by Craig Thomas
Grenade launcher, he thought. Or mortar. Even an RPG-7 rocket launcher. If they had all or any of those, and they well might, coupled with a laser rangefinder, then at the first sign of trouble they could put the Firefox on the scrap-heap. Their weaponry was more important than their numbers, their knowledge, even the radio with which they had undoubtedly communicated with Moscow.
He waited for seven minutes, then saw Brooke emerge from the snow-haze between the firs, and move towards him in a crouch. He slid into a prostrate position next to Waterford.
'Well?'
'OK. Sergeant Dawson's got our friends on the other imager. His count is thirteen, of course.' Brooke smiled. His breath was still hurrying from him. 'They're to give us fifteen minutes, no more. Dawson's doing some pinpointing for the others. I told them I wanted the radio operator alive, if possible. OK?'
Waterford nodded. 'That's about it. He's more likely to talk than the officer or the sergeants. OK, let's go.'
Waterford raised his head, and closed the thermal imager to his face once more. Satisfied, he slung the device at his back and moved the Heckler & Koch caseless rifle to greater accessibility across his chest. He gripped its bulky, almost shapeless form with both hands, climbed over the crest of the rise and began to descend. Brooke moved a few paces behind and to his left. They slipped from tree to tree as quickly and silently as they could. Waterford counted the yards they gained towards the shore, waiting for the moment of visibility. Twice he stopped to check the images revealed through the MEL device. Strange, firelit, patchy ghosts, forms that danced and wavered and changed shape.
He was suspicious of a small group hunched around each other, but not around any central image. No fire, no heater brewing coffee or tea — that was fifty yards away to the left of the group on which he focused. The radio might be there. In the freezing air around each body, each patch of warmth, each heater and cigarette, produced an image. But, in the middle of the group that attracted his attention, there was nothing.
Waterford believed that a grenade launcher or mortar sat, barrel elevated, in the centre of the three shifting flame-shapes he could see through the imager. If such a weapon was there, then it wouid have to be destroyed; its operators killed.
He motioned Brooke forward, pointing out his exact direction. Then he followed. They had covered perhaps a hundred yards of forward movement. Within another forty or fifty yards at the most, he would be able to see them. They would be able to see him. Ahead, Brooke moved with greater caution, with something almost comic in the way he lifted and placed his feet, held his rifle, hunched his shoulders. A cartoon robber. Waterford followed the same pattern of movement. Then Brooke suddenly stopped and whirled behind the trunk of a fir, rifle almost vertical, hand extended to warn Waterford. Waterford ducked behind the nearest tree.
Lower down the slope, the trees were heavy with snow. The wind was less fierce and insistent. Each time he exhaled, his breath moved upwards for almost a second before it was whipped away. He peered round the trunk. Brooke waved him forward. He scampered the few yards separating them.
'Well?'
'Laughter from the tea-party,' Brooke replied. 'Didn't you hear it?' Waterford shook his head. 'Trick of the wind. Catching the noise, I looked. Saw one figure at least. Off over there.' He indicated the gloom to their left and ahead of them with the barrel of his Armalite rifle. Waterford strained to see further into the soft, shifting fuzziness caused by the light and the blowing snow. Something moved, less distinct than the flame-shapes he could see through the imager. He put the MEL against his face. Yes. Two-no, three soldiers, at a brew-up. The thermal image of the heater was clear between them. The mugs of tea or coffee moved like lumps of burning coal. Blue, red, yellow. He swung the imager. A single figure, almost directly ahead, then two more, then the group of three around a cold, empty space, then paler, more distant images. One figure moving, corning closer. Probably the officer.
'To our right,' Waterford said. 'See anything? There — ' He pointed his arm like a sight. Brooke craned forward, then shook his head. 'OK, let me get closer with "What the Butler Saw" here, and then you move up behind me when I give the signal.' He checked on the moving man, and on the.group of three, then stepped from behind the tree. Ninety yards, no more than that now. He crouched and ran, dodging from tree to tree, pausing behind each trunk to listen for noises. Snatch of laughter or jocular abuse from the tea-party, a muffled cough into a mitten.
