“They were right there,” he said, pointing to the hillside which was rapidly disappearing in the snow. The snow was falling straight down, now, but he could tell by the taste of the air that it was soon going to be storming.
“There’s a hot-spot,” Jachin Ferani, the point leader, said shaking his head. “But… Oh, now I see it,” he added.
The sun was already up and they knew they were supposed to be out of sight. But they also didn’t want to lose their team. Not with a storm coming.
“Where?” Tomas Kulcyanov asked. All three of the team were down on their bellies, just below the crest of the ridge. Jachin was thermal imaging binoculars that could be switched for normal vision while Tomas and Dafid were peering through standard range-finding binos.
“Right where Dafid was pointing,’ Jachin said, chuckling. “In bivvies with their nets over them.”
“Damn,” Dafid said after a moment. “That is weird. I was looking right at them… ”
“We can make it down in about five minutes,” Tomas said.
“If we hurry,” Jachin pointed out. “We’re not going to hurry. We’re going to do the same thing. Right here.”
It had been nearly an hour since the team had bedded down when Adams heard a double click in his headphones. The point was, presumably, nearby but not coming in. Okay, he could live with that. They probably didn’t want to move in the light. He clicked once in reply. As he did, the wind started to pick up and the bivvy started flapping, hard.
“Well, this is gonna totally suck,” Adams whispered as the blizzard descended in ernest.
“Well, I think that Mr. Jenkins would say that this ‘sucks’,” Colonel Chechnik said, his jaw working as he read the report.
Russia’s intelligence agency did not have the technology or funds of its American equivalents. It made up for both by being, in many cases, far better.
The fall of the Soviet Union had released flood of information related to the “spy war” between the US and the Soviets going back to the 1930s and the returns were pretty much in: The Soviets had hammered the US.
The Russians had moles in most of the major defense and intelligence agencies not only in the US but in all of the West. They had penetrated almost every communications department, most secure research and regularly had people with access to the White House. They’d managed so many disinformation operations that straightening out fact from fiction was taking careful work by historians.
After the Fall, they’d had a hard time maintaining those links. But they had managed to retain very good HumInt in other areas.
Notably Chechnya.
While, as with the US, it wasn’t really helping them win the war, they often knew of movements before the Chechen high command. And when the High Command knew… well…
Chechnik looked at the document and sighed. He had placed a mid-level request in place related to the general area of the Keldara mission. And this was the result.
He looked at the phone, then the document then the phone. Finally, grimacing, he picked it up.
“I need to speak to the President.”
“You wanted to speak to me?” Nielson said, looking up.
Kacey and Tammie were in their new Keldara uniforms rather than flight suits since, given the hairy-ass missions of the last couple of days, they were taking a well-earned rest day.
“Colonel,” Kacey said, shifting uncomfortably in her new digi-cam. “Missions went fine. Clean in and out. How’re the teams?”
“Now we’re in blackout,” Nielson said, shrugging. “Hell of a storm on the way in. If they get into serious trouble they’ll call. But that’s likely to blow the mission. You know the orders the Keldara have on casualties?”
“No, sir,” Tammie answered.
“In the event that the casualty is anything but life-threatening and saveable by extraction, they are not to request evac. If the casualty is immovable, a broken leg for example, they and their partner will remain in place until after the mission and then be extracted if and when. We more or less anticipate Keldara being strung across the mountains until we can pull them out.”
“Holy crap,” Kacey breathed.
“That sucks,” Tammie said. “I mean, really sucks. I can see the reason, but… ”
“So I have no idea how the teams are doing,” Nielson said, smiling thinly. “For all I know, they could have been wiped out in an avalache. We won’t know for… ” He paused and checked his watch. “For four days and about twenty-one hours.”
“Understood, sir,” Kacey said. “And I notice most of the Rangers have moved out.”
“Third Platoon is tasked with local security,” Nielson said. “The other two platoons are up in the hills. I’d like you to coordinate with Captain Guerrin on any air support he might need. Doing at least one training mission with them would be wise to work out any bugs in methods or communication.”
“Will do, sir,” Kacey replied.
“And if that is all… ?”
“Actually, sir, we really came about something else,” Tammie said then nudged Kacey.
“Sir, we were looking at our budget… ” Kacey said.
“Just say it, captain,” Nielson replied with a smile. “I don’t need a power point presentation.”
“We’d like to do some… customization to our birds,” Kacey said, walking over to his desk and sliding a sheet of paper onto it. “I think we can do it just by shuffling a few items in the budget around. We don’t have two loadmasters and don’t really need them. We used a couple of the Keldara girls, who are budgetable lighter, for the supply drops and that worked fine. At some point the Chief can probably train them in on more complex tasks. So we can shift that portion of the budget around. And the Chief has some assets for parts that can probably cut our anticipated costs there. Even with the mods we should be able to cut some out of the budget.”
“I see,” Nielson replied, looking at the calculations. “And these mods are… ?”
“Well, that’s pretty hard to explain,” Tammie said, nervously. “Here’s a sketch,” she added, sliding a new sheet of paper onto the desk.
Nielson regarded it for a second and then grinned.
“Who came up with this?” Nielson asked, still grinning. “You gals or Chief D’Allaird?”
“We were talking about force multipliers,” Kacey said. “And I don’t know who said it first but we all thought of it at the same time.”
“The only thing I can’t figure out is why the Kildar didn’t first,” Nielson said. “Approved. And you might want to add express shipping on it,” he added with a grin. “It would be interesting to have it for the next series of missions.”
“How will this affect the mission?”
Getting to speak to the President of Russia, even when you have hot intel in your hand, was not easy. It was late in the day and Chechnik had been told he had only ten minutes.
Fortunately, the President was a former spook, so they could cover the ground fairly quickly.
“If Sadim sticks to this time table, it will make extraction very difficult,” Chechnik said. “Especially if they do not know about it.”
“If they know about it they are likely to cancel the mission entirely,” the President said, looking at the report again with cold eyes. “If I understand the timing, this should not affect the basic mission. They should be able to capture the package and destroy it long before this affects them. As long as they are not detected on insertion.”
“Correct, Mr. President,” Chechnik said, his face closed.