were engaged in a huge debate over whether they should defend themselves or simply surrender to the Russians in order to preserve the town and save lives.
Captain Mike Godfrey and Warrant Officer Samson had walked out of that meeting, telling the townsfolk that they welcomed help but had no intentions of surrendering. A lot of the local men had told the mayor to kiss off. They were fighting to protect their town. Period. And their numbers were growing.
Meanwhile, Vatz worked with about twenty guys to set up the main roadblock north of town. Fortunately, demolition derbies were a big pastime in High Level, and with the drivers’ help, they were able to create a nice little wall of vehicles, even adding a couple of tractor trailers from the local lumber mill. This wall would channel oncoming mechanized forces to the left or right, into the embankments—
Where Vatz and his men had set up a little high-tech surprise that, when they were finished, left all of them wearing evil grins.
The roadblocks on 58 to the east and west were hardly as reinforced, containing just four cars each but manned by another twenty riflemen that Vatz had organized into two teams. Nice thing was, quite a few of those guys were hunters who owned high-powered rifles with scopes — one of the benefits of working with a more rural community.
The final roadblock on the south side of the town was not yet in place, since there was still a steady flow of evacuees. But they had another 18-wheeler whose driver claimed he could flip the thing onto its side so that the entire trailer would lie across the road. He seemed eager to try that. At least thirty more guys would help hold that exit.
Finally, half of Vatz’s team had staked out the local airport, six miles southeast, with its single five-thousand- foot runway and small air terminal building. It seemed highly likely that at least some of the air recon forces would land there, the crews refueling while the troops dismounted. Vatz’s boys had negotiated a little something special for that party.
Vatz figured that a few more helos would land in the downtown area, near the RCMP station, town hall, fire station, and the local hotel and motels. So that’s where he and his half of the team were now positioned, strung out along the rooftops in sniper positions. Vatz had found himself a nice perch above the town hall, near a large stone balustrade. He was in one corner of the rooftop, while Captain Godfrey was in the other.
In some respects, this was a classic foreign internal defense (FID) mission, often an exclusive task of Special Forces operators. The training of the resistance in occupied France during World War II was one of the more famous FID missions that Vatz had studied. However, most teams had a lot more time to train and organize the citizens. Still, Vatz was proud of the work they’d accomplished in such a short time.
Though dressed like locals, Vatz’s team wore their camera-equipped Artisent ballistic assault helmets with laser target designator; the headgear subsystems’ 180-degree emissive visors provided them with maps, routes, and other networked data in the cross com monocle below their left eyes. High bandwidth wireless communications, along with a microelectronic/optics sensor suite, provided 360-degree situational awareness and small arms protection.
At the moment, Vatz worked the system’s handheld controller, not unlike the ones used for video games. He studied a radar image being piped in to both ODA teams. Twelve glowing blips were superimposed over a local map. The blips morphed into the glowing silhouettes of inbound Ka-29s with an ETA of about twenty-two minutes.
After muttering a faint, “Whoa,” he pulled up the camera images from every man on his team, silently making sure that each operator was in place.
ODA 888, call sign Berserker, and ODA 887, call sign Zodiac, lay in wait.
Many ODA team members liked to pick radio call signs based upon the first letter of the team’s name, with the detachment commander always being the team’s name followed by the number six, for command. Vatz’s old team used “Victor,” and he’d picked Vortex, which in his humble opinion sounded cool.
But when he’d been reassigned to Berserker, a “B” name had eluded him. The depression hadn’t helped. It was Marc Rakken who had suggested “Bali,” short for balisong, referencing the knives they both collected and reminding Vatz once more of the Venturi in his pocket.
Thus Nathan Vatz, call sign “Bali,” was reborn.
Captain Godfrey got on the radio: “Berserker team, this is Berserker Six. Enemy force inbound on your screens. Start with the plan. And when it goes to hell, you think. Adapt. Shoot. Move. Communicate. Are we clear?”
“HOOAH!” they all boomed over the channel.
“Hey, up there! Hey!”
The voice had come from below, and Vatz peered over the rooftop to spy the mayor on the sidewalk below, shielding his eyes from the glare.
“Mr. Mayor!” shouted Captain Godfrey. “They’ll be here soon. Stay inside!”
“We’ve made a decision. It’s the best for everyone. Now I need you people to come down. We’re not going to offer any resistance when they arrive. We don’t want any bloodshed.”
The mayor was joined by the fire chief and the RCMP commander.
Before Captain Godfrey could reply — and Vatz could shake his head in disbelief — Warrant Officer Samson’s voice boomed over the radio: “Berserker Six, this is Black Bear. We got an inbound helo on radar, coming in from the southeast. Lone aircraft, could be a civilian. Trying to establish comm with that pilot now, over.”
“Roger that,” said Godfrey. “We need him on the ground A-SAP!”
“I hear you, Six. Working on it.”
The captain then lifted his voice. “Mr. Mayor, get inside. It’s too late now.”
“I won’t. We need to wave our white flag, damn it. You’re going to get us all killed!”
“They’re going to kill you anyway,” cried Vatz, unable to contain himself.
“Sergeant, I got this,” said Godfrey, who winked and hollered, “He’s right. You don’t get inside, you’re dead.”
The mayor dismissed them with a wave. “We’ll see about that!”
TWENTY-FOUR
Colonel Pavel Doletskaya had convinced them to remove the straitjacket. He had no intention of hurting himself, and it was ridiculous for him to summon a guard every time he needed to use the small toilet in the corner of his cell.
Besides, they had four cameras inside and two guards outside. If he so much as held his breath, they would be on him in seconds.
They had even given him a small metal cot with a thin mattress and a military-issue blanket. His requests for reading material — for anything, really, to occupy his time — had been ignored. Moreover, it had been several hours since his last visit from the interrogators.
So he lay there, staring up at the ceiling, burping up the remnants of MRE #07, meat loaf and gravy. It was no wonder the American soldiers so often retreated during combat; they were all running to the bathroom after consuming 1,200 calories of pure indigestion.
Doletskaya draped an arm over his head and closed his eyes, longing to clear his mind…
They were back at her apartment now after a remarkable first meal together, and he looked into her eyes as she straddled him.
“Colonel,” he began softly. “I didn’t expect this.”
“Neither did I.”
Viktoria Antsyforov was even more beautiful in the shadows of her bedroom, her long hair, usually bound in a tight bun, fluttering like dark flames.
Following that fateful meeting at Kupol, they became lovers and spent the next few months working out the logistics of her plan. She foisted her ideas upon her colleagues and summarily crushed those who challenged her in their meetings.
On several occasions, Doletskaya had watched as she caught the eye of Izotov himself. Soon, the rumors
