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  A knock at the door halted the admiral’s tirade. A stiff and businesslike full-bird Army colonel wearing a starched white uniform shirt and crisply pressed blue slacks entered from the corridor.

  Based on the impressive array of ribbons on his chest, the colonel had clearly seen a great deal of combat, and his face was deeply tanned. It was a given around the Pentagon that when you saw a man or woman with a heavy suntan, they probably weren’t just coming back from vacation in Florida or Hawaii.

  No, around here that meant they’d been downrange.

  The man’s name plate read “Richter.” “Admiral, am I interrupting anything?”

  “Not at all, Colonel. I was just adjusting Major Griggs’s attitude.”

  “You’ll find that’s a difficult thing to do, sir. You see,” said the colonel, closing the door behind him and striding into the room, “ol’ Griggsy here just knows more than everyone else around him.” He turned to look at the admiral. “Admiral, Major Griggs and I have worked together on several occasions. He really doesn’t like being out in the field much. Seems he believes the Army life in the field is beneath him. He belongs behind a desk at some big think tank in the sky. He’s just too smart to be among the riffraff of us rank-’n’-file soldiers.”

  Colonel Richter stepped into bad-breath range of Griggs’s face. “I’ve had enough of you embarrassing my service up here in the director of plans’s office. It’s time for you to get back into the trenches. And since you’re getting close to retirement, that leaves me just about enough time to get your ass deep into something vital. A crap ton of manuals I need rewritten. You’re going to be my best paperwork monkey. Ain’t that right, Major Griggs?”

  “Yes, sir.” A thin bead of sweat rolled down Griggs’s forehead and onto the bridge of his nose. He let it hang there unattended.

  “Because if you don’t fulfill your role, even in these last months of service, I think we’ll find that you are just not fit enough to make retirement. It would be a bitch to serve nineteen and a half years just to be bounced out on a profile before you can formally retire with benefits, wouldn’t it?”

  The colonel turned toward the admiral. “Sir, I’ll relieve you of the burden of the major. I’ll take it from here.”

  “Thank you, Colonel.” The admiral smiled and turned toward the door.

  But before he could leave, the executive assistant to the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs walked in. Elena was in her fifties, sharp, stunning, and as shapely as a fitness instructor. She was as much a power broker around the office as she was a peacemaker. A lifelong civilian who had worked for more than eight chairmen in thirty-two years of federal service, Elena had remained the constant in this office for more than twelve years.

  Anyone who didn’t know Elena wasn’t worth knowing.

  “Hi, Admiral. Was hoping I’d find you here.” She smiled broadly. “The deputy sent me. Seems he had a productive meeting with your man just now, Lieutenant Colonel Connolly, but he’s disappointed you and Connolly’s partner had to miss the meeting.” She leaned to one side, looking past the admiral to catch sight of Major Griggs, who still stood bolt upright at attention in the middle of the room.

  “Oh, there you are, Bob. The vice chairman said the intelligence data these two men put together is the tops. Wants to go hot with it ASAP. Needs you and your men to tee it up to brief the chairman himself. He passes along his sincere compliments to you and your planning staff. Your team finally got us one move ahead of the Russians.”

  All three men stood in silence.

  Elena cocked her head. “I’m sorry. Did I interrupt something?”

  “No. Thank you, Elena,” said the admiral softly. “I’ll have Lieutenant Colonel Connolly ready to brief the chairman by this afternoon.”

  Major Bob Griggs remained at attention after Elena departed, but he couldn’t conceal the edge of a slight smirk.

  “Wipe that fucking smile off your face,” said the colonel, squaring up on Griggs again. “Admiral . . . is he still going with me?”

  Herbers was still fighting off the shock. His face cleared and he said, “Hell yes. I’ve got Connolly. You get Griggs.”

  Colonel Richter said, “Be in my office in fifteen minutes, Griggs. Clean out your desk here. Your ass is mine now.”

