The suwalki crisis, p.21
The Suwalki Crisis, page 21
“Fifteen thirty,” Torres said, glancing at his watch. “We’ve been here since zero seven thirty. You can do the math.”
Boone grunted. “Feels longer.”
“War usually does,” Burke said from the gunner’s seat. “Even when it hasn’t started yet.”
Up on the berm ahead, a Polish recon team lay prone with binoculars and a long gun, their camo blending with the pines. Somewhere to their left, the rest of Anvil Company sat in their own hides—tanks tucked into tree lines, Bradleys dug in along likely approaches.
The radio nets stayed mostly quiet. Every hour, Cunningham’s voice would come on, steady as a metronome. “Steel elements, this is Steel Six. Status check.”
And the answers came, one after another:
“Anvil One, no change.”
“Anvil Two, no change.”
“Anvil Three, no change.”
Today’s version of normal, thought Torres.
Inside the tank, PFC Munoz sorted through his MRE, sorting contents into neat piles on a ration box.
“You know what this is?” he said, holding up a pouch. “Chili mac. Gold standard.”
“Gold standard? No way,” replied Specialist Boone. “Beef stew. Now that’s a classic.”
“Haha, you’re both wrong,” Sergeant Burke joined in. “Spaghetti, gentlemen, is the MRE king. That chili mac stuff is what Supply sends when they hate you. It causes heartburn, and it burns on the way out.”
Torres laughed with the others, letting them run with their commentary for a while longer. The pointless banter did what it was supposed to do—filled the air that otherwise would be filled with worry.
PFC Munoz fell quiet after a while. Torres heard the younger man’s boot tapping a jittery rhythm on the floorplate.
“Sergeant?” Munoz finally said. “You think my mom knows about any of this? Like… what we’re doing out here?”
Torres kept his eyes on the horizon. Munoz was young, still eighteen, barely out of training.
“She knows you’re in the Army,” Torres replied. “If she’s watching the news like everyone else, I’m pretty sure she’s able to put two and two together and know her son is in the line of fire.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of what scares me,” Munoz said softly. “She worries a lot.”
Torres shifted, leaning down until he could see Munoz’s helmet through the hatch.
“Listen, Private,” he said. “Your job isn’t to think about what your mom knows. That’s not important right now. What is important is for you to do your job better than the enemy is doing his. Your job is to feed rounds into the breach so Burke and I can keep us safe and destroy enemy armor before they can destroy us. If this really kicks off, it’s going to happen fast. It’s going to be loud, and it’s going to be violent. But you’ve trained for this, Munoz, and I know you’ve got this. Just do your part. Let those with more rank than us worry about the rest.”
Munoz nodded, jaw tightened, a determined look on his face as he nodded. “Yes, Sergeant. I got this.”
From Battalion, the long-awaited call finally came.
“All Steel elements, this is Steel Six,” Cunningham said. “Be advised—POTUS addressed the nation two hours ago. Situation update coming in ten mikes. Platoon and vehicle commanders to the company net for a quick brief.”
“Here we go,” Sergeant Burke murmured softly.
Torres dropped fully into the turret, clipped his helmet back on, and switched over.
On the company net, Morrison and Yates laid out what they had been told by the battalion commander. No theatrics. Just facts.
They went on to confirm what they all suspected. Taiwan wasn’t an isolated skirmish anymore. The ChiComs had fired their Dongfeng-series missiles at US and allied bases across the Pacific and Japan. Allied ships had taken losses. The Chinese element of the Eurasian Defense and Economic Pact was fighting for its life. The Supreme Allied Commander Europe placed all NATO forces on Threat Condition Delta and warned of imminent attack. An emergency meeting of European governments had been called, and all national forces were being placed on high alert.
The increase in alert statuses across Europe and Asia was being met with similar alerts from the member states that were part of the EDEP bloc. Various news outlets and people posting on X were showing columns of armored vehicles and soldiers leaving bases and training areas across Belarus and the Leningrad oblast of Western Russia. OSINT reports began showing Russian and Chinese naval vessels in Kaliningrad putting to sea while vessels of the Black Sea fleet were also beginning to get underway.
