69 Nine

Captain Alexi Federov was deeply concerned-worried. In all his years as a hired mercenary since leaving the former Soviet Union, he’d never encountered anything quite like this.

His men were spread out across muggy, pine-laden hills in the state known as Pennsylvania. A seek-and-destroy mission in this terrain was about as tough as it could get. He led a force of Black Shirts, the special assassination troops trained in guerilla warfare by the elite USA Subversive Corps. Black Shirts were only sent into a war zone for highly specialized assignments. Alexi commanded one of these units, made up of mercenaries from around the world. Only the toughest and most bloodthirsty of the meres were chosen to serve with the Black Shirts … men who had little concern for the niceties of morality or compassion, who killed as easily and with as little thought as wild animals.

General Maxwell had directed him to halt an attack force of special SUSA troops reported to be in these hills. No sign of them had turned up anywhere … not so much as a single footprint. A nuclear blast fired in years past, during the original World War, had wiped out the citizenry of this region, leaving only a few farm animals and wild creatures, all with various forms of cancers and skin growths, marking them as survivors of a nuclear attack by long-ago enemies of the old USA.

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Federov spoke to his sergeant, Sergei Larinov, another highly skilled Soviet guerilla fighter, whispering to him in the fog of an early spring morning near a town that had been known as Hershey in the days before the war.

“Nothing. We were given bad information by General Maxwell about these Rebels. They are not here. Otherwise, we would have found something …”

“Why would anyone fight to hold this useless territory?” Sergeant Larinov asked. “What strategic value could it possibly have?”

“Who knows? I’m beginning to wonder about the competence of leadership under this Osterman woman. No one seems to know what they’re doing.”

Larinov glanced up at cloudy skies. A silence blanketed the valley below them. “No airplanes. No rockets. Not a shot has been fired.”

“It may be too quiet,” Federov warned. “Remember what Leonid said about silence when we went through our training in Mongolia. Silence can be a deadly thing … a warning. I have never been in a place as quiet as this. It is far too still to suit me. Even the animals seem afraid to make a sound.”

“Nor have I seen a place so quiet,” Larinov agreed, sweeping the pine-studded valley with field glasses. “If these American Rebels intended to challenge us over this place, they would surely send up aircraft in order to have our position. Even the quietest surveillance airplane flying at high altitude makes some noise.”

“They may not be able to get a fix on us,” Federov said. “We don’t know how well-equipped this General Ben Raines and his armies are. We have ten rocket launchers, and only thirty men for them to find. If these Rebels are here, we will certainly have them overpowered by weaponry … and skilled guerilla fighters.”

“At the very least, we have good men,” Larinov said, with a glance behind him. “Our Soviet and Yugoslav as-

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sault teams are the best in the world. I have absolutely no doubts about it. All we have to do is find the enemy.”

Federov let out a sigh. “What good will it do us, or this cause championed by General Maxwell and President Osterman, if they have sent us to the wrong place? There are times, like now, when I question the value of their intelligence reports on enemy activities.”

“General Maxwell sounded so sure. A unit of the Rebel’s crack assault troops was coming north by way of this old road, to launch an attack on the USA’s capitol in Indianapolis. No one had any doubts, according to the general.”

“I have my doubts now,” Federov said. “This is nothing but vacant farms … empty fields … a few wandering cows and some pigs beyond that hilltop. There are no enemy soldiers here. We have wasted our time on a dangerous night parachute jump, based on inaccurate information. No one … not even a civilian, is here now.”

“We were ordered to wait.”

Federov scowled. “Yes. To wait for the enemy. But as you can see, there is no enemy, unless we intend to wage war against pigs and cows.”

“According to General Maxwell, we will be paid no matter what we find.”

“I’m beginning to wonder,” Federov added, turning the focus knob on his field glasses. “I hear rumors that the USA is going broke … that they have very little money left after attacks on Rebel strongholds. Most of them failed miserably, which only makes me wonder more about their leadership.”

“I have heard the same thing,” Larinov said. “If this is true, we will be forced to take our money from them at gunpoint.”

“I was told the Bosnians have not been paid in silver or gold, as General Maxwell promised. They were given

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paper currency that is worthless. None of the stores in any of the towns in the USA will take this paper money.”

“Until General Maxwell breaks a promise to us, we have no choice but to follow his orders. If anything he has told us is not true, including the amount and type of money we will be paid, then I will kill him personally.”

Larinov was watching something behind them. “I heard a noise, Captain.”

Federov jerked around. “What kind of noise?” he whispered, when all seemed quiet at the rear, to the north of their present position.

“A cry … like the crying of a small child, but very soft and far away.”

“Who the hell would be crying in this wilderness? There are no children here. We haven’t seen anyone since we crossed that ridge miles behind us.”

“It may be nothing,” Larinov said, although he continued to keep an eye on a hilltop roughly half a mile away, north and west of them. “I could have imagined it, I suppose.”

Federov went back to his field glasses, sweeping the valley again. “Nothing,” he hissed, clenching his teeth. “But I have the distinct feeling that something is wrong, and my gut instincts have never failed me before.”

