by Andy McNab
‘See you at the LZ. I’ll get it all nicely prepared for you.’ Dima gave him a cheery salute and walked away. But something still told him it wasn’t going to be as simple as that.
13
Azerbaijan Airspace
The Mil Mi-26 lumbered upwards, curving away from the base as its rotors clawed the air, battering Dima’s ears with its thunderous throb. The temperature in the hold plummeted. Under their flight suits, Dima’s advance crew were already in their Iranian kit. Dropping them had to be executed with maximum speed. The landing zone they had chosen was a scrap of land surrounded by forest, fifteen kilometres from the compound, but a forty-five minute drive on the unmetalled roads threaded along the steep valley sides. It was good cover, but the sooner the Peykans were unloaded and separated from the Mil, the less danger of the cars being in any way connected to the fat black Russian chopper.
Kroll and Vladimir had taken refuge from the cold inside one of the Peykans. Vladimir was fast asleep after his first good meal in two years, his face a better colour, though the scar on his cheek still stood out. Kroll stared straight ahead, stonily. Helicopters were his bête noir. He had survived two hard landings and had made a lucky escape from a third when it had ditched in the Caspian.
Either side of the cars was the Go Team, to be deployed when Dima called them in. Until then they would remain on standby at an Azerbaijani airstrip just across the border. They were in full assault kit, everything black, and they carried AKSUs — short versions of the AK47, fitted with thermal imaging sights that were essential for seeing through smoke or CS gas. The AKSUs were also easier to conceal. With the stock folded they measured less than fifty centimetres. Some would also be packing PMMs or 6P35 Grach pistols. Saiga-12 shotguns would be handy for taking down doors and KS-23s armed with CS gas would help along the process of room clearing. Despite the volume of intelligence, they still had no real idea of how much opposition they would meet.
For some of these men, recent graduates, this would be their first hostile deployment. Dima felt a strong sense of responsibility for taking them on this escapade. I must be getting old, he thought. For a long time now he had worked alone, or just with Kroll. He used to have a reputation as a good leader, the sortmen would follow to hell and back — and quite often not back at all. But that was when he was a paid-up Spetsnaz. Now he was a freelance, a gun for hire. He’d heard Kroll say, ‘You never leave Spetsnaz — even if they fire you. Even if they put you in jail.’ Surely a few of these young men had to be asking themselves why they were putting their trust in a man who apparently had no allegiances, whose own masters had long been suspicious of him. But then he thought back to his own early days — when he was desperate for an assignment, any assignment. That was the point of Spetsnaz, to expect the unexpected.
Suddenly he realised that many of them would be the same age as the young man in Paliov’s photographs. He tried to put them out of his mind and concentrate on the job in hand. If he couldn’t focus, he would never get them and it would all have been for nothing. He had to separate himself from all emotions, completely.
He checked through the kit in each of the Peykans’ trunks. The same array of armour. In addition, five SVD Dragunovs — not the most accurate sniper gun but with the ten-round magazine and a 4x scope it was fine for the relatively close range work he anticipated. He’d demanded every kind of night vision optics — binoculars for the recce, goggles for close action. He planned on getting a firsthand view inside the compound walls before calling in the Go Team. That meant a rope kit for climbing and — when they were ready — rappelling. Whatever they had, there would be something they had missed. It was the nature of these operations, balancing enough kit with the need to be nimble.
Dima climbed up to the flight deck, the equivalent of two storeys up from the hold. He put on a spare headset and watched over the shoulders of the pilots as they pressed on into the moonless dark. The low cloud and fine rain almost killed what little visibility there was. The instruments kept them out of trouble, nosing the machine over sudden tall trees and power-lines.
‘Still reading quake tremors. It’s going to be a mess down there,’ said Yergin the co-pilot, waving a printout. ‘Keep your tin hat on.’ He grinned.
‘How long do you need to hold position over the compound to drop the Go Team?’
‘They get moving, I reckon three minutes max.’
