‘He also spent some days on the range and a week in the Killing House, and his scores were easily good enough to get him into the Regiment.’
The Killing House at Hereford is the Close Quarter Battle training range. Its interior can be modified to simulate almost any environment, and it offers the most realistic combat environment possible, short of an actual firefight. The troopers were looking at Richter with a little more interest.
‘Whilst I am reluctant to break into this paean of praise,’ Richter interrupted, ‘we do have things to discuss. Oh, and for the duration of this operation, my name is Beatty, OK?’
The kettle boiled. Richter made coffee and handed round the mugs. Dekker flopped down again in his chair, took a sip and then put his mug on the table beside him. The two troopers sat side by side on the sofa, silent and watchful. ‘It’s been a very long day,’ Colin Dekker said, ‘and we nearly didn’t make it. We got the Flash activation signal from your Secret Squirrel outfit at just after fourteen forty, UK time. We sent the van on its way within twenty minutes, which was bloody good going, and then we sat down and worked out what we were going to need.’ He took another drink. ‘Drawing the gear and checking it took over two hours, then we had to sort out passports, money, Channel Tunnel tickets and all the other stuff, so we weren’t ready to get into the chopper until well after five.’
‘Where did you fly to?’ Richter asked.
‘Manston,’ Dekker said. ‘The van was waiting for us, so it was a quick blast down to Folkestone, hop into the Chunnel train and then explore the delights of the French autoroute system, which isn’t that bad, actually.’ He smiled at Richter. ‘I hope you’re impressed.’
‘By what?’ Richter asked.
‘By the fact that neither I nor Trooper Smith nor even Trooper Jones have asked what the hell we’re doing sitting in a log cabin in a wood at a holiday resort in France watching Disney cartoons at nearly one o’clock in the morning, while Trooper Brown wanders about outside guarding a van which contains enough ordnance to start a small war.’
‘Only a small war?’ Richter asked.
‘It’s only,’ Dekker replied, ‘a small van.’
‘It’s camouflage,’ Richter said. ‘Hopefully no one will think of looking for us here.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t look for you here,’ Dekker said, after a pause, ‘so you might be right. Who exactly do you think might want to find us?’
‘At the moment, only the SVR and the GRU, but if it all goes wrong tomorrow you can probably add the entire security apparatus of la belle France.’
Trooper Smith blinked once, but that was the only reaction Richter could detect. Colin Dekker swallowed the last of his drink and put down his mug. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that you’d better tell us everything we need to know.’
Forty minutes later Richter folded up the map and put it back in his briefcase. Dekker looked at him thoughtfully, then turned to his men. ‘Trooper Smith can give us his recommendations before he goes out to relieve Trooper Brown. Your thoughts, John.’
The man called Smith looked at them both, then spoke softly and economically. ‘It doesn’t look difficult,’ he said. ‘The only problem is not knowing the actual opposition strength, but we can handle it.’ Looking at him, Richter thought he probably could.
Dekker nodded to him, and he left the cabin as silently as he had entered. Trooper Brown came in a minute or so later, walked straight to the kitchen and switched on the kettle.
‘Make yourself at home,’ Colin Dekker said. ‘Oh, I see you have.’
Brown walked into the lounge carrying a mug of tea and sat down next to Trooper Jones. He was more Dekker’s build, compact and wiry, but looked just as competent and capable as his companions. Colin Dekker outlined the task ahead, and Brown just nodded. ‘No problem,’ he said.
Richter coughed politely. ‘I have no wish to dampen this mood of unbridled optimism,’ he said, ‘but you should remember that we are likely to be facing two or three armoured saloons occupied by Spetsnaz troopers, probably carrying automatic weapons, plus an armed crew in the cab of the lorry and maybe other armed guards inside the cargo bay. There are exactly four of you, and you’ll also have to avoid shooting a number of GIGN personnel who’ll try and get in on the act.’
Brown looked at him coldly. ‘I said, no problem.’
‘Fine,’ Richter said. ‘Colin?’
‘Trooper Brown, as you’ve probably noticed, is not one to be bothered by the odds, but he does have the experience to back up what he says.’
