by Chris Ryan
we'd just block the road to anyone trying to come uphill.
By 9:00 a.m. I was back in my own OP, having filmed the summerhouse as well. My scramble around the mountainside had got me well warmed up and my fingers were nimble when it came to down-loading information from the camera into my lap-top and sending it up via the Satcom to the squadron at Kars.
Within five minutes Bill Chandler came on air to say that the quality of the pictures was excellent. He also confirmed that Orange was still transmitting from the same site, and that we had definite permission to exfil via the Russian Caucasus.
It wasn't until 11:20 that things started to happen. I got a sudden tsch, tsch in my earpiece, and there was Sasha, fired up.
"Beeg development!" he went.
"I have seen your men.
"Our lads?"
"Yes. They came from lower house into upper house."
"Out of the basement entrance?"
"Yes. Four guards bring them."
"How did they look?"
"Bad. Zheordie, I am afraid they are smashed up.
"What did you see?"
"The big man, Pavarotti his eyes are black. The small one has clothes on his hands."
"Clothes? Bandages?"
"Bandages. Yes."
"Where did the guards take them, Sasha?"
"Inside the house. Upstairs."
"The ground-floor entrance main door?"
"Yes."
"OK. Thanks. Keep watching."
I went straight through to Kars and relayed Sasha's information. Anger ran through me as I lay under my heap of pine branches. My first thought was to take the pressure off our guys by creating a diversion. A 203 grenade into one of the villa's windows would stir things up, all right. Sasha and I could drop quite a few of the home team if they came running out of the house. But a premature attack by just the two of us could well panic the Chechens and make them top their prisoners.
I spoke to Bill again and suggested what I'd been thinking.
"No go, Geordie," he replied.
"For Christ's sake take it easy.
It's great to know the guys are there, but until we've got the bomb secure, the plan must hold. They have to stick it out, and so have you.
Fuck them all, I thought savagely as I switched off. When it comes to the crunch, all senior ruperts are unfeeling bastards who don't give a stuff about losing guys.
I lay there feeling furious, but not for long.
The next development was almost worse. Shortly before 12:00 I became aware of a drone, faint at first but rapidly growing louder. Chopper, I thought. Then I caught the fluttering beat of a rotor, and a few moments later the thing came swishing and roaring so low overhead that its down draught made the roof of my OP thrash about, and I had to seize hold of some branches to stop them being blown away.
For perhaps a minute the roar persisted, as the pilot came in to land on the helipad. Then he shut his engine down and the noise fell away to a dying whine.
Sasha was already on the air.
"Zheordie helicopter in."
"Yeah. Did you see what sort?"
"Small civilian, passenger aircraft. Three to four persons. I knew Sasha couldn't see the pad from where he was, but he would get a look at the incoming party if the people walked the few yards down to the villa.
"They'll probably come down to the house," I told him.
"Stay on the air and let me know."
"Prinyato."
A couple of minutes later he said, "Now they are coming.
Three men. I think one is Akula. I recognise .. . Yes, definitely this is Shark."
"What are they doing?"
"They are coming to the door. Door opens in front. Inside house now. Zheordie?"
"Yes?"
"I notice something. When they were five metres distant, door open avtomaticheskii. And why? Some persons inside are watching with cameras.
"That's right. They've got closed-circuit TV. I filmed the cameras.
My mind was racing. Had the prisoners been taken upstairs for another session of interrogation, this time by Shark himself?
Had he brought some ace torturer with him, or maybe a nuclear expert, to find out the truth about the bomb?
I reported the arrival of the chopper to Bill Chandler.
"It could be set to lift our guys out," I warned him.
"Or the bomb. Is there any way the Yanks can track a helicopter if it takes off from here?"
"I'll ask," he said.
"I'll pass the message through. You'll tell us if it does move.
"Of course. What about binning the HALO and bringing the QRF in earlier by chopper?"
