Night of the Hawk, page 58
part #4 of Patrick McLanahan Series
“Get away from that desk, I said.” He stepped away a single step, moving toward her. “Left hand, fingers only, remove your gun from the holster and throw it over here.”
“Really, Sharon …”
“Now!” she ordered.
He shrugged his shoulders, reached down with his left hand, withdrew the gun from his holster, and tossed it to her feet. She stooped down and stuck it in her coat pocket. Greenfield then motioned to the other side of the room with her gun. “Move over there.” He circled away a few pacer, but he was still the same distance to her. “You’re getting lax, Boris,” Sharon said, going over to the waste can, kicking it, and stomping on the burning papers. “Former KGB honcho like yourself, getting caught by a tail like me. You were much slicker, more careful in the old days, Boris. But thank God you’ve gotten lazier. Makes my job a lot easier.”
Dvornikov ignored the jab. “Sharon, you’re really making a mess of the new carpeting …”
“Shut up, Boris.” She checked Gabovich. The two bullet holes in his chest were hardly bleeding—he was very dead. His gun was still in his holster; she left it there. “Why did you kill Gabovich, Boris? If what our reports say is true, he might have sold nuclear warheads to Voshchanka in exchange for clemency after the invasion of Lithuania was completed. He might have known where the warheads are…
“He knew nothing. He was crazy. He reached for his gun, and I shot him.”
“How can you be so sure? Did he say anything to you?”
“Nothing.”
Greenfield frowned at Dvornikov, not sure whether to believe him or not, then motioned to the bullet holes in Gabovich’s chest. “Pretty good group, Boris. Did you ever think about putting that group in his shoulder or leg so we could question him?”
“Is that what you will do to me, Sharon? Will you just wound me or will you shoot to kill?”
She bent down to examine the burnt papers. The top papers were charred, but the bottom ones were still mostly intact. “Neither, if you behave.” Her Russian reading skills were poor, but she soon recognized what the papers said. “Boris, these papers… they show the location of Voshchanka’s missiles. Why were you—”
Dvornikov moved with the speed of a cheetah.
He kicked Greenfield’s gun hand, sending the gun flying. One more step, driving with his legs and hips, and he punched at her face with an expert karate blow. She cried out and went cartwheeling over. He was on top of her, pinning her arms to her sides with his legs. He slapped her across the face once, twice, and finally felt the fight go out of her body.
“You have no idea, bitch, how long I’ve waited to do this,” Dvornikov gasped. There was no hint of the civil, refined, sophisticated man-about-town anymore—now he was a shaking, wild-eyed attacker.
It was a side of Dvornikov Sharon had always feared but never actually seen. The times they had met on business over the years in Moscow had always included heavy-handed sexual inferences from Dvornikov, inferences Sharon had just as heavy-handedly rejected. Knowing his sadistic reputation both in his professional and personal life, she had always worried that he would someday pounce …
He pulled her coat open, then ripped her blouse apart, revealing her breasts. “Oh, yes, lovely Sharon. I knew you’d be this beautiful …”
She tried hard to concentrate, to distract him, refocus him, all the while squirming beneath him, not giving in. She had kept tabs on him since Moscow, tailed him all the way to damned Latvia, and she was sure as hell not going to let him blow her mission for a quick and unwelcome fuck.
“Why were you helping Gabovich?”
“Because I realized he was right,” Dvornikov said. He groaned in ecstasy, trying to undo his pants. “Voshchanka is going to destroy Vilnius and Minsk. When he launches those missiles, the world will change—again—back to the way it was before all this reform and glasnost and openness and capitalism that has been creating so much confusion and disorganization in my country all these years. Russia will retake the republics and reassert its dominance over Europe once again—and I intend to be part of it. All I have to do is make sure no one finds out about the missiles. When I return to Moscow, I’ll be the chief of the KGB.”
He fondled her left breast, twirling the nipple between his thumb and forefinger. His grasp suddenly tightened, and she caught her breath as his fingers tightened. Dvornikov’s eyes narrowed, and his lips twisted into an evil leer. “You want a little pain, dear Sharon?”
