Soldier M: Invisible Enemy in Kazakhstan

by Peter Cave

  Kuloschow was aware of all this, and the knowledge both limited and channelled his possible courses of action. Osipov had unwittingly opened a can of worms, and that action had caused the ripples which had alerted Kuloschow. Now he, in turn, had felt forced to pursue the same delicate matter at a higher level. In this process of escalation, the ripples had become the very waves which Kuloschow recognized and feared. Hidden powers and men with dark secrets foresaw the threat and took steps to pull its teeth. Power put trust in power; strength relied on strength. The hidden men appealed to their oldest ally – the military. Through Major Osipov.

  Thus, in a bizarre twist of fate, the snake had taken its own tail between its fangs and bitten it. The circle was closed.

  Andrew awoke to the first grey fingers of light creeping into the gloom of the cave. He rose quietly, careful not to disturb any of the other sleepers around him. Stepping gingerly over the bodies huddled closely together for warmth, he walked to the mouth of the cave to survey the new morning.

  Although it was still bitterly cold, the storm had completely abated and the winds had dropped to little more than an erratic stiff breeze. A few flakes of snow fluttered down from the leaden sky, but otherwise it promised to be a calm, if not pleasant, day. Andrew luxuriated in a few precious and rare moments of privacy and peace before looking up into the mountains and their final objective, seeing with the eyes of a soldier but the soul of a poet. The soldier saw a forbidding landscape of ravines, crevasses and treacherous, icy gradients which muttered danger and death. The poet saw the grandeur of snow-covered mountains which sang of challenge and human triumph.

  Lost in such thoughts, the sergeant was completely unaware of Hailsham stepping up behind him.

  ‘Morning, Andrew. Enjoying the view?’

  Andrew turned, with a slight start of surprise. He forced a smile to his lips, masking his sense of disappointment that his private moment was over. ‘Something like that,’ he replied with a nod. He paused for a while as Hailsham’s eyes took in the same panorama. ‘What do you see out there, boss?’

  Hailsham did not even think about the question. ‘My job,’ he answered simply, but it said more about him than he could possibly have realized. He walked back to his bergen and returned with his binoculars and map. Taking up the binoculars he trained them on the distant mountains again, scanning in a wide sweep until he found the two reference points he was searching for.

  ‘How far now?’ Andrew asked. ‘Or perhaps more to the point, how long?’

  Hailsham shrugged. ‘In actual distance, probably no more than fifteen or twenty miles, as the crow flies. Trouble is, we’re not crows.’

  Andrew grinned weakly, still studying the same snowcapped mountains. ‘Maybe just as well,’ he observed. ‘This is more like penguin country.’ He was suddenly serious again. ‘Can we make it in the next forty-eight hours, do you reckon? We’re starting to get bloody close to our sell-by date.’

  Hailsham sighed deeply. He did not really need reminding that they were now a full day behind their planned schedule. Even though he had incorporated some leeway into his original plans, things were getting uncomfortably tight. Much more delay, and it would become impossible to complete the mission and get back to the rendezvous point with the Chinese in time for safe retrieval. Which would leave him with a difficult decision to make: whether to scrub the mission and beat a hasty retreat, or complete the job they had come to do and risk being stranded. Neither response would be very satisfactory – from either a personal or a professional point of view.

  Safar had now woken up and come over to join them. It was perhaps bad timing on his part as Hailsham turned the burning question of the moment on him: ‘How much longer?’

  At least he was optimistic, Hailsham thought with a slight sense of relief. With his usual irrepressible good humour, the Uzbek could not even see a problem. ‘I will take you to the next mountain plateau by evening,’ he promised with an easy smile. ‘From there you will be able to see the place you seek.’

  ‘And Kazakh guerrilla forces?’ Hailsham asked. ‘Are we likely to encounter any hostility?’

  Safar shrugged. ‘If we see them, you will kill them,’ he said firmly.

