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  “Me, too. But while it’s perfectly logical for them to want control over the reserves in Alberta, you always wonder: is this just a diversion to keep eyes on Canada while they slip one under the table?”

  “So we keep one eye on Canada and one on the rest of the world.”

  “Yes, sir. And, oh yes, one more smaller matter. Green Vox and his cronies are back at it. They’ve delayed the Stryker brigade heading to Calgary.”

  “What happened?”

  “Not sure. Reports indicate they might have planted IEDs. But these weren’t roadside bombs. They might have been planted on the vehicles before they even left Fort Lewis. If that’s the case, it was definitely an inside job. Those crews are trained to go over their vehicles very carefully.”

  “If a bomb is made to resemble a component that’s already there, how do you check for that?” asked Becerra.

  “Exactly.”

  “Are they moving again?”

  “Just in the last hour.”

  “Good.”

  “But here’s what bothers me, sir. For the past eight years, the Green Brigade has hit targets all over the world, significant targets.”

  “And you’re wondering why they’d attack Fort Lewis, then disrupt the convoy?”

  “Two smaller bombs just went off at Fort McMurray Airport, where our Marines have landed. No one was hurt.”

  “So the Russians have Vox back on their payroll. Another failure of imagination, eh?”

  “Maybe so. I’m sure time will tell. Well, that’s all for now, Mr. President.”

  “Thank you. And General, when that Russian recon force hits High Level, I’d like to monitor those channels.”

  “Absolutely. Should be any minute now.”

  “Where’s everyone else? Where are they?”

  The captain shook his head.

  Barnes and the medic were no longer moving, and the engineer was clutching his leg, shot in the femoral artery and bleeding all over the bay floor.

  Just then Gerard pulled open his bloody jacket and lifted his shirt, revealing a pair of dark holes in his chest. He wouldn’t make it, and neither would the engineer.

  “We need help!” Vatz cried to one of the door gunners.

  The guy ignored him, tending to his own shoulder wound. Gritting his teeth, Vatz pushed himself over to the Russian, wrenched up the man’s visor, and grabbed him by the neck. “Are you worth it, you bastard?”

  The Russian stared up with vacant eyes.

  Vatz glanced back at the remains of his team, then glared at the colonel once more and screamed, “Are you worth it?”

  “They’re splitting up now,” said Black Bear over the radio.

  Sergeant Nathan Vatz shivered. Looking down, he saw his gloved hands had formed into fists and felt the sweat pouring down his face, despite the cold wind blowing across the town hall’s rooftop.

  Don’t do that again, he ordered himself. This isn’t about revenge. Stick to the plan, the mission.

  “Looks like a couple heading toward downtown. Two more holding back, probably scouts. Four breaking off, coming for us at the airport. The other four? Not sure where they’re going yet. Looks like the scouts see the roadblock, over.”

  Captain Godfrey, still off to Vatz’s right, was working his Cross Com, studying the imagery coming in from Black Bear’s men at the airport. Suddenly he cried, “They’re jamming us!”

  Vatz checked his own channel: static. No voice, data, imagery.

  Didn’t matter. They’d hoped for the best, prepared for the worst, as always.

  Every operator knew his role.

  They just needed the Russians to be good enemy soldiers and die according to the plan.

  The two Ka-29s, painted in camouflage patterns, swooped down into the middle of the broad intersection, their rotors echoing so loudly off the buildings that Vatz wished he’d shoved in his earplugs. They had no tail rotors, he noticed, just a large main rotor with a smaller rotor beneath it. The tail sections had horizontal wings with vertical fins attached to the ends, like the dorsal fins on sharks. Each fin was emblazoned with a bright red star.

  A close look through his binoculars yielded more of the expected: Spetsnaz infantrymen visible behind the two crew members. Vatz assumed the hold was jammed to capacity: sixteen troops. Their landing gear unfolded, their noses pitched up, and they set down, one after the other.

  Vatz didn’t need to give the order. His weapons sergeants knew exactly what to do next. All of them did.

