Soldier M: Invisible Enemy in Kazakhstan

by Peter Cave

  Andrew fell into step beside Hailsham. ‘What the hell is this all about, boss?’ he hissed in Hailsham’s ear.

  Hailsham shrugged, lacking an adequate answer. ‘For the moment, it appears to be food,’ he muttered obliquely.

  The smell of hot, spicy stew and freshly brewed thick, black, Turkish-style coffee proved irresistible as they neared the camp. Hailsham allowed himself and his men to be ushered into one of the tents, where they squatted down on a soft carpet of thick army blankets and waited for the food to be served. The interior of the tent was cosy and warm, heated by flexible metal pipes which carried hot water from the petrol stove outside.

  It was all very efficient, Hailsham thought – suggesting that the whole operation had been fully equipped and prepared for a full-scale mission. After making sure that they were comfortable, Captain Yascovar made his polite excuses and left, promising to establish the radio link while the meal was being served. The men were left alone, and, glancing outside the tent, Hailsham could see no sign that any sort of guard had been posted. On the face of it, at least, Yascovar’s assurance that they were not prisoners seemed to be borne out.

  Cyclops came into the tent to join them. He grinned at Hailsham sheepishly. ‘I hope you don’t think I was collaborating with the enemy, boss, but I was bloody hungry,’ he said. ‘Anyway, there’s been no attempt to interrogate me in any way, and they didn’t even insist on taking my handgun.’ He patted his holstered Browning High Power to back up the statement. ‘So I figured the best way to play it was to just go along with them until you got here. I hope I did the right thing.’

  Hailsham nodded, putting the trooper at his ease. ‘That’s what we’re all doing, until I can find out exactly what’s going on. They’re trying to patch me through to Lieutenant-Colonel Davies at the moment.’ He turned to face Andrew and the others. ‘So, gentlemen, until I have some hard information, you might as well keep your questions on ice. I suggest you try to relax and make the most of the hospitality which is being offered to us.’

  The speech effectively pre-empted the barrage of questions which Hailsham had been expecting – exactly as it was supposed to.

  ‘So what’s the bloody grub like?’ the Thinker asked Cyclops.

  ‘Just like your mum used to make,’ Cyclops assured him.

  The Thinker grimaced. ‘Shit. My old lady was the worst fucking cook I ever knew. The only reason I joined the bloody army was to get some decent scran.’

  It was a wild enough exaggeration to raise a smile all round. The mood was almost jovial by the time two soldiers eventually turned up, bearing trays of hot stew with great chunks of bread, proper eating utensils and a big pot of coffee and tin mugs.

  The Thinker regarded the food with obvious relish. ‘This is as good as the bloody Ritz,’ he muttered. ‘Pity about the waitresses, though.’

  The soldiers put down the trays and left. Hailsham and his men set about the food voraciously. They had all forgotten how hungry they actually were. The metal plates were all wiped and licked clean by the time Captain Yascovar returned.

  ‘Major Hailsham? Everything is ready for you now,’ he announced.

  Hailsham jumped to his feet expectantly. At last he might get some answers he would understand, he thought. He followed Yascovar outside and across to the nearest helicopter.

  The craft’s radio officer handed him a pair of earphones and a mike, then stepped into the background and stayed there. It seemed to Hailsham that he was hovering about not so much to monitor the conversation as to be ready to offer help if it was needed. In any case, he was only a private, and it was unlikely that he understood much English. Not that Hailsham had expected privacy anyway.

  Slipping on the headset, Hailsham thumbed the mike button. ‘Hello, this is Major Mike Hailsham, 22 SAS. Reporting for briefing as ordered.’

  Despite the distance of the radio link, and the fact that it was being patched through at least one intermediate base, Barney Davies’s voice was unmistakable.

  ‘Mike? I expect you have a question or two.’

