first we walked by Regiment dudes, now we’re walking by Green Berets. I guess we’re working our way up.”

Conway just laughed, but he was genuinely curious about just how far into the inner sanctum of the “special” side of the Army they were heading.

Soon they arrived at the last building on the base. It was protected by another group of Rangers, who read Conway’s and Page’s name tapes and called someone over the radio. A moment later they were led into a hallway and told to knock on the last door on the right.

Nervously, Conway and Page looked at each other, then Conway rapped on the metal door.

“Enter,” came a booming voice from inside.

They entered, then found themselves facing a half-dozen men in civilian attire. The average age of these guys looked like it was about ten years older than the Green Berets back in the hangar, and they all wore scruffy beards and different types of adventure-wear clothing. Each one of the men also wore a pistol on his hip, and both Conway and Page noticed that the guns were individual to the men, and this told the young warrant officers that these guys were likely JSOC, Joint Special Operations Command operators. This would mean they were either SEAL Team Six or Delta. Either way, neither Conway nor Page had a clue what they were doing here.

“Come on in, gents. Thanks for dropping by,” one of the bearded men said.

In the U.S. Army, one does not “drop by.” They had been ordered over here by their CO, but if these guys wanted to be informal about this, Conway and Page were happy to oblige.

The man who clearly was the team leader introduced himself and his men. “I’m Midas, this is Boyd, this is Greyhound, these guys in back are Arctic, Beavis, and Slammer.”

Both Page and Conway thought the same thing at the same time.
These dudes are fucking Delta Force!

Midas said, “It’s an honor to meet you guys. I read the AAR about that piece of flying you did up in eastern Estonia. They say you two jokers grabbed a road map and flew into disputed territory so low that Russian radar thought you were driving a taxi. Then you took out a half-dozen T-90s.”

Conway knew the after-action review of his operation in Estonia had been classified by the military. Still, it was no surprise these black operators had read it.

Conway beamed with pride but replied, “Thank you, sir. But to be honest, we had some luck.”