“The leader of the Chechen force that was going into Russia was called Breslav,” Katya said. “And we got an intercept, two days ago: ‘Breslav, have you reached Turdun.’ ”
“Turdun’s a valley to the southeast,” Mike said, frowning. “A couple of small farms. Are they going to raid there, you think?”
“There’s an old trail from Turdun to here,” Vanner said. “Kat, you got a map?”
“Here,” she said, rolling out the old Soviet map. It had been marked up, however, with trails.
“It’s a mule trail, only,” Vanner said. “But they could set up a rally point in Turdun and then cross it to Alerrso; it ends just below the pass coming in one of the small off-shoot valleys. I’ve been trying to figure out the movement rate, but I’m not sure. If they pushed after leaving the Russian AO they could be there already. Or they could be still on the way.”
Mike sat back and considered the situation for a moment.
“How many?” he asked.
“The Chechen assault force was about two hundred according to rumor,” Katya said. “But that number has two separate sources and what the Spetznaz saw of it confirms. And it accords with what the Russians know of Breslav. He’s a Chechen warlord with about a hundred to two hundred followers. He calls it a battalion.”
“Pretty small battalion,” Mike mused. “But larger than I’d like to tackle at this point. Any chance this is disinformation?”
“Could be,” Vanner admitted. “But it feels real if it’s anything at all. If it was disinformation I’d expect more indicators, especially Humint. All we really have is this one intercept. As far as I know, Breslav never responded. He might have used a sat phone, though. I’m getting side-band twitches on those from time to time. One of the twitches was from the general direction of Chechnya, but inside of Georgia. It could have been Breslav calling in. I didn’t get a good fix on it, but it was well inside of Georgia, southeast of Turdun, though. That was yesterday. I can’t tell how far from Turdun, though.”
“Okay,” Mike said. “Prepare a more definite brief. I’m not doing anything important right now. I’ll take a team out and do a recon, see if there’s anything to it.”
“Don’t get yourself whacked,” Vanner warned.
“I won’t,” Mike said. “On your way out, ask the colonel to come see me.”
“So, it looks like the Chechens might be coming to visit,” Mike said. He’d assembled the full team of instructors along with three of the Keldara hunters who were going to be designated team snipers. He’d waited until Vanner was done with his dog and pony to take over.
“First, I’d like to know where we are on potential defense. Sergeant Heard, how are the ladies coming along?”
“Pretty good,” the former MP said. “We skipped the hoo-rah stuff and went straight to weapons training. They’ve all qualified with small arms and we’re working on medium and heavy machine guns at the moment. We still haven’t worked on mortars, though.”
“Leave the mortars at the serai for now,” Mike said. “If we need to use them, we can use our heavy weapons instructors to man them from here and they’ve got range for the whole valley. Get some equipment up here and dig them in, though. Don’t mess up my lawn too much.”
“Will do,” Sergeant Greer said, grinning. He was one of the basic instructors but when they went to advanced training he was the designated mortar instructor. “I’ll get the ladies to help if you don’t mind; no time like the present.”
“Works,” Mike said. “I’m going to take a small team up to try to see if there’s anything to this. Praz, what’s your best weapon at about a thousand meters?”
“Seven millimeter,” Praz said. “Or fifty.”
“Praz, Russell and Killjoy,” Mike said. “And the three Keldara. Praz and I will take sniper rifles, the rest will take SPRs. We need to get zeroed in tomorrow. Pack tonight, we’ll leave tomorrow night. Accelerate the militia weapons training; they need to be able to do positional defense as soon as possible.”
“Will do,” Nielson said, making a note.
“Vanner, commo?” Mike asked.
“If you can pack some microboxes along, that would be good,” Vanner said. “That way you can keep your transmission power down.” The small “black boxes” worked on a distributed network and only weighed two pounds.
“We had a ruck march scheduled for day after tomorrow,” Adams said. “We’re going to move that around for rifle training, but we can only run three teams through the range at a time. What say we take the other three, with their instructors in charge, and go place boxes behind your route? Do that for two days, take them back and run them through the range?”
“That’s going to be a big movement,” Mike said. “Take one team and make it look like a training exercise. Send one team up behind us, one south and one up into the hills to the east. That way we’ll have full coverage anyway. Rotate the other teams in behind them. Do some patrol training. Set it up and pre-train tomorrow, move out the day after. Get the other teams as dialed in on engagement as possible in three days. Then rotate the first teams out.”
“Do we send the first teams out armed or unarmed?” Nielson asked, thoughtfully.
“Armed,” Mike said. “I know they’re only familiarized, but always bring a gun to a gunfight. No magazine in the well, but full load on their gear. No frags, no heavy weapons. One of the instructors can bring a machine gun if they choose and load up as they please. The Keldara can carry spare ammo.”
“Works,” Adams said. “We’ll get it set up while you’re gone.”
“Taking one of your girls with you?” Vanner asked, grinning. “Gonna get cold up in the hills.”
“Not even Katya,” Mike replied.
As the Expedition rolled to a stop, Mike stepped out trotting and ran to the rear.
“Gear up,” he said, quietly. They were less than seven kilometers from the Turdun Valley. Of course, it was on the other side of a high ridge, but the Chechens could have gotten to this point already.
It didn’t feel like an ambush, though. It felt… right. Like he was back in his element. There was an owl calling off to the west and the trees were moving in a high wind across the pass. It sounded good, like home. He wasn’t juggling training schedules or budgets anymore, just going out to find and localize some bad guys. And, with any luck, neutralize them.
He still wasn’t sure how to do that, though. The correlation of forces was… severe. The Chechen force was filled with experienced guerilla fighters and his militia was severely outnumbered. The trainers, if he centralized them, would be a formidable force, but they hadn’t trained together. If he had a Specter or an F-15 loaded with JDAMs he wouldn’t think about how to take out the Chechens. He’d sincerely considered calling Washington to scream for help but he figured this was a personal fight. Let the Chechens learn not to fuck with the Keldara.
He shrugged on his ruck and hefted his rifle, stepping aside to let the others load up as he drifted to the woodline. The opening of the trail was clear in the faint light and he didn’t even turn on his Night Observation Device. After a moment, though, he keyed on the thermal sight on the 7mm sniper rifle and scanned the woods. Nothing, not even a deer.