by Andy McNab
‘It’s only fair to warn you there may be some shooting.’
‘What, with real guns? My husband shot a guest at our own wedding reception. You think I’m going to burst into tears and run away? Why do you think women are so weak all the time? I thought Russian women were meant to be tough.’
‘I don’t know. I promised personally to deliver you back to your father, so I guess I don’t want to let him down.’
She had shrugged. ‘Let’s do this one step at a time.’
They passed Sepehr Airport. The set-up, which was basic at the best of times, now lay in pieces. The Americans had done their worst. An Airbus sat on the runway, broken in two like a rotten log. Three smaller jets were completely burned out. The control tower had taken a direct hit. They took the Tello Road past the Imam Khomeini Sports Complex, where Dima had once put on a boxing contest for his trainee Revolutionary Guards. How many of those men were now PLR?
He looked again at Amara, her husband dead, her whole life in Tehran cut from under her. What future did she have? What future did anyone in Iran have right now? Those bombs, just their presence in the country could be devastating, never mind if they were used. What had Bashir intended with them? Was he about to find out?
After Nasirabad, the road, which had been getting steadily rougher, turned into a track. They were climbing up a long, tree-lined valley: either side of them the mountain slopes reared up — barren, lifeless, forbidding, an awesome beauty all of their own. In winter they were completely different, a snowy wonderland, teeming with skiiers. He had skied near here many times. His free pass and social working hours made him an attractive proposition. There were many women willing to enjoy his company, influential, well-connected women who in turn provided him with invaluable insights into the ruling groups and the vicissitudes of local politics. All of his relationships, except one, had had a mercenary angle. So much so that it had become a reflex. If I spend time with this or that woman what will she bring me? What’s the benefit? No wonder he had ended up alone.
As they bumped along the track up into the mountains these thoughts took him right away from the job in hand. Amara’s tap on his shoulder brought him back. From the seat behind she pointed at the gates up a steep ramp to the left. Dima slowed down about ten metres away and then pulled to a halt. They checked out the gun nests on either side of the gates. Two men in each: one with binoculars, the other with a machine-gun. They were NSVs — a universal anti-infantry, anti-aircraft, anti-everything weapon, discontinued after the collapse of the USSR, made under licence in Iran. Except those were probably the original Russian models, courtesy of Kaffarov.
‘They should recognise the car,’ said Amara. ‘I mustn’t look like a prisoner.’
‘Then you do the talking.’
Her outfit looked pretty convincing. She had taken a silk suit and wrenched off one of the sleeves and all of the buttons of her blouse, consistent with someone having grabbed her. Now the tied tails of the front held it closed. The trainers on her feet looked incongruous — but what would you wear for a post-quake, possibly pre-nuclear getaway?
They politely let her out, Dima nudging Vladimir to stand up straight.
‘Wait near the car. Let them come to you. The further in we can get before trouble starts, the better.’ She did exactly as she was told, trembling and looking for all the world like a woman whose house had just survived a brutal looting, whose virtue had even been compromised. The tears rolled down her cheeks as if she’d told them to. What a natural, thought Dima: she could have a bright future in the GRU.
A guard came forward, his Kalashnikov on his hip.
Amara practically threw herself on him.
‘Tell Kristen it’s Amara.’
He nodded at the Chevy.
‘My own security detail.’ She pressed a hand against her chest. ‘I said no, but Gazul insisted. They saved my life.’
‘Where is your husband now, ma’am?’
She touched him on the arm and shook her head, letting her hair fall over her eyes: she was good.
He walked back to his post, picked up a phone. A few seconds later the gates whirred open. Dima shifted into Drive and they rolled through. They were in.
43
North Tehran Airspace
Black and Montes watched through a starboard window as a pair of F-16s screamed past the Osprey.
‘They better leave something for us!’ shouted Chaffin over the roar of the rotors.
Black continued to watch until they turned into silver specks at the end of their ascending vapour trails.
‘They’re taking out the perimeter AAs and any other hardware they can lock on to. Plus any stray air cover they might have up there.’
‘We any closer to knowing who or what’s gonna be waiting for us?’ said Campo, as if he now knew how to zero in on Black’s weak spot.
