“Ryś Jeden do Ryś Trzy,” she radioed. “Lynx One to Lynx Three. Report.”
Lynx Three was her two-man sniper team. They’d infiltrated in ahead of the rest of the assault force. By now they should have settled into a concealed position that offered them a good view of the town and its immediate surroundings.
“Lynx Three to One.” Sergeant Karol Sikora’s calm voice crackled through her earphones. “We see no sign of the enemy on this side of the village. There are no thermal traces in the buildings we have eyes on. Repeat, none.”
Nadia bit down on the urge to tell him to look harder. The sergeant wasn’t a rookie. Like her, Sikora was a veteran of the Iron Wolf Squadron — an elite, high-tech force of pilots, intelligence operatives, and special-operations soldiers that had helped defend Poland and its Eastern European allies against periodic Russian aggression for several years. Originally, the squadron’s men and women were all foreign-born, mostly Americans. In fact, she’d first been assigned to Iron Wolf chiefly as a liaison officer for Poland’s president, Piotr Wilk. But as casualties mounted, more Poles joined the unit in combat roles — accumulating valuable experience and technical expertise before rotating back to their nation’s regular armed forces.
So when the sniper sergeant said there weren’t any Spetsnaz troops deployed in the houses with fields of fire covering this approach, she could take it to the bank. Which left one big problem. Where in hell were the Russians she’d come to kill? Were they really foolish enough to let her soldiers push inside the town without a fight? No, she decided, somehow she was still missing a piece of this tactical puzzle.
Nadia’s frown deepened. The clock was running. Every second she spent now trying to decide what to do next would cost her dearly later — on the back end of this mission. But while speed was life when you were already under fire, attacking blindly, without thorough reconnaissance, was usually a recipe for disaster.
Her mind ran faster. By refusing to defend the edge of the village, her Spetsnaz opponents clearly wanted to lure her into risking a quick dash across that wide-open ground ahead of them. Which meant—
“Lynx Three, this is One,” Nadia said into her headset mike. “Check out the tree line on our right and left flanks. Don’t rush it. Take your time and do a thorough job.”
“Understood, Lynx One,” Sikora replied. “Scanning now.” In these conditions, the SCT-2 thermal sights he and his spotter were using should be able to pick out a human-sized target at well over a thousand meters. If the Russian troops were sheltering under anti-infrared camouflage cloth, it would be tougher to spot them. But nothing short of the highly advanced camouflage systems used by Iron Wolf’s combat robots could render a target effectively invisible… and those were systems Russia still could not replicate.
Nadia glanced over her shoulder. Her assault force, broken into three six-man sections, squatted among the trees close by, waiting for the order to go in. Bulky in their body armor, tactical vests, Kevlar helmets, and shatterproof goggles, most of her Special Forces soldiers cradled short-barreled Heckler & Koch HK416 carbines. She could sense their eagerness. Like wolfhounds scenting prey, they were keyed up, straining at the leash.
“Three to One,” Sikora said suddenly. “You were right, Major. There’s a Russian weapons team dug in on the edge of the woods, about two hundred meters off on our left flank. I count two Spetsnaz troops with a PKP machine gun sited to sweep the clear ground.”
Nadia breathed out. The PKP Pecheneg light machine gun was a fearsome weapon, designed especially for Russia’s Spetsnaz units and mechanized infantry. Capable of firing between six hundred and eight hundred 7.62mm rounds per minute, that belt-fed automatic weapon would have cut her men to pieces the moment they left the cover of the trees. “Take them out on my signal,” she ordered.
“Understood.”
Carefully, she rose from her crouch and checked over her own HK carbine and other gear one last time. Soft rustling sounds indicated that the rest of the assault force was following her lead. No one wanted to find out the hard way that some vital piece of equipment had gotten tangled up or gone missing while they’d slogged their way through a couple of kilometers of dense forest to reach this position.
Of course, Nadia thought wryly, sometimes there was nothing you could do about things that were missing. She glanced down at where her feet should be — and no longer were. Instead, she saw the twin tips of her black carbon-fiber prosthetic running blades. Though the sight was no longer alien, she still couldn’t pretend that it felt natural. Not even after almost a full year.
Last summer, while defeating a Russian attempt to assassinate the man who was now America’s president, she’d been badly wounded. To save her life, trauma surgeons had been forced to amputate both of her maimed legs below the knee. Weeks of agonizing hospitalization had been followed by months of exhausting and painful rehabilitation. First, she’d relearned to walk using conventional prosthetics. Then more months had been needed to master the use of these agile, incredibly flexible running blades — and to rebuild her lost strength and endurance. And all of it — all her hard work, all her sweat, all her pain — had been driven by a single, overriding imperative: to prove that she was still fit for active service in Poland’s Special Forces, even without her legs.
Well, today is that day, Nadia told herself. Win or lose, this was the chance she’d fought for.
“Lynx Three, this is One,” she snapped. “Nail that machine-gun team.” She started forward. “All other Lynx units. Follow me!”
Two muffled cracks echoed through the nearby woods.
“Enemy weapons team down,” Sikora reported. “We have your back, Major.”
Good enough, Nadia thought. Now to cross that killing zone before the Russians realized their ambush had been blown. She moved faster, accelerating from a deliberate, almost gliding walk to a tooth-jarring, equipment-rattling jog. Then, as soon as she broke past the last few trees and came out into the open, she sprinted onward at top speed — bounding forward on her prosthetic blades toward the center of the little village.
Two of her assault sections peeled away, moving off to the left and right. They were tasked with fighting their way into the town from opposite sides — in a pincer movement intended to spread the enemy’s defenses and smash any attempted retreat. The six men of the third section stuck with her.
Nadia darted past the first row of empty houses and dropped into cover behind an old, banged-up Tarpan pickup truck. Her troops spread out around her, weapons up and ready to fire at the first sign of any hostile movement.
Voices flooded through her earphones as the other section leaders provided a running commentary on their progress. Their units were systematically clearing houses, going room to room in a hunt for Spetsnaz holdouts and any hostages. Stun grenades exploded with ear-piercing bangs, followed almost instantly by short, sharp bursts of assault-rifle fire.
“House One clear. One hostile down. No civilians present.”
“House Five clear. Two hostiles dead. No civilians here.”
“House Nine clear. No contact.”
Comparing their reports with her mental map of the town, Nadia realized that roughly half of the estimated Russian commando force was still unaccounted for… along with around a dozen innocent men, women, and children. Realistically, there was only one place left that was big enough to hold that many people. She risked a quick glance around the pickup truck’s rusting bumper.