Andy McNab - Battlefield 3 - The Russian

Only Cole seemed to be typing far more words than Blackburn was speaking. ‘Back up a second. How far away were you at the moment of the execution?’

‘Like I said, hundred yards, maybe more.’

‘Behind a slab of masonry.’

‘Yessir.’

‘You didn’t move.’

‘That’s what I said, Sir.’

Cole looked up from the screen.

What the fuck else could I do? Blackburn wanted to say.

‘I had no choice, Sir.’

Eventually Cole stopped typing. Read over his words and closed the document.

‘We got an ID. Private James Harker from Cody, Wyoming. Nineteen years old.’

A name.

‘Want to see how we ID’d him?’

A cold weight deep seemed to grow inside Black. ‘Let me look.’

‘You up to it?’

‘I was there.’

Cole turned the laptop towards him, clicked ‘Play’. The camera was a few feet from Harker’s face as his expression moved through relief at being discovered, to dismay, then fear, as he realised what was about to happen. Then it crumpled into helpless outrage.

‘Turn up the sound.’

‘That’s as high as it goes.’

Harker was getting a lecture, or more of a rant, of which only a few words and phrases were audible. ‘American pigs. . enter uninvited. . suffer the fate. .’ On the screen ran a separate statement rather than a translation. Invaders who dare to conquer in time of national emergency will suffer a righteous fate. Be warned. He slammed the laptop shut. He had seen all he wanted. What happened next he would never need reminding of. Blackburn handed him the photographs he had found near the body. Cole glanced at them and put them in a file. Then he breathed out.

For a few seconds neither of them spoke. Then Cole broke the silence.

‘Nothing you could do, right?’

Black stared, a surge of indignation rising, but then Cole nodded. It wasn’t a question there was an answer to. Cole put the laptop aside and shuffled the maps. Moving on. He smoothed his hand across northeast Iran. Blackburn became conscious again of the sound of the base. A convoy of trucks thundered past outside the tent. The air crackled with choppers stacked for landing.

Cole slapped the map. ‘We have one big fucking situation across the border.’

‘How bad?’

‘Bad-bad. Bashir’s taking full advantage of the chaos caused by the quake to consolidate his position. Parts of the south and east have been declared PLR territory. And in Tehran, no one’s in charge.’

‘You’re kidding.’

He drummed his fingers on the table. ‘No definitive confirmation yet, but there’s shit flying around that Al Bashir has a nuclear capability. If it’s true, we’re in a whole ’nother game now.’

Cole fixed Blackburn with another glare. Blackburn had been there before. He respected his commanding officer. Beyond that, he wasn’t sure. There was a coldness in him that meant he was either just that — cold — or he kept his inner self well-defended.

Cole nodded. ‘You did good yesterday, neutralising that IED. We got the casualties from Carter’s unit out and had your guys cleared. That wouldn’t have happened if it had blown.’

‘Just doing my job, Sir.’

‘Yeah, well, doing it that well means it doesn’t let up for you. It’s business as usual.’

‘I wasn’t expecting it to, Sir.’

Black felt stung. The last thing on his mind was some kind of reward. That was Cole all over. Pat on the back with one hand, slap on the face with the other. Cole stood up and grabbed the laptop.

‘Stick around. Briefing at 1300.’

They sat in two rows of folding chairs. The makeshift briefing room, fashioned out of a pair of refrigerated containers and inevitably nicknamed ‘the cooler’, was very far from cool. Cole stood, legs apart, beside a wall map of Tehran, tapping it with a pointer.

‘We got intel that Al Bashir is in the north sector of the city. His people have seized the Interior Ministry; that’s now effectively their HQ in the capital. Gentlemen, this one is ours. Our information is that the quake has downed their radar and entire sections of the country are without power. We are going in and we’re going to cut this thing off at the head and finish it before he gets dug in. But Al Bashir must, repeat must , be taken alive. The mission will go down as follows. .’

Cole tapped the map emphatically with his stick. The tension rose in the room.

‘PLR forces concentrated in the north will be kept occupied by ongoing air strikes. Assault element, call sign Misfit 2–1, will be flown in by Osprey to this location. They will have a sniper element consisting of Blackburn and Campo, call sign Misfit 3–1 as overwatch security. Designated LZ is a quarter mile from the Ministry. Once on the ground the assault team will proceed to the target building.’

Cole turned to another more detailed map of the area surrounding the bank. ‘Along the way, Black’s team will provide overwatch from these positions. Extraction will be by Osprey. Roger?’

The audience responded. ‘Roger.’

Campo grinned at Black. ‘This is cool shit, man. Like we Navy Seals all of a sudden.’

Cole slapped the map where the Ministry was. ‘I consider it our privilege to be handed this mission. So let’s make it good.’

16

Bazargan, Northern Iran

They all stared at the carnage. Vladimir spoke first, to Gregorin.

‘Well at least you downed the hangmen.’

‘And it didn’t rain.’

No situation had ever been too bad for Vladimir to extract some sliver of humour from, however grim. But it failed to raise so much as a smile. Eventually all eyes settled on Dima. He was rigid with silent rage.

‘Do what you can. Let’s get down there. I’m going after Shenk’s scanner.’

The smoke swirled around them, an acrid mixture of burnt fuel, rubber and flesh. The high walls had trapped the inferno, containing and concentrating the heat like a coffee pot. For several seconds, as the flames found the ammunition that hadn’t erupted, there were smaller explosions and blasts of flame.

Dima’s first thought, one that came to him all too often, was: How can it ever be claimed that these men did not die in vain? Those who died defending Moscow from Hitler, they did not die in vain, nor did those who fell in the battle for Berlin. The Soviet troops in Afghanistan? When he was too old to do this any more, he promised himself he would write a book analysing Russian military disasters great and small. Better get on with it , Kroll had said. It could take you some time to get through them all.

What had gone wrong here? Everything: starting with Dima having allowed himself to be blackmailed into taking it on and letting Paliov interfere with the design and the execution. Paliov, terrified of failure, had brought about exactly that, by failing to give Dima control of the whole operation. Dima wouldn’t have had Shenk anywhere near the site, a man no doubt competent at dealing with nuclear devices of all kinds in all places — except in the heat of battle. And because time was not on their side, they had only minimum surveillance. It contained a lot of data which appeared to tell them everything but told them almost nothing, especially not the key fact, which was that the compound, far from being a barely populated hideout, was in fact a major PLR base.

He glanced at Gregorin and Zirak, both ashen as they went from corpse to corpse, looking in vain for survivors. They knew most of these men, had taught them all they had learned. They would have good reason to be furious with him for letting this happen.

The carcass of Shenk’s Mil was surrounded by flames, its tail pointing straight in the air. Through the open door he could see Shenk in his seat, hanging from the straps, head on his chest, as if he’d nodded off in the midst of it all. Just the impact would have been enough to end his life. He could see the scanner in its housing on the bulkhead in front of him. A sheet of fresh flames erupted between them. Dima lunged forward through the flames, clambered into the fuselage and grabbed the scanner. It was jammed. He got closer, got both hands round it.