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  IRANIAN-AZERBAIJANI BORDER

  24 DECEMBER

  General Boris Lazar looked out across the open desert. The vast sands south of the Zagros Mountain range greeted his gaze in every direction except back north from where he had come.

  He was from Leningrad, which was now St. Petersburg, and he missed the salty Baltic air from time to time, but he was here now, by this brown river instead of his beautiful Baltic coastal streets. What is the name of this dirty thing again? He looked at his battle map and oriented himself: the Aras River. A shit little stream, he thought.

  The ocean would be a welcome sight soon enough.

  He looked over to see Colonel Dmitry Kir, his right-hand man, chief of staff, and the de facto chief of plans for his brigade task force. Lazar grinned his big, dirty, coffee-and-smoke-stained teeth at Dmitry, who was too busy talking on the radio to notice. General Lazar hadn’t trained the colonel; he didn’t have the skill to teach a man like Dmitry Kir. But he did have enough street smarts to recognize a spark in Captain Kir twelve years earlier that hinted at his work ethic and his ability to plan down to the minutest detail. General Lazar immediately sent the young captain off to the best schools and, more important, protected him and hid him from others, never mentioning the man’s obvious talents to his superiors or his fellow generals lest Kir be stolen away.

  Lazar had kept and cultivated Kir like a prized possession.

  Throughout his career Lazar had always known he didn’t possess the intelligence necessary to plan the really important operations, but he had surrounded himself with the best men and then bullied and politicked to keep them in his ranks. And now General Lazar had one of the most finely tuned military units in the Russian army, and he had Colonel Kir and his other staff to thank for it.

  He sat down heavily in the wooden folding chair and raised his feet onto an empty green plastic case that had housed three 125mm shells in foam. The shells had already been loaded into one of Lazar’s T-90 tanks.

  Colonel Kir looked up from the radio and back toward his boss. The general liked that Kir always had an honest demeanor. The general mistrusted almost everyone he met, including all of these Iranian fucks around him, but Colonel Kir was as trustworthy a man as lived anywhere on earth, Lazar was certain.

  Kir said, “General, the men are ready to move out; the Iranian Guards Armor are lined up to provide the escort down Route 12 all the way to the border. We are at your command.”

  “Fine. Put your boots up for a moment and have a Turkish coffee with me. You’ve worked hard, friend. Relax a moment before we go back to work.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Colonel Kir sighed a little on the inside, but he didn’t let it show. Instead he just nodded and sat in a wooden folding chair that was covered with a colorful local woven rug. He took one of the small cups of thick, sludgelike Turkish coffee that, in Kir’s estimation, looked more like pudding and tasted more like a lump of coal.

  He didn’t have time for this shit, not even for Lazar, the Lion of Dagestan. He had units to organize for the next big phase: Colonel Klava never filled his tanks with fuel when he was ordered to do so, and he was sure to stop the column halfway through the journey. Colonel Glatsky always had stupid questions just before they began their road marches, which delayed his departure. Colonel Nishkin never said anything but needed the latest maps and data spoon-fed to him or he would just start making shit up once they drove off.

  Colonel Kir would have to admonish them all on the radio, as usual.

  But the host of concerns vanished as he looked across the makeshift table at his boss.

  The general already looked the part. His bald head and pronounced chin were features that struck Kir as old-school Soviet. Lazar had already localized a bit: his heavy Russian greatcoat was augmented by an Azerbaijani animal-skin undercoat he’d bought in one of the markets up north. His new thick boots were a replacement for the thin fake-leather Russian issue and were much more practical for the cold desert winds they had all come to know so well. It whipped through a person, the air caked with brown sand that whirled around them and got into everything.

  Lazar stared back at him as he sipped his Turkish coffee.

  His boss was always at ease. The general loved to say, “I cause great stress, but I have none personally.” Kir seemed to bear the brunt of his boss’s stress, and it was at times like this he wished the general would show some, just a little, at least to demonstrate that he had a clear understanding of the multitude of uncertainties that lay ahead.

