One Step to Danger

by John Gubert

  “While you are causing the diversion, our Special Forces from Marseilles will swoop in. They will storm the house. They are expert at that. And we need them to do their bit.

  “The final group will come about five minutes later. In total there will be seventeen men in that band. They will attack and mop up as many survivors as they can. Then they will plant bombs and destroy as much property as possible.

  “When the third wave come, you and your men retreat and hold the gate. It is important that our retreat is smooth and fast. Our men will withdraw and you will all be picked up by two vans we will send in.

  “They will take you to the safe house between Nimes and Avignon. That’s the one you used yesterday morning. The helicopters will come in and fly you out. The only difference this time is that some of you will come back to Geneva and others will be distributed via safe houses to their bases. You, Charles, will come back to Geneva.

  Is that all understood?”

  “It’s very clear. I have no questions. Has anyone else? “I turned to the men who would be with me. There were no questions. I went over and said hello to each of them. The men were tough looking. They were not the sort you would argue with. But I would depend on them for the next few hours.

  Some minutes later, Aldo returned. “I’ll be in radio contact. Pierre there will act as the radioman. Have you all checked your guns?”

  I nodded and watched as all the others did too.

  I was helped into a parachute and reminded of the routine. “Alberto will jump with you,” he said “And will be there to help you if you have problems.”

  I nodded. The plane was flying high and the side door was open. There was a flood of cold air through the cabin. Two men stood up in front of us. Then Alberto and I. Then Pierre and the remaining man stood behind us.

  The first two jumped. They dived down together, using their arms to pilot themselves close together.

  I heard a call. It said, “Jump.” I launched myself out and saw Alberto tracked me with ease. Below me, out of the corner of my eye, I saw parachutes open.

  I had counted to ten as instructed and pulled the cord. The parachute opened and I soon felt the jerk of the chute as I slowed down and then felt myself floating through the air. Above me I could see two more chutes opening. The plane was nowhere to be seen.

  Alberto indicated me to steer to the left and I saw below me the complex. It was shrouded in the dark, the stars hardly lighting up the sky. It was perfect. The plane was too high to have disturbed anyone. And, unless someone was suffering from insomnia and staring up into the sky, we would not be seen. Then when we hit the ground and activated the alarms, the chaos would start.

  Ahead of us the first two had landed. Until we got to tree height we seemed to float down. I had followed Alberto’s instructions and was heading to a square of lawn around a quarter of a mile from the main house. The first two were there already. Their parachutes lay discarded on the ground. The breeze ruffled the light silk of the chutes.

  Suddenly the ground started to come up fast. It hit me hard and I panted as all the breath left my body. It was as if I had just run a fast race. I was stunned. It couldn’t have been for long as the last two were still above us. I slipped out of the chute, unhooked my gun and took cover.

  As the last two landed, there was still no reaction from the Russians. We must be on the monitor by now. Yet we could see no lights. We could hear no voices. Surely we had not chosen an area that was not covered by security? We grouped together.

  “We’ll spread out and advance to the house. I don’t like the quiet. Be alert everyone.”

  Pierre was about to call on the radio. I called out, “Radio silence until we know they’ve heard us. They could pick up the radio.”

  We advanced across the lawn. “Keep close to the trees. Try to avoid the open. We should get as close as possible to the house. That will cause the most chaos.”

  We had advanced around two hundred yards before the man on my extreme left fell. A light blazed from the trees, illuminating the entire area. It must have been a trip wire. “Take cover,” I yelled.

  “Call base,” I yelled to Pierre. “It’s going to get hot here. We have to hold the area until Special Forces get here.”

  We edged forward. I saw a movement in the distance and fired a quick burst in its direction. I sensed something behind me and wheeled round to see nothing. I was getting edgy.

  Ahead of us was a barn, It was totally separate from the house and I motioned the men to get inside. We could do a lot of damage holed up there. There was no sense in trying to move into the open.

  We swept through the barn. It was empty. That seemed strange. Why would there be nothing in there?

  It was then that I realised the barn looked smaller inside than it had on the outside. I pulled Alberto aside and told him to check the walls.

  He did so but found nothing. I still wasn’t satisfied and checked for myself. I was getting doubly suspicious because we were not being attacked. I then realised why the barn looked small. It had a low roof. There were two floors. I did not know what was on the upper floor. It could not be reached from inside the barn. I was immediately scared. This could be a trap. This could be why we had not heard from the Russians so far.

  I got the men to follow me and led them quickly from the barn. We waited in the trees nearby. There was still no movement. It was then that I realised why. There was nobody there. The place was empty. Miraculously, nobody was responding to our presence. I did not know how. But that was the only explanation for the inaction.

  I told Pierre to radio my suspicions through to the base. In the meantime, I indicated to two of the men to come with me and get closer to the house. The Special Forces would be there in a moment. Alberto, Pierre and a third man were left behind.

  The house ahead of us was dark. I could have sworn that it was uninhabited. In the distance I looked at the barn. I still sensed someone was there. I was getting more and more nervous. The silence was unreal.