There were three short, muted puffs! of sound, but the ex-KGB officer’s body jerked as if it had been hit by three consecutive hammer blows. Dvornikov’s right rib cage exploded in a cloud of gore and bright crimson, and his eyes grew wide in shock. He looked down at his side, saw bone and pieces of his right lung hanging out of his body, then turned to Greenfield. “Sharon, my love,” he croaked, blood flowing from his dying lips, “what did you do?” His eyes rolled up in his head and he slumped over.
She stayed on her back for several long moments, the smoking gun in her right hand, listening to his heavy, gurgling breathing. She did not move until the gurgling stopped. Dvornikov had forgotten about the gun that she had put in her coat pocket—his gun.
The sadistic bastard was finally dead.
When she felt strong enough to move, she crawled back to the desk and the pile of half-burnt papers lying on the floor. From what she could tell, these were Gabovich’s notes on the sale of three nuclear warheads to General Lieutenant Voshchanka of the Byelorussian Army and surveillance records on the location and technical-system setup for the SS-21s on which they were to be carried.
Sharon moved painfully to her feet, buttoned herself up, collected the papers, stuffed them in her coat pocket, and left the room. The Byelorussian Army’s attack was under way and the counterattack would be beginning shortly after sunset. If Voshchanka was going to make good on his threat to launch those missiles, he would do it then. She didn’t have much time, but there was still a chance. She had to get the papers to the U.S. Embassy there in Riga, have them decoded and translated, and hope they could lead the Marines to the location of the missiles.
ALONG THE LITHUANIAN-BYELORUSSIAN BORDER
THIRTY MILES EAST OF VILNIUS, LITHUANIA
13 APRIL, 2214 (1614 ET)
The Osmanskaja Vozvysennost, or Osmansky Highlands, which lay between Minsk and Vilnius, was called the “Highway to Heaven” by the people of northern Byelorussia because the rugged, rolling glacial valleys, hills, and buttes led from the marshy, dark wetlands of central Byelorussia to the fertile, well-drained valleys and farmlands of Lithuania and the Baltic Sea region. But the Highlands were also rugged, rocky, windswept hills, which made it very difficult to bring wagons or heavily laden horses across it. As such, they were a favorite spot from which to stage an ambush. Between the tenth and fourteenth centuries, several key battles between the Lithuanian-Byelorussian defenders and foreign invaders were won because the defenders swept down from the Highlands to overwhelm the invaders traveling on the marshy, unprotected valley plains below.
Lithuania’s Grand Duke Gediminas’s main castle was built on a hill that was part of the western terminus of the Osmansky Highlands. The Iron Wolf Tower, the main guard tower of the castle, was perched atop the hill and was itself ten stories tall, making the tower the highest elevation in all of Lithuania, with enough visibility to see nearly fifty miles into Byelorussia north and south of the Highlands.
General Dominikas Palcikas had taken advantage of this and had put an old war-surplus Royal Navy Type 293 air-and-surface-search radar atop the main tower to track helicopters and vehicles traveling along the highways and lowlands. Because the radar was old and very unreliable, however, Palcikas, just like his warrior brethren of ages past, had not forgotten to keep human sentries up on the tower to keep watch and report any activity they saw.
Palcikas, being a student of history, assumed that all professional, Soviet-trained generals were the same. It was a surprise, then, for him to find General Voshchanka’s Home Brigade moving rapidly along the main east-west highway north of the Osmansky Highlands. All armies that have taken the “low road” through Byelorussia—the Teutonic knights, the Mongols, the Crusaders, even the Russian conquerors—have gotten nailed from defenders coming out of the Osmansky Highlands.
Of course this was now the age of helicopter and jet warfare, of tanks that could climb mountains and guns that could dig out even the most entrenched troops. So it was not going to be an easy fight.
“Radar contact, aircraft, numerous targets, bearing one-zero-three degrees, range twenty-eight nautical miles,” the radar controller in a van parked on the grounds of the Lower Castle reported via radio. “Heading westbound at eight knots. They’ll be over Vilnius East in a few minutes.”
