by Ian Slater
“My own crew, sir.”
Freeman, his left hand pressed hard against his forehead like a sunshade, right hand with the monocle pumping time, was walking back and forth in the G-2 hut, giving orders left and right, including the minutiae of equipment needed by the small out mobile force. Norton and the G-2 officers took notes, looking like overworked waiters at a fast-food takeout.
“How long to get them here, Dick?”
“Took the ten hours,” said Brentwood, not quite yet believing that he was actually volunteering for the mission.
“Outstanding!” said Freeman. He looked at his watch to put the mission’s ETD on Zulu time. “Oh three hundred hours tomorrow.” Freeman was now talking to his logistics officer, Malcolm Wain. “Mal, I want you to oversee chopper preparation. Suggestions?”
Wain took the roll-rule and punched in the numbers on his calculator. “Five hundred miles with extra tanks — yes, sir. NOE flying. It’ll be risky, General. They’ll be under the radar screen of course, travelling that low, but there’s always the unexpected and—”
Freeman swung about from the map. “What the hell’s the matter with you? I picked you because you were a man with initiative. You can’t handle it, Mal, I’ll get someone who can.” There was silence in the G-2 hut, broken only by the steady hum of the computers.
“Yes, sir.”
“All right,” said Freeman. “Can you get them there?”
“Yes, sir. Four hours flying. Reach there by dawn. Return after dark. Two Cobras riding shotgun for two Super Sea Stallion choppers carrying the strike team. Six SAS/Delta troops, four of Brentwood’s crew and four collapsible Snowcat ‘Arrow’ vehicles in each Stallion. With a Stallion crew of three that makes thirteen men apiece. One chopper goes down, we still have one team — albeit a skeleton one — intact.”
“Anyone superstitious about thirteen?” asked Freeman. He gave no one an opportunity to answer. “I’m not.” He paused, hands on his hips, shaking his head and looking up at the man he’d chosen because he was reputedly the best of the finest in the service whose promise was “Venio non videor”—”! come unseen.” “By God, Brentwood, I envy you. I wish I was going with you, but I don’t know beans about driving a submersible.”
“Too bad, sir,” said Brentwood in as neutral a tone as he could manage. Norton coughed, turning away. The G-2 duty officer was handing Freeman an urgent decode. After reading the message, the general shook hands with Robert Brentwood. “You and Dick work out the fine-tuning here with Wain.” With that the general turned abruptly and walked over to the far corner of the hut where a terrain map had been spread out on one of the large folding tables.
Brentwood looked across at Norton, feeling as if he’d just been through a squall, suddenly realizing that the “fine-tuning” would have to include some way of getting back — after they’d got to Port Baikal and highjacked a GST. “Maybe,” he said to Dick Norton, “they’ll all be asleep.”
“It’s very sparsely populated,” said Norton. It was the only thing he could think of that might be remotely comforting.”Port Baikal — from the aerials — is just a bit of a village. I don’t think you’ll have trouble getting in there. Our chopper guys are the best in the world — flew special operations in the Iraqi desert.”
“Bit colder, I guess,” said Brentwood.
“Minus thirty. Good for the choppers, though. Gives ‘em more lift.”
“Great,” said Brentwood who, though facing the hazards of the deep every day of a submarine patrol, had always been of the mind, unlike his kid brother, that anything that flew was inherently unsafe. He was still watching the general who had now, it seemed, turned his attention to some other matter. The G-2 duty officer came up and gave Norton a copy of the decode.
“Sure would like to talk to him about some of those ‘finer details’ he mentioned,” said Robert Brentwood. “Like what the SAS/Delta boys’ll do if we make it to Port Baikal. They spend a few days hiking in the woods, waiting for us?”
“Oh,” said Norton, moving under the light to better read the message, “they’re trained to survive for days, even weeks, in—” He didn’t finish what he was going to say, falling silent, jaws clenched, realizing now why Freeman had abruptly ended the conversation with Brentwood to go to the maps. Norton showed the message to Brentwood. The Thirty-first “Stalingrad” Motorized Division, leading the Fifth Siberian Army, was only two hundred miles away. Robert Brentwood was a naval, not a military, tactician, but it was as obvious as the nose on his face that if he couldn’t kill the cruise threat from Baikal, Freeman wouldn’t stand a chance.
