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  ASSAULT BY FIRE

  ATYCE ASHER NOVEL

  H. RIPLEY RAWLINGS IV

  LT. COL., USMC (RET.)

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2020 H. Ripley Rawlings IV

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  PINNACLE BOOKS and the Pinnacle logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-0-7860-4706-2

  Electronic edition:

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4707-9 (e-book)

  ISBN-10: 0-7860-4707-0 (e-book)

  To my wife and children—

  Home Team: It’s time to taste some of that

  freedom we’ve defended all those years!

  —LIEUTENANT COLONEL DAD

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Inevitably, when someone sits to write a novel, they have people behind them, to their front and on the sides to thank. Unfortunately for me, I have a whole army (and perhaps a Marine Corps, Air Force, and Navy, too).

  Special thanks to: my wife and kids for enduring and encouraging me through the creative process; my mother, who is my second editor, bickering pal, and constant source of candy for the grandchildren; Mark Greaney, my mentor, confidant, and good friend; authors and friends Marc Cameron and Mike Maden, for listening to me drone on with ideas, then providing sage advice in return; the indomitable Gary Goldstein, my Kensington editor, who put up with a lot more than an editor should have to and never once lost his smile; the whole Rawlings and Felger families, for their patience and kindness; my spiritual allies, the Dastur/Haksars, Westbrooks, Cerritellis, Tellerias, Smiths, Pinions, Papases, and Burts; the queen pharmacist and her Elden Street Tea Shop; and many, many others who will remain nameless to protect their innocence in having anything to do with this novel.

  Se un infortunio deve essere fatto a un uomo, dovrebbe essere così severo che la sua vendetta non ha bisogno di essere temuta.

  (If an injury has to be done to a man, it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.)

  —NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI, The Prince

  PROLOGUE

  When Premier of the Soviet Union Joseph V. Stalin died in 1954, the Russian Executive Command finally received permission from the presidium to alter the grand Soviet national military strategy from one focusing on the defense of Rodina (Mother Russia) to something completely new—one that could be summed up by saying that a series of lightning offenses are the best defense in the modern, nuclear era. In these new war plans, a successful invasion of Europe was given as a foregone conclusion. Russia was completely confident they held the upper hand on the Continent.

  But the invasion of the continental United States, without the use of strategic nuclear arms, remained a vexing problem for Soviet military planners. Three major obstacles prevented the generals from supporting an invasion.

  The following pages are an excerpt from the original Soviet War plan.

  Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

  War Plan 90X-54 (Invasion of the United States)

  Combined Assault of America

  by Russian Ocean and Air Forces

  Para 18-01

  1. Invasion of the contiguous forty-eight United States by sea is determined by the leading Soviet naval planners in Leningrad to be impractical at this time. Achieving our doctrinal and desirable five to one troop ratio via undetected large transport ships and across the Atlantic/Pacific oceans is not feasible with current technology.

  2. Invasion of the United States is unlikely to be sustainable due to wanton and massive U.S. practice of private firearm ownership. The American Second Amendment means conflict within the continental United States will devolve rapidly and inevitably into a bloody house-to-house conflict. Insurgencies will consist chiefly of remnant military interspersed with willing, patriotic, and well-armed civilian insurgents—who will arise shortly after (or during) the planned Soviet “Assault Phases” and after our forces’ initial seizure of the U.S. coast(s).

  3. The U.S. policy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) means an invasion would be costly, as any surviving U.S. nuclear force command and control architecture will retaliate with strategic nuclear weapons.

  SOVIET MILITARY EXECUTIVE COMMAND CONCLUSIONS

  Para 18-02

  Any invasion of the U.S. will be cost prohibitive in both materials and personnel, and any estimates for victory in a land invasion of the continental United States offered to the Supreme Soviet in War Plan 90X-54 should remain marked as merely “feasible,” until the three listed factors can be removed or mitigated.

  Finally, it is the estimate of my entire staff that invasion should only be considered in the event of an existential threat against Mother Russia herself.

