Order of battle command.., p.26
Order of Battle (Command and Control Book 3), page 26
Skelly cocked his head, then put his hand on his chin like he was thinking. “Is it?”
“K-10 is not field tested,” Abby said. “We have no idea how the units will operate in combat conditions.”
“No better way to find out.” Skelly sounded like he was enjoying this back-and-forth.
“This operation is not authorized,” Abby said. “It violates the rules of engagement.”
“The operation has already gotten the green light, Abby. I had the authorization in hand before I ran it through Mama.”
Abby cut a look at Dylan. He looked just as puzzled.
“Authorization from who?” she demanded.
“Above both of our paygrades, Abby. I have a verbal order to throw out the ROE. I’m supposed to take the hurt factor up to eleven as fast as possible.” He grinned smugly. “Somebody wants to make an impact, and they’ve decided that I’m the man for the job.”
“As CEO of Sentinel, I am telling you right now: this mission is not authorized. Do I make myself clear?”
“I hear your words, I understand your words, and I don’t give a shit, Abby. I’m literally a man on a mission.”
Abby wanted to put her fist through the laptop screen, but instead she gripped the edge of the desk, her knuckles white from the strain.
“I mean it, Manson,” she said. “Don’t do this.”
“I’s just following orders,” Manson said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Abby felt Dylan’s body close behind her as he leaned toward the screen.
“Ah, CIA man,” Manson said. “I thought you might be lurking in the shadows. I suppose you want to speak your piece, too?”
“As the authorized representative of the US government, I am ordering you to stand down, Mr. Skelly,” Dylan said.
Skelly shook his head. “No can do, G-man. You have been superseded, my friend.”
“That’s not possible,” Dylan said.
Skelly adopted his thinking pose again, hand on chin. “Well, let me review my chain of command. You work for the CIA, and the CIA works for the White House, so if the big man in the White House calls me with new orders…I think you done got outranked, boy.”
“The President called you?” Abby said. Would Serrano do that? she wondered. He just might.
Skelly shrugged. “Close enough.”
“Manson,” Abby said. “You are ordered to stand down and discontinue all operations. I’ll be in Ukraine in the morning, and I’m taking command of the operation. Is that clear?”
Skelly’s smug façade dropped. He glared at the camera, his lips peeled back from his teeth in a snarl.
“You have your orders, Abby,” he said. “I have mine.”
Skelly ended the call.
Abby snatched up her phone and called Josh. He answered on the first ring.
“I need the plane ready to go in an hour.” Abby realized she was talking way too fast, and her heart was racing. She took a deep breath. “I’m going to Ukraine.”
Dylan’s hand touched her shoulder. Warm, heavy, reassuring.
“Mr. Mattias is going with me,” she added without looking up.
“I’ll see to it, Abby,” Josh replied. “Anything else?”
“Is there any way to lock Manson out of access to Mama?” Abby asked the question though she was pretty sure she knew the answer.
“Not quickly, no,” Josh said. “His access is hardcoded, just like yours.”
Abby cursed. They’d made that decision together, she and Joe and Manson. Equal partners, no one ever gets locked out.
Except by death, she thought. Joe’s access was revoked upon his death, leaving her and Manson as the sole superusers on the system. Even today, only she and Manson could grant direct access to Mama.
“Keep monitoring Manson’s activity on Mama,” she ordered. “I don’t trust him.”
“Of course.” Josh hesitated. “There’s one more thing. Are you alone?”
Abby did not look up at Dylan. “Go ahead.”
“Don Riley called. He wants to access Mama tonight. He said you authorized his visit.”
Dylan’s hand still touched her shoulder. It felt good. She could sense her anger draining away. Abby looked up and smiled at him.
Can I trust you? she wondered.
“That’s fine, Josh,” she said into the phone. “We’re leaving for the airport now.”
40
Oleksandriya, Ukraine
“You have your orders, Abby,” Skelly said. “I have mine.”
