Iron Wolf by Dale Brown Read Free Book Online

slop!”
    Kravchenko forced a laugh.
    Forty-five meters.
    His right hand ached from the strain of holding the grenade lever closed. A droplet of sweat stung his one good eye. Impatiently, he blinked it away.
    They were forty meters away.
    One of the Spetsnaz soldiers, turning away from his friends to light another cigarette, finally noticed them. Startled, he stared at the two Ukrainians for a long moment and then hurriedly nudged his closest comrade.
    â€œ Stoi! Hold it!” this one shouted, unslinging his submachine gun.
    Thirty-five meters. Close enough.
    Still moving, Kravchenko hurled the grenade toward the bunched-up Russian bodyguards. As it flew through the air, the arming lever popped off in a hissing shower of sparks and smoke.
    Kravchenko and Lytvyn threw themselves flat.
    The grenade hit the pavement right in the middle of the Russians and went off in a blinding flash. Ninety-seven grams of RDX explosive hurled jagged shards of aluminum outward at more than two thousand meters per second. All four soldiers were knocked down.Fragments that hit their body armor failed to penetrate the titanium and hard carbide boron ceramic chest- and backplates. Fragments that hit arms, legs, faces, or skulls punched through in a gruesome spray of blood and bits of shattered bone.
    Before the echoes of the blast faded, the two Ukrainians were up and running toward the headquarters building. Lytvyn tossed his windbreaker aside and opened fire with his AKS carbine on the move, hammering the fallen Spetsnaz troops with short bursts. Hunks of bullet-shattered concrete danced and skittered away. Kravchenko drew a Makarov pistol from his shoulder holster and thumbed the safety off.
    Off to their right, a rifle cracked—dropping the pilot of Voronov’s helicopter with a single shot.
    Across the pad, twin turboshaft engines whined shrilly as the crews of both Ansat gunships went for emergency starts. Slowly at first and then faster, their rotors started turning.
    Two of Kravchenko’s men broke cover and dashed to the edge of the tarmac. They carried RPG-22 antitank rocket launchers. Both men stopped, braced, and fired almost simultaneously. Finned, rocket-propelled grenades streaked across the pad and slammed into the gunships.
    The Ansat-2RCs blew up, torn apart by the RPG warheads and the detonation of their own fuel and ammunition. Twisted pieces of rotor and fuselage spiraled outward. Clouds of oily black smoke lit by fire boiled away from the heaps of blazing wreckage.
    Pavlo Lytvyn charged into the OSCE headquarters building without slowing down. Kravchenko followed him.
    Two ashen-faced Russian officers spun away from the windows looking out across the helicopter landing pad. They frantically clawed for the pistols holstered at their sides.
    Lytvyn shot them at point-blank range and moved on down the central corridor.
    The wide hallway ended in a door marked BIROU DE COMAND ă and KAMANDA OFIS —“Command Office” in Romanian and Belarusian.
    The big man kicked the door open and slid inside, moving sideways to cover the three stunned men—the two young officers who commanded this OSCE post and Lieutenant General Mikhail Voronov—grouped behind a large conference table covered with official documents and maps. He settled the stock of the AKS firmly against his shoulder. “Stay very still, gentlemen. And, please, keep your hands where I can see them.”
    Fedir Kravchenko entered the room. He heard the shocked, indrawn breaths when they saw the mutilated left side of his face. Kiev’s best plastic surgeons had done their utmost to repair the damage, but there hadn’t been much left for them to work with.
    He moved behind Voronov and the others, deftly relieving them of their sidearms. He tossed the pistols across the room and stepped back a pace.
    â€œWhat do you want from us?” one of the two OSCE officers asked stiffly, keeping his eyes locked on the unwavering muzzle of