The latest and biggest project by Cornerstone 2001 was restoring a flooded school campus. The combined elementary, middle, and high school complex, which also served as a local medical clinic, day-care center, farmer’s market, veterinary clinic, and vocational-technical school, had been badly damaged when the nearby Czur River had spilled over its banks in the springtime rains and runoff, and nearby damage and contamination to wells and water-treatment facilities had left the area without any sanitary facilities or healthy water supplies. It was Lewis’s job to coordinate the activities of the Green Mountain Boys, along with a few soldiers from other NATO countries, Macedonian Army conscripts, and local paramilitaries and townspeople into an effective construction unit.
The first task was organizing this mishmash of foreigners, soldiers of different branches, and locals, but that’s where Lewis really shined. He had been organizing things all his life, starting with his baseball card collection, his Little League team, his senior class in high school as class president, and yard stock in the lumber yard where he had worked as the dayshift foreman for the past ten years. He used an effective combination of communication skills, cajoling, horse trading, force, and his keen powers of observation to identify leaders, followers, or slackers, and put them in the right place. After fifteen years in the Air Guard, including two months in Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm, he also knew a lot about taking a bunch of kids — the conscripts in the Macedonian Army were all between eighteen and twenty years old — matching them up with the veterans, and letting the old farts lead.
Once the job for today was outlined for the groups, they launched off on their own. The job was to pump out standing water from the campus, strip out water-damaged walls and floors, inspect the structure for signs of weakness or damage, repair or replace the foundations and structures, rehabilitate the grounds, and then get them ready to refurnish. About half of the campus was still under water, some of it as much as two feet high, so they had big trailer-mounted pumps ready to go. But before anyone stepped into even a quarter-inch of water, Lewis had the 158th Medical Services Squadron and the 158th Civil Engineering Squadron, Environmental Control, come in and test the soil and water for signs of contamination. This part of Macedonia was fairly pristine, and there were few villages upstream, but Macedonia did quite a bit of cattle farming in the highlands, and cattle waste and disease caused all sorts of problems, not to mention the real hazards if they found any dead cattle carcasses or corpses. So nobody touched anything unless it was signed off on by the medical and environmental guys.
Lewis’s troops were just fanning out to begin work when he heard choppers in the distance. It was not unusual at all — the international airport at Ohrid just a few miles to the west had a military facility where most of the United Nations troops were stationed; and being fairly close to the border and to the two-millennium-old historical sites of southern Macedonia, the area was very heavily patrolled — but Lewis stopped to search for them and watch them approach. Macedonia had a few American surplus UH-1 Hueys and a few old ex-Soviet Mil-17 transport helicopters, but these choppers sounded even bigger — and it sounded like a lot of them inbound.
There were. Popping up from a low-level high-speed inbound approach to the schoolyard was a formation of three Mil Mi-24V “Hind-E” helicopter gunships in a wide V formation. The big armored choppers zoomed in at treetop level, and as soon as they cleared the tree line, their noses lowered again, rapidly picking up speed. He could even see the big gun turret in the front under the nose sweeping back and forth, looking for targets, locking on and tracking any large vehicle or military-looking building — he swore the lead choppers gunner locked on to him and had him dead in his sights. Lewis had seen plenty of Russian helicopters throughout the Balkans in his years here, but all of them had been unarmed. These were armed to the teeth with rocket pods, anti-armor missiles, bombs, mines, even air-to-air missiles filling every attach point on their weapon pylons. That was a major violation of NATO and United Nations directives — but even more than that, they were scary as hell.
Lewis had never seen a Russian helicopter on an attack run before, but he imagined this was exactly what it looked like. He withdrew his walkie-talkie from its belt holster and keyed the mike button: “Cornerstone Alpha, this is Cornerstone One.” Alpha was the unit’s commanding officer, Colonel Andrew Toutin, the commander of the 158th Fighter Wing, currently located. at the Cornerstone operation headquarters in Skopje.
“Go ahead, Chief.”
“Sir, I’ve got an eyeball on three big Russian helicopter gunships ready to overfly the Resen school grounds, and they are armed. Repeat, they are armed to the teeth.”
“What?” Toutin shouted. “What in hell was that? Armed? Are you saying you clearly observe weapons on board these helicopters?”
“Affirmative, sir. Many weapons. Many weapons.”
He could imagine his boss swearing long and loud off-air — the boss, a salty old veteran fighter pilot with over twenty years’ active duty service and over ten years in the Vermont Air Guard, usually used expletives frequently and often creatively in everyday conversation. “I’ll call it in to NATO headquarters here, Chief,” Toutin said. “Contact the Macedonian security NCO and make sure they keep their weapons out of sight. If the choppers try to land, keep the civilians away from them.”
“Roger all, sir,” Lewis responded. “Break, break, Seven, this is One.”
“This is Seven,” the Macedonian noncommissioned officer in charge of the security forces for Cornerstone responded in broken but passable English. “I see the Russians too, Chief. I copy Alpha, we keep our weapons out of sight, and I will order the police chief to get the civilians indoors. I will initiate a security checkpoint report and verify orders. Stand by.”
The Russian gunships completed their low pass over the campus, then split up and disappeared over the horizon, flying so low they were hidden by trees almost immediately. The thunderous roar of the Hinds masked the sound of more helicopters coming in. These were Mil Mi-8T troop transport helicopters, huge twin-turboshaft monsters carrying fuel in external pylons instead of weapons. Lewis saw six of them dart in toward the school from three different directions, all from treetop level and at maximum forward speed. Spreading out across the campus, the helicopters suddenly pitched up to quickly slow their forward speed, then settled rapidly to the ground in three pairs spread out about three hundred yards apart. Seconds after the transports hit the ground, heavily armed Russian soldiers in dark green camouflage BDUs and with camouflaged faces and weapons spread out to guard the helicopters and took cover positions behind nearby buildings. As the transport helicopters departed, the Hind-E gunships cruised nearby, ready to pounce if any enemy activity popped up.
Pretty damned efficient, Lewis thought grimly. Everywhere he looked on the campus, there was a Russian infantryman. They were probably not outnumbered, but they were clearly outgunned.
One of the Russian soldiers set up a smoke-wind direction torch on the parking lot, and moments later a lone Mi-8 transport arrived. This one was a little different: it off-loaded only eight security troops, and it was festooned with antennae all over its fuselage. Along with the security forces, an officer with full battle gear stepped off the helicopter, flanked by a few aides, staff officers, and a civilian. Aha, Lewis guessed, the boss has just arrived.