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  She gave him a pat on the back. “We need planes.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Shank said.

  Paulina walked off into the night while unslinging the rifle from her shoulder.

  * * *

  • • •

  Minutes later Shank could tell the Poles had spotted the Russians. The first of a series of hushed whispers arose from the position nearest him. It was a little earlier than he’d anticipated, so he snatched up the radio handset again. “Nooner, this is Shank. Need you to accelerate TOT. Can you make a new TOT? Two-two-two-five?”

  There was a pause, then: “Copy, Shank. We can make that TOT.”

  “Good man. Lean into that throttle, brother.”

  Shank trudged through the snow on his crutch toward the Polish lines. He found himself pleasantly surprised to see a mountain of anti-tank rockets, grenades, and boxes of machine-gun ammunition. Slit trenches had been dug into the frozen earth, and the Poles were protected enough to stay safe from all but airbursts and overhead hits.

  Pretty good, thought Shank.

  The operator of the massive DShK machine gun waved him over and motioned for him to look through the starlight scope of his weapon. Doing so, Shank immediately saw a line of tanks. It took only seconds to ID them as T-14s.

  He turned away from the scope without a word and rushed back to the truck as fast as his crutch would take him. When he got back, Nooner was already broadcasting, declaring himself ready to attack.

  “Shank, this is Nooner. BP inbound. I can see a row of tanks. They’re right where you said, sir. I have clear line of sight.”

  Shank’s heart pounded as if he was about to deliver ordnance on target himself. “Roger. I need you to clear our gun target line. Pull right off target. There will be a lot of shooting going on down here, and your chances of getting hit are high if you don’t fire your ordnance and climb immediately.”

  “Copy all,” Nooner said. “Let your people know we’re starting our attack run now. PGM first, then second passes with guns.”

  “Copy all. Clear to prosecute targets.”

  Shank heard the unmistakable whine of the A-10s above on their attack runs, then the terrific sounds of two missiles shrieking through the air. This was followed seconds later by the rolling explosion of destroyed Russian armor. Fireballs lit up the night sky and now machine-gun tracer fire lanced across the open field from the wood line, pounding into the approaching vehicles.

  The gunners blazed away, lighting up the night. Shank looked up and down the line and saw six other heavy weapons pouring fire into the Russian column.

  The Russians quickly determined the source of the fire from the incoming tracer rounds emanating from the woods on the hilltop, and in moments Shank heard a spinning, whirring noise as 120mm tank gunfire rolled across the open farmland and toward them, passing overhead.

  This was followed quickly by more incoming tank rounds. Again, most were high and arced over the hilltop only to cause devastation kilometers behind the Polish force, but a few hit just in front of the militia, shook the ground, and dumped what snow was still clumped in the pine trees above after the jackhammer assault of the machine-gun and cannon fire.

  Someone shouted over the crashing sounds: “They’re moving through the field in our direction! Four hundred meters!”

  Fuck, thought Shank, they’ll assault right through. These little trenches and felled trees aren’t enough to protect us from a full-on attack.

  He moved back over to the radio. Above him he could hear limbs snapping as the coaxial machine guns on the Russian tanks peppered the wood line with heavy fire.

  He ducked low and reached for the handset.

  Before he could broadcast, his wingman came over the radio. “Shank, this is Nooner. I’ve got eyes on armor headed toward your position.”

  “Nooner, this is Shank. Set up for an immediate reattack. Bring the BP to just west of my position and cycle on target. The Russians will be on top of us in minutes if you can’t hit them hard and fast right now.”

  “Can do. Am I clear onto the target?”

  “Yeah, ASAP. Pull right stick off target and gain to six thousand.”

  Before Shank had finished speaking the night erupted with a loud and inordinately long Brrrrrrrrrrt. By the sounds of things, Shank estimated Nooner had dumped over a hundred rounds onto the Russians in one blast.

  A second after the first sound ended, there was another long burst as Nooner’s wingman fired his cannon.

