by Chris Ryan
"Fuck me!" he muttered under his breath, as though immediately sensing a challenge, then louder: "I could go through those bastards in under a minute.
"I didn't think they'd trouble you much," Laidlaw said with a smile.
"So that," he continued, 'for the moment, is Apple. Now for Orange. Some of you have already been to Balashika, I believe."
I nodded.
"The second site is less precisely specified."
His next coloured diagram showed mainly open country, with a few buildings and fence-lines running across it.
"This is the southern boundary of the space control complex at Shchiolkovo, next door to the training area at Balashika. It will be for you to choose the exact location, but the objective is to place Orange within a hundred metres of the perimeter, so that its blast effects will cover the entire space complex. As some of you have seen, the training area in which you'll be operating abuts the complex. It should be relatively simple to bury the device at a suitable depth."
"Which is .. .
"A minimum of six feet, a maximum of twenty."
The guy seemed to know all the answers. Yet still I could not quite believe that what we were hearing could be for real.
"These CNDs," I said.
"How powerful are they? What damage will they cause if they go off?"
"Apple would destroy much of the centre of Moscow, and remove the Russian high command at one stroke. Orange would take out the space complex, removing Russia's ability to launch ICBMs with any precision. In both cases, blast damage would be limited to some extent by the fact that the devices would go off underground but it would still be extremely severe.
"In the city, the Kremlin would disappear. Every tunnel under Moscow would collapse. The entire Metro system would be destroyed. Escape tunnels and nuclear shelters the same. The city would come to a standstill. Within a two-kilo metre radius, I would not expect anyone to survive."
I took a deep breath.
"Between them, then, the devices would kill a few hundred thousand people. Possibly a million."
Laidlaw said nothing, so I went on, "This is all well and good, but we aren't trained to handle weapons of this kind. We won't have a clue about them, and unless we postpone the whole training programme there isn't time to learn."
"No bother," said Laidlaw.
"I gather one of your colleagues has been on a course in the United States."
"That's right," the boss broke in.
"In fact he's escorting the devices over. He's coming in with them this evening."
"Who are we talking about?" Whinger asked sharply.
"Steve Lime."
Steve Lime! The guy whose initial and surname spelt "Slime'.
Whose nickname was Toad. Jesus! This really freaked me. I glanced at Whinger. He hated the bastard as much as I did.
Toad! The colleague from hell.
I heard the CO saying, "He'll be going with you, of course.
You'll need him to look after the devices, and prime them when the time for insertion comes.
Toad had always been a pain to the lads on the squadron, but over the past few weeks, since he'd been posted to the States for a course in nuclear technology, he'd faded into the distance, as it were, and people had stopped beefing about him. It wasn't his fault that he was ugly, with oily skin and protuberant eyes; what bugged us was that he seemed to have no personality, and never got on with any of the guys. He'd go about with a smarmy smile on his face, but there was no warmth in it, and after a while you came to realise that he was wrapped up in his own affairs. At the same time, he was a real crawler, who'd lick up to anyone if he thought he could gain something from doing so.
How he had ever made it into the Regiment I could never understand. He had come from an unusual source the Royal Engineers where he'd worked in bomb-disposal; he was fascinated by explosives obsessed, almost and he spent hours tinkering with time-fuses and remote-firing gadgets.
He'd never tell you what he was doing, or have any real crack with the lads. He'd associate with the cooks and drivers rather than with the rest of us. It was no accident that he'd ended up as an instructor on the lock-picking wing, in a dim little world of his own. I know that all SAS guys, myself included, are loners to some extent; but at the same time everyone has to muck in, and Toad never did.
The idea of having to live at close quarters with him in the camp at Balashika was a fucking wind-up. In fact I found the whole scenario a nightmare.
I'd always hated the idea of nuclear weapons because they're bound to kill thousands of innocent civilians, including any number of children people who have no idea of what's going on. My career in the SAS has always emphasised the need for precision: what you might call 'economy of violence'. People imagine that guys in the Regiment have a cold-blooded, murderous outlook, and regard anybody as a potential target. It isn't like that. All our training is directed to making surgically accurate strikes on targets that have been properly identified.
For the moment, all I could do was grasp at straws.
"This tunnel under the river," I said.
"How do we know it's still open?"
Laidlaw checked his notes, gave a half-smile, and replied, "It was open on the fourth of April this year, and we have no reason to believe the situation's changed."
"That means someone's been down it. If access is that easy, how do we know that the KGB or some other security organisation isn't sitting in there, waiting for us to arrive?"
"The suggestion is that, once you've got Apple in position, you should block the tunnel on the river side of it by dropping the roof, as if there had been a natural fall."
"Not that easy if it's concrete."
"I didn't say it was concrete." A hint of irritation edged into the Scot voice.
"The tunnel is lined with brick, and it's not in the best of condition."
I nodded in token conciliation.
"Even if you do drop the roof, it is recommended that you brick the device into the tunnel wall."
"Hard to camouflage new mortar."
"That'll be up to you. I imagine there may be dust or mud that you can smear around."
