The Moscow Cipher

by Scott Mariani

  ‘You must be kidding, man,’ Grisha said. ‘Kaprisky is one of the New World Order. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a fucking Bilderberg Group member, takes vacations at Bohemian Grove and all that, performing satanic rituals with Merkel and Obama and all the other Illuminati scumbags. He’d track our location in a heartbeat and send a hit squad to wipe us out.’

  Ben ignored him and looked at Yuri. ‘You have my word that she’ll be safe. The jet will be on the tarmac by the time we reach Moscow. She’ll be back in France within a few hours. This is the only way it’s going to go down, Yuri. It would be much better for her if you cooperate.’

  They’d been talking for almost an hour. In the heavy silence that now followed Ben’s words, he heard a tiny creak of the bedroom door behind him and turned to see Valentina half-hidden in the doorway, peeking anxiously through the gap.

  ‘How long have you been standing there listening, Sweet Pea?’ Yuri asked her in a soft voice.

  She pushed the door fully open and burst into the room, head hanging, her little shoulders slumped miserably, her lower lip sticking out and trembling as she struggled not to burst into tears. She ran to her father and flew into his embrace, locked her skinny arms around him as if she never wanted to let go. Yuri’s face contorted with emotion as he hugged her tightly.

  ‘ Ik wil niet gaan!’ the child sobbed, reverting to Dutch. ‘ Laat ze me niet nemen, Papa!’ I don’t want to go! Don’t let them take me away, Daddy!

  ‘Maybe it’s for the best, baby,’ Yuri replied, holding back his own tears. ‘Mummy’s so worried about you. She can’t wait to have you home safe. You’ve got to try to understand, Sweet Pea. Papa made a mistake bringing you here.’

  ‘But I want to be with you and Uncle Grisha!’

  Ben heaved a sigh and exchanged glances with Tatyana. This isn’t going to be easy, her look said, and he was inclined to agree.

  Yuri was stroking his little girl’s hair and trying his best to quieten her tears as she pressed against him for comfort, her little body racked with sobs. The confined Alyosha had started up his barking again, barely muffled by the thin walls of the shed. Grisha looked towards the dark window and pulled an irritated grimace at the racket coming from outside.

  Ben took out his cigarettes and was about to light one up when Tatyana frowned, pointed at the child and shook her head. He heaved an even heavier sigh and put the Gauloises away and reached for the vodka instead. Anything to soothe the nerves while Valentina calmed down. The least Ben felt he could do was let her and Yuri have a few moments together before they had to part for what would probably be quite a while. He knew the kid would probably hate him forever, but what choice did he have?

  ‘I wish that dog would shut up,’ Grisha muttered, rubbing his beard. ‘He goes off at shadows, the wind, chickens farting, anything at all.’

  Nobody had a reply to make to that. And it was during that lull in the conversation, before anyone spoke another word, that a sudden loud percussive blast from outside flared across the night sky and rattled the farmhouse window panes. At almost exactly the same moment, the farmhouse door burst in and three armed men in black tactical assault gear stormed into the hallway.

  Then the lights went out, the farmhouse was plunged into darkness. Amid the screaming and chaos, the gunfire began.

  Chapter 29

  The insertion of the commander and a twenty-man assault team into the vicinity of the target had had to be carried out fast and covertly, using a hastily scrambled trio of Kamov Ka-226T utility helicopters carrying seven troops apiece. Once the exact position had been pinpointed, the Mission Chief back at base had established a suitable drop zone 4.5 kilometres to the north: close enough for the commander and his team to make their way cross-country once on the ground, far enough away for the helicopters to make their pass unheard by the occupants of the farmhouse. A survey of the local topography had revealed a ridge of forested hillside that would mask the lights of the aircraft from view, if the pilots made their final approach to the DZ at sufficiently low altitude.