"Not a chance." Bill was adamant.
"We still don't have clearance to fly in Russian airspace. Besides, we need the element of surprise. Our information from Colonel Gerasimova in Moscow is that the defence force is bigger than you think.
There's a bigger barracks down the valley with a hundred or more in it. Plus any local guys they can muster."
"Is that right?"
"Yep. And listen, Geordie, the colonel's done us another favour. She got on to Kelsen, the firm of Finnish architects who built the villa, and faxed us the plans."
"Oh, great!" I said.
"There's a basement floor," Bill went on.
"That's got gym, games room, sauna, showers and so on. Then, below that, there's another floor, a kind of sub-basement, marked "Storage". That tallies well with the pictures you sent."
"Tochno," I went, thinking of Sasha with his eyes on the building and unconsciously slipping into Russian.
"Exactly.
That's where they brought our guys out of, that lower door. I reckon that's where they're being kept. When the assault goes in, we're going to need to hit that door first. Wait a minute, though. There must be some internal access from the store area to the upper floor. Isn't anything marked on the plan a staircase or a lift?"
"There's a lift-shaft, yes."
"Maybe the lift's knackered. Or maybe it hasn't been installed yet. Plan round taking out that lower door, anyway.
Shortly before 12:30 Sasha buzzed me up again. Toad and Pavarotti had been taken back underground, looking even worse than before. Pay was walking with a limp, and there was blood showing through the bandages on Toad's hands.
Bastards! I said to myself Just wait till we get in among them.
Bill Chandler had already told me, "No hostages." Now, after what Sasha had seen, I was going to feel no compunction about taking out everyone in the villa.
*
The sun never came out that day. The haze of cloud thickened steadily, and early in the afternoon snow began to fall. My problem was exhaustion. I fought it as hard as I could, but I know that I nodded off several times and when I suddenly came to, just before 3:00 p.m." I couldn't remember where I was.
Then, as I moved, snow slid off the flap of my sleeping bag and on to my face. I rolled over on to my front and looked out. Snow was falling hard a real blizzard, fine flakes slanting in towards me from my right front. The weather was coming from the south-west, from the high mountains.
When I scanned the summerhouse through my binoculars, I saw that a white blanket of snow lay unmarked all round it.
Nothing doing there.
I knew that the helicopter hadn't taken off: for one thing, I'd have heard it go; for another, it would never fly in this weather.
So Shark must still be in residence. Little did he realise that his time was rapidly running out.
Or was it? A new fear began to needle me. If this weather kept up, with its heavy cloud cover, the HALO jump might have to be postponed. Snow on the ground wouldn't matter -in fact it would make the DZ show up all the better, white in the middle of the black wood but snow clouds in the air were another matter. I'd better report the conditions to the FMB.
When I tried to go through to Kars, my anxiety rose a notch.
No response. I suspected the blizzard was to blame, and that the snow was bl
ocking contact with the satellite. Comms are notoriously fickle. They go up and down, and often there seems no reason. I fiddled with the dish aerial, turning it this way and that, and then moved out of my lair on to a more prominent site.
Still no contact. I tried again and again, to no avail.
Lying on my front, I realised how the snow was blotting out every sound. Work on the fence, which had been proceeding intermittently, seemed to have stopped completely, and a heavy silence lay over the compound.
Then I heard a noise of an engine, labouring up the hill from the barrack area. Presently it came into view a mid-grey, square-bodied truck with big snow tyres, weaving slightly as it slithered over the snow. The driver swung up on to the flat area outside the summerhouse, crunched into reverse and backed to within two or three yards of the doors.
He and another man jumped out, and one of them opened the truck's rear door to release a third. All were wearing dark green overalls and brown fur caps with ear-flaps tied up over the crowns. The driver produced some keys, unlocked the doors of the shed and slid them back. A minute later, out came all three, lugging, between them, one of the components of Orange.
