The line was spreading out, the men on the flanks running now to get around her from either side.
She considered running… but where could she run to? They were already close enough to shoot her if they wanted to. She also considered opening fire, going down in some kind of heroic, John Wayne last stand, but that was just plain silly. At a hundred yards, she wouldn't be able to come close to hitting them with a handgun, while they were carrying AKMs, assault rifles accurate to four hundred yards or more. Hanson had never thought much of the old, ultra-macho idea of death rather than surrender.
"Stoy!"
The command snapped at her from her right, and she spun, surprised.
Damn! How had he gotten so close so quickly? A Russian was standing less than twenty yards away, his AK aimed at her.
"Stoy!" he barked again, gesturing with the rifle. "Zdavayetees!
Brawste arujyee!"
She wished that she could speak Russian. Still, it was clear what he wanted. Carefully, making no quick moves, she extended the hand holding the Beretta and dropped the weapon to the ground. The soldier stepped cautiously closer. "Rukee v'vayrh!" The rifle snapped up, a savage gesture, and she raised her hands over her head.
He looked Oriental, not Chinese exactly, but with a Mongolian's flat face and puffy, slit eyes. Those eyes widened as he got closer, and Hanson was uncomfortably aware that he had just realized that his prisoner was a woman.
He spat something harsh. It didn't sound like Russian. His eyes were twinkling and his face was marred by an unpleasant grin as the rest of the soldiers hurried up.
She stood there uncertainly, arms still raised, as rough hands groped and pawed and patted, spun her about, then groped again. One grabbed her left arm, jerked it down, then pulled off her wristwatch and pocketed it. Another grabbed her SAR radio and jerked it from her flight suit. She tried to concentrate on the uniforms surrounding her, instead of the grinning, too-eager faces. Green camouflage… but with a peculiar, high-peaked, visored cap. They wore shoulder boards with the letters BB on them in gold.
She knew that the Cyrillic letter that looked like a B was actually a V. What did VV stand for? She was sure that they weren't speaking Russian as they jabbered at one another.
After they had searched her with elaborate thoroughness, someone produced a length of heavy twine and tied her wrists tightly behind her back. She was expecting them to take her back to the truck, but the one who'd first captured her appeared to have a different idea. "Vpeeryad!" he ordered, and the muzzle of his AK jammed into the small of her back just below her bound hands.
"I don't understand you!" she told him. "I am American, understand?
Amer-"
"Skaray!" He prodded her again, this time in the buttocks, and she stumbled forward, then fell to her knees as the men around her laughed and hooted. Two of them grabbed her then, one taking each of her arms, hauling her to her feet and dragging her forward. They were taking her, she saw with mounting horror, toward that nearby barn she'd noticed during her descent.
Inside, the light falling through the gaps between the boards of the walls was filtered through drifting dust, and the air was thick with the mingled smells of hay and manure. Someone grabbed her arms from behind, holding her tightly while the rest closed in.
"No!" she yelled, desperate, angrier now than she'd ever been in her life. "No, you bastards! No!" She tried to kick, but they held her legs while a grinning Mongol stooped to unlace her boots. Another reached up and started tugging at the zipper to her flight suit.
Evidently, that proved to be too slow. Knives gleamed in the half light as three or four of them roughly began cutting every stitch of clothing from her body. It was slow going, for the material of the survival garment beneath her flight suit was thick and tough, like a wet suit. The men chatted back and forth as they worked, sometimes laughing as though at a hilarious joke.
Then she was on her back in the hay and they were all around her, pinning her down, spreading her legs, fondling her, laughing as she cursed and twisted helplessly beneath them.
The hay prickled the bare skin of her back and legs, and the air was so heavy with the stink of barn and animals and unwashed, sweating men that she could scarcely breathe. She'd heard about things like this happening, heard horror stories about Russians raping women in Germany in World War II, about Serbs raping Moslem women in Bosnia… but it couldn't, couldn't be happening to her.
Somehow, she managed not to start screaming until the first of them dropped his trousers and lowered himself onto her body.
CHAPTER 27
One after another, the Super Stallions descended from the sky like lumbering, green-and-gray-camouflaged insects. On the LZ perimeters, AH-1 Cobra gunships circled and darted, evil-visaged dragonflies that hovered, stooped, and spat deadly flame as hostile positions were identified and targeted. On the ground, Marine spotters called in death from above. Cobras and blunt-nosed Harrier II jumpjets screamed in at low altitude, slamming enemy strong points, vehicles, and troop concentrations with 2.75-inch rockets, TOW missiles, and rapid-fire cannons.
On the high ground above Polyamyy, elements of the 1st and 3r Battalions, 8th Marines, spread out from their initial LZs, taking up positions on the windswept, barren heights overlooking the Kola Inlet. A cluster of SAM sites and a radar station, smoking ruins now after repeated air and cruise-missile strikes, dominated the top of the cliffs, overlooking a sprawling naval docking facility on the water.
The Marines had just been flown ashore from the LHA Nassau, a floating, flat-topped warren of gray passageways and compartments that experienced Marines referred to, with teeth-gritting sarcasm, as a "Luxury Hotel Afloat."
Some of the old hands joked that after sleeping in tiny racks stacked five and six deep with nineteen hundred other Marines for the past six weeks, the 1/8 and 3/8 were more than ready to take on anything the Russians could throw at them.
Russian Naval Infantry were still holding the ruins, but most scattered after a pair of Harriers shrieked in low across the cliff tops, slashing at the sheltering Russian troops with rockets and free-fall iron bombs. As the Marines moved forward, a dozen tired and ragged-looking men in camouflage uniforms emerged from a tumble-down of bricks and I-beams, hands in the air.
Lieutenant Ben Rivera reached the edge of the cliff, an M-16 gripped in trembling hands. He was scared, yes, but more than that he was excited. He'd missed out on the fighting in Norway the year before, and he'd been dreaming of this moment ever since he'd entered the ROTC program in college.
From the beginning, though, he'd wanted to be a Marine aviator, and he'd made it too, learning to fly Marine F/A-18s… and burdened by no false modesty, he could freely admit to being one of the best.
But Marine tradition still firmly held that all Marines, whether pilots, tank drivers, or cooks, were first and foremost combat riflemen. More to the point, Marine aviators were expected to take their turns as Forward Observers, aviators assigned to the infantry to serve as advance ground controllers.
He'd thought that he'd enter Russia in a Hornet. Instead, he'd come in by Super Stallion, attached to the 1/8. He didn't really mind, for his training had prepared him for just this sort of assignment.
It was just that when the low, rumbling thunder of Marine or Navy jets rolled across the snow-capped peaks of the Kola Inlet, he could grip his rifle and look up from the mud and imagine that the other aviators definitely had the better deal.
Or at the very least, a wider view of the war.