Commander-In-Chief (50 page)

Caruso said, “You tried to kidnap the American last night in Tabariškės.”

He shook his head. “Other men in my unit. Not me.”

Now Dom asked, “Did you blow up the
Independence
?”

“The what?”

Chavez and Caruso both thought the man looked genuinely confused by the question.

Chavez said, “What about the train?”

“Wha . . . what train?”

Caruso said, “
That
looked like bullshit,” confirming what Chavez was himself thinking.

Chavez said, “What’s your name?”

“Luka.”

“Look, Luka. You can’t be lying to us. I just killed three men. At this point, killing one more would actually make things easier. We don’t have a car. I
really
don’t feel like carrying you to the hospital.”

Luka laid his head on the ground. “We were ordered to fire on the Russian troop transport. To wear the badge of the Polish People’s Lancers.”

Dom just mumbled softly. “Bingo.”

•   •   •

A
minute later, Ding left the little shack and stood in the dark. He called Linus Sabonis’s mobile phone, ready to tell him to pick up the Serbian prisoner and give him the intel he just learned, but Sabonis didn’t answer. He called back again, and again it went to voice mail.

Frustrated, Ding called Sabonis’s second-in-command. He answered on the fifth ring. Ding started to tell him what was going on, but he didn’t even get to the part where they tailed the BMW away from the roadblock before the man interrupted him.

“I’m sorry, I have to go.”

Ding was surprised by the man’s nonchalance. “You’ve got something more important going on?”

“Actually, yes.” There was a slight pause. “Russian troops from Kaliningrad have entered Lithuania.” The man hung up.

Ding reentered the shack and looked at Dom. He said, “It’s showtime, brother. We are officially in a nation under attack.”

Dom looked down to Luka. “You’re on your own, asshole. Crawl down to the street and get a taxi to take you to the hospital, or else wait for the Russian tanks to save your ass. We’re outta here.”

“I’m hurt! I can’t walk!”

“Sucks to be you,” Caruso said, and he and Chavez left the injured man in the shack without another word.

E
veryone thought the Russian attack on Lithuania would begin with rockets launched from over the border from Belarus and Kaliningrad, followed by tanks and troops moving through border crossings along the highway. Attack aircraft and helicopters, it was assumed, would support the ground forces, and artillery would pound the way ahead.

But the opening salvo was something quite different indeed.

A previously scheduled Russian military train passing through Lithuania came to an unscheduled stop at a railway yard in the Paneriai forest, just southwest of Vilnius, not far from the airport. Because of the Russian train’s movement down the line, the massive rail yard’s normal security had been augmented by a platoon of Lithuanian Land Force riflemen, but these thirty men plus the dozen or so lightly armed security guards were no match for ninety-six tier-one Special Forces commandos from Russia’s Directorate “A” of the FSB Special Purpose Center on board the train. The dedicated counterterrorism unit was known in Russia as “Spetsgruppa A,” or Special Team Alpha, but around the world they were known
as “Alpha Group.” These were the “Little Green Men” who had shown up in eastern Ukraine the year before, and the men Lithuanians had reported seeing near the borders for the past few weeks. Most of these sightings were erroneous; there were a few cross-border incursions, but the Little Green Men had waited till now to begin their direct action inside Lithuania’s borders.

The ninety-six members of Alpha Group on this train had been given two crucial missions for this first night of the invasion. Forty-eight of the men would climb into vehicles waiting here in the yard and drive into the capital itself. They would break into eight six-man fire teams and begin quickly blocking roads, initiating checkpoints, and essentially showing themselves to the citizens of Vilnius as they headed to work in the morning. The Russians wanted to instill chaos in the nation, to give the impression the invasion itself had already made it into the capital before anyone knew they were at war. Eight separate teams working in eight predetermined choke points could make the news by dawn and grind the city, and perhaps the entire country, to a halt by mid-morning.

Like much of Russia’s hybrid war, the operation was mostly for show, to create an
impression
of facts on the ground in order to change the
actual
facts on the ground.

The other forty-eight men of Alpha Group had a more direct operation planned. They, too, would climb into vehicles staged here at the station and then race to the east, taking back roads through the forest for the two and a half miles to Vilnius International Airport. Here they would break into four twelve-man units, with individual objectives. Two teams would hit opposite ends of the airfield to draw away the guard force and engage any military presence, while teams three and four would attack the terminal itself from opposite entrances, taking over the building and then setting up defensive positions in the shopping mall–sized space. The two fire
teams would then attempt to link up and take over the control tower, thereby dominating the airport.