Snow or no snow, there was no chance of me making a mistake the men were only sixty metres from me, and through the glasses I could see those orange markings perfectly. The sight set my adrenalin racing. Again I had to fight down my instinct to make a direct intervention. A 203 grenade into the front of the van would rearrange Akula's plans pretty swiftly.
But, again, that might mean the end for Pay and Toad.
The three men went back in and brought out the second half. I snatched up the Satcom receiver and switched on. Nothing.
Again nothing.
Shit! The bomb was about to disappear, and I couldn't report it.
The men locked the shed, slammed the doors of their truck and climbed aboard. I watched helplessly as the driver started up and drove off downhill, nosing his way carefully through the bends. By now the snow was falling so fast that, even as I watched, the vehicle's tracks were becoming blurred. In a few minutes they'd be obliterated altogether.
In spite of my anxiety, I realised that what had happened carried one small advantage: now, if the HALO drop did come in as planned, Sasha wouldn't see the bomb, and wouldn't know anything about it.
The next hour was one of the most miserable I'd ever known.
I spent it shitting bricks that the head-shed might call off the free-fall. They might decide to leave Sasha and me to try and spring the prisoners. I could just hear Bill saying, "Make your own way out as best you can." Fucking thanks, I thought. I kept reasoning, No, they can't do that they'd be four guys down rather than two. But for all my wishful thinking I couldn't be sure.
As the snow kept floating down in a dense pall, I speculated about where the bomb might be heading. Back to Moscow, I felt certain. What if the Chechens used it to threaten the Russian government, just as the Americans had been planning to do?
What an irony that would be.
I convinced myself that the blizzard was going to continue all day and all night, and that Akula's men had come up to move the bomb while they still could, before everyone got snowed in.
At last the snowflakes began to thin, and the sky lightened as the storm moved on towards the north-east. I waited till I could see a patch of blue sky among the clouds, then tried the Satcom again.
This time, thank God, the call went straight through.
"Bill," I exclaimed.
"They've moved the fucker!"
"I know. Where the hell have you been?"
"Nowhere," I told him.
"The com ms went down in a snowstorm.
"I see. Well, the device has been on the move."
"I was trying to tell you that. Some guys came and carried off the components in a truck. Bill how far's Grozny from here?"
"Fifty ks. That's where it's gone. The Yanks have tracked it that far."
"The damned thing'll be airborne by now," I said.
"If it's gone off the air again it means it's inside a plane. What do we do?"
"Wait one.
I held on, hearing nothing but a roar of static. Then Bill came back and said, "We're going ahead with the drop, weather permitting. We're just waiting for the latest forecast."
"The sky's clearing here," I told him.
"It's bloody cold, too."
"OK, Geordie. I'll come back to you in a minute."
I waited tensely, longing for the hit to be over and done with.
"Let's just grab our guys," I said to myself, 'and get out of this arse hole of a place."
Then Bill came through again. The forecast was good: clear skies behind the storm, and a hard frost. The plan remained on.
What was more, they'd decided to advance the drop by half an hour, moving it to the original time of 1900. The two Chinooks were on their way to Nalchik, and would sit there waiting to hop over the mountain as soon as they were summoned.
"We passed all your data to the R.A.F," Bill said.
"They've done an appreciation and decided to approach you from the north, down the slope. They don't fancy coming up the valley an dover the compound entrance."
At 5:30 I gave my press el a double jab and said, "OK, Sasha. I'm on the move. We're off to the DZ. I'll come round and pick you up. Stay still till I reach you.
"I wait."
Stars blazed overhead, and even though the moon hadn't risen yet the night was alarmingly bright, the snow reflecting all the remaining light from the frosty sky. This white blanket was something we hadn't planned for: the patterns on my DPMs were clearly visible, and I could have done with a snow overall.