‘You pay good attention to our recce report or you won’t know what they’ll have pointing up at you.’
‘Don’t worry: the force is with me.’ Yergin swished the air with an imaginary light sabre. ‘Get ready. LZ in two.’
14
Near Bazargan, Northern Iran
The rotors swatted the air above as they prepared to disembark the Peykans — Dima, Kroll and Vladimir in the lead car, Zirak and Gregorin in the second. The cars were facing to the rear. As soon as the doors opened and the ramp dropped Dima reversed in a neat arc and accelerated away, night goggles on, no headlights, at least until they were clear of the site and on a public road. They didn’t wait to watch the Mil pull away but they heard it all right, and hoped that Kaffarov’s captors in the next valley didn’t.
‘Welcome to Iran. We hope you have a pleasant stay,’ said Dima. Vladimir was awake now, lounging on the rear seat. Kroll looked more comfortable now he was back on terra firma. ‘And a bloody short one,’ he added. ‘I want to be back for lunch.’
It was three a.m., but they were pumping enough adrenalin to keep them awake for a week. Once he’d got the measure of the Peykan, Dima put on more speed. He almost lost it on a blind bend when a tanker came the other way, with its huge headlights blazing. Its driver couldn’t see them until the last moment, and they couldn’t see much but the sudden whiteness, followed by an almighty roar. Taking up almost the whole of the winding, uneven road, it brushed past them with inches to spare. Dima was relieved to find the brakes had been uprated with an anti-lock system, which enabled them to slew to a halt at the only place they could stop without tipping over the edge.
‘Quite responsive,’ said Kroll. ‘I wish my wife was as quick.’
‘She is, as it happens,’ said Vladimir.
‘Yes,’ said Zirak on the radio. ‘And unlike the gorilla, she sends flowers after.’
Dima smiled to himself. Despite all the danger, his mistrust of Paliov and the sheer insanity of the mission, he was back where he belonged, leading a team of the best to the very limits of their abilities. There was nothing so bonding as knowing you might all be about to die together — that and a good wife joke.
They went through a small village: a cluster of dozing houses with no evidence of occupation save for a single prayer mat on a washing line. It appeared deserted, yet there was no sign of damage from the quake. A sound, somewhere between a bark and a howl, issued across the cool night air.
‘Jackal,’ said Kroll.
‘Or your wife again.’
Leaving the LZ behind them in the distance, the road climbed out of the valley and did a hairpin left into the next one. Kroll examined the hills with a night sight. ‘Got it. Fuck me, it looks a lot smaller in the flesh.’
‘Yeah, like your dick,’ came the reply from the back.
‘The walls are still up. Doesn’t look like the tremors have had any impact’
The road forked where a drive curved up to the main gate. They slowed as they passed, taking in what they could in the gloom.
‘Tempting to just go and ring the bell — could be a lot simpler.’
‘Yeah, and get your head blown off.’
Two hundred metres beyond the drive Dima slowed to a halt, waiting for the second car to catch up. Once its lights were in view he carried on at a crawl until he found the track to the right that he’d seen on his friend Darwish’s pictures. The track was deeply rutted and the car bottomed after a hundred metres. The cypress trees made a good screen. Dima opened his door.
‘Okay guys: let’s get kitted up.’
The air
was damp, and pungent with the aroma of the cypresses. A mountain grouse, surprised by the unexpected visitors, shot into the air from near their feet with a furious clatter of wings, but otherwise there were no sounds, no wind. Vladimir took the rope kit and helped himself to a Dragunov. One of the reasons he was on Dima’s must-have list was his climbing skill. As a boy of nine he had escaped from a juvenile detention centre down a four-storey wall. A few years later he was making frequent visits to his girlfriend’s second floor bedroom, scaling the outside of the block where she lived while her father waited on guard, oblivious, in the hallway. ‘Like Dracula,’ he said, grinning with his remaining teeth.
