“Copy, Alpha. Ready to engage,” Lou replied, not a trace of hesitation in his voice.
“Bravo teams, we have company,” she added, although all teams had heard her exchange with Lou.
“Tango Two ready,” she heard Martin’s voice confirm, followed by the rest of the trucks.
Yeah, ready, she thought, clenching her jaws. As we’ll ever be. A bunch of people armed with MP5s, Tavors, and handguns, maybe a couple grenades, against Russian armored assault vehicles, and who knows how many soldiers. Not a fair fight, but she wasn’t going to shy away from it. They’d come here to do a job, damn it, and they were going to do it. They were going to take these people home, no matter what.
Their only strategic advantage was the narrow, mountain road. The assault vehicles could only approach them one by one if they kept on moving. With a little bit of luck and some decent gunmanship from the Bravos in Tango Nine, they could take them out one by one. Or at least she hoped so, considering the Ansyrs were fully armored.
“Step on it a little,” she asked the driver. The man nodded and increased the speed.
Alex looked behind her, at the people riding in the truck. They were scared, packed closely together, the way gazelles gather when lions are circling the herd. Most of them had their eyes on her, looking for hope, for safety, for a way home out of that dark, endlessly miserable hell. She had to say something to them.
She took a deep breath, and then spoke into her radio, while maintaining eye contact with the people on her truck.
“All Tangos, this is Alpha.”
“Go for Tangos,” Lou replied.
“All Tangos, please repeat my message to your passengers.”
She cleared her voice, then continued.
“Things are going to get a bit ugly,” she started saying, cringing at the way it sounded. “The Russians are catching up with us. Please know we’ll do everything it takes to get you back home to safety. We have air support on the way, and we will make it. This is my promise to you, to all of you.”
She checked the back of the convoy, and noticed the sky was lighting up closer behind them. The Russians were getting near.
She spoke into her radio again, while her right hand clutched the Tavor’s handle tighter.
“Lima, this is Alpha. ETA on air support?”
The radio went silent for a little while, and then static picked up before an unfamiliar voice chimed in.
“Alpha, this is Firefly Nest. ETA is sixteen minutes. We have you on remote visual. Hang tight.”
…63
Captain Kevin Callahan woke up with a start. His XO knocked twice on his stateroom door, then walked right in, not waiting for permission. What the hell was going on?
His current assignment was a tricky one. He was leading battle group Okinawa into a series of tactical naval exercises off the coast of Japan, in collaboration with the Japanese Navy. As captain of USS Okinawa, a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship, he was the commander of the entire battle group: one Arleigh-Burke class destroyer, two Freedom-class and one Independence-class littoral combat ships (LCS), two GHOST super-cavitating stealth ships, and several support vessels.
But that wasn’t the tricky part of his current assignment. The tactical exercises were going well, and the Japanese Navy was a worthy partner with naval strategy valor. However, they rarely operated more than fifty miles away from Russia’s territorial waters. Most days they’d come as close as ten miles, irritating the crap out of the Russian Coast Guard, their vessel commanders, and everyone else for that matter.
Naturally, the Russians were worried, knowing the Okinawa, a Wasp-class, landing helicopter dock (LHD), amphibious, assault ship, essentially an aircraft carrier for helicopters, deployed and maneuvered so close to their coast. The Okinawa carried almost two thousand Marines aboard, in addition to the ship’s complement of almost twelve hundred. Her own fleet of seven Super Stallion helicopters, four MV-22 Osprey aircraft, four Super Cobra attack helos, and six Harrier II attack aircraft packed a serious, worrisome punch. Her stern gate could drop and launch additional armed landing hovercraft, challenging the enemy with its versatility. Hence, it was not surprising that the Okinawa and its battle group made the Russians wary, anxious, and irritable. Yet, while she was executing joint tactical exercises with the Japanese, staying just barely outside of Russian territorial waters, there was little, if anything, the Russians could do.
The Russians had two powerful radar stations, tracking every move the ship made. One station stood high on a cliff near a lighthouse called Red Partisan, and the other was farther south, right on the coast, near Terney. Those two radar installations could track everything, from surface vessels to air traffic. The facilities were heavily guarded, and most likely were humming with intense activity every time one of the battle group ships started her engines, or lifted her anchors.
They had received significant diplomatic pressures to take their joint exercises farther out into the Pacific as a sign of goodwill, but Washington and Tokyo had held equally strong. As long as battle group Okinawa was not entering Russian territorial waters, there was nothing Russia could do about it other than foam at the mouth.
Before Captain Callahan had finally gone to bed for the night, sometime after midnight, his battle group was sailing around Wakkanai heading east, just five miles off the coast of Japan, but only a few miles away from the territorial waters of Sakhalin. He hoped his XO didn’t bring the news that someone had made a mistake and had veered into Russia’s waters by accident; there’d be hell to pay.
He sat on the side of his bed, rubbing his eyes.
“What is it, XO?”
“I have the president for you, sir.”
Sleep still fogging his brain, Callahan asked, “You have who?”
“The president of the United States, sir, on encrypted voice comm.”
All his remaining brain fog instantly dissipated under the wave of adrenaline that hit every nerve in his body. The president? Calling him? That had never happened before, in his entire career. It had to be serious.
He hopped to his feet and threw his working blues on within seconds, then almost ran to the bridge, followed by his XO.
“Captain on the bridge,” one of the lieutenants announced, standing at attention.
Callahan went straight for the communications desk. He put on the headset handed him by his communications officer, cleared his throat a little, then signaled to the young man to open the line.
“Mr. President, sir,” he greeted. “This is Captain Kevin Callahan, Battle Group Okinawa, off the coast of Japan.”
“Captain, we have a situation on our hands, and you’re the only one who can help,” President Krassner said, skipping the pleasantries and going straight to the core of the issue.
“Sir?”
“Flight XA233, the flight that was presumed crashed in the Pacific, was in fact hijacked by Russian terrorists. A small American team found the plane and was able to free the passengers and crew being held as hostages. They’re heading toward the coast, taking heavy fire, right in the area where you are now. There are nearly 450 people, most of them American. They need your help, captain. We have to bring them home.”