  Hailsham laughed cynically. ‘That’s a fucking understatement, Barney, and you know it,’ he said. ‘Here’s question one for starters. What the fuck is going on? Question two – is this supposed to be an open conversation? I have visitors.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that, Mike,’ Davies assured him. ‘This link is scrambled at this end and patched through GCHQ. There’s full and open cooperation between our government and the government of the Kazakhstan Republic. Over and above that, it should be safe from outside ears. As far as you are concerned, Captain Yascovar is as fully briefed by his people as you’re about to be.’ Davies paused for a second. ‘Oh, and be nice to him, by the way. He’ll probably be a general by tomorrow.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Hailsham hissed, making the obvious inference. ‘It really is the Night of the Long Knives, is it?’

  ‘Now who’s dealing in understatements?’ Davies asked. ‘A three-way hotline between Moscow, Alma-Ata and London has been buzzing almost continuously for the past thirty-six hours, the Chinese delegation has stormed out of the Hong Kong talks and is threatening a total boycott, the Kazakh Republican military chief Osipov is under close arrest, and there are some very embarrassing questions being asked in the House of Commons. Yes, I think one might reasonably say that the shit has well and truly hit the fan. Does that answer your question?’

  ‘Eloquently,’ Hailsham said. ‘So where does that leave us?’

  ‘Surprisingly, smelling of roses,’ Davies told him. ‘Having tipped over the slops bucket, the Kazakh authorities seem quite anxious to have us help clean up the mess. However, the Foreign Secretary has insisted I point out that you do have a choice.’

  ‘Choice?’ Hailsham queried. He did not quite understand.

  ‘You can abort this mission right now,’ Davies said, spelling it out for him. ‘If you do decide to pull out, Captain Yascovar will make sure that you are all safely escorted back to Alma-Ata and transferred to a neutral base. No questions asked, no complications. However, if you want to stick around, then the Kazakhs would appreciate your help. They’re not too experienced in this sort of situation.’ Davies paused for a few seconds to let it all sink in. ‘Well?’ he demanded eventually. ‘Do you want out?’

  Hailsham almost exploded into the mike. ‘No bloody way,’ he said vehemently. ‘No way am I prepared to abort this one, Barney. Not now. I’ve lost three men, and I’ve dragged the others through hell and out the other side again.’

  It was the answer which Lieutenant-Colonel Davies had fully expected. Knowing Hailsham as he did, it could hardly have been otherwise. ‘That’s what I thought, Mike,’ he said. ‘But I was asked to give you the choice, and I did.’

  ‘So, when are you going to fill me in with the details?’ Hailsham asked, growing impatient. ‘How much more do we know about this mountain complex and what we might face up there?’

  There was a long pause at the other end as Davies assembled his thoughts. ‘Right, are we sitting comfortably?’ he asked eventually. ‘Then pin your ears back, Mike. This gets kind of complicated.’

  Another, shorter pause, and Barney Davies began to launch into a story of horror, intrigue, conspiracy and double-dealing that soon had Hailsham’s head spinning.

  ‘Well, now you know as much as I do,’ Captain Yascovar said, as they walked back towards the tents from the helicopter. ‘It’s all rather incredible, don’t you think?’

  Hailsham let out a derisive grunt halfway between a laugh and a snort. ‘What I find incredible is that all this could have remained buried for so many years,’ he muttered.

  ‘Simply because no one wanted to dig for the truth,’ Yascovar pointed out. ‘Until your mission stirred things up, nobody had asked any questions. Once they did, of course, the whole thing snowballed.’

  ‘But what the hell were our various governments doing all that time? American intelligence … our own security services?’

  Yascover shrugged. ‘Th
ey didn’t call it the Cold War for nothing, Major. The Iron Curtain was a lot thicker than many people ever realized. And don’t forget that it worked both ways – or would you have me believe that neither British or American scientists were involved in warfare research projects during those thirty years? I don’t know if you’re aware of it, Major Hailsham, but the rumour still persists throughout the Eastern bloc that AIDS was originally developed by the Americans as a biological weapon for use in Vietnam.’

  Hailsham smiled thinly. ‘And we thought it was the Russians in Afghanistan.’

  ‘So you see,’ Yascovar went on. ‘The world continues to hold unpleasant mysteries and secrets. People such as you and I are always the last to know, Major.’

