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  Specialist Cross ran over to him. “Are you alright Sergeant Childers?” he asked, genuinely concerned despite his own shrapnel wound.

  Luke was holding his left arm as pain shot down it to his hand and fingers. He could feel some blood starting to ooze through his fingers. “Yeah, I’ll be all right. I think I just got clipped. Get the machine gun reloaded. We need to keep providing covering fire,” he replied as he pulled open a bandage from his tactical vest and began to wrap his wound. He didn’t dwell on the injury very long as he moved back to the machine gun just as soon as he could.

  With another 100-round belt attached, he began to lay down covering fire for the rest of the American soldiers still moving to the corner below them. While they were shooting away at the Russians, they could hear what sounded like a cacophony of machine gun fire echoing from the various cross streets. It was pure chaos as they saw green and red tracer fire zig zagging back and forth between the various groups of soldiers. Above the din, Childers could also hear the roar of a lot of vehicles starting their engines, and the unmistakable sound of tank treads as they rumbled down the city streets. As Childers was keeping a group of Russian soldiers pinned down, he suddenly saw a tank rumbling in their direction. When the turret began to turn towards them, he knew they had seconds to vacate the area before that 125mm gun fired.

  Childers got up and grabbed Specialist Cross by his individual body armor (IBA) and yelled at him, “Run back into the building!”

  They had made it a couple of feet into the living room when the balcony exploded from the high explosive round the tank had just fired. As Luke was moving through the living room, he felt the sudden pressure change in the air around him, then the immense heat from the explosion. His body was thrown to the floor by the concussion of the blast. Specialist Cross was just slightly in front of him, so Luke had absorbed most of the blast preventing him from being too seriously injured.

  As Childers laid there on the floor, he fought to keep his mind from drifting off into la la land and the blackness that was beckoning him. He felt a sharp burning pain in his legs and lower back, though he could still feel his toes and wiggle them. “That’s a good sign,” he thought to himself.

  Specialist Cross got up and moved to Childers. He began to apply a couple of bandages to his legs and tried to help him up. “We need to get you out of here, Sarge. You’re hit pretty bad,” he said in an anxious and shaken voice.

  “Agreed. Let’s try and move down the stairs over there and get to the ground floor. The rest of the platoon should be here by now,” Luke replied through gritted teeth. As they made their way to the ground floor, several American soldiers entered the house and began to move to several of the windows. They were on their way to set up a couple of machine guns.

  “Hey, we need a medic over here!” Cross yelled to the soldiers who had just entered the room.

  When the men turned and saw that the injured soldier was Sergeant Childers, they instantly yelled out for the platoon’s only medic to come help them. A minute later, the medic came in with several other soldiers, many of them wounded. They immediately began to place the wounded on the chairs and couches, turning the first floor of the building into a makeshift aid station.

  Lieutenant Taylor walked into the room, carrying another wounded soldier. He saw Childers and came over to him. “How bad are you hurt, Luke?” he asked as he surveyed his comrade in concern.

  “I think they got my legs and my left shoulder pretty good. How is the rest of the attack going? Are we breaking out of the city yet?” Luke asked, hoping all of their efforts were not in vain as he continued to fight to stay conscious.

  “It’s starting to look like it’s going to work,” Taylor answered. “I saw a couple of the German tanks just a couple of blocks away. I think we are going to bust out of this hole, so you just hang in there. We’ll get help and hopefully a medivac for the wounded once we are able to place some distance between the city and the Russian lines.”

  *******

  The fighting was fierce and hard, often devolving into hand-to-hand hostilities and close-quarter combat. The mixed NATO units fought like men possessed along this part of the Russian line; within the first thirty minutes of heavy fighting, the German tank unit that was leading the charge broke through the Russian positions, which were quickly followed by a battalion of tanks from the 1st Armored Division. Next came dozens of Strykers and other armored vehicles and trucks. When a group of transport vehicles drove towards Lt. Taylor’s position, they stopped and loaded their wounded into the truck, along with the rest of their platoon and company.

  The fighting lasted through most of the night and into the early hours of the morning as the NATO Forces opened a fairly wide hole in the Russian lines. The Ukrainian units that were trapped with NATO were fighting with everything in them to try and roll up the Russian positions, giving the rest of NATO more time to get their soldiers out of the city. The NATO tank units were doing their best to support the Ukrainians and give their forces as much time as possible to get out as well.

  Just prior to the breakout, General Fenzol had contacted Lieutenant General (LTG) Isaac Zotti, the Commander of Three Corps and the NATO Ground Commander near Novohrad-Volynskyi. He had informed LTG Zotti of their plan to break out of the city and requested as much air support as he could possibly get. In response, the NATO Ground Commander told General Fenzol that if he could get his force to the city of Kmytiv, roughly 110 kilometers west of Kiev, they would try to get him additional reinforcements, supplies and medivacs.

