'Advance to Contact' (Armageddon's Song)

by Andy Farman

  With a shout, muffled by his own respirator, he launched himself across the intervening space and fell onto the loose end of rope in the full knowledge that a single tear in his chemical warfare suit would mean an agonising death. More men came to his assistance and the pontoon’s bid to escape was ended, he climbed to his feet drenched in sweat beneath the rubberised material of his protective garments.

  When the pontoon was secured and the retaining clamps bolted into place, he personally guided back the first tractor unit carrying bridge sections. His surviving combat engineers had briefed the infantry on how to manhandle the sections off the flatbed, across to the river, and how to lift the leading edge onto the first pontoon. With some pushing and a lot of arm waving the pressed men climbed into position on the flatbed and slid their lifting bars into position under the topmost section. The engineers waited until they were all set and then signalled them all to lift together, fifty men bent their knees and heaved and grunted, muscles straining and backs cracking with the effort, but the section did not move. After a moment or two they tried again in unison but with the same result.

  The engineer officer was cursing their collective manhood’s as he clambered up to see what the problem was, pushing one man aside and taking his place. For a third time they took the strain and tried to lift the section, tendons standing out and faces reddening as they heaved but again they failed to make any impression. Withdrawing the lifting bar he had used, the officer stepped up onto the bridging section, utterly at a loss as to why they could not accomplish this simple task, and then his eyes fell upon something on its metal surface, a burned and blistered area of metal decking. He tapped it curiously with the lifting bar, and then noticed many other such blemishes. A sick feeling started to grow in his gut and he rushed to the edge and clambered down the side, peering between the sections before jumping to the ground and running to the next vehicle. After checking the third and final vehicle, the only ones to have escaped destruction in the earlier Skeet attack; he again jumped to the ground and walked slowly to the riverbank. The clamorous thunder of battle was clearly audible from across the river, and he stood on the bank gazing across for a minute before looking at the lifting bar he still held. His combat engineers and the infantry had stopped what they were doing to watch him, and then looked at each other as the officer roared in frustration and flung the tool as far across the water as he could.

  The Skeet’s had miraculously missed destroying the tractor units of these transports loaded with bridging sections, but the long, wide expanses of metal that they carried had attracted the attentions of dozens of the devices, and the bridging sections were all firmly and inextricably welded to one another by the strikes.

  Colonel Lužar received the information with a heavy heart; it had all been for nothing, all the fear, adrenaline, men and vehicles that had been lost were simply wasted. Calling up his surviving units he organised a hasty withdrawal under contact, and the fighting vehicles collected what survivors of knocked out vehicles that they could, and began the business of fire and manoeuvre as they backed away from the Mitterland Kanal.

  RAF Kinloss, Scotland: 1118hrs, same day.

  Snowploughs were busy keeping the runaways clear of the still heavily falling snow when Scott and Constantine emerged from the stations subterranean operations centre. It had been a very long night for them both, as they followed the progress of the Nighthawks insertion into Russia. The signal that they were down and in the safe hands of the US Special Forces, had come hours before, but Constantine and Scott had stayed until word was received that they were in the safe house, nearer to Moscow, and all was well.

  They trudged through the snow; hands thrust deep into pockets, with collars turned up against the snow and the chill wind blowing in off the Moray Firth.

  “This is scary, Scott. It is like it is mid-winter in Siberia!” Their breath fogged the air as they hurried on across the snow to their office, obediently following the network of footpaths, even though it would take them twice as long.

  “I was talking to the met officer here on the camp; he thinks this is just a freak event, owing to the bombs in the ocean interfering with the weather patterns.” Scott paused to gaze about him, looking for the station Warrant Officer, the individual who was responsible for all things discipline related, and who regarded the straying off the footpaths in order to take short cuts across ‘his’ grass, as being second only to ethnic cleansing in the scale of serious crimes. The coast seemed to be clear so they cut across the snow covered grassy areas, making a beeline to the office. Scott continued with what the meteorological officer had been telling him. “Apparently…I suppose quite obviously really, the earth is getting closer to the sun by the hour, so it’s going to warm up anyway and all this snow will be gone…imagine though, what would it be like if this were October and not April!”

  Constantine thought about it for a moment.

  “Yes, but will the weather patterns have settled down by the time the next October does get here?”

  But Scott’s thinking had drifted to his kids back home in Virginia, back in January there had been heavy snow and they had loved it, as had he and Jean. Watching them play had taken him back to his own childhood, there was a reason why snowball fights and Tobogganing were amongst the clearest and most treasured of childhood memories, the snow lent a magical quality to them.

  Through the snow they saw the headlights of the rented Range Rover on the road outside their building, smoke from the exhaust evidenced the coldness of the engine, and Pc Stokes was industriously scraping away at the ice on the windscreen with the edge of an expired credit card. He looked up as they approached.

  “Everything okay boss, is Miss Vorsoff alright?”

  Neither of the close protection officers were in the know as to the operation that was being run, and neither of the officers had any wish to know the details of their charges mission.

  “Yes Nigel, everything is fine, thanks. Is the heater on?”

  “For the last quarter of an hour, since you phoned from ops sir.”

