Unsung Warrior Box Set, page 43
part #1 of Unsung Warrior Series
It was full of metal, and whether it was a store room or an armory it would reveal a wealth of information about the partisans, and how they had lived. Maric intended to stay well clear of it. Old ammunition, and possibly a crate or two of decaying dynamite, were something best given a wide berth.
Some of the recon team started preparing a breakfast, and Maric could hear the hiss of self-heating packages. He barely noticed the noise as he pondered a problem. It was time to make contact with the comms and control center, but the rock above them made that impossible.
Then he had an idea, and spoke briefly with Mosha. The two men headed off in different directions, and didn't take long to find what they were looking for.
"Think this bloody thing will still work?" said Mosha.
"It's either this or you have to go up that shaft, Boyo," said Maric with a grin.
They’d found an old aerial that the partisans must have used. It was a heavy piece of wire strung out through a gallery running off the cavern at an angle of about 45 degrees. Maric assumed it ended at a more substantial metal rod on the surface. Whether that rod had survived the weather over the last 75 years was another question.
He called Anderson over, and the electronic specialist managed to get Maric’s sat phone patched into the wire.
"Not sure what sort of signal you're going to get, Major,” said the electronics man. "The aerial is badly corroded in places, and it may have microscopic cracks in it so the signal has to jump gaps. I think you'll be getting a fair amount of static."
Maric nodded. He would take his chances. It was either that or one of them was going to have to find away to the surface, and the team didn't exactly have a map of the underground cave system. They did have six days to scout around the Count’s lair, but he didn't want to waste too much time. Moments later he was through to Sigonella.
There was, indeed, a lot of static, more at his end it appeared than theirs. Comms and control had the technology to clean up the signal while Maric didn’t, but at least contact had been made.
Sigonella now knew they were on the ground, and proceeding as planned. Maric promised he would try to make better contact with them later in the day. Then he closed the connection.
Eight klicks north of his position, someone was also having problems with electronics.
"Well, where is this contact of yours?" said Zhuk, pushing his stubbled head past Nikolic's ear to look at the screen. He smelled of greasy food, and, possibly, vodka. Or was Nikolic imagining that? He didn’t think that Zhuk would drink on duty. Hot showers were limited at the base, and none of the security force washed as often as Nikolic would have liked.
“It was only there for a minute," he said – and you took your time getting here, he might have added in different circumstances. But no one crossed Zhuk.
The big Russian straightened up, and muttered something to a much smaller, worried-looking man who trailed along behind him. The smaller man departed. He had gone to get Lebed.
Nikolic couldn't even remember the smaller man's name. He had started his time at the base as the representative of the African who bankrolled Kastrioti, but the Russians had soon put him in his place. Now he was a gofer of sorts, nothing more.
Conversations at the base were conducted in Russian. Some of the Spetsnaz could speak Serbian, but generally they couldn't be bothered doing so. Nikolic was one of the few Serbs allowed to work directly with them. His Russian was good.
He wondered again how all this had come about. He had entered the Serbian Army in peaceful times, and worked his way up through the ranks. Then there had been the disastrous Serbian expansion.
He had always been a radio technician and political aide, fairly high up in the army, so he didn't see the atrocities committed in the early days of the expansion. He heard about them, but talked himself into discounting the allegations.
Then the Serbs were forced back to their original borders, peace was declared, and the hunt for war criminals began. Nikolic soon saw the writing on the wall. As a high-ranking aide he must have known about the atrocities, and therefore the war crimes tribunals would find him guilty. He was a pariah in his own country, so he worked for the Count now, and kept his head down.
Lebed strode smoothly into the room. There was a brief discussion with Zhuk, and Nikolic pretended to concentrate on his job.
"I don't like it, Lebed," said Zhuk. "First the attack on the outpost at Prekal, and now this."
Lebed nodded. "The attack on the outpost might have been the Italian Mafia,” he said, “but radio contact this close to the base is something else again.”
"If it was the Mafia at Prekal, they were too far from the coast for my liking," said Zhuk, "and they missed the shipment. It came through three days later, which makes it a strange sort of information leak if we have one. Besides, when the Mafia became a nuisance six months ago we killed a few of them. There hasn’t been any trouble since.”
“The Crane says the radio transmission was very weak, and it was poor quality," said Lebed. Nikolic flinched. He was called ‘the Crane’ because of his long legs and arms and slight build. He wasn’t a ‘real man’ apparently, like the Russians were.
"The problem is, a weak signal means it must have been nearby,” said Zhuk.
“Or it could mean the source is further away but the operators don't have very good radio equipment,” said Lebed.
“I don't like it," continued Lebed. "Send out some patrols, and have the wireless operators monitor for transmissions around the clock. We need to keep an eye open for the next few days.”
Zhuk saluted sharply, and marched out of the room.
Nikolic hadn't known what to make of the strange radio signal, but if the two Spetsnaz were worried, then he should be worried as well. The two men had come up through the Russian special forces together, and when they got too old for front line duty, had drifted into enforcement work in the public arena.