  Racing jets flew low, just overhead but invisible in the darkness.

  The Poles at the wood line erupted in cheers, and they continued pouring their own fire down at the approaching enemy.

  Shank keyed the radio. “Nooner, Shank. You’re making friends down here. What’s your time left on station?”

  “I can push past war limits, but I still only have another fifteen mikes left. We burned a lot of fuel looking for you.”

  Shank pointed to his watch and then held up one and then five fingers to Paulina. She nodded and ran forward to another of her machine-gun positions.

  Shank watched her a moment as she went, then pulled up the mic again. “Roger. Let’s get to work. Be advised, we are still in danger of being overrun.”

  “Copy all. Bringing it in tight. Make sure your guys are keeping their heads down. We’re going to crisscross that kill zone with everything we’ve got.”

  For the next fifteen minutes Shank coordinated the air-to-ground battle. The direct fire from the Russians continued closing in on the Polish positions. As the enemy got closer, the sounds of smaller- and smaller-caliber weapons added to the mix told Shank that dismounted infantry was nearing the woods. He gave Nooner some more guidance, then decided he couldn’t stand it any longer.

  He had to get another firsthand look at the fight to get a better view. He climbed behind the wheel of the truck next to the radio, then put the vehicle into drive. He drove forward toward the machine-gun position with the lights off. He knew the Russians would be looking for thermal signatures, so he didn’t move too close to the wood line before putting the truck in park.

  A Russian tank round slammed into the trees just twenty meters off his ten o’clock position, and a spinning branch spider-webbed his windshield.

  “Fuck!” he shouted. He fell out the door of the truck, reached back in for his crutch, and then moved as fast as he could toward a machine-gun emplacement. The cuts on his legs had all split open and he could feel blood oozing out.

  Looking out over the Polish valley now, he could see the Russian tanks and BTRs. Ten pieces of armor burned, but another ten sprinted up the hill, moving in pairs forward, while another two shot volleys of suppressive fire. The closest vehicles were now less than one hundred meters away, clearly desperate to make it into the trees and among the Poles so that the NATO aircraft above couldn’t continue whittling down their ranks.

  In front of Shank’s eyes a precision-guided missile drilled the lead tank as an A-10 passed low under the cloud cover. A second Hog followed only three seconds behind, its 30mm cannon spewing fire. The tracers blazed through the night in a long and continuous red and yellow streak across the blackness, directly onto a BTR. At least half of the rounds penetrated the vehicle. They were more than enough; the crew had no chance. The vehicle burst into flames; then the ammunition cooked off, sending sparks and flares into the night. Brilliant flames licked thirty feet into the air from the blasted open top hatches of the vehicle.

  “Good work, Nooner!” Shank shouted, though he wasn’t on the radio.

  The assistant gunner of the Dushka spun about, hearing Shank. His face was covered in blood. One of the tank blasts had sent shrapnel into his position.

  Now Shank did return to the radio and grab the handset. “Pour it on, Nooner!”

  The level of incoming fire began to slacken.

  “Nooner, Sh
ank. Do you see signs of withdrawal?”

  “Affirmative. I see vehicles turning back to the road. They are headed due east. Looks like they’re bookin’ it. I think you’re just fighting their rearguard now. Want us to hit them in the ass on the way out?”

  “Negative. Please remain on station here. If these positions show signs of slackening, they could still overrun us. We’re so lightly manned, I think a platoon of Russians with night-vision equipment could kick our asses.”

  “Copy all. We’ll keep an eye on your flanks and let you know. We have great thermal pictures with the temps so low.”

  Shank put the radio handset down. He could see the outline of Paulina approaching him, her AK-47 up at the ready. He stepped out of the truck again. “Hey, looks like . . . ,” he began, but she raced forward and threw her arms around him and hugged him hard. It was painful on his wounds—he imagined it was painful to her injured arm as well—but he hugged her back. He laughed, happy that she was happy. Then he noticed she was sobbing. He pulled back and looked at her. She turned away but then back to him again, wiping tears that left streaks on her dirty cheeks as she smiled brightly. He reached up with his good hand and brushed the tears away. It didn’t do more than smudge the dirt around, but she leaned into his hand, enjoying the personal gesture.

