“Thank you Colonel, I will only use it if I have a need to,” I had reassured him.
“Good, any other needs – requirements?”
“Yes – transportation and equipment.”
“All arrangements for transport, both external and internal, I have already taken the liberty to make for you. Depending on your availability, which I trust is immediate, we will fly you out later today to southern Russia, and then on to the target location, first thing tomorrow,” he had replied. “With regards to ‘equipment’, I presume that you mean weapons?”
“Yes.”
“Have no concern on that point. I am more than sure that we should be able to find you something suitable out of our small stockpile,” he had joked, before turning serious, again. “We haven’t discussed your fee, yet,” he had added, almost as a casual addendum.
I had paused for a moment before replying: “There will be no fee, on this occasion.”
“No, fee?” the FSB Colonel had queried, the loud rustling sound of a newspaper, from the chair by the fire, punctuating his query.
“Consider it to be a goodwill gesture in return for my FSB accreditation.” I had replied.
The Colonel had given a thin smile, again. “Is there anything else that you need, ‘Major’?”
“Yes – an English speaking Russian Special Forces Operative, preferably with proven covert operations experience and an understanding of Chechen.”
The FSB Colonel’s smile had widened, exposing his small but beautifully shaped teeth. “I have just the very man for you,” he had responded readily.
And he had, too!
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
Later that day, or more correctly later that night, at a small military airfield in southern Russia, Colonel Dmitri K…had introduced me to the imposing figure of Spetsnaz Starshina, Vissarionovich – Spetsnaz Sergeant Major Vissarionovich, to you and me.
Born in 1962, in the Kuban region of southern Russia, on the Black Sea between the Don Steppe and the Caucasus, Vyacheslav Vissarionovich had been born into a long line of Kuban Cossacks. During the First World War, his grandfather had ridden against the Hun on the Eastern Front, until Russia had capitulated. Then, in the April of 1918, he had ridden with the ‘White Russians’ against the ‘Bolsheviks’. However, after initial successes in the Kuban campaign against the Red Army, they had been unable to capitalise on their gains and, short of supplies; they had been rapidly overrun when the Soviets had launched a massive counter offensive. By the beginning of 1920, they had been virtually in full retreat towards Novorossiysk, where they had made one last attempt to make a stand. Eventually, the majority of the White Russian Army had been evacuated, but about a third had remained behind, including the Cossacks, who had refused to abandon their horses. Most were either captured, and subsequently executed, or had dispersed into the Steppes, including Vyacheslav Vissarionovich’s grandfather. And it had been in the broad wide expanses of the Don Steppes that his grandfather had taken refuge and managed to escape ‘Decossackization’ – the systematic elimination of all the Cossacks of the Don and the Kuban Regions of Southern Russia, in the purges that had followed.
When Germany had invaded the Soviet Union, on June 22nd 1941, it had presented embittered Cossacks with the opportunity to take up arms against the ‘Bolsheviks’ again, readily fighting alongside the German Wehrmacht against their old foe. But not Vyacheslav’s father – much to the horror of his own father, he instead had joined the Red Army! Vyacheslav’s father had been one of the first Kuban and Terek Cossacks to be mobilised into the Red Army, into the 53rd Calvary Divisions of the 3rd Calvary Corps. At the Battle of Smolensk, he had taken an active part in raids deep behind the German lines. One raid, which had taken several days and had covered hundreds of kilometres, had succeeded in decimating and destroying lines of supply and communications of the German 9th Army. In another raid, attached to the 1st Shock Army, he had been part of the Soviet spearhead that had launched the counter attack on the right flank of the 7th Panzer Division, in its advance on Moscow; causing what would become a decisive delay in the German advance on the Russian capital – a harsh Russian winter and an acute lack of supplies had done the rest. After Moscow, in the August, Vyacheslav’s father had been transferred to the Caucasus to join the 9th Kuban Cossack, which had formed part of the 4th Guards Kuban Cossack Corps. In the November, they had taken part in the Stalingrad counter offensive, encircling and then crushing the German 6th Army. After the defeat of the Germans, at Stalingrad, they had broken through the German lines, going on to liberate the Southern Ukraine and Romania. At the end of the war, Vyacheslav’s father had proudly ridden