  While NATO and Russian aircraft battled over the skies of Kiev and the surrounding area, roughly 80 Blackhawks, Chinooks, and British Puma helicopters began to head towards the city of Kmytiv and the city of Zhytomyr. Once the area had been secured, the Air Force would send in a few dozen C-130 cargo aircraft to drop in fuel, munitions, and other supplies Fenzol had requested. General Zotti was under no illusions; he realized that this was purely a rescue effort, not an attempt to grab and hold this city from the Russians. He estimated the Russians would launch a massive counterattack against Kiev and try to encircle General Fenzol’s meager force once again. They needed to get munitions and fuel to his force ASAP and hope they could keep on the move long enough to get back to the NATO lines.

  ******

  22,000 feet above Zhytomyr, Ukraine

  Major Dale Young (call sign “Honey Badger”) was cruising along at 650 knots with his wingman, Captain Jorge Montoya (call sign “Iceman”) looking for targets. Below them were 80+ NATO helicopters and close to 30 C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft, all vigorously carrying out a daring rescue operation. The past several hours had been absolute chaos as their fighter squadron scrambled to get airborne and support this last-minute operation.

  “I have no idea who drew this operation up, but it’s clear that it’s being done by the seat of their pants,” Major Young lamented to himself.

  Their Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) support aircraft buzzed through on the satellite link. “Raptor 66, this is Looking Glass. We are tracking 10 MiGs heading towards your location from Rostov-on-Don. Their altitude is roughly 100 meters, moving at 680 knots. How copy, over?”

  “This is Raptor 66. We copy. Send the targeting data. We are going to descend to 5,000 feet and will engage the MiGs shortly,” Major Young said calmly as he led his wingman down through the cloud cover on their attack. They were three minutes away from being within weapons’ range, and they needed to lose a lot of altitude if they were going to get in position.

  Young and his wingman descended quickly, lining up for their attack. They needed to intercept these MiGs before they got in range of the helicopter force. Above Raptor 66, another flight of four F-15s was swooping in to help support them. It was a risky move for the U.S. to vector in those F-15s; NATO had already lost 29 aircraft from Russian surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) in the area. Unfortunately, the F-16s performing the Wild Weasel missions had been getting hammered hard trying to suppress the SAMs.
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  “Iceman, I only have three missiles left,” Major Young explained to his wingman. “I want you to fire your remaining missiles at the same time that I do. Then we’ll head back to base, rearm, and get back on station again. How copy?”

  “Copy that, Honey Badger. Between my four missiles, and your three, we’ll hopefully scare these guys off from their attack,” Captain Montoya replied.

  “I wish the rest of our squadron hadn’t gotten re-routed to head to Kiev,” Major Young thought. “If only these Russian Su-25 ground attack aircraft hadn’t started mauling the Ukrainian armored vehicles along the E-40 highway.”

  As they descended to 5,000 feet, their AWACs sent them the targeting data they needed for their missiles. Major Young had missile lock with all three missiles, and quickly depressed the firing button three separate times. In rapid succession, each missile dropped from his internal missile bay and began to streak towards the incoming MiGs. Major Young and his wingman banked hard to their left and headed in the direction of Kiev.

  They watched briefly as their missiles shot across the sky towards the Russian MiGs. Once the enemy aircraft detected the missiles, they began to take evasive maneuvers, trying their best to survive. Four of their seven missiles struck the MiGs dead on, exploding the aircraft in glorious balls of fire. Three of the missiles exploded without connecting to their targets; the evasive maneuvers had been successful for a few of the Russian aircraft. Now it was up to the F-15s to finish off the remaining six MiGs.

  As they leveled out over the E-40 highway, their radar display began to show a series of SAMs firing at the F-15s. Major Young watched in horror as he counted twelve missiles from at least two SA-21 missile batteries streaking across the sky to destroy the F-15s that had been sent to help them.

  “My God, I wish I had known there was an SA-21 in the area,” Major Young lamented to himself. “My F-22 is largely invisible to radar though, so it’s not like we’ve been shot at or painted by the SAMs…I would have warned them! Ugh, the Russian SA-21s have been wreaking havoc on our ability to secure air supremacy over Ukraine since the start of this war…”

  Breaking his train of thought, his wingman’s voice came over the radio. “Where are we going, Honey Badger? The base is in the other direction,” his wingman said jokingly.

  “I know, I just want to head up the E-40 for a little bit and see if we can spot the convoy we are providing air support for,” he replied to his wingman’s question.

  As they flew along the highway, they eventually spotted the ragtag group that had busted their way out of Kiev. The convoy stretched for miles as nearly any vehicle that could drive and carry soldiers was on the road. It was a mix of military vehicles, busses, taxis and civilian vehicles. Towards the end of the convoy, they saw dozens upon dozens of pyres of black smoke rising into the sky. It looked like the images he had seen as a child of the so-called “Highway of Death” in Kuwait.

  During the Persian Gulf War in 1991, the US Air Force had caught a couple of Iraqi divisions fleeing Kuwait to Iraq, and had wasted no time in sending nearly everything they could to wipe them out. After the attack, the highway had been renamed “The Highway of Death” for all the burned-out vehicles and charred bodies strewn across the road. It was a gruesome sight. It looked like the Russians had delivered their own version on the E-40.

  “Geez--I wonder how many people we lost during this air raid?” Major Young wondered. “I wish we would have been able to prevent this.”

