by FARMAN, ANDY
The house, when it came into view, was in darkness and she paused for a few minutes to listen, realising that ears were at least as important a sense as the eyes at night, before moving around the house in a circle. Once she reached the side of the house where the old ladies herb garden lay she paused again, waiting for the moon to appear through a gap in the scattered cloud covering in order to look at the well-tended and raked surface for boot prints, there were none. Surely anyone surrounding and then searching the place would have walked across it at some point, wouldn’t they? Off in the direction of their nearest neighbour a dog barked, its sound carrying across in the nights stillness, Patricia couldn’t remember hearing that before and peered in the direction of the disturbed canine but the other farm wasn’t visible from ground level.
Inside the dark house she paused inside the kitchen to listen, but found that her heart rate was so high the coursing blood in her veins was inhibiting her hearing and she had to wipe the sweat off her palms, rubbing them against the material of her jeans whilst holding the Beretta one handed, before fishing out a pen light.
She had experienced problems with this back in Scotland, holding the weapon with sound suppressor in one hand and the torch in the other before finding what Pc Pell had called ‘her girlie solution’, resting the suppressor on her other forearm whilst holding the penlight cack-handed.
Trying to remember all she had been taught she checked each of the ground floor rooms, but all appeared in order, the signs of a search were not evident. Keeping to the edge of the stairs to minimise the risk of creaking floorboards she made her way upstairs. The first bedroom was Caroline’s, and Patricia had to put the pen light between her teeth in order to turn its handle before resuming her stance. The penlight revealed an unmade yet empty bed with the sketchpad lying open upon it.
It wasn’t what Patricia had expected to find and she remained motionless for a second with a bemused expression on her face before entering the room and kneeling to check under the bed. She didn’t know what she expected to find but she didn’t know where the hell else her pilot could be. No USAF pilots were hiding beneath the springs and she stood, the light from the penlight illuminating the sketchpad as she did so and Patricia did a double take. There was a full length nude study of the Russian girl, impressive in its capturing of Svetlana’s features and of the expression on her face, it was also extremely graphic, the pose was obviously post coital but Patricia’s attention was snatched away from it as the distant barking sounded once more. Stepping to the window she opened the curtains to see that their neighbours lights were on, which in itself was a very unusual event for a farm at this time of night, but also there were the headlights of at least three vehicles beside the building too.
She left Caroline’s room at a dead run, turning along the corridor to the back of the house and racing for Svetlana’s room. She didn’t slow when she reached it, just barged the door open before stumbling to halt inside. Svetlana and Caroline were together on the bed, their faces turned towards her in alarm before the tangle of naked limbs hurriedly unravelled. Patricia ignored the nudity and the confirmation of a relationship she had only suspected a few minutes before on seeing the sketch pad, her pilot was ashen faced and seemed to be trying to find the right words but Patricia no time
“The militia are searching all the farms…get dressed!” Caroline opened her mouth to speak but closed it again as she realised what she was about to say was as inane as it was futile. Svetlana was already moving, pulling on underwear and jeans, so Caroline followed suit.
The commotion had roused the elderly couple who had appeared on the landing outside their room and Patricia managed to make them understand that they could not switch on the lights and that herself and the other two young women were leaving, she then retrieved the satellite phone from its hiding place in the orchard, sending a brief sitrep before placing it in a rucksack.
Although their few belongings had been kept packed for a quick exit should it be necessary, it still took several minutes for them to gather downstairs. Caroline removed the laptop from its hiding place and replaced it with a bottle of good vodka, as an excuse for the hiding places existence if a search should discover it. Svetlana came down last, having ensured that there were the odd items left in the bedrooms and bathroom that would reinforce the farmers story that a niece and her friends from Moscow had been staying, but had decided it was safe now to return to Moscow, and had left the previous day. She kissed first the wife and then the farmer, wishing them well and promising to visit once the war was finished. For her part, the farmer’s wife hugged and kissed all three before shooing them out into the darkness with a prayer for their safe journey.