  But Lazar showed nothing but supreme calm, so Kir was reduced to sitting here and pretending to be relaxed.

  Dmitry Kir drank his coffee, burning his lips as he gulped it too hastily, eager to get back to work and out from under his boss’s grim gaze.

  Finally, Lazar turned to his colonel. “Give the order, Dmitry. Let’s go to war.”

  CHAPTER 21

  ZUGSPITZE, GERMAN ALPS

  24 DECEMBER

  The two H225M Super Cougar helicopters kicked up white vortices of snow as they lowered to the glacier. Their chosen helicopter landing zone was becoming obscured by frosted ice clouds as the French special forces soldiers looked out into the cold from the open side door.

  Apollo had trusted the Escadrille 3, 4th Special Forces Helicopter Regiment pilots with his life on many previous occasions. The pilots were true pros. Their specialization in landing the Dragoons in exceedingly poor HLZ’s, while occasionally under fire, had already earned them a very solid reputation.

  Apollo saw an easing in the men’s faces when they felt the craft sink down onto its five huge wheels.

  He climbed out of the Super Cougar, leading his men twenty meters distant, where the sergeants would pause to take account of their gear and equipment. Above them, two tall columns of snow spun overhead from the five composite rotor blades.

  These new Eurocopters were equipped with special deicing systems, but the experienced pilots, who were still used to the old AS532s, didn’t like to take any chances with frozen engines. They would keep the birds warmed up and spinning until Apollo and his men were ready to leave. Unfortunately, seeing the rising plumes of snow above the helos would also serve as a reminder to Apollo that he was burning NATO fuel, and doing so on an only somewhat legitimate mission, what amounted to little more than a search for a curious phone signal.

  Caporal Konstantine stepped up to him. “Sir? I don’t see any obvious enemy forces or spies here, but I would like permission to check over the Schneehasen, just to make sure.”

  Apollo cocked his head at the German phrase. “Snow bunnies?”

  Konstantine pointed to the gathering crowd of mostly females in brightly colored and tight-fitting ski suits watching them from the railing of the Zugspitze Gletschergarten, a high Alpine “Glacier Garden” bar and restaurant that now overlooked the team’s landing position from higher on the snow-covered mountainside. In the midafternoon, even on Christmas Eve, there was a flurry of activity.

  Sergent-Chef Dariel broke into their conversation, having just come over from the other helicopter. “Sir, you can damn well believe everybody on this mountain knows we’re here. Did we plan on landing right in the middle of the ski slopes, or was it the 4th SF Helo flyboys’ idea?”

  “No choice. We have no authorization or clearance to land here anyhow, so they picked a spot off the rescue HLZ that wouldn’t annoy the skiers too much. I’ll take a small contingent up to the peak. We’ll get better reception for Caporal Konstantine’s electronic detection equipment to search for that phone signal, assuming it’s even transmitting.”

  “Copy, sir.”

  Apollo detailed the plan to the troops. One Team, led by Apollo himself, would take the gondola to the top of the Zugspitze to look around for anything amiss. Two Team and Three Team would remain by the helos with the gear but were given
a broad radius to send out teams of two to scout everything from the two restaurants and the three ski runs serviced by two ski lifts down here a few hundred meters below the peak.

  The lower lift took skiers to the most popular and more basic slopes. The other, higher lift went all the way to the buildings on the very peak of the mountain, four hundred meters higher than where Apollo stood now.

  Captain Apollo Arc-Blanchette, Sergent-Chef Dariel, Caporal Konstantine, Caporal Garron, and two other men selected by Dariel couldn’t have looked more out of place in this Alpine ski resort as they hiked to the base of the gondola. Their white snow camo uniforms, the silenced Heckler & Koch UMP45 SD submachine guns on their chests, the FN SCAR-L carbines on their shoulders, and the Glock 17 side arms strapped to their hips just added to their menacing appearances.