If all went according to plan, Russian follow-on troops from GRU (military intelligence) Spetsnaz units would land before dawn, resupplying and reinforcing the Alpha Group men already on site.

But first the Russians had to get off the train and to the airport. The Lithuanian troops defending the area were at first just confused by the fact that the big Russian train seemed to be slowing down as it approached the small station building in the center of the rail yard. The platoon commander’s first order was for his second-in-command to call someone back at base to ask what was going on. It wasn’t until the yard’s security force, men who were used to the Russian train sailing through the station at 100 kilometers an hour, dove to the ground and hid themselves behind railcars and cinder-block walls that the Land Force soldiers had a clue that they were in danger.

The soldiers followed the security men to defensive positions, albeit slowly, and when the Russian men in black began to leap from the still-moving train, firing on anything that moved in the station, the twenty-three-year-old commander of the Lithuanian platoon realized he didn’t have to wait for base to get back to him with orders.

He understood. The fucking war everyone in the nation had been talking about had just begun, right before his eyes.

Alpha Group snipers climbed onto the roof of several railcars and trained their long rifles, Sako TRG 22s outfitted with infrared scopes, on the scene before them. Within seconds they were picking off targets around the station and farther back in the rail yard, while below them the expert assaulters of Alpha Group began leapfrogging maneuvers to get distance from the train.

A Lithuanian machine gun began to bark from the roof of the
station, raking the train with 7.62-millimeter rounds. One Russian was hit squarely in the elbow, ripping his arm off at the joint and spinning him to the ground, where he would bleed to death in minutes.

But the big FN-MAG machine gun, the Lithuanians’ most potent weapon at the scene against the now ninety-five invaders, was silenced after making the single kill. An assaulter on the ground lobbed a forty-millimeter high-explosive grenade from the underslung launcher below his Kalashnikov, and his shot landed perfectly in the sandbagged position, killing the Lithuanian gunner and wounding his reloader.

Within two minutes of the first shot at the rail yard, the lead squad of Alpha Group assaulters reached the station, having crossed several open tracks. They were down two men, and four other Russians lay dead or wounded on the tracks behind, but once the assaulters penetrated the station, the surviving Lithuanians, soldiers and security guards alike, were in full retreat, heading toward a pair of large warehouses to the northeast and then into the forest beyond.

The Russians did not pursue them; their orders were to conserve ammo; only the snipers remained on the train cars to scan with their infrared scopes to keep guard against a counterattack. While they did this, the assaulters rushed to a locked gate to the northwest of the station, shot it open with a shotgun blast, and then entered a large storage parking lot. Here, twenty brand-new Volvo XC-90 SUVs sat waiting for delivery to car dealerships all over the Baltic on two Peterbilt car carriers. Russia’s FSB men working for a logistics company in Sweden had purposefully held up customs paperwork, keeping the vehicles stuck in port in Klaipėda until the day before yesterday, thereby timing their arrival by train here for delivery.

The commander of the Alpha Group men had multiple sets
of keys, and he passed them out to the drivers. The operators jammed themselves and their heavy equipment into the Volvos, using all three rows of seats and every cubic inch of cargo space to do so, then the twenty vehicles left the station, minus the dead and wounded they lost in the infiltration operation.

•   •   •

L
ieutenant Colonel Rich Belanger got word about the successful infiltration of Russian Special Forces the way he normally learned about fast-moving intelligence in the field. Piecemeal and with as much conjecture and false reporting as genuine actionable intel. His Marines were all positioned to the east of Vilnius, they didn’t hear a word about the action at the train station until thirty minutes after the attack, and by that point the surviving Russian commandos were well clear of the station. No one knew where they had gone, but Lieutenant Colonel Rich Belanger realized that as troubling as enemy action behind him was, he needed to stay focused on his mission, the one thing he had some control over. The Belarusan border ten miles in front of him, and the 25,000 Russian troops positioned there.

The Lithuanians would just have to sort out the Russian deep-penetration mission on their own.

