Lieutenant Greshev hugged the ground, flattened by the explosion of the Tiger and simply afraid to stand up. From his position on the side of the road, he could see the darkened hull of a Tiger speeding directly for him. In less than a minute, his platoon had been destroyed because of his error, and now he lay behind the bullet-riddled body of the soldier he had knocked down running blindly through the dark. A series of small explosions ripped through a small knot of brave soldiers trying desperately to put one of the platoon’s light machine guns back into action. He could see all of this now through the night vision goggles that he had forgotten about earlier. He could also see that nothing moved in his command vehicle, which had been obliterated seconds earlier by the same weapon that just killed the few surviving members of his platoon. He couldn’t imagine any of the soldiers near the light machine gun surviving the simultaneous detonation of several high-explosive grenades in their midst.
As the Tiger raced toward him, he made a split-second decision to atone for his failure and bring honor back to the platoon. He tensed his body and made sure that the safety on his AK-74 was not engaged. When the Tiger reached a point less than thirty meters away, he jumped to his feet and fired his rifle from the hip in the general direction of the speeding vehicle beside him. His lifeless body hit the ground without knowing what he had accomplished.
Using his rifle’s angled tritium sights, Gosha fired a hasty burst at a soldier superimposed against the flames of the burning vehicle. Before he could assess the effects of the burst, a hammer-like impact dropped him through the hatch into the rear compartment. Seva’s body followed him through the hatch, landing directly on top of him and dislocating his right shoulder, which had been pinned underneath him by the fall. The pain in his shoulder flared so intensely that he momentarily lost track of the fact that something had knocked him off his feet. He lay there for a second, unable to process what had happened, until the Tiger jolted, tearing at his dislocated shoulder.
“Motherfucker!” he said, pushing Seva with his left arm.
He could tell that Seva was dead. The operative’s body moved with little effort, displaying none of the stiffness or resistance indicative of someone still in control of his or her body. The clanging of metal projectiles against the Tiger’s hull suddenly shifted to the rear of the vehicle, settling on the back hatch and dissipating with the few seconds it took Gosha to regain his bearings.
“We’re through,” Farrington announced.
“Seva’s hit. I think I’m hit too,” he managed to say, cringing from the pain caused by the Tiger’s coarse ride.
“Slow us down to sixty,” Farrington said.
Farrington raised his night vision goggles and climbed between the seats. A bright light filled the compartment, focused on Seva, who lay on his back. The light shifted to Gosha’s face, causing him to raise his left hand.
“He’s gone. Where are you hit?”
“Right leg, maybe. My shoulder’s on fire too,” Gosha said.
Farrington helped him up onto the bench opposite of Sasha, being as careful with him as possible in the back of a dark, cramped compartment moving at sixty miles per hour down a glorified jeep trail. The experience nearly caused Gosha to momentarily black out, mainly fueled by the pain in his right shoulder. He stared at Sasha’s glazed-over eyes as Farrington examined him with the flashlight, wondering if he had survived the firefight.
“I think I dislocated my shoulder,” Gosha said.
“Let me see.”
Farrington raised his limp arm at the elbow, rotating it across Gosha’s stomach and probing along the dislocated shoulder. The pain caused by the movement of this arm caused him to grimace, but paled in comparison to what Farrington had planned for him. Without warning, he firmly swung Gosha’s forearm one hundred and eighty degrees in the opposite direction, causing him to scream. The pain subsided within moments, restoring full mobility to his arm.
“All fixed. You have a laceration across your right thigh from a bullet that ripped through your holster. Nothing too nasty,” Farrington said, aiming the light at a red slash visible below a rip in his bloodstained khaki cargo pants.
“Patch that up with a compress, and reload the grenade launcher. I need to contact Sanderson and figure out what we’re looking at to the west.”
“Got it. How long until Black Rain is on station?” Gosha said.
“Fifteen to twenty minutes. We’ll hit Slavgorod right as they arrive.”
“We’re going around Slavgorod, right?”
“Going off-road this far from the border will give the Russians time to redeploy the bulk of the 21st in our path. We can’t get into a running gun battle with BTRs on twisting jeep trails with no cover. They’ll tear us to shreds from a distance. Black Rain will get us through Slavgorod. Then we go off-road,” Farrington said.
“We can’t survive another encounter like that.”
“I know. Patch yourself up, and get ready. We’ll be there in less than fifteen minutes, unless our air is late.”
“All right. Let’s do this,” Gosha said, not sure what to make of Farrington’s lightning advance along the most predictable route to Slavgorod.
Chapter 62
Karl Berg watched the satellite feed closely, speaking in hushed tones to Sanderson through his headset. He didn’t want Audra to figure everything out until it was effectively too late to stop what he had planned. He glanced over the top of his computer station and caught the watch floor supervisor’s attention. Almost time. Audra leaned over and pointed at a cluster of vehicles on one of his screens. Her index finger rested on the thermal image of four BTR-80 armored personnel carriers hidden behind a thick barrier of trees north of Slavgorod. She slid her finger east along the main approach road to the city and stopped on a pair of Tigers less than a half-kilometer away.
“They need to take evasive action immediately. That’s a reconnaissance element looking to hand off targets to the BTRs. The rest of Farrington’s nine lives will be used up pretty quickly if the BTRs catch him in the open,” she said.
She was dead right, as usual. The single 14.5mm gun in each BTRs turret had an effective range of three kilometers and could fire a variety of armor-piercing or high-explosive projectiles, all of which could penetrate the thin armor on Farrington’s vehicle with little effort. There was no way Farrington could approach Slavgorod with the BTRs guarding the road.
“I’ll notify Sanderson immediately,” he said, feeling guilty about the subterfuge circling the air between them.
“Base, this is control,” Berg said. “I am passing positive control of Black Rain to your station. Satellite imagery confirms the presence of four BTR-80s and two Tigers on the approach road. I recommend using ordnance sparingly. Additional units have entered the city from the south and may present a challenge.”
“Which unit is Black Rain?” Audra said.
“Hold on,” Berg said.
He didn’t meet her gaze, knowing he couldn’t lie directly to her face. He concentrated on the screen and activated the communications link to Weatherman, a CIA drone operator working out of the mobile control station at Manas Air Base. Berg had managed to surreptitiously deliver one of the CIA’s MQ-9 Reaper drones to Manas, hidden amidst the logistics equipment necessary to support the temporary presence of three top-secret helicopters. The secrecy surrounding the helicopters kept prying eyes off the delivery manifests, drawing little attention to the arrival of one additional C-17 Globemaster III heavy transport aircraft from Jalalabad Air Base.