  Without another word, the colonel and the admiral walked out, leaving Griggs still standing at attention.

  Griggs’s little smirk faded and more sweat rolled onto his collar. His shoulders fell, he relaxed his posture, and then he headed back to his brand-new, comfortable office to empty his brand-new desk into a cardboard box.

  For Bob Griggs, the big leagues hadn’t lasted long, but he and Connolly had successfully achieved what they’d termed “Operation Sacrifice Fly.” Griggs forfeited himself so Connolly could slip in to brief the vice chairman in his place.

  It had worked perfectly to plan, and now all that was left for Griggs to do was pay the price.

  CHAPTER 44

  NEAR HOF, GERMANY

  26 DECEMBER

  Lieutenant Colonel Tom Grant’s face had never been this cold in his life, but he was so intently focused on scanning the horizon through his binos that he couldn’t be bothered to duck down into the warm insides of his M1A2 Abrams tank. The temperature was in the low teens, but the frigid air whipping across Grant’s face was due to the fact that the tank he was riding in was blazing down the German autobahn.

  One of the advantages of leading a unit comprising mainly techs and mechs was that Grant’s order to remove all the governors from the engines had been obeyed and put into action in less than two hours. Now the Honeywell AGT1500C multifuel turbine engines cranked out a speed of over sixty miles per hour.

  Grant’s driver had the pedal to the metal, as he’d been ordered to do, and the lieutenant colonel worried that the young Army specialist might drive off into a ditch or run over a civilian car.

  Sergeant Anderson, the tank’s gunner, had climbed over to Grant’s seat while Grant stood up in the turret, and the young man scanned through the commander’s independent sight system. The M1A2 SEP had two sight systems, both thermal and both very high-tech. With the flick of a switch Grant could designate several targets and the gunner, Anderson, could then kill each one in succession.

  But at the moment Grant was searching for any sign of Russian forces in the dark through his binos, and his gunner was using Grant’s sight to look for long-range targets and to keep the driver out of trouble.

  The voice of Grant’s operations officer, Captain Spillane, came over the headset: “Sir, relay from an AH-64 pilot over the UHF. He says he’s got comms with one of the ground stations on the guard nets.”

  “Copy, Brad. Read it out loud on this net,” said Grant, his eyes still in his glass, hunting for enemy armor ahead.

  “Sir, the traffic is as follows. ‘Cease fire, cease fire, cease fire. All NATO forces, cease hostilities. Acting EUCOM commander is designating a cease to all NATO combat operations.’”

  Only now did Grant lower his binos.

  Sergeant Anderson spoke over the intercom. “You have got to be fucking kidding me!”

  “Anderson, get off—I can’t hear the operations officer,” barked Grant; then he rekeyed his radio. “Brad, confirm what you just said. Acting EUCOM commander has told us to halt all actions?”

  “That’s an affirm, sir. I’m picking it up on the NATO frequencies now as well. It’s not as clear as the relay I have to the Apache, but it confirms the cease-fire.”

  Anderson came back over the intercom. “This has to be a Russian trick. A ruse, sir.”

  Grant was too preoccupied to tell his gunner to get off the intercom again. He climbed back down into the turret, and Anderson moved out of his seat and back to his own. Wiping his face, Grant got on the intercom.

  “Anderson, I want you to use the Blue Force Tracker, or a map, or some
thing—just get me to the eastern half of Stuttgart. Copy?”

  “Got it, sir.”

  Grant rekeyed the radio. “We might be able to catch them as they depart Stuttgart. We’ll move into position.”

  Spillane replied with, “Uh . . . roger, but . . . then what, sir? Are we going to just blow off the cease-fire?”

  “It could very well be a spoof operation from Russian radios. But at the least we’ll be in position to reattack the Russian forces as they depart if we can’t confirm the EUCOM orders. If there is a cease-fire, and I do say if, I at least want to be in a position to observe that they observe the cease-fire and get the hell out of Germany. I’ll follow their asses all the way across Poland if I have to.

