by Andy McNab
She took off the black full-face helmet and shook her head to unstick her hair from her skin. She was still in a bad way, but comfort wasn’t what either of us needed right now. We needed to crack on.
I hoisted myself out of the sidecar and we examined the magazine cover together. Semyon was on the far right, in the back row. I pointed at the egg-shaped guy in the centre of the group.
Her face turned to stone. ‘That’s Brin.’
‘First name Vladislav? Is he Vladislav Brin?’
The wind was getting up. She wrapped the waxed jacket more tightly around her. It must have been Grisha’s: it was in far better condition than mine.
‘Yes,’ she said finally. ‘He is the CEO of M3C.’ She cupped her hands to light a cigarette, took a deep drag and, without taking it out of her mouth, pulled her wheelie-case from between my legs. She undid it and retrieved a pashmina, which she wrapped round her neck. I’d been cold in the sidecar; she must have been freezing.
She stared at the magazine cover, transfixed. I couldn’t tell whose face she was concentrating on. The one she hated or the one she loved.
‘I know Brin.’ I zipped the case up and shoved it back into the footwell. ‘The last time I saw him was in ’eighty-eight. He was selling technology to the US in East Germany.’
She jerked her head round. ‘What?’ Her eyes blazed.
There was no need to bullshit her any longer. We had less than a day to do what we needed to do. I told her everything I’d been keeping from her. I told her who I was. I told her about how Dex, Red Ken and I had lifted the gold. I told her what had happened when we were loading it. I told her about Tenny, Altun and Spag. I told her why I’d been in Iran, working for Julian, and about getting binned from the job as soon as I knew that Spag was involved, and that he was still CIA. I told her who had killed Semyon. And finally I told her I was there for one reason and one reason only – to avenge my mates’ deaths.
She stared at me, taking it all in as I continued.
‘I still don’t understand where the four of us fitted in. I know Altun is the middleman between Brin and the Taliban. I know the Taliban can pay for the missiles with heroin or heroin money – it doesn’t really matter which. I can’t understand how Spag and the gold are involved. Or what cements him to Altun and Brin.’
‘Nick?’ She thought for a while. ‘I don’t know, and I don’t care.’
That was good enough for me. ‘You’re right. The story, the pictures, so what? They won’t bring Grisha or Semyon back. These people -’ I pointed at the magazine ‘- these people will survive anything you do and then they’ll kill you for it. It’s just the way of the world. So fuck ’em. I’m going to kill them. I don’t care that the CIA are involved and I don’t care about the gold, the heroin or any of that shit. I’m here for Red Ken, Dex and Tenny. They were all I had left. And now I’m here for Semyon and Grisha too. I’m here for revenge. What about you? You want some?’
Her whole demeanour had changed. ‘Yes – no more story. I want revenge.’
‘Good – you get me to the proving ground and I’ll do the rest.’
She took the cigarette from her mouth, flicked away the ash, and considered the burning tip. ‘How?’
‘I don’t know yet. We’ll share the riding – get us both out of the city and I’ll work something out.’
103
Outskirts of Vologda
0648 hrs
The night ride along the endless ribbon of pitted tarmac had been dank and miserable, and so was the truckers’ stop we’d pulled into. A strip of ancient wooden shacks was attached to each side of a filling station. Poor-quality light spilled from their windows and dribbled away into the forest. Power lines drooped between their poles and branched off over the parking area. If it hadn’t been for the Cyrillic signs, I could almost have been in the American Midwest.
I sat on Cuckoo, wet, cold and hungry – all the things I hated – waiting for Anna to come back.
A convoy of military trucks made their way down the other side of the road. Each set of headlights caught the rooster tail of spray thrown up by the one in front. As they drew closer, they slowed and stopped. I heard boots on tarmac before I saw soldiers run into the shops.
I made myself look busy, double-checking all our gear was well strapped down. The first filling station we’d come to must have thought they’d won the state lottery. Besides fuel cans, a small bubble compass and a roll of Sellotape, we’d bought them out of food, water and maps, and even their stock of towing kits.
The maps had been OK for getting us here, but the training area was just shown as a massive stretch of grey. No roads, buildings or even water-courses were marked, and there was no sign in the middle of it saying ‘Proving Ground’. But I had a plan.
I looked up. The convoy would have come from the naval air base Anna said was located about forty K further up the road. That was the direction we were heading when we left here.
The thunder of turboprops rumbled somewhere above the low cloud. Anna had said the base was where long-range aircraft took off to patrol the Atlantic. I knew the ones she was talking about – Antonovs with wingspans as big as B-52s, but props instead of jets. The papers had reported that the Russian crews held up boards with their email addresses on so the Brit interceptors could drop them a line and join their Facebook page.
Anna came out of the nearest shack carrying two paper bags and a couple of large steaming cups. She wasn’t short of admirers, even here. Five or six soldier boys followed close behind. They whistled appreciatively, zipped up their jackets and headed reluctantly for their wagon.
The bag she passed me contained a small loaf of brown bread and a jar of strawberry jam. I broke the loaf in half and scooped jam into it with two fingers. ‘Did you find out where we can get it?’