with the rest of his Regiment in the Victory Parade of 1945, in Red Square. However, unlike other members of his Regiment, Vyacheslav’s father did not leave the Red Army and return home after the demobilisation of his unit – he had no home. His father, enraged that his son had taken up with the hated ‘Bolsheviks’, had disowned him and forbidden him from the family farm on the Don Steppes. Instead, he had become a ‘contract’ serviceman, enlisting back into the Red Army, on a rolling five year contract. With his extensive combat experience, and citations for bravery, Vyacheslav’s father had been quickly absorbed into the special army unit of the Military Intelligence Service, the GRU – later to evolve into the Spetsnaz GRU. In this ‘special’ unit, Vyacheslav’s father had seen involvement in Korea as an ‘observer’, during the Korean War. Returning back to the Soviet Union, his unit had been actively responsible for quelling anti-Soviet uprisings in Eastern Europe: firstly, in the German Democratic Republic, then in Hungary, followed quickly by Czechoslovakia and Poland. Vyacheslav’s father had quickly risen through the ranks of his unit, attaining the rank of Starshina, by the time he had been forty.
It had been in the April of 1961 that he had returned back to his former home on the Don Steppes, the first time in twenty years. His mother had died of acute influenza and he had returned for her funeral. But, his father had banned him from his mother’s funeral and had expressly forbidden him from seeing other members of the family. Ignoring him, Vyacheslav’s father had still attended the service, resplendent in his full dress uniform and medals. While this sight of his son in a Red Army uniform had infuriated his father further, sending him into bouts of absolute rage…the splendour of the uniform had attracted the attention of another – a young girl called Yulia, who, fourteen months later, after a whirlwind courtship and marriage, had become Vyacheslav’s mother. Vyacheslav’s proud father had bought a large farm house and land for his new family. Apart from infrequent leave, as an infant, Vyacheslav had seen very little of his father – a tall mysterious kind figure, who had spent all his available time with Vyacheslav and his mother and, later, two sisters and a younger brother. His father had retired from the Red Army on Vyacheslav’s seventh birthday, and had taken up the role of full time father to Vyacheslav and his siblings. With a generous pension, his father had no need to work the land but, instead, had bred and trained horses. And, at the age of eight, Vyacheslav could ride a horse bareback without reigns, much to the great delight of his doting father. When it had come to a career for the young Vyacheslav, there had only been the one option – to follow in his father’s footsteps.
At the age of fourteen, the young Vyacheslav, already tall for his age, had attended the North-Caucasian Suvorov Military School, as a boarder. Here, he had still received an academic education but the focus, in the main, had been on military and political subjects. Graduating at the age of eighteen, instead of going on to a Higher Military School, for officer training, Vyacheslav had undergone the gruelling selection process for Spetsnaz, a military branch of the Soviet Union’s Special Forces. Along with other potential recruits, he had been subjected to an intense and crudely brutal six month long induction programme, deliberately intended to strip away all resemblance of dignity and self respect but, at the same time, also intended to condition and implant the toughness and blind courage that they would need for combat. Whil
e at Middle School, Vyacheslav had taken up boxing, and this had stood him in good stead to take the beatings of ‘Dedovshchina’; the brutalisation of new recruits by regular physical beatings, routinely carried out by the other older conscripts. After successfully completing the induction process, Vyacheslav had been selected for the extremely demanding Non-Commissioned Officers School. For the next six months, he had undergone the arduous course, with its high dropout rate – which could be as high as eighty percent! As well as basic military training, he had also undergone specialised training in: hand to hand combat, including silent killing techniques with the hand or knife; sabotage techniques, focusing on the making and the placing of explosives; parachuting, including high altitude free fall; infiltration and survival techniques; knowledge of at least one foreign language and culture; and schooling in the weapons and military tactics of NATO countries. Graduating successfully from the Non-Commissioned Officers School, with the rank of Junior Sergeant, Vyacheslav had been immediately attached to an active Spetsnaz unit, on route to Afghanistan.
