by Duncan James
“How on earth have you managed to organise all this, and so quickly?” asked Lloyd in disbelief.
“It’s our job – it’s what we do,” said Armstrong.
***
Albert ‘Whistler’ Piper had been on duty in the Ops. Room running the London end of the rescue mission since it was first learnt that Makienko had flown to Zurich instead of Moscow. Weekend duty officers often have a quiet time on their eight-hour shift, but not today. He’d taken over at lunchtime, the balloon went up around 2 o’clock, and he had already handed over to the night watch-keeper. But he had decided not to hand over this particular operation; he would continue running it from one of the other desks. Every operation being run from the Ops. Room had a code name, but nobody had thought to give him one yet. So he scribbled on the board above the TV monitors “Get Lloyd”, and from then on, that’s what the operation was called.
Bill Clayton, had joined him earlier.
“I’ve been trying to get hold of Barbara, my PA, but she doesn’t seem to be at home, which is odd, so I may as well work from here as from my office,” he announced, sliding into one of the chairs next to Piper in front of the bank of TV screens and telephones. “Shan’t be in your way, shall I Whistler?”
“Of course not. You’re the boss, after all.”
“Do we have direct contact with the team in Switzerland?”
“Not quite direct, but as near as we can get. I have set up an open line to the Ops. Room at RAF Brize Norton, and they are relaying messages to and from the team in the field via their Hercules.”
“So what’s the current state of play out there?” asked Clayton.
“They’ve recovered both Miller and Dr. Lloyd. There’re both injured, but Lloyd is not bad. Miller sounds very dodgy, though, and they are obviously worried about him.”
“What about the Russian?”
“Dead.”
“Where are they all now?”
“Still at the recovery point, but preparing to move out. The weather is closing in, so the Swiss can’t get a chopper to them. They’re worried about the effect on Miller of a cross-country journey to the location of the Swiss recovery team, but there is no choice. Miller may not last the night out in the open.”
“That bad, eh?”
“There’s a decent medical evacuation kit on the aircraft, so their aim is to get Miller to that ASAP. The plan is to leave Lloyd in the medical centre at the Swiss Air Force base.”
The radio link to Brize Norton burst into life.
“We’ve just heard from the aircraft that your team is moving out. If the weather holds, they should get to the recovery point in a couple of hours,” said the distant voice.
“The Swiss Army team has two helicopters with them, about 20 minutes flying time from our aircraft on the ground at Payerne,” said Piper.
“What do they plan to do with the dead Russian,” asked ‘S’.
“I’ll find out.”
He got on to Brize Ops.
“Pass the message, will you please, that London wants to know what they plan to do with the gunman.” Piper turned to Clayton. “They don’t know he’s Russian. I thought it best not to tell too many people.”
“Good thinking, Whistler. How long have you been on duty, by the way?”
“About twelve hours now,” he replied, glancing at the clock on the wall which showed UK time.
“If only I could raise Barbara, she could rustle up some bacon sandwiches.”
Whistler looked around the room.
“Alex,” he called across to a colleague. “If you’re spare for a few minutes, me and the boss could murder a bacon sandwich and a coffee from the kitchen.”
“So could I,” came the reply. “Ten minutes!”
One of the red telephones in the Ops. Room rang. The Duty Officer answered it, and called across, “It’s for you, boss – Downing Street.”
Clayton took the call from Sir Robin Algar. “Why are you in the office?” he asked.
“We’ve been a bit busy, as I guess you have,” replied the Cabinet Secretary. “Lots of diplomatic bits and pieces to sort out, thanks to you! How’s it going?”
“We’ve recovered Lloyd, you’ll be pleased to know. He’s been injured, but apparently not seriously.”
“How was he injured?”
“The Russian had another go at assassinating him, that’s how.”
“How the hell did they know where he was?”
“A question I’ve been asking myself, as you can imagine. I thought we’d taken care of your mole.”
“There’s obviously another somewhere. Better informed, too. Something to ponder tomorrow, perhaps, once we’ve got today out of the way. What happened to the gunman?”
