Boomer was a long way from home. He’d grown up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where the George Washington Bridge touched New York City.
Boomer’s earliest memories were of his mother taking him on walks in Fort Washington Park along the banks of the Hudson beneath the high arch of the bridge. She’d taken him there when he was ten years old after receiving the telegram that his father had been killed in action in Vietnam. That was in 1969, prior to the Army instituting the policy of having notification officers deliver the grim news. At that time, the Army had simply sent telegrams and had them delivered by cab drivers.
Virginia Watson had had the driver take them down to the park and drop them off, the piece of yellow paper gripped tightly between her clenched fingers. The news of Michael Watson’s Medal of Honor for actions on the last day of his life would come many months later, but on that bright fall day nothing had mattered other than the intense grief Boomer could feel and see in his mother. Boomer’s emotions were more complex. His father had been gone for eight of the first ten years of his life and Boomer’s memories of him were blurry images of a large man dressed in a uniform with a strange green beret that he wore cocked at an angle.
Just as Boomer had sensed the grief that day, seven years later, he had sensed his mother’s disapproval of his decision to accept the automatic offer of an appointment to West Point that every child of a Medal of Honor winner was given. Boomer’s attitude had been that at least something good had come from his father’s death. Besides, he had rationalized, she couldn’t really afford to send him to college anywhere else. The idea of a free education and pay more than satisfied his seventeen-year-old mind.
His mother had already gone into debt to send him to Cardinal Spellman Catholic High School in the Bronx. And though she would have preferred more bills rather than give another man to the Army, Boomer was not to be swayed.
His easygoing attitude was blunted in this regard, and she accepted his decision.
She’d seen this tenacity on the basketball court at Spellman.
Despite his — by basketball standards — relatively short height of six feet, he’d earned a starting slot on the Spellman varsity team by outworking all the other players on the team and impressing the coach with his hustle.
What had really caught the coach’s eye thought, was Boomer’s actions as a sophomore in a game against perennial New York basketball mecca Power High School, alma mater of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Boomer had been sent in after the starting backcourt had fouled out trying to guard Power’s all-city forward, later an NBA player. The coach had told Boomer to let the Power forward have no free shots. Boomer had promptly stuck to the more talented player like glue, hacking him severely every time he handled the ball, to the point where the Power player had lost his temper and took a swing at Boomer. The fight that erupted had cleared both benches and half the stands and resulted in Boomer and the Power player being ejected, but not before Boomer had returned the swing and decked the other player. The action had surprised the coach, but not Boomer’s mother in the stands. She knew that, like his father, her son had a hard streak in him.
The years had passed and now Boomer was lying in wait, a familiar but always nerve-wracking position as far as he was concerned. As the countdown to action continued, Boomer was shifting to his action mode, his nerves freezing over and a wary calmness settling in. He grabbed the handset for the Satcom radio again.
“Angel, this is Mustang.
Over.”
The reply from the pilot of the MI-25 was instantaneous.
“This is Angel. Over.”
“Status? Over.”
The pilot’s laconic southern drawl was reassuring.
“At hold position. All clear. We can be there in a jiffy to pick yaup. Over.”
“Roger.” Boomer checked the time display on the GPR.
“We’re probably going hot here in five mikes. We’re going to need you real quick then. Over.”
The Russian-made aircraft, appropriated from Saddam Hussein’s air force during the Gulf War years previously, and the Soviet made weapons and uniforms, were a subterfuge to influence any possible survivors of the ambush-or anyone who might be in the area — that the events that were about to occur were the work of a renegade
Ukrainian militia group of which there certainly were many. The only pieces of equipment that were not endemic to the area were the GPR, night vision goggles, and satellite radios, but if any of them were captured, there would most certainly be, a body captured also, at which time the foreign origin of the equipment would no longer matter and diplomatic denial would take over.
The muted roar of the helicopter blades sounded behind the pilot’s voice.
“No sweat. Over.”
“Mustang, out.” Boomer glanced down the road, trying to catch the glow of the oncoming vehicles headlights in his goggles, where they would show up like brilliant spotlights.
Nothing yet.
Boomer spoke into his FM radio.
“Bronco, this is Mustang.
Status? Over.”
Martin’s reply was swift.
“All set. Over.”
That meant Martin’s team had the Soviet made PK machine gun set up and their RPG rocket launchers ready.
Contrary to the movies. Boomer knew a good ambush consisted of setting up the kill zone, then backing off so that the weapons can effectively cover the killing ground which must be too far from the ambushers for the victims to overrun.
In this case. Boomer was satisfied his men had all the little checkmarks in the manual of efficient killing ticked off.
A faint glow appeared in the hills to the south: the reflection of the headlights. Boomer picked up the handset for the Satcom.
“Thunder Point, this is Mustang. Over.”
“This is Thunder Point. Over.”
“Request final mission authorization. Over.”
“Your mission is a go. Mustang,” Decker said.
“Authorization code Victor Romeo Two Four. I say again, your mission is a go. Code Victor Romeo Two Four. Out.” The radio went dead.
“There’s gonna be some hurting puppies in a few minutes,” Lanscom whispered, the snout of his NVG pointed down the road, picking up the glow, as he fingered his AK-74. This was Lanscom’s first live mission, and Boomer could understand the younger man’s nervousness.
He himself had been on several, but that didn’t necessarily make it any easier. In fact, having witnessed the effects of modern weapons on the human body did little to relieve the anxiety of being on the receiving end.
Boomer didn’t bother trying to allay Lanscom’s fears.
Now that he had the final go, his job was to concentrate on the mission at hand. The bus was carrying members of one of the factions of the newly formed Ukrainian parliament.
A faction that was vehemently opposed to following the guidelines of the standing agreements on nuclear arms reduction between the United States and the Ukraine.
NATO inspection teams in the Ukraine to ensure treaty compliance had recently been forced to curtail their activities.
The political situation was growing unstable. A NATO team had been attacked two days earlier by a mob, and the U.S. Congress was getting very vocal about sending 200 million dollars a year to the Ukraine to dismantle nuclear weapons when the job wasn’t being done. The Ukrainian parliament, defying the Ukrainian president’s signing of the START II Treaty, was making vague threats of nuclear blackmail as the country’s economy slid into a morass. It was the politics of the late 1990’s, and since military force was-an extension of politics. Boomer was here to extend the wishes of the United States government.