He rechecked the moving man. Closer, pursuing an orderly, steady progress. The officer. Now, pausing at the group, his flame-shape bending over something -
Had to be. Had to be rocket or grenade launcher, or a mortar. Laser rangefinder. Goodbye, MiG-31. Just in case, Waterford supposed, anything intolerably wrong occurred, they would have the option of-preventing the aircraft's removal. Did he hear their voices then, just as he turned to wave Brooke forward — ?
No. Nothing. He pointed the MEL imager back towards the rise, scanning along it, picking up Sergeant Dawson's kneeling, burning shape, using another MEL imager. Dawson would be watching him. He would see the first shots fired. Bright, burning blobs leaving one flame-shape, entering another. Strangely, though, the change in body heat of anyone killed would not show for some time.
Brooke looked and listened. He shook his head.
'Four of them now. No more than seventy yards. Next tree should do it. Ready?' Brooke nodded. They hurried to another fir, less than ten yards ahead of them. Brooke looked once more, and nodded.
'What is it? Can you see what they've got there?'
Brooke was silent for a time, staring through the short, stubby barrel of his PPE Pocketscope. The light conditions made its use necessary, though it was most effective as a night sight. He lowered the instrument and said, 'It looks like one of their ACS thirty millimetre jobs.'
'Effective range, eight hundred metres. Enough. Anything else?'
'Laser rangefinder, I'm pretty sure.'
'Right. Let's take them all out. Who knows, we might get the rest of them to surrender if we get the officer as well? You — work round that way. I'll outflank them on the other side. Wait until I start firing before you open up.'
'OK.'
Brooke moved off immediately, working his way from tree to tree, threading his path inwards and ahead, towards the shore of the lake. When he was little more than a shadow, Waterford raised the MEL Imager. Brooke's form burned in bright colours. He swung the instrument. Yes, Brooke was close enough. He moved away from the tree, working to his right for perhaps fifty yards until he was satisfied that he had chosen the optimum position.' Immediately he had finished firing, he would make for the position of the radio and its operator. The man was perhaps thirty or forty yards from him. He used the MEL to check. Yes, no more than forty. A straight run. Eight or nine seconds — say ten. How many Russian words can you say in ten seconds?
He checked the group around what he, too, could now see was an ACS 30mm grenade launcher on a tripod, with its round drum, like a heavy case of film, attached to the barrel. The laser rangefinder sat on top of the barrel. Waterford had no doubt that the elevation of the barrel would direct a grenade into the clearing where the Firefox sat.
The officer stood up, addressing a last remark. Someone laughed, a noise above the wind. The officer made to move away. Waterford gripped the ribbed plastic of the rifle's barrel, and fitted the stock against his shoulder. He squinted into the optical sight. He set the selector level for three-round bursts. There were fifty caseless, polygonal rounds in the magazine. He breathed in, held his breath. The officer moved slightly, straightening like an awakened sleeper, hands on hips. One of the others was looking up at him. It was the moment. Waterford squeezed the trigger of the G. 11.
The officer leapt across the barrel of the ACS, turning a half-somersault. Waterford felt the very slight kick of the slow recoil. The officer had taken all three rounds of the burst, fired within ninety microseconds. Waterford refocused on the man looking up from the ground, his
head not yet swinging to follow the leap of his dead officer over the grenade launcher. He squeezed the trigger once more. The man's face disappeared from the optical sight. He heard Brooke's Armalite open up on automatic, turned, and began running.
The radio operator was half-upright, staring towards the man running at him. Four seconds. He was already bent once more over the radio, his fingers flicking at switches, turning knobs. Waterford skidded to a stop twenty yards from the Russian, flicked the selector switch to automatic, and raised the G. 11. The remaining forty-four rounds left the rifle in a brief, enraged burst of noise. The soldier and his radio disappeared in a cloud of snow, the man lifted from his feet and flung away, the radio disintegrating. -
In the ringing silence after the rifle emptied itself, Waterford cursed. Twenty yards more, and the man would have been alive. But, he was opening a channel, about to inform Moscow.
'Damn!'
Now, they needed one of the Russians alive.
