Forty-Five
The Spetsnaz were not only active in Washington DC.
A second team of operators from the GRU’s
Spetsnaz forces had, in previous weeks, been infiltrated into the mainland United States through Mexico. Their route had been a perilous one, involving several weeks aboard a freighter ship to Nicaragua and then a covertly-chartered flight to a remote Mexican airstrip. There, they’d been met an SVR contact who provided them with a trio of rugged pick-up trucks, as well as false passports, cash, and other supplies.
Using these supplies, the eighteen-strong team had crossed the border in three teams of six. They went over illegally, using smuggling routes uncovered by the SVR as well as contacts within the Mexican cartels. How exactly the SVR had made these contacts, the
Spetsnaz men did not want to know.
All eighteen of them got over the border in one piece.
They travelled in the same smaller groups to a safe-house in Oklahoma arranged for them by the SVR before linking up as a unit once again. Tinker Air Force Base, located in the southern part of Oklahoma City, was home to the 552nd Air Control Wing of the United States Air Force. The wing operated over two dozen E-3D Sentry Airborne Warning & Control System (AWACS) aircraft, with the jets being identifiable by the larger radar dish protruding from their tops. AWACS aircraft had been considered high-value assets since the inception of the concept, being available in limited number and requiring highly-trained crews to operate.
The task of
Spetsnaz Detachment #319 was to destroy as many AWACS aircraft as possible on the ground at Tinker AFB.
As a secondary target, the
Spetsnaz team was to destroy the KC-135 tanker aircraft belonging to the 507th Air Refuelling Wing of the U.S. Air Force Reserve and the 137th Air Refuelling Wing, Oklahoma Air National Guard. All personnel encountered by the
Spetsnaz at Tinker AFB were to be shot dead on sight. This wasn’t an act of barbarity for the sake of barbarity, as the
Spetsnaz men would stand accused of, but rather it was done because such a small unit of men operating this far in enemy territory could not hope to cater for Prisoners of War, and the highly-trained personnel that operated high-value air assets such as the E-3Ds and KC-135s needed to be killed to prevent their use by the enemy later on.
To accomplish their task, the
Spetsnaz carried a variety of weapons. Ak-74 assault rifles were their primary weapons, sometimes with underslung grenade launchers, along with Saiga-12 shotguns, RPK light machineguns, RPG-29 rocket launchers, grenades, satchel charges, and Sa-14 surface-to-air missiles. When the order came to attack, the GRU
Spetsnaz team had just witnessed the US Air Force base go into lockdown as DEFCON Two was declared. Nevertheless, they had an objective to achieve; theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die.
Rather than risk using one entrance to the base, the
Spetsnaz commander decided to break his unit down into three teams of six once again for the assault. One team approached through the sun-dried undergrowth from the south, cutting through the barbed wire with pliers and making entrance to the base.
The second team quietly infiltrated from the north, successfully dodging floodlights and squads of military police as they snuck within range of over a dozen E-3Ds parked on the northern side of the facility.
The third team approached from the east, prowling in from the suburban housing districts that were sprawled out in that area.
As they approached, U.S. Air Force E-3Ds and as well as the National Guard and Reserve KC-135s were scrambling to take to the skies as a result of the DEFCON Two alert that had suddenly been issued. The United States had not reached such a level of alert since 1962, and subsequently it was somewhat ill-practised, although everybody from the President down knew that it was impossible to perfect the sudden scrambling of hundreds of aircraft and the lockdown of bases such as Tinker, which housed not only military personnel but their spouses and children too.
The
Spetsnaz commander gave a single-word order just as his comrades in Washington D.C. carried out their mission; “execute.”
From the shadows, eighteen
Spetsnaz soldiers emerged.
Spetsnaz Team #3 never got far. Upon infiltrating from the east, they found themselves surrounded by U.S. Air Force Security Police personnel, heavily-armed with M-4 carbines and M-249 light machineguns. The sudden use of a massive searchlight blinded the commandos, who wore night-vision goggles. This gave the Americans the time they needed to open fire. The
Spetsnaz fired back, killing two of the base security troops, but four of their six were quickly killed, with two more wounded. The Americans rapidly pinned the infiltrators to the ground and cuffed them, marking them out as the first POW’s of World War III.
From the south, Team #2 achieved somewhat more success. Bursting into view, they cut down several ground crewmen along with a squad of security police personnel.
Though two of them were killed during the charge, four more men made it to the first batch of aircraft, a trio of KC-135s along with a single E-3D. The AWACS jet was destroyed by a satchel charge which was detonated seconds after it had been planted. A KC-135 nearby suffered much the same fate. Another soldier lobbed a grenade into the engine of a KC-135, blowing off the wing of the aircraft, before he was gunned down. The two survivors retreated southwards, hoping to escape the barrage of American gunfire that was now being directed against them.
Neither made it as security troops pursued, killing one soldier before the other dropped his rifle to the ground and raised his hands. He would live, but not to fight another day. The Defence Intelligence Agency, the FBI, CIA, and many others would all want to talk to him, and for the young
Spetsnaz junior sergeant this would be a deeply unpleasant experience.
Team #1 achieved the most success. Lead by the major in charge of
Spetsnaz Detachment #319, they had crept within view of no less than ten AWACS planes on the northernmost parking area of the field. They destroyed two with RPG-29s and another with a satchel charge, before advancing rapidly towards the aircraft while laying down covering fire. A Humvee filled with security troops was blown up by an RPG, killing five of them. As security troops swarmed towards them, the surviving
Spetsnaz troops withdrew into an aircraft hangar behind them, taking hostages as they went.
A trio of ground crewmen, a wounded Air Force Security Police trooper, and two members of a KC-135 crew were forced at gunpoint into the
Spetsnaz stronghold, which the Russian soldiers quickly fortified, barricading the doors. The Russians demanded a safe passage off of the base, threatening to kill their prisoners if their demands were not met.
The security troops refused their demands of free passage, and within twenty minutes, an assault was ordered by the outraged and shaken base commander.
A full platoon of Air Force Security Police personnel would soon storm into the hanger. Explosive booby-traps set up on the doors killed two of the American assaulters as well as a hostage. The other hostages took the opportunity granted by the chaos to tackle one of their captors, dragging him to the ground and beating him to death as the assault occurred. The final surviving
Spetsnaz soldiers killed another two U.S. Air Force men before they were themselves cut down in a hail of gunfire. The attack on Tinker Air Force Base had lasted less than half-an-hour. At the end of it, fifteen Russians and forty-seven Americans were dead. Five of the invaluable E-3Ds and two KC-135s had been destroyed.
Orders were already being issued for the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, along with members of the US Army’s ultra-secretive commando formation known as Delta Force, to begin the hunt for these ruthless teams of highly-trained Russian commandos that would be fleeing from Washington D.C.