  He took in a long breath—

  And the battle began.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Still crouched beneath the cellar staircase and not moving a muscle, Major Stephanie Halverson listened to the commotion going on upstairs:

  “Where is she?”

  “Who?” asked the father.

  “The Yankee pilot!”

  “I don’t know!”

  A gunshot boomed, causing the mother to cry out, and Halverson thought, This is it. It’s over.

  They had killed the husband. They would come down and finish the job.

  Suddenly, the mother bolted from her hiding place in the back and charged toward the stairs, where a Spetsnaz soldier was just coming down.

  “Don’t shoot!” she screamed.

  He did.

  Put a bullet in her chest.

  But a half second after he fired, so did Halverson, carefully aiming between the slots of the wooden stairs, her round coming up between his legs and into his torso.

  He tumbled forward, his rifle dropping to the concrete. Before Halverson could come out and grab it, the boy was there, snatching up the rifle. He panted as he looked at his mother slumped across the floor—

  Then a creak from the stairs seized his attention. He cut loose a dozen rounds.

  Yet another troop slumped.

  Halverson darted across the room, got up on a chair, broke out the window with the butt of her pistol, then hoisted herself up and squeezed through the hole. “Come on!” she cried, reaching out to the boy.

  He raced over and took her hand, just as a metallic thump sounded, followed by a loud hissing: gas.

  They’d killed two. Had the father shot one? Maybe. There’d only be three left, then, she thought.

  Out in the snow, she and the boy ran straight for the barn, about a hundred yards away.

  Gunfire boomed behind them.

  She hazarded a look back. One troop, who had come out the back door, had just spotted them.

  “Run!” she screamed.

  Sergeant Raymond McAllen wasn’t shaking in fear but in frustration. His men had the fuel truck pulled up beside the Longranger III, the hose attached to the bird. However, filling the tanks took time. Too much damned time.

  Come on, come on.

  The Russian helos were twenty meters above the tarmac, ten, five . . .

  He tightened up against the wall, his helmet and combat subsystems fully activated, his Heckler & Koch XM9 assault rifle at the ready.

  Each operator on the team handpicked his own weapons, sometimes purchasing a few fancy toys themselves, and McAllen had recently been experimenting with the XM9, a weapon whose earlier version, the XM8, had been abandoned by the military.

  Like the XM8, the 9 was a modular weapon with four variants: a baseline carbine, a compact carbine, a sharp-shooter, and a heavy-barreled automatic. McAllen carried the baseline carbine with attached XM322 grenade launcher.

  McAllen glanced off to his left, where Palladino lay prone beneath a tree, eye pressed to the scope of his M82A1 sniper rifle with its bipod dug deep in the snow. He’d taken the big girl along for this ride, and her .50 caliber rounds would easily penetrate the fuselages of those helos, the booming alone enough to strike fear in the hearts of the enemy.

  Gutierrez had positioned himself a couple meters farther south, near another tree, his SAW balanced on its bipod. Radio operator Friskis and assistant team leader Rule were closer to the chopper, each armed with an MR-C—Modular Rifle Caseless—whi
ch fired 6.8 mm caseless ammo at a rate of nine hundred rounds per minute. Both weapons were also equipped with rail-mounted 40 mm grenade launchers.

  All of which was to say the boys from Force Recon were good to go and waiting for showtime.

  But the order to fire would never come, McAllen realized. The Russians were jamming all communications. He would let the SF boys take the first shots, as they had indicated. His years of experience would tell him when to engage his men.

  The first two helos touched down, the third and fourth only seconds behind.

  From somewhere on the other side of the terminal came a boom and hiss, followed by a white streak that spanned the tarmac in the blink of an eye, reached the lead helo—

  And detonated directly over the canopy.

  After the initial explosion, two more quickly followed, knocking the chopper onto its side, rotors digging into the ice and asphalt, while another burst sent flames shooting from shattered windows.

  Those Special Forces guys must’ve brought an AT4 from their cache back home. They had some very nice toys.

  Jagged pieces of fuselage and engine components from the first chopper flew into the second, striking its rotors just as a side door popped open and the first infantryman tried to get out. Meanwhile, the third and fourth choppers began to lift off.