‘I don’t doubt that for a moment, but I don’t think it’s going to be a picnic.’ Richter took a fresh sheet of paper. ‘We have a meeting at nine thirty tomorrow morning with DST and GIGN personnel in Paris, where we’ll sort out the details of the actual assault, but I would like to get some feedback from you first. Are you happy with the basic plan – stopping the lorry and the escort using the fake accident?’
‘Yes,’ Dekker said. ‘That’s good, and it should minimize the risks.’
‘So the next question,’ Richter said, ‘is how to immobilize the truck and the escort.’
‘Right. The truck first, as that’s the most important. What size vehicle is it?’
‘We’ll know tomorrow morning, but my guess is an articulated lorry.’
‘Good,’ said Dekker, ‘that makes it easier.’ He thought for a moment. ‘The two most important things, I take it, are that the load the lorry is carrying isn’t damaged, and that the vehicle is completely immobilized as quickly as possible?’
‘Yes,’ Richter replied. ‘I doubt if any external cause could detonate the weapon, but there would be obvious radiation hazards if the container was breached.’
Trooper Jones spoke for the first time. ‘We can slice the main drive-shaft.’
‘How?’ Richter asked.
‘Easy. A small piece of plastic, wrapped around it and detonated. The shaft’s hollow, and that would snap it like a twig. Without the drive-shaft, that truck’s going nowhere.’
‘That’s good,’ Colin Dekker said. ‘That’s very good. And you’d deliver the explosive as soon as the truck has stopped at the accident?’ Jones nodded.
‘OK,’ Dekker continued. ‘That takes care of the truck. Escort?’
‘Again,’ Richter said, ‘we won’t know until tomorrow what the strength is. The DST has mounted surveillance of all overland border crossings, and will then operate a long-tail on the convoy as it travels through France. I’m expecting a minimum of two escort vehicles, possibly three, so probably at least ten armed opposition personnel.’
‘How do you want them?’ Colin Dekker asked. ‘The escort? Alive or dead?’
‘I don’t personally care,’ Richter said, ‘but I think preferably alive. It doesn’t make such a mess on the road and that might irritate the French a bit less, and one or two of them might have something useful to tell me.’
‘OK,’ said Dekker. ‘Subject to GIGN or DST veto, we’ll aim for a co-ordinated assault, using stun grenades and CS gas, the go signal being the detonation of Trooper Jones’ lump of plastic on the truck’s drive-shaft. Then the application of the minimum force necessary to achieve the objective. Textbook stuff.’ Dekker looked at his watch. ‘Two thirty,’ he said. ‘Bed, now. I’ll meet you here again at – what – seven?’
‘Seven will be fine,’ Richter said, and the three men filed quietly out into the night.
Oval Office, White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.
‘Have you briefed the Joint Chiefs yet?’
‘No, Mr President.’ Walter Hicks shook his head. ‘I wanted to tell you first.’
The older man gestured. ‘Go ahead.’
‘I wish we could claim the credit for this, Mr President,’ Hicks began, ‘but the fact is that we can’t. The British put this together themselves from the data we released to them about the Blackbird flight, the implications behind the murder of an SIS man in Moscow, and some other bits and pieces. They then persu
aded a senior SVR officer to fill in the gaps.’
‘Really? How did they persuade him?’ the President asked.
‘You really don’t want to know that, sir,’ Hicks replied.
The President looked up and shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘perhaps I don’t. Carry on.’
‘Our source in Moscow – RAVEN – was quite right. There was and is a covert assault in progress against us. The problem is that there’s almost exactly nothing we can do to eliminate the threat. What the Russians have done is sneak a whole bunch of conventional nuclear weapons into major cities here in the States and tie them all to a trigger in a communications satellite.’
‘They’ve done what?’ the President shouted. Hicks didn’t reply. ‘Jesus Christ.’ The President stood up abruptly, his face flushing red with anger. He leant across the desk and pressed a switch on the intercom. ‘Get that bastard Karasin here as quickly as you can,’ he ordered. The intercom squawked. ‘Yes, I do mean fucking Ambassador fucking Karasin. I want him here now.’ He almost shouted the last word, and snapped the switch back angrily. Fists clenched, he stood silent for a moment, then sat down. The anger had vanished, and he was again the calm, calculating man Hicks had come to know. ‘Which cities?’ he asked.
