Shadow War (20 page)

Alie stared at the enormous, pajama-clad ass of the man on the jungle gym. They weren't really pajamas, more like an ill-fitting ninja suit, solid black with a blue-and-gold ribbon tied around the upper right arm, symbolizing independent Ukraine. This was the uniform of the Donbas Battalion, although
uniform
wasn't exactly accurate, since every man was supplying his own. The sloppiness was not instilling Alie with confidence, but she'd seen worse. She'd seen half-naked kids with broken mirrors for jewelry charging tanks with machetes.

The man in the ninja suit swung for the next rung, missed, and went down in the sand, screaming and grabbing his balls.

“I don't know what to say,” Hargrove said. “I seriously, swear to God, do not know what to say.”

The trainers had set up a tire course for agility drills and six-foot wooden walls for the recruits—no, volunteers—to scale, but otherwise the operation was one officer in sunglasses watching thirty grown men on a playground. Jump the swings. Climb the ladder. Slide down the slide. Low crawl. High crawl. Make a circuit. Do it again.

Off to the side, a group of six was drinking water, two of them bent over with their hands on their knees. Behind them, another group of six was sitting on their rucks with their boots off. Alie recognized the squad assigned to march with their
fifteen-pound rucks. Five miles, Colonel Barkley had said. It had taken them an hour and half.

“I don't know what to say,” Hargrove said again.

It was the only thing he'd said all morning, but he must have said it a hundred times. Americans had seen videos of al Qaeda recruits training like this in the run-up to the Gulf War and laughed. We were going to fight these dogs? What a joke. And yet, right here, in front of him, American trainers were doing the exact same thing.

“Honestly, Bill,” Hargrove said. “To say this isn't what I expected would be such a vast understatement, that I can't even say it. So what is left to say?”

Colonel Barkley didn't respond. He'd been around the world a dozen times, from Indonesia to Latin America, and this was how it was done. Every method had been tested; every exercise had a purpose. Even with the Iraqi security forces, this was the way it was done. The difference was time. In Iraq, the trainers had six months, and that still wasn't enough.

“I have to work with what I have,” he said. “I have two weeks to train whatever comes my way.”

“But these guys aren't even in shape.”

Some were, some weren't. This was a representative cross-section of a modern society, not a CrossFit class. There was nothing substantially different about these Ukrainians than any other army Barkley had trained, and there was nothing substantially different about the way he was training them. He wasn't a scientist. He was a mechanic. It amazed him that the bureaucrats still hadn't figured this out.

“My job is not to get them into shape,
Officer,
” Barkley said, emphasizing Hargrove's unearned title. “That is not going to happen in fourteen days. I assumed that would be self-evident. My job is to strengthen their minds. To give them the spirit of
the bayonet, by which I mean the will to persevere. When I am through with these men, they may not be able to run a mile, but they will have the intestinal fortitude to fight.”

“What are you talking about?” Hargrove asked.

“I'm talking about the warrior spirit, son.”

“With bayonets?”

“With your bare hands, son, if that's what it takes.” The colonel could feel himself getting hot. This was the mission: the lesson that had been taught to him in 1981, when he enlisted, and that he had taught to thousands around the world. Harden the mind. Control the fear. Trust the team. When you lived it, you understood. If you lived like a pussy, it could not be explained.

“I need to see your results,” Hargrove said coldly. He'd lost the
sir,
and the respectfulness, of the night before. “Where is the Donbas Battalion?”

“At the front.
Sir
.”

Hargrove waited for more.

“Five miles up the road,” Barkley spat. “Jessup will show you the way.”

They argued halfway to the Donbas Battalion headquarters before Alie gave up. Hargrove insisted the training was a travesty, a swindle, a gross injustice to the American taxpayer and the CIA. She understood; this wasn't the world you imagined when you were at Camp Peary, running obstacle courses and reading field manuals. This wasn't how the military was portrayed in all those history books back in Hargrove's room. But it was how the world actually was. Alie had seen it before: in Sudan, in Kenya, in Niger.

“Locke trained security forces in Burundi, Chad. They prevented a genocide,” she said.

“And?”

“They don't even have playgrounds. Three years in that country, and I never saw a single slide.”

Hargrove stared out the car window. The guards for the Sloviansk Battalion appeared briefly, waving them through. Jessup, driving in front, had vouched for them. “I don't want to hear about Locke,” Hargrove said.

