BLITZ
Yevgeny Bondarev hadn’t planned to join the Spetsnaz assault on the enemy base, so it was with not a little surprise that he found himself on the end of a rope, rappelling down the cliff face overlooking the collapsed cave, trying to find the drone-sized egress hole in the cliff.
The GRU Spetsnaz company commander was a Siberian Yakut, Captain Mikhael Borisov. He had grown up in the coldest region on the planet, Verkhoyansk, where the average winter temperature was 30 degrees below. The near zero winds on top of Little Diomede were like a spring breeze to him, but he wouldn’t have felt them anyway, because he was boiling with rage.
He had decided the operation to capture the US base was a basic airfield seizure, with the complication that he had no intel on the layout inside the Rock. Fresh VVS drone imagery of the entrance to the base showed the cave mouth had collapsed. Ingress would have to be through the remaining cliff face tunnel unless his men could find a lift or stairwell leading from the destroyed US radome down into the base below. He had planned to take the US base using five 5-man squads in three quadrotors, a mix of rifle and weapons troops.
But one of his machines had developed engine trouble and had been forced to turn back, taking with it eight of his men including a number of their heavy weapon specialists. Their attack was timed to follow as closely as possible behind the VVS missile strike on the enemy base — he had decided to move ahead with the troops he had. That left him with 16 men, himself and the Russian VVS Major-General who had been waiting for them on top of the rock, with further bad news. The aviator had scouted the ruins of the American base and had not been able to identify any sort of lift, stairs or shaft leading down from the dome of the rock into the base below due to the damage caused by the thermobaric bombs used in the first wave of the LOSOS attack. That didn’t mean there wasn’t one, just that he hadn’t found it. It could be well concealed; now Borisov would have to use valuable time and resources looking for and securing it to ensure they didn’t find themselves suddenly flanked. He would also have to leave one of his squads on the surface to check the wrecked radar base and protect their copters while he took his remaining squad through the launch chute and down under the rock to probe the enemy’s strength.
The observation had led to a heated exchange.
“You no longer have the strength to take his base,” Bondarev said. “You should call in at least another platoon.”
“With respect Comrade Major-General…” the GRU officer pointed out. “That is not your call to make. I am the ground force commander and this element of the operation is being led by the GRU, not the VVS. Every minute we delay, the enemy can be recovering from your missile attack,” Borisov said. “Attending to their wounded, shoring up their defenses.” He took a step forward toward Bondarev. “Perhaps the VVS would like another week of rest and recreation before finishing its job, but we are Spetsnaz, and I say I still have enough men to both secure this landing zone, penetrate that base, assess the size and disposition of the enemy defenders and only then will I make a decision about whether to call in reserves.” Realizing he had taken his authority as far as it would go, he gave an insincere smile, “Now, perhaps you would care to equip yourself for climbing? Seeing you are here, your insights about this base could be valuable.”
Borisov had created a defensive perimeter around the copter with one of his squads but Bondarev looked at the remaining ten or so soldiers standing behind their commander and he could see that if they weren’t going to be allowed to start killing some Americans, and soon, they might very well decide a coward of a VVS officer would make a fine substitute. In reality, there was nothing he could do about it.
Which was how he’d found himself dangling on the end of a rope, trying to identify the American drone launch chute for the Spetsnaz team above. Bondarev had taken his best guess, looking at where his Sukhoi lay crumpled and still smoking at the bottom of the cliff, and with Borisov on a rope beside him, had dropped over the edge of the cliff and was easing his way down.
About a hundred feet down, and still 500 feet above the sea, he found it. It lay off to his left, so he had to kick and bounce his way over to it. He gave a hand signal to the Spetsnaz soldier on the other rope, and they took up positions on either side of the hole. It showed nothing but complete darkness. Bondarev had discussed with Borisov that it was possible the attack through the mouth of the cave had knocked out the base and everyone in it, but neither of them was willing to trust their lives to that assumption.
Pulling down the night vision device on his helmet, Borisov stuck his head tentatively around the rock and Bondarev half expected to see it disappear in a volley of fire and spray of blood, but the darkness remained silent.
“Long tunnel, some sort of low-intensity lighting at the end, so we can assume your attack didn’t kill the power. Big enough to stand up in, slight incline. No cover I can see. Stealth is out, we’re going to have to pop smoke, go in fast.” He started relaying orders to his men above. Bondarev had borrowed one of the Spetsnaz helmets and took a look for himself. The NOD, or Night-vision Optical Device, on the helmets could be flipped between light enhancing and an infra-red mode that would penetrate dust and fog. He saw the tunnel was long — he could see only a faint glow at the end, and there was a guide rail set in the floor which must be used to keep the drones centered in the tunnel during launch. It was big enough for them to stand up in without crouching, and the roof and sides were shored up with steel beams, recessed into the rock. Bondarev whistled; the tunnel was a major piece of engineering in itself. He couldn’t help but be impressed by what the Americans had done, right under their noses.
When the others had joined them, Borisov and one of his men took a position on either side of the tunnel entrance and pulled out smoke grenades. On a signal from Borisov they swung into the opening, threw their grenades and dropped prone with OSV-96 AMR rifles extended in front of them. The others swung in behind them and rushed down the slight incline, also throwing themselves flat. Bondarev came in last, unable to see anything, with only the small Makarov he always carried in a trouser pocket on the leg of his flight suit. He smelled wet concrete, machine oil, salt air and spent explosive.
“No contact,” the Spetsnaz commander said to his squad. “Move up!” They began crawling down the tunnel through the smoke, on their stomachs. The walls of the tunnel were smooth, covered only by a black soot that Bondarev guessed was the remains of fuel from either drone launches, or his own exploding Sukhoi. As they’d identified, there was no natural cover, so Borisov’s men moved in overlapping teams of two down either side of the tunnel. All Bondarev could do was keep his eyes on the dark shadow of the man in front of him and try not to bump into anyone.
Suddenly up front there was a signal, and everyone stopped.
“End of the tunnel,” someone radioed back. “Three-meter gap. Continues on the other side.”
Bondarev tensed. If the enemy was waiting in ambush, this would be the perfect time, as they paused at the edge of the drop. Bondarev heard a splash.
“Water below,” the man up ahead called back. “Still no contact. We can jump it.”
“Coming forward,” Borisov said and ran up to the lip of the chute in a crouch. He signaled to Bondarev to join him, giving Bondarev his first look inside the enemy base. Or what was left of it. He could hear heavy duty exhaust fans working overtime to clear the dust, smoke and water vapor left behind by the cruise missile strike but with his helmet on infra-red mode he could see no movement inside. It appeared the cave had once been much bigger, but a huge rock slide had closed part of it off. He could see the outline of a trailer or comms room set up above the waterline, cables running from it to the roof where they were gathered into thick plastic tubes that ran over to what must be the drone flight deck and launch catapult.