by Andy Maslen
Eli put the binoculars down.
“Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.”
After returning to the SandCat to get a few items necessary for the mission, they made their way back to the factory entrance. Gabriel reached the gates first. They were fastened by a length of chain and a simple domestic padlock. He pushed the padlock into the gap between the gates, inserted a pry bar into the shackle and with a sharp twist, broke it open.
“Split up or stay together?” he asked.
“We always worked in pairs, so I say stick together. Plus, we have the dogs to deal with.”
As she spoke, the two animals in questions came tearing around a corner of the nearest building, howling and barking. Gabriel drew his pistol and as the nearer dog got to within thirty feet, fired two rounds into the air. The effect was impressive. The dogs, obviously starved to judge from the prominent ribs sticking through their mangy coats, slid to a stop. Ears back, tails between their legs they growled in a disconcerting unison that raised the hackles on Gabriel’s own neck. While he covered them with the pistol, Eli slipped a field ration pack from her backpack, slit the outer casing and squeezed the contents, a sticky brown paste, onto the ground.
“Hey, you scruffy looking things, hungry?” she said, in a soft, sing-song voice. “Chow time, mutts. Come and get it.”
She stood back, next to Gabriel.
They watched as the dogs, still growling, looked at the pile of reconstituted meat stew between them and these two strange humans. The animals were clearly torn by an internal battle. Hunger versus fear. The latter emotion, Gabriel guessed, was behind their show of aggression, more than any genuine desire to hurt him and Eli. These were no war dogs, bred specifically for combat. They weren’t even proper guard dogs; they were just some local strays that had been rounded up and let loose inside the factory grounds at night.
After thirty seconds or so, hunger won the day, and the two dogs crept forward, heads bowed, occasionally glancing up at Gabriel and Eli, who had their hands resting on their pistol butts. The humans backed off and left the dogs to their meal.
They entered the factory through what appeared to be a rudimentary reception building. Inside the door, they found themselves in a rectangular room with sofas and a simple, low, wooden coffee table on which several magazines were scattered. Behind the desk that ran along one end of the room was a door. The sign was in Cyrillic, and read:
тек уәкілетті қызметкерлер
but Gabriel could guess its meaning:
AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY
Stock Taking
BEYOND the door was a huge, windowless, open space; clearly, the manufacturing facility began here. Gabriel flicked a row of switches set to the left of the door. Overhead pendant lamps flashed into life revealing the main business of TK Industries. Set like obelisks here and there on the smooth concrete floor were lathes, presses, bench drills, and other industrial equipment whose purpose Gabriel could only guess at. Running the length of the vast space was some sort of production line, with stations for workers to sit, or stand, as they worked to assemble the various calibres and types of ammunition.
Blue and red, wheeled plastic bins held empty cartridge cases, sheets and rods of metal stock, and everywhere sealed, heavy-duty cardboard cartons were stacked in towers, pyramids and blocks.
“Any thoughts on how we’re going to blow this place?” Eli asked, poking the toe of her boot at a pile of metal waste on the floor.
“They’re manufacturing ammunition so the place will be awash with TICs and TIMs. We can use those.”
“Sorry, ticks and tims, what are they?”
“Toxic Industrial Chemicals, Toxic Industrial Materials. I’m thinking asbestos, acid, phosphorus, maybe chlorine compounds. These guys are making brass, so there’re probably all kinds of nasty chemicals used to do that.”
“Yeah, plus all the propellant, and if they’re making grenades or rockets, then there’s going to be high explosives, the works.”
“So let’s find the stock room, shall we?”
They worked their way round the edge of the hall in opposite directions, looking into every door set into the brick wall. Most were open and led to offices or store cupboards housing innocuous materials like overalls or cleaning supplies. At the far-left corner, Gabriel found a door that didn’t open when he tried the handle.
“Eli, over here!” he shouted.
Eli joined him. Nodded.
He kicked out at the door, smashing the heel of his boot against the lock. The flimsy mechanism gave way immediately, and Gabriel pushed through into the space beyond. He hit the next set of light switches and, as the neon tubes plinked and flickered into life, let out a low whistle.
“I think we just found the stock room,” he said.
The space was two hundred and fifty yards by a hundred at least, and racked out with aisles of steel shelving like a builders’ merchant’s. Stacked on every flat surface were drums, cartons, gas bottles and pallets groaning with dull metal ingots. One corner was stacked floor to ceiling with beige fibre drums marked Vihtavuori – 20KG Smokeless Propellant. Standing idle in the centre of the space was a black-and-yellow forklift truck.
Gabriel thought for a minute while Eli wandered up and down the aisles, for all the world like a shopper looking for tile cement, wallpaper or fence panels.
She returned with a grin on her face.
“I can’t read the labels,” she said. “But I’ve seen enough skull-and-crossbones stickers and corroded hands to know this is what we need.”
“It’s what we need for the explosive. But not the fuse. I don’t want us to be anywhere near this place when we blow it, or we’ll end up as atoms.”
“So what are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking I’m Kamenko. I’ve got an important client stopping by to pick up some ammunition. I welcome my client like any proud factory manager. Show them the merchandise, give them a bit of lunch and then, guess what?”