  Helpless, Honey Badger turned his aircraft around and began to head towards home. He began to add altitude, bringing their aircraft up to roughly 20,000 feet, their optimal cruising altitude, they steadily made their way back to the NATO airbase in western Poland they were now flying out of.

  *******

  Luke had been utterly exhausted when they loaded him into the back of a truck after he had been wounded. Even though he heard the near-constant sound of gunfire, tanks, explosions, helicopters, aircraft, and the occasional bullet hitting their vehicle as they drove out of the city and onto the E-40 highway, he soon fell asleep.

  The medics yelled at him, “You need to stay awake!”

  “Well, you shouldn’t have given me a shot of morphine then,” Luke grumbled in a sleepy haze, and then he went right back to the world of dreams.

  When he woke up next, he felt comfortable and strangely clean. As he slowly opened his eyes, he saw white ceiling tiles above him and a light shining overhead. As he regained more of his senses, he realized his head was resting against a pillow and he had a blanket over him. He raised his right arm to rub his eyes. He felt some stitches on his left cheek, and saw an IV in his right wrist.

  “I must be in a hospital,” he realized, “but where, and what day is it?”

  Just then, a nurse walked over to the side of his bed. “Ah. Hello Master Sergeant Childers. Glad to see you are awake. I’ll go get the doctor,” she said kindly, and then darted off before he had a chance to ask her anything.

  A few minutes later a clinician walked into his room and came over to his bed. “Good afternoon Master Sergeant. It’s good to see you up. You had been unconscious for a while,” the doctor said, reading from his medical chart as he spoke.

  Luke could see he was a military doctor, and an American, which meant they had broken out of the Russian lines and made it back to safety, or at least he had somehow. “How long have I been out? What about the others in my unit?” he blurted out impatiently.

  The doctor held up a hand to tell Childers to slow down. “I know you have a lot of questions, and I will do my best to pass along what little information I know. You were brought to Germany two days ago, along with several hundred additional soldiers who escaped from Kiev. I cannot tell you anything about your unit, or who else made it out. I only know that many hundreds of wounded soldiers were evacuated.”

  Luke processed that information for a moment before shooting out his next question. “How bad am I hurt, and how soon can I get back to my unit?”

  The doctor smiled at the spunk of the man in front of him. “The good news is you are not in that bad of shape. You needed a few stitches on your left cheek and left arm from what appeared to be a shrapnel wound. You had several pieces of shrapnel in both of your legs that we took out, and a bad contusion on your lower back. You are going to be sore and will need some time to recoup, but with a little bit of physical therapy you should be able to return back to duty within a month, maybe two, pending nothing gets infected.”

  Childers let out a sigh of relief.

  Just as the doctor was about to leave, he turned around and said one more thing. “By the way, congratulations on your promotion, Master Sergeant. I was told you had been in constant contact with the enemy the last month and a half, but the promotion came through nearly a month ago.” The doctor shook his hand and then left to go see the next patient on his rounds.

  Luke laid there for a minute, just thinking. Another voice interrupted his thoughts, and then he suddenly realized that there were two other soldiers that were patients in the same room with him. He hadn’t even noticed them up to this point.

  He overheard one telling the other, “Hey, I just read in this newspaper that the nurse gave me that a lot of NATO units that had been trapped in Kiev broke out and made it back to the NATO lines.” The two soldiers chatted with each other about it, speaking as if some sort of miracle had occurred.

  Luke felt better, knowing that a lot of his unit had probably made it out. Filled with a renewed sense of peace, he closed his eyes. Almost instantaneously, he fell asleep. He did have six weeks of sleep deprivation to catch up on, after all.

  *******

  Note: The following chapter begins about 18 months before the start of hostilities in Ukraine, and the timeline continues forward from that point.

  *******

  Election Meddling

  Moscow, Russia

  Hotel Savoy

  It was a beautiful day in Moscow. The sun had finally broken through the
clouds and the summer flowers were in full bloom. Zhang Dejiang made a mental note to find time to take a short walk outside to enjoy the sun on his face, even if just for a few minutes before he boarded his plane back to Beijing. He finished tucking his shirt into his pants, looked down and slipped on his black dress shoes, freshly polished for that day’s meeting.

  This was the last day of a three-day trip to Moscow to discuss a wide range of security issues, to include the American general election. This afternoon, however, was reserved to specifically discuss the final details for the post-American election world and what it would look like. More importantly, they were to strategize how Russia and China were going to assert their national wills on a greatly weakened America.

  As he finished getting dressed, he motioned for his secretary, a beautiful young woman who had accompanied him on this long trip from home, to make sure he had his tie on straight. She made sure he looked polished, which was one of her primary duties. He gave her a quick nod of acknowledgement, which was the highest form of praise she received from him.

  “Make sure my belongings and gifts are brought to my aircraft while I head off to my final meeting,” he directed.

  “Yes, Sir,” she replied.

  Zhang walked through the elegantly decorated lobby of the hotel and stopped for just a minute to marvel at the intricate crown molding and designs on the walls and ceiling. He really enjoyed staying at this particular hotel when he traveled to Moscow. “One of these days, I’ll bring my wife here,” he thought.