C
havez and Caruso neared the airport at two-thirty a.m., riding in tandem on the motorcycle with only the Maxpedition shoulder bags they’d used during their operation this evening. They had other gear at their safe house in the Old Town of Vilnius, but they had decided to bypass it and expedite their escape from Lithuania. The men were well versed enough in OPSEC that there wouldn’t be anything in the safe house that could lead back to them, and the laptops and other electronics were encrypted and set up by Gavin Biery so that he could wipe their drives remotely if called on to do so.

Leaving a safe house behind without scouring it wasn’t optimal, but considering the fragmented news about an attack under way somewhere in the country, Chavez opted to pull the plug on his operation here and concentrate on exfiltrating the country while he still could.

The two men pulled over next to a grated storm drain a few blocks from the airport and disassembled the weapons they’d been given by the SSD. As Ding let go of the receiver of the MP5 and
listened to it splash below him, he said, “I wish we had time to go find Herkus Zarkus and give him these weapons. Couldn’t hurt to have a backup or two.”

Caruso tossed the pieces of his pistol in the water as well. “Realistically, the only thing we could do for him is knock him on the head and Shanghai him out of here.”

They left their motorcycle in the lot next to the airport terminal and headed in to the security desk, and here the stress on the faces of the armed officers made it plain they knew their nation had come under attack. Just like Chavez and Caruso, however, these men had no real information. They just assumed the invasion had begun far to the west at the Kaliningrad border, or else twenty-five miles away at the Belarusan border. Bad news, to be sure, but none of them suspected they were in imminent danger.

The Americans explained they had a jet waiting for them at the airport FBO and a call was made from the terminal, and soon the men were directed through a metal detector and sent on their way.

Caruso noted the envious look from the men, who obviously wished they could simply climb aboard a private jet and leave the country.

Once the two Americans stepped back outside for the walk from the terminal building to the Gulfstream parked on the tarmac two hundred yards away, however, the Campus operators were surprised by the sudden wail of an alarm. At first Caruso thought they’d gone out the wrong door and triggered it themselves, but after a few moments a voice came over the loudspeaker in Lithuanian. Neither man understood what was being said, but whatever the announcer was saying, he sounded a hell of a lot more agitated than he would if he was just letting everyone know a couple idiots had passed through the wrong door at a sleepy airport.

Dom and Ding picked up the pace for the Gulfstream, which was bathed under lights in the distance in front of the fixed-base operator.

They were still one hundred yards away when the men heard a single snap from a rifle, far to the south, beyond the end of the runway. Both men looked out past the lights of the tarmac and saw several more flashes of light and then, an instant later, the sound of gunfire made its way to them.

“What the hell?” Dom said. “That can’t be the Russians here already.”

“Who says it can’t?” Ding replied, and he broke into a run for the plane.

An explosion back at the terminal sounded to both men like the detonation of a forty-millimeter high-explosive grenade, and it was answered by staccato bursts and single snaps from automatic and semiautomatic weapons.

By the time the men were within fifty yards of their destination, they heard sustained gunfire from the northern end of the airfield as well.

Caruso said, “They’ve got the runway surrounded! Whichever way we taxi, we’re going to be taking fire!”

Ding looked through the cockpit window and saw Campus pilot Helen Reid at the controls, and as he ran around the front of the plane he saw copilot Chester “Country” Hicks standing at the doorway with an HK UMP submachine gun down by his leg. He was looking to the south, the location of the nearest gunfire.

Even though Country wasn’t trained in the security of the aircraft like the usual flight security officer for The Campus, Adara Sherman, he had been a Marine aviator, and he knew how to skillfully operate a number of different weapons.

The two Campus men raced up the stairs and past Country, who immediately began to close the hatch. Chavez ducked his head into the little cockpit of the Gulfstream luxury jet. “There is shooting at the terminal, and at both ends of the runway. What are you going to do?”

“Do they have SAMs?” Captain Reid asked.

“No idea.”

“RPGs?”

“Unknown. I just heard automatic small arms and forty-millimeter grenades.”

Chavez had to back out of the cockpit so Country could climb into the right seat, then he leaned back in. Reid was already applying power to the port engine to turn the aircraft to starboard. To her right, Country was belting in and scanning out all the windows, trying to decide on the best direction to go.

He said, “Most of the shooting is to the south right now. Looks like the Fourth of July over there. Once they get through the terminal, though, the middle of the runway will be under direct fire.”