Closer to home, Russian units opposite them had gone from exercise posture to full combat readiness. Artillery batteries had moved into preplotted firing positions. PLA rocket brigades operating from Kaliningrad and Belarus were now part of that picture.
“I know this sounds grim, but I need to stress to you that as of now, we are still not at war. That very well may change any minute now, but let’s pray calmer heads can still prevail,” relayed Captain Morrison as he shared what little he knew with his tankers.
Torres listened as their battalion commander paused long enough for his information to sink in before he continued.
“Minutes ago, we just received a change in our rules of engagement,” Morrison continued. “The new ROE is as follows. If identifiable hostile forces cross into Polish territory or fire at NATO forces from across the border, we are cleared to engage. No warning shots. No de-escalation games. If they start this, we hit back hard and fast to end this fight before it gets going.”
On the turret net, Burke let out a low breath in surprise. “End it before it gets going? You’ve got to be kidding,” he muttered.
“Cut the chatter,” Torres hissed to silence him. “Let the captain finish.”
“At 1800,” Morrison continued, “you’ll get a thirty-minute window to send some SMS texts home to let your families know you’re OK. No voice or video calls are permitted, and all traffic needs to be routed through StarShield. Effective immediately, all cellular communications and unencrypted radio traffic are offline. Expect comms discipline and potential allied and enemy jamming. If this goes sideways, it’s going to happen fast. Make sure your people know where they’re supposed to be and what they’re supposed to do when it does—Bolt Six out.”
The radio went silent. Torres switched over to the company and platoon net, ready for additional instructions should they come.
He sat there for a moment, listening to the faint tick of cooling metal and Specialist Boone’s steady breathing. Looking through the turret hatch, Torres saw the sky outside had gone from peak brightness of midday afternoon to the shadows of early evening.
“Okay,” he said finally. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Burke, run through your engagement drills again. I want target calls smooth. Munoz, recheck every round and strap in that rack. Boone, review your routes. If we have to move under fire, I don’t want you guessing.”
“Roger,” Burke said.
“Yes, Sergeant,” Munoz said.
“Copy,” Boone added.
Torres climbed back up into the hatch, eyes going to the same stretch of forest and low hills he’d been staring at all day.
From this angle, Poland looked quiet. Peaceful, even.
He knew better.
For years, he’d told Maria they fought overseas so the worst of the world never reached El Paso. So the people who wanted to roll tanks through free countries never decided to test the Rio Grande or the border outside some American town. Standing there above Anvil-22’s turret, he believed it more than ever.
If monsters wanted to remake the world, better to meet them here—in cold woods and foreign fields—than in neighborhoods where his kids rode their bikes.
*******
A Few Hours Later
Position Set Delta
Torres walked back to Anvil-22, slower than he’d come down from the Battalion brief.
Behind him, the last echoes of Cunningham’s instructions faded from the air. Ahead, his tank waited under its sagging web of netting, the paint already dusted with pine pollen.
Inside his pocket, his phone was a dead weight. No bars. No data. Just a black screen and a reminder he hadn’t been able to keep his promise about calling his wife back “soon.”
Specialist Boone sat on the glacis, helmet off, feet dangling. He looked up as Torres approached.
“All quiet, nothing to report,” Boone relayed.
“That’s good,” Torres said. “Let’s hope it stays that way. Best get back to your station.”
Torres climbed into his commander’s spot and checked on his crew. Burke had his eye pressed to the sight, hands resting light on the controls. Munoz had his harness tightened, gloves tucked under his belt. Boone had just settled into his driver’s seat.
“I got nothing new from the Battalion brief,” Torres began. “We stay ready. We stay small. We do our jobs when the time comes.”
PFC Munoz shifted uncomfortably, looking up toward the hatch.
“Sergeant?” he asked. “You think… this is it? The big one?”
Torres rested his forearms on the hatch rim, his gaze fixed on the distant tree line.