Dominikas Palcikas, on board his Mil-8 assault/transport/command helicopter, nodded nervously when the report was relayed to him. The helicopter, along with twenty others belonging to his First Battalion, were parked atop Dokshitsy Butte, ten miles east of the Lithuanian border. The Mil-8 was a standard attack/assault craft, carrying ten security troops, a battle staff of four, and four 57-millimeter rocket pods, but Palcikas had it upgraded with extensive communications gear to serve as his forward command ship.
With his air-cavalry unit were about two thousand troops and a hundred vehicles, from tanks to armored personnel carriers to World War Il-era Jeeps, armed and ready to charge. “Ninety knots airspeed—could be attack helicopters,” Palcikas mused. “But if our patrols haven’t spotted the initial spearhead of tanks yet, those helicopters are probably scouts.
“No reports of attack helicopters up anywhere,” Colonel Zukauskas, Palcikas’ deputy commander, added. “Perhaps the American Marines’ raid on Smorgon was a success?”
“Perhaps,” Palcikas said with a dim smile. There was actually a lot of evidence that suggested that the Marines were very active in Byelorussia—the command team that was picked up by one of Palcikas’ helicopter cavalry companies, the unexplained return of the Marines to Fisikous, and the reports he heard about a large-scale explosion and fire at Smorgon Army Air Base itself.
But the Byelorussian Army that was advancing on Vilnius from Smorgon was still large and very powerful; they had as many scout helicopters as Lithuania had helicopters of any type, and they probably had as many mechanics and garbage collectors as Palcikas had trained soldiers. There was no way that Palcikas could hope to face Voshchanka’s army head-to-head. Voshchanka could lay waste to the city with ease, using just his helicopters …
… so Palcikas wasn’t going to face Voshchanka’s troops head-to-head. He had learned from long years of experience as well as from the realities of life that he had faced since becoming commander of Lithuania’s young army that he could not do anything he wanted. No amount of prayer, positive thinking, or planning was ever going to make the Byelorussian Army turn tail and run. Palcikas needed an alternate plan, and he was putting that plan into motion at that very moment.
Despite the speed advantages for Voshchanka’s troops of traveling on the superhighway that ran from Minsk to Vilnius, the one disadvantage lay in maneuvering—it was easy and convenient to leave the highway only in certain places. Trying to maneuver laterally once the convoy got moving was nearly impossible. Palcikas had decided to borrow a page from Byelorussia’s early history:
When the Mongol invaders swept across the territory toward the Baltic, the Rus inhabitants were able to cut off their supply lines as well as their rear and flanking guards by making lightning-fast hit-and-run attacks down from the Highlands, then escaping back into the rugged hills. Using his light tanks, armored personnel carriers, and assault/transport helicopters, that was precisely what Palcikas had planned—instead of trying to face the Byelorussian Army head-on at the border, he had moved his entire division from Vilnius, nearly six thousand troops, across the border into the Osmansky Highlands of Byelorussia and was now in position to attack the troop column’s flanks and rear. Visibility was poor, but through the cold, driving rain Palcikas could see the columns of tanks and armored vehicles speeding across the Minsk-Vilnius Highway westward.
The poor weather had obviously hampered Voshchanka’s scouting operations, because at least one patrol helicopter flew within two kilometers of First Brigade’s hiding place and failed to spot them. Now most of the scouts had moved ahead, tightening their search patterns as they moved closer to Vilnius.
“Radar reports more helicopters inbound,” Zukauskas said. “Multiple inbounds, faster than the first group. It’s got to be the assault helicopters. Position is very close to Third Brigade’s.”
“Signal Third Battalion to stand by to attack when the helicopters pass by,” Palcikas said. Messages were sent between Palcikas’ units via old-style field telephones, since a radio broadcast originating so close to the Byelorussian troops would have been detected and pinpointed immediately. Palcikas walked, then crawled over to a small knot of soldiers lying on the very rim of the butte, studying the Byelorussian armored column through a large telescope. “You got us a target yet, Sergeant?”
Sergeant of Infantry Markuc Styra looked up, saw that it was General Palcikas himself lying in the mud next to him, and gulped. “No, sir. I see the vehicles all right, but I can’t make out the missile vehicles or ZSU-23-4 units.” His telescope was a large, bulky, Soviet-made CSR-3030 night scope, able to amplify tiny amounts of light to illuminate the entire scene and allow them to “see in the dark.” Unfortunately, the older device needed a lot of light to be useful, such as moonlight, and with a full-blown spring thunderstorm on top of them, it was going to be all but useless.