Helen Reid said, “Then let’s not hang around. I’ll take the high-speed taxiway to the middle of the runway, stop, hit full power while on the brake. I’ll try a short takeoff to the north.”

Chavez said, “Will that get you high enough to avoid the shooting at the north end of the runway?”

She was already taxiing at a speed that forced Ding to hold on with both hands.

Captain Reid answered, “No. We won’t have any altitude by the time we hit the end of the runway.”

Country said, “We can go hard right.”

She nodded. “Hard right. As soon as the wheels leave the runway, we’re going to climb to the east.” She glanced at Chavez. “You and Dom better strap yourselves in.”

Chavez rushed back into the cabin and sat in the captain’s chair next to Caruso. Caruso was looking out the portal next to him. “What did they say?”

“They said the in-flight meal is going to be delayed.”

Dom laughed despite the tension. “No problem. I have a feeling I’m about to lose my appetite.”

•   •   •

T
he Gulfstream did not ask for takeoff clearance from Vilnius Tower, because Reid could plainly see the flashes of light from gunfire through the tower glass. There was a gunfight going on in there, and she’d never heard of well-armed air traffic controllers, so she assumed the tower would be in the hands of the Russians in mere moments. Instead, she applied the brake, pushed both engines up to full throttle, and waited for them to spool up to a scream.

She released the brakes, the sleek white aircraft lurched forward, and she drove it down the middle of the runway with her foot pedals. Chester “Country” Hicks read off her speed as she kept her eyes flitting between the centerline for reference and the flashes of light out of the dark at the end of the runway. The gunfire seemed to rush closer to her with each second as her aircraft raced toward a battle it could not avoid.

Reid normally kept a “sterile” cockpit on takeoff: no conversation, no talking at all other than what was necessary for the operation of the aircraft. But this was no ordinary takeoff. She said, “If we get hit, we need to know where we are going to put down to the south.”

Country said, “Ninety knots . . . ugh, if it’s bad enough we’ll just have to find a highway. If we can limp over to Poland, let’s do that. One hundred knots.”

Reid needed 120 knots to rotate, but in front of her a shower of sparks began to explode across the runway. “They’re shooting at us.”
She pushed down on her right pedal, taking her off the center line but racing her toward the right edge of the runway as the plane shot forward.

“One ten,” Country said, and then he added, “You’re running out of real estate.”

The sparks picked up all around. Reid had no idea why the Russian Army was shooting at her, but she assumed the assaulters had been ordered to prevent all aircraft from leaving the country.

When she could no longer see any of the right edge of the runway in front of the nose of her aircraft, she waited an instant more, then began to put back pressure on her yoke.

On her right, Country said his next sentence as if it were just one word: “onetwentyrotate.”

Reid pulled back harder, lifted the nose off the runway just feet before it rolled off the right edge and into the grass. The back tires left the hard surface even closer to the grass, but the plane was airborne now, just three hundred yards from the northern end of the runway.

As soon as they had any altitude at all, certainly they were no more than forty feet off the ground, Reid put her Gulfstream into a twenty-degree bank to the right.

Country said, “Gear up,” and he retracted the landing gear himself.

The twenty-degree turn became thirty, the thirty turned to forty, and soon they were heading off to the southeast.

Lines of glowing tracers raced by Reid’s left window.

•   •   •

O
ne minute later Dom Caruso appeared between the two pilots. “I’m going to buy you both a beer, but not till we get where we’re going.”

Hicks just laughed, doing his best to play cool. Helen Reid, on the other hand, was not cursed with the same sense of bravado as the former Marine and the intelligence operator. She said, “Gentlemen, how about we stow the macho swagger until we get out of Lithuanian airspace? For all we know, a couple of MiGs are hunting us down as we speak.”

Caruso said, “You’re right, but we’ll be in Poland airspace in a couple of minutes.”

She countered, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but a half-hour ago you had no idea Russia had attacked Lithuania. Do you know they haven’t attacked Poland?”

Chastened, Caruso turned to leave the cockpit.

Reid called after him. “We’ll be landing in Brussels in three hours. You guys should get some rest.”

Caruso looked back at her. “Brussels? Why are we going to Brussels?”

Country snapped his fingers. “In all the excitement I forgot to tell you. Give Gerry a call, he needs you boys in Belgium.”