Rebel Blast

by Don Pendleton

  Detailing his discussion with MacManus, he let the company executive know that he was out of his depth, but that his concerns would be noted. For any further action to be taken—should it be deemed necessary—it would be essential that he receive full company dossiers on the twelve members of the party. It was only when Billings hesitated, and had to be pushed, that he admitted they already had a security man on the team.

  “At what point were you going to mention that? Or were you only going to send eleven dossiers and hope that I couldn’t count?” the big Fed asked with as much sarcasm as he could muster.

  “I thought you might not want to get involved if you knew we had already taken precautions...at least, get involved so soon,” Billings replied hesitantly. “I mean, he’s good. He used to be a Company man—maybe you know him?”

  “I work for the Justice Department,” Brognola said with a sigh. “You watch too much TV, Billings. ‘Company man.’ Jesus. Just send me all twelve dossiers electronically, and make it quick.”

  Billings was a rattled man. They were in Brognola’s in-box within ten minutes, and he was already reading off the screen when he put a call through to Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, head of the cybernetics team at Stony Man Farm.

  The Farm was the covert home base of the Sensitive Operations Group, and America’s ultra-secret action teams Phoenix Force and Able Team. In addition to being high up in the Justice Department, Brognola was SOG’s director. That fact was known to very few people, one of whom was the President of the United States.

  “Bear, I have had a bad day already, and I need to you to run some checks and surveillance for me...” Briefly he outlined the situation as it had unfolded for him that day, ending with, “I need you to keep a watch on Chechnya and any activity inside the borders. It might be Russian, but maybe not. I just don’t know. It might not even be worth our time and trouble.”

  There was a pause and the big Fed had a sudden feeling that his last sentence had been way off the money.

  “Hal,” Kurtzman said carefully, “I don’t want to do anything to up your blood pressure, but before we talk any more, just take a look at the Russia Today channel...”

  Brognola had a screen mounted in one corner of the office. He picked up the remote and hit the on switch, skimming to Russia Today.

  He cursed softly. This day was getting worse with every minute.

  Chapter Four

  “In essence, you are very easy to control. En passant, that is always the problem with the Chechen people—they are easy to control because no matter how belligerent they may be as individuals, you get them in a mass and they have no direction and are unwilling to take orders. And so it is easy for any force, of any size, to take them down.

  “But I digress. You are easy to control in this situation because you are a small town in a position that is at once your strength and weakness. It needed just a little thought to see this and envisage a way in which to gain control simply and easily. Which I have done. All that I require now is your co-operation, which you will of course give lest you wish to be responsible for the deaths of many of your citizens. This you will not want. We will be gone from here when victory is ours, and any casualties left behind will be ones that you—and your behavior—will be held responsible for in the long term. Do I make myself clear?”

  Alexsandr Orlov ceased pacing up and down in front of the battered oak desk and turned to fix Aslan Bargishev with a glare that was part intense, part mad.

  Bargishev shifted uneasily in his seat. He wanted to tell this robe-clad maniac to shut up and get the hell out of his office. The two men flanking the door with AK-47s made him think better of that tactic. Bargishev was a simple man. If he wanted something, he took it. That had been how he had acquired Lev Maskhadov’s wife, and his business. Maskhadov himself had gone on a “business trip” and never come back. The local council had been next. The acquired business gave him money, which was a highly prized commodity in such a poor region. The fact that a simple grain importer could also bring in crates of ordnance with the bags of grains had stood him in good stead with those in the region who realized that in a State that was still in the early stages of growth, ordnance was the real currency.

  Bargishev had used his cunning, brains and oily charm to rise to the top. He had power, and he had the police chief in his pocket. The fact that the man was Mrs. Maskhadov’s moron of a brother and so fond of power that he would do anything he could to hold on to it was a strongly mitigating factor.

  If this man staring at him, waiting for an answer, was telling the truth, then at least the stupidity of his brother-in-law would no longer trouble him. But that was scant consolation for the rest of what this madman was spouting.

  “Forgive me, for I am a simple man,” Bargishev began, opting for the approach that usually gained him a foothold—and maybe some time, in this instance, to work out just what was going on—with any new acquaintance of use or power. “I am the humble mayor, so to speak, of this town. I sit here, on administrative business, when my phone starts to ring—both my phones start to ring,” he added, indicating his cell phone and the landline on his desk, “and I am told about vehicles coming into town, and men with guns. We do not have guns around here, sir, we are a peaceful community—”

  Orlov barked a harsh laugh that cut off the mayor midflow. “You think I’m stupid? You cretin, I have bought arms that have come through your hands. I am Chechen like you, I know what we do. Do not try to be clever, for you are not. Not as clever as you think. It was easy to take this town, and it will be easy for me to replace you while we are here. You have a simple option. Work with me, or never have the luxury of breathing to work again.”

  Aslan Bargishev was not the idiot that Orlov painted him. He was a liar, fraud, criminal, kidnapper, murderer and adulterer—the last being the real crime in this community—but he was not stupid. He hadn’t taken the calculated risks that he had to end up clumped over his desk with his brains dirtying the window behind him.

