by Chris Ryan
Within a couple of minutes an answering call came back: inside the railway complex, it said, were the offices of a company operating steam trips in a joint venture with a Swiss tourist firm. The place had modern communications, and also a large, empty engine shed in which we could assemble our kit and lay on some quick training.
Once Ivan had nominated the men for each of the teams, we had only a few hours in which to sort them out. My three Nikolai Two, Igor and Misha were all built like brick shit houses and well versed in abseiing.
The railway office and shed turned out a big bonus. By midday Ivan had sent the normal staff home, taken the place over and set up a command post and control centre in the main office, with a dish aerial on the roof. The engine shed was high enough for us to put in some abseil practice: with ropes anchored to the steel girders under the roof, we had about fifteen feet clear below us.
Ivan's video showed quite a few possible anchor-points on the roof of Block B the tops of lift-shafts, ventilation pipes and so on and I foresaw no trouble there.
From our study of the architects' plans we knew that the flat had two bedrooms and a living room ranged along the southern balcony face, down which we'd be coming. On the other side, along the internal corridor, were the kitchen, hallway, separate lavatory, a bathroom and a big storage cupboard. To us on the outside and to the snipers positioned in Block C the s windows were the first four from the right-hand end on the twelfth floor. I named them Okno Odin, Okno Dva (Window One, Window Two) and so on, numbering from the right. One was the first bedroom, two the second, three was the top half of a door which opened inwards from the balcony into the sitting room, and four another window in the same room.
Ivan agreed that we should time the hit for 2130, in the hope of catching the big players in the sitting room. Therefore we decided to blow the window-door and go in that way.
Whinger, meanwhile, was sorting a route for his team to enter via the fire-escape door on the roof, and come down the emergency stairs to position themselves outside the flat entrance.
I tried to impress on Ivan how easy it would be to create a blue on-blue to have the Red and Blue teams firing at each other.
But in fact the layout of the flat gave us two natural territories in which to operate. For Red, the balcony team, the obvious field of fire was the sitting room; for Blue, entering from the corridor, the hallway would be the main theatre. We made it a fundamental rule that Red team members would only engage targets remaining in the sitting room and not fire at anyone running through into the hall. Blue would be free to fire into the hall or either of the bedrooms.
Of the three guys allotted to me, I was happy enough with Nikolai and Igor. The one who worried me was Misha, one of the relics of SOBR. Sasha had put him in my team because he'd done abseiling, but our experience so far suggested that he had a low IQ, and wasn't all that co-operative either.
No good worrying about that now.
I took the team through our sequence of actions again and again. We'd abseil down to the balcony, aiming to establish ourselves on it thirty seconds before the raid was due to go in.
We'd need to be extremely careful in our movements: not to clank our weapons against the metalwork of the balustrade, not to let a boot or elbow bump on a window. For the last few seconds we'd crouch against the wall of the flat, under the windows. As soon as I confirmed by radio that Whinger's team was in position, I'd call, "Stand by, stand by… Go!" then crack off the door charge and follow it instantly with a stun grenade.
Seeing the blank looks on their faces, I started to flap a bit. I knew what standard they'd reached, and it wasn't as high as we needed. A fully fledged SAS assaulter is so highly trained that his reactions are instantaneous. These guys were nowhere near that level. Nevertheless, since Igor was the sharpest of our team, I detailed him to be first into the room.
"The second the grenade blows, you're through." I told him via Anna.
"When you go in, stay on your feet and move to the left. None of this rolling around we've been practising.
"You other two, give him covering fire through the blown out window. Aim outwards into the corners of the room. Don't fire straight at the door into the hall, otherwise rounds may go through and hit your own guys coming from the other side."
When Igor protested about being first in, I told him he didn't need to worry. The godfathers inside would be deafened and blinded by the stun-grenade.
Suitable ladders took a bit of finding. There were some in the Omon stores but they were too short and heavy for our purpose.
It was Sasha who had the idea of borrowing better kit off the nearest branch of the fire service. They came up with an extending set of four three-metre sections, made from aluminium, well machined and snugly fitting. The overall length was eleven metres, and since the gap between the corners of the buildings showed on the architects' plans as nine metres, we would have a one-metre overlap at either end.
Once we'd held several practices at assembling the ladders and crossing gaps on them, we bound the ends with foam and masking tape to reduce the risk of making a noise, and handed them over to another team. These two guys, who appeared to be television technicians, drove to Block B and took the ladders up the fire stairs on to the roof, under the pretence of realigning the aerials.
By 4:00 everything was in hand. Omon had discovered an empty apartment on the thirteenth floor of Block C and installed a pair of snipers, armed with Dragunov 7.62mm rifles fitted with telescopic sights. Their brief was to watch for movements in the target flat with binoculars and report any change to the control room. When the assault went down, they were to engage anyone who tried to make a getaway by coming out of a window and escaping along a balcony.
At 4:30 Whinger and I got Sasha to drive us back to Balashika. Rather than handle Russian detonators and det cord of uncertain vintage, I wanted to pick up some of our own. At the base we found everything in order: the lads back from a good day in the open, and no further scares. We had time for a quick meal and a cup of tea.
