The drone took off and established a circular holding pattern until Major Gogaza took direct control of it. With their eye in the sky in place, he crawled under the safety of the blanket. Flicking the night vision camera on, Gogaza quickly found the roving guard patrols. From what he could see, there were four roving patrols that moved around the perimeter of the fence.
Once the first patrol passed, he contacted his operators. “Cut the fence and begin to infiltrate the storage tank facility,” he ordered.
They needed twenty to thirty minutes to place enough charges inside the tank farm to make sure the entire facility went up. If all went according to plan, his team would also place multiple charges at a lot of the oil pipeline terminal sections, which would tear apart the actual pipeline shutoff junctions. That would in turn cause petrol to continue to flow past the destroyed sections of the pipe, into the raging inferno they were about to create. With any luck, this fire would rage for days if not weeks, depriving the Russians of a critical fuel source.
Five minutes into the operation, they spotted their first sign of trouble. One of his team leaders contacted Gogaza. “OP1, Alpha Two has eyes on two tangos with a dog moving toward my position. I’m going to be spotted. Please advise if you’re able to neutralize the dog. I’ll take out the tangos.”
Major Gogaza cursed under his breath. “That’s a good copy. OP1 will neutralize the dog. Stand by,” he replied. He gently nudged the sniper to his left, who had already zeroed in on Alpha Two’s position and found the tangos and the dog.
Despite using a silenced rifle, the sniper’s shot was still audible when he fired. Because of the range needed for this situation, he could not use subsonic rounds, which meant the silencer could only partially muffle the sound.
Major Gogaza suddenly felt nervous and exposed. “At least the infiltration team on the ground is in a range to use their subsonic rounds,” he thought.
The sniper’s round successfully struck the German shepherd center mass, killing it instantly. Before either guard could react to what had happened, the operators of Alpha team appeared from behind one of the fuel tanks and fired short bursts from their silenced rifles, hitting both guards in the chest and killing them before they could fire a shot or alert their comrades to the attack that was underway.
Knowing their cover was blown, Major Gogaza called an audible and changed the attack plans. “Alpha, move immediately to place your charges on the pipe control junction now! Bravo, find one more fuel tank to place your explosives on and head back to the rally point. Charley, get your charges placed on the pumping station ASAP and then meet back at the rally point. How copy?”
One by one, the three teams reported in and raced to get their explosives rigged. Then, to Gogaza’s dismay, the drone detected several additional guards exiting a small building, heading toward his Alpha team’s location, probably to investigate the single gunshot they’d heard.
“Alpha, you have six tangos heading toward you. Set your charges and get the hell out of there!” he said urgently.
He watched nervously as the guards fanned out and moved toward the pipe control junction.
Gogaza keyed his mic. “OP1, OP2, you guys are going to have to cover them on the way out.” The two snipers used their foot to tap, letting him know they understood and were standing by.
It was killing Gogaza to watch everything take place over a drone feed and not be on the ground with his men. He’d been in Special Forces his entire military career, and he lived for missions like this. Sadly, rank and command meant he was spending more time doing activities like this than actually being the shooter directly on the ground.
His radio crackled ever so slightly. “This is Charley. Explosives have been set. Exfilling now. Will meet at rally point.”
“Thank God, at least the pump station is rigged to blow,” thought Gogaza. Now they just had to get their other two teams out.
To his surprise, the guards that were headed toward Alpha were either walking slowly or just completely missed them as they made their mad dash to the fence line. In either case, both Alpha and Bravo teams made it out of the facility before the second perimeter guard patrol got near them. Then, as he and the rest of the teams packed up their gear and headed to the van, they all heard the facility alarm go off.
Gogaza sighed. “They must have found the bodies,” he realized.
“Blow the charges now, and let’s go,” he ordered as they all piled into the van. It was time to go meet Charley at the rally point and then head to their exfil point and hope their ride out of Dagestan was still possible.
As the alarms of the facility vibrated in the air, the darkness of night was broken by a brilliant flash and a thunderous boom. The first petrol storage tank had exploded. This initial blast was quickly followed by several more glorious explosions. Within minutes, close to a dozen more tanks had blown up. The night sky turned to day as the roaring flames now reached thirty or forty meters high into the sky.
Major Gogaza’s team sped along the side road even faster. The perimeter of the flames would only increase, and they had to pick up Charley Team before they too were engulfed.
A mischievous smile spread across Gogaza’s face. If the guards had survived the immediate attack and managed not to be thrown to their deaths by the shockwaves, they would surely be much more interested in trying to live or finding a way to stop the flames than in catching him.
A few seconds later, Gogaza’s van twisted to a stop, kicking up dirt. Charley Team jumped in and they closed the door. They would all be drinking that night.
Warrant Officer Third Class Tiberius Petre held the 120mm mortar round over the top of the mortar tube, waiting for the order to release. Within seconds of indicating he was ready, his commander, Major Constantine Prezan, gave the order to him and the two other mortar teams. Tiberius dutifully dropped the mortar round and bent down to grab the next one.
Thump, thump, thump.
The mortars shot out of their tubes and headed toward one of the largest oil depots in Russia. Seconds after the first mortar fired, Tiberius dropped the second round in and repeated the process as quickly as he could until all his rounds were spent. In the span of three minutes, the three mortar teams had managed to fire off 36 mortars into the tank farms, causing many of them to explode. Soon, the fires and explosions were ripping across the nearby facilities. Within twenty minutes, the entire area was torn asunder as millions of barrels of petrol and the refineries nearby were reduced to a burning inferno.
Tiberius swelled with pride. With his mission complete, it was now time for them to work their way back to their safe houses and see what other mischief headquarters had in store for them.
The Big Switch
A technician finished changing one of the halogen lightbulbs in President Petrov’s office, under the close supervision of two FSB agents and a set of personal bodyguards. Once the agents had made sure there were no listening devices somehow being inserted into the light fixture, they let the poor man leave so he could go about the rest of his duties in the underground bunker, ensuring all the lighting and HEPA filters were functioning properly.
Since the assassination of the American president two months ago, Petrov had become paranoid that the Americans would try the same thing against him. The Yankees had managed to effectively piece together the assassin’s history and find the link between the Russian GRU and the antifascist organization that had been running roughshod on the American and European college campuses. Once Foss had been able to see the full scope of the work stoppages, antiwar protests and general civil disruption that Antifa was having on the American and European war efforts, the new administration immediately moved to crack down on the organization. There had been so much anger and outright hostility toward Antifa after Gates had been assassinated that what had been a horribly dysfunctional American Congress had somehow managed to unite around banning Antifa as a violent Russian-sponsored organization.