Two hours later, as they were going over the supplies needed, from every piece of winter clothing to the hand-held Magellan GPS — global positioning system — that gives a soldier his position within fifteen meters anywhere in the world, the young G-2 lieutenant came in with full kit for Brentwood, which included a small capsule called the “L” pill. “It’s optional,” explained the lieutenant with an apologetic smile. “We’ve had reports that in the Urals, when our boys from Ten Corps were cut off, well-”
“Siberians don’t take prisoners,” said Norton. “They figure looking after POWs is a drain on resources.”
There was an awkward silence, which Brentwood himself broke by a game attempt at humor.”I take it ‘L’ isn’t for love.”
“Lethal,” said the lieutenant. Norton said nothing. There was absolutely no point in telling Brentwood that the Siberians wouldn’t even waste a bullet on prisoners. In the Urals they’d used their rifle butts on a company of Ten Corps POWs. It saved ammunition — even if it took a little longer.
“You’d better get some sleep,” the lieutenant ingenuously suggested, then looked about conspiratorially. “I can get you a fifth of sake. Not as good as whiskey, but—”
“Sake’ll be fine. Thanks, Lieutenant.” Brentwood was a stickler for running a dry submarine and rarely drank, even when he was ashore. Last time he could remember having done so was having a beer with Rosemary on his last leave. But right now a fifth of anything would suit him just fine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Colonel Nefski, recently of Khabarovsk, had already learned that Marshal Yesov had arrived in Irkutsk, forty miles west of Lake Baikal. Yesov had come not simply to finalize the attack but to use the cruise missiles aboard the miniaturnye podvodnye lodki—”midget submarines”—to produce a total og-nevoy udar—”fire shock”—and udar voisk— “troop shock”— against the American Second Army before Freeman could reach beyond the Amur hump and split his forces in a two-pronged offensive, one southwest to Irkutsk, the other swinging north to Yakutsk. If either — or worse, both — was ever captured by the Americans, it would afford them non-air-refueling radii to pound the Siberian army’s arsenals and factories.
The political officer, the Zampolit, of the Siberian Thirty-first, was screaming at Nefski. Advance SPETS scouts, dropped ahead of the Thirty-first with their BMD fighting vehicles at the tip of the Stalingrad Division’s spearhead, had rounded up several civilians near Kultuk at the southernmost end of Lake Baikal. One of the prisoners, a Jew suspected of working for the yevreyskoe podpolie— “Jewish underground”—had been “persuaded” after his fingernails had been torn out to reveal that the camera he possessed had indeed been used for sabotage; that photographs of the lake had been passed on via the Rossiya express to contacts at Irkutsk further west. The KGB knew there was an active Jewish underground working from Irkutsk all along the Trans-Siberian to Krasnoyarsk railhead 530 miles west of Baikal then northeast on the BAM — the Baikal-Amur mainline loop — from which it could find its way through to Allied lines. Nevertheless, despite what might be the seriousness of the situation, Nefski refused to be cowed. Who did this Zampolit think he was — Chernko? Nefski asked him coolly how it was that he assumed it was one of Nefski’s prisoners who had received the photos of the lake or whatever from the old Jew.
“I told you!” shouted the political officer. “The old man confessed. He ga
ve it to someone on the Rossiya. By the time the SPETS got the old fool to talk, the photos had already been passed.”
“To whom?”
“The old Jew had no names. It’s a rule — they never give one another their real names. All the SPETS got from him was that it was a Jewess on the Khabarovsk carriage.”
“Was she pretty?” enquired Nefski.
The Zampolits face was creased with worry. “If the Americans suspect we’re slipping the midgets under the ice from Port Baikal at the southern end of the lake they’ll try to bomb the rail line and—”
“Why?” said Nefski, not minding his insolent tone. “What good would bombing Port Baikal do? The submarines are already safe — deep in the lake.”
“Yes, but they must come in for armament resupply.”