“Dead. It was Makienko. Hang on a minute.”
It was Brize Norton Ops. “Your man says they will leave the gunman for the Swiss Army to find tomorrow if they can. It’s snowing hard, so he may not be recovered until the Spring when it all thaws. Your man says it could look like a shooting accident. Plenty of hunting in the area away from the ski slopes.”
“I heard that,” said Algar. “I was just going to ask.”
“So far as we know, Moscow has no idea he went to Switzerland in the first place. They don’t know where he went, which is interesting, since it means our new mole was communicating with Makienko rather than Moscow. My point is, though, that if the Swiss Army can’t find him, the Russians certainly won’t.”
“Well, much to discuss later, but I’m relieved Lloyd is safe. Your chaps on the way home now?”
“It’s not quite that easy, Sir Robin.” Clayton was not usually that formal. “One of my men is very seriously injured, and may not survive the journey.”
“I’m so sorry. I should have asked,” replied Algar, who had noticed the change of tone. “Who is it?”
“Someone you know well, I’m sorry to say. Dusty Miller.”
There was a pause.
“That’s really bad news. I’m so sorry. Please let me know how he gets on as soon as you hear. Such a nice man.”
“One of my best, but he’s not dead yet, and he’ll fight like hell to come through this, if I know him.”
“Let’s hope he wins. But we should meet tomorrow – or later today, as it is now. We need to think about future protection for Lloyd and who takes responsibility for it, how we handle the Russians if we need to, what the Swiss role should be in all this, and, perhaps most importantly, whether we really do have another mole in our midst, and who it might be. I’ll get my girl to ring Barbara to fix it up. Meanwhile, keep me in touch with developments if you will.”
The red phone went dead, and the bacon sandwiches arrived.
***
3 -DUSTY’ MILLER - THE RED MIST
There was a red mist. Nothing else. Just pain and a red, swirling mist. Then nothing. From time to time, even the mist drifted away. Then there was nothing at all. Just the agony – the pain. Otherwise, absolutely nothing. No sight, no sound. Nothing. But the red mist would return. It stayed for longer, now, but when it melted away again, there was nothing. Just nothing. Only the pain. He wished he could scream, but he couldn’t. He could do nothing. There was nothing. Only the excruciating pain and the red mist.
This time, though, it was perhaps different. There was something new. Not just the red mist and the pain, but a noise. A dull, throbbing, roaring noise filling his head. But that was all. Mist and noise and pain. But they drifted away. And then there was nothing again. Nothing until they came back. Every time, the mist was getting darker, and the noise was getting louder, and the pain was getting worse, but that’s all there was. Otherwise, nothing. Just mist and pain and noise - or nothing.
The roaring, drumming, throbbing noise was getting so loud now that it hurt. Hurt. Everything hurt. His eyes hurt, his head hurt. Everything hurt. But there was no relief when the mist and the sound drifted away. No sensation of anything at all. Just nothing. If only he could scream out. But he could do nothin
g. His training, perhaps. Suffer the pain of torture. Don’t let them know.
He tried to open his eyes, the see through the red mist of pain and unconsciousness. Nothing happened. He tried to move – anything. Legs, arms, head, fingers, toes. Nothing worked. His ears perhaps. Maybe that dreadful noise wasn’t just in his head after all. He began to think that there was something else, apart from the thundering, roaring noise in his head. Something vaguely familiar. A deafening drone. Still a dreadful noise, but different. Two noises coming together.
But still he drifted in and out of the red mist of pain. If only he could open his eyes. Or move. Or scream. Or get rid of that dreadful penetrating throbbing noise. Or noises. He was sure now there was more than one source. His splitting headache and something else which he almost recognised.
And now another. More sound, making itself heard over everything else. He recognised that, too. He was sure. A voice over everything else. And a message he recognised, too. He had heard it before. The noise, and the voice, and the message. He had heard it all before.
The mist was thinning, but he drifted away into it again. This time, he fought against it as best he could, but it still enveloped him. Now nothing again. No mist, no noise, no voice. Nothing. But still the pain.