  “Fair enough. Tell me what it is that you want.”

  * * *

  THE TAKING OF Argun-Martan had been simple. Its strength and weakness was its isolation. In the shadow of the mountains, its one winding road was easily defensible, and by the same token easy to secure. This was a time of peace, or at least as much of a peace as ever existed in the region. The Russians who still held nominal grip over the State as a whole were smart enough to know that in this part of the country a lighter hand would yield better results. They were also smart enough to realize that their very presence was resented.

  So it was that the small party of Russian soldiers annexed to the town had their barracks on the northern approach. A cinder-block building that had been built in the prime of the Soviet regime, it had running water and little else, with any luxuries added since powered by a generator that ran from outside the building, and plumbed and wired in with more enthusiasm than skill.

  No Russian liked being given the Argun-Martan beat, despite the stark beauty of the land. The rising mountains, the cloud-spattered skies and the harsh roar of the river amounted to nothing when a person was freezing at four in the morning in winter.

  Nothing ever seemed to happen in Argun-Martan, either. The four soldiers who populated the detachment passed their tour of duty in a haze of homemade vodka. Their main goal seemed to be persuading the local prostitutes that they were not entirely bad and that their money was good.

  They were bored, slack and ripe for the taking. Orlov had ordered surveillance that revealed a routine of ineptitude. An advance party of one—Viktor Adamenko—had made short work of them. One had died while on sentry duty, a giant hand crushing the soldier’s cries in his windpipe, as a Tekna knife punched through his thick coat and into his kidneys. The dead man’s duty partner had been dozing in a truck when a face at the window made him jump. He was about to berate his compani
on for waking him when a hand punched through the glass and stunned him. Before he had a chance to react, the door was wrenched open and he was on the ground, tasting the bitter dirt and moss of the roadside. It was the last thing he tasted before the relentless stamping combat boot of the giant crushed his skull, and kept pounding until it was pulped.

  The remaining two soldiers had been easier. With no one left to raise an alarm or to react to one, Adamenko could make as much noise as he wished. He considered killing the generator first, perhaps to give them some notice that there was a situation, and to make some sport for himself. But no. Alexsandr had told him to make it quick, so that they could proceed according to plan.

  The giant sighed to himself. This was too easy, and he liked a degree of challenge with his killing. It made it interesting. No matter. There would be plenty of other Russians he could kill slowly.

  The cinder-block building had four windows and a front and back entrance. Adamenko opted for the front. He figured that these idiots were so slack that they would just leave it unlocked.

  He was right; he strolled into the block as though he was resident, into a fug of tobacco and marijuana smoke. Inside was messy, unmilitary. One man was asleep on a bunk, so comatose that even the sound of Adamenko’s entry did not wake him. The other was glassy-eyed in front of the plasma TV screen that was bolted to the side wall, transfixed as he watched three men take on a woman old enough to be their mother. She was yelling in Russian, cursing and urging them on. It just reinforced Adamenko’s view of the Russians as worse than animals. This behavior was intolerable in a soldier. He strode up to the soldier, unleathering his Glock and setting it to short bursts. He was standing over the soldier before the man looked up, glassy-eyed. His reactions slowed by many intoxicants, he opened his mouth to ask a question when Adamenko tapped a 3-shot burst into his chest. The soldier howled with pain and fell off his chair, rolling and screaming while the giant turned to the sleeping man. He would be no fun. Even the loud burst of gunfire had not roused him. With a sigh that was part frustration and part sadness that the military was so debased, Adamenko put the Glock to the man’s temple and tapped. The volley of three shots removed the sleeping soldier from this world and to a longer rest.

  Turning back, he saw that the soldier with the chest wounds had pulled himself toward his own bunk and was clawing for a weapon. Maddened by the pain, his duty spurred him toward what could only ever be an act of hollow revenge. He would soon die from blood loss, but he could at least try to take his killer with him.

  Adamenko walked casually across the room. Another tap took out the plasma screen, which was starting to annoy him. A flicker of a smile ghosted across his grim features. This man at least showed some signs of spirit. It was a redeeming feature that the giant would not have expected a few moments before.

  As the soldier rummaged desperately among the scattered junk on the bunk, Adamenko stood and waited. He could not grant too much time, as he was on a schedule, but he felt that he could at least give the man a chance.

  Finally the soldier’s hand closed on the only weapon he had strength enough to hold. One hand was pressed pointlessly to a wound in his upper chest, and in his free hand he held a Walther PPK, which trembled as he arced around to cover the giant. It took all the strength he had left, and he could not even spare the presence of mind to wonder why the giant had not fired on him.

  Adamenko smiled and raised the Glock slowly. “Go well into the next world,” he said softly in a guttural voice damaged in childhood by the gas. “You are a better man than I thought, and showed courage.”