  “Keep trying to contact EUCOM directly by any means to seek clarification and guidance. Got it?”

  “I got it, sir. I’ll plug the directions in and navigate the regiment. Permission to ask our German buddies for help with any shortcuts?”

  “Do what you gotta do. Just get us there before the Russians get too far away.”

  * * *

  • • •

  An hour and a half later Lieutenant Colonel Grant and fourteen M1A2 SEP tanks of the 37th Armored Regiment sat outside the German city of Göppingen.

  Grant looked through the commander’s sight, and through it he could clearly see a massive military train with the Russian flag painted on the side. It rumbled along a track through sparse trees two kilometers distant, with several Bumerang escorts driving along an adjacent road.

  Anderson was watching, too. “Trains, sir? Did anybody say anything about trains?”

  Grant said, “It’s not like we’ve been getting much intel, Anderson.”

  “Sir,” the young man continued, “I could dump a thermobaric round right up that train’s ass, kill all them Russians. Hell, I can see four or five of them set up as air sentries on the roof, watching those Apaches in the distance.”

  Grant felt the same emotions as Anderson but said, “We’re not doing that. If this cease-fire is for real, then the time for us tankers to make an impact has passed.” He spoke with obvious frustration.

  Spillane came over the radio. “Courage Six, Courage Three.”

  “Go ahead, Brad.”

  “Sir, I have a colonel over at Panzer Kaserne on the radio.”

  “The Marine base?”

  “Yes, sir, but he has a landline back to Patch Barracks. He confirms what we heard and offers to tank us up if need be. He relays that someone—he wasn’t sure who it was—directed us to stay in contact with the Russians, to escort them right out of Germany and into Poland. We pass them off to the Poles, who will take it from there. He said there would be more to follow by radio, but our regiment is the most ‘unfucked’—his words, not mine. Guess there’s a lot of chaos in the city right now. Hell, all over Europe. But we’re the closest and best to task with the job of armed escort right now. Orders for ROE will follow.”

  During the radio pause Anderson said, “Sir, if I plop a round through that engine, those fucks would be trapped here.”

  “You have your orders. Sit here and watch. Then we’ll follow them and keep watching.”

  “Watch them get away with it, sir?”

  Grant closed his eyes. He wanted to be sick. These Russians had killed his men and now he had to babysit them part of their way back home.

  He keyed his radio. “Copy all, Brad. Ask the colonel to relay that we acknowledge and understand our mission.”

  Tom Grant slammed his head back into the unyielding steel ammo magazine behind him in frustration.

  CHAPTER 45

  WARSAW, POLAND

  26 DECEMBER

  Polish president Konrad Zielinski made the decision unilaterally and knew it would make him, for the majority of the population of his nation, the most despised man in Poland.

  But the calculation was not hard for him. He would not—could not—allow the Russians to kill, maim, and destroy their way across his country, then just return home in peace.

  Like nothing had happened.

  No. There would be repercussions. Despite the cease-fire NATO had declared, Poland would attack the Russian column with everything they had.

  Unilaterally.

  He knew the Polish armed forces did not have enough firepower to destroy the Russian invaders; there was too much Russian airpower to protect the column, they were moving too fast, and the Russian forces on the ground were too well equipped, too well trained. The surprise against his Polish Land Forces had been too complete. But the president felt his military had to try to deliver the hard lesson to Moscow that there would be a price to be paid for any invasion of its neighbor.

  And it was abundantly clear to President Zielinski that the Poles would have to do this themselves. NATO did not support them. They would not help them, and had negotiated the Russian assault forces a clear withdrawal, almost as if Poland were just some middle ground for other, bigger countries to bargain over and transit at will.

  No, not again. Russia would learn something of Poland’s strength, and NATO would as well.

  A meeting was called and the generals arrived quickly and quietly at the Ministry of National Defense on Klonowa Street in central Warsaw. President Zielinski himself came to the meeting, the lone man in the room out of uniform, and after a brief but impassioned speech harkening to World War II and the Polish history of agonies and wrongs from Russia, he sat down at a chair behind the officers.

