Shadow War (11 page)

Grigory Maltov sat in the passenger seat of the lead Range Rover, impatient, waiting for the signal. It was after 0130. Enough talking. Enough planning. He hated the plan: too clever. But he had gone along. In fact, when Karpenko balked, and “Colonel” Sirko sat quietly, crapping his fancy pants, he was the one who had spoken up.

He hoped the American appreciated it.

“It's a go,” Greenlees said into his earpiece.

“Finally,” Maltov muttered in Ukranian, as he signaled the driver.

And then they were moving through the darkness, speeding down Karpenko's private road, a line of twelve Range Rovers and, near the middle, the family's two black armored Mercedes. They hit the main road and turned north. They were in blackout drive, all lights disconnected except the headlamps, which were taped with foil so that only a narrow beam shone on the road ahead. The drivers wore night-vision goggles, and they didn't slow for turns. The convoy would be gone before anyone knew they were there.

Eight minutes to the airbase, the American had estimated. Maltov planned to make it in five.

Let them come,
he thought.
Let them bring everything.

He was happy to be out of the dacha, after days of cowering behind the iron gate. Happy to have been given the most dan
gerous job. Happy to have been allowed to choose his own men. He had brought most of these men up from the mud with him. They were his brothers, in a way the Communists could never understand. They would follow no one else, at least not as they would follow him. The American understood that much at least.

“Twenty-five mikes.” It was Locke, counting minutes.

“Copy.” Maltov glanced at his watch: 0148. Twenty-five minutes until the plane was scheduled to arrive. Forty until it could be back in the air.

“0148,” Greenlees said on the headset.

Maltov rechecked his kit. He wore a pistol in a chest holster, but he preferred his AK-47, with two magazines taped together at opposite ends for faster reloading. The Kalashnikov had greater firepower and made more noise.

They passed into a forest, the trees thick along both sides of the road. He had been in a firefight before, but not as often as his men assumed. He wasn't an enforcer. He had been the head of the local pipefitter's union at the ironworks in Kramatorsk when Karpenko had taken over the factory. He had fought Karpenko's thugs so brutishly that the boss had finally hired him. The other pipefitters weren't happy—until he brought the best along. Like Romanyuk, in the last car. And Poplavko. And Pavlo, his driver, who he had known as a boy. The rest of the pipefitters never understood. Unionism wasn't a path to better pay; it was a chance to impress the men who could give you a better job.

Now he was one of those men.

The entrance came quickly, with its small museum sign. Eleven vehicles, including the two family Mercedes, turned into the complex; three continued to the gravel road in the forest. Maltov leveled his AK-47. When the parked Å koda appeared, he fired. The Range Rovers behind him did the same as they passed. It was unfortunate. He knew Ivan, who led Belenko's
men. He probably knew the two dead men in the car. They were Ukrainian comrades. They drank together, when their bosses had been friends. But their boss was on the wrong side now.

“We're here,” he said, when they reached the gate. It was 0159.

“Sixteen minutes,” Greenlees replied.

Maltov had argued with the American over the details, but the main components were never in dispute: two Land Rovers stayed to block the entrance from the main road, two stopped to guard the parking lot gate, the rest would form a ring around the parking lot. Locke had insisted on the exact placement of every man, including the ambush team on the entry road and the fire team in the forest. It was too much. Maltov had nodded along, but he no intention of fussing to that degree. These were his men. They were going to be taking fire. He trusted them to find the place where they felt most comfortable.

He stepped out of the Land Rover and stood in the middle of the parking lot, directing traffic. “Spread out,” he yelled, at three vehicles bunched too closely together.

“Block that landing strip access,” he yelled, as the family's two armored Mercedes pulled onto the tarmac and edged under the fuselage of the museum's Tu-160, a massive Soviet bomber. Even with the quarter moon, the plane dwarfed the two black cars, making them invisible.

“Set the ambush line there.” He pointed with his rifle as armed men poured out of the Land Rovers and found shelter in the tree line. He looked around: he had men on three sides of the parking lot, and the enemy would have to cross between them to get to the landing strip. The American was smart. He had to give him that.

He lifted both arms. “Here is the kill zone,” he yelled. “Wait for my shot. No one fires until I do.”

“Nine minutes,” Greenlees said in his ear.

“In position,” Maltov replied, as his men locked the gate and deployed spike strips, covering them in dirt to blend into the ground.