“Look!” Larinov exclaimed, pointing to a grassy slope to their rear. “It is Yarimer! What is he doing out in the open like that?”

Federov turned his binoculars on the slope. Yarimer Hecht, an old friend from Russia, was staggering down the hill holding onto his belly. And now Alexi heard the crying sounds, too, for they were distinct in the silence surrounding them.

“What the hell is that he is dragging behind him?” Larinov wanted to know, focusing his field glasses on the man in a black shirt and black beret stumbling toward them,

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pulling what looked like coils of rope dangling between his legs.

Alexi sighed, reaching for his AK47 automatic rifle. “He is dragging his intestines, Sergeant. Someone has cut his belly open.”

Larinov tensed, reaching down for his own automatic rifle. “Then they are here,” he whispered.

The sudden staccato of automatic weapons fire thundered from the hills north of them. Yarimer Hecht went down in a heap as if he’d been struck over the head by a heavy hammer, blood squirting from a number of wounds across his back and sides, his head coming apart in a spray of blood and bone and tufts of his long black hair.

“Son of a bitch!” Federov hissed, looking for the source of the bullets. “How the hell did they get behind us?”

“It is not possible,” Sergeant Larinov said as more and more gunfire erupted from trees to the north and west of their position.

The endless blasts of large-bore guns echoed across the Pennsylvania valley. Men in black vests and berets tumbled out of pine thickets, shooting at unseen targets to their rear before they were gunned down.

“They have us cornered,” Federov exclaimed. “We have no choice but to pull back to the south, and that is all open country.”

“To hell with this,” Larinov shouted as the gunshots came closer, lead slugs whistling through the air above their heads now.

He came to a crouch and took off at a run, keeping low to make as small a target as possible.

Captain Federov had cupped his hands around his mouth to warn his sergeant against such a retreat when he felt the earth shudder beneath him.

Sergeant Larinov stepped on a landmine less than thirty yards downslope. He was blown skyward, arms windmill-ing, his AK47 flying into the air only fractions of a second

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before his legs were severed from his body. Pulpy bits of bone and flesh swirled away from his torso, and as he met his appointment with death he let out a bloodcurdling scream.

Federov did not watch his sergeant land in pieces around a deep crater where the landmine had been planted. All he could think of now was making it out of that place with his skin intact.

Men were screaming across wooded ridges behind him, and he had proof the land south of his position had been mined … his trusted sergeant’s body decorated the dark green grass running into the valley below him.

“How the hell did they slip up behind us without any of my men knowing about it?” he wondered aloud, inching backward until he was protected from flying bullets by a ledge of rock jutting from the hill.

It was not possible, and yet the shrill cries of wounded and dying men made it all too clear his squad was in deep trouble in the pines.

Federov saw two of his men break from a stand of trees at a dead run, spraying automatic weapon fire in their wake as they ran toward safety.

A mortar thudded somewhere on a hillock west of the valley, and then an earsplitting explosion blew his Black Shirt squadmen away, leaving nothing but flying dirt and clods of grass where they had been only moments before the blast.

To hell with this, he thought, bending low to make a run to the east, where no guns riddled the slopes. He dashed across the low side of the ridge with his AK47 cocked, ready to unleash its deadly load should any target present itself before he reached the apparent safety of a pine grove nestled in a swale between two hills.

Too late, he caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure in the pines, and the glint of early morning sunlight off the barrel of a rifle.

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Federov threw himself flat in the grass, bringing his rifle to bear on the shape.

The pounding of rapid fire filled his ears, and he felt a stinging sensation spread across the top of his head and his right shoulder.

The sky above him began to spin, and he lost his bearings for a moment.

“What the hell… is happening?” he groaned, feeling a wet substance flow out of his mouth when he spoke.

He looked down at the grass below his chin. A crimson stain spread between his elbows, and pain raced through his skull unlike any pain he’d ever known.

am shot, he thought dully as he felt himself spinning in widening circles. Tiny pinpoints of light flashed before his eyes as the world around him darkened.p>

How did they get behind us? he wondered again, until a deep wracking cough filled his mouth with blood.

His eyes batted shut, and the pain was gone.

Buddy Raines walked out of the woods and stood over Federov’s bloody body. He cradled his CAR in his arms and glanced around at the other Scouts as they emerged from their hiding places. “Jimmy,” he called to his second in command, “police the area and make sure there are no survivors.”

“Yes, sir,” Jimmy Gardiner said, turning and making a sweeping motion with his arms, signaling his men to check the bodies for signs of life.

Buddy sighed. Though he was in charge of Bat 508, he’d volunteered to lead this group of Scouts in a drop behind enemy lines, to carry out his father’s orders to wreak as much havoc in the USA’s backyard as they could.

“Hurry up, Jimmy. I want to get back under cover as soon as possible, before any reinforcements show up. We’ve still got that power plant to take out.”

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Jimmy grinned. “Yes, sir. I wonder how the citizens are gonna like being without electricity.”

Buddy smiled back. “I imagine they’re gonna raise hell with Osterman. She’s going to have to do some explaining to her loyal followers about how this could happen so far from the front lines, just like Ben wants.”