On the video screen, Abby opened her mouth, but Skelly ended the call before she could respond.
He laughed in the empty room. Man, that felt good, he thought. I am so tired of listening to that woman yap.
There was a time when they’d been colleagues, even friends. But that was because of Joe. He brought people together. Without that emotional glue, their diversion of interests was inevitable. They’d made it work for a long time, much longer than Skelly expected, but the last year of unrelenting, explosive growth just brought them into conflict more and more.
The break was inevitable. It was time to part ways.
Time, thought Skelly. Time was not on his side if he wanted to complete this operation before Queen B arrived in the Ukraine to seize his throne.
He raised his voice. “Landie!”
The office door opened so fast that Skelly wondered if Landersmann had been listening to his call. “You rang, boss?”
“The mission we were planning?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s on.”
“Okay.” Landersmann came into the room and shut the door. “When do you want to go?”
“Tonight.”
“Manse,” Landersmann said. “Tonight is too soon. We need time to prep the K-10s, and we don’t even have an insertion plan yet.”
“It needs to happen tonight, Landie. End of story. You have questions, I have answers. Let’s make whatever decisions we need right now.”
Landersmann extracted a tablet from the pocket of his cargo pants. “Okay, fine. How many K-10s do you want for the op?”
“How many are in the depot?”
Landersmann tapped the tablet. “Eighteen. Fourteen are fitted with fifties, the rest have Gustafs.”
Skelly tugged at his beard. The choices were a Barrett M82 .50-caliber sniper rifle and a Carl Gustav M3 reloadable weapon that fired a variety of 84mm ammunitions ranging from anti-tank to anti-personnel round.
“I’ll make this easy for you,” Landersmann said. “It takes minimum two hours to reconfigure a K-10.”
“Fine,” Skelly said. “Go with what we’ve got on hand.”
“Roger that. How many K-10s do you want for the mission?”
“All of them,” Skelly said.
“All? Boss, are you sure that’s a good idea? This is every K-10 we have in the entire company. If there’s a problem, we’ll be shit out of luck.”
“The point of this mission is to make some noise, Landie. Use all of them.”
Landersmann lowered his tablet. “Are you sure about this, Manse?”
Skelly leaned across his desk. “If you ask me that question one more time, you won’t have to wait for Abby to show up to fire your ass. Copy that?”
“Got it.” Landersmann picked up his tablet. “How do you want to deploy the K-10s?”
Skelly considered the question. The safest deployment method would be to drive the weapons systems to within ten kilometers of the target and set them loose, but the depot was a two-hour drive to the west, safely out of the conflict zone. Two hours there, load time, plus two hours back, then another two to four hours to get the K-10s to the drop-off point, assuming no issues.
Too much time, he thought.
“How about a HALO drop from a C-130?” Landersmann asked. “Once they wake up, you can rally them.”
The K-10s were capable of traveling at up to thirty-five kilometers per hour for their five-hour battery life, but there was no way to control where they landed with any certainty.
Skelly shook his head. “They could land anywhere. Somebody’s living room, for God’s sake. The middle of a highway. We’ll see them on some internet video.”
“We can’t do a low-altitude drop from a C-130 over a conflict zone,” Landersmann said. “We’ll get shot out of the sky.”
“What about the gliders?” Skelly asked. “How many K-10s could we fit in one of those?”
The Silent Arrow cargo delivery drone was an autonomous glider designed to provide aerial resupply into situations where manned aircraft were unable to fly. Deployed from the cargo bay of a C-130 flying at twenty-five thousand feet, the glider was equipped with an autopilot system, GPS navigation, and LIDAR for remote landing capability.
“We’ve never used them before,” Landersmann said.
“How many K-10s can we fit in an Arrow?” Skelly repeated.
Landersmann consulted his tablet. “According to the specs, we could handle six K-10s in each Arrow, and we could fit three Arrows inside a C-130.” He sighed. “Are you sure you want to put all of our K-10s inside a couple of flying shoeboxes?”