  “You save many Polish today. You kill many Russians today.”

  “I just got my guys in the sky to do the work,” he said, and she hugged him again.

  CHAPTER 67

  USS JOHN WARNER

  30 DECEMBER

  Commander Diana DelVecchio sat with her XO in the wardroom; before them were laptops, charts, papers, and laminated maps.

  Both of them were dog tired.

  The John Warner’s journey through the Tadjoura Trough had been a harrowing experience for all on board, and the crew was utterly exhausted. The acoustic-shadow trick at Moucha Island had worked to an extent. But the hot pursuit of Russian naval vessels, the seemingly endless cat and mouse, the active sonar sweeps and screens, had taken a toll that showed in everyone’s face. Commander DelVecchio had led them through the hours of tense creeping along the bottom without any great incident. A few more distant depth charges had been fired to flush them out, but otherwise the John Warner had popped up unscathed. Perhaps wiser and more trusting of their captain’s and their own abilities to run a gauntlet of hunter-killers. A Cold War skill that had become increasingly rusty with the U.S. Navy’s perceived dominance of the seas in the intervening years in submarine warfare.

  After a full day of slow, silent running and virtually no sleep for the crew or command, the John Warner had managed to sneak away from its Russian pursuers and into the open waters of the Gulf of Aden. But the rapidity with which the ships and subs hunting them broke off contact immediately made DelVecchio suspicious that the Russians had been called away for either a tactical or a strategic reason. She decided to chance an ascent to raise the UMM and communicate with Fleet, and when she did so her suspicions were confirmed.

  The entire surface and undersea force arrayed against her had turned away and was now steaming into the Indian Ocean, presumably, said Fleet, to stand watch off the African coast. The Russians would know the American Virginia-class was somewhere out there in the deep, and the last thing they would do would be to allow the American sub to come close enough to shore to effectively fire its cruise missiles in support of the Marine contingent forming at Mrima Hill.

  And Diana DelVecchio had been sitting there for the past hour, trying to find a way to do just that.

  Maybe the exhaustion she and her team were experiencing was partially to blame, she told herself as she reached for her thermos of coffee.

  And maybe, she also considered, this was just an impossible equation to solve.

  The USS John Warner had a dozen Tomahawk land-attack missiles on board, and the TLAM was an incredibly potent weapon. It could deliver either a 1,000-pound high-explosive warhead or a similarly sized cluster bomb with pinpoint accuracy.

  But TLAMs worked best against stationary targets. GPS-guided munitions flew to a fixed point on the map and then detonated; this was not the way to combat a brigade of attacking armor rolling toward friendly forces. Sure, DelVecchio could launch salvos of TLAMs willy-nilly at coordinates north of Mrima Hill and hope she got fortunate in taking out armor, troops, or the like, but it would take one hell of a lucky shot to do any real damage.

  And even if the Marines could give her the exact coordinates, the Tomahawks would still be ineffective from out in the Indian Ocean. They had an impressive range—over 1,300 miles—but they traveled subsonically, no more than 550 miles an hour, and to be utilized in the most time-efficient way would have them flying near enough to the enemy surface force arrayed off the coast.

  If DelVecchio launched from hundreds of miles away, the Russians would have time to move fixed-position forces or equipment to safety before the TLAMs arrived.

  No . . . firing a dozen two-million-dollar missiles into the plains and jungles of Kenya would do nothing for the Marines, and it would imperil her crew unnecessarily by revealing their location to the enemy.

  She raised her thermos to her mouth, hoping like hell the next jolt of caffeine would be the one to help her see the answer to this riddle.

