User:RelentlessRecusant/Broken Arrow/Chapter 1

Chapter One He had been here for what he surmised to be days. He didn’t know where he was, but it had been his home for the last 72 hours. Home. That wasn’t the word for this place. Home brought thoughts of warmth. Yet all he felt was a cold, dark solus. And the pain. The pain. Every hour, on the hour, they would come. They would ask. He would spit. There would be hurt. Spitting was all he had left, shackled to this chair as he was. He couldn’t move his arms or legs, just his head. He could aim and spit. They had taken his clothes the first time he had spit on their officer. Their interrogator. His interrogator. His executioner. But death was not what he desired, and not what they would give him. He was resolved to stay alive as long as possible without cracking just to spite them. They could break his bones, but they couldn’t break the spirit his country had instilled in him. Deployment + 00:34:27 Major Sergeyvich Mission Clock) \ Saint Petersburg, Leningrad Military District, Western Russia	Lieutenant Colonel Illych looked at the photos on the desk. They were the most recent updates from the American UAV flyby over the house. Major Sergeyvich regarded his superior, the commander of Mirka Team, 2nd SpetsNaz Brigade, with a sense of admiration. Though he was only a pay grade above Sergeyvich, Illych was as veteran as they came. He was also old, and he would soon retire if he did not make Colonel. The Russian word for colonel rolled off Sergeyvich’s mental tongue with a sort of flare. Illych was a veteran from Afghanistan, where he had served in an airborne unit. The war had changed him, it had changed all of the Russians stationed there. Sergeyvich looked to the other in the room, a chubby photo-analyst from the GRU.	“I count seven Chechens. These two should be the hostages. They are back to back in what appears to be the kitchen,” he said, looking from Sergeyvich to Illych. Sergeyvich looked at the seven light outlines the analyst had indicated as being the Chechen rebels, and then at the two light outlines of the hostages. Two of the Chechens were in the living room, two in the bedroom, and three guarding the hostages. “Thank you, comrade,” Illych spoke softly to the analyst, voicing his thanks though all three knew full well that a photo-analyst was not necessary to read the black and white thermal outputs of the UAV. “You are dismissed.” The photo-analyst stood, gathered the photos into a folder, turned sharply (which was unexpected for someone of his girth) on his heels and left the shack, walking off into the darkness. Sergeyvich watched the spook leave, then turned to his superior and, together, the two began drawing up a plan. Within the hour, Mirka Team was on the move. D + 01:17:49 (Lieutenant First Class Yuriy Mission Clock) \ Saint Petersburg, Leningrad Military District, Western Russia Lieutenant First Class Yuriy reclined in the barn across the way from the target house. This was far removed from the real combat Mirka Team had been going through fighting the Chechens on the Russian-Georgian border. All they seemed to do here in western Russia was range competitions and endurance training, mixed with a few skirmishes against other Russian military units. Yuriy grimaced as he remembered the last skirmish. He had taken a rubber round from an enemy sniper in the forehead, and had been out cold. Now he got the chance to take out his frustrations on the real enemy, the Chechens. Apparently, a whole bunch of them had holed themselves up in this house with a couple of hostages, thinking they could get away with whatever they pleased. Mirka was here to make them know different, though they would all probably be dead before they actually realized Mirka had descended upon them. Yuriy took a moment to inspect his SVD Dragunov for the eighth time since he had staked out in this barn in the frostbitten cold, watching the Chechen house. As it had seven times before, the inspection just reminded him of how much he despised the unit leader, Major Sergeyvich. Sergeyvich was a hardcore close-quarters combat kind of guy, and thus, he catered to the CQC guys’ needs before the riflemen. As such, though the riflemen requested the new SV-98 and SV-99 rifles to replace the aging SVDs that they used, but Sergeyvich had always denied their requests. Illych, who was an Afghan vet and had to make do with an AK-74U, didn’t exactly favor the riflemen either. “Rifle One, do you see movement?” “No movement on eastern side.” “Rifle Two, do you see movement?” Yuriy did not take his eyes of the tritium-lit PSO-1 scope as the Lieutenant Colonel requested an update. “Two targets behind the shades. They match the Chechens from the briefing,” he reported. He could almost hear Illych mull over the information. All was going according to plan. There were two targets in the living room, and Rifle One had reported two in the bedroom not five minutes ago. “Rifle One and Rifle Two, take the left most targets. Close-quarters will handle the right most targets.” Illych ordered. Yuriy, complying with orders, shifted his scope to the left most target. His spotter did likewise, preparing to give him a string of data on the pinpoint position to aim that would result in a headshot. Yuriy had already done all of the calculations in his head while waiting (the targets had scarce moved over the last hour), as had his spotter, but as per protocol, Yuriy would still wait for his spotter to give him the coordinates before firing. D + 01:23:35 (Major Sergeyvich Mission Clock) \ Saint Petersburg, Leningrad Military District, Western Russia Sergeyvich could feel the adrenaline rush through his veins, almost overpowering the bitter cold of the night. His thoughts flickered to the sharpshooters, who had been stationed outside for at least an hour or so. But sharpshooters were of no concern to him. They were absolutely useless in close-quarters combat, as bad as Russian Army infantrymen, which was saying a lot. Sharpshooters were only good for watching, though American movies boasted snipers as shooting down airplanes and other such wild fantasies. Sergeyvich had discarded his cyan beret in favor of a balaclava with three holes cut out: two for the eyes and one for the mouth. It would blend in with the night better than his men’s face paint. Unlike most officers, Sergeyvich lead from the front, and carried an AS Val rather than a silenced 6P9 BM pistol. Sergeyvich had insisted