“Ah,” said Nefski, trying to reduce the consequences for both of them, because he had suddenly realized who it might be. “I don’t think the Americans know, Comrade. And if they did try to bomb Port Baikal and got through the heavy antiaircraft ring we have all about the lake, so what? If they hit one or two subs in the dock that were in for ammunition resupply, the other subs would still be at large in the lake. Plus they would be warned off by the explosions.”
“Ah!” said the Zampolit, mocking Nefski’s own tone. “You don’t understand the Americans, comrade. Haven’t you heard? They can be ingenious. They will try something.”
“Then,” shrugged Nefski, “put everyone around the lake on extra alert.”
The political officer conceded the point. “Nevertheless, you must try to find this woman and stop any other messages that might be—”
“Oh,” said Nefski, lighting a cigarette, “there is no mystery there, Comrade. There’s only one pretty Jewess that was sent from Khabarovsk to Irkutsk. I have interrogated her before. Her whole family is rotten.”
“Then I suggest you question her again. Get as much information from her as you can before you get rid of her.”
Nefski took a long drag on his cigarette — a Winston, the Zampolit noted enviously. Imported from Japan, no doubt. “That might be difficult,” Nefski was saying.”To eliminate her.” The political officer looked angrily at the KGB colonel. “Why? You shoot people every day. It’s your job.”
“A pilot,” said Nefski, “transferred to Irkutsk PVO with all the others from Khabarovsk station — he fancies her.”
“I don’t care what some pilot fancies,” began the political officer.
“This pilot is the son of a high party official, Comrade. Kiril Marchenko.”
“He’s in Moscow!” said the Zampolit defiantly.
“Ah, yes, but who knows who else is in Moscow? Perhaps he’s helping us.”
“I don’t care. Interrogate her then have her shot. Moscow’s finished. Novosibirsk is what counts now, Comrade.”
“The pilot is one of our aces,” Nefski informed him.
The Zampolit sneered contemptuously.”Never heard of him. Eliminate her.”
Nefski rose and saluted. “As you wish, Comrade.”
Nefski told himself he wasn’t afraid of the political officer, but nor was he a fool. You did what political officers told you or you would be eliminated.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Christ! It’s colder’n a fish’s tit!” These were the first words that Aussie Lewis said as he stepped off the C-5 after the long haul from Alaska via Japan to the Never-Skovorodino road. “There a whorehouse ‘round here, Yank?”
The marine assigned to drive the twelve SAS/Delta Force troops to Freeman’s HQ was busy chipping ice from the Humvee track’s windscreen. “Nearest cathouse around here, buddy, is Japan. Thataway!”
“Oh, lovely!” said Aussie. “You hear that, Davey boy? You’re gonna have to play with yourself for the duration.”
“Better than being on Rat,” responded David Brentwood, saluting and shaking hands with the marine colonel who, though senior in rank to David Brentwood, was awed by the presence of a Congressional Medal of Honor winner.
“Take no notice of him, sir,” David told the colonel. “He’s an Aussie. They all talk like that. Good man in a firefight, though.”
The colonel grinned. “Yes, I knew a few in ‘Nam around Da Nan—” The Humvee’s radio crackled loudly in the frigid air. “Incoming! Incoming!”
Aussie Lewis hadn’t heard any heavy artillery. Where were the Russian guns? The Commies didn’t fire any artillery unless they had at least a hundred of them.
“Cruise missiles!” yelled a marine. “Let’s get outta here!”
“Beautiful,” said Aussie, heaving his eighty-pound pack into the back of the Humvee. “Hear that, Choir?” he called out to Williams. “No fucking class, these Sibirs. Can’t wait till a man’s unpacked.” Williams, the last man in, pulled the door shut. “Well, with you yabbering away, Aussie, they’ll have no trouble knowing where we are.”
“Now, don’t get shirty!” said Aussie and, either oblivious to or uncaring of a colonel of marines being present, adopted Choir Williams’s accent, explaining to all in the truck, “He’s a fucking Welshman. Take him out of the Estedford and he gets terrible cranky. He’d rather be singing in chapel you see. Tenor—’Men of Harlech’ and all that shit!”