  Hailsham was grateful for the young man’s blind faith, at least. If nothing else, it went some way to alleviating some of his own doubts. For the moment, he preferred not to even think about the secondary problem of the official Kazakhstan Republican forces. Now that the storm has passed, it was surely only a matter of hours before helicopter patrols would be out looking for them. And Safar’s reference to a mountain plateau had been rather disconcerting, suggesting an ideal site from which to launch a search-and-sweep operation. It would not take much military planning to set up a landing and refuelling base in a dangerously short space of time. Just two choppers and a small support team of maintenance engineers would give them the capacity to scour an area of up to fifty square miles within the next two days. The next two vital days, a little voice inside his head reminded him, in case he had not already realized.

  Hailsham mentioned nothing of these fears to Andrew. Keeping some problems to oneself was one of the responsibilities of command. But his consideration was largely wasted, for the black sergeant had already identified and thought about the problem for himself. He had seen enough of the new morning to know that the weather was lifting fast, the heavy and low cloud cover already beginning to break up and melt away. In an hour or two it would be ideal flying weather. A reconnaissance mission was probably well under way at that very moment, with planes or helicopters already warming up on the tarmac at Alma-Ata. They might even be in the air already.

  It was not a pleasant thought to dwell on, Andrew realized suddenly, pulling himself up with a mental jolt. He glanced across at Hailsham. ‘So, what’s Safar’s verdict?’ he asked.

  The question snapped Hailsham out of his own gloomy thoughts. ‘Sorry, I keep forgetting that you don’t follow the lingo,’ he apologized, quickly passing on a rough précis of Safar’s information.

  Andrew assimilated it with a curt nod. ‘I guess the sooner we get going the better. Someone’s going to be coming looking for us – and somehow I don’t think they’ll be bringing us morning coffee.’

  Despite himself, Hailsham smiled. ‘You could be right,’ he conceded. ‘They sure as hell won’t be wanting to wish us a nice day, either.’

  In fact, if they had seen the sealed and coded orders which Major Osipov was at that very moment opening, they would have been as surprised and confused as he was.

  Osipov read the orders carefully for the second time, just in case there was some room for misunderstanding. There was none. They were as clear and as unambiguous as they were baffling. No matter how he tried to find some hidden rationale, he failed miserably.

  In fact, the instructions were so completely bizarre that Osipov might well have suspected some sort of trick. But they carried a top security coding and had come through the correct channels. Only one thing was certain: they had not passed through Premier Kuloschow’s hands on the way.

  Chapter 18

  For breakfast the troopers finished off the remainder of their high-calorie ration packs. It might be the last meal any of them got for some time. From now on they were on a strict survival regime, and would have to live off the barren terrain – a prospect which was not exactly promising. Thinking about it, Hailsham realized that none of them had actually noticed any signs of animal life since landing. Not that they had been specifically looking for it, of course, but it was somewhat disquieting, all the same.

  At least water was no problem, Hailsham thought. He supervised the operation of packing freshly fallen snow from the ledge outside into their canteens, replenishing their dwindling reserves. Although several of the men had urinated out through the mouth of the cave before bedding down the previous night, they had all shown the foresight and consideration to aim sideways and piss with the wind behind them. Apart from which, all were sufficiently versed in mountain su
rvival techniques to scoop up only snow which was pristine white. Rule number one, Hailsham thought to himself, recalling the phrase often echoed by ski instructors: Never eat yellow snow.

  Finally, they were all packed and ready to move out. The men gathered in a knot at the entrance to the cave, obviously expecting some sort of rallying call from the boss. Hailsham did not disappoint them. He looked at them calmly but firmly.

  ‘All right, let’s get ready to move out,’ he announced. ‘I’m not going to call a full battle order at this point, but I want you all to be ready for a shake-out at any time. Just in case the thought hasn’t already occurred to you, our two friends last night were obviously part of a guerrilla combat unit – and these particular natives are far from friendly. Whether they were a scouting unit or just a couple of stragglers, we have no way of knowing. But the strong likelihood is that there will be others in the vicinity, so keep your eyes skinned and your ears open.’ Hailsham paused for a second. ‘Is that clear?’

