Command Authority Read online

  There. Heads popped up out of the mud, then disappeared again. “I see them. Small-arms position. Don’t waste a one-twenty-five. We’ll clean them up with the coax when we get closer.”

  “Roger.”

  Another salvo was fired into the buildings on a low hill beyond the intersection, and Lapranov scanned through his optics. The town was deathly quiet; there was virtually no resistance.

  “Keep firing,” he ordered, then he knelt back down into his commander’s station to get a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “Wipe this place off the map.”

  Seconds later, another transmission came through his headset: “Storm Zero Two to Storm Zero One.”

  “Go,” Lapranov said as he lit his smoke.

  “Movement to the south of the hospital. I . . . I think it is a vehicle.”

  Lapranov dropped his lighter back inside and looked through his binoculars. It took a moment to find the area; the hospital was a few kilometers beyond the high school, on a small hill. But he scanned to the south of the building and finally he saw the movement on the road in the shadows.

  At first he thought he was looking at a jeep, or maybe an SUV.

  Another T-90 called in. “Storm Three to Storm One. I think it’s a helicopter.”

  “Nyet,” said Lapranov, but he looked closer. The dark vehicle seemed to stop at an intersection, then began moving laterally into a parking lot.

  “What the fuck?” Lapranov said. “Maybe it is a helo. Gunner, can you ID it through your Catherine?” The Catherine long-range fire-control thermal imager built into each tank allowed the gunner to see distant targets on a video screen. Lapranov himself had access to a Catherine screen, but he’d have to sit down inside the turret for that, and he was having too much fun up here.

  The gunner came over Storm Zero One’s intercom. “Confirmed light helicopter. Single rotor. Can’t make out markings—he is behind a truck in the shade. Shit, he is low. His skids must be just a meter aboveground.”

  “Armament?” Lapranov asked. He squinted into his binoculars to get a better view himself.

  “Um . . . wait. He has twin pylons with machine guns. No missiles.” The gunner chuckled. “This guy wants to come out and play against us with his pop guns?”

  Lapranov heard a commander of one of the other tanks on the net laughing.

  But the captain did not laugh. He took a long drag on his cigarette. “Designate it as a target.”

  “Roger. Designated as a target.”

  “Range to target?”

  “Four thousand two hundred fifty meters.”

  “Shit,” Lapranov said.

  The effective range of the 9M119 Refleks missile system, used against tanks as well as low and slow aircraft like helicopters, was four thousand meters. This small helo hovered just out of range.

  “Where is my air support? They should have seen this fucker on radar.”

  “They won’t see his signature. He’s moving between the buildings. Too low to the ground. He must have flown over the hill through the entire town like that to stay off radar. Whatever the hell he’s doing, he’s a good pilot.”

  “Well, I don’t like him. I want him dead. Call in some support. Pass on his coordinates.”

  “Da, Captain.”

  “All Storm units, load HE-FRAG and resume the attack.”

  “Da!”

  Within seconds, all six tanks fired 125-millimeter main gun rounds into the buildings at the center of Põlva, killing four and injuring nineteen with this single salvo.

  3

  Edgar Nõlvak heard the shells tear through the sky overhead, and he looked back over his shoulder in time to see them impact against the city hall and the bus station. When the smoke cleared, he noticed a vehicle moving along a road, higher on the hillside. At first he thought it was a black or green SUV; it even seemed to stop in a parking lot. It was difficult to see because it was shaded by the big hospital building next to it, but eventually Edgar realized what it was.

  It was a black helicopter. Its skids were no more than one or two meters above the ground.

  The man lying next to him in the mud grabbed Edgar by the arm. He pointed at the helicopter and shouted hysterically. “They are behind us! They are attacking from the west!”

  Edgar stared at the helicopter, unsure. Finally he said, “It’s not Russian. I think it is a news helicopter.”

  “They are filming this? They are just going to watch us die?”