Then they were on the wrong side of a Mafia push for control of Stalingrad, and things were too hot for them in Russia right now. That was why they were down in Albania working for the Count.
The two Russians were aptly named. Zhuk in Russian meant ‘the beetle’, and he had so many muscles they kind of rounded him out into that shape. His nose had been broken many times, and never been set properly. There was a scar under his left ear where his jaw had been broken by a machete, and the wound had never healed properly. That wouldn’t be the only scar on his body.
Lebed on the other hand meant ‘the swan’, and he floated serenely above the devastation and violence around him. His mind was always working out possibilities, and what could be turned to an advantage. His knuckles protruded from the backs of his hands, large and calloused. Boxing was his first love, and he was fast. On the street, or in a military action, there wasn’t time to wrap his knuckles in gloves. He was just as fast with a knife.
They were the ideal team. Brains and brawn. They also reinforced each other’s complete lack of conscience. Nikolic felt grubby when they were around.
He looked at the array of electronics equipment on the table in front of him. Lebed had told him to get whatever he needed to stay in contact with the outposts, and the occasional contact further afield.
He had gone way beyond that, and the two Russians had asked him to explain why. He knew the cost wasn’t the issue, so he went straight past that to lay it out clearly for them.
“Who is the enemy?” he had challenged them. This was his field, and it gave him the courage to be outspoken.
“Interpol? NATO? Rival warlords?” he said. “US forces in Europe? You’re going to need the same surveillance capabilities they have, if you want some warning the bastards are coming.
“Whether you shut down the base and hide before they get a lock on us, or you want enough time to evacuate, this stuff will tell you something’s going on before it happens. Do you understand?”
Zhuk had glared at him. The big Russian had felt challenged in some way, but he couldn’t see how it was being done. Lebed nodded, and told him to go ahead and assemble the equipment, then test it.
Now it looked like the outlay in time and money was paying off.
Nikolic didn’t mind the work. He appreciated getting paid each week, and the Count had taken him in and given him a job. Those two things bought a lot of loyalty.
CHAPTER 19
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Once the stop for breakfast was over, Maric led the recon team along the side of the cavern for another klick, and then turned east of north into a side channel. It got narrower and narrower, and the team eventually squeezed out of it at the bottom of a collapsed cavern. The round bowl wasn’t much different to a very large bomb crater.
A wall of debris climbed most of the way to the surface on one side, but there was still a good section of cliff near the top. This was as far as Besim’s directions went. Once they climbed out of the bowl they should be able to find the Count’s base, somewhere ahead of them.
Anderson took a little time activating his drone detection kit. It could only show movement in the section of blue sky directly above, but it read clear. The little party scrambled up the slope until they reached the cliff at the top. Davies was the most experienced climber, and he made short work of the cliff. He hammered a fixed point into a crack in the rock, and ran a rope down.
The rest of the team followed him up, and Anderson checked his electronic equipment again. It showed no sign of drones, and that was a big plus. The mobile cameras must be limited to a certain number of sweeps each day.
Maric led the team toward a ridge to the north that had some of the best cover. Once they reached the ridge they settled in to wait. The Count’s base should be no more than a couple of klicks ahead, if Cal's radar readings were correct.
Mosha scanned the ground on the far side of the ridge while Maric established contact with Sigonella. The comms and control center in Sicily came in loud and clear. His contact acknowledged that the recon team were closing in on their target, and should know the layout of the place by the end of the day.
The ridge lay in the middle of a broad plateau, and there was little in the way of vegetation. Rainfall ran straight off into the deep gorges Mosha could see on two sides, and again just in front of the ridge the team was on. Apart from those indentations it was rolling country with a few rocky outcrops.
The rest of the recon team made last minute adjustments to their weapons and their gear. From here on in there was no going back. Everything they needed to rely on had to work right the first time.
Just over one and a quarter klicks ahead of them, Nikolic had sat up sharply a few minutes earlier as he saw a strong spike on the screen in front of him. It told him there was a powerful radio signal close by, and he quickly established it was a sat phone signal. He lifted the hand piece used for communications within the rambling base, and Lebed appeared within a minute.
"What is it?" said Lebed, as he looked at the initial spike Nikolic had logged, and then the bouncing hills and hollows of ongoing communication that showed under it.
"Military grade comms, and it’s close by," said Nikolic. "I'm trying to get a fix on the location now."
The Serb had set up slave stations a few klicks out in all four directions. If anything got closer than 20 klicks, he could use the slave stations to pinpoint the signal to within a few meters. It didn't take him long to find the source of the signal, or to transfer the coordinates to a detailed map of the area. The signal died just after he had finished doing so.
"South ridge, just east of Molotov knoll," said Lebed, as he looked at the map. The Spetsnaz had named all the geographic features around the base to suit themselves.
"Where are teams one and three?” he said sharply, and Nikolic located them in moments by using the small transceivers that each team leader carried. He transferred their locations to the map. Team One was due east of the base, with rugged terrain between it and the intruders. Team Three was a fair way east of Molotov knoll along South ridge, and was by far the better choice.