Her eyes widened and she pointed at him.
“You invite them to come out the back and do some quality assurance.”
“In one,” he said. “There must be a weapons room and a range, or just a spare bit of ground out the back somewhere.”
Their search for Gabriel’s imaginary weapons room took another hour. They found it in a separate brick building behind the main manufacturing facility.
Inside, the armoury was fitted out with steel wall-racks. Arranged in ascending order of size, and potency, were around thirty different weapons. The array started on the left with a pair of Ruger SR22s, dinky .22 rimfire pistols no self-respecting terrorist would carry, but which an assassin might find handy. It continued through a variety of pistols and revolvers increasing in calibre from .38 through .40 to .45 and 9mm Parabellum, and on to the unfeasibly large “hand cannons”: chrome-plated .357 Magnum Colt Pythons, .44 Magnum Smith & Wesson Model 29s, and the granddaddy of them all, the .50 Action Express Desert Eagle.
“They love pistols in the Middle East,” Eli said, picking up a Colt Python and aiming it at a spot on the wall. “Anyone can get hold of an AK-47. But pistols are status symbols. It’s like carrying a sword over there. Point your AK at them and they’ll just laugh. Shove a Glock in someone’s face, and they really pay attention.”
“We need something more like one of those,” Gabriel said, pointing at the weapons leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the room.
These were altogether more serious bits of kit. Assault rifles from NATO and former Soviet Bloc countries rubbed shoulders with battle rifles, carbines, submachine guns, heavy machine guns and, at the end of the row, the weapon that Gabriel selected, an RPG-7. The Soviet-designed, anti-tank weapon was in use all over the world, both in official armed forces and terrorist organisations.
Beneath the rocket-propelled grenade launcher were half a dozen warheads. Gabriel reached down for one labelled TBG-7V.
“Know what this is?” he asked Eli
.
“Not exactly. I mean, it’s a rocket-propelled grenade, but I couldn’t tell you the specific warhead type. It’s not one I’ve seen back home.”
Gabriel pointed at the Cyrillic characters stencilled beneath the TBG-7V.
“That says thermobaric warhead.”
“A fuel-air bomb.”
“Exactly. When these babies detonate, they suck oxygen out of the surrounding air to create a fucking great fireball. I’m thinking it would make a nice little lighter for the birthday cake candles.”
“So either Kamenko was making these, or he was running a sideline as a dealer in ex-Soviet and NATO munitions.”
“The second is my guess. Stands to reason. You get a reputation as a supplier of small arms rounds, people are going to start asking you for other stuff. He was probably supplying the weapons themselves.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“Yes, dummy! Because we’re taking out a bigger part of the supply chain. Not just the ammunition, but the weapons as well.”
Back at the storage facility, Gabriel climbed into the forklift. Eli was standing by the door leading to the factory. Both were wearing breathing masks they’d found in a supply cupboard.
The forklift was an electric model. Gabriel thumbed the starter button and as he moved off the engine hummed beneath his seat. He began pushing over barrels of chemicals at random. On some, the lids popped off immediately, releasing their foul-smelling contents in waves that washed back towards the forklift’s solid rubber tyres. On others, the lids held firm, so Gabriel applied downward pressure on the sides with the forks until the drums split.
Gradually, a lake of vivid greenish-yellow liquid spread over the floor of the warehouse-like space.
It was taking too long. Gabriel wanted the whole place to be filled with volatile chemical fumes and gas to be a hundred percent certain the place would go up sky-high. Then an idea, risky, but not, he felt, dangerously so, occurred to him.
He drove the truck round in a circle so that a supporting stanchion of a rack of blue plastic drums was right in front of him. He backed up, then lowered the forks and pressed the accelerator pedal to the floor. The truck lumbered forward and rammed the stanchion. With a creak, the structure began to give way as the steel buckled. Gabriel reversed and then drove the truck over to Eli. They watched as the racking collapsed, and dozens of the plastic drums cascaded to the floor and burst.
He slammed the door and together they raced back through the main factory building. Eli was carrying the RPG-7 across her back alongside the assault rifle.
The dogs were still licking at the ground where they’d left them as Gabriel and Eli emerged from the front door of the reception building and ran for the gates. Before they left, they shooed the dogs out then hit the big green plastic button by the main loading bay doors of the factory. Now, they had a twenty-by-four-yard, black rectangle to aim at.
Back at the rampart in front of the hollow concealing the SandCat, they turned to face the factory.
Gabriel loaded the warhead into the RPG-7.
The range was 500 yards. Right on the edge of the rocket’s effective range against a moving target. He lifted the RPG to his shoulder.
Then he brought it down again.
Industrial Incident
ELI turned to him.
“Problem?”
“This isn’t going to work,” he said. “It’s too far to risk it with a one-shot wonder. We have to get closer.”
“If we get close enough to guarantee the shot, there’s a very good chance we’ll be incinerated along with the factory,” she said.
“Not if we act like terrorists,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“This thing’s armoured, right? So you drive us closer – say, to two hundred yards. I’ll fire from the roof. You hit the power as soon as I’m back inside. We’ll have to rely on the armour-plating to protect us from the blast wave.”