  The drop had gone without a hitch. Moving silently in seven squads of three men each, the team covered the four and a half kilometres like the skilled, experienced operatives they were. Once they reached the target zone, every man knew his role. For this mission they had been issued a mixture of non-lethal weaponry in the form of the latest extended-range wireless Taser guns intended for the capture of Petrov and the girl, as well as the more usual hardware associated with their work: 9mm Glock pistols for the Taser crew, and compact AEK-919K Kashtan submachine guns as used by Russian Special Forces, fitted with silencers, tactical lights and lasers, for everyone else.

  The lethal firearms were primarily intended for the purpose of eliminating the British ex-soldier called Ben Hope who posed the most significant threat to the success of their mission and had been the sole reason for deploying such a large force of men in the first place. If not for his presence, the idea of sending three helicopters loaded with twenty-one combat operatives to take care of two amateurs and a little girl would have seemed like madness. But Hope’s involvement, whatever the reason for it, changed everything. The team had been briefed on his background and level of ability. What they had been told about this man made them rightly nervous. Nobody would hesitate to shoot to kill on sight.

  Arriving at the target zone, the team had spread out to more closely reconnoitre the operational area from various angles and finalise their assault plan. Other than a barking dog and a few nervous goats, all seemed quiet and calm at the farmstead. The team leader had been in frequent radio contact with the Mission Chief who, sitting in his command centre far away, was watching the entire show via live satellite feed on his big screen. It was the satellite that had picked up on the dark shadow on the rise overlooking the farmstead from the south. When the commander sent a squad to investigate, they confirmed that it was the same black Mercedes they’d been looking for.

  The remaining troopers, meanwhile, carried out a final weapons check and prepared themselves for the breaching entry of the farmhouse. One unit of three had been selected as the point men, whose responsibility it would be to take down Hope in the opening few seconds of the surprise attack and secure the building as the rest of the team moved in and rounded up the prisoners.

  The backup units took up their positions around the farmyard, ready to move at the signal. Everyone was wearing the standard issue military night vision goggles. One man carried a belt pouch containing syringes loaded with powerful sedative drugs in doses ready prepared for two adult males and one twelve-year-old child.

  The countdown was tense. Nobody spoke. Clutching the radio remote in his gloved hand the commander pressed the button that activated the explosive device attached to the fuel tank of the Mercedes. The percussive blast of the explosion shook the trees and a fireball lit up the sky. An instant later, the entry squad breached the front door at the same moment that a secondary explosive device rigged to the power transformer outside the farmhouse took out the electricity.

  The unexpected fusillade of loud gunfire that rang out from inside the farmhouse was the first sign that the assault was going bad. The team’s silenced automatic weapons made little more than a clattering sound. The commander froze just an instant too long when he heard the crashing double BOOM – BOOM followed by the sharper crack of a high-velocity rifle going off inside the building. The troopers still outside all looked to him, eyes wide behind their masks, awaiting his order. He yelled, ‘ Go go go!’ and led the way inside the farmhouse, illuminated an eerie sea-green by the night vision goggles. He swung his weapon left and right in search of his target but could see nothing except an empty room. The toe of his combat boot touched something heavy and soft on the floor of the hallway and he looked down to see the bodies of the point men, all three of them, sprawled at his feet.

  Stepurin and Orlov had each had his head partially removed by a shotgun blast. Vasiliev had made it about a metre further inside the room before he�
��d hit the floor dead from a gaping hole in his throat, an inch above the edge of his bulletproof vest. His submachine gun was gone.

  But the commander had little time to survey the damage to his men as the remainder of the assault team swept into the building in his wake, pointing their guns in all directions.

  Suddenly their tactical plan was all awry. Where moments earlier all five of their targets – Hope, Petrov, Solokov, the child and the woman Nikolaeva – had been inside the room, they were all gone as though vaporised. All that remained of their presence was a rumpled newspaper, an empty vodka bottle and four glasses, and a rustic double-barrelled shotgun and a World War II battle rifle lying on the floor with wisps of smoke still trickling from their muzzles.

  Getting a grip of his frazzled nerves the commander remembered that there was no back door to the farmhouse. That meant the targets were still inside. ‘Find them!’ he yelled to his men.