The years that had followed had been years of unrelenting continuous combat and high risk covert missions, with Vyacheslav fighting the Mujahideen, whenever and wherever they could be found – easier said than done, considering the way that they would strike and then just merge back into the populace. With his unit, Vyacheslav had travelled the breadth and length of that very hostile country, seeking out and killing the Mujahideen, where ever they had found them. If, on occasions, the Mujahideen had taken refuge amongst the local population – then the local population, by definition, had become the enemy. And, by unintentionally becoming the enemy, that populace had inadvertently placed itself open to suffer the most terrible consequences for their actions – often, being killed out of hand by overzealous army conscripts, or ruthless Spetsnaz. During his time in Afghanistan, Vyacheslav had been mentioned many times in dispatches for bravery. And he had been decorated accordingly and promoted to the rank of Senior Sergeant. His unit had been one of the last to leave Afghanistan, but not until after one final mission. Along with elements of motorised infantry, airborne troops and other Spetsnaz units, he had taken part in Operation Magistral, one of the last Soviet military operations to be undertaken in that country. It had been the last victory for the Soviets, with them taking the Satukandav Pass; allowing the relief of Khost, on the border with Pakistan; and the opening of the road between Khost and Gardez, the capital of the Paktiā province of Afghanistan; allowing besieged Soviet and Afghan troops to escape Khost. The fighting had been heavy and brutal, on all sides.
On his arrival back in the Soviet Union, from Afghanistan, Vyacheslav had been promoted to the rank of Starshina, Sergeant Major, and transferred into the Spetsnaz GRU. The GRU, or to give it its full title, Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravleniye, being the foreign Military Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, of the Armed Forces. Vyacheslav had obviously impressed somebody at the Kremlin for, within a short period of time, he had been transferred yet again, this time to an elite dedicated counter-terrorism unit, Spetsgruppa A. Also known in the West as ‘Alpha Group’, Spetsgruppa A in affect had been the military Special Purposes Forces arm of the KGB.
The KGB was dissolved in 1991 and replaced, firstly by the Federal Counterintelligence Service, the FSK; and then, in 1995, by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, the FSB…Spetsgruppa A coming under the direct control of the Directorate of the FSB Special Operations Centre – and de facto, the direct control of the Russian President, himself. Different name on the door, but, intrinsically, still the same ‘Boss’ – and still the same line of ‘work’!
Vyacheslav had initially found himself in Lithuania, with a small team of Spetsgruppa A, sent in to quash the uprising there, in the January of 1991. Then there had been the political crises close at home – in Moscow, itself. Firstly, there had been the Soviet attempted coup of August 1991. Hard line communists in the Politburo, and also in the KGB, had not been happy with the liberalisation that had been sweeping over their Soviet Union, and had wanted to oust President, Mikhail Gorbachov from office. He had been convalescing after illness, at his dacha in the country, when the plot had been hatched. The head of the KGB had verbally ordered the commanding officer of the Alpha Group to send a team to assassinate Gorbachov, at his dacha; and another to storm the ‘White House’, the Russian parliament building, liquidating all Gorbachov supporters in the process. But, the Commander of Alpha Group had been no fool. Without possessing unequivocal written orders, he had not been about to go out and assassinate the Russian President. Instead, he had deliberately prevaricated. He had sent a Spetsgruppa A team to the ‘White House’, on the pretext of carrying out an in depth assessment of the building’s vulnerability to an armed insurgency attack; the other, including Starshina, Vyacheslav Vissarionovich, to assess the safety of President, at his dacha in the country. This had given him time to secretively canvass the opinion of other military commanders, and most importantly, to gauge where their loyalties and support had been – with the President, or with the Politburo. As it was, more of his military peers had been for the President, than against him – especially the local commanders of the Tank and Armoured Divisions, stationed both in Moscow and on the outskirts of the city. And that had been the decisive overriding factor for the commanding officer of Alpha Group. He had stood down the Spetsgruppa A team at the ‘White House’, and had ordered Vyacheslav’s team to protect the life of the President, at all costs – which, by their very presence, they had in effect done.