  The barn was much bigger outside than in. It was taller rather than wider. The roof was peaked. Inside it had been flat. Barns don’t have closed lofts. The barn must be an escape route from the house. But I still couldn’t work it out.

  “Back,” I shouted. We turned round and headed back towards the wood. Then all hell broke loose. From the house and the barn, now both lit up by powerful floodlights, came a non-stop roar of gunfire. One of our men fell over, his hands clutching his stomach. A red gush spread out from his clasped hands as he sank down onto his knees. He fell on his side. He seemed to have passed out.

  We had no choice but to leave him there. We advanced towards the wood, three going forwards and two covering our rear.

  In front of us the barn roof slid back and we could hear the whirr of a helicopter. I pointed a sub-machine gun and desperately tried to shoot out the rotors. Now I understood. The silence must have been cover to allow the gang leaders to escape. Once they were out of the way, we would have been attacked. But we had got too close and so they had launched their attack sooner than planned. They would not be concerned, though, for the chances of our disabling the escape helicopter with a machine gun were remote.

  It was then that we heard the crashing noise of heavily armed men approaching. Pierre called, “It’s the Special Forces”. We breathed a sigh of relief.

  As they advanced we retreated. A rocket launcher appeared and they lined it up, targeting the helicopter that was starting to rise from the roof of the barn. The rocket passed through the rotors, which shattered against it but somehow did not cause it to explode. We heard the helicopter crash back into the barn as the rocket exploded harmlessly in the distance.

  There was now an intense battle around the house and the barn. We retreated to the gate as instructed. I was now bringing up the rear with Alberto.

  We approached the gatehouse and were greeted by a hail of bullets. Pierre went down. The man next to him threw himself behind some trees to our left for cover. Every
one else dived behind a ridge and watched, lying on our backs, as the bullets flew over our heads.

  I eased myself upwards and saw that Pierre was lying crumpled on the ground. I could see that he was dead. Blood stained his jacket and the back of his head revealed a gaping hole.

  We had lost two men, although we could not be certain that the one who had fallen by the barn was alive or dead. The Special Forces were at the house. Soon the main body would arrive. The best thing we could do was to wait for their arrival. They would easily flush out the gunmen in the gatehouse.

  So far my advance force had failed in its objectives.

  I realised as Pierre fell that we were outnumbered. The Russians had been much better prepared than Di Maglio or his people had guessed. I had already lost one man at the barn. Now I had lost Pierre and with him our radio contact.

  I called the four of us to retreat into the woods. There we could take better cover. The man on my far left gave us cover. The people who had been assigned to me were good. They reacted by instinct. It had been obvious from the time of the parachute jump that I was a passenger. I was not the right person to lead these men. I was not even in their class in this type of combat.

  My training had been to combat street fighting and terrorism. This was actual warfare. As we withdrew into the woods, the main gunfire came from our side. The Russians were happy to see us retreat and took cover. From time to time a warning blast from them reminded us of their presence. They obviously saw protecting the gate as their primary objective. They also must have been aware of the second force at the house and barn. I hoped we did not have a mole and that they were not also aware of the third force that would strike in a few moments.

  We regrouped in the woods. At one point Alberto noticed a remote controlled camera and shot it out. Otherwise there appeared to be no movement.

  Behind us, near the house, there was fierce fighting. We could hear explosions and gunfire. We had definitely not succeeded in catching the Russians unaware. Although my group had not been spotted landing, we had been spotted somewhere. I suspected the mystery barn with its false walls was the key. It obviously had been two floors. The upper one was a re-inforced hanger with a sliding roof. There must have been a tunnel from the house to the barn, and I assume it came out at one end behind one of the interior walls.

  I thought again about the people whom they had tried to get out in the helicopter. It must have been Rastinov and his key lieutenants. There was no logic in keeping them in the house during a pitched battle. That was the job of the foot soldiers. I doubted they had been much hurt from the accident to the rotors. They would have crashed back perhaps ten feet. That was hardly enough to bruise them.

  A movement to our right alerted us. A burst of gunfire was met with an equally vigorous return. We advanced into the wood, but the gunmen had disappeared.

  “Let’s draw out the ones at the gate.” I said. “The main force is going to arrive soon.”

  We spread out. Three of us swept to the front and one covered our rear. I was in the centre. We crawled out of the wood and eased forward towards the gate. We took cover behind the crest of a slope. Beyond us was the gatehouse and we could see men inside.

  “Fire on the gatehouse. If we can draw them out, all the better. But there’s no point in going out into the open or we’ll just get mown down.”

  We opened fire. There was a desultory return. They were disinterested in us. We were no problem. They expected us to come out when the men in the house and barn drove back our companions. They obviously felt they could wait.

  “It’s no good,” said Alberto. “We need to contact the others and warn them. They’ll expect the gatehouse to be in our hands.”

  I looked over to where Pierre lay. We needed to get him or his radio. The radio lay a bit away from him. Of course it had a strap. If we could hook that we could get the radio.

  “That may work in films,” said Alberto, “but it won’t work here. Once they see us trying to get it, they will fire on the area and the chances are that they will hit the radio. That is if they haven’t done that already.”

  He slipped out of his heavy gear and just held his automatic against his hip. “Give me cover. I need all you’ve got and I’ll run for it.”