  Constantine and Scott kicked off the snow that had clung to their shoes before climbing inside, Scott turned the blower up, for a moment and tested the air coming from the vents, but it was still cold so he turned it off and shivered.

  “Tiredness thins the blood; I could sleep for a week.” He turned to look at Constantine in the back. “You look like you could do with a solid twelve yourself.”

  The major looked haggard, but could not relax right now because his thoughts were not with the here and now, but far off across the Continent in Russia.

  Driving out of the camp the police officer turned left and followed the B9089 east until they passed through the small wood that marked the RAF stations eastern boundary, and then turned right onto a minor road. The driver and passenger of a van with a Newcastle builders logo on the side watched them disappear, and the passenger made a call on his mobile before they then headed for Kinloss town, keeping to the roads that had been gritted by the council lorries.

  Stokes always varied their routes, never going the same way twice in a row. This wintry morning he took them along a series of minor roads, which meant having to engage four wheel drive because the gritter’s would never spread salt on these narrow roads.

  Eventually they drove across a tiny old bridge over the rail line to Inverness and cut through the edge of Alves Wood, pulling up outside the house which lay a quarter of a mile beyond the trees.

  The snow had been falling for a few hours and there was nothing to suggest anyone had approached the house since they had left it the day before, all that marred the pristine white blanket was a single set of footprints that came from the front door, up the path and turned right, heading away down the lane. Stokes recognised the shape and tread of his colleague’s trainers, which had yet to be covered over with fresh snow.

  “Bloody hell…you’d think he’d have given the run a miss today.” Although both of the police firearm's officers work
ed hard at keeping up their levels of fitness, Pell was the keener of the two men.

  “He’s probably gone to fetch the newspapers.” Scott commented, too tired to get over excited about the antics of a fitness fanatic. If the man wanted to run all the way into the town of Kinloss and back in the snow, then that was his business. Crunching through the crisp snow to the door Stokes put his key in the lock and swore when it wouldn’t turn. He tried jiggling it and then removed the key and putting his mouth in front of the lock he blew, thinking that moisture could have frozen the lock immobile in the sub-zero temperature. When the attempt failed he turned to Scott and Constantine and shrugged.

  “Sorry, I’ll hop over the wall and try the kitchen door…gimme a boost up please.”

  Constantine linked his fingers and crouched for Stokes to put an icy foot into the stirrup they formed, and then heaved up, boosting the policeman up so he could catch the top of the ten-foot high garden wall. Stokes pulled himself up nimbly and dropped out of sight, leaving the Russian major shake the snow off his hands and blow on them to restore some warmth.

  Scott stamped his feet to keep the circulation going, his mind again on what his kids would be doing in all this snow if it were snowing in Virginia too. A slight movement from the door caught his eye, it opened a few inches and then he saw a flash of light.

  Constantine heard a grunt followed by a muffled thud from behind him, and turned with a grin, thinking that Scott had slipped and fallen, but the CIA man was lying flat on his back on the footpath and the snow under his head was turning dark.

  Constantine rushed over to his friend, and then froze when he saw a small hole just left of centre of Scott’s forehead, a trickle of blood running from it down the side of the Americans face to join the steadily growing stain in the snow.

  “Be so good as to remain completely still Major!” a woman’s voice ordered him from the doorway, and Constantine could do nothing except comply.

  Stepping through the kitchen door from the garden, the tanned man took out a mobile phone and summoned their back-up crew as he went to join his partner at the front. He was enjoying a feeling of quiet satisfaction in their having managed to trace the traitors from such a small lead as the telephone number of a public call box, miles away in Edinburgh. Hotels, guesthouses and rental addresses such as this one had been visited throughout Scotland, the Borders and Scottish Isles. The girl was missing, but the major would tell exactly where she could be found, as pliers applied to the testicles were a proven method of loosening tongues.

  Constantine was hoping desperately that Stokes was still alive, and would be coming through the house at any moment, but the only sound he heard was that of the woman stepping out of the house, her right foot making the snow on the top step crunch, and then with her left foot she stepped down onto the footpath, onto the spot where the milk bottle had broken. Constantine heard her grunt as her foot skidded on the patch of ice created by the milk from the broken bottle. As she fell she put out a hand to save herself, and Constantine turned as she screamed, having put her free hand on broken glass from the bottle.

  The instructors who had taken himself and Svetlana through the tedious hours of unarmed combat had stressed that the aim was to inflict the maximum damage to your opponent, because if it got to the point where you had no weapons left to fight with, it was all or nothing. The woman’s eyes were screwed up in pain as he took a pace forward but then they opened, and the handgun with its sound suppresser, which had wavered off target, was now starting to move back toward him. Constantine kicked out, but not at the hand holding the pistol. The human body has points of varying vulnerability the instructors had stressed, eyes can be gauged out, ears can be pulled off and groins can be punched or kicked, but the throat is the most vulnerable of all. His right foot came forward, and he drove the toe of his shoe into the exposed throat with all the force of a striker taking a penalty, crushing her trachea.