Brooke's rifle had stopped firing. Already, Dawson would be moving the rest of the SBS team down the slope at the run. Waterford slipped behind a tree trunk and waited. They needed one of them alive — but only one.
* * *
'It has begun,' Aubrey announced sombrely as he put down the headset and turned to Gant and Curtin. 'Waterford reports four taken prisoner, the rest dead. The killing has begun.'
'It began days ago!' Gant snapped at him, sitting on one of the camp beds, still dressed in his flying suit, Thorne was lying on another bed, holding a paperback novel above him, reading. He seemed uninterested in Aubrey's announcement, indifferent to the surge and swell of emotion between Aubrey and Gant. 'Days ago,' Gant repeated. 'It killed Anna, too.'
Aubrey glared in exasperation. 'You have already made your point most eloquently concerning Anna,' he remarked acidly.
'The hell with you, Aubrey — the hell with you. Anna's death is as pointless as those poor bastards spying on your people at the lake. Just — dead. Like that.' He clicked his fingers. 'Just like that. And what the hell for? Why didn't you tell the poor slobs you'd given up on this idea before you had them shot? Just so they could know what they were getting killed for!'
'Be quiet, Gant — !'
'The hell I will!' Gant stood up, as if to menace Aubrey. Curtin watched him carefully, analytically, from the other side of the room, near the radio operator's console.
'There is nothing I can do!'
'Then there was no point at all in it.'
'I can't admit that…'
'Because you can't live with it.'
'I have tried, dammit — I have tried…' Aubrey turned his back and walked to the window. Skogeroya's mountain roots were visible. Gulls were blown like scraps of paper over the grey water of the fjord. Kirkenes huddled on its headland. Another glimpse through the storm, but not the weather window that was still promised for later in the afternoon. Still promised, still on time. It could, they now said, last for as long as an hour. Aircraft could fly in it. 'Pointless,' he announced to the room without turning from the window. Then, as if called upon to explain something, he faced Gant.
'I — these events have been uncontrollable, Mitchell,' Gant sneered at the use of his first name. 'The original operation worked just as planned — yes, even to the unfortunate deaths involved. They were not planned, but they were taken into account. No one was forced to work… but these events — the past days — they are happenings outside the rock pool. Do you understand? Intelligence work takes place in a rock pool. In this case, the marine creatures there, in their sealed-off world, have been disturbed, flung violently about by a storm. There is nothing I can do. I am sincerely sorry about the woman's death, but I did not cause it. Yes, yes, she was blackmailed into assisting you, but I intended — just as you promised her — that she would be safe from her own people and from ours afterwards. I would have persuaded Buckholz to set her free. She could have returned to her lover — that foolish, tragic young man who was the real instrument of her death!'
He broke off, as if he disliked the pleading tone of his own voice. He hated the confession he was making, yet it forced itself upon him not so much because of Gant's accusations but because the guilt had returned. It was filling his chest and his thoughts. There was only one justification in the rock pool — success. But, he could not control these events, he had failed to tailor them to the parameters of intelligence work. Soldiers, equipment, a timetable, weather conditions, repairs, the very location of the Firefox — all had conspired to flood the calm rock pool and fling them all into the raging water. He could now only admit defeat, pack and leave.
'I do not need lessons in guilt from you, Major,' he said tightly, surprising himself.
'I wonder.'
'There's nothing more to be done. Acknowledge Waterford's signal.' He crossed to the charts on the table, shuffling through them. 'Curtin, if you please,' he said. 'Now,' he continued when the US Navy officer had joined him, 'the weather window is such as to prevent the Chinook making it all the way, in and out, from Bardufoss. Therefore, the two Lynx helicopters must be used. We must instruct Moresby to salvage what he can — a list of items from his own descriptions of the on-board systems must be drawn up. Everything must be loaded aboard and flown out the moment the weather clears. They will have perhaps less than half-an-hour before the first Russians arrive, probably in force…' His hand skimmed and dusted at the map as he spoke.