Black didn’t know. His crew always looked to him for the answers. If he had one, he’d give it to them. If he hadn’t he’d give them some possibles. Always something. They thought of him as the smartest: the guy who was going to get home, get to college and go up in the world, be a teacher like his Mom, maybe. But Blackburn didn’t know where he was going. His judgement had been shaken. Nothing in the world looked how it used to. Campo, his former friend, sat staring out at the sky. He’d almost killed him earlier. He had to hold it together. Who or what was waiting for them? Perhaps only God. Perhaps nothing. He thought of his father, in the Vietcong’s cage in the water, from brave soldier to terrified teenager: what had he expected to face in the end?
The images from the CCTV screen in the bank vault flashed back to him. Bashir had been easy to ID. The more he thought about the second man, the more a voice in his head clamoured for attention. A guy cuts a Marine’s head off with a sword on the Iraqi border; thirty-six hours later he’s moving nukes around with Al Bashir in downtown Tehran. Andrews and Dershowitz hadn’t looked convinced. Now Blackburn was having his own doubts. Felt himself headed into a whole tunnel of self-doubt: not a good way to be going into a mission.
The mountains reared up like a great barren wall, the only patches of green being the vegetation down below in the valleys. Blackburn tried to imagine the hard, sunbaked rock covered with snow, shut his eyes for a moment and took himself back to a day out with his family, swooping down Blacktail Mountain in Montana, breaking the rules and going straight down. The trick was knowing when to break them.
‘LZ three miles. Prepare rope!’
44
Alborz Mountains, North of Tehran
The distance from the gate to the chalet was two hundred metres. Dima drove at walking pace to maximise the time they had to take in the buildings and scan the surroundings.
Kroll piped up from the back.
‘Hey, guess what — both nuke signals just stopped.’
‘Is the scanner fucked again?’
‘Nope. Still getting a signal from the third device.’
‘Any ideas?’
‘Could be underground. In some kind of vault.’
As they got closer to the house they saw a Mercedes G-Wagen: black with black glass. Kaffarov’s? There were two other vehicles, a brand new Range Rover Evoque and a battered 1990s Peugeot.
Amara pointed.
‘The Range Rover — that’s Kristen’s.’
‘So she’s free to come and go?’
‘Only with minders.’
‘For the world’s most notorious arms dealer, he’s not exactly overburdened with security,’ said Kroll. ‘Either he’s smart enough to know that it just provokes the wrong sort of attention, or he’s mad enough to think he’s untouchable. Maybe both.’
‘Facts would be a lot more useful than speculation,’ said Dima.
‘Only trying to help.’
‘Right,’ said Dima. ‘First golden rule: stay in touch.’
Each of them had a radio headset. The plan was to send in Amara, with Zirak and Gregorin. They would scope the place, give Dima a sitrep and pinpoint Kaffarov. It was the
sort of operation Dima relished: a plan made on the hoof using whatever available assets there were — in this case Amara and a small tight crew of utterly dependable men all capable of thinking on their feet. They had stayed with him on this, when many saner people would have bailed out. He watched them walk up to the house. The young blonde from the photos waved ecstatically from one of the balconies.
It all looked much, much too easy, he thought.
The first rocket landed exactly where Kristen was standing, as if it had been aimed right at her. She didn’t even have time to react. One moment she was waving, then she was gone. The balcony disappeared in a cloud of atomised concrete that engulfed Gregorin, Zirak and Amara below. He heard Amara scream, then the second rocket smashed into the mountainside fifty metres away. Dima felt himself flying backwards, then cartwheeling, until a wooden fence brought him to a halt just in time to see the two gun towers flattened by another strike.
Dima was up first, looking for Kroll and Vladimir. They were pulling each other to their feet. He pointed at the downed gun towers.
‘Get to the AAs. See if they still work. Whoever’s up there, stop them — now!’
He was moving towards the chalet, not thinking about Gregorin and Zirak or Amara and Kristen: only Kaffarov and the nukes. That’s what he’d come for. He’d made it this far, paid too high a price not to collect his prize. No one was going to take it from him now.