  In Ben’s way of seeing things, when a bunch of heavily armed men come storming into the house with the obvious intention of hurting someone, you shoot first and keep shooting until they’re down. That lightning reaction time and unflinching response had been instilled into him as a young warrior until they were completely second nature to him, and he’d only become faster since.

  Still, getting the drop on the surprise attackers when his own guns were lying on the table next to him hadn’t been easy, even for him. Ben had taken down the first two with Grisha’s old hammer gun and the third with the Mosin Nagant rifle, before the damned ejector had snapped off leaving the chamber blocked by the fired shell case and the weapon about as useful as a baseball bat. That had left Ben about one and a half seconds to rearm himself and get Yuri, Valentina, Grisha and Tatyana out of the room before more attackers came bursting inside the farmhouse.

  Where they were going, he had little idea and no time to consider, just as now was not the moment to try to understand what was happening, who was attacking them, and how anyone could have found them so fast. Survive the moment and figure it out later … if you live that long.

  The house was pitch black around him, save for the thin beam from the tactical light mounted to the weapon he’d taken from one of the raiders. Bursting through a door at the end of the narrow passage through which they’d come, he shone his light around a poky kitchen that looked filthy even in the dark. Next in was Yuri, clutching Valentina in his arms with a hand over the child’s mouth to stifle her terrified cries. Then Grisha, stumbling through the doorway like a blind-drunk bear. Tatyana came last. Ben closed the door, which had an old-fashioned lock and key that he twisted home.

  No way a nineteenth-century iron lock would keep anyone at bay for long. There was an ancient electric stove on the other side of the kitchen. Ben grabbed it and heaved it away from the wall, ripping the electric cord from its socket, and dragged it quickly across the greasy linoleum floor to barricade the door. He glanced around him. The kitchen had no windows and no other door. That was very, very good, because it eliminated points of entry by the attackers. And it was very, very bad, because it meant the five of them were trapped here inside.

  As Ben’s mind raced for a way out of the situation, he heard thundering boots in the passage. Something hard and heavy thumped against the door, and then again, with enough force to flex the timber frame. The attackers would be inside the kitchen in no time. Ben stalled things by rattling off a couple of three-shot bursts at the door, his bullets ripping clear through the wood. A Kashtan submachine gun chambered for the short, stubby and less powerful 9x18mm Makarov cartridge was ballistically inferior to the classic 9mm Parabellum he’d relied on for most of his life. But it did the job just fine. The thumping stopped.

  Ben grabbed Yuri and shoved him away from the door, fearful that the attackers would return fire through it. When that failed to happen, Ben remembered what Yuri had said about his enemies wanting to take him alive. Maybe there was something in his crazy tale, after all. They might not risk firing through the door. What would it be instead? Gas? A stun grenade? Ben’s old SAS unit would not have been defeated by a simple wooden door barring their way. Nor would these guys.

  Valentina was in a wild panic and struggling like a little eel in her father’s arms. Yuri was as terrified of hurting the kid as he was of letting go of her in the darkness. Ben caught a glimpse of Grisha in the darting light beam and could see the big guy was losing it too. Grisha staggered to the kitchen counter, groped about until he found a carving knife and started waving it around like a lunatic, yelling Russian curses that were probably something like ‘Come and get a piece of this, you bastards’. Ben had seen the effects of shock overcome better-trained men than Grisha, and if someone didn’t do something fast he was liable to harm someone, or himself. There were enough people already trying to harm them from the outside without a deranged slasher in their midst.

  Ben was on the big guy in two strides, dazzling him with the weapon-mounted light. He twisted the knife out of his hand and stuck it deep into the kitchen worktop. Pressed the gun muzzle hard up under Grisha’s chin and said, ‘Be calm or I’ll kill you.’

  Grisha became suddenly much quieter and stood there, breathing hard, white froth bubbling at the corners of his mouth. If he collapsed of sudden heart failure, at least Ben wouldn’t have to worry about him. There was enough to worry about already.

  The enemy seemed to have fallen back from the door, but he could be certain they were planning their next move and it would come very soon. Ben had already used up about a third of his one and only magazine. When the bullets ran out they would be down to pots, pans and cutlery to use as improvised weapons.