Svetlana took from Patricia the Beretta and also the lead, walking point as they headed back the way the American had come. She set a fast pace that had them breathing hard by the time they reached the van and the, by now, extremely anxious driver.
Once they were concealed within, their contact pulled on a pair of PNGs and off they moved, back towards the forest, but only for a few hundred yards. In the dark confines within the van they were alarmed at the sudden stop the van made, followed by its reversing fast and then turning sharply. The smooth surface of the road gave way to ruts and holes as the contact backed into a field and concealed the van behind a high hedgerow before switching off the engine.
The Russian and the USAF aircrew had no way of seeing out of the vehicle and could only sit in the darkness with beating hearts. At first they could hear nothing at all, just the sound of their own breathing, but then came sound of engines and the clank of tracks on the road surface.
A pair of BMP-1 fighting vehicles passed by the field without stopping and then came a third BMP leading a convoy of three trucks, which also drove by without stopping or slowing.
Further down the road the leading pair turned off the road, demolishing a section of fence and driving across the crops so laboriously planted and tended by the farmer and his wife, to take up positions where they could intercept anyone fleeing from the farmhouse.
After a few minutes their contact left the van to listen, but apparently satisfied that there were no more militia following on he returned to the cab and the journey resumed.
Arkansas Valley, Nebraska, USA.
An apologetic marine lieutenant shook Henry Shaw into wakefulness, but at least he had the decency to have a mug of java in his hand.
There was no contact yet between the Red Army and the forces charged with denying them easy access to the autobahns, and neither Equalizer nor Guillotine had reached critical mass. Henry would need his strength and wits about him when that happened. Accordingly he had taken the opportunity to return to his bunk after the President, under protest, had been ushered off to bed by his doctor for a minimum four hours sleep. The Presidents’ blood pressure was sky high prompting an immediate ban on coffee, and the prescribing of beta blocking drugs. The doctor was an admiral and didn’t give a damn that his patient was the leader of the free world. He had left his private practice and put on the uniform again to replace his predecessor, killed in Washington DC like so many thousands of others. The President had tried charm and bullying, all to no avail in his attempts to get the physician to leave him alone.
In the end, when the coffee embargo had been declared the President had asked the admiral outright why he was so persistent in making his life difficult.
After a moment the admiral had answered.
“Perhaps I’m just pissed because I voted for the other guy last time around, or maybe I just think your wife is too nice a lady to be a widow….but to get back to the business at hand Mr President, if I see you with coffee one more time I will dump the entire stock down the John, and throw whichever guy or gal who gave it to you in the brig.”
Concerns in the shelter were naturally for the President’s health and welfare, but becoming collateral damage in the caffeine conflict was truly alarming for some of the dedicated worshippers of the little brown bean.
The mug in his hand was at least an assurance that the Java tap had not been turned off in the intervening hours.
“Mr Jones is waiting for you in the conference room, sir.”
Henry straightened up, rubbed his eyes and ran a hand over his chin. There were the first signs that he should shave again at the first opportunity before the heads of the bristles that were just beginning to appear had a chance to develop into a five o’clock shadow.
General Shaw had never had the good fortune, or looks, that had early bristles looking ‘cool’ on him, they always appeared more disreputable than ‘designer’.
Terry Jones looked up at the electronic buzzing that heralded the arrival of the United States Marine Corps top soldier.
“Good morning Mr Jones.” Henry mumbled, a portable electric shaver restoring order for the time being.
“Pardon me but a chin follicle massacre was required.”
He silenced the device with a flick of a switch on its side and ran fingertips over his lower face, inspecting the results.
“I remember the very first flop house hotel I stayed at.” Henry said conversationally.
“On my first ever weekend pass from Parris Island I caught a bus over to Beaufort where I could get gloriously drunk and sleep it off in peace. The landlady pushed the register over the desk for me to complete and asked if I had a good memory for faces?...well I naturally asked her why and she replied…”
“There’s no shaving mirror.” Terry finished the story for him.