“Is the area secure?” It was Locke.

Maltov looked toward the five Land Rovers parked in front of the runway. Two men were sweeping the grass and tree line with infrared scopes. No sign of trouble.

“Secure,” he said.

The headset was quiet. It was 0206. Then: “Light up the landing strip.”

Maltov picked up his radio. “
Svititi,
” he said.

Two SUVs broke the line and went speeding down the runway, dropping flares every hundred meters or so, making the mothballed war strip come alive.

“Seven minutes,” he yelled to his men. “Positions!”

The men disappeared into the shadows, as Maltov slipped into the trees. The base grew silent. No movement. No lights but the parallel lines of red flares. He adjusted his night-vision goggles, as the two SUVs from the runway slipped back into line.

“Six minutes,” he said over the radio.

But they didn't have six minutes. They had less than two before he heard automatic gunfire from the main road, and Pavlo yelling “They're here!” into his radio, followed by more fire as the enemy's vehicles passed into the ambush zone on the entry road.

“Wait for them,” Maltov yelled, settling behind his Kalashnikov and aiming at the kill zone as a four-by-four careened into sight. It was shot to hell and running scared, the driver not even slowing down as he crashed through the gate. The spikes shredded his tires, the car fishtailed, and then the world burst open, gunfire pouring into the parking lot from three directions, even
as a second four-by-four careened through the gate and smashed into the first.

Maltov could feel the AK-47 jerking in his hand. He could hear guns firing around him, a thousand bullets a minute, a deafening roar. It was unreal, as if the bullets exploding into the cars weren't from his gun, as if he wasn't the one tearing apart the men inside.

The fusillade lasted a minute. Maybe two. He paused, watching for signs of life. He could hear the echo of shots being fired, down by the main road, off to his right, but with no other targets in sight, he fired the rest of his clip into the decimated four-by-fours.

He didn't hear the diesel engine until he stopped to reload. He snapped in the fresh magazine and listened, wondering what was coming, until,
Shit!? How?
he thought, as an armored personnel carrier flattened the spike strip at fifty miles an hour and tore into the parking lot. It was a BTR-80, a tank on wheels with a heavy machine gun turret, firing as it came, splintering trees.

Maltov dove facedown in the dirt. By the time he looked up, a squad of soldiers wearing night-vision goggles were behind the BTR, firing in tight formation.

“They're not Ukrainian,” someone shouted.

Maltov unloaded his magazine, half in a panic, the gun muzzle flashing green in his night-vision goggles. More SUVs were pouring in at high speed, swerving around the troop carrier and heading toward the landing strip. Maltov fired wildly, the whole tree line firing with him. An SUV took fire, flipped, and exploded. The SUV immediately behind crashed into it, sending bodies through the windshield.

“Don't let them through,” Maltov shouted as he ducked again to reload, but nobody heard him over the gunfire. Another SUV was hit; it fishtailed and smashed into the concrete museum
building. The car door opened, blood exploded, and a body fell to the ground.

The BTR lurched forward with a plume of diesel, its turret swinging in Maltov's direction. “Down!” he shouted.

“Kill that thing!” someone yelled. He heard the
fush
of an RPG and saw it zoom over the BTR and explode a tree on the other side.

“Reload!”

The vehicle stopped. The turret turned in the direction of the RPG as two men with AK-47s popped out of hatches on the top. Yuri and Danka, his RPG team, evaporated in a cloud of blood and dirt, the BTR advancing now, firing as it came.

We're being overrun,
Maltov thought.

“Fall back,” he shouted, wishing he'd gone over the evac plan with his men, as the American had insisted, but it was too late. Most of his men were already running or dead, and to hell with the landing strip, he'd done what he could. He turned to run, but a barrage of well-aimed bullets were slashing toward him. He dropped to the ground, but the man beside him wasn't as fast. Maltov heard the grunt, a thump, and the clattering of the AK-47. It was Poplavko, shot through the chest.

He couldn't look away. He heard the zing of the bullets overhead and the shouting. Chechen. He didn't know the language but he understood the rhythms. Belenko had hired Chechens. Maltov hated Chechens. Every Ukrainian did. But he couldn't see them. All he could see was his old friend, three feet away, lying dead in the leaves.