  The walls were solid brick. The ceiling above them was planked with heavy boards. The floor was paved with stone slabs. If there was a way out of this, he couldn’t think of what it might be.

  Yuri said, ‘Grisha – your prepping cave.’

  Chapter 30

  At first, Grisha seemed to have no more idea what his friend was talking about than Ben did. Then, like a man woken out of a trance by a bucket of cold water splashed in his face, the big guy got a hold of himself. ‘My prepping cave!’ he repeated.

  ‘His what?’ Ben demanded. There wasn’t a lot of time for discussions here. He could feel the seconds ticking by before the attackers stormed their puny defences.

  Grisha stumbled across the dark room, his movements lit only by the thin bobbing beam of Ben’s tactical light. Ben watched, mystified, as the Russian crouched awkwardly in front of a cupboard by the sink, opened a drawer and groped about inside with his arm buried up to the elbow. There was a click. Grisha scrambled back to his feet, and grabbed hold of the cupboard unit with both hands. The hidden latch he’d undone released the entire thing from the wall, allowing it to swing away freely on hinges. Quite what this DIY modification was all about, Ben had no idea, until he saw the hole in the floor that the unit had been concealing.

  An area of flagstone flooring had been laboriously chiselled away. In its place was a sliding metal trapdoor lid covering whatever was below. Grisha yanked it aside to reveal a circular hole dug through the compacted earth beneath the house. The cavity was easily wide enough for a man of his bulky girth to fit through, extending downwards like a manhole for a metre or so before it apparently opened out into a much wider space. The first few rungs of an aluminium ladder glinted from the light of Ben’s beam.

  Ben was about to ask where the hell the hole led to, but didn’t bother as the answer could only be: a better place than up here. ‘Okay, let’s go,’ he said. He kept the light shining on the mouth of the hole as Yuri released Valentina from his clasp and urged her to clamber down. Wide-eyed and too bewildered to argue, the girl started shinnying like a monkey down the ladder. Yuri went after her, then Grisha, slow and ponderous, causing the ladder to creak with his weight and Ben to tense with impatience.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ Tatyana muttered, shaking her head.

  ‘No choice,’ Ben told her. ‘Move.’ When she had relucta
ntly disappeared downwards through the hole, Ben swung his legs over the edge and slid down the ladder to join them inside the space beneath.

  Grisha pressed past Ben to where a length of rope dangled down at the side of the hole. The big guy tugged on the rope and the kitchen unit swung back into place overhead. He grabbed a handle on the underside of the trapdoor and slid it across to seal off the hole. Once two heavy bolts had been shot into place, they were firmly closed inside.

  Inside what, Ben was about to discover. ‘Let’s have some more light,’ Yuri said, and suddenly the darkness was filled with the glow of a gas-cartridge camping lantern. Ben peered about him and saw they had climbed down into what appeared to be a dug-out space within the foundations of the house. The walls were solid earth and stone. Thick wooden posts rested on concrete slabs and supported the weight of the kitchen floor above.

  ‘You built this?’ he asked Grisha. The big guy nodded and held out both hands as if to proudly display the many calluses such a Herculean task must have cost him. It had to have taken months, if not years, to dig this place out by himself. It was as big as a wine cellar – except other things than wine storage had been on Grisha’s mind when he built it. Rack shelving filled every available inch of wall space, crammed with emergency supplies for the coming apocalypse, impending disasters or whatever the evil tyrants of the New World Order had in store for mankind. He’d been stockpiling tinned food by the truckload, stacked to the ceiling as well as barrels of drinking water with dates labelled by marker pen. Crates were overflowing with survival gear and purification tablets and firelighting equipment and batteries and tools, even a hazmat suit and an assortment of gas masks. As long as their enemies didn’t lob a nuclear weapon down on their heads, they should survive all right, for a while at least.

  They had made it down into the makeshift cellar just in time. From overhead, strangely far away as though they were deep in a mineshaft, came the muted crash of the kitchen door being rammed in. Muffled footsteps thumped about as the assault team burst into the room, only to find that their quarry seemed to have done a magic disappearing act.