“OK, fine. But with one change to the plan.”
“What’s that?”
You drive. You told me you were in Mobility Troop with the SAS, right?” he nodded. “So you’re the better driver. But I’ve been fighting people armed with RPG-7s my whole life, and I know the weapon better.”
“Fair enough. Come on, then. Let’s go.”
Gabriel drove out of the depression, round the natural rampart and powered across the scrubby terrain back towards Kamenko’s factory. At what he estimated was one hundred yards, he slewed the big unwieldy vehicle to a stop so that the rear doors faced the factory.
“All yours,” he shouted over his shoulder. Then he twisted round in his seat to watch as Eli prepared to fire.
Through the open rear door he could see the factory, and the big, black rectangle in the front wall. The moon had come out from behind the clouds, lighting the landscape with a pure, white light that threw sharp shadow across the ground from every pebble and thorn bush.
Eli climbed onto the roof leaving Gabriel with an unobstructed view of the target.
He heard the clicks and scrapes as she readied the RPG-7, and realised he was holding his breath.
“Fire in the hole!” she yelled.
The blast of the booster charge was drowned out as the main rocket motor ignited a fraction of a second later. Gabriel counted as the grenade streaked towards the factory, trailing an arc of white smoke, eerily lit by the moonlight.
One.
Two.
Thr—
It was a perfect shot.
The grenade, still under full power from its rocket motor, streaked in through the wide-open loading-bay doors.
The blast was huge as the thermobaric warhead detonated. A huge, deep-bellied, blaring boom that rolled across the flat land towards them.
Gabriel yelled to Eli, “Get back in!”
She was already swinging down and slamming the rear door behind her.
“Go!” she shouted, slamming her fist against the inside of the rear compartment.
He floored the throttle and mashed his way up through the gears, urging the SandCat up towards its eighty miles per hour top speed. The wheel was alive in his hands, bucking and twisting as the terrain transmitted its shape to him through the steering rack.
He glanced at the wing mirror.
The monstrous fireball was rolling outwards and upwards, a furious orange against the black night sky. Seconds later, two things happened simultaneously.
The leading edge of the initial blast wave overtook the SandCat. And the explosion from the vaporised TICs set off a chain reaction that caused the hundreds of drums of propellant and high explosives stored in the factory to detonate.
The overpressure from the second blast rushed past them, almost upending the SandCat. Gabriel heard the transmission scream as the rear wheels were lifted off the ground. He fought to keep the steering on the straight-ahead. Then the rear wheels thumped down again and after slewing right, left, and then over to the right again, he regained control and they were back, speeding away from the remains of TK Industries.
The blast wave rammed into the air in front of them, banking up the air pressure until its power dwindled. Then the huge volume of compressed air drove the blast wave back towards the factory, spackling the windscreen with a hailstorm of sand, mud, plant material and grit. Gabriel flinched instinctively, but kept the steering wheel straight.
Moments later, he reached the safety of the dried-up lake bed and skidded down into its comforting embrace.
Killing the engine, he jumped out, ran round to the rear of the SandCat and dragged open the door, which was pitted and scorched.
Eli jumped down, came to him, and stretched up to kiss him.
“That was fun,” she said.
They climbed to the top of the rampart and watched, no binoculars needed, as the factory continued its rapid, fiery descent into rubble. A series of blasts sent jets of pale-yellow flames hundreds of yards into the air. The bangs reached them seconds later.
Underlying the bassy explosions was the continuous rattle and chatter of small arms fire. But this was not the soundtrack of a firefight; this was hundreds of thousands of neatly packaged rounds detonating inside their cartons.
They stayed watching until it was clear that whatever was left would be no more than a foot or two tall. To the music of sporadic explosions in registers from tenor to baritone, they climbed aboard the SandCat and drove off, back to Karaganda, and their extraction.
Orders is Orders
LONDON
DON sat back in his leather chair and regarded his two operatives. Eli looked her usual calm, unruffled self. He liked the way she’d take on any mission as if being asked to run errands in Soho for him. She’d travel halfway round the world, deal with person or persons deemed detrimental to the UK’s security with extreme prejudice, and return with that lazy smile still plastered on her olive-skinned face. Gabriel, on the other hand, looked as if he had done battle with more than physical challenges. His face was drawn, tight round the eyes and mouth. The stubble on his cheeks gave him a haggard look, and his eyes flicked restlessly around the anonymous Whitehall office Don used when he was working in London.
“Let’s start with my thanking you both for excellent work in Kazakhstan,” he began. “Our analysts are working through the files you gave us. You’d think Christmas had come early, along with birthdays, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.”
Eli laughed. “I hope you can use it to build a case for further action.”
“Oh, I’m sure we can. At the very least, our friends in the Secret Intelligence Service will enjoy reviewing the material. And tell me about Mr Kamenko. You followed my instructions and left him alone?” He looked at each of them in turn. Waiting for an answer. An answer he felt sure would cause him some trouble with his political bosses.
“Not as such,” Gabriel replied, finally, running his fingers across his scalp.