  The six men rode from the glacier upward toward the top of Zugspitze. The cable car rose high into the Alps while skiers and snowboarders merrily shot by below them, white rooster tails of snow crystals in their wake, crisscrossing down the ever-white frozen landscape.

  The cable car swayed gently in the persistent alpine winds.

  Apollo looked at their destination as their gondola neared the top. The peak had been intermittently obscured by clouds from below, but now he could see it clearly.

  “Mon Dieu,” said Apollo quietly, gazing at the beauty of these astral surroundings. “‘He makes the clouds His chariot,’” he said, remembering a long-forgotten Psalm his father had taught him.

  At the gondola’s terminus, a massive concrete structure was built astride the ancient rock. He could see a gift shop and a restaurant inside the huge glass windows. Outside, the building was topped with an observatory platform and capped by a weather instrument tower.

  The mountains glimmered in the winter morning’s sunshine around the windswept structure.

  The gondola locked into the bay at the top with a loud clang and the men disembarked, some unsteady from the swaying. Apollo flashed his identity badge at a German security officer at the entrance, then explained that they were there to check out a suspicious mobile phone signal.

  “This is highly irregular,” said the portly fifty-something guard, speaking English with a thick German accent. “I must call this down to my superiors.”

  Apollo answered in English. “Sure. Call anyone you like, but we need access and for you to remain with us as we inspect the top. It shouldn’t take long, but as I mentioned, we are on NATO’s special response force and we have the authority.”

  “But . . . why all the guns?” the security guard asked. “Is there danger?”

  “We never travel without our full kit. It’s the rules.”

  Apollo rightly assumed the German would appreciate rules, and the man just nodded.

  “At least he’s packing some heat for a plump little piggy,” said Caporal Konstantine, speaking in French and referring to the 9mm Glock pistol strapped to the security guard’s hip.

  “Bet he’s never fired it,” Caporal Garron responded, also in French.

  Dariel admonished his men. “Watch your mouths.”

  The small entourage of seven—six large French special forces men in winter camouflage uniforms and laden with weapons and packs, and one out-of-shape German security officer in a heavy winter coat and a knit cap—continued up the multiple stairwells to the top observation deck. Once there, they stepped outside with a sea of clouds dancing below them. The sun above shone brightly, and at this moment, anyway, their view of the surrounding peaks was crystal clear. They could see to the valley floors in Bavaria and Austria below with the glacier to their backs.

  “You can practically see back to the HQ in Belgium from here,” said Caporal Konstantine, again in French.

  “Not so far. But you can almost see Stuttgart on the clearest days,” replied the German, in perfect French. The Dragoons traded embarrassed glances.

  Apollo tasked Sergent-Chef Dariel with directing the men to pull out their binos and begin to look around. He then turned to Konstantine. “Use your equipment and see if you can hunt down that signal. Get us closer than the one-kilometer radius the JIC was able to provide.”

  Konstantine pointed to the weather tower. “I’d like to climb this to get an even better reading. If anyone is transmitting from up in these mountains, even an additional ten or twelve meters can make a difference in direction finding.”

  “Okay,” Apollo said, then turned toward the security guard, speaking French now. “Would you be able to allow my compatriot access to this tower?”

  “My name is Herr Schneider and, yes, I can let you in. The tower is for the—how do you say?—Deutsche Wetterdienst.”

  “German Weather Service. I’ll instruct my men to be careful around the equipment.”

  Schneider took the keys from his belt and unlocked the steel gate in the chain-link fence that surrounded the small tower, and Caporal Konstantine stepped in. The ladder up the tower was covered in icicles, and this made his ascent especially slow.

  While Konstantine climbed, Sergent-Chef Dariel directed his boss to the railing overlooking the Alps to the north. The view was incredible and every now and then the peak became totally whitewashed as snow flurries passed overhead.

  Dariel said, “It’s a pity, but even if there is a Russian spy skiing the slopes and coming on to the girls, there does not seem to be any great threat to the NATO alliance up here.”