  ‘Clear as a virgin’s piss,’ the Thinker murmured, with a nod. It was a comment which evoked an immediate guffaw of derisive laughter from the rest of the men.

  ‘When the fuck did you ever meet a virgin?’ Tweedledee demanded. The Mancunian grinned at him benevolently.

  ‘A bloody sight more times than you,’ he countered. ‘The difference being that I didn’t leave ’em in the same state.’

  It was an effective put-down. Tweedledee lapsed into silence, having the good grace to know when he had been bested. He followed the others’ lead in shrugging on his bergen and running a final check on his SA-80. All weapons had already been cleaned and wiped free of overnight condensation as a matter of routine.

  ‘OK, let’s hit the road,’ Hailsham said. ‘And watch your steps out on that ledge. I probably don’t need to remind you that we had a little bit of snow last night.’

  As understatements went, it was a little bit like the guy in the lounge bar of the Titanic: ‘I know I asked for more ice in my drink, but this is ridiculous.’ The previous night’s blizzard had brought down well over fifteen inches of thickly packed snow. Although the high winds had blasted most of it over the side of the ledge, there were several places where an outcrop of rock, or a fissure, had provided somewhere for it to stick fast. Once started, heavy drifts had quickly built up, some of them as tall as a man and spread across the full width of the ledge. In fact, looking along the narrow route which they had to negotiate, Hailsham thought the irregular series of white mounds looked like a spaced-out sentry line of headless snowmen performing guard duty on the mountain path.

  He pushed such fanciful thoughts from his head, considering the series of snowdrifts as the obstacles they actually were. Although clearing them out of the way should not be too much of a problem, it would be time-consuming and not without risk. The ledge was totally exposed, and well within rifle range of many of the surrounding peaks, and someone equipped with a half-decent telescopic sight would be able to pick them off like ducks in a shooting gallery. If there were any more guerrillas in the immediate vicinity, Hailsham could only hope and pray that they did not have a Cyclops among their ranks. Or indeed that their armaments did not extend to the latest laser-sighted hardware.

  He was slightly surprised when Safar stepped outside the cave and turned back in the direction they had come from the previous night. Although there was no real reason for it, he had somehow expected that their route would be in the opposite direction. Double-checking, Hailsham reluctantly questioned the Uzbek guide’s sense of direction.

  ‘Why are we backtracking?’

  Safar pointed along the ledge in the opposite direction and shook his head violently. ‘No way on,’ he explained. ‘That way leads only to a sheer rock face. Impossible to climb. We must go back.’

  He seemed pretty certain, Hailsham thought. With a faintly resigned shrug, he fell into step behind the guide and began to pick his way carefully over the more obvious patches of ice and snow which glistened in the diffused light of the pale morning sun. Even though the ledge was well over two feet wide at this point, it was still hazardous and nerve-racking going. Some of the frozen patches were not apparent until the men actually trod on them. Two or three times in the first twenty yards, Hailsham felt one of his feet slide out on an invisible section of black ice, or skid on some loose shale beneath the snow which had been blown down from the main face by the savage winds. At such times, he could only recover himself, shrink back into the inner part of the ledge and marvel at the fact that they had ever made it through the full fury of the storm.

  Finally they reached the widest section of the ledge at the top of the chimney. Hailsham relaxed slightly, tensing again only when he glanced down the plunging fissure which they had previously climbed. In the cold light of morning, and in the aftermath of the blizzard, it was no longer a negotiable stairway between the two levels of this part of the mountain. Overnight, driven and packed snow had completely filled in the open section, turning it into a gleaming white chute in which all footholds had been totally obscured. It reminded Hailsham of a near-vertical bob-sleigh run. He glanced uncertainly at Safar, who was hovering uncomfortably around the mouth of the chimney.

  ‘I hope you’re not going to tell me that we have to go back down again,’ he muttered thickly.

