The questioning continued for another hour while the major networks continued to report on the massive firings taking place across the military leadership. A number of former generals who were employed by the various news agencies were sounding off. Some were calling this a much-needed move and a sign of decisive leadership. Others called it reckless, and said it was dangerous to replace so much of the command structure in the middle of a war. Meanwhile, the real conflict continued, both on the battlefield and in cyberspace.
Traitors
Carl Wiggins was nearly done getting ready for work when he saw the breaking news on the TV. “More news about the war in Ukraine,” he groaned. “I think I may have royally screwed up, giving the Russians a heads-up on our intentions in Ukraine. They said they were going to use the information to confront President Gates and get him to back down, not use it to launch a preemptive attack. What a mess.”
As he finished tying his shoes and was just about to grab his sport coat, he heard a knock on the door. Not sure who would be knocking at his door at this hour of the morning, he walked over and opened it, to find several men wearing FBI jackets holding their badges in his face as they pushed their way into his apartment.
“Hey, what is the meaning of this?” Carl demanded. “I didn’t give you permission to enter my house. I insist that you leave immediately!”
As he spoke, one of the FBI agents grabbed him firmly by arm and guiding him to the living room.
“You are Carl Wiggins, correct?” the agent asked in a forceful tone.
“Yes. I’m Carl Wiggins, and I demand to know what in the world is going on right now!” Carl replied angrily. People were crawling all over his apartment. One agent had a box and was cataloging and then collecting all of his electronic devices.
“I am Agent Walt Wittman from the FBI. We have a search warrant to search your home and seize any electronic devices. We also have a warrant for your arrest,” he said proudly, as if he had just arrested the most important person of his career.
Carl did a double-take before responding. “Arrest? Arrested for what?!” he yelled as Agent Wittman turned him around and began to place his handcuffs on his hands.
“Mr. Wiggins, you are under arrest for espionage and treason. We caught you providing classified intelligence to the Russians,” he replied calmly as he began to guide Carl through the doorway and into the hallway of his apartment building. “I advise you to remain silent and not say anything further, Mr. Wiggins.”
Carl could not believe it. He had been so careful. How could the FBI have found out he was providing intelligence to the Russians? As they placed Carl into the back of a government car, the reality of the situation began to sink in.
“I am in serious trouble if they are charging me with treason,” he thought. “That can carry the death penalty… I’m going to have to cut a deal if I’m going to save my own skin.”
Ambush Alley
SFC Childers’s platoon had taken up residency in the small but strategically-positioned village of Prolisky. It was a small village between the international airport and the city of Kiev, and on one of three major routes the Russian army would have to travel to capture the city. The Russians had hit the British, German, and American armor units near the Boryspil Airport throughout the entire day, with both air and ground forces causing significant casualties despite the arrival of the two BCTs from the 1st Armored Division. The Russians were throwing their best tanks and aircraft into this fight and the NATO forces were getting hammered. By midafternoon, the bulk of NATO forces had fallen back to the surrounding villages and suburbs around Kiev, and would look to make this a street fight unless ordered otherwise.
Lieutenant Taylor walked up to Captain Jordan, the new troop commander, to get some final instructions for his platoon. Both men were physically and mentally exhausted from near constant fighting. “Sir, Sergeant Childers and the rest of my platoon are getting the rest of the artillery shells and claymores ready for the ambush. Once we light it off, my guys are supposed to abandon our positions and run to this point here,” he said, pointing to on the map. “Then, you want them to get ready for the next ambush?” he asked, wanting to clarify the mission and make sure he relayed the information properly back to his guys.
Captain Jordan had been the executive officer of Nemesis Troop for the past year. However, earlier in the morning, their captain had been killed during one of the many Russian air attacks. He was then given battlefield promotion to captain and told to take over by their Squadron Commander. Now he had the job of trying to carry out a series of ambushes designed to delay the Russian advance on Kiev.
“Yes, exactly,” Captain Jordan answered. “I have First Platoon here,” he explained, showing Taylor a point on the map. “They have another series of artillery shells ready along this stretch of the highway. Once your platoon falls back, they will need to get this position here and get ready for the third and final ambush. If all goes well, we’ll get three shots at hitting the Russians along this highway before we fall back to this section of the NATO lines. I was told that the 2nd BCT from 1st Armor that passed through our lines a couple of hours ago will be positioned here. We will function as their infantry support until told otherwise.”
Their meeting broke up and 2nd Lt. Taylor and the other 2nd Lt. from first platoon ran back to their respective platoons to get their men ready for the coming fight. Third and fourth platoons had already been consolidated into first and second platoons earlier in the morning, when they arrived in the village. The troop had taken more than forty-percent casualties since the start of the war, and there was no need to keep four significantly weakened platoons and spread their diminished supply of officers and NCOs across four platoons.
While Lieutenant Taylor had been coordinating the ambush with the rest of the company, Sergeant Childers was having the soldiers string up their claymore anti-personnel mines and 152mm artillery shells along the highway for the ambush.
“Peterson, you unscrew the fuse cap on the artillery round like this,” Childers explained as he demonstrated to a couple of the soldiers in his little group.
“Once you have the fuse cap removed, you take the blasting cap and place it inside the fuse well, and then seal it up like this.” After Childers had demonstrated what to do, he then began to take the back of a phone apart and started attaching a small copper wire from the phone’s circuit to another wire attached to the blasting cap.
“As you can see, we need to be careful when we wire this up. Once it’s done, each one of these rounds is going to be an independent IED that can be set off by sending a SMS text from this phone. So that we make sure they all go off at the same time, I’ve created a group text that will send the message to all of the phones attached to the IEDs simultaneously.”
One of the soldiers asked, “How did you learn all this?”
The question broke Childers concentration for a second, and brought a smile to his face. “I learned how to make these things back in 2003 in Iraq, during the invasion. I was with the Rangers and we had captured a couple of Saddam Fedayeen soldiers who had been building these types of IEDs to use against us. When we raided the building and captured those guys, they had a couple dozen of these things laying around. We had a few of the Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) guys with us, so they set out disarming them. Later that evening, when we got back to base, I talked with some of the EOD guys and they walked me through the process of how these guys were building them. The more we started to encounter these types of IED ambushes in Iraq and Afghanistan, we all started to learn a lot more about them — how to build them and how to disarm them.”