The evacuation of Poland had choked up the roads a lot. Luckily, the Gadfly transport choppers were up to the task of rapidly mobilizing the Enforcer mechanized divisions. Russian ground tactics relied on shock and awe, and their war machines were shocking and awe inspiring indeed. Bankole's troops were sustaining heavy losses without so much as scratching the enemy. If anything, he had complete night time air superiority and his Hailstorms were wreaking all nine hells across the eastern European country side. But the day and ground belonged to the Russians and they were pushing his forward troops back daily. Warsaw had been overrun and the Russian's attack momentum didn't seem to be slowing. Soon they'd be into Germany (at the rate of their advance, it could take a week!) and then there would be no stopping them from taking Paris.
There would be a major engagement that would take place at the town of Hannsburg on the Poland/Germany border. The eight roads and two train depots along with a valuable satellite uplink station rested at that vital town. Bankole was moving the 103rd mechanized, and the 107th mechanized to that position along with ordering the retreating troops to fall back and lay there where they deserved a short breather before getting thrown back into the fray. His troops would reach that town in three days.
The Russians would reach it in two.
Dolan didn't understand the term "Rainbow six" at first. She'd heard of the Rainbow counterterror team of course, everyone in every special agency was required to know of the NATO counter terrorist force. The term "Six" she had learned after asking one of her men, David Peled, about it (he'd also been a part of Rainbow) was because of the British derivative of the name. Directors of their agency divisions were known as "Sixes" while the subcommanders were known as "fives." Therefore, "Rainbow Six" which was based in Hereford (also home of the 22nd SAS regiment) meant that this John Clark was the one who had fucking started the group. Hot damn! Just how old was he?
"Rainbow six?" David Peled nodded. "It'll be good to see him again."
"He's bringing a couple of the old guys too. You heard of Homer Johnston, JC Chavez and Oso Vega?"
"Sniper, shooter and big guy, yeah they were part of it back when I was in." David Peled grinned. "Good to get the old firm back together. Chavez is Six's grandson if anyone was wondering."
"What's so important about it?" a younger man in his twenties asked, he was Benjamin Zil'Zilich, part of the IDF team under Dolan's command. He was part of the Mossad's foreign black operations force, and therefore a special man out of a community of special men. However, Dolan noted that he was hotheaded and hadn't actually had a single operation under his belt. But he spoke English as fluently as if he was born in Times Square. "So they can shoot, but they're old men. won't be too hard to compete with them will it?"
"We're on the same side." The third member of the team shook his head, he was Daniel Stuart an Israeli jew of American heritage. "Its no competition."
Zilich shook his head and returned to cleaning his MicroTAR-21. The latest and greatest in Israeli special forces weaponry was the pride and joy of this small IDF team. They waited in the barrack ready room of Tel Aviv's gym where they had completed the shooting excercise for the day, Dolan had insisted that she tag along and while she was out of shape compared to the men who ran 6 mile morning PTs and performed a hundred press ups without breaking a sweat, she was satisfied that her shooting hadn't faltered since her time with HRT at Quantico. The Rainbow men arrived on time at 0900.
They were all in their 40s except for Clark (who Peled had disclosed was aged in his goddamn seventies and still in good business) and Chavez who was only in his early twenties, good to see someone so young. And they all looked just as fit as the Israeli team. Zilich visibly gawked at the sight of the giant Oso.
"Do you eat barbells?" Zilich managed in fair English. Oso laughed and replied in the same language.
"Naw, I was raised by bears." Vega joked.
"Peled, its good to see you again." Clark shook his former comrade's hand and introductions mixed with reunions for a few moments.
"How you guys holding up?" Peled turned to his former comrades.
"Its been nice, Werner picked us up for HRT." Johnston shrugged.
"You'll really like what we have here." Peled eagerly began displaying his equipment to the Rainbow men. "We've got the IDF future force Tac helmets with real time HUD and imaging equipment, it links right up to our snake cameras too, great for peeking around the corners. High yield thermal upgrades on the tactical goggles, " He displayed the helmets that looked quite a bit like helicopter pilot helmets except there were a pair of IR goggles that had been attatched to it, "powerful enough to penetrate a foot of concrete. Corner shot attatchments for all our gear, pistols and rifles, RC drones, latest Semtex plastics, Heartbeat sensors and disruptors-"
"The disruptor?" Clark shook his head, "Never heard of that one before."