  Hailsham nodded. ‘You make your point, Captain.’ He stopped in mid-stride, turning towards the Kazakh officer. There was a slightly embarrassed look on his face. ‘Look, do you think we could start again?’ He held out his hand.

  It was more than just a conciliatory gesture. Barney Davies had made it clear that they were to work together. Although each officer would be responsible for his own men, the planning and execution of the raid on the Phoenix complex was very much a joint mission. And, in typical SAS fashion, rank was virtually suspended. To all intents and purposes Hailsham and Yascovar were equal.

  The Russian took Hailsham’s hand in a firm grip. This time, there was real warmth, even friendship, in their handshake.

  They began to walk on towards the tents again. ‘So, when do we move in?’ Hailsham asked after a while.

  ‘Just before first light tomorrow,’ Yascovar answered him. ‘I thought that the element of surprise might work in our favour. The complex was designed to withstand the full fury of the elements, and it is heavily protected against attack. Breaking into it will not be easy.’

  Hailsham nodded.

  ‘Which is why you and I have a busy night ahead of us. There’s a lot of planning to be done,’ Yascovar added.

  Both men were silent again for a while. Finally Yascovar said: ‘By the way, what did happen to your SAM system, Major?’

  There did not seem much point in trying to lie. ‘We had to abandon it,’ Hailsham said. He eyed Yascovar cautiously. ‘Look, it was unfortunate, but we thought we were under attack.’

  Yascovar dismissed the matter with a wave of his hand. ‘Such things happen,’ he said quietly. ‘As I said earlier, Major Hailsham – we are soldiers. We leave politics to the politicians.’

  ‘Yes,’ Hailsham murmured thoughtfully. The matter ended there.

  Chapter 22

  Captain Yascovar seemed to have given himself the shitty end of the stick, Hailsham thought initially. By opting for a frontal assault on the main body of the complex, he was exposing himself and his men to the full fury of the facility’s defensive shield. Their actual knowledge of those defences was sketchy, to say the least, but even their limited intelligence suggested that it posed an awesome threat.

  The research building itself, built six subterranean levels deep into the very bedrock of the mountain, was constructed of steel-mesh reinforced concrete. The top eight feet which actually showed above the ground was of even more robust construction, a windowless and virtually featureless block of eighteen-inch-thick concrete built around a cage of sheet-metal plating. The only indication that the structure was anything more than a solid and inaccessible monolith was the single access port at ground level, designed like a bank vault door and controlled only by sophisticated electronic coding from deep within the lower levels.

  All four sides of the roughly square building were protected by video-sighted 7.62mm heavy machine-guns and the slightly domed roof was virtually bomb-proof. Externally an area of somewhere in the region of thirty square metres in the immediate vicinity of the access port was heavily seeded with electronic proximity mines, controlled by well-protected sensors built into the structure of the roof. Internally the facility boasted a complement of thirty-two well-armed security staff. On paper, the complex seemed impregnable.

  Yet that was what Yascovar had set himself and his men up against. Compared with that task, his own job was a doddle, Hailsham told himself. Breaking into buildings was, after all, the SAS’s stock in trade.

  Seen in this light, Captain Yascovar’s plan made logical sense, Hailsham realized. A full-scale frontal assault would give the security forces something to think about while the real invasion took place. It was all about having the right men for the right job – and having them in the right place at the right time.

  Curiously enough, it was the very design and structure of the complex which gave it its one weakness. For the sheer size of the subterranean building demanded a vast intake of fresh air which had to be sucked in, filtered and purified and then pumped around the labyrinth of laboratories, offices and corridors. Three massive intake vents higher up in the surrounding mountains took care of this inflow, although all of them were armoured and protected against explosives. Even if access could have been effected, there would still have been no way through the whirling intake turbine blades, or the impassable wall of filtering and pumping machinery.

  But air sucked in also has to be pumped out again – and it was here that the original designers had created the single, vital flaw in the system. Perhaps it had been just an oversight, or perhaps a simple and human psychological error which suggested that an inlet demanded more security than an outlet. It did not really matter either way. The important thing was that the single exhaust vent for the entire complex was protected only by a grille of half-inch metal bars. And it was here that Hailsham and his men would make their entry.