Henry laughed. “Oh, I see you stayed there too?”
Terry was smiling back, but the smile did not reach his eyes.
“No, I was never in the service and I think our lives have taken us on pretty different courses General, and that doesn’t make for too much common ground, shared experiences or mutual friends.” His look was steely, and the crocodile smile remained.
Henry seated himself opposite, to all intents unaware that the CIA Directors remark was anything but a casual observation.
“There was Scott, I liked that young man.”
Terry Jones did not reply immediately, his eyes remained unblinkingly on Henry.
“Yes, indeed.” He eventually allowed. “There was Scott Tafler.”
“So what is occurring now that could not wait until the Presidents next briefing?” Henry asked.
Terry at last looked away and used a remote to switch on the plasma screen at the foot of the long table.
There was a segment of a cable news programme regarding Argentina’s claims to have responded to an attack on one of their maritime patrols by sinking a pair of surfaced submarines.
Henry didn’t dog the news channels, despite them often bearing bad tidings well before the intelligence services got wind that there was even a problem.
Scraps of uniform and a short length of hose had been recovered from the surface of the ocean and were displayed for the cameras. The hose bore stencilled Cyrillic lettering and the uniform items had been identified as being of Russian and Chinese manufacture.
“This footage is from the Argentinian aircrafts cameras.” Said Terry as the item drew to a close.
It was a very grainy view, made worse by the weather conditions and low altitude; two hundred feet below the cameras minimum focus height.
Terry pressed ‘Freeze Frame’, capturing the blurry shapes of the Tuan and the Admiral Potemkin in the harsh magnesium glare of the aircrafts dropped flares. The Chinese Kilo was dwarfed by the bulk of the Russian submarine.
Terry opened a folder and passed over a clutch of still captures from the footage, digitally enhanced and showing the STREAM rig clearly joining the vessels in a replenishment at sea operation.
“Well I’ll be…” Henry shook his head incredulously. “Ingenious little fuckers, aren’t they?”
Terry flipped across a fourth enhanced still and Henry was silent for several minutes as he studied it.
“If you’d just shown me the first three I would have said it was a long range hunting party, but what is this submersible doing here…do they have a sub down somewhere down that way?”
Henry then looked up and glanced around as if realising for the first time that the two of them were alone. He turned the photograph over and saw its point of origin was Naval Intelligence, not the CIA.
He looked up at Terry, noting the stare and that cold half smile had returned.
The CIA was briefing the military on something the military were already aware of, and furthermore it would be aired by the navy in a few hours’ time for the President with Henry present.
“You want to tell me what this is all about? Why am I really here Mr Jones?”
“Well, that is indeed the sixty four thousand dollar question isn’t it?” Terry said. “What are you doing here, General?”
Henry stood, looking across the table at Terry.
“Well I’m not playing mind games with a spook when I could be sleeping, that’s for sure and certain, Jones.”
He crossed the room to the door but before he could turn the handle Terry Jones spoke again.
“I liked Scott too, and if I had been in London last week I sure as hell would have been present when his killers were picked up…so I have to ask you Henry, what was it that you were doing that night which was so all fired important that you stayed away, huh?”
General Henry Shaw paused momentarily, looking at the CIA Director and returning his stare before turning the handle and departing.
General Shaw had a small bunk all to himself with a locking door to add a little security for sensitive papers. It wasn’t as if sneak thieves were likely to be a problem in such a facility though.
A standard metal lined documents case held what papers Henry kept, and that sat below the single metal framed bed.
On arriving back at the bunk Henry reach beneath the bed and drew out the case, lifting it and checking that its locks were still secure. Satisfied, he crouched to slide it back in its place and that is when he paused, seeing the faded beer mat that was no longer with its five brothers inside an internal compartment, laying where it had fallen unnoticed during an otherwise professional search.