  I signalled to our rear guard. He, too, came up to us and I then gave the order. Three machine guns spattered out at the house, their bullets smashing against the walls, the metal shutters and the door. Alberto threw himself over the ledge and scrambled over to the radio. In one swoop he had it by the strap as he turned to come back towards us.

  We carried on our firing. The men in the gatehouse saw us and started to fire at Alberto. Their shots, though, were random ones and he had dived over the ledge and was back with us before they steadied. Two men came into view but retreated as we targeted them.

  The third man returned to take up the rear watch. There was still no movement and all was quiet in front of us. We were still not doing well in our diversionary role. The Russians had outwitted our every move.

  Alberto was on the radio and contacted the main force. He turned to me, “One minute before they hit the main gate. They’ll attack with rockets. We should open fire but in another direction. The ones in the gatehouse may not then notice the third force approaching from the other side. They will automatically assume that we have been engaged from the rear and suppose that the battle up at the house has gone in their favour.”

  I nodded. That would make them relax their guard. Some could even move over towards us to see what was happening.

  I reversed the stance, leaving one man to cover the gatehouse. We waited another twenty seconds or so and then I gave the order. We fired into the woods, hitting trees and bushes at random.

  The man covering the gatehouse opened fire as someone looked out of one of the windows. Then we heard a deafening roar as rocket after rocket pounded into the gatehouse. We whirled around as four or five men stumbled out of the crumbling building. We moved up the ridge and caught them in a hail of fire. At least two seemed to go down. The others rushed towards the building as another rocket hit it. The last we saw of them was as the side of the building collapsed over them.

  Our final assault wave moved in. There were shots but only sporadic ones. Alberto was on the radio and said, “We should advance and take over the gatehouse.”

  We moved forward. Pierre was definitely dead although I bent down to check. I saw from the man by my side that he realised that was a fruitless exercise even as I started to kneel next to the still figure.

  We took up our positions around the destruction of the gatehouse. More ammunition was dumped next to us. Almost without a word the new group made their way forward towards the battle that raged around the house and barns. We covered the gatehouse and could only listen to the battle raging in the distance. It grew in intensity. We assumed that the main force had joined up with the others. Alberto was on the radio and indicated yes.

  “They are in the house. The barn’s destroyed. They say they are taking control. We should be on the alert. Some people may try to get out.”

  “Have they caught the main targets?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet, unless they were in the barn. Someone is checking it over.”

  We carried on watching. Alberto pointed to the drive. A jeep was heading our way at speed. It contained four people and we knew that they were not ours. “Don’t let them get away,” I said.

  We waited behind the crumbling walls until the jeep was just alongside us. At that point the driver was concentrating on the road in his attempt to get away from the fighting.

  The passengers stood no chance. They were totally exposed. Four sub-machine guns raked the vehicle and its passengers with a torrent of bullets. It spun out of control and crashed into the wall on the far side of the gate, knocking over one of the few remaining unbroken sections.

  There was no movement. Alberto and I cautiously made our way towards it. We edged round. Two bodies lay beside the jeep. One man
was pinned against the steering wheel. A third was slumped across the back seat. There was blood everywhere. The jeep was pockmarked with bullet holes. One man groaned on the ground. Alberto spun round and opened fire on him. He was not going to groan again.

  I pushed the man at the back of the car onto his back. His eyes stared up into the sky. He was dead. I moved to the one by the steering wheel and pulled him back. His neck was almost broken off, but that had not killed him. The bullets had done that before he crashed.

  The final man was a bit further away and I went to him. As I approached a hand grasped at my leg and almost pulled me off balance. My instinctive burst of fire missed its mark. But Alberto did not. His rapid burst of fire sneaked past me and into the body, which jerked a couple of times and then lay still.

  I looked at the face. “Rastinov,” I said. Alberto looked at the others. We knew one. It was Andrei. The others we did not recognise.

  “We may not have done too well earlier,” I said to Alberto. “But you paid for your meal ticket.”

  He grinned, pleased at the plaudit. We headed back for cover and waited for our next move. I called the others and told them we had caught two of the targets. They had killed Krakow. There was still one to go.

  The fighting ahead was quietening down. The fierce continuous bursts of fire had ceased. Now we had sporadic bursts. “They are cleaning up,” said Alberto.

  The radio called. We would start pulling out. We called Aldo at base and called for the pick up vans. We had fifteen minutes to wait. The last round had begun.

  I noticed the man crawling through the trees first. He was approaching the mound we had hid behind during our sally with the gatehouse. “Pastinsky,” I said. “I want him.” He was the one who had talked about raping Jacqui before she would die. “I want him to suffer.”

  “No,” said Alberto. “Kill him. We forget vendettas. They mean people die unnecessarily. This is war not gang warfare. Nobody will see how he died. It’s not worth making him suffer.”

  He was right, but I resented it. I knew though I had to do as he said. Pastinsky drew closer and, as I had him in my sights, I squeezed the trigger. I had sighted him low down. Stomach wounds are usually fatal if they come from the stream of bullets caused by a sub-machine gun. They are also very painful.