“Hard to say, but it feels like it,” he said. “Listen, guys, here’s what matters. This is our line. Our piece of ground. We fight the enemy here, so our families don’t have to fight them back home.”
Munoz swallowed. “Back home… my mom keeps saying she can’t watch the news anymore. Says it makes her sick.”
“She raised you, Munoz,” Torres said. “That’s her part. This is yours.”
Boone’s voice floated up from the driver’s station. “My old man used to say you’ve got to fight the wolves in the hills, so they never learn the taste of sheep,” he said. “Guess this is one of those days.”
Sergeant Burke snorted. “That’s cute, Specialist, remind me to put it on a bumper sticker. I’ll make a killing selling it to you country bumpkins.”
Torres laughed. So did Munoz.
“I think your old man was on to something, Boone,” Torres said quietly. “Sometimes the only way to beat a monster is to become one, or something worse. My grandad used to say that about his dad, who served in Vietnam.”
Silence settled again, thicker this time. The wind tugged at the netting overhead, making it sound like it was whispering to them.
Torres thought of Maria in their kitchen, Miguel with his baseball, and the lives they were trying to protect by sitting in this forest on the far side of the world. He was concerned that, if this turned into the kind of war history books would eventually talk about, then there was a good chance some of them wouldn’t survive the coming days. That was the reality of war—politics by force.
He’d known that when he raised his right hand the first time, and each time he’d reenlisted. Lifting his binoculars to scan the low hills again, he saw no dust plumes, and no armor silhouettes. There were no rocket trails clawing at the sky heading toward them. Just quiet. How long it would stay that way was anyone’s guess. For now, he’d savor it.
Chapter Seventeen:
Mission Complete
April 29, 2033
0427 Hours Local
Roma Kungsgard, Gotland, Sweden
The morning dew glistened on pine needles as Illya Vekta settled the Chukavin sniper rifle against his cheek. The weight felt natural—an extension of his body rather than a tool. Through his Dedal-T4 thermal scope, the American air-defense system glowed like a lighthouse in the fog. He breathed slowly, trying to calm his heart and steady his nerves, inhaling the scent of wet dirt and spring vegetation.
After the debacle of the last forty-eight hours, Illya wasn’t sure if their mission was still possible. SAPO had kicked in doors all over Gotland, rolling up the Chinese MSS cells that had come in under the Baltic Wings “bird festival” cover. His own team had been booked into one of those same festival Airbnbs, listed under the same fake conservation NGO, until a terse midnight message from their Rezident told them to burn the flat and go to ground. If that warning had come ten minutes later, he might be sitting in an interrogation room right now instead of lying on a bed of pine needles staring through his scope.
“EMCON status?” Illya whispered, barely disturbing the air.
“Tight and clean,” Sergeant Rudenko confirmed from his left. “No emissions detected. They’re running passive scans only.”
Rudenko shifted in the moss. “I still can’t believe those MSS idiots let SAPO walk straight to their bird-watching flats,” he muttered. “If Rezident hadn’t pulled us out with the rest of Baltic Wings, we’d be dead or sitting in a Visby interrogation room.”
“Yeah, well, they were sloppy,” Illya snorted in disgust. “That’s the difference between us and them—we’re not. Stay alert and watch your sector. It’s almost time.”
Rudenko nodded.
While Rudenko provided overwatch, Illya focused on the target. For weeks, they had observed the Americans—cocky and overly confident. They had grown complacent since their arrival on Gotland. Their electronic warfare suite, designed to detect Russian communications and incursions across the Baltic, remained silent when it should have been active the moment it arrived.
Illya pushed those thoughts aside as a light breeze carried the dampness of the Baltic Sea across the landscape. He shivered softly, his clothes absorbing the moisture as a chill ran across his body. He forced himself to ignore the discomfort and focused on the primary target: the Leonidas high-powered microwave system perched atop a Stryker vehicle 682 meters away.