They walked in single file towards the point in the wall that Dima had chosen. They couldn’t see any cameras but it was possible they were concealed. Where he had identified a bend in the wall on the pictures, he reasoned there should be a blind spot.
The walls were ten metres higher than even Kroll had estimated, but Vladimir wasn’t fazed. With the rope attached to his belt and the guys at the bottom feeding it out in case of kinks, he started up the wall at such a pace that it looked like he had suckers on his hands.
‘Nice,’ said Kroll. ‘Like Spiderman with balls.’
Vladimir disappeared from view, obscured by the trees close to the wall. Two minutes later he was down again, having fixed the rope to a rampart by tying loops round it and then using snail links to join the loops.
‘It’s a bit busy in there. You better look.’
Dima climbed the wall using the rope. What had he been expecting? A deserted open area, a few vehicles, not much happening. He couldn’t have been more wrong.
Since the last satellite pictures he had seen, taken only four hours before, the place had been transformed into a hive of activity. Three large trucks were parked facing the gate, each with its tailgate dropped. There must have been fifty men down there, all very young, looking like they had just been turfed out of the trucks and were waiting to be told what to do next. There were another twenty in semi-military uniforms, carrying a mixture of shotguns and rifles. Far from being the secluded hideaway of Al Bashir, this looked more like an improvised HQ. The wall he was secured to had deteriorated. There was no walkway. He was unlikely to be disturbed by a patrol, nor were there any cameras that he could make out. He pulled on the rope — the signal for the others to join him. It was pointless attempting to mount any assault themselves with those numbers below, he thought. But he also realised that the Go Team making a fast rope descent would be a disaster — unless all those below with arms were seriously distracted. There was just about enough room for the nuke team to land their Mil, but only once the personnel had been cleared.
Kroll peered down at the crowd and sighed. ‘Why does life have to be so complicated?’
Vladimir was by his side, reaching down to give Zirak a hand. ‘It’s what makes it interesting.’
This was why Dima had wanted Vladimir along. He thrived on unpredictability; he lived for it. Dima scanned the crowd below, trying to read what was happening. Someone in uniform prodded an older man with his AK. If these were recruits they weren’t exactly being welcomed. Coerced, more like. Where was Kaffarov? They would have to contain these men before they could mount a search. And clearing an area for Shenk’s chopper was another problem.
There was no sign of the big boxy Mercedes G-Wagen, identified on the satellite pictures as Kaffarov’s.
He turned to Kroll. ‘Call up the Slug. Put them on standby.’
A plan was forming in his head, which involved laying down enough fire in one area to provoke the crowd — and the shooters — into taking cover in one corner. But a second later he abandoned it. A prisoner, hooded, half-naked and shackled, was being led by four men towards the far wall. He was not going willingly. Could it be Kaffarov? He was short and from his torso he looked to be the right age. Whatever Dima thought of him personally, the mission was to bring him back in one piece.
He turned to Kroll. ‘Tell the Slug it’s go-go. Expect armed response. Tell them to be prepared to fire on descent.’ Then he addressed the others, pointing at the hooded man. ‘If that’s what I think it is we have to take out the executioners.’
Above the raised platform towards which the captive was being dragged was a thick beam, from which hung several nooses. His legs were flailing wildly. Despite the hood, he was under no illusion as to what was about to happen.
Dima beckoned Vladimir. ‘Prepare five rappels — when we go, we go down together.’ He looked at Zirak and Gregorin. ‘Which of you is the best shot?’ They each pointed at the other. ‘OK, G comes before V: Gregorin. Move twenty metres to your right and take out the hangmen. Don’t hit the prisoner: he could be Kaffarov. Kroll, how close are the Go Team?’
‘One minute.’