‘That’s the problem,’ Hicks said. ‘We don’t know which cities, and even if we did that wouldn’t help us to find the bombs. You’re only talking about something the size of a small car, even with its back-up power supplies. You could hide it almost anywhere. Almost any crate in any warehouse could contain a weapon.’
‘How did they get them here?’ the President asked.
‘As far as the Brits know, it was a mixture of discreet smuggling and improper use of the Diplomatic Bag.’
The President nodded, not really hearing Hicks’ answer. ‘So,’ he muttered, almost to himself. ‘What do we do?’ He raised his voice slightly. ‘And what do they want?’
Hicks gave a shrug. ‘That, Mr President, is the point. The Russians don’t actually want us to do anything.’
The grey-haired man looked up sharply. ‘They haven’t gone to all this trouble, smuggling nuclear weapons into America and launching a satellite, for nothing,’ he said. ‘There must be a purpose behind it.’
Hicks nodded. ‘Oh, there’s a purpose, Mr President, but the Russians really do want us to do nothing. They want us to stand aside and watch as they march into Western Europe.’
Marne-la-Vallée
Colin Dekker knocked on Richter’s door at seven exactly, came in and sat down. They ate a scratch breakfast of toast and marmalade, washed down with English tea – Dekker had brought the bags with him.
‘One question,’ Dekker said, as they stood up to leave. ‘Are we authorized to carry side-arms before the operation?’
‘Probably not,’ Richter replied, ‘but I’m wearing the Smith, and in view of the situation I suggest that you should all carry personal weapons.’
‘Good enough,’ Dekker said, and vanished outside to brief his troops, two of whom he would be leaving at the camp to ‘mind the store’. When he reappeared, Trooper Smith in tow, the three men climbed into the Granada and retraced Richter’s route of the previous day, driving over the autoroute to Disneyland, parking the car and catching the RER to Paris.
French Ministry of the Interior, rue des Saussaies, Paris
They arrived outside the British Embassy at eight fifty. Tony Herron and John Westwood appeared five minutes later, and the group walked into the French Ministry of the Interior exactly on time. Lacomte was already in the conference room, studying a map, and beside him stood a tall, well-built man with close-cropped hair, who Lacomte introduced as Lieutenant Erulin of the GIGN. Dekker and Trooper Smith eyed him with interest. ‘Fortunately,’ Lacomte said, ‘Lieutenant Erulin speaks English, so we will have no language problems.’
The way he said it made Richter wonder if he was anticipating any other kind of problems. Richter introduced Dekker as Captain Colin of 22 Special Air Service Regiment, and Trooper Smith as Trooper Smith, and they got down to business.
Lacomte began by providing a summary of overnight events, which amounted to very little. Monsieur Giraud and the Minister had summoned him late the previous evening and requested an update, and he would be seeing Giraud again immediately before lunch. The French President had been informed, and had also been in consultation with the American President and the British Prime Minister. ‘The Minister reinforced what Monsieur Giraud said, Mr Beatty,’ Lacomte said. ‘He wants minimal French involvement in this matter.’
Out of the corner of his eye Richter could see Erulin stiffen. ‘Colonel, with respect,’ the GIGN officer began, ‘this operation is already using significant French resources. We will be closing both carriageways of a busy autoroute for a distance of some forty kilometres and a period of, probably, four or five hours. We will be using two articulated lorries and numerous emergency vehicles, not to mention the gendarmes and others who will have to be at the scene to provide local colour. It seems pointless to me to pretend that it is an unauthorized British operation. GIGN personnel are perfectly capable of handling this entire matter.’ He waved a hand dismissively towards Dekker and Smith.
Lacomte regarded him levelly for a moment. ‘I think you may well be right, Lieutenant,’ he said. ‘I suggest that you call the Minister and Monsieur Giraud immediately and tell them that they are wrong.’ Erulin stared at him for a moment, then dropped his gaze. ‘No?’ Lacomte continued. ‘Right, then we do it their way.’