As I sat down to eat I said to Whinger, "I don't think very many Mafiosi are going to come out of this alive."
* * *
By 5:15 we were back at the railway command centre for a final run-through of the plan. I made up my explosive charge for blowing the window a ring of det cord taped on to a sheet of expanded polystyrene about fifteen inches square, to which I'd fitted a short broom-handle and explained to my three how, once we reached the balcony, I'd apply the polystyrene gently and silently to the glass of the door, holding it out with the end of the handle, before I cracked off the charge.
I emphasised that, once we had launched the hit, we must go quickly through with it. If anyone saw us crossing between the buildings, for instance, it was possible that the alarm could be raised. Once we were established on the roof of Block B, we couldn't afford to hang about.
My big worry was the weather. All afternoon the wind had been getting up, and by 8:00 a gale was blowing and driving blasts of rain before it. In a way it was good, as the roar of the storm would cover any small noises we might make; but I also reckoned there'd be hellish turbulence around the edges of those tall buildings.
Everyone was nervous myself and Whinger no less than the students. As before all operations, our watches seemed to stop or at least slow down to a ridiclous crawl, the hands hardly moving.
The snipers came on the air with the occasional bit of news "Green One. Curtains being drawn in Window One.. Light switched on in Window Two' and by 8:05 all four windows had been curtained off. That suited us fine.
As we rehearsed the action sequences again and again, the only person who seemed unmoved was Anna.
It felt very strange to be dressing in Russian kit. Their flak jackets were heavier and stiffer than ours, and made us pretty clumsy. My helmet fitted my head inside but still felt very big.
Realising that it would be difficult to control my explosive charge on its panel while I was crossing on the ladder, I had Nikola
i lash it flat to the small of my back, with the handle pointing up behind my head like a short antenna.
When I glanced across at Whinger I was amazed: he looked every inch a member of Omon, with his features hidden under a black rapist's mask, and only his eyes and mouth showing.
For the tenth time, it seemed, I checked all weapons and magazines.
At last it was time for the off We went out on foot into the cold, swirling wind through a gate in the railway compound wall, over the wasteland. The odd street lamp was burning in the distance, but the area we crossed was good and dark. With us we had one guy in civilian clothes, to range ahead as a scout and radio back a warning if he met anyone on the stairs. The covert com ms system was working well: in my earpiece I could hear the Black team lining itself up in the van they'd arranged for transport, and the occasional remark from a sniper. With the finger and thumb of my right hand I settled the throat mike more comfortably in position.
In the underground car-park of Block B we waited while our scout started climbing.
"Red and Blue at foot of stairs," I reported, and immediately Anna's voice answered, "Vas pony al Khorosho."
A few moments later the scout called to tell us that all was clear as far as floor five, so both teams went scuttling up. After another pause there, we took the next eleven flights straight, and arrived at the top panting.
Out in the open, the wind was formidable. There was no point in telling people to watch themselves. They wouldn't have heard me, anyway, and anybody with the slightest sense of selfpreservation wasn't going to start pissing about in a place like that.
All Moscow, it seemed, was spread out at our feet. Immediately below us the patches of wasteland were dark, but to the south blazed an immense galaxy of lights, and the main thoroughfares were like brilliantly illuminated rivers down which flowed endless streams of headlamps.
The ladders were lying where the pseudo-TV crew had left them, and we had no trouble locking the sections together. But when we tried to raise the whole length upright, the force of the gale nearly lifted two of us off our feet. Quickly I got a second rope round the top of the ladder and secured our ends to vertical standpipes. That way, we could exert enough friction to lower the whole bridge gently into position. Once it was down, we lashed the near end to a rail, in case it got blown overboard after we were across; even though the ladder was lightweight, it wouldn't have improved the health or temper of anyone it landed on after dropping sixteen storeys.
By now I was shitting bricks.
"Wish to fuck I'd never volunteered to lead," I said in Whinger's ear.
"I'll go if you like," he said good old bugger that he is.
"No, no. I'm fine really."
I was, too once I'd started.
"Khuyevo dyelo" I said to myself.
"Shit, shit, shit!" and then I was on my way.
With a safety rope round my waist and belayed on to the guy next in line, I crawled forward, each knee on one sharp-edged rung at a time, hands clutching the side-rails with a grip like a Scotsman's on a five-pound note. The ladder swayed horribly as gusts of wind hit me. I tried not to look down, but far below and away to my left I couldn't help catching glimpses of cars that looked like toys. Half-way across I decided it was better to keep my eyes shut.
Even without seeing I could tell how far I'd got from the bend in the ladder. It flexed most when I was in the middle. Russian ladder, I kept thinking. Russian aluminium. I hope to hell it doesn't break.
At last it began to stiffen again as I drew near to the far side. I opened my eyes and saw that I had only feet to go. A few more seconds and I was safe on the roof of Block B. As I scrambled on to the rough asphalt I was appalled to find that the ladder's overlap was more like a foot than a metre. The blocks were obviously slightly farther apart than the architects had prescribed. I watched, fascinated, as I saw the end of the ladder creeping in and out, and realised that the high buildings were swaying in the wind.