It was swift, decisive, false, and he knew it. The imitation of action. The retreat. 'Our people, those who can't be got on board the two helicopters, must move out to the nearest crossing-point into Norway… that's north-west. Waterford can be relied upon to organise everything in that area…'
He looked up. Gant's shadow had fallen across the chart. His knuckles were white as he leant on them. His face was bleak and angry; a remote anger, something Aubrey could not lessen or turn aside.
'Yes?' Aubrey asked in a voice that quavered.
'Send me in,' Gant said. His eyes did not waver, nor did he blink. There was no colour in his cheeks.
Aubrey shook his head, preparing a smile of quiet, grateful dissent to disarm the American. 'No — ' he began.
'Send me in.'
'Impossible, Mitchell — quite impossible…' He essayed the smile. It appeared to have no effect. Thorne had put down his paperback, and was sitting up against the pillows like an interested invalid. Aubrey sensed that Curtin, beside him, was divided in his opinion.
'Send me in.'
'I cannot risk you — '
'So now I'm valuable?'
'You always were.'
'I doubt it. Send me in the Harrier. Thorne can fly it — I'll fly it if you want to cut down on possible waste… if I can't get that airplane out of there before the Russians, then I come back in the Harrier… look, Aubrey. I can tell them which pieces to remove, which systems. I'm the only one who can!'
'The senior engineering officer is quite capable of doing — '
'The hell with you, Aubrey!' His fist banged savagely on the table. The paperweight on the sheaf of signals jumped to one side. Gant looked at his watch. 'You've got less than two hours to decide. I can be on-site in five or six minutes from take-off. That gives me twenty minutes, maybe more, before the Russians can even move. Tell them to get the airplane ready — find out if they can get it ready. Tell them I'm coming.'
'If they wait, they'll have no time to dismantle — '
'Is that what you want from this — bits and pieces? Is that what anyone wants? Washington? London? They want the airplane. They want the balls that comes from pulling this thing off. They don't want bits and pieces, they want the whole damn thing!'
'I just can't risk it-'
'You try. You'll find it easier than you think. It isn't your neck. Ask them if the airplane will be ready. Tell them I'm coming.'
'It's no more than a machine, Mitchell.'
'It always was. It's too late to remember that now.' He stared into Aubrey's eyes, and lowered his voice.
'Baranovich, Fenton, Semelovsky, Kreshin, Pavel — and Anna,' he whispered.
Aubrey's face whitened. From the corner of his eye, he saw Curtin's quick gesture to silence Gant. Gant's face remained unmoved.
'How dare you…' Aubrey hissed.
'Do it, Aubrey. Give the word. You said it — we're outside your precious rock pool. Give the word. Get that airplane ready for me to fly.'
Aubrey stared into Gant's eyes for a long time. Then, abruptly, he turned on his heel and snapped at the radio operator. 'Get "Fisherman",' he said. 'I want an updated report on the repairs. At once!'
* * *
'I'm afraid, Comrade Chairman, that we have to assume that your reconnaissance party was surprised and overcome. Which means, in simple terms, that they know that we know. We are each equally aware of the other.' Vladimirov buttoned his greatcoat and descended the steps of the Palace of Congresses. Andropov, in a well-cut woollen overcoat made in Italy, walked beside him. 'It's hard to grasp what the weather must be like up there,' Vladimirov added, deflecting the conversation.
'Mm?' Andropov murmured, watching the placement of his feet; his expensive shoes were protected by galoshes. Frozen snow crunched beneath Vladimirov's boots. Andropov looked up at the general. 'What did you say?'
'The weather-in Lapland,' Vladimirov murmured impatiently. He was angry with Andropov, though relieved to escape the claustrophobia of that glassed-in, underground tunnel of a control room for at least a few minutes.
'Oh, yes.'
Andropov's mind reached into the political future, towards failure, while his own thoughts anticipated at least a qualified success. The capture or death of the reconnaisance party was of little importance now. The weather conditions prevailing at the lake and along the border, controlled everything; defined action, timetabled events.
The strategy, the tactics, did not satisfy, even interest Andropov. Already, he was attempting to anticipate how anything other than complete success might be used against him, used to thwart his ambitions within the Politburo and beyond it. For Andropov, the weather, more than a limitation, was a prison, a promise of failure.