  McAllen craned his head toward the forest. “Outlaw Team, fire!” Even as he issued the order, he burst from his position and launched a grenade at the open door of the second chopper.

  That first infantryman was already cut down by Gutierrez’s machine gun—and as he slumped, McAllen’s grenade flew into the helo’s crew compartment.

  What a shot!

  With a slightly dampened boom, the grenade exploded, shredding the men inside and blanketing the chopper in thick, gray smoke.

  The thumping of more helos from behind sent McAllen’s gaze skyward. For a moment, his heart sank as he assumed more enemy troops were inbound.

  But no. He had to blink to be sure he was seeing them: a pair of civilian choppers with riflemen strapped in and leaning out their open bay doors, already opening fire on the two Russian helos below.

  McAllen had to hand it to the SF guys, who’d managed to recruit those pilots and get some shooters up there. Sure, it was amateur close air support, but he’d take it.

  Palladino let his first round fly, the rifle emitting a crack of thunder that rattled the buildings. He was targeting the crew members of the third helo. His round punched a gaping hole in the canopy and blew the pilot to pieces.

  That bird wasn’t going anywhere now. It dropped back toward the tarmac, hit hard, then began to bank erratically over the grass, as Gutierrez raked it with more fire.

  The bay door popped, and a few Spetsnaz infantry leapt out, hit the ground, and came up firing—

  But they were quickly cut down by the riflemen in the air, helos sweeping over them, rounds sparking as they ricocheted off the street.

  McAllen was ready to call it day. Khaki was giving him the high sign: the tank’s full, let’s boogie.

  “All right, Outlaw Team,” McAllen began.

  The sudden hissing and sparking of new fire on the wall behind him, on the ground, the snow, and over his head sent him diving onto his gut.

  And just beyond the chopper, in the forest, came at least a dozen Spetsnaz infantry, probably two full squads, with one guy dropping to his knees, balancing a tubelike weapon on his shoulder.

  McAllen’s mouth fell open. He recognized an RPO-A Shmel, or “Bumblebee,” when he saw one. The weapon fired a thermobaric projectile utilizing advanced fuel-air explosive techniques. Some described the weapon as a flamethrower, but it was more like a rocket with a flamethrower’s aftereffects, burning for a very long time.

  The guy aimed at the fully fueled Longranger.

  “Get out of there!” McAllen hollered to Khaki, Rule, and Friskis. “Get out!” At the same time, he cut loose with his XM9, directing all of his fire on the guy with the Bumblebee.

  Squinting against the smoke from his barrel wafting into his eyes, McAllen watched the guy fall forward and drop the rocket, just as Khaki, Rule, and Friskis came racing toward him, gunfire raking their paths.

  Gutierrez swung his rifle around and began to suppress the oncoming troops, but McAllen already saw they couldn’t hold them back for long.

  And yet another Spetsnaz troop picked up the Bumblebee and was leveling it on his shoulder.

  McAllen fired at that guy, dropped him, then another salvo sent him rolling to the left, out of the bead. He felt a dull pressure on his shoulders as a few rounds struck his Crye integrated body armor, but he was okay.

  “God damn, Jonesy, you would’ve loved this,” he grunted, wishing his old assistant were here in the fray. Then he cried, “Outlaws, fall back to the front of the terminal. NOW!”

  As his men continued, still returning fire, McAllen got to his feet and did likewise. He chanced a look back, saw yet another guy shouldering the Bumblebee.

  There was no one to stop him now.

  McAllen sprinted forward, reached the corner, and ducked around to his left, just as a massive explosion struck like thunder from a hundred rain clouds.

  A gasp later, the concussion wave struck, lifting him a meter into the air, then knocking him flat onto his belly.

  With the whoosh and roar of flames still resounding, accompanied by an unbearable gasoline stench that seemed to clog the hot air, McAllen felt a hand latch onto his wrist and pull him to his feet.

  “They blew up my goddamned chopper!” shouted Khaki, releasing him. “They blew it up!”

  Just then the two civilian birds swooped down, riflemen ready to strafe the oncoming infantry behind them.

