Free The Loyal Nine by Bobby Akart Page B

the moment of truth.
    “Time for me to say goodbye,” said Nomad. “I have a plane to catch out of Volgograd International.”
    “I don’t think you’re going to have any luck crossing the Russian border, my friend. Not after this,” said Teresenko.
    “Who said anything about a road?” asked Nomad, nodding at the wide channel next to the mouth of the Kalmius River.
    The white plume of a fast-moving boat entered the channel, which abutted a series of massive piers used to supply the blast furnaces with raw materials directly from shipping vessels.
    “Sneaky devil. Good luck to you, Amerykans’kyy ,” said Teresenko.
    “ Amerykans’kyy? I didn’t see any Americans here,” said Nomad, as the tempo of fighting rose to a crescendo along the highway.
     

Chapter 9
    December 16, 2015
    Mariupol, Ukraine
     
    A sharp pain creased Lieutenant Miroslav Lazarev’s right arm, causing him to reflexively drop the wooden flagpole he’d held propped against the vehicle’s hull. The blood-spackled flag momentarily draped across the open hatch in front of him before it slipped down the side of the BTR-82’s armor, pulled to the pavement by the weight of the pole. The sound of distant small-arms fire reached him, jerking his attention to the bridge. A snap passed in front of his face, barely drawing his attention away from the mayhem unfolding more than a kilometer away.
    A massive concussion rippled through the vehicles in front of him, immediately knocking him against the BTR’s remote-controlled turret. The armored personnel carrier screeched to a halt on the road, flinging him forward against the lip of the metal hatch. The lieutenant’s body-armor kit absorbed most of the impact against his chest, dropping him into the vehicle as metallic chunks pinged off the frontal armor.
    “You’re hit, sir,” said the driver, leaning over to pull the lieutenant’s hatch shut.
    Lazarev touched the bloodied rip in his camouflage-patterned, heavy-weather jacket.
    “I’m fine,” he muttered, listening to the discordance of panicked voices squawking on the company command frequency.
    “None of this makes any sense,” said Lazarev, straightening his helmet before peering through the small ballistic-glass windshield.
    Pieces of the bridge fell in the river, chasing a wall of water that raced up the Kalmius, swamping the tree-lined field between the riverbank and the highway. That was a big fucking blast. Ukrainian attack aircraft? The battalion’s arrival in Mariupol was supposed to be unopposed.
    “Shut your blast screen, sir,” said the driver, pulling a latch that slammed a heavy metal shutter down over the ballistic glass in front of the driver’s seat.
    Without thinking, Lazarev did the same, catapulting the front compartment into darkness. He pulled the rotating viewport down and leaned into the binocular-style eyepiece, hoping to make some sense of the bridge’s destruction. With the cold metal pressed against his cheekbones, he searched for signs of the bridge, finding nothing but jagged concrete and twisted metal where M14 once crossed the river.
    “I hope we didn’t have any vehicles on the bridge. It’s gone,” said Lazarev, not sure if the battalion commander had reached the first span when the explosion occurred.
    “What’s gone?” asked the driver, hunched forward to peer through the semicircle of fixed viewports.
    “The bridge!” said Lazarev, twisting in his seat to switch the radio to the battalion command frequency.
    Confusion reigned on the battalion net, with multiple stations trying to contact the battalion commander. Lazarev raised his handset and gave it a try.
    “Liberator, this is Liberator Three One. Over.” No response.
    He wasn’t sure if his request had transmitted over the net. Too many voices competed over the single frequency.
    “Everyone has lost their shit—and we have zero situational awareness,” said Lazarev, kneeling on his seat and raising the commander’s