Moving cautiously, and keeping to bare rock ridges as much as possible so that I didn't leave a continous trail, I worked my way round to the helipad. Sure enough, the chopper was still on the ground an Alouette, painted some light colour, its rotor blades drooping under a three-inch load of snow. If it remained in position there'd be nowhere for a Chinook to land. No matter the hostage recovery team could fast-rope down while the aircraft hovered. Then, if we couldn't shift the Alouette, we might have to exfil from the DZ in the forest.
I found Sasha ready to move. Instead of heading out to the left, in the direction of the DZ, we put in a bit of a detour and made our way straight up to the top fence, which was still unfinished After watching for a couple of minutes we climbed the wire at a point where the wind had blown the snow off a rocky spine, leaving no tracks on the inside. The outside was a different matter. We landed in what turned out to be a gully, filled with snow to a depth of a couple of feet, and we couldn't help churmng up the surface as we floundered out of the drift. I snatched up a pine branch and frisked it back and forth behind us, levelling the surface as best I could; but the moonlight was so bright that a trail still showed.
There was no time to mess about. Clear of the fence, we turned left, to the west, through the forest, and again followed the contour. Navigation was simple: I knew that if we held our height, we'd come out on the farm track that led up from the valley to the high hay field
Except when we brushed into tree branches, our progress was utterly silent: the dry snow lay like six inches of the softest powder, and our boots made not the slightest sound as they pushed through it.
We reached the track at 6:40 and stopped to listen. Twenty minutes in hand. Suddenly, into the silence, floated a wolf chorus, coming from much farther off than the howling the night before. Turning to look behind me, I saw that the moon had appeared over the eastern horizon, enormous and pale. For maybe a minute the distant, eerie wailing rose and fell. Then it died away.
We moved downhill until we came to the junction and the path that led to the hay field It crossed my mind that perhaps, for maximum security, we should continue to push our way through the trees, rather than use the track. But then I thought, To hell with it. There's nobody about. Let's just get there.
By 6:50 we were on the edge of the field, which glowed brilliant white
in the moonlight.
"They'll see this, all right, when they jump," I whispered.
Sasha nodded. I saw him swallow, and sensed that he was just as hepped up as I was.
"I've told them this is the forming-up point, by the old wagon," I said quietly.
"You stay here, just in case anyone's been following us up. Keep back against that tree-trunk, in the shadow. As soon as I've collected everyone I'll bring them over.
OK?"
"Da, da." Sasha nodded vigorously, then said, "Good luck!"
I punched him on the arm and moved away, skirting the edge of the field to keep in shadow. At 6:55 I stopped to wait, halfway up the long side, and stared to the south-east, way out among those millions of stars. I knew the Here would be coming on the same path we'd used, flying at 28,000 feet. I also knew that I'd never see it or even hear it. All the same, I couldn't help searching for it in that phenomenal sky. I imagined the tailgate descending, the red warning lights, the guys lined up, three abreast, packed tightly together and laden with all their gear, toddling towards the lip at the back of the cabin floor with good old Pat Newman overseeing.
A minute to go. Maybe the plane was late. No the S-F air crews could hack it to the second. In that case, the Here must be almost overhead.
I walked out a few metres into the field and stood in the open, feeling very exposed. Twenty seconds to run .. . ten .. . five, four, three, two, one. P Hour.
Now where were they?
I found I was holding my breath, and had to make a conscious effort to relax. Were the lads on their way? It was almost impossible to believe that twenty bodies were hurtling down towards me at terminal velocity, a thousand feet every five seconds. Twenty-four thousand feet in two minutes. Then the chutes would deploy at 4,000 feet.
I counted the seconds, staring upwards, with the Firefly in my right hand. Then at last I heard the magic sound I'd been waiting for: the sudden, rattling, snapping flutter of a chute breaking out.
It came from high in front of me, and was quickly followed by another, and another, four, five.. . then several all at once.
Holding the Firefly above my head, I punched the rubber button on the base and saw a brilliant flash bounce off the snow.