  Edgar looked back to the tanks as another shell came crashing down, hitting just sixty meters from the ditch where he lay. Mud rained down on him and the others. “They are going to die themselves if they don’t get the hell out of here.”

  —

  Lapranov was enjoying his cigarette. As he took a long drag, a transmission came through on the net. “Storm Zero Four to Storm Zero One.”

  “Go, Four.”

  “Sir, looking at that helo again on the Catherine . . . there seems to be some sort of a pod above the main rotor.”

  “A what?”

  “A pod, sir.”

  Upon hearing the last transmission, Lapranov dropped down into the commander’s compartment and looked at his own Catherine long-range monitor. He could see the helo better now. Yes. There was a round device on top of the main rotor shaft of the little aircraft.

  “What the hell is—”

  The cigarette fell from his mouth.

  Oh, shit.

  Lapranov had studied the silhouette of every aircraft flown by every NATO force. Softly, he said, “That’s . . . that’s an OH-58.”

  The driver in Storm Zero One came over the net. “Negative, sir. The Estonians don’t have—”

  Lapranov shouted into his mike now as he launched upward, frantically grabbing at the hatch handle so he could pull his turret hatch shut. “It’s the fucking Americans!”

  —

  Chief Warrant Officer Two, Eric Conway, U.S. Army, Bravo Troop, 2nd Squad, 17th Cavalry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, glanced down at his multifunction display and looked at the thermal image of Russian tanks in the trees more than two miles away. Then he returned his attention to his blades above. The tips of the four main rotor blades of the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior spun perilously close to the walls of buildings on either side of the street. If he did not hold his cyclic perfectly steady he would strike one of the buildings and send his helo spinning and crashing, and his own poor flying would kill him and his copilot even before the Russian tanks got their chance.

  Satisfied he was steady, he blew out a long breath to calm himself, then spoke through his intercom. “You ready, dude?”

  His copilot, CW2 Andre Page, replied calmly, “’Bout as ready as I’m gonna get.”

  Conway nodded, then said, “Lase target.”

  “Roger. Spot on.”

  Quickly Conway keyed his mike to broadcast on the fires net. “Blue Max Six Six, Black Wolf Two Six. Target lased.”

  —

  Four full miles beyond the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior, hidden behind the relative safety of a forested hill, two massive Apache Longbow attack helicopters hovered low over a pasture just north of the village of Aarna. The flight leader, Blue Max Six Six, received the transmission from the scout helo at the same time his copilot/gunner, seated in front of and below him, saw the laser spot tracker on his multifunction display indicating a laser fix on the first target, several miles away.

  “Roger, Black Wolf Two Six. Good laser. Stand by for remote Hellfire mission.”

  —

  The Kiowa Warrior scout helo hovering over the town of Põlva was not heavily armed. But its power was not in its onboard stores; rather, its power came from its ability to find and fix targets for the big Apache gunships behind it. This was VCAS, very close air support, and CW2 Conway and his copilot had taxed their skills to the limit by, essentially, driving their helo through the village to stay off enemy radar so they could get into position to scout for the Apaches.

  “Roger, Blue Max Six Six. We’re go
nna need to hurry this up. We are out in the open.”

  —

  In the tree line, the commander of the tank on the northern flank of Lapranov’s squadron shouted into his microphone: “Storm Zero One, this is Storm Zero Six. Laser warning!”

  “Shit!” Lapranov muttered into his headset. The little helicopter in the distance may not have been armed with missiles of its own, but it was, apparently, designating targets for some unseen aircraft.

  “Arena systems on!” he commanded.

  The T-90’s Arena countermeasure system used Doppler radar to detect an inbound threat to the tank. As soon as the attacking projectile was within range, the Arena-equipped tank would fire a defensive rocket designed to close to within two meters of the missile before exploding, destroying the threat.

  Lapranov next said, “This helo is spotting for Apaches or jets. Where is my air cover?”

  The commander of Storm Zero Five answered back: “Inbound in ten minutes.”

  Lapranov slammed his fist into the wall of his commander’s console. “All tankers, load Refleks.”