Erulin lapsed into a sullen silence. Richter wondered how his attitude would affect the co-operation they were going to need with GIGN personnel, and he knew Dekker would be thinking exactly the same.
‘As the subject of manpower has been raised,’ Lacomte continued, with a glance at the GIGN lieutenant, ‘this might be an opportune time to look at the forces available to us.’ He looked over at Dekker. ‘I understand you have three men with you?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Dekker replied. ‘A standard four-man patrol.’
Lacomte nodded. ‘Lieutenant Erulin is in command of a GIGN strike team, which is all the French involvement that Monsieur Giraud wishes. For those of you not familiar with GIGN operating procedures—’ he clearly meant all of the non-French in the room ‘—that’s two five-man intervention forces, plus a dog and handler. I don’t think we’re going to need the dog today, as I’m sure we can all find a lorry on a deserted autoroute.’ Dekker rewarded him with a polite smile. ‘So that gives us a total of fourteen personnel, plus Captain Colin, Lieutenant Erulin and, of course, Mr Beatty and myself. I assume,’ he said, looking at Richter, ‘that you, Mr Herron and Mr Westwood are not intending to participate in the actual assault?’
‘Certainly not,’ Richter said, looking at Colin Dekker. ‘No point in having a dog and barking yourself.’ Erulin sneered at him.
‘I’m out of this,’ Westwood said. ‘My boss wants me to keep a watching brief, but he didn’t say anything about me being shot at.’
‘Very well,’ Lacomte continued, ‘I don’t want to discuss the actual tactics of the assault at this stage, as until we know the composition of the opposition it would only be speculation, but what we can do is assess distances and average speeds.’ He looked down at his map. ‘Strasbourg to Metz is about one hundred and fifty kilometres, Metz to Reims around two hundred, and Reims to Laon about fifty. If we add, say, another ten kilometres from the Laon intersection to the site of the operation, that gives a total of just over four hundred kilometres.’ He glanced round the table. ‘How fast can a lorry travel?’
‘Too bloody fast, in most cases,’ Dekker said.
‘We’re not talking about an average trucker with a deadline to meet,’ Richter said. ‘This is a large, heavy and very dangerous load, and it’s not just the truck, it’s also the cars. They’ll all have to make stops for food, fuel, toilets, sleep and all the rest, so I’d have thought we should estimate a fairly low average speed. They’ll also probably stick to the sp
eed limits, because the last thing they’ll want to do is attract attention.’
‘If they do it’ll be about the only lorry in France that does obey the speed limits,’ Tony Herron murmured.
‘Let’s have some numbers, then,’ Lacomte asked. ‘Mr Beatty?’
‘My guess would be no more than eighty kilometres an hour, overall.’
Lacomte did a quick calculation on the paper in front of him. ‘That gives a total journey time from Strasbourg of about five hours.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Let’s give ourselves a reasonable time frame. What’s the fastest possible speed we could expect the convoy to achieve? One hundred kilometres an hour?’
‘Make it one ten,’ Dekker said.
‘Right. One hundred and ten – that gives a time of about three and a half hours. So we can work on the basis that the convoy will arrive here,’ he tapped the ringed section on his map with the pencil, ‘between three and a half and five hours after departure from Strasbourg.’
‘So all we need now,’ said Colin Dekker, ‘is the time the lorry is going to clear Strasbourg and start heading this way.’
Right on cue there was a knock at the door and a DST man entered with a sheet of paper, which he handed to Lacomte. They all waited expectantly while the colonel scanned it. ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘The Gendarmerie in Strasbourg has reported that the Russian convoy arrived early this morning, but the delays caused by the roadworks have held all the vehicles at Strasbourg. They do not expect the convoy will be able to continue its journey until mid-morning at the earliest. More importantly for us, we now know what we’re up against.’
Autoroute E42, Strasbourg, France
Unlike the crossing at Waidhaus, getting over the German/French border had been a mere formality. All four vehicles had been ordered to stop, probably because of their Moscow plates and because they were quite obviously travelling together, but all the French Customs officers and gendarmes had done was inspect their passports. They hadn’t even bothered asking what the lorry was carrying or why twelve Russian diplomats were driving together across Europe.
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