“It’s perfect,” Skelly replied. “We drop the Arrows on this side of the Dnieper River, and they glide across to the landing zone. Even if somebody picks them up on radar, they’ll have the signature of a civilian plane, not a military jet.”
“Boss, I’m just gonna say it one last time,” Landersmann said with a pleading quality in his voice. “This is a terrible idea. The target, the timing, the whole thing is gonna blow up in our faces.”
“You let me worry about that,” Skelly replied.
“But what about—”
Skelly stopped him with a look that could cut glass. Landersmann got the message. He came to sloppy attention and gave a mock salute.
“Yessir, yessir, three bags full,” he said.
“Fuck you, Landie.”
“Fuck you back, boss.” Landersmann executed an about-face and goose-stepped to the door.
“I want those bastards in the air in three hours,” Skelly called after him. “I’ll upload the mission parameters now.”
As the door closed behind his second-in-command, Skelly considered the topographical map on his laptop screen.
The fact that he was even allowed to consider a mission like this blew his mind. But according to the man on the phone, the White House wanted to shake the Etch A Sketch on the Siege of Kyiv. That’s what the news whores were calling the Russians’ last push to dominate the whole of eastern Ukraine.
The capital city of Kyiv straddled the Dnieper River, which snaked its way from the Belarusian border to Crimea, an area of Ukraine that had been pieced off by the Russian Federation in 2014.
Crimea was an appetizer, Skelly thought. Now Luchnik was back for the main course.
The Russian front had advanced to the Dnieper River in several places, but in Kyiv, the Ukrainians were putting up a serious resistance. Everyone involved in the conflict knew that capturing—or losing—the capital city of Kyiv was a key element in their road to victory.
Kyiv was only about thirty miles south of the Belarus border. The Ukrainian military had long seen the strategic value of the capital as a military target, and they had set up a defensive arc that began at the Belarusian border and extended eastward. Since Kyiv was situated on the Dnieper River, the Ukrainians wisely used geography to their advantage, forming an eastward-facing defensive line anchored in the south at the city of Pereiaslav on the Dnieper and curving all the way to the north.
Inside this Ukrainian defensive arc was a warren of prepared positions, armor, artillery, air defenses, and at least fifty thousand regular Ukrainian Army and civilian militia. Although NATO was not officially in the fight, the allied countries provided all manner of armaments, logistics, and intelligence support to Ukraine. A number of nongovernmental organizations were also on the ground providing humanitarian aid to those fleeing the renewed fighting. In fact, the city of Pereiaslav was home to a large contingent of British medical personnel working for Doctors Without Borders. They’d told the international press they’d remain in Kyiv even if the city fell.
The British made a big deal about their location, calling their position the “anchor” for the evacuation of eastern Ukraine and the humanitarian center supporting Kyiv.
But Skelly was more interested in the Russian military positioning. He zoomed into the area around the city of Lubny. Located seventy-five kilometers due east of Pereiaslav, the countryside to the north of Lubny was home to the Russian command post for the whole Ukraine operation.
Skelly switched to video surveillance of the area.
According to Mama’s assessment of the intel, this Russian CP was home to two division commanders overseeing the attack on Kyiv. The main building was an inflatable tent the size of a department store and surrounded by a host of smaller tents and vehicles. Two kilometers to the west was a fuel depot and an ammunitions dump. On the live feed, Skelly could see hundreds of Russian soldiers hurrying around the camp.
A target-rich environment, to be sure, but not something Skelly would have considered attacking even in his wildest dreams. That is, until he got the phone call.
The man on the other end of the secure line had identified himself and got right to the point.
“Mr. Skelly, I’m calling you with a change in mission,” he said.
Skelly had recognized the voice. “Yes, sir. If this is a contract issue, I suggest you take it up with my CEO.”
“I’ll deal with Ms. Cromwell in my own time. For now, I need a major distraction against those Russian bastards, and I think you’re the man to deliver it.”