Germany.
Well before dawn the 43rd Motor Rifle Regiment had oriented towards the south west in hastily prepared positions, guarding against a possible counter attack by NATO. They were now three miles inland and five from the bridgehead, out of earshot of the roaring of engines as tanks, APCs, self-propelled guns and all the hardware of armoured warfare crossing the ribbon bridges to the western bank of the Elbe.
At the bridgehead a tenth bridge had just been completed. By the time dawn arrived a further five would also be carrying the weight of the Sixth Shock and Tenth Tank Armies fighting and support units as they moved forward into the offensive.
As yet no work had begun on the autobahn bridge; the combat engineers were still clearing the booby traps left by NATO, a dangerous task at the best of times but doubly so now in the dark. The platoon of engineers tasked to perform the clearance had already lost three men, one dead and two wounded, but had no option but to continue. The schedule called for prefabricated bridging sections to be laid between the spans starting at first light, and to that end a detachment of field police were ensuring that the engineers did not waver from their explosive ordnance clearance duties.
In order to fulfil the role the planners of this campaign envisaged, Colonel Lužar’s regiment had been re-equipped with whatever equipment had been left over after the two, mainly Russian, armies spearheading the drive to the channel had been refitted. His battalions consisted of a mixed bag of MBTs and APCs of differing types and marks. The latest types to be added to the regiment’s inventory were not new; indeed his own command tank wore the tell-tale signs of previously having been knocked out. A crudely patched area on the outside of the turret had its twin on the inside, an area of scorched metal and blistered paint
His battalions’ main battle tank companies now consisted of T-62, T-72, T-80Bs and T-
80Us, plus the inferior T-90s. As for his APC companies, well they were also a mixture of BDRMs, BMP1s, 2s and 3s with ancient BTR-60s in evidence here and there. It was hardly a first class unit anymore but he had been assured that NATO units were in a worse state, and any moves made against him would be half-hearted efforts.
Only one company of his faithful PT-76 amphibious tanks remained of the battalion he had first attempted to force the Elbe with. The survivors had been reformed into one large company the next day. So many of his men had fallen that night without knowing that they were merely a diversionary attack, a side show to divert reserves from being able to repel the Red Army’s main effort, which itself had proved a long drawn out affair and an eventual failure.
For Colonel Lužar the shooting of the other unit commanders after that night had been monstrous, they had not been expected to succeed and yet they died for failing.
Thus far Colonel Lužar had not seen a single enemy fighting vehicle and the only reaction to their presence had been several artillery strikes. Taking all things into account the resistance they had met had been pathetic, although the artillery had been highly accurate, and up to that time he had begun to wonder if they had killed all of NATOs brave young men and women, and the rest had run away.
To his right sat the charred remains of a BRDM infantry fighting vehicle. Flames still flickered in the molten rubber of what had been its tyres. An entire infantry section had perished with the vehicle and its crew, without so much as firing a single shot. It was just one of the eleven AFVs he had lost in that thirty minute attack, and the way the enemy fire had been corrected, to walk across fighting positions pointed to the presence of a spotter in close proximity.
Patrolling had discovered the spotter’s location in the ruins of a building only 300m in front of the colonel’s own position, but sloppy command and control by the infantry patrol’s commander had left an escape route open. His infantry came under effective automatic fire from the ruins, which allowed the enemy troops to slip away in pairs until only a single weapon remained. Frustrated by the lack of aggression shown by his infantry, Lužar had ordered his own vehicle forward to break the impasse, but if he had thought the sight of his approaching T-80UK command tank was going to intimidate the remaining enemy soldier he was mistaken. The enemy soldier had continued to pin down the infantry with short economic bursts, buying more time for his comrades to make good their escape. Lužar had been forced to drop down inside the turret to avoid the fire directed his way, after which his gunner had fired a single main gun round into the ruins, silencing the weapon.