  Much to Hailsham’s relief, the little Uzbek shook his head and pointed upwards. Following the line of his finger, Hailsham’s eyes took in a short, stiff but negotiable climb towards a long, ridged hog’s back which stretched, he estimated, about two miles to the left. Assuming that Safar intended to lead them around it, the route then gave way to a section of rugged and broken hillocks and cols of snow-covered rock and beyond that what appeared to be a sheer rock face. It was this eventual obstacle which gave Hailsham the most cause for concern. It was difficult to judge from this distance and with the naked eye, but at a rough estimate the vertical cliff was anything from seventy to a hundred and twenty feet high and looked treacherously glassy.

  Hailsham unslung his binoculars and lifted them to his eyes to take a more detailed look. It was not immediately encouraging. Seen in greater detail, the vertical rock face was indeed well over a hundred feet high, and as smooth as if it had been cleaved out with a single blow of some mighty axe. Apparently devoid of suitable hand or footholds, it looked impassable.

  Hailsham scanned along the wall of rock and ice to the east, eventually identifying another one of the odd, slashed-out ledges which seemed to be a fairly common feature of this stretch of mountain. It ran horizontally for perhaps half a mile or so, then started to slope up at an increasingly steep gradient, eventually forming a small pass which led around the end of a blind ridge. Beyond that, it was impossible to even guess what lay ahead, but Safar had spoken of a plateau and Hailsham could only assume that it lay immediately above the sheer rock face. Sudden, cataclysmic subsidence millions of years ago would account for both the cliff-like drop and the broken and rugged crags below it. Satisfied with his schoolboy geology and comforted with the probability of a safe and easily negotiable route, Hailsham lowered the binoculars and glanced across at Safar once again, nodding his agreement.

  ‘It looks OK,’ he conceded.

  The young man treated him to one of his cheerful grins. ‘No fuckin’ problem. Piece piss,’ he said proudly.

  Hailsham smiled to himself. The Uzbek was learning fast, he thought. By the time he got back to his own people, he would probably be able to cuss as fluently as a regular squaddie. Which might well come in useful in the future, since Tweedledum was probably at that very minute teaching the Uzbek women a few choice phrases of his own with which to enrich their native language.

  Andrew and Cyclops had moved over to join them. Cyclops jerked his thumb towards the little Uzbek guide. ‘Does Sherpa Tenzing here know where we’re going?’ he asked.

  Hailsham was still smiling. ‘No fuckin’ problem,’ he said, mimicking Safar’s broken accent.

  Cyclops regarded him blankly, fai
ling to understand the humour. ‘Ask a bloody silly question,’ he muttered to himself moodily, sloping away to rejoin the others.

  Andrew looked slightly worried, Hailsham noticed. There was obviously something on his mind. ‘Care to share it with me, Andrew?’ he said.

  The Barbadian looked uncertain for a few moments, finally shrugging. ‘I suppose I’m just a bit worried about our little reception committee last night,’ he admitted finally. ‘If the other direction from the cave is impassable, they can only have come down the route we’re about to take up.’ He broke off to nod up at the higher mountains. ‘And it can’t have escaped your attention that there are at least three places in that terrain up ahead which would make damned good positions for an ambush.’

  Hailsham’s face was suddenly serious again. ‘The thought had occurred,’ he said candidly. ‘But your concern is noted and appreciated. However, I don’t see that we have much choice in the matter. Do you? I’m always open to suggestions.’

  Andrew’s thick lips curled into a rueful smile. ‘We could always hop on the first bus home,’ he murmured. ‘Failing that, I’m afraid I don’t have much to offer.’

  Having been reminded of the problem, Hailsham was busy thinking it all through again. He was silent for a long time, running as many permutations as he could think of through his head. Finally he spelled out what few conclusions he had come to.

  ‘Everything rather depends on who those two were, where they came from and where they were going,’ he announced. ‘If they were scouts, then it’s a pretty sure bet that there’s a larger force somewhere up ahead of us. In which case, the chances of an ambush or an attack will depend on the strength and intentions of that force. And how they perceive us, of course. They might well consider it prudent to go into hiding and let us pass, rather than attack.’ Hailsham paused. ‘Right so far?’