The Leonidas was a unique counter-UAS system, designed to fry drone circuits with directed-energy pulses. It created an invisible dome of protection, negating the effectiveness of FPV drones and other swarming tactics learned during the Russo-Ukraine War of the prior decade. Positioned behind the drone killer was the real prize—the AN/MSQ-104 Patriot Engagement Control Station. It was the brains controlling the Patriot battery and the primary target they’d been assigned to take out.
By neutralizing the pair, it would temporarily collapse the entire air-defense network protecting the island and much of the Baltic Sea around it. It would pave the way for whatever came next, whatever Moscow and Beijing had cooked up. Whatever it was, he hoped they’d learned their lessons from the previous “special military operation.” What a goat rope that had turned into. A colossal waste of manpower and resources—but it had at least given the nationalists the opportunity to rid themselves of Putin.
“What’s our timeline?” Illya asked, adjusting his shooter’s glove as he opened and closed his hand.
“Seventy minutes to shift change,” Rudenko whispered, his eyes still peering through the thermal binoculars as he swept the tree line. “Those guards in vehicles still haven’t moved. I’m not even sure they have the CROWS weapons systems powered up and ready to use. Oh, and that roving patrol from earlier—it’s due back in seventeen minutes from the northeast.”
Illya nodded, grunting in response as his gaze shifted north along County Road 143. Sitting along the side of the road was a Pasi armored personnel carrier and a handful of soldiers from the Swedish Home Guard unit. They were part of the local Gotland battalion paired with the American paratroopers, maintaining a halfhearted perimeter around Grönt Centrum—a local fairground some of the Americans had commandeered for a temporary barracks. The Swedes, who had remained neutral for centuries until joining NATO nearly a decade ago, were about to find out what it meant to align with the Americans, to hitch their wagon to a waning superpower.
The operational window was tight. Three other strike teams were poised across Gotland. There should have been more, but the Chinese part of the mission had been compromised the day before. This necessitated them moving their entire operation forward a couple of days. He just hoped the teams targeting the radar arrays near the Visby airport, the Ygne power distribution center south of the city, and the Nasudden Wind Farm in the southwestern part of the island were successful in their attacks. If they timed this right, it would create synchronized chaos across the island and blind NATO’s northern flank.
“Illya, it’s 0429,” Rudenko whispered. “One minute to showtime.”
Illya settled his breathing. Three shots. That was all he’d get; that was all he needed. He activated the ballistic calculator on his wrist-mounted Strelets-M tactical computer, accounting for temperature, humidity, and the barely perceptible breeze. Satisfied with what he saw, he settled the crosshairs on the Leonidas’s emission array, his trigger finger beginning to squeeze.
“Executing…now,” he whispered as the rifle fired.
The rifle kicked into his shoulder, the sound of the shot subdued, but not overwhelming. Through the optic, Illya watched the .338 Lapua’s armor-piercing incendiary round crash into the center of the array. Sparks and pieces of the dish array erupted outward as it shattered. The rotating microwave platform froze midsweep. The system instantly went offline, the protection it offered gone.
Without pause, Illya shifted his aim to the vehicle-mounted diesel generator powering the Patriot’s ECS trailer. He aimed for the generator’s control panel junction. He inhaled, let out half an exhale, then held his breath as he squeezed the trigger.
Bang!
The shot punched through the control panel and into the electrical system that controlled the generator. It must have punctured a fuel line as diesel atomized, spraying a mist nearby before igniting in a flash. Before the flames could spread, he fired again, the third round destroying the voltage regulator, permanently destroying the Patriot’s power source.
The lights on the ECS trailer blinked out immediately. With the system instantly dead, the island’s air and missile defense shield was gone in an instant.
“Leonidas disabled. ECS offline. Mission complete. Time to get out of here,” Illya calmly reported as he began to back away from his firing position.
Rudenko’s rifle barked twice in rapid succession. “Sentries neutralized. Machine gunner down.”
Without a further word spoken between the two, they began their withdrawal, retreating into the wood line behind them. Soon, excited shouting in Swedish and English began to echo into the trees as Illya and Rudenko moved quickly.