“Get me Team Three,” said Lebed, and Nikolic moved quickly to make the connection. Lebed spoke harshly into the hand piece, and a gruff Russian voice acknowledged at the other end.
Lebed put the handset down.
“Drones?” said Nikolic, but Lebed shook his head. “If they spot a drone, they’ll know we’re onto them,” he said.
Nikolic didn't dare ask what was at the location his sensors had picked up, but Lebed told him anyway.
"Someone has sent a military team, and they are looking for us,” he said bluntly. “This is when we earn our pay.”
He looked straight at the Serbian radio technician for a moment, then hurried off to inform the Count.
The recon team were currently in a hollow that backed into the top of the ridge. There were a few rocks and some low scrub around the edges. That made it one of the better defensive sites along the ridge. Maric set up four of his team as a perimeter around the hollow, and left the remaining three in the center as emergency firepower if the situation called for it. Mosha touched his arm, and handed him an army nocular.
"The second hill,” he said. "The one with a few decent-sized rocks around the top of it, about two klicks out. Do you notice anything different?"
"It took Maric a while to see it. Then he twigged. An area on this side of the hill was just too flat to be natural. Sure, it had a scattering of stunted shrubs on it, but that was easy to fake. Camouflage netting and plastic ornaments would do the job easily. In fact it was overdone. There were too many shrubs, considering how barren the rest of the area was.
He patted Mosha's shoulder to let him know he’d seen the anomaly. There was no doubt he was looking at a helipad. He figured that night flying, instruments only, might work in this area. Still, it must be for VIPs, or emergency use only. The Count wouldn't want to draw too much attention to the base.
Then he looked down into the gorge that split the plateau just in front of the ridge, and saw a doorway recessed into the wall below him. It was a brilliant piece of work. It would take anything up to a truck in size, and there was no way anything flying overhead, from a surveillance plane to a satellite, would pick it up.
Now that he looked more closely, the bottom of the gorge was passable by a four-wheel drive vehicle. It might have taken a bit of work in the beginning to roll the larger boulders to one side, and smooth off a lip of rock here and there, but now it all looked natural.
The recon team was closing in on the Count’s base all right. Maric handed the nocular back to Mosha, and pointed down into the gorge. Moments later he heard Mosha's sharp intake of breath, and got his shoulder punched in excitement.
Mosha was his number two, and they had been together for years, but Maric wondered if he needed to remind him of the chain of command, and the penalty for assaulting superior officers. He knew he wasn’t going to do that.
"Do you want to set up shop here and collect intel?" said Davies, who was at the perimeter on Maric’s left, "or do you want us to split into teams and see what else we can find?"
Maric smiled. They were keen, and that was a good thing, but the job of a recon team was to stay hidden, and gather intel, not to engage. He wanted to do a circle around the helipad, keeping a klick out, at some stage over the next day or so, but there was no rush. There was still four and a half days until the main force parachuted in, assuming the recon team gave the go ahead.
Then his mind managed to tell him something his hearing had been panicking about for some time. It was too quiet. Not deathly quiet, but the background noise was a lot less than it had been five minutes ago.
Something was stalking something else, and every living thing sensed it. Goddammit, he could swear the ground itself whispered to him sometimes. The act of stalking a prey animal was a drama that had been repeated since time began, and Maric could sense it. He wasn’t going to let his team be a target.
"Ambush," he said quickly, and the others instinctively flattened themselves against the bottom of the hollow. Moments later Maric had devised a strategy for the situation. The first thing he did was send Anderson back the way the recon team had come in.
It would give his best sniper unit an angle of fire across the ridge, if only Anderson could get to a suitable place and set up his rifle. Then he sent Davies and Markovic down the slope below them.
There was reasonable cover at the bottom of the gully. The two men were to work their way east, using every bit of cover they could find. Maric didn’t know what was coming for them, but he knew it was coming from that direction. Davies and Markovic would know how to improvise when the shooting started.
Maric patted Mosha twice on the shoulder, and slipped out of the back of the hollow on the side nearest the gorge. He preferred to take his chances ‘in the wild’ so to speak, rather than being bunched up in one place and shot at.
Mosha knew what to do. The two pats on his shoulder put him in command. The first thing he did, oddly enough, was to pull the perimeter back into the center of the hollow. Then he had two of the team surrender their helmets, and prop them up on top of night goggles, in spaces between the rocks. The goggles looked enough like binoculars to fool at a distance, and it would be reasonable to imagine someone was scanning the area from the hollow.
Maric let himself down the slope carefully. It was steep. He had to be careful not to dislodge a boulder, or make any other noise. He rested for a moment, and slowed his heart rate. He was heightening his senses, and letting go of his thinking mind. His life depended on him doing so.
He had every faith in his team, and their ability to work in unison. The capabilities of the beast he had created were greater than the sum of its parts, and whoever disturbed his people would be hit by a massive response. Then he resumed his sideways crawl.
The first sign of the enemy was a grenade that was lobbed overhand into the center of the hollow. It was an excellent long-distance throw. It was also smart. A grenade launcher would have given away the position of the soldier behind it. It was amazing how much about distance and direction an experienced field operative could work out from a sound like that.