He heard the distant thrum of the Mil, but there was too much action down below for anyone to notice yet. In position, Gregorin watched the action through his sights, postponing the first shot as long as he could. Then three things happened in quick succession. A few of the gunmen on the ground looked up at the approach of the still invisible Mil, and Gregorin fired his first shot at the execution team. One fell. The rest, struggling to get the writhing man’s head through the noose, thought he had slipped or been kicked — until the second shot took the face off another of them. The others dropped the hooded man like a hot coal and ran for cover, as their victim flopped on to the platform and curled into a foetal position. Then from the corner of his eye Dima saw the lights of a truck come on. It shot forward, forcing its way through the men and the guards towards the gates. ‘Shoot out the tyres!’ yelled Kroll. ‘Stop the truck!’
But the men, panicked, were surging around the vehicle. It was impossible to get a clean shot without hitting the occupants or the crowd. Most of them now had their faces craned towards the sky, as the Mil came overhead, obliterating all sound as it hovered. The ropes came down, followed by the first of the Go Team. They loosed off teargas, but it wasn’t enough to cover them effectively as a volley of shots met them. Dima cursed as he saw the first two fall to the ground, wounded or dead.
‘Fire at will,’ he yelled to the others, but they had already started. ‘Take out the gunners.’ Then he saw it. Less than a hundred metres from the Slug, ghostly in the thick haze of the night sky, the Nuke team’s Mil hovering — drifting closer, as if waiting to land. It was way too early. It had no radar jamming. It wasn’t equipped for hostile action. Why were they so close? Then he saw the side door open. Shenk’s team were firing as well. Some of the gunners on the ground noticed the second chopper and started firing back.
Dima screamed at Kroll: ‘Pull back! Get Shenk to pull back NOW!’
But Kroll couldn’t hear. He was preoccupied with the shooting. As soon as Dima looked back he saw it. A streak of bright light from the south arcing into the sky and then sweeping towards them, the warhead black and invisible against the blinding blaze of its propellant.
‘Missile!’
Dima could only watch as it slammed into the cockpit of Shenk’s Mil, shearing the front clean off, the flaming bodies of the crew falling from the wreckage. Meanwhile, the frontless craft turned upwards, dropped its tail and began to spin like a giant boomerang towards the Slug. The Slug pilots, facing the other way, would never have known what hit them. Dima and his team flattened themselves against the wall as the rotors of the two aircraft engaged. The smaller craft fell first, on to the wall opposite Dima’s team, wobbled, then slid nose down next to the hangman’s platform. The stricken Slug took longer, its sophisticated avionics struggling to compensate for the damaged rotors — but it was all too much for them. The nose of the craft reared up, the draught almost blowing Dima off the wall, as it smashed down into the centre of the compound. A giant fireball swept over them.
15
Forward Operating Base Spartacus, Iraqi Kurdistan
The shower was cold and the pressure zero, but as far as Blackburn was concerned it was the best wash he had ever had. He
stood there far longer than his allocated time, and if anyone had a problem with that they could go fuck themselves. Several cuts and scars stung viciously as he smoothed the soap over them. He watched the soupy puddle of dust and soot mix with the congealed blood into the familiar war cocktail that swilled around his feet. But he knew that even if he stood under there for a month, what had happened yesterday was never going to wash off. Is this it, he wondered, the moment when a man changes for ever?
When he’d walked off the Osprey back at the FOB everyone stared. Montes, who had just got the news, came jogging up and slowed when he saw him.
‘Man, you look like you came back from the dead.’
Only when he caught his reflection in a vehicle mirror did he realise why. His face and hair were completely grey with dust and soot, mixed with sweat into a paste which the sun had then baked dry. His T-shirt was stiff with his own blood and that of the dead girl. Montes threw his arms round him and several wounds protested in unison.
‘We’d wrote you out the script, man.’
As he marched Blackburn to the shower trailer, Montes gave him their end, how after Blackburn had followed the wires into the building they’d felt the first tremor and made for open ground, just as the big one hit and all the buildings collapsed around them. He outlined a mushroom with his hands. ‘Baboom. Hello Hiroshima. Place looked like out of some demented game your Mom won’t want you playin’. Next thing, they pullin’ us out.’