  The first faint rays of the early morning sun glinted on the whirling rotor blades of the two helicopters as they lifted from the plateau and rose towards the mountains.

  The Hind-As were designed for a crew of four and a passenger capability of eight fully equipped combat troops. Packing Hailsham, Cyclops, Andrew, Tweedledee and the Thinker in on top of Captain Yascovar’s complement of eighteen men was a bit of a squeeze, but then they had not been expecting to fly Ambassador Class. Clad as they were in heavy NBC suits and S6 respirators, comfort was hardly a matter for consideration.

  Cyclops glanced at Tweedledee. ‘Bet you never thought we’d be going in by private air-taxi service,’ he said, his voice distorted and blurred by the respirator. ‘Makes you feel like a VIP, doesn’t it?’

  Tweedledee grunted. ‘All I feel like is a bloody Star Wars trooper,’ he said.

  Cyclops nodded. ‘Yeah, you look like one,’ he confirmed.

  It was time for last-minute orders. Hailsham pulled his mask away from his face so that he could speak clearly.

  ‘Right. Now the important thing to remember is that once we do get inside that complex there must be no wild and indiscriminate shooting,’ he reminded them all. ‘Aim specifically and directly at human targets only – and make sure that there is no scientific equipment of any sort either in or behind your line of fire. I don’t need to point out that there could be anything in there, from bacteriological agents to nerve gas. We don’t know what’s in there, or how deadly it might be. The last thing we can afford is to go spraying bullets around the place. If you’re in any doubt at all, hold your fire. Dive for the nearest protection and wait for someone else to cover you from a safe line of fire. Understood?’

  The men nodded gravely, all well aware of the potential horrors which might greet them once they reached the laboratory areas.

  ‘And secondly, don’t open fire at all unless fired upon,’ Hailsham went on. ‘We want to make this assault as much of a surprise as possible. Hopefully, Captain Yascovar and his men will be keeping the security forces well occupied on the complex perimeters. We want to keep them from knowing we’re sneaking in the back door for as long as we can.’

  A slight lurching feeling in the pit of his belly told Hailsham that the Hind-A was starting to go down again. It had been agreed that the two choppers would swoop in low, dropping Hailsham’s team off about fifty
yards below the complex before climbing again to circle round and make a final approach down from the mountains. If no one had already heard them coming, it might at least suggest that the attack was from one direction only, and focus the defences at a single point. Even if this small advantage was only a temporary one it would help – and they needed all the help they could get.

  Hailsham slipped his respirator back in place and checked it. He glanced over at Yascovar, jerking one thumb into the air. Reaching up, Yascovar punched a control button and the bottom section of the horizontally divided door at the front of the passenger cabin began to drop down like a ramp. With another sickening lurch, the Hind-A sank to within four feet of the ground and hovered just long enough for Hailsham and his men to drop over the side and into the thick snow. Then the helicopter was off again to join its companion in a smooth and almost unbroken movement.

  Hailsham watched them both climb and wheel away for a few seconds before returning his eyes to the ground. He unfolded the sketched plan of the complex he had been carrying in his hand and studied it quickly. Tapping Andrew lightly on the shoulder, he pointed up ahead to the right, where the exhaust ventilation shaft could be seen as a black, igloo-shaped hole against a white background. Pausing only to check their weapons, the troopers began to plough through the snow towards it.

  The sound of heavy machine-guns opening up from higher up the mountain made Hailsham’s head snap up, a curse forming on his lips. The dark mound which had been all he could see of the complex was now twinkling with flashes of light as the roof-mounted machine-guns spat out a hail of fire at the approaching helicopters.

  ‘Damn!’ Hailsham grated out, realizing that their chance of a surprise attack was gone. He had hoped to get at least as far as the ventilation shaft entrance before the action started. Obviously the complex boasted an efficient early detection and warning system. They had probably picked up the approach of the helicopters at a range of a mile or more. Hailsham’s heart sank. If their surveillance was that good, then they had probably monitored the close approach of the drop-off helicopter as well. In which case, it would not take a genius to figure out the probability of a primary assault force. Or indeed roughly where they were likely to be.