  The tanned man appeared in the hallway; Constantine straightened up, having taken possession of the woman’s handgun. The tanned man’s weapon was in his right hand, pointing down at the floor, but he whipped it up and was turning his body sideways on to present a smaller target to the major who snapped off a shot one handed, hoping for the man’s chest but having a sound suppressor on the muzzle was new to him, it altered the balance and he snatched the shot. There was little more noise than that of the working parts cycling back and forth in the weapon but it bucked in his hand, muzzle heavy and hitting the tanned man’s right knee, causing the leg to collapse. As the man fell to his knees Constantine fired again, this time two handed and aiming as taught, double tapping and both rounds struck the wounded man in the upper body. His targets arms dropped to the sides, and then the gun fell from the hand that had held it. The head lolled forward as though he were a puppet without strings and the body fell face first onto the mat inside the doorway. Constantine kept his weapon pointing at the fallen man, but looked down at the woman, distracted by the gurgling sound she emitted as she rolled over onto her side, her blue face burying itself in the snow and then became deathly still, the body relaxing completely. He aimed at the body inside the door as he stepped indoors. He didn’t know how to feel for a pulse at the side of the neck like they did in the movies, so he did the other thing actors did, and he nudged it with his foot. Satisfied that he was as dead as the woman he knelt and retrieved the man’s fallen pistol. Constantine’s gaze then fell upon the form of Pc Pell, lying like a broken doll at the foot of the stairs with the back of his head missing and his training shoes gone. Sorrow and anger welled up inside him. He had liked both Scott and the policeman but now both were dead, gunned down by these people. The tanned man’s hand moved, the movement catching the majors eye and Constantine shot him three times in quick succession, bulky sound suppressor doing its job, the ejected spent cases ringing like chimes as they struck the old and burnished brass artillery shell casing that acted as umbrella stand before clattering onto the polished oak floorboards and rolling away.

  Constantine rolled the body over, taking a hand and using a lifeless arm as a lever and avoiding the expanding pool of blood. Inside the man’s jacket were photographs, a copy of Constantine’s embassy ID picture, along with a photo of a bare breasted Svetlana wearing a G-String and a grin, stood on a windsurfing trainer board on a beach, her instructor smiling smugly at the camera with his arms about her hips.

  His fingers left dark smudges on both and he straightened up, examining his fingers before wiping them on the side of his coat to remove the fake tan make-up that smeared them. It then occurred to him that he did not know if these two were alone.

  Pell’s MP-5 was visible, still attached to its harness and discarding the pistols he knelt quickly, unclipped the MP-5 and checked the pockets for spare magazines. He found two and stuck them into his own coat pocket before checking the load on the MP-5, and then moving as he had been taught, butt in the shoulder and weapon in the aim as he made his way to the back of the house.

  Police Constable Stokes was lying crumpled and motionless in snow stained red at the corner of the house; Constantine rolled him over and sighed sorrowfully at the eyes, which stared unseeing at the snowflakes that floated down to land on the dead face. The tanned man had been waiting for Stokes to appear around the corner of the house, killing him with a single bullet in the side of the head as he’d stepped into view. Constantine went through his clothing, ignoring the Glock but pocketing the mobile telephone he discovered there. The house phone had been disconnected when the house had been taken over, and both his and Svetlana’s mobiles had been taken by the CIA debriefer’s as a precaution.

  The sound of a vehicle negotiating the slippery, un-gritted road reached the major, and then the engine note altered; it was stopping outside the house. The voices of several men and the noise of cocking weapons indicated that it was hardly likely to be a passing motorist, or the local constabulary.

  Constantine ran back into the house, pausing in the living room to p
eer out through the hall door. The front door was still wide open, and in the lane he saw a battered van, but hurrying towards the gate were four very serious looking men carrying AKM-74 assault rifles. Constantine did not know any of them, but he was certain the cavalry wouldn’t be arriving in a builders van and totting soviet weaponry. As the first of the newcomers caught sight of the woman’s body he froze in alarm and opened his mouth to shout.

  Constantine went up the hallway squeezing off aimed shots from the MP-5; he moved quickly in the crouching, knees-together walk that kept the upper body steady enough to permit more accurate fire than running would have.

  His first round hit the left side of his targets chest and the leading newcomer dropped with a grunting cry, whilst the other three dived out of sight, rolling for cover. Constantine reached the doorway and fired through the hedge at where he though the others were taking cover before kicking the door closed and stepping aside as he did so. Return fire hammered through the door's woodwork, and straight through the Kevlar panel which could not stop high velocity, steel cored rounds. The gunmen’s leader screamed at the firer to cease fire, because Bedonavich was no use to them dead, and the firing ended abruptly.

  Constantine knew he could not defend the house against these men, he had to get clear and call for help, so turning he sprinted through the house, across the garden and through the rear gate into the snow covered field beyond.

  At the front of the house, one of the fallen man’s comrades checked him over rapidly; rolling him onto his left side, the injured side, keeping the un-punctured lung upper most, the wounded man was then left to fend for himself. One man covered the front whilst the other two took a side each, leopard crawling along so as to use the cover of the privet hedge that ran around the front garden. Once they reached the cover of the side wall they got up and ran to the far corner at each end of the garden.