David Brentwood, in the front with the colonel and driver, turned around. “You pack those Norsheets?” He was anxious that the Norwegian tent segments, which could be used to make various sizes of small tents, had been brought along.
“Planning on using them, are you?” asked Aussie.
“Did you pack them?”
“Yeah. Course I did. But we won’t need ‘em with our cold-weather garb,” he added. Beneath each man’s Gore-Tex parka and overpants there were three other layers: fiber pile, quilted jacket and pants, and polypropylene underwear. “She’ll be right, mate.”
“Thought you were cold?” said Choir good-naturedly.
“Not for long, Choir, not for long. Girls all say that I’m one hot—”
There was a scream of air, an enormous flash of light over the next rise. They saw a Humvee thrown at least forty feet into the air, its doors flying off, the black silhouettes of the marines flung from it.
The colonel and the SAS/Delta troopers felt the sudden jerk of acceleration as the driver put his foot down, and while Aussie might have been one of the toughest of the twelve commandos, he had never been under cruise salvo fire before, and wondered what the hell the driver was doing. But the marine wasn’t listening to advice; his helmet hard up against the windscreen, he peered through a tiny hole in the ice, picking up the infrared headlight beam.
“They land a quarter-mile apart,” explained the marine colonel. “Like running a traffic light. Provided you can—” Suddenly he stopped. Night was day, and they felt a warm wind actually push the Humvee forward as the vehicle hit fifty-five miles an hour on the hard snow road, started to skid, and righted in a rain of dirt, snow, and God knew what else falling on the vehicle’s roof as it continued on to Freeman’s HQ. No one said anything until the vehicle came to a shuddering stop, an MP swearing and jumping out of the way just in time, his weapon raised, momentarily fearing it was some kind of terrorist attack. The driver sat there shaking, the MP bawling him out. The colonel toned everything down, and while the SAS/Delta team moved into Freeman’s HQ to be briefed on what the general called the “game plan,” Choir Williams, tongue in cheek, blithely asked, “You making book on this mission, Aussie?”
Aussie didn’t answer until after the briefing, which lasted a half hour.
“Well?” asked Choir Williams. “What odds are you giving now?”“
Aussie was checking his ammo pack. “Why don’t you take a flying fuck at a doughnut?”
“Oh, how kind,” said Choir, turning to David Brentwood. “You hear that, Captain? Is that any way to talk to a tenor? I ask you now.”
Aussie saw ice was already forming on his magazine pouches, and as he replied to Choir Williams his breath looked like a fiery dragon’s. “Why don’t you take a
flying—”
“All right,” cut in Brentwood. “Six hours sleep — then it’s off to the lake resort.”
“Resort? Oh, spare me!” moaned Aussie. “Two fucking comedians. I can’t stand it.”
“Don’t worry, Aussie,” said O’Reilly, one of the four Americans, including David Brentwood, in the team.”Least you don’t have to hoof it.”
“I don’t like those friggin’ Snowcat ‘Arrows,’ “ said Aussie. “Make more noise’n a bloody chopper.”
“Not to worry,” responded Choir. “Snow’ll muffle the sound, Aussie.”
“I’d still rather hike in.”
“Not enough time,” commented David Brentwood. “You heard the general.”
“Too bad,” said Aussie, shifting his attention to his nose, one of the most insidious dangers of a winter campaign being that the flesh could freeze so fast you didn’t even notice it.”Least my prick is still warm.”
“You’re hopeless,” proclaimed Choir. “Get in the truck, you horrible man.”
David Brentwood was glad of the repartee among members of the team. Without high spirits, not even the best equipment in the world would be enough on such a mission as this. As the Humvee drove away, David Brentwood went back in the HQ to see his eldest brother. The briefing of the mission had been so detailed and required so much attention that apart from a handshake they’d not had the opportunity to say much to one another. David felt badly about it, but the fact was he hesitated going in to see his brother. They’d never been that close, the age gap between them much wider than it was between Robert and Ray, the second oldest. Besides, having stayed alive during the war so far without having seen that much of one another, David harbored what he knew was an irrational but powerful conviction that seeing one another now and being on the same mission would be — well, just plain bad luck.