She knew it was trouble when she saw the camp: men in mismatched black fatigues packing trucks, gear being tossed haphazardly, small groups of wandering militiamen. There were far fewer men than she had anticipated, maybe eighty at most, but that could be for tactical security. These days, nobody concentrated troops in camps. Too easy for the enemy to count, capture, or bomb. Except for traditional armies, most forces operated in small units now.

Twenty minutes later, they were gearing up to head out with a patrol. And Hargrove was fuming. The militia was sloppy, he said. The mercenaries—
his
mercenaries, the ones the CIA hired—had been curt. There was no respect for authority. His authority. The CIA's authority. The authority of being . . . right and proper in your work environment. Of being fucking professionals.

“They're going to Kramatorsk,” Alie said. She had seen it in the master sergeant's eyes when she mentioned the city. It was only twenty kilometers away. That was why the men were gearing up. “They're going early in the morning,” she said, when Hargrove didn't answer. “Mission early. Assault on the enemy early.”

Hargrove wasn't listening. He was staring at a group of men smoking cigarettes and cutting up for a militiaman with a cell phone camera. This was the unit they'd been assigned to shadow.

“We're going to Kramatorsk,” Alie said, grabbing Hargrove's arm. “That's why we're here.”

“I'm going to do my job,” Hargrove snapped. “I'm going to make sure these men get what's coming to them. And then, and only then, are we going to Kramatorsk.”

Alie watched him stalk off. Of all the macho bullshit . . . of all the wrong times. Locke was out there, twenty kilometers away. How could this patrol possibly matter?

“I suppose you're a soldier,” Alie said to the man beside her. His name was Shwetz, and he was their interpreter. He was dressed in black, with blue and yellow cloth tied around his upper right arm. A Kalashnikov was slung incompetently over his shoulder.

“I've been trained,” Shwetz replied, handing her something black.

“At the school?”

“Yes. For two weeks. Two weeks ago.”

She took the black item. It was a full-face ski mask, with only the eyes and mouth cut out. She shivered involuntarily, remembering the docks in Bosaso, Somalia, when they'd put her in a hood, when she'd lost Magdelena . . . there was no way she was putting it on.

“What did you do before?” she said, handing it back.

Shwetz smiled from inside his ski mask. “I was a teacher. Third grade.” Alie could see it. He had a gentle disposition and fearful eyes. “But I guess, really, we are all soldiers now.”

Miles and I were sitting on our rucks, eating cold French field rations. One of the best perks of being a private sector soldier was that you didn't have to choke down American MREs—Meals Ready to Eat, aka Meals Rejected by Everyone. It was embarrassing, as an American, that the French version was so much better.

“Reminds me of Tamanrasset,” Miles said, in the way other people might reminisce about their anniversary dinner at the Olive Garden or hearing Pachelbel's
Canon
yet again
.
I knew why he was thinking of Algeria. It was only Miles and me on that mission, and we had played backgammon for three days, while our local contact became increasingly unhinged with worry. We ignored him, and in the end, our man walked right into the line of fire and was killed, as we knew he would. If I recall correctly, I beat Miles 213 games to 62, although I wasn't convinced he was trying.

“Reminds me of Guinea-Bissau,” I said, picking up a bite of freeze-dried navarin d'agneau with my ivory mission chopsticks, “when we left Tailor in the jungle.” We were hunting a Colombian drug lord that had taken over this West African country, making it a transit point for cocaine going to Europe. Tailor had made the mission a living hell, constantly bitching about the local prostitutes and his scrotal infection, so when we accidently lost him on an all-night op, we weren't in a hurry to reunite.

“We tracked him for three damn hours,” Miles laughed.

“We were a hundred meters away, and he never heard us.”

“Because he kept bitching out loud about his scrotum, even though he was the only one there!”

“What a bonehead,” I said, working the chopsticks with practiced ease, a calming ritual I'd been using for almost twenty years. Every outfit has boneheads, even the elite.

“I'm glad he washed out,” Miles said. “But I feel sorry for his wife. She probably has the clap.”

Greenlees came over and sat. “We're just talking about dick infections,” Miles said to him, “but don't worry, Johnny, it's nothing you can catch from giving blowjobs.”

Greenlees chuckled unconvincingly.

“What did he say?” I said, nodding toward Karpenko.

The helicopter pilot was the one reminding Miles of Tamanrasset, because he was becoming increasingly unhinged. He was a civilian. My guess was that Maltov had claimed to be hiring him for a corporate flight.