  “Forget the bird. I’ll buy you another one!” cried McAllen. “Let’s get some cover!”

  Ahead lay a garage, home of the airport’s fire crew. They swept along the main terminal, headed for that—

  One of the terminal doors opened, and Black Bear appeared. “Marines, get in here now!”

  “Do what he says,” hollered McAllen.

  They filed into the terminal, stealing a moment to catch their breaths.

  Black Bear smiled, removed his cigar. “Guess you boys will be staying awhile.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  While they usually packed light, Sergeant Nathan Vatz’s team, along with the rest of the company, had opted to haul some of the bigger gear up to High Level, especially when faced with a cold weather operation against a numerically superior force.

  Fortunately for them, some of that equipment had made it out of the C-130 before the missile had struck. Their AT4 and Javelin had survived, along with a couple of other surprises still waiting for the Russians.

  The boys at the airport had taken the AT4. Vatz’s team had the Javelin, and he tensed now as the missile, fired from the other side of town, dropped like Thor’s hammer on top of the Russian helo.

  Well, the U.S. government would have to make some reparations to the townsfolk of High Level, Alberta—

  Because the helo burst apart, raining ragged pieces of metal, tubes, and wires onto the surrounding buildings. Doors folded in, and large glass windows shattered into the road. Still more brick facades crumbled, and a steel street sign was cut down like a blade of grass.

  More shrapnel and other debris hurtled into the second chopper, whose troops were already jumping down, a couple immediately succumbing to the blast.

  Vatz firmly gripped his pistol-like combat weapon, nicknamed Lethality Central, LC for short.

  The first 15mm, cold-launched, intelligent-seeker round streaked away from one of the weapon’s five tubes, homed in on that chopper’s open door, and punched through several infantry.

  Vatz triggered two more rounds, saving the 4.6 mm projectiles in tube number five for close encounters of the final kind.

  One of the locals down below ran out in the street and rolled a grenade beneath the chopper. The pilot couldn’t achieve liftoff in time, and the bla
st sent him banking sideways. With a grinding, crunching, glass-shattering racket, the bird chewed its way into the local courthouse. The rotors snapped off and spun away like knives thrown in a circus act as the helo’s nose vanished inside the building.

  Another grenade, this one launched by Vatz’s engineer, dropped beside the helo, the detonation opening up the bird’s fuel tanks, and the fires quickly rose, triggering several more explosions.

  Wind-whipped smoke appeared in the distant north. Vatz seized his binoculars and swore as one of the Russian helos fired rockets on the main roadblock. He’d been hoping they’d leave that obstacle to the mechanized infantry, but sometimes luck—and bullets—ran out.

  Those local guys manning the roadblock couldn’t do much against that bird, and they wouldn’t last long. Vatz already felt the pang of their loss.

  “Bali, this is Black Bear, over.”

  The voice surprised Vatz, and he switched his Cross Com to an image piped in from Samson’s helmet camera. “Bear, this is Bali, go ahead, over.”

  “Communications are back. Go figure. Anyway, we’ve taken out four enemy helos, but we got twenty, thirty Spetsnaz guys on the ground from at least two we didn’t get, moving toward the terminal, over.”

  “Roger that. We destroyed our two helos. Still got one out by the northern roadblock. No location for the rest, over.”

  “Yeah, I see the smoke.”

  “Black Bear, hold them there. If we don’t get any more visitors, we’ll rally at your position, over.”

  “Sounds good, Black Bear, out.”

  Captain Godfrey, who was coordinating operations with Captain Rodriguez from 887, said those guys were sending a truck out to the roadblock to see if they could assist with fires on that helo.

  Meanwhile, the thumping of more rotors drove Vatz to the opposite side of the roof. Down below, in the side street, a Ka-29 had just landed, and troops began pouring out.

  He cursed, got back on the radio, told his boys to expect dismounts in the area.

  Then he express-delivered another pair of guided munitions down on the helo through its canopy. He slipped the LC into his Blackhawk SERPA holster, took up his MR-C rifle, and fired down on the still-exiting infantry.