"Newest toy from ICOM industries." Patricia Dolan explained with quite some smugness, the United States had always been known for its high tech stuff but sometimes the world could still catch them off guard. "Its still in its experimental beta, but they managed to release a few for us. You understand how the heartbeat sensor works?"
"Just about." Clark nodded. "Something about being able to detect the electromagnetic field around a human heart. I remember when Peled dropped that bomb on us."
"Right, and the human field is unique, which is why it doesn't get confused with the patterns of animals and such. Well, the disruptor," she held up the sheet up, it was no larger than the size of her palm, and had a peel off side so it could stick to objects. "Is something that emits another small field. And the idea behind it is that because the two fields are in such close proximity, they overlap so the sensor will become confused and cancel it out as something that isn't human."
"Isn't that sort of a wave that close to your heart dangerous?" Price asked suspiciously.
"There's been some discussion about it physically disrupting the pattern of your heart beat," Dolan admitted "But from all the testing that's been done it isn't likely although if anyone here has heart problems I wouldn't recommend putting it on."
"And a sensor actually can detect you at close range." Peled went on. He'd been part of the first team to use it back when it had first been given to Rainbow so he'd been one of the people that had been chosen to test the disruptor. "At a range of about seven meters or so, standard systems are able to separate the two so we shouldn't get too reliant on it."
It wasn't hard for many modern countries to acquire things for their special forces or counter insurgency teams. Whether they would actually encounter one during this operation would be up to providence.
"But continuing, we have the sensors, disruptors, phone taps, firewall penetrators, newest DKL 400 bit radios and that basically covers it."
"We brought a couple toys from the Agency that I felt you guys might be liking." Clark said and gestured for Homer Johnston to shuck his bag and display its contents on the table. "I'm good friends with a guy at the NSA, and he's been generous enough to lend us some of these." First he held up thin stylus object. "EMP disruptor, tap it on something and it will either short circuit immediately or for the more study stuff, it'll disable it for about two to four minutes give or take. We've also got a more powerful one in grenade form."
He pulled out something that looked like infrared NVGs but the optics looked more streamlined and also bulkier at the same time. "Sonar goggles, three dimensional imaging via high acoustic tones. Like a sub."
"How?" Peled managed, Clark smiled and gave a shrug to show that he wasn't saying anything about that.
"Nice to know we still have some of the best toys." Chavez smiled. "How are we getting into Turkey?"
"Well Turkey's shut down its air ports so we can't take that route, it'll have to be by sea…"
INC Hamas steamed out at twenty knots. The latest in the Israeli fleet had the armament of a few destroyers and frigates in other fleets. INC Hamas was a corvette and one of the few ships in the modern world left to engage directly in ship to ship threats. Captain Jared Gregorich kept his eyes on the radar screen quite literally the lifeblood of this tiny 200 meter ship. He was operating in the northern sector of the Mediterranean, dealing with the Turkish fleet which was just as modern and twice as large. Their submarine force outnumbered Israel's and in the past, Turkey had been a rather good neighbor performing joint excercises and war games with the Israeli Naval Force but now they were not friends, it was no longer a game for Gregorich and the crew of Hamas. He'd heard rumors of a war about to be kicked off, well that's why Gregorich had decided to go career. He wanted to fight a war.
The Radio officer's hot printer spat a message out which he read before handing it to Gregorich.
TO: ACTUALINC-56
FROM:SURFNAVINT
ALL INF VESSELS ARE NOW TO CONDUCT UNRESTRICTED WARFARE IN TURKISH AND EGYPTION WATERS. THIS IS TO BE UNDERSTOOD AS A GENERAL WEAPONS FREE ON ALL RPT ALL SURFACE AND SUBSURFACE FOREIGN VESSELS
-INC 56 - TWENTY PLUS SURFACE VESSELS ON INTERCEPT WITH LIGHT AIR COVER, NO REPORTS OF SUBSURFACE VESSELS.
Gregorich scanned the second part twice and nodded to his XO, Lieutenant Jamal who then pressed a key on the general control board which sent an alarm throughout the ship which would send his crewmen scrambling to their ready posts. Jama lifted up the intercom "Set condition bravo throughout the ship."
INC Hamas was now at war, and standard procedure would be to immediately illuminate the powerful search radar to full.
"Surface contacts sir," the Electronics warfare officer said "Bearing three three two karem two hundred, call 'em patrol boats."
"Sir, I've got a radio hail on an open channel, its in English sir." The radioman said. "Says for us to turn around and leave restricted Turkish waters."
Gregorich shot Jama a cool glance, which Jama answered by pointing at the charts.