‘About ten kilometres further up the road.’
I wolfed down the bread and jam between gulps of strong, sweet black tea, then climbed back onto the saddle. Getting aboard Cuckoo was just like straddling a regular bike, except you had to manoeuvre your right leg just ahead of the metal bars connecting it to the sidecar and just behind the air intake for the right cylinder. I liked to be able to move my leg around, and it felt hemmed in by the hardware.
Another invisible aircraft laboured above us as I kick-started the Ural. I hoped the cloud cover hung in there. We needed all the help we could get.
104
0710 hrs
We soon found ourselves paralleling a four-metre-high chain-link fence. The fir trees the far side of it seemed to advance and recede as we continued, and in a few places crossed the wire in an attempt to overwhelm us.
It doesn’t matter what flag you’re flying or what uniform you’re wearing, every army in the world has certain things in common. The chain-link fence is one of them. The high command can’t seem to get enough of them. They don’t stop anyone getting in, but they’re great for hanging warning signs on. Red ones emblazoned with a skull and crossbones were pinned to it every twenty-five metres or so. I couldn’t read the Russian writing beneath, but the message was clear.
We throbbed away at the Ural’s top speed of 100 k.p.h. Its basic 750cc twin-cylinder sounded like a diesel truck. These machines hadn’t changed a bit since the Russians reverse-engineered the German Army’s BMW in 1939 – and Cuckoo was the real deal, one of the originals. It was designed to go to war, take a pounding and still come back for more.
Like most of the really good squaddies I knew, it was also a pain in the arse. Taking orders was not what it was about, and I rather liked that. There was plenty of feedback from the handlebars. It had its own way of doing things, and it didn’t care who knew.
It wanted to turn right whenever I accelerated, so I began steering left to counteract the pull. But easing off the throttle for a shift of gear made the bike yaw back to its original axis. I had to learn to feather my steering according to throttle input in order to keep the thing heading in the direction we needed to go.
&
nbsp; Braking and turning were also no picnic. Hitting the front brakes pulled the Ural to the left, whether or not you wanted to go there. Right turns were even more hair-raising. If the change of direction was too sudden, the bike would start to lift.
We passed a barrack block overlooking a wet parade-ground. An endless line of wooden shacks stretched along its furthest edge, probably selling everything from beer to women. Neat lines of trucks and APCs glistened in the rain. Soldiers drilled or ran around at the double, all the normal business. It could have been any fortified military compound anywhere on the planet. It was exactly what I’d been hoping for.
We cracked on. I checked the odometer, watching it move up to the ten K mark. Anna slapped my left leg. We’d reached the truck stop she’d been told about. I pulled in.
This one had a hardware store. There were rows of shovels and picks lined up against a wall in some kind of display, next to knackered tractors that had probably left the production line in Stalin’s time.
I waited outside in the rain while Anna went in. I took off the helmet to get some air. My whole body felt grimy and stiff, like I’d spent the night in a trench. For some reason, a night in the open always feels worse after first light. It was the bit I’d hated most about being a squaddie.
Anna came out twenty minutes later, laden with gear. ‘Shall we fill it up at the pump?’
‘Not here. Let’s get on target.’
I put the helmet back on and we rode for another thirty K along the fence line. The skull and crossbones still made regular appearances every twenty-five metres or so. The occasional building materialized out of the drizzle beyond the wire. I didn’t have a problem with the bad weather. There would be no test firing until it cleared.
At the thirty-five K mark we reached the guts of the air base, and barrack block after barrack block, all drab concrete and flat-roofed, interspersed with semi-circular huts made of corrugated iron. The whole place was heaving with lads in uniform trying to look as though they were on the way to somewhere important.
We passed the main gates. A MiG fighter and a Hind helicopter gunship were mounted on plinths either side of them. Two sentries in fur hats and camouflage waterproofs stood to attention beneath them, AKs across their chests. Their pissed-off expressions reminded me that there was something about being a squaddie that I’d hated even more than waking up after a night in the open.
Runway lights throbbed in the gloom behind them, fading away into the distance. Several massive Antonovs were lined up on a concrete apron alongside jets and helicopters. Jeeps buzzed between them. I slowed down as much as I could without drawing attention to us. I gave my visor a wipe and scanned the place for a smaller white jet among the grey.
Nothing.
We pushed on, passing armoured fighting vehicles and general military traffic.
About a K further on, a dense block of trees came right up to the fence line and crossed over it. The chain link disappeared among its branches.
I braked and shouted down to Anna. ‘What do those signs mean? They saying the place is mined?’
‘No – just that you’ll be shot if you trespass into the training area.’
I slowed some more and checked behind us for possible observers. There were none. The road was deserted. I swung Cuckoo to the right, across a thin strip of wet grass, then manoeuvred between the trunks of the firs until we reached cover up against the fence. I turned off the engine, dismounted and pulled off my helmet. ‘Now you can fill it.’
I lifted a whole lot of gear off her legs and undid the rope clamping the full petrol cans to the rear parcel rack. As she tried to haul herself out, I dropped one of the cans by the sidecar and left her to it.
