Plan of Attack

“Looks like Russian troops have moved even farther east than we anticipated, sir,” Hal said after studying the symbology on the new chart. “I’d say they’ve completely taken Tedzhen. A few patrols have moved almost all the way to the Sakar Reservoir. Colonel?”

“Our contact point is on the north side of the reservoir,” Griffin said. “Our landing zone is between them and the Russians’ new position. It’s close, but I don’t think it’s been compromised — yet.”

“Top? What do you think?”

“The data is over thirty minutes old, sir — they may have compromised your landing zone already,” Chris Wohl responded by the secure satellite link. “But there’s only one way to find out.”

“I agree,” Hal said. “Colonel? Your thoughts?”

“This is your show, Hal,” Griffin said. “But going in at night, in this contraption — I’d say we go for it. No way in hell they’d ever expect us.”

“That’s the spirit, sir,” Hal said happily. “Control, recommendations?”

“This is Intel, Condor,” the intelligence officer responded. “We have a few other alternate infiltration spots, but it’ll extend your ground-travel time past your reserve power limit.” The BERP electronic battle armor ran off very high-tech fuel cells that supplied an enormous amount of power but for relatively short periods of time, depending on usage. In a simple “sneak and peek” operation, their power might last hours — but if they had to fight their way out of a battle, the power could last only minutes.

“The last two fuel cells are emergency-only, Control. We never plan to use them,” Briggs said. Each team member carried extra fuel cells — they were even more important than ammunition on this mission. “If we can’t do this mission without using the emergency fuel cells, we don’t go. We’ll do the approach to the planned landing zone, and if it’s hot, we’ll bug out.”

“Sounds good to me, Condor,” David Luger said. “We’re good to go.”

“Roger that,” Carter acknowledged. “Five minutes to release, Condor.”

It was the longest five-minute wait in Trevor Griffin’s life. All the techniques he had learned over the years to calm himself — controlled breathing, consciously unclenching muscles, Transcendental Meditation — refused to work this time. But soon he wished he’d had to wait a little while longer. It seemed only a few seconds when Carter gave a one-minute warning.

The bomb doors below them slid open. The rumbling sound reverberating in their helmets quadrupled in intensity, and the little craft shook violently in the disrupted airflow, as if it were a young stallion trying to break the wrangler’s grasp on the rope to free himself.

But the worst part was when they dropped free of the Megafortress’s bomb bay and fell out into space. Griffin felt as if his stomach had flown up into his throat. Blood rushed to his head, causing his vision to “red out,” and he thought for sure he was going to lose his lunch. The Condor’s sudden deceleration caused his body to mash up against his shoulder harness, which dug mercilessly into his body, so hard he could feel it pinch even through the thick BERP body armor. The Condor’s nose pitched over, and for a very long, uncomfortable moment, he thought he was heading straight down, ready to slam into the earth facefirst.

“Good separation, Condor,” Carter’s voice said. “How are you feeling, Colonel?” Undoubtedly the BERP rig had some sort of telemetry device that was sending body-function readouts back to Battle Mountain. “You can breathe anytime now, sir.” Griffin found he was holding his breath, and he let it out with a gush and found that the pressure on his chest had already greatly subsided.

“I’m okay,” Griffin said, willing his breathing to quickly return to normal.

“That first step is definitely an eye-opener,” Briggs exclaimed. Griffin silently cursed his desk-bound stomach and vowed to stay in better shape.

If he made it through this mission in one piece.

“MA flight controls responding normally,” Carter reported. “Coming up to best glide speed…now.” The Condor’s nose pitched up greatly, assuming a much more normal, albeit slightly unsettling, nose-down attitude. Underneath Condor’s skin were thousands of tiny computer-controlled hydraulic actuators that twisted and manipulated most of the outer fuselage — in effect, the entire body was a wing, with an almost infinitely controllable amount of lift or drag. The craft could glide as slowly as a feather one moment, sink as fast as a fifteen-thousand-pound rock the next moment, and then float like a cloud the next, all without deploying one aileron or flap. “Looking good, Condor. Sit back and relax, folks. We’re on glide path to target.”