“He wants extra money,” Greenlees said. “Hazard pay.”

“What did Karpenko say?”

“He threw out a number, a good one, but he won't negotiate.”

At least he had some spine. Karpenko was too willing to compromise, if you asked me, especially with assholes. Never compromise with assholes.

“Sirko should just punch him in the face,” I said, thinking of the effective violence of their last encounter, after the pilot had gone gorilla on Greenlee's eye.

“Agreed,” Greenlees said.

But Sirko wasn't going to do it. Not without word from Karpenko. I could tell the old colonel disagreed with his boss's generosity, but he'd spent a lifetime following the chain of command, and if this was how the boss wanted it, this was how
Sirko would act. It was disappointing. I thought old-school Russian commanders were bolder than that.

“
Mierda,
” Charro said. “Two more.”

Miles and I looked at each other, then pushed our meals away and swung around to the Toughbook screens. We'd gotten lucky. The edge of one of our surveillance feeds showed the industrial building where the local toughs hung out. The club was on the ground floor, front corner. It had probably been a workingman's club when the factories were flourishing, a place where shift workers gathered to knock off the rust. But the area had fallen into disrepair as the factories closed, and this protomilitia had taken over.

The club had been quiet, at least for a while, but since 0800 the members had been out in force, harassing passersby and looking for the three missing men. Around ten, they had congregated outside, smoking and arguing. Eventually most of them left, probably to sleep off their drunks. For two hours, almost nothing.

Then, five minutes ago, a low-end Mercedes had pulled up and two goons in ill-fitting, off-the-rack suits had gotten out. One went inside. One, with an AK-47, stood by the door. The second Mercedes, the one Charro had just spotted, was almost identical to the first.

“War council,” Miles said.

“How many?”

“Five in the front door,” Charro said. “Inside unknown. They've been in and out all day. And there's a back door.”

I didn't like it. The muscle had gone home, but chances were, they were simply resting up for tonight.

“What do you think?” I asked Miles. He knew the calculus: leave them and hope for the best, or knock them out now. If we chose the latter, the next hour was our window of opportunity.

“It's a risk either way. When the dead men don't turn up for afternoon cocktails, they'll go looking for them. If they find the bodies in the Dumpster”—damn the Å koda and its small trunk, Wildman really hadn't had a choice—“this place will be crawling with ants. But take them out now, and the Russians may arrive, asking questions.”

It was a matter of timing. We needed only a few hours without interference, but we needed them early tomorrow morning.

“Maybe we can distract them . . .” I started, when I caught sight of Boon, who was standing guard on the catwalk, raising his Israeli Tavor-21 assault rifle. Instantly, the FN SCAR was off my shoulder and aimed at the door. By the time we heard the car crunching on the gravel, the entire team was in firing position.

The sound stopped. Ten seconds later, there was a pounding on the door and shouting in Ukrainian. Karpenko relaxed. It was Maltov. When Charro opened the door, the enforcer walked in like a conquering hero, trailing seven tough-looking Ukrainians. The last of his loyal men.

I started to say something. It was ridiculous for Maltov to drive up unannounced, even if he was the one who had suggested this facility. What if he had been followed? What if someone else had been here? His lack of opsec was staggering.

But Sirko beat me to it. He was on Maltov in a second, yelling in his face, and I didn't need a translator to know that he was up his ass about professionalism.

Maltov didn't care. He brushed Sirko off with a wave of the hand and went directly to Karpenko, who gave him a hug. They hadn't seen each other since before the assault, I realized. Until this moment, Karpenko might have thought he was dead. And I hadn't even given the Ukrainian a second thought.

Sirko started to say something else, but Karpenko turned away, his arm on Maltov's shoulder. Maltov was his guy. It was
Maltov and his men, I was sure, who had saved Karpenko from the palace coup three days before my arrival in Poltava. Maybe Maltov had always been the inside man; maybe that moment had thrust him there. Either way, Sirko was out. Maltov was Karpenko's man now.

“Double the watch,” I snapped to Jacobsen, since we'd still been compromised by the enforcer's stupidity. No sense taking our operational security for granted. But there was a positive side here, too, because I could always use extra muscle, and because Maltov had proven adept at sourcing supplies from locals, and he knew Kramatorsk . . .

I turned to Miles with a smile, thinking of the club. “Third option,” I said.