As the mist cleared once again and he drifted back into some sort of consciousness, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and another wiping his lips, gently trying to wake him. Still the noise, and still the voice he knew. And still the same, familiar message.
“Wake up, Miller. Talk to me.”
He struggled to open his eyes, to see through the fog of agony. He peered unseeingly into a dark abyss. There were hazy silhouettes of people bending over him in a dark, foreboding place. A familiar place? He drifted away again, before he could begin to work out where he was or who was with him. Still the same excruciating pain, still the same deafening, throbbing noises in his head, and still, in the background as if in a nightmarish dream, the voice, “Talk to me talk to me talk to me.” He forced his eyes open. The hazy figures were wearing hard hats and uniforms. Some dressed in white, others in camouflaged uniforms. Military uniforms.
If only he could move. The very thought of it made the pain worse – unbearable. He had the impression he was constrained in some way. Strapped down. To a stretcher perhaps? He simply could not move, and gave up trying. At least his brain was beginning to work, even if nothing else was. His eyes flickered shut again. No red mist this time. Just the noise and the voice. He thought he recognised both in some way, but it was too much effort to try to work things out. He wondered where he was, but really couldn’t care less. He could do nothing about it. Or anything else. Nothing. Wherever he was, he had to stay there. He couldn’t move. But where had he been? Where was he going? How did he get here? Who was with him? Whose was that voice, constantly pleading with him to talk? In uniform – military. At least he was among his own kind. That was something of a comfort.
His eyes flickered open again, and he looked beyond the figures bending over him. Now he was sure he recognised the dark, foreboding place he was in. An aircraft. That was it. He was in an aircraft. That was the noise, too. A military aircraft. He knew he had been in one before. Several times. An RAF Hercules. That’s what it was. He tried to focus on the two uniformed figures bending over him. One could have been a female. A Red Cross arm band on her uniform. It was the other, a man in white, who was pleading with him, trying to make himself heard over the noise of the aircraft. “Talk to me. Wake up, Miller and talk to me.”
By some super-human effort, he managed to whisper huskily, “Pain”. The arm with the Red Cross gently wiped his mouth. Through the thinning mist, he saw them say something, and watched as the Red Cross emblazoned arm plunged a needle into him. He drifted off into unconsciousness again, and this time, stayed there. No red mist, no noise, no voice, no pain. Nothing.
***
Commander Nick Marsden was the first to admit that the mission had not turned out quite as he had expected. Not that he ever really knew what to expect, as he hastily gathered together his team of Special Services personnel for their urgent dash to the mountains of Switzerland.
Their aim had been to provide immediate support for Dusty Miller, a Staff Sergeant SAS colleague, who was in the mountains above Montreux to provide protection for one of Britain’s top nuclear physicists, now working at CERN. What nobody knew when Miller left London with Dr. Roger Lloyd, was that one of Russia’s top agents was also on his way to Montreux, on a mission to kill Lloyd. Everyone had thought that the Russian, Dmitry Makienko, was heading for Moscow, but MI5 had lost track of him at the critical time as he left London.
He had nearly managed to kill both Lloyd and Miller.
***
It had been a mad scramble from the start, but events proved that it had all been vital. Marsden was a Special Boat Service man from way back, and although he was now doing something of a desk job – top secret work, but behind a desk most of the time just the same – it was not difficult to get his team together, even at such short notice. They were all on standby, anyway, ready for an immediate emergency, and that’s what this was.
It was the ‘Arctic’ team he got together, a specially trained group dedicated to Arctic Warfare, and fully equipped ready for action. All their gear was stored at RAF Brize Norton, where the standby RAF Hercules of the Special Forces Flight was also ready to go at a moment’s notice. By the time Marsden and his team got there, their Snowmobiles, skis, winter clothing and other specialist items had already been loaded, and the aircraft was ready for immediate take-off. The standby crew had been briefed to prepare a flight plan to get them to the Swiss Alps north of Montreux. The plan was for the task force to be parachuted in, to land as near as they could get to Miller, and for the aircraft then to head for the Swiss Air Force base at Payerne, south of Lake Neuchatel and about 30kms north of Montreux, to wait for them.