Igor came across next, and made it with no fuss. So did Nikolai, who hadn't even bothered with a safety rope. It was Misha who got into trouble. Exactly what happened, I'll never know. All the rest of us saw, as we crouched shoulder-to shoulder in the gale, was that he stopped half-way across the bridge. Whinger came up in my earpiece saying, "Blue got a hold-up. Oh, for fuck's sake…" and then, "Get on, yer twit."
Obviously Whinger didn't shout. Even if he could have been heard it would probably have been counter-productive, because in that situation, if someone loses his nerve, yelling only intensifies the fright. But seconds were ticking away. From exchanges on the radio I knew that Black team were starting their final approach to the front of the building. We couldn't afford to lose time.
Another dark figure started crawling out on to the ladder.
With a double weight on it, the aluminium sagged horribly. The second man reached the feet of the stationary Misha, who was frozen in a face-down attitude. The back-up guy began talking, first in a low voice, then louder. When bollockings had no effect, the newcomer turned physical. From the blurred movements it looked as though he had started thumping Misha with his fist on the backs of his knees.
Still there was no reaction.
The wind and rain were hitting our faces so hard that, even from close range, it was impossible to tell exactly what happened next. It looked to me as though the second guy had tried to crawl over Misha's prostrate body. He was right on top of him when there came a sudden eruption of movement. I saw a flurry of limbs, much faster than men crawling, as if the two were wrestling.
An instant later one of them was falling. Without a sound he dropped away into the dark.
Jesus! I thought. Too low for his chute. But of course he had no chute.
He went straight down, 150 feet on to concrete.
I grabbed the press el of my radio and hissed, "Red leader. Wehave a casualty. One guy's fallen."
"Roger," came Anna's unemotional voice. She said something else in Russian. Then, "Can you recover him?"
"Not a chance. He's gone right to the ground."
"Proceed, then."
"Roger."
The guy who'd survived the mid-ladder encounter reached us.
Not Misha. It was Volodya from the Blue team. Misha was written off Peering over the edge of the roof, I could just make out a little dark heap splat ted on the deck. At least the controllers knew what had happened. It was up to them whether or not they made any move to help him. I was pretty certain there'd be no point. No way could he have survived that impact, especially with the weight of the weapon on his back, the ammunition in his pouches and all his other gear. All I could think, selfishly, was, I hope to hell nobody saw him go past their window.
The rest of Blue team quickly came across, Whinger last. He gave me a strained look, but never said a word about the setback just a quick "Idyomr to his guys, and they were gone, round the end of the lift-housing to the point where the emergency stairs reached the roof.
I led the two surviving members of Red team along the roof to the far end and round the corner, until we were positioned above the target windows. There we quickly laid out our ropes. We found ideal anchor-points in the form of a strong metal rail that skirted the raised top of the lift shaft, and in a couple of minutes we were ready to descend.
"Red leader," I called.
"Can I have a sniper report on the windows? Are all curtains drawn?"
Anna instantly passed the request. I heard Green come in: "Da, da. Vsyo," and in a second I got, "Yes, all curtains closed."
My watch said 9:24. "Red leader," I reported.
"Starting descent now."
Abseiing down a building in the dark is never a picnic. Still less is it easy in a high wind. The longer your rope, the more you swing about, and the greater the danger of accidentally bumping against a window. But it was no good pissing about. I stuck my arse into space, walked backwards over the edge of the roof, and started down.
Luckily the shape of the building was kind to u
s. All the doors and windows were set back about a metre inside the balconies, so that as we came past each floor there was very little chance of any accidental contact with the inner wall of the building.
Inches at a time I tip-toed down the wall and dangled in space above the top half of the first balcony. On down past the metal rails. Sixteen done. Fifteen the same. Slowly on past fourteen.
My two guys were doing OK, to the right and left of me.
Between fourteen and thirteen a terrific gust of wind swung us so violently that all three of us bumped against each other.
Luckily the windows were closed and curtains drawn all the way down, courtesy of the wild night.
My boots touched the top rail of the twelfth-floor balcony. I eased myself down gently until my backside was on the rail, then got my feet on the floor of the balcony itself. I'd landed in front of Window Two. The greenish curtains were drawn tight, but light was shining out round the edges.
The second I was out of my ropes I turned to guide Igor in.
By 9:28 all three of us were in our prearranged positions: myself crouching beside the door, Nikolai on my right, Igor on my left. Even in the relative shelter of the balcony the wind was blustering loudly, and there was no need to keep my voice down when I reported in.
"Red leader, on target. Blue, report your state."
"Blue, preparing charge," came Whinger's voice.
"Wait out."
"Red, roger." My heart was going like a hammer. I imagined Whinger deftly taping a length of det cord down the centre of the door. I glanced either way at the dark, helmeted faces beside me and gave a reassuring twitch of my head. The lads had heard Whinger in their earpieces, but naturally hadn't understood what he said, so I made taping motions round our own doorway. Both got it, grinned back and nodded.