He picked up speed as he got to the pile of rubble, and found some steps, half broken, jutting out from the facade. He scrambled up them on to a chunk of balcony that immediately broke away when he stepped on to it, nearly sending him crashing to the ground with it. He could hear someone screaming under the rubble. A fire had broken out inside the building, belching acrid smoke. No mask, shit. All the kit was still in the SUV. All he had was his AK and a knife. He climbed through a window, grabbed a shredded curtain which he tore a strip from and wrapped it over his face.
A big drawing room, with nice paintings on the walls. A Matisse. And a Gauguin: two voluptuous island girls, topless, gazing out at him. Could they be real? Maybe that was what the non-Muslim heaven looked like: quite possibly not virgins, but he wasn’t fussy. He saw a giant marble chess board on a glass coffee table the size of a lake: a game midway through. No players in sight: white two moves from checkmate. From a doorway, a huge man with cheeks that squeezed his eyes into slits was aiming an Uzi at him. Yin or Yang? Dima would never know. His knife thudded into the man’s carotid artery, making a mess of Gauguin’s Tahitians. He hoped it was a fake.
Dima jumped on him, retrieved the knife, grabbed the Uzi and tore off his radio. Another blast echoed deep inside the building — the boiler or a fuel tank? The floor lurched and half a wall collapsed, sending a huge mirror down like a guillotine on to the expiring Korean. He saw the chess set glide away: game over. Four rooms on this floor. Two completely blown away. Kaffarov could be under the rubble as well. Two more — a library. He didn’t dare think about what precious first editions might be in there. A desk and a laptop, but a small one, white. Kristen’s? Check it later. He found the internal stairs. Intact. Took them three at a stride. Outside he heard the AA guns. A short sharp burst. Someone conserving their ammunition: Vladimir. He marvelled at how you could identify someone by the way they shot.
Bedrooms: one untouched, fresh flowers in a vase. Roses. A swimsuit on the carpet — wet. Tch, tch. A towel as well. Young people today, never clear up after themselves. His mother’s voice. You would have liked this room, mother. Silk cushions, triple-mirror dresser with matching curtain along the front: all the things you never had. A masked man in each of the mirrors. Himself. The en suite bathroom all marble: massive.
A rumble from outside, high up. Helicopter? There was a pad on the roof. Wrong noise. Plane? Both: Osprey. Keep the Marines away, Vladimir: I’m not done here yet.
Seven more bedrooms: all empty. They’d seen the G-Wagen: Kaffarov had to be somewhere. No sign of an office, nor even another laptop. Where was it all? Kaffarov never stopped, always trading, always in demand. Food, water and weapons, the three basic needs of humanity, in his case definitely not in that order.
The engines were close, slowing now. The Osprey doing its magic trick, switching from flight to hover, a fourteen-second process: fourteen seconds to take aim. Bam. Right on cue, another burst of AA fire, then an explosion, engine revs rising to a scream, struggling to do the work of the stricken second engine.
And suddenly Dima was down, smothered by a huge bulk. How did something that big move so fast, so quietly? His face grated against brickdust. Heat pressed in on him, and garlic sweat. The lone remaining twin was perched on top of him. From behind a hand curved round his forehead, gripping his brow, fingertips pressing against his eyeballs. He tried to open one eyelid, saw a window. Outside was the Osprey, its bulk falling to earth, the remaining engine losing the battle. And in extreme close-up, a flash of blade in the other hand curving toward his neck.
45
Dima didn’t hear the order. It disappeared under the sound of the Osprey falling among the trees, slamming into the ground and pulling with it more of the half-destroyed chalet. The blade hovered in the air as its owner struggled to reconcile the desire for revenge with the need to obey orders. His boss won that one. The blade disappeared, for now.
‘Hold up his head.’
Yin or Yang wrenched Dima’s head up and to one side. Kaffarov bent down slightly and Dima got his first close-up look: a Tajik, dark-haired and pale-skinned with a thin neck and a pronounced chin. Without all the hired muscle he might be a pushover, but right now Dima lacked the opportunity to find out.
‘He doesn’t look American. Take him to the pool.’
‘Thanks, but I haven’t got my swimming kit,’ said Dima.