After the failure of the Soviet coup attempt, of August 1991, what had followed then had been the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union. At the outset, along with the KGB, Alpha Group were to have been disbanded, but Gorbachov had personally intervened. And Spetsgruppa A, Alpha Group, had eventually come under the direct control of the eventual successor to the discredited KGB – the Special Operations Directorate of the FSB. This reorganisation and realignment of Spetsgruppa A had turned out to be quite fortuitous, as it so happened, for the next President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin.
1993 had seen another constitutional crisis occur in the former Soviet Union – the fledgling Russian Federation had started to tear itself apart. There had been what had amounted to a political standoff between Boris Yeltsin, the Russian President – and the Russian Parliament. There had been a gradual but symptomatic deterioration between the two factions. Such had been the extent of the deterioration, that Boris Yeltsin had dissolved the country’s legislature, including Parliament. Opponents to Yeltsin, mainly from hard line communist and extreme nationalist organisations, had occupied the Russian White House, by force. For awhile, there had been an armed standoff at the Russian parliamentary building. However, in the streets, blood had flown freely as rival groups had attacked and killed their opponents in a bout of unbridled vicious street fighting. After unsuccessfully trying to negotiate a diplomatic solution, with the great country of Russia beginning to fall into anarchy, Boris Yeltsin had decided to resolve the matter with military force. And, while tanks had shelled the upper floors of the building, Vyacheslav and his unit of Spetsgruppa A, along with units of Vympel Special Forces, had stormed and had retaken the Russian Parliament building, the ‘White House’ – uncharacteristically, for Vyacheslav and his unit, inflicting very few casualties amongst those protestors defending.
Probably under orders to keep the body count down!
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
After his part in the storming of the White House, Vyacheslav had been assigned to many other ‘spetsial’nogo naznacheniya’, ‘special purposes’, both inside and outside the Russian Federation and the former Soviet Union – but that is something I’ve been asked not to talk about.
At just over six feet, the Sergeant Major had been a lot taller and better built than I had imagined that he would have been. Broad deep muscular chest, solid thick arms and wide broad shoulders – more power lifter than scrawny wiry Spetsnaz. His fair golden hair
cropped tight to his perfectly domed skull, with just his eyebrows, and a neatly trimmed gold goatee beard, being the only hair visible on his head.
“Colonel,” he had saluted Colonel Dmitri K…, coming to attention, before turning to address me directly as “Major.”
“At ease, Starshina, Vissarionovich,” the Russian FSB Colonel had ordered.
Despite wearing an oversized ill fitting black ‘Nike’ tracksuit, over his blue and white standard issue hooped vest, the Sergeant Major had still created a presence in that deserted military hanger.
“Starshina,” I had acknowledged the Sergeant Major. I too had also been wearing a tracksuit, black with two thin white stripes running parallel to one another down the sleeves and both legs of the pants – standard Spetsnaz ‘undercover’ issue for Chechnya, at the time.
“Major,” he had replied.
“Be seated, Starshina, Vissarionovich,” the Colonel had informally instructed him.
“Colonel,” the Spetsnaz Sergeant Major had replied as he had pulled up a small metal chair to the table that we had been sitting at, hanging the sling of his AK-104 carbine over its back.
“You have been briefed on the mission, Starshina, Vissarionovich?”
“Yes, Colonel,” had come the affirmative reply – his English very good, just a trace of an Eastern European accent present in his ‘R’s’ and his ‘Eee’s’.
“And what precisely is that mission, Starshina, Vissarionovich?”
“To escort the Major, here,” he had replied, momentarily giving me an acknowledging glance, “to the target,” he had continued. “And assist in providing the Major with whatever support is required – armed or otherwise. Ensure the absolute success of the mission, and make sure that both the General and Major are safely returned to this base, Colonel, Sir.”
Autobiography of an Assassin:: The Family Page 36