pinning her down, spreading her legs, fondling her, laughing as she
cursed and twisted helplessly beneath them.
The hay prickled the bare skin of her back and legs, and the air was so
heavy with the stink of barn and animals and unwashed, sweating men that
she could scarcely breathe. She’d heard about things like this
happening, heard horror stories about Russians raping women in Germany
in World War II, about Serbs raping Moslem women in Bosnia … but it
couldn’t, couldn’t be happening to her.
Somehow, she managed not to start screaming until the first of them
dropped his trousers and lowered himself onto her body.
CHAPTER 27
Tuesday, 17 March
1200 hours
The Kola Peninsula
One after another, the Super Stallions descended from the sky like
lumbering, green-and-gray-camouflaged insects. On the LZ perimeters,
AH-1 Cobra gunships circled and darted, evil-visaged dragonflies that
hovered, stooped, and spat deadly flame as hostile positions were
identified and targeted. On the ground, Marine spotters called in death
from above. Cobras and blunt-nosed Harrier II jumpjets screamed in at
low altitude, slamming enemy strong points, vehicles, and troop
concentrations with 2.75-inch rockets, TOW missiles, and rapid-fire
cannons.
On the high ground above Polyamyy, elements of the 1st and 3r
Battalions, 8th Marines, spread out from their initial LZs, taking up
positions on the windswept, barren heights overlooking the Kola Inlet. A
cluster of SAM sites and a radar station, smoking ruins now after
repeated air and cruise-missile strikes, dominated the top of the
cliffs, overlooking a sprawling naval docking facility on the water.
The Marines had just been flown ashore from the LHA Nassau, a floating,
flat-topped warren of gray passageways and compartments that experienced
Marines referred to, with teeth-gritting sarcasm, as a “Luxury Hotel
Afloat.”
Some of the old hands joked that after sleeping in tiny racks stacked
five and six deep with nineteen hundred other Marines for the past six
weeks, the 1/8 and 3/8 were more than ready to take on anything the
Russians could throw at them.
Russian Naval Infantry were still holding the ruins, but most scattered
after a pair of Harriers shrieked in low across the cliff tops, slashing
at the sheltering Russian troops with rockets and free-fall iron bombs.
As the Marines moved forward, a dozen tired and ragged-looking men in
camouflage uniforms emerged from a tumble-down of bricks and I-beams,
hands in the air.
Lieutenant Ben Rivera reached the edge of the cliff, an M-16 gripped in
trembling hands. He was scared, yes, but more than that he was excited.
He’d missed out on the fighting in Norway the year before, and he’d been
dreaming of this moment ever since he’d entered the ROTC program in
college.
From the beginning, though, he’d wanted to be a Marine aviator, and he’d
made it too, learning to fly Marine F/A-18s … and burdened by no
false modesty, he could freely admit to being one of the best.
But Marine tradition still firmly held that all Marines, whether pilots,
tank drivers, or cooks, were first and foremost combat riflemen. More
to the point, Marine aviators were expected to take their turns as
Forward Observers, aviators assigned to the infantry to serve as advance
ground controllers.
He’d thought that he’d enter Russia in a Hornet. Instead, he’d come in
by Super Stallion, attached to the 1/8. He didn’t really mind, for his
training had prepared him for just this sort of assignment.
It was just that when the low, rumbling thunder of Marine or Navy jets
rolled across the snow-capped peaks of the Kola Inlet, he could grip his
rifle and look up from the mud and imagine that the other aviators
definitely had the better deal.
Or at the very least, a wider view of the war.
Local resistance appeared to have ceased, and he was searching now for a
good spot for an Observation Post. Fifty meters ahead, the ground
crested in a low, rounded hummock occupied by concrete block ruins still
smoldering from last night’s air strikes. Signaling to his radio
operator, Gunnery Sergeant Ed Larson, Rivera dashed for the rise, head
down, alert for movement ahead of him.
He reached the ruins and picked his way through them, probing the