The fence was easy enough to climb. I used one of the pickets as support. I wasn’t worried about sensors. This thing stretched for hundreds of miles.
From the top, all I could hear was the gentle glug of fuel into our new Chinese chainsaw. I couldn’t see anything of the runway through the trees. That was good: it meant they couldn’t see us.
I jumped back down and grabbed the other can. We’d topped up the bike at every filling station we’d come across over the last six hours, even if the tank was three-quarters full. If we had to leg it, the last thing we needed was a fuel gauge on zero.
Anna was done. She screwed the filler cap tight. ‘What are we going to do now, Nick?’
‘They’re going to shoot down drones, right?’
She nodded. ‘When the clouds clear. They’ll want to do it at near maximum altitude.’
A MiG screamed off the runway to our right.
‘Maybe they’re going to take off from here. It’s the main base and the only airstrip we know about so far. We should penetrate as far as we can into the area, and check out where the drones are heading.’
‘Is that it?’
‘No, we’ve got to keep on pushing forward. The more we do that, the more we can find out – and the more chance we have of getting on target.’
I pointed to the clear plastic bubble on the side of the chainsaw. ‘Pump that thing until it fills with fuel.’
I went and tied everything back onto the bike. It was beginning to look like a really bad Cub Scout’s rucksack – all we were missing was a frying-pan and a bunch of tin mugs. ‘OK, on the bike. You’re going to ride through the hole.’
I picked up the chainsaw and after ten or twelve wrenches on the starter cord, and finally working out how the choke operated, the thing sparked up. I stuck the eighteen-inch blade against the chain link to the right of the steel post I’d just used to climb up, and throttled up to full revs. It was pointless worrying about the noise. If we were heard, we were heard. There was nothing I could do about it. What I could do was cut the fence and keep cracking on.
The thing didn’t cut that well – they never do at first. The chain bounced and snagged, but we got there. By stretching my arms as far as I could above my head, I cut a strip about two and a half metres high.
I turned off the saw and handed it to Anna. ‘Lash everything down – even the helmets. We have to look as normal as possible when we get back on the road.’
She nodded. We were definitely going to do this job and then escape. Everything would go like clockwork. That was part of the forward-momentum thing. You did your best to make yourself sound as if it was going to work, as if the job was going to be done. With luck, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I laced my fingers through the bottom of the fence and tried to drag it upwards.
105
It resisted at first, but came up easily once I’d wrenched the lower links clear of the undergrowth that had twisted its way through them. We were left with a gap like a badly drawn, inverted V.
Anna revved and pushed Cuckoo through, gouging its beautiful paintwork right down to the bare metal in places. She brushed her fingers lightly across the scars as she made way for me to replace her on the saddle. I knew what she was thinking, but I reckoned both Semyon and Grisha would have thought it was all in a good cause.
We worked our way through the trees and bounced onto a four-metre-wide gravel track that cut through the forestry like a firebreak. Puddles stretched across its rutted and pot-holed surface as far as the eye could see. The Ural bucked and reared and sent up sheets of muddy water, but kept ploughing on just like it was built to do.
I could hear the props of a reconnaissance aircraft taking off a couple of hundred metres to our right.
I just wanted to keep moving forward, try to find something – anything- that might give us a clue as to where we were, and where we should be going. I was working on the assumption that the most secure area, the proving ground, would be in the middle of the site rather than at the edge.
For a moment I was back in Brecon, in the training area where I seemed to have spent half of my squaddie life – a maze of forestry blocks, tracks and firebreaks just like this, and just as wet.
The cloud hung low overhead, and mist filled the gap between it and the
treetops. There wasn’t a breath of wind and the drizzle fell in a fine sheet. Give me proper pouring rain every time – but this stuff would do just fine. Low cloud meant no drones.
The little bubble compass was taped onto the speedo lens. The ball inside it pitched and yawed with every pothole, but I could see we were heading roughly north-north-east. I tried to keep the air base to my right. We were moving in more or less the same direction as the runway, towards the centre of the site. We emerged from the firebreak after another two hundred metres. I stopped when the track and the tarmac converged.
Most of the activity seemed to be at least seven or eight hundred away, the other side of the runway. I pulled the Nikon out of my day-sack and scanned what I could see of the air base. I checked the lines of aircraft for drones and the Falcon and found neither.
We carried on until we hit a junction from which five different gravel tracks headed back into the trees.
Numbered arrows in a riot of different colours were nailed to picket stumps. This was good news if you’d just been told to follow the yellow route to the RV point, but not much help otherwise.
Military training areas are plastered with signs and markers because head sheds the world over assume every squaddie is as thick as shit, and needs every message to be delivered as simply as possible. Don’t drive your tank here. Don’t dig your trench there. We don’t want this whole place to be full of flattened buildings and fucking great holes. A training area might look rough and ready, but there are more restrictions than a national park.
I could see another sign a bit further down one of the tracks – a wooden panel on a metal pole, with faded lettering beneath a smaller version of our old mate the skull and crossbones.
The Ural’s valves clattered as I bounced us down to it.
‘What does it say?’
‘Nothing much, Nick. Ranges. Shooting ranges.’
