“The season starts,” Vadim said, walking out the front of the headquarters as he was throwing on a light jacket. He waved for Mike to get back in the Expedition. “Please, Kildar, it is probably the best place to talk.”
“Are we going anywhere?” Mike asked.
“Up the road,” Vadim said, waving south. “You have weapons with you, yes?”
“Yeah,” Mike said, frowning. “Do I need them?”
“No longer,” Vadim said, sighing. “At least probably not. A farm was attacked by the Chechens. At least I assume it was Chechens. The farmer was seen talking in a tavern with some Chechens yesterday. Today there is a home burned, dead bodies, all the usual. It is very annoying.”
They drove up over the pass to the south, climbing close to the treeline at the top, then down into a series of narrow valleys. Mike took a turn off on one of the dirt roads that led up into the mountains, grateful that he’d brought the Expedition instead of the Mercedes, and finally stopped at a clearing.
It was a small mountain farm like many in the area, a cleared vegetable patch next to a small stone house. Across the road, and a stream, was a larger area that was green with some plant. There should have been goats and maybe an ox in the paddock to the side, some children playing or working around the house.
Instead there was a smell of fire and two policemen picking up bodies and dispiritedly loading them into the back of a truck. The paddock had been broken down and the door to the house was shattered and half burned.
“There were nine who lived here,” Vadim said, shaking his head and getting out of the Expedition. “Viljar Talisheva, his wife, a brother and six children. There are four bodies. He had a teenage daughter and one that was just short of teen.”
“And those are the bodies missing?” Mike said, his face hard.
“Indeed,” Vadim said. “This is what I’m to prevent, but I’d like to know how.”
“With more people you know who is moving in the area,” Mike said. “You intercept the Chechens before they do stuff like this. Simply keeping them from moving through town will cut down on it; you can’t move through this region without moving through Alerrso. Not north and south. Do you think they moved north?”
“No, they fled back to the south,” Vadim said. “They will bribe their way past a checkpoint and be gone. I have put out the word on this, as you would say, and I am told they will be found. I doubt it. Honestly, south of the pass there are a dozen ways they can go. They might still be in the area, waiting until we are no longer looking for them. They might have passed the food they took to a mule train that will take it to Chechnya over the mountains. Maybe done the same with the girls or simply kept them for their own uses.”
“We’re going to have to patrol heavy,” Mike said, shrugging. “As soon as the militia is trained. It’s going to be a pain in the ass, but I’d rather this not happen in Alerrso or the Valley. And I’m sure the news about what’s happening in the valley is getting out. We’re going to have to keep a close eye out for movement in the area even before the militia gets formed.”
“I’d love to know how,” Vadim said, dispiritedly. One of the bodies was very young.
“I’ll see if we can get the phone system in Alerrso upgraded,” Mike said. “If anyone moves through the town, we can set up a signaling system. Maybe put out some hide positions using radio. Even without the militia, there’s a tiddly strike force in the trainers. If they strike first through the roads we’ll have warning.”
“Do what you can,” Vadim said. “I’ll stay here to clean up. It’s all I can do.”
“That’s the situation we’re dealing with,” Mike said, shaking his head. He’d called Adams and Nielson into a conference as soon as he’d gotten back. “While we’re training, we need to keep one eye on the security situation.”
“I don’t want to just put guns in the hands of the Keldara,” Adams said, frowning. “They’re smarter than I’d hoped, but I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Agreed,” Nielson said, setting his laptop on the desktop. “But the trainers can start carrying, heavy, from now on. The work they were on is winding down as I’d planned as we get closer to the planting festival. Planting’s done, by the way; what are they waiting for?”
“It’s scheduled for a particular day in the year,” Mike said, shrugging. “It’s more of a spring festival than a strictly planting festival. But I still think we should wait until then to start training; I don’t want to interfere in their festivals and for a few weeks after there’s not much to do around the farm the women and older men can’t handle.”
“I can work with that,” the colonel said. “We can start pulling back a small strike team, five or so, in the event that something goes wrong. Keep an SUV up here for them to move in.”
“Create a ground-floor weapons room,” Mike said, nodding as the plan took shape. “There’s a small utility room by the main entry corridor. Start storing personal weapons there. I’ll get a couple of Keldara to set up weapons racks.”
“That will handle any minor attack,” Adams said. “But I’d like some recon and a warning net.”
“Some of the Keldara are hunters,” Mike said, musingly. “Give them over to a pretraining team and set them out, two-man teams, as eyeballs north and south. Nothing we can do about the tracks in the mountains right now, but we can keep an eye on the road. Get Vanner setting up the main commo shack and train them in on the radios. Scatter some radios in Alerrso. Lay in a secure line to the Keldara commo center or put it up here.”
“Up here would work better,” Nielson said, definitively. “It’s the most secure location and we can put an antenna farm up on the roof that will link through the whole area easily. We’ve got the satellite radios for longer range; only thing that will work in these mountains. I’ll set up the training teams. Probably send out a trainer with the hunters for some makee learnee. One trainer and one hunter per team for the time being.”
“Give me the names and I’ll start rounding them up,” Adams said. “And the back-up strike teams. We should rotate that.”
“I’ll get it to you by the end of the day,” Nielson said, frowning.
“I’ll get some Keldara up here and get them started on the gun-rack,” Mike said, nodding. “Anything else?”
“Not that I can think of at the moment,” Nielson said.
“I can,” Adams said. “Some of the Keldara are bound to get shot up doing this stuff. The medics are going to designate some of them for basic medical training, maybe more with some of the women. But we’re still a long damned way from the hospital. Any way that we can get a chopper for extraction?”
“Unlikely,” Mike said, shaking his head. “As far as I know the hospital in Tbilisi doesn’t even have one.” He looked at the chief’s face and frowned. “Damnit, you want me to buy them a chopper?”
“One that we have first priority on,” Adams said, nodding. “Yes. And they’ll probably need help, for the first year at least, with support and pay for the pilots. Keep in mind, you might be the guy that needs it.”
“Christ,” Mike said, shaking his head. “This is getting expensive enough it’s noticeable. Okay, okay, I’ll think about it.”
“Then that’s all,” Adams said. “I’ll get with the Keldara about the gun-rack; you don’t know diddly about building a gun rack.”
Mike was down in the weight room, pushing his way through a punishing pect workout with E Nomine cranked up on the speakers, when the door opened to reveal one of the Keldara women. She immediately shouted something he couldn’t catch over the booming industrial.