  The 9M119 Refleks guided missile round was designed to fire from the main gun, then “grow” fins and race toward its target. It would take the six gunners upward of thirty seconds to unload the high-explosive shell already chambered in the main gun and then have the autoloader replace it with a Refleks.

  Storm Zero Two said, “Target is beyond effective range, sir.”

  Lapranov shouted, “Just do it, damn you!” He hoped like hell firing all six missiles at the little Kiowa Warrior on the hill would force the American chopper to break its laser targeting sequence long enough for the Storm tanks to get back into the cover of the forest.

  —

  Four miles due west, hovering north of the village of Aarna, the two Apache Longbows each carried eight Hellfire missiles. On command from the flight lead, both gunners launched. As the Hellfires flashed through the blue sky toward an unseen target in the east, the Apache lead transmitted to the scout helo in Põlva.

  “Be advised, Black Wolf Two Six. Multiple Hellfires off the rails and inbound, target Alpha.”

  —

  In Storm Zero One, Captain Arkady Lapranov saw the streaking blip on his Catherine. He knew it was heading to Zero Six, as that was the tank whose laser indicator alarm had sounded.

  The first Hellfire missile appeared above the hill as a tiny quivering spark of light. On the backdrop of blue sky, there was no perspective to show it was approaching for several seconds, but then it angled down toward the tree line.

  Storm Zero Six’s automatic Arena system saw the incoming Hellfire missile, and it launched a rocket to defend itself from it. Fifty meters from impacting the tank, the Hellfire exploded, sending metallic shrapnel all through the trees.

  The Arena worked once, but the second inbound Hellfire came too quickly behind, before the Arena could reset and reacquire the new target. The missile slammed into Storm Zero Six’s turret before the system could launch another defensive rocket.

  Lapranov was inside the commander’s station of his tank with his hatch closed, and Zero Six was one hundred twenty meters to the north of him, but still the explosion sent pieces of metal pinging off the hull of his tank.

  A second tank, Storm Zero Two, fired two Arena defensive rounds a moment later, and it managed to survive two inbound Hellfires. As the second missile was destroyed in front of Zero Two, Storm Zero Five announced it was now being painted by a laser beam.

  Zero Five disintegrated a moment later.

  Lapranov gave up on the Refleks missiles; the four remaining tanks’ autoloaders were still in the process of selecting the right projectile from the magazine.

  Lapranov shouted, “Fire smoke and disengage!” to all Storm units, and then in his own intercom, “Driver, get us out of here! Back! Back! Back!”

  “Da, Captain!”

  —

  In the Kiowa Warrior hovering four feet above the ground in Põlva, Eric Conway and Andre Page watched while the four remaining tanks began pulling back away from the town, trying to get into the cover of the trees. A dozen huge bursts of white smoke all around them shrouded them in a puffy cloud.

  Page said, “They’re popping smoke and bugging out.”

  Conway spoke calmly into his mike: “Change polarity.”

  “Roger,” answered Page, and he switched his thermal imaging system from white hot to black hot.

  On the screen in front of them, the four tanks hiding in the wide cloud suddenly appeared as plain as day.

  In Conway’s headset he heard, “Black Wolf Two Six, be advised, two more missiles away.”

  “Keep sending ’em,” Conway said.

  While Page pointed his laser on the fourth tank from his left, Conway moved his attention back to his rotor blades. He’d come left a little; the tips were only six feet from impacting the second floor of the hospital. He checked the right side quickly, saw he had a little more clearance over there, so he smoothly rocked the cyclic to his right and recentered his helicopter in the parking lot.

  In the trees one of the T-90s’ countermeasure systems fired, and small explosions flashed on the TIS image. They were nothing, however, compared with the massive detonation of the fifty-ton tank that happened a second later when the trailing Hellfire slammed into its turret from above.

  “Good hit, Blue Max. Target destroyed. New target lased.”

  “Roger, Black Wolf Two Six. Firing . . . missiles off the rails and inbound.”