  Apollo agreed. “Yeah. Looks like a dry hole.”

  A shout from behind took their focus to the weather tower. One of the men was racing toward them. “Sir, Konstantine is yelling that he’s receiving something.”

  The three ran across the iced-over metal decking to the base of the ladder inside the weather tower and peered up. They could see the top hatch was open and Caporal Konstantine was looking down.

  “Sir,” he said, his tone bright with excitement. “I’ve found it. The signal.”

  “Can you tell what direction? How far?”

  “Sir, it’s coming from this tower, right here. You better come up here and look at this.”

  Apollo and his other two men, followed by the German guard, climbed the frozen ladder up to the top. The wind whipped against them, and while the soldiers wore their goggles, Schneider had to squint as another snowy gust passed through and around them, momentarily obscuring their vision down to a few meters.

  At the top they huddled together as Caporal Konstantine shouted above the wind.

  “Sir, look here, on this big weather mast.” He pointed to a metal pole that extended four meters up from the base of the weather tower. “That equipment about one meter from the top looks brand-new, and it’s like nothing I’ve seen. There’s a satellite dish, a few radio antennae, and . . . that thing.”

  Apollo saw a metal box the size of a microwave oven, with one side made of glass. Inside appeared to be a large lens facing toward the north. A red light glowed in the center.

  “The hell is that?”

  “Sir, that looks like a big laser. From the lack of ice accumulation, it was put up in the last day or two.”

  Schneider said, “A Wetterdienst crew arrived yesterday and worked here. They said they’d be working on other peaks on the mountain for the next few days.”

  “Where are they now?” Apollo asked.

  “I think I can answer that.” Caporal Konstantine pointed to a small unidirectional antenna. “That thing is too little for anything but point-to-point comms. Whoever is talking to that antenna is doing it from that peak over there.” He pointed to a smaller peak four hundred meters farther along the range to the northeast.

  Karl said, “There is another small weather station over there. The Wetterdienst guys have clearance to that one and a bigger one on that peak.” He indicated a rocky outcropping just fifty meters to the southwest.

  Apollo scanned the closer peak. A concrete-and-iron
outbuilding was built into the rock, an antenna array rising above it. A group of four men in heavy winter coats stood by the antenna, and they seemed to be looking back in the direction of Zugspitze.

  Apollo eyed them for a moment, then waved. Cheerily they waved back. He then looked over his shoulder and was surprised to see Konstantine climbing up the steel beam of the mast, a slow process with the accumulation of ice on every surface.

  “Just want to get a better look, sir.”

  In moments Konstantine had made his way up to the white box.

  Dariel said, “If you fall, Caporal, I’ll kick your ass where you land!”

  The men laughed, and Konstantine leaned over the metal box and reached into the wires coming from it. He had to shout to be heard over the wind. “Sir, the cables connecting this thing to the battery have Cyrillic writing on them.” He pulled one of them loose from the metal mast and unfastened it from the back of the box.

  He dropped it down, and Dariel caught it and looked it over.

  “It looks like military-grade equipment to me,” said Sergent-Chef Dariel.

  Suddenly Apollo realized this had not been a wild-goose chase after all. “Looks like some sort of Russian signal-intercept operation is going on here. Spy shit, I guess. Call the men. I want the rest of One Team and Three Team to get their gear, including skis, and take the ski lifts to the top of the slopes. That will put the men within five hundred meters of that other weather tower. Tell them I want HF and SATCOM up immediately. Inform HQ we are investigating further but we may have found something.”

  “Copy, sir. On it,” said Sergent-Chef Dariel. He began passing the orders to the men down below on the glacier.

  Apollo added, “Let Two Team come up from the glacier, put on their snowshoes, and climb up the east side of the peak. It will put them right at the base of that building.”

  “Sir, what if it’s nothing? Just some weather service people stringing up some new equipment.”

  “With Cyrillic lettering?”