Mary, Republic of Turkmenistan

That same time

Although it was at the crossroads of travel and commerce in Central

Asia, and had been for centuries, Mary was definitely a very lonely and desolate place now.

Mary once was the second-largest city in Turkmenistan and the nexus of the railways, highways, and petroleum pipelines that transported Turkmenistan’s immense oil and natural-gas wealth to other parts of Central Asia and as far east as the Indian subcontinent. It was also now the easternmost stronghold of the Army of the Russian Federation, which was trying to wrest control of Turkmenistan away from its interim Muslim government and replace it with a pro-Russian government again. Most of the Muslim population had fled north toward Charjew, ready to cross the border into Uzbekistan if necessary; a few hardier souls had decided to make the perilous journey across the burning sands of the Kara-Kum Desert toward Kerki, ready to escape to Uzbekistan or Afghanistan if the Russians dared pursue them this far.

Mary was Podpolkovnik Artyom Vorobev’s first field command. He was in charge of the 117th Rifles, a motorized rifle regiment with about three thousand troops carried aboard a conglomeration of vehicles, everything from cargo trucks to BTR-60 armored personnel carriers and BRDM scouts. Vorobev, however, was lucky enough to have a battalion of T-72 light tanks augmenting his force, which he deployed right up front on the Ashkhabad-Mary highway. He also had almost a full air-defense battalion, including four ZSU-23 mobile antiaircraft artillery vehicles and three 9K35 Strela-10 mobile surface-to-air missile units, along with a command-post vehicle, radar vehicle, and reloads.

He used to have an S-300 brigade up front, but of course the damned Americans and their unmanned stealth bombers had taken care of that unit. The furor regarding his decision to deploy the S- 300 air-defense brigade so far ahead of his regiment had thankfully quieted down in the wake of the United Nations’ decision to exclude all foreign military combat aircraft from Turkmenistan. He was still in command, and he was determined not to screw up again.

The Strela-10 heat-seeking antiaircraft missile system was much more capable than the ancient ZSU-23 against high-performance aircraft, such as the American bomber that was shot down a few weeks earlier. But as commander of the point scout unit, Vorobev’s objective wasn’t to take on a massed air or ground assault but simply to make contact with any enemy forces out there, report their strength and position, disengage, and maintain contact until heavier reinforcements arrived. The main force was many kilometers away, but it was two full reinforced brigades spread out along the fifty kilometers between Mary and Tedzen, supported by several aviation, air-defense, engineer, and special-operations companies.

Vorobev’s command vehicle was located near the rear of his regiment, about ten kilometers southwest of the main airport at Mary and four kilometers behind the lead scout formation to the east. He was proud of this force, and he told his battalion and company commanders that every day. Vorobev had been deployed all over the Russian Federation in various units throughout his eighteen-year-long army career, but mostly as a staff officer, never as a field commander. He had worked hard and used his contacts to go to the best schools and training centers so he could fill out his resume with plenty of academic experience, but despite top marks and glowing endorsements from many high-ranking generals and even a few vice marshals in Moscow, he had always lacked the one thing he needed to compete for flag rank: actual experience commanding a combat unit in the field.

When he got his orders to go to Turkmenistan, he thought his career was over — an assignment to Central Asia was worse than one to Siberia. But it turned out that one of his many patrons did him a favor: He would be taking command of a full regiment, which looked good on any subcolonel’s record, but his first command was in a relatively quiet and safe location — Ashkhabad, Turkmenistan. Nothing ever happened there.

That is, until about two months after he took command of his unit. Then, as his grandfather always used to say, “On idyot pyerdyachim parom,” or “He was going to the top propelled by fart steam.” The Taliban had invaded Turkmenistan, one of the other Russian army regiments in his division assigned to defend the city of Mary had been crushed, and now he was suddenly thrust to the forefront with strict orders from Moscow not to underestimate the Taliban-led forces and let the same happen to him. Vorobev’s regiment was now expected