“Hang tight, then. We’ll have to get you some illumination.” He crawled back out away from the crest of the butte, then said to his deputy, “Colonel, get the helicopters ready to attack.”
* * *
It was not any of the troops in the armored column below, but the weapons officer aboard a Byelorussian Mil-24 assault helicopter flying south of the highway who first issued the warning: “Brigade, brigade, this is flight one-five-four. Enemy helicopters atop the butte to the south. I have them in sight—closing to attack.” The gunner had locked his infrared scanner on the very hot profile of the helicopter below. “Target!” he cried out.
“Call out range,” the pilot responded. “Rocket pods coming hot.” In a Mil-24, the gunner usually controlled only the infrared TV sensor in the nose and whichever weapon the pilot would let him have. But since most pilots did not like to retake control of a weapon only to find no more ammunition in it, most retained full control over all weapons—relegating the gunner to the role of a high-tech observer.
The gunner used an optronic device in the infrared scanner to judge range: “Estimated three kilometers … two kilometers … left three degrees … coming up on one kilometer …”
But something was wrong. The object he thought was a helicopter was not looking anything like a flying machine now. “Stand by.”
It wasn’t a helicopter! As they got closer, the gunner saw it was a truck, apparently with a broken axle or two flat front tires, with some ammunition crates behind it to form the outline of a large helicopter and some sort of weathervane-type device mounted on the roof to make it look like a helicopter’s rotor. A few strategically placed flares made it look like an idling helicopter through the infrared scanner. “It’s not—”
But he wasn’t adamant enough about making the withholding call. “Missile away,” the pilot said, and let fly a salvo of ten 57-millimeter rockets. The explosion was spectacular—too spectacular. The thing must have been loaded with oil or gasoline, because the truck exploded with a great big orange fireball that lit up the night sky like a beacon—it was bright enough out there to see the armored column a good two or three kilometers away.
“Good hit, good secondaries,” the pilot radioed.
“It wasn’t a helicopter,” the gunner reported. “It was a decoy! Let’s climb out of here and—”
It was too late.
The Mil-24 was hit a few seconds later by a Soviet-made SA-7 missile fired by one of Palcikas’ infantrymen as the attack helicopter flew overhead—at a range of less than a thousand meters, even the relatively unreliable SA-7 Strela missile could not miss. The infantryman even knew enough not to wait until the helicopter passed by, but to hit it as it was moving abeam his position since the Mil-24’s engine exhaust is diverted sideways and downwards to( deter heat-seeking missiles fired from astern.
The Mil-24 continued flying after its destroyed left engine was shut down, but it crashed several kilometers away moments later.
But the downing of the Mil-24, although a real bonus for the Lithuanians, was not the main objective—Palcikas’ men needed a big distraction and a bright source of illumination while they searched for specific vehicles in the armored column, and they found it after the gasoline-laden decoy went up in flames. Layered within most Soviet-style armored columns were air-defense weapons, usually surrounded by other vehicles to disguise and protect them—but when the column reconfigured to deal with the “attack” from the Osmansky Highlands, the protection broke apart.
The spotters on the ridgeline above the column finally saw their objective: spaced every ten vehicles or so were four SA-8 road-mobile surface-to-air missile units, with four short-range antiaircraft missiles per unit; every fifteen vehicles was one SA-6 tracked surface-to-air missile unit carrying three medium-range missiles, along with its “Long Track” and “Straight Flush” surveillance and tracking radars and maintenance-support vehicle chugging alongside; and spread out laterally from the column every five vehicles were two ZSU-23-4 air-defense-artillery tracked units.
As well as learning lessons from historical battles, Palcikas had learned a lesson from the more recent Persian Gulf War—hit an objective with heavy, sustained firepower, then move. That is exactly what he did. As soon as the air-defense vehicles revealed themselves, Palcikas ordered his tanks and attack helicopters to attack. The Lithuanians streamed out of the Osmansky Highlands, opening fire on the air-defense vehicles before they had a chance to react.
