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  After his two firefights with Russian Spetsnaz forces, Apollo had been recalled to Brussels and then ordered to attach to the Troupes de Marine, the former colonial troops of the French army, now the French Expeditionary Forces Command in Africa.

  The Dragoons were the most eligible and best-trained unit to go to the tiny African nation of Djibouti, now the presumed landing port of the Russian forces that the West felt certain were on their way to the rare-earth mine in Kenya.

  A minute before landing, Apollo saw the coastline and the azure waters of the Gulf of Aden, and he scanned until he found what he was looking for. It was the new Chinese naval port facility. The Chinese had a military base here in Djibouti, but they didn’t have much in the way of infantry forces, so Apollo assumed the Russians weren’t worried about landing here.

  Plus, China didn’t have much of a stake in this fight. The discovery of the massive rare-earth deposits in Kenya was bad news for China no matter who ran the mine. They’d be forced to pay either the West or the Russians for the metals, and it would drive down prices of their own REMs, so there was no use getting in the middle of a superpower war and picking a side whose victory wouldn’t make much beneficial difference to them but could cause a deepening of hostilities with the other power.

  Furthermore, China had its eye fixed firmly on another prize now: Taiwan.

  The Airbus bounced once on touchdown; then the pilot hit the brakes and reversed the engines, slowing the big machine. It taxied to the airport’s service apron on the French military side and slowly came to a stop.

  The sixty-four men of the French special forces, 13th Parachute Dragoons, stood simultaneously, shouldered their packs and weapons, and began preparing to move the heavier equipment off the big aircraft.

  As the hatch opened, Apollo was slammed in the face by the oppressive heat, like a blast from a furnace. He squinted into the brightness, marveling at the fact that he’d been fighting for his life in deep snow less than seventy-two hours earlier.

  As he reached for his sunglasses, he was met at the open hatch by the French military attaché, a commandant in rank, which was equivalent to major. Behind him stood an overtly perspiring diplomat in a tropic-weight tan suit. Both men looked harried, panicked.

  Apollo stepped up to them.

  “Vous êtes Capitaine Arc-Blanchette?” the major asked.

  “Oui, mon commandant.”

  The commandant extended a hand with a sealed file in it. “Your orders. I am not authorized to talk to you about the contents. Now, get your men and their gear off the plane, because we need to get on. We’ve been ordered to evacuate all consular personnel immediately.” The commandant gestured outside, and through the open hatch Apollo saw a long line of civilians, all sweating profusely and carrying their possessions in backpacks and roller luggage. They poured across the tarmac toward the aircraft, jostling one another in the process.

  Apollo turned to the cabin, and loudly ordered his men to get their gear and get off as quickly as possible. Before they hit the bottom of the ramp, several men tried to squeeze around Apollo’s heavily laden troopers.

  They were unsuccessful.

  Once on the tarmac, Apollo pulled his men off to the side and out of the way. Here Sergent-Chef Dariel called them to order. When the men were at attention, Dariel saluted Apollo, who returned the salute. Dariel then gave the booming command to pivot to the right and marched the men in as sharp a column as they could maintain, given the heavy bags, right past the scrum of French civilians.

  The commandant remained at Apollo’s side. “Thank you, Captain. It’s been a hell of a day. Two ladies threatened me this morning. One hit me with her bag across the face.” He pointed to a large red welt; clearly the bag had a metal buckle. “The other was the wife of an oil CEO. Apparently she knows the prime minister’s wife pretty well. At least, that’s what I understand after the four phone calls I received from Paris.”

  Apollo saluted the superior officer, uninterested in the man’s situation. He had his own issues to concern himself with, and he prioritized them higher than this man’s getting hit with a handbag.

  He turned to the diplomat. “I might ask you, sir: Do you know a man named Pascal Arc-Blanchette?”

  “Yes, I know him. He’s not here. He was told he could leave, but he didn’t show up at the airport, and we’re not waiting around.”

  “He’s my father. I just want to know if he’s reachable via mobile phone.”

  “I don’t know, young man. Call him and see. But word is—and you didn’t hear this from me, Capitaine—that the Russians have been hacking into the cell networks. They have been more unreliable than ever, and sometimes you can hear strange clicks on the line.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Apollo.

  Both the diplomat and the commandant left the Dragoons behind as they rushed toward the aircraft stairs, eager to get themselves on the turnaround flight to France.

  * * *

  • • •

  DJIBOUTI CITY, DJIBOUTI

  28 DECEMBER

  The flotilla of Russian and Iranian warships and the remaining commercial cargo and fuel haulers arrived in port in Djibouti City at eight a.m.

  While the frigates patrolled the mouth of the harbor, the other ships docked so they could off-load their men, fuel, and stores.

  By nine the off-loading of Iranian transport and cargo containers was going smoothly. Colonel General Lazar watched from the pier side, flanked by Colonel Kir, as the huge cargo crane swept back on board the big Iranian vessel in front of them and then lowered its boom and began unspooling its braided steel cable.