The twin yanked him up by the scruff of his coat and dragged him across the room like a recalcitrant dog. A door, with nothing to distinguish it as such, opened silently in the wall. And there was the rest of it: a whole parallel universe carved into the mountain behind the facade of the chalet. Dima tried to walk but the twin held him down, so he was forced to let his feet drag behind him, and be pulled along the corridor like a toy.
Another door opened — the gym — and leading off it, a room full of screens. They stopped in the gym. Dima tried to turn his head to see more of the other room, but was yanked forward again. There was a brief glimpse of an aquarium: did people like Kaffarov keep piranhas, or was that only in films? Then he smelled the chlorine. They didn’t start with a question. The huge Korean just stuffed his head into the water and held it there. Twenty seconds. A taster. Yanked him up. Kaffarov’s face was close, calm, expressionless, his pupils tiny dots.
‘Who sent you?’ He spoke in Farsi, then repeated the question in English.
Dima replied in Russian.
‘Your girlfriend’s under the rubble. If you hurry you might just be able to save her.’
His head went under again: a cold, suffocating horror, no space, no air. Don’t try to breathe. How long would it be this time? He counted twenty seconds — and then another. Kaffarov’s face was closer this time.
‘You are going to tell me exactly who you are, and why you’re here, or Yin will drown you.’
‘Ah, so it was Yang I killed then. You boys really do look alike.’
‘Do it.’
Down he went again. Okay, start counting. The water was tepid, sort of stale. Dima knew what to do. He’d trained for this, come first in his Spetsnaz group for lasting the longest. It was all a matter of relaxing. The more relaxed you were, the less energy you used. Keep counting. Entire extra seconds could be gone without that next lungful. Learning how to suffer through all the misery and punishment of his training, being thrown naked on to the hard frozen snow and made to fight, the beatings, the humiliation, all about controlling pain, managing anger, channelling it into patience, kneading it into raw aggression, conserved for just the right moment.
The trick was not to care, to
keep counting but just give in to it. So I’ll die: so what? I’ve had my moments. The record for staying under water was eleven minutes thirty-five seconds. His best was just under eight. But that was after a really good sleep. I should have fucked that receptionist, he thought: she had red hair and smelled of apples. That would have been a good memory to go out on.
Three minutes. He had glimpsed the pool, seen that this was the deep end. What else could he use? Focus on the surroundings, the hand pressing down, where Yin’s weight on top of him was distributed, the knees on his shoulders, not his lower arms which were free. Dima inched them round until his hands could grasp the edge of the pool. Four minutes. Not as good as he was. He needed that lungful of air right now.
He let his muscles go, stopped resisting, and used the weight of his head, which he had been pushing against the twin’s hand, to pull him further down, boosted by the leverage from his hands on the edge. With an extra pull he pushed himself deeper. Yin lost his balance, keeled over Dima and hit the water: not what he was expecting. Dima plunged a hand down, grabbed the knife from his pudgy hand, brought it straight up under Yin’s flailing ribcage and plunged, then twisted, then plunged again. He felt a wall of muscle, withdrew and plunged once more.
46
There was a collective shout of pain in the Osprey as they felt the jolt. The AA fire took the tip of the starboard rotor off, stalling the engine before the flames started. The ramp doors were already opening for a fast exit, but the door gunners had been blown away. Not by a hail of fire but by short sharp bursts expertly aimed. The F-16s had reported the AA guns neutralised. Mistake. So many mistakes in warfare, Blackburn now understood. It was a miracle anybody survived, let alone triumphed.
The port engine revs rose as it sucked at the air, trying to compensate, but the Osprey was halfway through its transition from flight to hover. Blackburn felt the craft climb and then hang for a tantalising few seconds before it gave up the fight and started its progression downwards. The pilot did what he could but the ground rushed towards them. Men frozen into position clung to the grab handles on the fuselage interior. Futile. Blackburn lurched towards the open ramp, tripped and slid headfirst. He smashed through several trees he never had time to identify, but boy did he love those trees. The arms of angels breaking his fall. His arrival back on earth was still painful though and he blacked out for several seconds. Further down the hill, he saw the Osprey roll on to its side: the wings, with their still-spinning rotors, snapped off like bits of a plastic kit.