“I’m listening,” Skelly said.
“Find a target—I don’t care what it is—and get the attention of the Russian military. Make their lives a living hell.”
Skelly started to ask a question, but the man cut him off.
“I’m not interested in details, Mr. Skelly,” he said. “We each fight battles in our own way. I have politics, you have bullets. Throw out the rules of engagement. Just get the job done, by whatever means necessary and as quickly as possible.”
“Yes, sir,” Skelly said, still wondering if this guy really knew what he was asking for.
“Whatever you do, make it big enough for them to drag Luchnik’s ass out of bed. I want him to realize that the gloves are off. Am I making myself clear?”
“Whatever means necessary?” Skelly asked.
“Whatever means necessary.”
Then the line went dead.
Skelly cycled back and forth between the video imagery and the topographical map until he settled on a primary and secondary landing zone for the K-10 insertion about five kilometers west of the Russian CP. A few more minutes of searching was all that was necessary to select an extraction point ten kilometers south of the target.
Skelly grinned as he punched a button to upload the mission details to the ops center computer.
Whatever means necessary, Skelly thought. Be careful what you wish for.
Despite his misgivings, Landersmann managed to get the mission prepped and the C-130 in the air by four a.m. Skelly joined him in the ops center to watch the Silent Arrow glider deployment using the overwatch drone.
“I’m calling this Operation Russian Nesting Doll,” Landersmann announced to a round of appreciative chuckles.
“Just get the K-10s on the ground in one piece, funny guy,” Skelly growled.
“Approaching the drop point,” one of techs announced. “Big Bird is at twenty-five thousand feet and ready to execute.”
Skelly checked the map. The C-130, designated Big Bird, was thirty kilometers west of Pereiaslav, headed due east. He shifted his gaze to the video feed in time to see the C-130’s rear ramp lower to the open position. He nodded at Landersmann.
“To Big Bird,” Landersmann said. “Drop the first doll.”
The order went out. A few seconds later, a dark box shape popped out of the cargo plane.
“Package is launched,” a tech announced. “Stand by for deployment.”
The Silent Arrow cargo drone had folded wings that were supposed to deploy as soon as the unit was free of the mother ship.
Nothing happened. The box fell through the sky.
“Twenty thousand feet. No deployment.”
Skelly cursed.
“Do an override!” Landersmann said. “Deploy the goddamned wings.”
“There is no override, sir,” the tech replied. “It’s all automatic. Fifteen thousand feet and falling.”
“Fuck,” Landersmann said and repeated the oath several more times before turning to Skelly. “I recommend we abort.”
Skelly looked at his watch and shook his head. “Tell the pilot to turn around and line up for another run. Have the air crew double-check the setup.”
“Manson,” Landersmann said under his breath. “We just turned thirty million dollars’ worth of autonomous weaponry into a fucking meteor. Are you sure you want to try again?”
Skelly’s look was enough for Landersmann to turn back to the waiting ops team. “Set up the bowling pins, people. We’re going again.”
Ten more minutes slipped away as the C-130 ran a racetrack turn and verified the glider setup.
Landersmann approached Skelly. “Look, I don’t want to be that guy, but this is crazy, Manson.”
Skelly put a meaty hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Do you trust me, Landie?”
“Sure.”
“Then trust me when I say that if you don’t get the remaining twelve K-10s on the ground safe and sound, I will fire your ass. Capeesh?”
“We’re ready, sir,” the lead tech announced.
Landersmann sighed and turned around. “Russian Nesting Dolls, take two. Tell Big Bird they are clear for deployment.”
For all his bravado with Landersmann, Skelly was rattled. He looked at the clock in the corner of the computer screen. Abby would be on the ground by noon. If he had executed the mission successfully, he’d have the White House on his side. If not, she’d fire him—or worse.
“Package is launched,” came the announcement. “Stand by for deployment.”
Skelly watched the box fall from the back of the C-130. It dropped toward the ground.