“It should be easy to locate Miller once we get there,” said Marsden during the in-flight briefing. “He is carrying a tracking device – one of the new Delta 7s. Here’s a receiver for each of you, in case we get split up when we get on the ground.”
While all this was going on, the Special Forces Support Group at Hereford was busy organising their opposite numbers in Switzerland to provide a recovery team. There was a squadron of Super Puma helicopters based at Payerne, and two of these would be deployed, with a small section of ground troops to assist with the UK teams’ recovery from the mountains.
By the time the Hercules captain found a half-decent dropping zone for his passengers, the planned rescue had to be changed. Miller had managed to get a message to his control room that Dr Lloyd had been shot and injured, and that he, Miller, was off in pursuit of the Russian. Marsden’s team split in two, one to rescue the injured scientist, and the other to track down Miller.
Miller had left his backup tracking device with the injured Dr. Lloyd, before setting off cross country in pursuit of the would-be assassin. Miller was a good skier, but so was the Russian, who was getting away from him. Miller decided to cut off a corner by heading through the woods as they sped downhill, a dangerous tactic through trees in a gathering snow storm. But Miller gained ground, and managed to get off a few rounds from his HK53. Makienko was hit, but not badly enough to prevent the Russian from returning fire with his sniper’s rifle. Miller took aim as carefully as he could at that speed and fired again, a short burst this time. The gunman fell, wounded, sending up a cloud of snow as he slithered across the slope. He came to a halt at the foot of a tree, and as Miller closed in on him, Makienko somehow managed to let off another round from his sniper’s rifle. Miller felt the bullet tear the flesh from his right arm. He dropped the HK53 as he skidded towards the prone figure, slamming in to a tree and coming to a shattering halt some fifty meters from the man.
Now Miller was in real trouble. He took stock of his situation as best he could, in spite of his great pain.
He had felt, and heard, his lef
t leg shatter as he hit the tree, which had shed its load of snow from its upper branches on top of him. As he fell back, gasping for breath, there was a sharp and excruciating stab of pain from his ribs. His right arm was hanging virtually useless. He could not move it.
Miller struggled to reach his Browning pistol, but the weapon was at his left side, ready to be easily drawn and used by his right hand. Not now. There was blood everywhere, in the freshly fallen snow, and Miller could already feel himself getting weaker.
Makienko was also loosing strength, and Miller was gratified to notice that he had hit the Russian in the chest.
Miller was fast losing blood and consciousness. It was a huge effort to focus on the Russian.
Makienko also struggled to see his adversary, wiping blood from his mouth.
Miller fell back exhausted by his effort, and noticed the ever-widening stain of blood in the snow around him. He knew he was going to die. He did not have the strength to reach his pistol, or to struggle to safety in the trees. He was a sitting duck for Makienko, if the man lived long enough.
This time, it was Miller who had to wipe blood from his mouth. He was finding it difficult to breathe, and waves of pain and dizziness swept over him.
The snow was now beginning to blanket him as it fell ever more heavily and thickly. Through the red mist of pain, he saw the furious FSB man let fly another round without taking proper aim. Miller felt it hit, but it was only a flesh wound this time he thought. Not that it made any real difference. He was a goner anyway. A wave of excruciating pain swept over him again, and he mercifully began to lose consciousness as he watched the Russian, through unfocussed eyes, unsteadily but deliberately take aim again, perhaps for the last time.
Miller heard a volley of shots ring out, but felt nothing. Instead, he vaguely saw Makienko thrown back into the snow, no doubt by the recoil from his gun.
Miller was light-headed now, and barely aware of what was going on around him anymore. He was hallucinating, he was sure of that. He imagined he could vaguely see, through the pain, what he thought were three shadowy figures, dressed in white combat overalls and headgear, and carrying HK53s. They swept down the slope, showering powdery snow from their skis in their wake.