  The officers next talked over the military options, and the immediate consensus was that there were precious few. The lieutenant general who commanded the Polish Land Forces admitted he was firmly against an attack. These Russians were exiting Germany of their own accord, under an umbrella of peace, and it was assumed they’d file back quickly through Poland and end this affair. The general of the Polish air force agreed. He’d lost a sizable portion of his most advanced aircraft during the Russian lightning raid two days earlier. A coordinated and concerted Polish attack on the Russian invaders with what he had left would be very hard to pull off. The military term was “penny packeting a response”—cobbling together a mishmash of forces on an unknown timeline. It was likely he would only lose more of his air force in another round of fighting and all but invite future threats into Poland when the Russians realized Polish air had been so badly degraded.

  And what would the repercussions be from NATO if Poland violated the cease-fire? The PLF might take a few bites out of the raid force, but if there was no NATO to support them after the initial attack, what more might come over the Belarusian border? This threat was real and the stakes were nothing less than the very existence of Poland.

  Some sort of surprise attack was the only hope for, if not parity on the battlefield, then at least a fighting chance for the Poles to strike a solid blow, to damage this raid force without destroying their nation in the bargain.

  But the Polish Land Forces could not plan on any surprise, because there was no way they could move into position to cut off the Russian armor without the Russians knowing about it from their intelligence collection. It was assumed spies and drones had poured over the border with the raid. In the past two days multiple shoot-outs and killings had taken place in and around train stations in the southern part of the nation, and bodies of dead fighting-age males in civilian clothes and carrying Russian weapons had been recovered.

  The officers stood around a table and looked over maps of their nation. It was clear that the easiest, quickest, and smartest move for Sabaneyev to make would be to roll his force back across Poland along the major highways that passed closest to his original invasion route. If he did this, he’d be back in the safety of Belarus before nightfall of the following day. The flat farmland around the motorways and almost completely rural landscape would make the possibility of any ambush by the Poles remote and ill advised. Even by air they would be forced to
play by Russian rules.

  The generals were getting nowhere with their attack plan, and President Zielinski was becoming visibly irritated, when a colonel in Wojska Specjalne, the Polish special forces, spoke up. He pointed out that even though the motorways wouldn’t take Sabaneyev through any urban areas, there were two major cities close to his assumed return route: Wrocław and Kraków. One of these cities, he suggested, could hide an irregular force with SF support that just might be able to avoid detection by the Russians until the column was too close to avoid rolling into a trap.

  A general in the mechanized cavalry dismissed the idea brusquely, saying no force of any size would be able to get out of the city and into fighting positions along the motorway before the well-defended Russian column could destroy it, even if the motorway skirted right alongside the urban center itself.

  But the Wojska Specjalne colonel boldly pushed back and offered up a plan that, at first blush, left some of the officers in the room questioning which side of the fight he was on.

  “We have to trick the Russians. We have to let them think they’ve gotten what they want. We have to let them do what Russians do best . . . believe too much in their superiority.

  “They are set up for sleek, fast-paced-maneuver warfare. They have enough tricks to fight back against everything we’ve got. So we place them where they should not be. We mire them in a city.” He paused and saw confused faces looking back.

  “And then what?” asked the cavalry general. “We fight a battle with Russian armor in the congested, civilian-filled streets of Kraków or Wrocław?”

  The colonel nodded solemnly. “Tak.” (“Yes.”)

  The room was silent for several seconds. And then President Zielinski said, “Colonel . . . you have the floor. Lay out the full plan. No great speeches, now. How does this work?”

  The colonel turned to Zielinski. “Mr. President, please understand. I believe an attack will be successful in damaging the Russian wheeled force, ideally down to the last man, but it will be similarly devastating to the population centers. You have two choices, Kraków or Wrocław. From the map it appears they would both be well suited for my idea.”