Page 49 of Dead Fall

Difficult, but not impossible.

The world was full of incredibly malign individuals. Rarely, however, did you see them banded together in such a grotesque confederation.

The parallels between the Wagner Group’s Ravens and the NaziDirlewanger Brigade still struck him as uncanny. It was as if the SS unit had been brought back to life some eighty years later.

Man’s inhumanity to man was a tale as old as time, but the Ravens were taking it to the next level.

The updated intelligence that the GUR man with the briefcase had shared was the stuff of nightmares. It had also provided a possible lead. That was why Harvath and his new team were going to Kolodyazne first.

The danger of the assignment—both in relation to the men they were hunting and how they would be operating within the shadow of the front lines—had not been lost on him. They weren’t looking for a needle in a haystack; they were looking for a live hand grenade under a mountain of rusty razor blades surrounded by a sea of molten lava.

If there was one thing he knew, it was that as bad as things had started, this mission could get exponentially worse. Even the best-planned operations were subject to Murphy’s Law. And there were few places Murphy liked more to come out and play than an active war zone. It was his playground and the combatants his playthings.

Feeling his heart rate climbing, Harvath admonished himself for allowing his thoughts to get away from him. He closed his eyes and worked on his breathing. There was nothing he could do until he arrived at the front. He had to make the best of it. He was going to be stuck inside this tin can for the next two hours.

Aside from some intermittent radio traffic and the occasional communication between the driver and the gunner, the ride was long and boring. A few of the soldiers chatted quietly. Some slept. Others listened to music or played cards. One read a book.

If Harvath could have had anything, in addition to all of the burned-up equipment he had lost, he would have loved to have had a book. He’d always been a big reader, especially on deployments. Books helped take his mind off things and pass the time.

In Belarus, he had read a great thriller calledWolf Trapby an author named Connor Sullivan. He would have loved to have picked up another, but the Ukraine operation had gone into motion so quickly, he hadn’t had the time.

Listening to the treads of the APC rumbling over the road, he tried to keep his mind in a quiet, meditative state. The only thing that pulled him out of it was when the driver abruptly slowed or changed course to avoid something in their path. Russian land mines, like Russian sabotage of the Ukrainian rail lines, were a constant threat. All in all, their journey had been uneventful.

Passing through an abandoned, battle-scarred village about a half hour from the front, Harvath was rocked awake by the sound of gunfire. It was soon joined by the M113’s driver yelling something in Ukrainian.

Shaking off the fog of the trancelike state he had been in, he instantly realized what had happened. He didn’t need for the driver to yell his command again. Harvath was closest, which meant that he needed to be the one to act.

As bullets pinged off the steel skin of the APC, he reached up, pulled the dead gunner out of the hatch, and took his place.

When the driver shouted a new order in Ukrainian, Harvath yelled back for him to speak English or Russian.

“The church!” the driver yelled in English, speeding forward. “Shoot the church!”

Harvath swung the Browning M2 heavy machine gun hard left and opened up on the bell tower.

The .50-caliber rounds thundered out of the Ma Deuce and punched hole after hole in the structure.

Every fifth round was a tracer, and Harvath used them to fine-tune his fire. He tore the wooden tower to shreds and even rang the bell,twice.

He then paused his shooting, his thumbs ready to reengage the trigger, waiting for some sort of response, but there was no return fire. Either he had taken him out or the sniper had fled.

Nearing the edge of the village, Harvath could see a bridge up ahead over a small river. The driver brought the APC to a halt and seemed to be weighing what to do next.

Harvath took advantage of the pause to call for more ammo. As themen below scrambled to grab him a can, he scanned the town for additional threats. Where there was one sniper, there were likely more hostile actors. Whether it was a squad, or an entire platoon, was unknowable. They were close enough to the front that it could be anything.

Reloading the .50-cal, Harvath charged the weapon and called out to the driver, “We can’t sit out in the open like this all day. We need to get moving.”

“I know,” the Ukrainian shouted back. “I am not sure about the bridge. It could be rigged.”

Harvath gave it a quick glance. There was no way to be certain. Not without getting underneath and thoroughly checking it out, section by section. The man was right to be uneasy. Harvath was growing uneasy as well.

The sniper, or more likely one of his comrades, could be waiting for the APC to roll across before blowing whatever explosives they had hidden beneath.

Harvath assumed that the driver knew his route and that not only had he made this run before, but there had been no recent reports of enemy activity in the area.

“Forget the bridge,” said Harvath. “We’ll take a different route.”

The driver was about to respond, when he detected motion near the edge of one of the buildings. As a Russian soldier stepped into the open and the driver saw what he was carrying, he yelled, “RPG!”

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