  The Iranians were particularly harsh to the Djiboutian dockworkers, working them on double-quick time, presumably to impress their Russian leadership. Shouts in Arabic, French, Farsi, and English echoed across the water in the bustling Djiboutian industrial harbor. The Iranian naval personnel now seemed bent on meeting the off-loading deadline they had promised.

  Lazar watched the crane come up from the hold with three BTR-82A armored personnel carriers marked for and guarded by Colonel Borbikov’s Spetsnaz personnel. The vehicles were braced next to one another on the ends of the cables and the strain made the crane’s winches squeal. He was pretty sure they were maxing out the allowable weight to get three off at a time, but the crane held, and moments later it placed them gently on the pier.

  Lazar knew that a half dozen nuclear artillery shells would be secured in one of the vehicles, and he tried to determine exactly which one by the number of hulking special forces soldiers guarding the massive machines on the dock. Just behind the two command vehicles tasked to Borbikov, a third BTR was virtually surrounded by Spetsnaz once it was unhooked from the hoists, and Lazar could see Borbikov, still on the ship, looking down at it.

  Well, there you are. Borbikov’s nukes, Lazar told himself.

  The whole idea of bringing nuclear ordnance to Africa was insane as far as Lazar was concerned. He understood that it would be an important bargaining chip once he took the mines, a way to get the rest of the world to hesitate before making any attempt to retake Mrima Hill for fear of causing the Russians to fire on approaching forces at distance—or, worse from an economic standpoint, to set fuses and vacate the area, leaving behind nuclear devastation that would render the entire mine unusable for centuries.

  But Lazar was a conventional soldier, and he did not like this escalation from his side, because he suspected that it would lead only to an escalation from the other side.

  Lazar told himself for the hundredth time in the past four months that he must be successful in taking and holding the mine so that there would never be any detonation that could start a full-scale nuclear war.

  The general’s own BTR command-and-control vehicles came out of the hold next. Unlike the fighting variant of BTR, which carried troops and a 30mm cannon, Lazar’s C2 variant had an extendable communica
tions mast and an array of antennas. Without satellite phones or a spot to set up a long-wire high-frequency radio, he would be able to talk to his own brigade for a limited time, but he would feel immeasurably more comfortable once aboard, on the move, and surrounded by his maps, with Colonel Kir directing traffic. They would stop periodically to throw up the bigger antennas, and about halfway through their drive south they’d get satellite comms up again and begin making regular reports back to the Kremlin.

  Lazar signaled to Colonel Kir to mount up and take the three vehicles to the staging area. The general had decided to walk instead. He would be cramped in the BTR on the drive south to Kenya, and he felt the walk might be his last stroll for a while.

  Along the way, he spoke with pockets of Russian soldiers marching in platoons toward the head of the pier. Stretching his legs and chatting with the boys raised his spirits. He hailed familiar faces as he went and received a few cheers in response. With a smile on his face, he reached the end of the pier and spotted Kir and the assembling troops and lines of vehicles. They were about halfway done; in another few hours they’d be fully off-loaded.

  CHAPTER 56

  USS JOHN WARNER

  GULF OF ADEN

  28 DECEMBER

  “Helm, come to one-two-nine degrees. Depth, thirty feet. Speed, four knots,” whispered the navigator.

  “One-two-nine, and thirty feet, aye,” answered the pilot.

  “Confirm heading and depth, aye,” said the copilot.

  Commander Diana DelVecchio watched the two men at the controls. The two young men sat next to each other, working in perfect harmony with her boat to keep the submarine level and on course.

  The XO leaned over to her and spoke softly, out of the earshot of others. “Ma’am. We’re doing this? We’re going to attack the port of a nation we’re not at war with?”

  “I prefer to think of it as us attacking hostile forces who are in the process of invading the nation we’re not at war with.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, but DelVecchio acknowledged his concern.

  “The area commander opened ROE when the shooting started in Germany. Having said that, some locals around the port are going to die if we hit one or two of those oil tankers. It will be devastating.” She remained silent for a moment, then spoke up in a louder voice.

  “Weapons, status report.”

  The weapons control officer responded with “All tubes loaded. Tubes two and four are still awaiting confirmation. Outer muzzle door is causing them some trouble.”

  “What’s the issue?”

  “Captain, we don’t know—might be barnacles crusting the outer hatch, portside. Torpedo room wants permission to flush it with air to see if they can jar the hinges.”

  “No,” she said. “Get the targeting solution finished. When we fire the starboard tubes, tell them to pop air in on the portside, then immediately fire the other spread. That way we’ll only give away our position to anyone listening when the first fish are already in the water.”

  “Aye, Captain,” said the weapons control officer, who turned quickly back to the two men at the digital targeting computers.

  “Up scope,” she said to the weapons station officer.

  With stealth and cunning and supremely accurate navigational charts, the John Warner had managed to slip through the phalanx of Russian submarines and the Iranian and Russian frigates, and was now within range of the harbor of Djibouti City. Only silent running here would keep herself and her crew alive, and she knew they’d have time to fire only one spread of torpedoes at the big ships now at dock before they’d have to turn and run.