  The soldier knew he was a dead man. He squeezed the trigger of the Walther, hoping that at least he could avenge himself in death. He mustered just enough strength to trigger the pistol. His shot went high and wide, his already shaky grip kicked back by the recoil, his arm flailing as his body was driven backward by the momentum of his killer’s short tap, the three rounds punching into his head.

  Adamenko looked around in the sudden quiet, grunting with satisfaction at a job well done, and soon left to rejoin the main group.

  With the scant military presence eradicated, it was a simple matter to proceed into the town. There were a few farms in the region, but these were scattered as it was not prime farming land. Most of the population worked either in trade within the town, or were involved in construction as the old Soviet-era buildings were renovated or pulled down to make way for new ones. Others had more shady occupations, but these for the most part also kept them within the confines of the town. It was a self-contained community, which was one of the reasons Orlov had chosen it.

  The convoy swept along the road, meeting no oncoming traffic. Just past the military post, just under three kilometers from the town itself, stood the junction box for the telephone landlines and the tower that had been erected to pick up satellite signals for cell phone networks.

  The box for the landlines was a huge construction, botched and repaired since Soviet days, and prone even in the twenty-first century to cutting out in a manner that would not have been accepted anywhere else in the west. At this point, where the west began to blend imperceptibly into the east, anything was possible and anything was acceptable as just another example of the old ways collapsing and new money failing to step into the gap. No one would notice or care if the landlines went down—at least not for some time—and no alarm would be raised. The cell phone tower was another matter. The newer technology was more reliable and more relied upon; it would soon be noticed if the service was unavailable.

  Orlov stationed two men with synchronized watches at the junction box and tower. Their orders were simple: at a specified time, set by the distance and speed to the town center, they were to cut the landline connections so that they were killed completely. The cell phone tower was to be temporarily disabled. Although he had no use for the landline, the phone and internet connections afforded by good cell coverage would be invaluable to Orlov’s plan. The two men were engineers, specifically trained for tasks of this nature.

  With communication to the outside world to be severed at a set point, and for as long as he deemed necessary, Orlov was content that he would be able to carry out his mission without any real problem.

  On the sweep into the town, they encountered no resistance or query. There were some curious glances from those they passed, but old habits died hard and people preferred not to die at all until old age claimed them. The hard years of Soviet dominance, and the equally unflinching eye of the Russian state since dissolution, had built in a tendency to look the other way.

  The town itself was an odd mix of buildings contained within an equally strange and irregular layout. The main street, around which the older part of town had been initially seeded, was composed of old Georgian-style buildings that were ornate and set in their own small grounds, with the retail and business premises crammed toward one end, their irregular skyline bespeaking of a hurried and unplanned construction. Gables, sharp angles and terraces made for a mix of shapes that were confusing to the eye, with the two hotels housed in the town set almost dead center. One was little more than a bar glorified by rooms above that were furnished in a most basic style. The other was the luxury hotel—maybe so by Russian rural standards, but distinctly old-fashioned and almost nineteenth century by Western European measure—in which the mining party was housed.

  If they hoped that Orlov did not know of their presence, they were hoping in vain. His target town had been picked for some time, but his schedule had altered to accommodate intel reports. Their presence, even without knowledge of what they had discovered, would only add weight to his demands.

  Beyond this, the town sprawled out a little into utilitarian and faceless Soviet blocks, drab and characterless dwellings interspersed with industrial units that were now dormant and semiderelict, livened only in places by the attempts of entrepreneurs to rebuild and remodel. Even these efforts dwindled
to a desultory end, with the town not so much ending as sputtering to a disinterested halt.

  After Adamenko had whetted the edge of his anger with the police chief, it had been simple for Orlov to dispatch men to each end of the town to secure observation posts. Meanwhile, he took the rest of his men to the administrative center of the town, where his consultation with the mayor had been as satisfactory as his knowledge of the corrupt businessman had suggested.

  Having left instructions with the mayor as to how the people of the town should be informed of the changes, along with regulations concerning the curfew and restrictions he would now have imposed, Orlov deputed two men to accompany the official as he fulfilled his instructions.

  So far, all was going to plan. It had been easier than he had supposed, and had more than fulfilled his hopes for success. He was a suspicious man and took this as an omen.

  Of course, he had told the mayor only part of his plan. The idea of setting up Argun-Martan as an independent state within Chechnya as an example for others, so that his message could be spread, was the idealistic side of his scheme. The other aspect would only alarm the mayor, and so, by inference, the people of the town. Orlov did not want this; at least, not yet.

  There were matters that he had to attend to first, not the least of which was to establish communications with the outside world. His men carried old-fashioned walkie-talkies, which in the mountainous region proved more reliable than other, satellite-based comm systems. He deputed a man to send messages to the men at the junction box and cell phone tower: the jamming system on the tower could be lifted and connections restored.

  Satisfied now that things were as he wished them at this stage of the operation, he took Adamenko to one side.

  “My friend, it is time for us to visit the hotel and the interesting guests who reside there.”