  Finally, reluctantly, DelVecchio looked up at her XO with bloodshot eyes. “I’d do anything in the world to help those boys, but I don’t see any way without putting the John Warner in absolute peril.”

  The XO nodded at her. “I concur. If we could slip in like we did in the port in Djibouti, then I’d be the first to say so. But we’d have to get so close to the coast to be effective with the TLAMs, there would be virtually no chance of survival.”

  Commander DelVecchio’s tiny frame deflated, and she put her elbows on the table. “All right. We’ll go to a position three hundred miles from the coast. Flight time of the TLAMs will be well over a half hour from there if they fly in a straight line, a lot more if we send them around the Russian fleet. It’s the best we can do, but it’s not good enough, because it won’t do a damn thing to help the Marines.”

  “You can’t win them all. We helped by knocking out the fuel for their tanks.”

  DelVecchio did not respond.

  The XO stood. “I’ll give the command. Please, Commander, get some rest.”

  She didn’t look up or answer verbally; she only nodded with her head still buried in her hands.

  * * *

  • • •

  SOUTHERN POLAND

  30 DECEMBER

  Shank, Paulina, and the small unit withdrew from the battlefield at one a.m. and drove to a nearby village. With a swagger born of their time together and a heady confidence taken from a successful fight, they knocked on the doors of a couple of adjoining houses and asked if they could stay the night. Both families were happy to oblige and took them all in.

  Paulina left the house for a meeting with TDF leadership and to check on the wounded, but Shank stayed with a group of seven militia in the kitchen. The family brought them cold meats and cheese and wine, and the talk at the dinner table was robust.

  A bottle of vodka came out, and Jahdek looked to the American. “Shank, we say Twoje zdrowie! Then we thump the glass and drink.”

  Shank was exhausted. He’d taken another pain pill and really just wanted to lie flat and sleep. But Jahdek was insistent.

  “Okay, maybe just one.” He held up the glass and butchered the toast. “Tow-jaw, drove-away!” He downed it in one gulp and gagged from the harshness of the vodka going down his throat, and the others laughed while Jahdek patted him on the back.

  Another bottle was brought out and soon everyone was singing.

  After a time, Shank’s eyes began to droop, while the men and women around him kept drinking. The lady of the house saw her celebrity was tired, so she guided Shank to a private bedroom on the second floor.


  Soon he was sound asleep.

  * * *

  • • •

  He woke sometime in the night—his hand itched under its cast. He figured he wouldn’t be sleeping well for a long time.

  He opened his eyes; shafts of soft moonlight reached into the room, and in the light he could see Paulina sitting on the edge of the bed and looking at him.

  “You sleep?” she asked.

  He blinked his good eye and stared at her, unsure if he was dreaming. Sensing his confusion, she took his left arm in her hands and felt the bandages.

  “We must change, okay?” She reached to the floor and retrieved a small medical kit. Putting his arm in her lap, he felt her soft skin as she unraveled the wraps one at a time. “I change. You rest. Okay?”

  He tried to lay his head back, and he watched her in the moonlight as she first unraveled the old bandage and then rewrapped his arm.

  While she worked, she said, “You like family?”

  He was surprised by the question till he figured out she was asking if he liked the family hosting him that evening. He replied, “Yes, they were very kind. So are you, Paulina.”

  She smiled a little, focusing on her work. “Tomorrow men will take you to Warsaw. You return to your Americans from there. Not safe to travel through south. Still too many Russians.”

  “What will you be doing?”

  “I stay in south. Go east. Look for more Russians.”

  Soon she tied off the bandage around his hand and then examined the dressing over his left eye.

  She felt his face and traced the lines of the bandage with her fingers. “Must change, too. This one hurt, okay?”

  “Can’t wait,” he answered.

  She seemed confused for a moment, then smiled again.

  She worked gently in the moonlight—slowly, not like an expert; he doubted she’d ever done this before. But she seemed surprisingly tender, like she cared enough to put effort into doing it right.