  —

  Lapranov’s Storm Zero One was twenty-five meters back in the trees when the tank’s laser warning indicator sounded. He screamed for the driver to get them deeper in the woods, and the T-90 shredded a path through the pines as it tried to retreat.

  Moments later, Zero One’s own automatic countermeasure system fired. The captain could do nothing but grab on to the handholds above him and shut his eyes.

  The moment of panic and sheer terror experienced by Arkady Lapranov did not translate to any empathy for the men and women in the homes he had blown apart throughout the morning. He cowered in his commander’s control center and hoped like hell the Arena would save him.

  His countermeasures saved him twice, but a third missile broke through, slammed into the Kontakt-5 explosive-reactive armor, triggering a detonation on the skin designed to blunt the incoming round’s power, but the Hellfire tore into the steel of the fifty-ton tank like a bullet through flesh. The three men inside died microseconds after the Hellfire warhead’s detonation, the turret of the T-90 fired one hundred fifty feet straight up, and the vehicle itself was knocked back like a plastic toy slammed on a concrete driveway. It exploded, pieces of armor ripped through the forest, and secondary explosives sent flames and black smoke billowing into the cold sky.

  —

  A minute later CW2 Eric Conway transmitted his battle damage assessment over the fires net. “Blue Max Six Six, Black Wolf Two Six. Good hit. I see no further targets.”

  From behind him, the Apache Longbow lead said, “Roger, we are RTB.”

  Conway held his gloved fist high, and Page bumped it with his own fist, and then Black Wolf Two Six banked to the north and began both climbing and rotating at the same time. It picked up horizontal speed and shot over the four-story hospital on its way back to base.

  —

  In the ditch a kilometer or so to the east, Edgar Nõlvak had risen to a sitting position so he could get a better look at the six smoldering tanks in the tree line.

  There was no cheering or celebration in the mud. The men here only half understood what had just happened, and they had no way of knowing if the next wave of Russian war machines was even now rolling through the forest. Still, they took advantage of the end of the attack. Some ran to their cars to bring them closer, while others dragged the injured out of the ditch and toward the parking lot so they could be transported to the hospital in the civilian vehicles.

  Rough, unsure hands grabbed Edgar Nõlvak and pulled him along.
He slid through the mud, wincing with the pain in his legs that was only now becoming apparent, and he said a silent prayer for his village, for his country, and for the world, because he had the feeling he was witness today to the beginning of something very bad.

  —

  The battle of Põlva was recorded as the first engagement between NATO and Russia, but by late afternoon a dozen such incidents had taken place throughout eastern Estonia.

  Russia’s war plan had hinged on NATO remaining unwilling or unable to support its member state. Russia’s gamble had failed, and it withdrew from Estonia the next day, claiming the entire exercise as a success: The country’s only intention had been to root out terrorists in some villages along the border, and this had been achieved.

  Everyone in the West knew, however, that Russia had wanted to drive all the way to Tallinn, and its failure to do so was nothing less than a total defeat for Valeri Volodin. It was clear to all, probably even to Volodin himself, that he had underestimated the resolve of NATO in general, and the USA in particular.

  But while the celebrations in the West erupted with the Russian withdrawal, officials in the Kremlin were already moving on past this setback and working on a new plan to move its power to the West.

  And this plan would be sure to take into account the danger posed by the United States.

  4

  Two attractive twenty-somethings sat at a table in the center of the pub. This was like most Wednesday nights for Emily and Yalda; they drank their ales and they complained about their jobs at the Bank of England. It was nearly eleven p.m., and the bulk of the after-work crowd was long gone, but the two women always worked late on Wednesdays, putting together reports that were both tedious and stressful. To reward themselves for their efforts, they had developed the habit of popping in here at the Counting House pub for dinner, drinks, and gossip, before heading to the Tube and their flats in the East End.

  They’d been keeping up this ritual for a year, and by now they knew all the regulars at the Counting House, if not by name, at least by sight.