  DelVecchio now knew what everyone above the surface knew: the Russians were going for that rare-earth-mineral mine that had been such a big story in the news for a few months three and a half years earlier. She’d received word that a mechanized brigade was on board the flotilla, as well as a warning that there was almost no way to stop them once they were on land. A few companies of the French Foreign Legion and a battalion of the Kenya Defence Forces protected the mine itself, and French and American military leaders were scrambling to get assets into play; but with the shooting down of the four B-1B Lancers the day before, nobody wanted to fly anywhere near the Russians.

  It was up to DelVecchio, here, now, to thin the ranks of the enemy, or there would be nothing to stop them from winning the mines and destroying everyone and everything in their way.

  * * *

  • • •

  DJIBOUTI CITY, DJIBOUTI

  28 DECEMBER

  French spy Pascal Arc-Blanchette watched the activity at the port through his binoculars from over a kilometer away, standing outside a press box at the Stade Hassan Gouled, the largest soccer stadium in the East African nation. He had a decent if distant vantage point from here and he could determine only two things: there were a lot of Russians, and they had brought some toys.

  It had been a hell of a morning. The sixty-four-year-old had spent the previous evening at the French embassy learning details about the fleet and the destruction of four U.S. bombers over the Gulf of Aden, and he’d been on the phone and met in person with local contacts, doing his best to set up lines of communication so they could stay in touch and report in when the streets were clogged with Russian armor, Russian guns, and Russian eyes.

  He truly wished Paris had paid closer attention to his warning that Russian special forces were operating in Djibouti, and he blamed himself for not raising a louder alarm. But not for long. He understood that his little corner of the world here was on no one’s radar more than twenty-four hours ago, and with everything else going on, there was no alarm he could have sounded that would have allowed Paris to stop a Russian invasion.

  No, this attack had been coming for some time—it was inevitable—and now all Pascal could do was that thing he did best: spy on his adversary.

  To this end he turned away and left his high perch at the Stade Gouled, heading downstairs for his car. He’d relocate to the far edge of the city to put himself in position to monitor the Russians when they left town on their way to Kenya.

  As he made his way down the poured-concrete staircase, his phone rang. He snatched it up, thinking it might be one of the dockworkers he’d been trying desperately to reach for the past few hours.

  “Allo?”

  “Hi, Papa. It’s me.”

  Arc-Blanchette usually beamed from ear to ear upon hearing his son’s voice, but not now. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Not much goes on around here I don’t know about, but in your case I got a call from a friend at the ministry involved with the evacuation. He mentioned a group that sounded a lot like yours was flying in, and then the plane would fill with those French flying out.”

  “I was hoping to see you getting on that plane.”

  Pascal laughed softly. “I’ve spent years down here with nothing much going on. I’m certainly not leaving now while there is some real excitement.” His tone turned serious. “I’m more concerned about you. What can you and your tiny band of lightly armed soldiers do against all that pouring off those ships?”

  “The less you know, the better.”

  There was silence for a moment. “Ah, my brave, brave boy. The Arc-Blanchettes have fought for France in every capacity since the time of—”

  “Yes, I know—since the Battle of Montebello. You tell us all the time. Where are you? I’d like to see you.”

  Pascal thought for a moment. “There is a place I use from time to time. The owner and his family are trusted friends. La Mer Rouge. It’s a kilometer south of the highway as you leave the city. But beware: Russian eyes and ears are everywhere.”

  “I will, Papa. Be safe yourself.”

  * * *

  • • •

  PORT OF DJIBOUTI

  DJIBOUTI CITY, DJIBOUTI

&
nbsp; 28 DECEMBER

  On the pier adjacent to where General Lazar now conferred with his staff, Colonel Borbikov was not happy. His Tigrs were just now slowly rolling off the gangway, and the Djiboutian dockworkers seemed intent on banging every crate and cargo net full of equipment during the off-loading. He told himself he’d be lucky if half his ammunition and equipment was operational after such rough treatment.

  The longshoremen were being paid a considerable sum, Borbikov knew, and he wasn’t getting much out of them in his estimation. He told himself these Third World wretches would quickly start working a hell of a lot harder if he started shooting the laziest in their ranks, but he did not pull his pistol.

  Instead he let the thought pass. There was a strong possibility Russia would need the use of this port again in the future to bring more equipment or troops to the rare-earth mine.

  The local men passed him without a word; most looked the other way when they noticed his angry glare.

  Suddenly an ugly noise jarred him out of his thoughts. The vessel’s Klaxon alarm began sounding.

  What the fuck are these Iranian assholes up to now?

  He ran up the gangplank as dockworkers filed past him, looking around in mild curiosity. Some Iranian sailors and Russian troops peered up into the morning sky, worried about an attack from the air.

  Borbikov pushed through them. “Make way! Move your asses!”

  A man he recognized as one of the junior Iranian deck officers ran onto the bridge wing above him, leaned over, and yelled down through a bullhorn.

  “Hujum tuwrbid! Hujum tuwrbid!”