Next Whinger came up with, "How do we get the devices on site?"
The CO looked at Laidlaw, as if asking permission to intervene, and said, "They'll travel out with you on the Here, sealed in Lacon boxes. They can be marked the same as ammunition. The weight will be about right. At the other end it'll be up to you to devise ways of moving them to their final positions."
"What if the Here goes down with the devices on board?" asked Pavarotti.
"What's the chance of a premature detonation?"
"None," said Laidlaw.
"Even when the two halves of each device are united, nothing can happen until the control box has been interrogated and primed by satellite signal. You need have no worries on that score.
Thanks, I thought, feeling crushed with a sudden terrific weight of responsibility. The boss was going on again about the paramount need for security; but although I could hear what he was saying I was wondering how the hell I could carry out the training mission with this knowledge in my mind. Every day we'd be dealing man-to-man with our students, instructing and encouraging them, and at the same time, behind their backs, we'd be plotting to annihilate them.
As the main briefing was coming to an end, the CO drew me aside and said, "One thing to remember, Geordie: whatever happens, don't let yourselves get involved in any live operation, like you did in Colombia."
"That was different, Boss," I protested.
"When Peter lifted, we had to do something about it."
"I know. But what I'm saying is that we don't want any repetition. Even if the Russians beg you to take on a job for them, refuse."
"Will do."
From the briefing we went into a close-up study of the two sites.
Laidlaw produced large-scale drawings with much detail on them.
"All this information is on compact discs, which
you can obviously take with you," he said.
"The discs are programmed so that if anyone tries to get into one without using the correct password, the contents are automatically destroyed. Nevertheless, you obviously want to handle the discs with the greatest care.
As soon as the brass had dispersed, I called the team together for a Chinese parliament. We got a brew on, and sat round discussing this amazing turn of events.
Rick remembered that, a few months ago, there'd been reports of the Russians losing a whole load of such devices.
"There was something on the Internet that I down loaded on to our Russian file," he said.
"Wait one, and I'll pull off a copy."
While he went to make a search, Whinger and I filled in the other guys on the layout of the Kremlin and the British Embassy, which had suddenly become of critical importance. I felt instinctively that because the Orange site was out in open country, we'd be able to hack it without too much trouble: it was Apple, right under the walls of the Kremlin, that made my neck crawl.
In a few minutes Rick returned with a couple of pages printed off his lap-top.
"Listen to this," he began, reading out his transcript. '"A respected Russian scientist and former adviser to President Yeltsin said on Thursday that during the 1970s, under orders from the KGB, Moscow had secretly developed suitcase nuclear bombs. The devices had an explosive capacity of one kiloton the equivalent of 1,000 tons of TNT. They could be activated by one person, and could kill 100,000 people. The bombs were designed for terrorist purposes. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, at least 100 such devices have remained unaccounted for."
Rick broke off, looked up and said, "Guess what this respected Russian scientist is called." When nobody answered,
he said, "Yablokov. We all know what that means.
Somebody gave a groan. Yabloko was one of the first words we'd learnt on our Russian course. It means 'apple'.
"Either it's a fluke," I said, 'or someone's having a laugh."
"Maybe someone nicked a couple of suitcases from the KGB, and we're just taking them back," Pavarotti suggested.
"There's a worse possibility than that," said Pete.
"If we're doing this to the Russkies, who's to say they haven't done it to us already? What if there's a CND nicely placed in the wall of the Thames, under the House of Commons terrace?"
"Yeah," Whinger agreed, 'and another under the guardroom, right here in camp.
"It's no bloody joke," I told him.
"Don't you remember that time in the seventies when the Finns stopped an articulated truck and found it contained the roof for a Mexi stay-behind shelter, destined for England? If the bastards were getting dug in in the UK then, why should they have stopped now?"
"Here's something else off the Net," Rick went on, scanning his second sheet. Again he read: '"Russia is regarded as an increasingly unreliable partner on international issues, because of the power of corrupt officials, crooked businessmen and organised crime, a US public policy research group declared on Monday. A panel of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said that the criminalisation of Russia's economy, if left unchecked, would make normal state-to-state relations with the country un viable It will become impossible for the United States to have traditional, satisfactory dealings with an emergent Russian criminal state"' He lowered the paper and said, "What about that?"
"That's it, exactly," I said.
"The stupid bastards in the Pentagon have got the wind up. They're bobbing like the shit-house fly, and want us to do their dirty work for them."
Once in Russia, we were going to need several days for site recces. Obviously we'd have to get the training course up and running; so no matter how fast we moved there was no way we could install Apple and Orange immediately. That in turn meant that the devices would have to be stored somewhere secure for the time being.
The idea of having them with us in that decrepit barrack block at Balashika seemed impossible, and I rapidly came to the conclusion that we must get them into the cellar at the British Embassy at the first possible moment. There, apart from other considerations, Apple would be practically on-site anyway, only a few hundred yards from its ultimate destination. The trouble was, the devices would travel into Russia with us on the Here and be off-loaded on the strip at Balashika. How could we account for the fact that we needed to transport heavy boxes into the centre of Moscow?