  Signed,

  Colonel General I. V. Magyv

  Soviet General Staff Headquarters

  Offensive War Plan 90X, April 1990 Revision

  CHAPTER 1

  Twelve years ago

  Fallujah, Iraq

  He was being dragged backward into a building by the scruff of his flak jacket. As his heels left marks in the sand and dirt, he dazedly stared up and admired the beautiful blue-grey smoke eddies in the air. The near-constant fighting had left a cloud of swirling gas from the guns. Still deafened b
y the explosion, Lieutenant Tyce Asher looked around, bewildered. His face and hands were singed and burning in agony, but he couldn’t remember why. He scrambled to his feet, wobbling and taking in his surroundings. His Marines had taken up positions at the windows. As things became clearer to Tyce, he could feel a thumping, a dull pounding against his face and chest, the bass of booms and pops reverberating through his body even in his still mostly silent world. Nearby, a machine gun was going full bore out a narrow window.

  Good! The men are letting them have it, he thought, somewhat proud of himself for making his first coherent thought through the haze in the room and the fog in his brain.

  Three grenades had been used to clear the room of militant fighters, and now the formal, antique-style office furniture was ripped and shredded. Charred and torn, the filing cabinets leaked Iraqi government paperwork out onto the floor. A painting of Saddam Hussein, sliced by shrapnel, hung off-kilter on the wall.

  Tyce was starting to remember the detonation that had torn up and through the bottom of his Marine Corps Humvee. Shards of searing-hot steel shrapnel had spiraled through the air, slicing and tearing everything in their path. The two Marines in the front seats were spared the hell of being chopped into a hundred pieces by the ricocheting metal: Both were vaporized, disappearing in the fireball that engulfed the Humvee.

  The shock wave from the underbelly IED had blown out all four doors, catapulting Marine Lieutenant Tyce Asher from the back seat and out of the vehicle. His heavy body-armor-clad frame was ejected and thrown in a somersault. He landed on his head with a sickening crunch.

  He had lain in a heap atop a twisted Humvee door. His brain pounded, displacing all rational thoughts. Sitting partially upright, he fixed his gaze on the vehicle he’d occupied only a moment before. Now flames roared out the top and sides of the contorted wreckage. It took a major effort, but with a shaky hand, he reached up to his head. His helmet was gone, splintered on impact with the concrete. Thankfully, it had done its job—breaking into pieces so his head didn’t.

  He’d sensed a shape next to him—Sergeant Dixon kneeling over him. Tyce could see the sergeant’s mouth moving, but no sound seemed to be coming out. There wasn’t even a ringing in Tyce’s ears, just dead silence. That and the feeling that every inch of his body had been beaten with a lead pipe.

  After a few seconds of screaming in his ear, the sergeant had given up and dragged him toward a nearby building by the handle built into the back of his flak jacket. Tyce’s legs kicked weakly at the baking-hot noonday pavement, his body automatically trying to assist even in his near-insensible state as he was manhandled across the street.

  Emerging from the memory, Tyce grabbed his platoon sergeant by the shoulder. He pointed at the building down the street, presumably the one from which the enemy had initiated the IED. Tyce motioned for him to assemble a squad and follow him. Deaf or not, the time had come to take the fight to the enemy. His platoon sergeant looked him up and down and seemed to be saying something, probably telling Tyce to go get checked out by one of the navy corpsmen. Tyce just shook his head and told him to hurry up. Or at least, Tyce hoped that was what it sounded like. He still couldn’t hear his own voice.

  Not long after, Tyce was leading the squad out into the acrid air, past the still-burning wreckage of his Humvee. He picked the middle of the group. A good place from which to lead—he could see everyone and contribute to some accurate fire, if need be. Tyce was an expert marksman with both his rifle and his service pistol.

  Youngish by most standards, but considerably older than most of his men, Tyce was twenty-six. Taller than average, about six-three, lean and with sandy blond hair. Marines used every tactic in the book to maintain order and discipline, but the most important of all was respect. And that could only be earned. Tyce had done pretty well in the eyes of the men over in these last months in practically nonstop combat. He never shied away from a firefight and never ordered his men to do something he wasn’t personally willing to do himself.

  When they reached the building, the men hoisted each other up through two blasted-out corner windows.

  Never clear a building through the front door. Tyce recited the maxim to himself, then thought, or any door, for that matter.

  He’d learned that in his first fifteen minutes of combat.

  Anyone who didn’t went home in a body bag.

  Once the men’s eyes adjusted to the gloom and smoke inside, Tyce pointed at each squad leader, directing them to start clearing the building from room to room. Rifles short stocked, up and at the ready. Grenadiers in the middle, machine gunners bringing up the rear. Adrenaline and blood pumping.

