The Gotland Deception полностью

Torres shrugged. He knew how to do regular maintenance on his tank, but he was far from a grease monkey who might know how to solve a problem like that. “Ugh,” he commented. “OK, Boone. Get it topped off before we roll. Burke, you and Munoz check the ammo storage. I want every round secured.”

Torres headed back to where Novak now stood with Major Kowalski and a Polish captain by the name of Piotr Sikoa studying a tablet map.

“—avoid the A1 through Toruń,” Captain Sikora was saying. “There’s construction delays, plus it takes us too close to Kaliningrad.”

“How close?” Novak asked.

“Hundred fifty kilometers at the nearest point.” Kowalski’s expression darkened. “Close enough for those Russian Helios ISR drones or even those new Chinese Winged Dragon high-altitude surveillance drones. We’ve been spotting more of these drones edging Polish airspace as they monitor our ports and the rail and road networks entering from Germany. For an exercise, they sure are conducting a lot of surveillance across much of our country.”

For a moment, no one spoke as the words hung in the salty air. The Russians had always maintained a presence in their Kaliningrad enclave, but the recent arrival of some Chinese units was beginning to cause alarm in Poland and even Germany that this so-called exercise might become something more. The Kaliningrad pocket was strange — a piece of Russia wedged between Poland and Lithuania. The so-called Suwałki Gap was the only thing separating Russia from its proxy Belarus.

“Geez, are these drones armed?” asked Novak.

Kowalski shrugged, his smile not reaching his eyes. “Who knows these days. When they first announced this new military and trade pact, I genuinely thought we might begin to see a period of normalcy with Russia. You know, neighboring countries trading with each other and perhaps moving beyond our past. Now? Who knows what Moscow and Beijing think anymore.”

A horn blast drew their attention. The USNS Fisher was maneuvering into the adjacent berth, her deck stacked with shipping containers. Inside those boxes were four M5 Ripsaw autonomous combat vehicles, the platoon’s new silicon-brained partners.

“Ah!” Kowalski brightened. “Your robots arrive. We are very curious about these systems.”

“You and me both, sir.” Torres had done the training at Fort Bliss, but three weeks wasn’t enough to trust his life to a machine.

Novak’s phone buzzed. He frowned at the screen.

“Problem, LT?” Torres asked.

“Text from Captain Morrison. Third Platoon had an issue clearing German customs. Some paperwork glitch with their Ripsaw’s AI classification.”

“They get it sorted?” Torres pressed.

“Yeah, but they’re twelve hours behind now.” Novak pocketed the phone. “We might be running our validation exercises shorthanded.”

Torres shrugged. In sixteen years, he’d learned that plans were just suggestions. “We’ll adapt.”

The next two hours blurred. Tanks were offloaded, inspected, and fueled. The Ripsaws emerged from their containers like lethal insects — low, angular, bristling with sensors and weapons. Each one cost more than most Americans made in a lifetime.

Torres watched the civilian technicians fuss over Ripsaw Two-One, his platoon’s assigned unit. The thing looked wrong somehow. Tanks had personalities, quirks you learned like a spouse’s moods. The Ripsaw just sat there, cameras swiveling with mechanical precision.

“Creepy, right?” Staff Sergeant Granger appeared beside him, coffee steaming in the cold. “It’s like it’s thinking.”

“It is thinking,” Torres insisted. “That’s the point.”

“Yeah, but thinking what?” asked Granger. He was eight years in and steady as bedrock; he didn’t rattle easy. But the Ripsaw had them all on edge.

“Right now? It’s probably calculating firing solutions on those seagulls,” Torres teased.

Granger laughed, breaking the tension. “As long as it doesn’t mistake us for seagulls.”

By 0900, the Polish HET crews had arrived. Torres watched the first M1300 Heavy Equipment Transporter back up to Alpha-21, its hydraulic ramps lowering with a mechanical whine.

“Easy with my baby!” Torres called out as Polish operators guided his tank onto the flatbed.

Torres’s counterpart was right to be nervous. Loading seventy tons of tank onto a transporter required millimeter precision. One wrong move and you’d throw a track or worse.

“Your men seem competent,” Novak observed, watching the Polish crew work.

Major Kowalski nodded with pride. “They move our Leopards and K2 Black Panthers regularly. American tanks are heavier, but the principle is the same.”

Alpha-22’s turn came next. Torres climbed up beside the Polish loadmaster, a grizzled sergeant who looked like he’d been doing this since the Cold War.

“Beautiful machine,” the Pole said in accented English, patting the Abrams’s armor. “Much heavier than our tanks.”

“She’ll ride steady?”

“Of course. We secure with twelve-point tie-downs. Could drive upside-down and she wouldn’t budge.” He grinned, gold tooth catching the morning sun.