"Tell the Russians we've shipped in some new com ms equipment, at the Embassy's request," Whinger suggested.
"OK," I agreed, 'but what do we say to the Embassy?"
"That it's some of our own stuff. The security in the Russian barracks is shite, and the equipment's so sensitive that we don't want to leave it lying around while we're out working all day.
You pretty well told the Charge that already."
"All right," I persisted.
"Let's think about transport, then.
That's going to be a bugger. It looks to me as though we're going to have to whip in to the Embassy pretty often. We don't want to draw attention to ourselves by using a military truck or a Brit car. I hope Anna turns up trumps with those Russian vehicles she promised."
After a delay to the MAC flight from Nevada, Toad didn't reach Hereford until late that evening. I was having supper when I got a message to say that he was in the SAW. As soon as I'd finished I went over to the wing's special armoury and there he stood, dry-washing his hands. After a couple of months in the desert sun, anyone else would have had a really expensive tan, but all he'd managed was to turn a sickly yellow.
"Hi, Toad," I went.
"You made it. Where are your packages?"
"Right there." He half-turned to his right, pointing behind him, and there, sitting on a wheeled pallet by the wall, were four black steel trunks, each maybe two feet by four feet, and only a foot deep, with a couple of smaller boxes on top of them. The only markings, stencilled in white paint, said "A-I, A-2, A-R' and '0-1, 0-2, O-R'.
Jesus!" I said.
"So they come in kit form and have to be fitted together."
"Oh yes. Early portable devices were in two parts. Then, as technology improved, they started making one-piece models real suitcase bombs. Those are still around, but when something more powerful's wanted they've gone back to this modular design."
I was horribly fascinated by the thought of what the black cases contained and what they could do. But at the same time I couldn't help being irritated by Toad's proprietorial air. There was something in his gestures, in his attitude, which said, These are mine, and you can keep your distance.
"Everything all right?" I asked.
"Sure." He rubbed his hands some more.
"Good course?"
He nodded.
"Have you been briefed about the operation?"
"Not yet."
"Well, we're leaving for Moscow the day after tomorrow, so there isn't much time. Better come on up, and I'll give you the bones of it now. Then maybe you can brief me and Whinger on the devices in the morning."
We went up to the main briefing room, and I unlocked the safe in which I'd stored the site plans and the CDs. Toad hardly spoke as I went through them, but I knew that his quick mind was soaking in every detail.
"The Orange site is out in open country," I told him.
"Part scrub-land, part forest. As far as I can see, it's just going to be a hole in the ground: either one we find and adapt or one we dig ourselves. So I don't see much of a problem there. The tricky one's going to be Apple. This access shaft, in the courtyard, is at least twenty feet deep.
"Pulleys," said Toad.
"Spot on. I've thought of that. Those small titanium pulleys the Mountain Troop use for hoisting heavy machine guns and mortars up steep hillsides. The thing is, how robust are the devices? Can they stand knocks, or have they got to be feather bedded
"Oh no, they're pretty robust. You could probably drop one down the shaft and it wouldn't come to any harm." Toad frowned and t
hen added, "Cancel that. Better not drop it."
"But it couldn't go off, even if we did?"
"Not a chance. Until the two components are united they're inert. We'll have to take them in separately and couple them at the last minute."
He studied the plan for a minute, then asked, "What depth is the tunnel running at as it comes to the Kremlin wall?"
"We don't know. But it's a hell of a wall. Must be thirty or forty feet high, so the foundations have to go down some way.
"We'll need to get the SCR within ten feet of the surface."
"The SCR?"
"The Satellite Communications Responder. That's the unit which the satellite sends messages to and interrogates."
"How big is it?"
"Oh those small black boxes downstairs. Didn't you see them?
Like this." He held up his hands a foot apart.
"Can they be some way away from the device?"
"Sure. The connecting co-ax cables can be any length."
"Maybe there'll be an old ventilation shaft. Or maybe we'll have to bore into the tunnel roof."
"An auger, then."
"Good thinking. What else?"
Slimy though he was, Toad had his head screwed on, and in the morning he gave the whole team a good briefing. This time he started with the SCR, and described how it needed to be positioned with its antenna coming up to within three or -preferably two feet of the surface. The controlling satellite, he told us, would send it signals to check that the system was working. There was no chance of an accidental explosion, because detonation could only be achieved by a complex sequence of questions and answers, and confirmed by coded messages from the Pentagon.
"The SCR contains its own nuclear power source, which gives it an indefinite life," Toad said.
"One snag is that the generator contains radioactive fuel and could become a health hazard if it gets crushed or broken. That's why it's so heavy: it's encased in a lead jacket."
"What happens if the Russian security forces do an electronic sweep along the front of the Kremlin, up above?" asked Rick.
"Won't they detect it?"
"Almost impossible," Toad replied smoothly.
"For ninety-nine percent of the time the SCR's passive. It's just listening. Its response periods will be pre-set to times like three in the morning, when people are least likely to be about."