He started firing, his Kalashnikov propped on a fallen branch, his finger holding down the trigger. He fired through his magazines, two hundred rounds, until they clicked empty. He could feel the heat off the barrel, his hands going numb, but it only made him more determined. He wouldn't run. He would stand
his ground. He didn't notice the screaming in his ear until he reached for Poplavko's last magazine.

“The bird is here. The bird is here. Detonate the C-4. Do you copy? Do you copy?”

He heard a plane, maybe, but then something exploded, a grenade, not close, but it knocked him on his ass.

“Detonate the C-4!” the voice was shouting in his earpiece, but he was paralyzed, on his back, there was nothing he could do.

Maltov tore off his night-vision goggles and stared at a sky cut by branches and leaves. He couldn't believe it. The stars were gone. They were overrun. Belenko had come with more than twenty men, a lot more, and an armored troop carrier, and there was no way he could keep them busy, or keep them in this parking lot, any longer.

The Wolf stepped out of his SUV as the machine gun cut into Karpenko's men. He was surprised his old colonel had chosen this airstrip and staged an ambush rather than a classic security perimeter. Pretty cunning for a washed-out relic, and a perfect place for him to die. Here among the old Soviet bombers, in a provincial firefight between amateurs, the kind of men who dove for the nearest cover instead of the best, and emptied their magazines as quickly as possible rather than aim. The Wolf almost felt sorry for them.

Almost.

“Blow them up,” he yelled to his Chechens, shooting a line of tracers at Sirko's two remaining SUVs. Two men shouldered RPGs, followed the tracers, and the SUVs exploded.

And then the rabbit bolted. It was a single black Mercedes, hiding under the biggest bomber, now tearing down the landing strip at full speed.

The Wolf leapt back into his vehicle and floored it. He didn't worry about the gunfire; speed would be his cover. Smoke poured from the dead SUVs, obstructing his view, until he cleared the wreckage and was on the access road to the landing strip, following the black Benz.

Wolf saw the BTR's turret turn, tracking its prey.

“No!” he yelled, but the car never stood a chance. The 14.5-millimeter machine gun tore through the Mercedes's “bul
letproof” skin with such force that the vehicle flipped on its side and rolled end over end at ninety miles per hour. Two hundred meters later, it burst into flame.

The Wolf lowered his head. The only thing he could do now was hope to find something identifiable as Karpenko, once the car was cool enough to search. He needed DNA proof and pictures of the body to collect his reward.

Maltov heard explosions and saw the branches rattle above him. A twig fell, hitting him in the face, such a pointless thing. He sat up. A hundred meters away, SUVs were on fire, their gas tanks creating secondary explosions, and in the glare, behind the overturned four-by-fours, he could see the armored personnel carrier, its gun turret turning toward the fleeing Mercedes. He could hear screaming in his ear about the plane and the damn C-4, but it was no use, the Mercedes was flipping now, in slow motion, on fire, and the battle was over. They were pinned down, and they were all going to die here, and was there anything worse, really, than dying for a losing cause?

Then he saw it. The potato truck, plowing through the gunfire. For a moment, he didn't understand. Pavlo was supposed to block the exit with this truck bomb. He was supposed to be safe. Of all the men, he was supposed to be safe. He had promised the boy's mother . . . his sister . . . Pavlo was just a teenager. Maltov had been to his christening and bought him his first beer, it seemed like only yesterday. He had promised his sister he would keep her boy safe. But now Pavlo was racing toward the BTR, in a truck full of C-4 and ammonium nitrate . . .

“No, Pavlo,” he said, as the truck slammed into the armored troop carrier, it's back end rising into the air with the force of
the collision, then smashing down with a massive explosion that sent a pillar of fire into the night sky.

Maltov lay in the leaves, not firing, not moving. Watching. In the silence, he could see men scrambling away from the blast. Some were shot as they fled. Some stumbled, their bodies on fire. It was over now, truly over. It was time to go. He couldn't do anything more. Everyone was dead, including Pavlo, who had given his life for his friends.

“Firing,” he said into his earpiece.

He pulled the detonator off his web belt, flipped the safety, and squeezed. He felt the first blast, a shock wave of hot air, and then the deafening bang. Six tall trees fell across the entry road, obstructing the exit. He squeezed a second trigger. The flight tower across the parking lot seemed to lift, then totter, then collapse to the ground, trapping the enemy's SUVs on the landing strip and buying precious time for his men to escape.