The village’s largest building sat not far away down the street. According to the quick-and-dirty intelligence briefing she’d received, that gray cinderblock eyesore served as a kind of community center — a place for celebrations, day-care classes, local meetings and political rallies, and even a small, bare-bones health clinic staffed by a visiting nurse. Its main entrance, a set of big double doors, looked out onto the road.
Nadia snorted. There was no way in hell she would lead a charge through those doors. The easy way is always mined, ran one of Murphy’s half-humorous, half-serious laws of war. Or, in this case, probably rigged with a booby trap and zeroed in on by a couple of cold-eyed Spetsnaz bastards just itching to even today’s score by killing a few Poles. Even though it would cost her more time, they needed to find another way inside.
Swiftly, she led the way around one of the abandoned houses and then along a narrow alley crowded with bags of garbage, old mattresses, and waist-high stacks of worn-out tires. The alley opened onto a small cross street paralleling one side of the community center. And there, flanked by overflowing trash bins, was another door — narrow, dingy, and looking as though it was almost never opened. Perfect, Nadia thought.
Using quick, silent hand signals, she deployed her small force, stationing two soldiers to provide covering fire while the rest lined up behind her in a tactical stack next to that side door. Satisfied, she tapped the section’s breaching expert, Sergeant Dombrowski, lightly on the shoulder. “Make us a hole, Tadeusz,” she murmured, easing a flashbang grenade out of one of her assault-vest pouches.
With a nod, he moved around her and racked his Mossberg 500 twelve-gauge shotgun to chamber breaching rounds. Angling the shotgun down at a forty-five-degree angle, he jammed the muzzle tightly against the door — aiming halfway between the knob and doorframe. Wham. Wham. Two quick shots blew a hole through the door and smashed its lock.
Without pausing, Dombrowski kicked the door open and whirled away. In the same split second, Nadia leaned forward and lobbed her grenade through the opening.
BANG.
The stun grenade detonated with a blinding flash. Smoke and dust eddied out of the doorway.
“Go! Go! Go!” Nadia shouted. Tucking her HK securely against her shoulder, she rolled through the swirling smoke and into the building — sliding right to clear the way for the other Polish Special Forces soldiers pouring inside after her.
They were in a large room filled with overturned tables and chairs. Through the gray haze hanging in the air, she could make out indistinct shapes sprawled across a scuffed-up linoleum floor. Frowning, she glided sideways, keeping her back to a wall. Her eyes scanned back and forth, alert for any signs of movement.
Abruptly, motion flickered at the right edge of her vision. She spun in that direction, seeing what looked like a Spetsnaz commando holding a rifle pop up from behind one of the overturned tables. Trained instincts took over. She squeezed off a three-round burst.
Pieces flew off the mannequin and it flopped backward. Its helmet spun lazily across the floor.
“One hostile dead and down,” she said coolly, already swinging back to hunt for another valid target.
More HK carbines stuttered as some of her troops spotted different figures representing Russian soldiers and opened fire. The others barked orders, warning the simulated civilians trapped inside this room to “get down and stay down!”
Nadia kept moving, advancing deeper into the tangle of tables and chairs. Part of her admired the illusions created by those who’d put together this combat exercise. Another part felt frustrated. Shooting up silhouettes, mannequins, and pop-up targets was never as satisfying as facing off against live foes. As Whack Macomber, one of the Americans she’d served with in the Iron Wolf Squadron, would often growl, “These frigging battle simulations are a lot like kissing your sister.”
Clearing the rest of the shooting house reconfigured as a “community center” took several more minutes of close, effective teamwork — carefully working through a labyrinth of rooms filled with a mix of targets dressed as both Spetsnaz soldiers and innocent Polish civilians. When they were finished, she ordered everyone back outside.
Once there, they regrouped with the rest of the assault force.
“Training Command, this is Lynx One,” Nadia radioed, scowling down at her watch. They were running very short on time. “We’ve cleared the village. All hostiles eliminated. No friendly casualties.”
“Acknowledged, Major Rozek,” a laconic voice replied. “We show Phase One complete. Proceed immediately to Exercise Area Bravo.”
She sighed inside. Area Bravo was more than a kilometer away. Good Christ, she thought. This was going to be tight. Very tight.
Concealing her worries, Nadia issued out a set of rapid-fire orders that deployed her troops into a column of fours and put them in motion. With her in the lead, they set off at a fast trot — hurrying back into the forest and down a winding dirt road in a rattle and clatter of weapons and equipment.
Ten minutes later, they broke out into the open again. A three-meter-high log wall stretched across their path. After they’d spent hours tramping through the woods in full battle gear and then fighting their way through a mocked-up village, the obstacle looked as tall and imposing as the Great Wall of China.
Nadia took a deep breath. This was it. She turned her head. “All right, guys. Let’s go! Up and over and through!”
She set off at a dead run. Just short of the wall, she leaped upward, grabbing a handhold between two logs near the top and planting one of her blades on the narrow edge of another log, lower down. Then, pushing off with the flexible prosthetic limb, she jumped again and got both gloved hands on top of the obstacle. Breathing hard, she swung herself up and onto the top of the wall — using her arms and upper-body strength to compensate for her missing legs.
Without pausing, Nadia lowered herself down the other side and dropped the last few feet. She rolled over and came up facing a wide field crisscrossed by barbed-wire entanglements and shallow, muddy ditches. Instructors manned machine guns set on fixed mounts along one edge of the field.
Gritting her teeth, she scrambled upright, ran forward, and then dove headlong into one of the ditches. Cradling her carbine in both hands, she wriggled forward using her elbows and knees for leverage. Her blades, perfect for running on firm ground, were virtually useless now… deadweight. Their slick, carbon-fiber surfaces couldn’t get enough traction in the soft, sticky mud.
The machine guns began firing. Live tracer rounds whipcracked low overhead — drawing lines of glowing fire across the field just a few centimeters above the razor-sharp coils of barbed wire. Soldiers started to pass her on both sides. She was falling behind the pace. Nadia swore silently and pushed on, straining to crawl faster.
WHUMMP.
A fountain of mud erupted a few meters away. Seconds later, more small explosions rippled across the obstacle course. Wonderful, she thought grimly. The trainers were setting off buried pyrotechnics to simulate mortar rounds, grenades, and mines. That was all she needed now.
Tucking her head low to snake under a wire entanglement, she squirmed onward. Barbs snagged at her tactical vest and then tore loose. She raised up slightly, spat out a mouthful of mud, and risked a quick look ahead.
The edge of the field was just twenty meters away.