"We're well within our waters sir."
"Condition Alpha." Gregorich said and set his hands at the small of his back. "Come right three two three, unmask all weapons."
"Condition alpha is now in effect." Jama said over the intercom, now Hamas was ready for combat. "All decks are standing by sir." There weren't many naval movies out there anymore, Americans just seemed to forget how important the seas were, and maybe the waters weren't flashy enough for them to make movies about it.
"EWO," Gregorich said and raised his binoculars to the coordinate- he could see grey outlines of what were probably little patrol boats escorting a Corvette. That would be the main threat, the patrol boats would be wasps and usually unmanned. Drone technology had increased exponentially since their first use in 2004. "I want you to start on their control frequencies and work your way from there. Give 'em a full octave."
"Aye aye sir, full octave." The Electronics Warfare Officer said and began rapidly punching his keys. This was a man that had ever increasing responsibility placed on him as time went on. When he wasn't jamming enemy long range radios or overloading their powerboards, he would be cyberfighting, defending the INC Hamas against electronic attack as well as executing his own. "Full octave" meant that he would be sending an eight tone jamming against the enemy ship which could probably defend against it, but was not so inclined to launch its own attacks and that was what Gregorich was counting on while he concentrated on standard tactics. The eight tone jamming would have the added affect of knocking out its long range radio, short wave radar, whatever GPS navigation it had and maybe even the drone control network.
Another thing was that, supposing Gregorich was wrong and he actually was in Turkish waters, the full octave would buy him time enough to slink back to Israeli sea. Of course, his charts couldn't be that off course, otherwise he'd have run his ship aground a long time ago. And electronics warfare couldn't even be considered war shots and had almost the same affect as firing a couple five inch rounds across a ships bow.
Through the binoculars, Gregorich could see that the enemy ship was turning- a flash of smoke and gout of flame rose from the ship.
"Vampire vampire!" the Radar officer shouted. "Incoming missile designate threat axis three three two – we got another one, multiple vampires, four sir!"
"Left full rudder, all ahead flank. Come to new course two seven zero, ready countermeasures, your weapons are free."
The starboard 40 mm began its cycle, firing a round every three seconds at a low azumith. The incoming missiles were Gladius type sea-skimmers which would come in low, a good six meters above the waves and punch through the hull of his ship as if it were made of glass. Its warhead brain though, was developed in the late 1980s and therefore extremely primitive and susceptible to all kinds of attacks such as Foil chaff, jamming, or even outright control by the crew of Hamas.
"Splash one, splash two." The radar intercept officer shouted.
"One jammed." The EWO shouted from his station, his fingers flew over the keys as if possessed.
"Firing solution!" the Principal Weapons Officer (PWO) called. "Battery A and guns have a firing solution."
"Set to salvo fire and shoot." The Israeli captain snapped.
"Birds away, time on target, sixty seconds." The PWO snapped a stopwatch up and counted down. Asp missiles were a copy of the Gladiators the Turkish forces used but had been upgraded over the years giving a decent chip for its brain. The missiles were set to different randomized evasive vectors which would make it so much harder for counter batteries to gain good locks on them. Salvo firing ran the risk of those missiles slamming into each other but it again would be hard for the counterbattery to prioritize. He would overwhelm it with fire, and eight missiles probably might be enough.
"I want full safeties on the torpedo tubes." Gregorich wiped the sweat off his brow. What modern warfare lacked in humanity surely made up for it in intensity. "give me a firing solution."
"Twenty seconds." The PWO said. The radar officer shouted something but it was drowned out as the counterbattery officer fired off a countermeasure, a booster R-BOC canister rocketed into the air and foil chaff blossomed out of it, attempting to confuse the warhead. The Turkish Gladiator saw the foil bloom overhead of its target and saw the fuzzy outlines merge into one massive target. The warhead's brain scrambled and immediately self destructed. Fragments pinged onto the bridge, the shockwave of the explosion shuddered the viewports.
The Turkish ship was not so lucky, its own countermeasures rocketed high into the air and exploded the same, but the Israeli missiles could see two very distinct pictures and distinguished that one was a surface target, and one floated in the air and was therefore not the target. Two missiles struck the fore and aft sections of the Turkish corvette and remaining missiles distributed themselves amongst the patrol ships.
They obviously weren't drone controlled, the remaining pair of patrol boats turned and sped away at flank, too fast for even a nimble corvette to give chase.
"Well done." Gregorich said and smoothed his hair. He allowed himself a grin. "Stand down to condition Bravo, good first battle."