  Each squad received some quick instructions from their sergeants, then raced off to different parts of the building. Tyce dashed a note onto a scrap of paper for his radioman to transmit back to their company commander.

  As the squads passed by on their assignments, a few men gaped at him openly. A few minutes before, they had seen him blown clean out of his Humvee, and here he was, standing tall and issuing orders. Tyce waited next to his radio operator in the empty room, weapon at the ready and every muscle tensed and straining for any sign of action from the squads.

  Five blasts from upstairs. Even in his deafened state, Tyce felt the concussions.

  Corporal Clausen’s squad. He bounded up the stairs after his men, realizing as he did how foolish he was to do so without anyone to assist.

  No time, he thought, gotta attack. I’ll just have to rely on my other senses.

  Bullets and fragments of wall skittered by him as he ascended the stairs. When he got to the top, the smell of gunpowder was strong—and mixed with something else. He smelled the air. In his deafened state his other senses were already taking over.

  Cooking oil and cardamom? he thought.

  Dull, pumping sounds of adrenaline-fueled blood rushed through his ears.

  As he reached the top of the stairs, his heart sank. In a flash, he realized he’d sent his men into a trap. No one had survived. The small room was a bloody scene of death, booby-trapped. A veritable kill zone.

  Holy shit . . . my orders killed them, he thought.

  Two flashing shapes caught his eye. Two figures moving at the exact same moment. In a heart-bursting instant, he made a decision born of combat experience to target the one he assessed as more dangerous.

  He chose the terrorist at the door, balancing an AK-47 assault rifle against his hip and blazing away at full auto as he tossed a grenade into the room with his other hand. Directed by instinct, Tyce pulled the trigger twice. Accurate and controlled, both rounds met their marks. The man fell in a heap, motionless.

  The choice was a good one, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw another movement down by his feet. A wounded terrorist with a knife. Tyce swung his carbine around—too late. He felt a searing pain in his leg as the terrorist’s wicked blade cut deep into his calf. The wound and his body armor brought him crashing heavily to the floor. The fighter jumped on top of him, weighing him down, trying to drive the deadly knife into Tyce’s neck. Tyce blocked it and tried to reach for his own Marine Ka-Bar fighting knife.

  This was the wrong move. By shifting one hand, he was rewarded with a wicked downward slash across his face.

  He had reduced the threat from two to one, but now he was in a death struggle on a floor slick with blood, battlefield debris, and cooking oil. And somewhere in the smoke-filled room, a hand grenade ticked silently.

  Tyce had to do something—anything—or he was going to die. In one swift, calculated movement, he wrenched the wounded terrorist fully on top of him like a shield. It was the right move. The man kicked and clawed at Tyce, but it was too late. The grenade exploded in a huge blast. Shrapnel filled the air of the small room.

  Tyce went deaf again.

  Twelve years ago

  St. Petersburg, Russia

  Colonel Viktor Kolikoff paced up and down his large, new, oak-paneled office, lost in thought. He’d worked twenty-two years
to earn this place in the army headquarters building in Saint Petersburg. Twenty-two long, industrious years.

  The best years of my life, he thought, and he felt he’d earned this corner office, one with enormous floor-to-ceiling Empire-style picture-frame windows overlooking the Moyka River. It afforded him wondrous views of the Bolshoi Theatre and the Fabergé art museum.

  The building was once a grand palace of Tzar Nicholas II. Kolikoff had occasionally tried to guess what the office had been used for, just about a hundred years ago. It was his now, along with his vaunted new title, Chief of Staff of the Western Military District, and all the duties attendant to that position.

  As one of the Russian army’s quickest and brightest rising stars, Kolikoff had made full colonel in less than twenty years—a meteoric rise only achieved by less than one percent of all Russian officers. He was absolutely certain of himself, and certain that he was destined for greatness.

  That is, he had been . . . until just that moment.

  At a slight squeak of over-polished shoes behind him, Kolikoff tore his gaze from the beautiful views and equally ripped himself away from any remaining thought of grandeur.

  Everything had changed in the blink of an eye a few hours before. With just a few words, the general had placed him in charge of the worst assignment Kolikoff had ever heard of. Hell, worse than he could dream of. He couldn’t think of a more career-killing project if he tried.

  He pivoted sharply about and glared at the three lieutenants standing at attention, as if they were to blame for spoiling his grand dreams of climbing to the very top of the military ladder. “A fucking computer?!” he shouted.