on having all of the Vals for his team modified. Normally, there were three notches along the trigger group. Mirka Team’s had four. A three-round burst option had been added after manufacturing, which had taken Sergeyvich a hell of a lot of bitching to get. Another modification Sergeyvich had obtained was a mounted PSO-1 optical scope, normally reserved for SVDs and VSSs. Of course, the riflemen didn’t think these modifications as necessary, and whined all the more about getting “proper” sniper rifles like the SV-98 and SV-99. But they would never understand close-quarters combat. A sniper was off in their own little world, looking hither and yon for a target, prepping the headshot, and then blowing some poor fucker’s brains out. Sergeyvich and his men were right in the thick of things, having to achieve the same headshot, but more often and with a fraction of a second to react. It was life and death for Sergeyvich and his men. Snipers never fully appreciated this, because the only time they were threatened was by other snipers. And then, it was always who spotted who first, not who was the quicker to react. For close-quarters combat, it was all about a perfection of head shots in a fluid motion that no sniper would ever achieve. Of course, that really didn’t matter all too much for this op. The SpetsNaz outnumbered the rebels 24 to 7, had the element of surprise, were attacking at night, and had superior intelligence, firepower, and technology. The Chechens didn’t stand a chance in hell. With that thought in mind and with the curling plaster of the ranch pressed against his back, Sergeyvich lightly put down the flash-bang grenade and donned sun glasses. While it appeared to come straight out of science fiction, what with Special Forces wearing sun glasses at night, the glasses actually served as flash blinders. They would the SpetsNaz troops that split-second advantage of not having to look away from the action as the phosphorous grenades went off that could spell the difference between life and death. With the glasses on, Sergeyvich cut a fit and lean figure: he was a closely-cut man dressed in an olive-drab camouflage coat over a load-bearing jet black tactical Kevlar vest. While one might have expected SPETSNAZ to be imprinted in bright yellow on the back of his vest, it was not so. The Russians regarded SWAT with contempt, as the bright letters would mark them well at night for enemy snipers, and also designated to the enemy who they were. Sergeyvich retrieved the flash-bang and handed it to the soldier behind him. Then, after ensuring his Val was on burst, Sergeyvich quickly turned the corner, weapon ready. There was nothing. He reached back, making a hand signal around the corner to give the all clear sign to his men. “All clear. Team Two, move forward. Rifle One and Rifle Two, cover our approach. Any movement?” he asked. “Negative, comrade major.” Sergeyvich looked to one of his men, who slung his Val and brought a GM-94 grenade launcher to bear. He handed it to Sergeyvich, who then had the soldier from earlier load the flash-bang grenade in, set to go off on impact with the window. “All teams, report,” Illych ordered. “Team One in position,” Sergeyvich replied. “Team Two in position.” “Rifle One in position.” “Rifle Two in position.” There was a two second pause. “Go!” Illych commanded into the radio. All at once, six shots were fired. Both rifle teams, which had switched to thermal vision to avoid the worst of the blinding flash from the grenades, shot the left targets in the head. Meanwhile, the flash-bang grenades went into the window, traveled a few centimeters further into the room, and then went off, blinding any surviving occupants. Simultaneously, a soldier from each ground team, each armed with a KS-23 shotgun, blew the handle off the respective front and back doors. The KS-23, normally used for riot control, was the perfect tactical shotgun for Russian ops in that it had the power to breach doors, but the accuracy to be an effective primary weapon. Sergeyvich was the first one through the front door as it swung inward violently. Through the far door, Sergeyvich could see a target aiming an old AK-47 at him. He squeezed on the trigger. Suddenly, his barrel was pointed at the ceiling, spraying wildly. Sergeyvich cursed as he tried to control his weapon, which must have been switched to automatic sometime between turning the corner and breaching the door. Taking a step back and releasing the trigger, Sergeyvich was tripped by one of the soldiers behind him, and fell to the ground. I’m dead, he thought. There was no way he would survive fire from the ground. The Chechens would kill him out of spite before the rest of his soldiers overwhelmed them. When the warm feeling of blood leaving the body did not come, Sergeyvich looked over to his right at the badly maimed corpse of one of the two occupants of the room, the one that had been sniped. It too was not bleeding, which confused Sergeyvich to no end. More shots were fired as the team moved in, and then it dawned on him. The Chechens had used heated manikins to throw off the thermal sensors on the UAV and the sniper scopes. He could hardly imagine how they themselves had avoided the thermals. All he knew is that his men were fighting for their lives against the real Chechens, and he was lying on the ground. “All clear!” one of his men yelled. He wanted to yell no, that it was a trick, that they needed to search harder, but he couldn’t find his breath. “Red Fox to Big Bear. Eleven point one? That’s pretty good for Russians,” came a voice over his radio. The voice was most definitely American, though the speaker hid his accent well. “Pretty close to SAS. Delta Force beat you, though. Again.” “One-One to Big Bear. What the fuck is going on?” Sergeyvich yelled into his radio. “US Army Special Forces, Staff Sergeant Dieter Murray, ‘Red Fox’. American liaison to you Bears for foreign internal defense. You just ran the kill-house, Major.” “Thank you, comrades. We did not tell Mirka it was a drill, because we thought it would improve their time. They did splendidly, methinks.” “The photo-analyst was a nice touch. How’d you wrangle the GRU into this, anyway?” Sergeyvich seethed as the chatter increased, the riflemen recalling Sergeyvich’s fall for all to hear. “I will remember this, Yuriy,” Sergeyvich called out, identifying the particular rifleman who had been first to laugh by voice. “I am not so quick to forget.”