Andy McNab - Battlefield 3 - The Russian

43

North Tehran Airspace

Black and Montes watched through a starboard window as a pair of F-16s screamed past the Osprey.

‘They better leave something for us!’ shouted Chaffin over the roar of the rotors.

Black continued to watch until they turned into silver specks at the end of their ascending vapour trails.

‘They’re taking out the perimeter AAs and any other hardware they can lock on to. Plus any stray air cover they might have up there.’

‘We any closer to knowing who or what’s gonna be waiting for us?’ said Campo, as if he now knew how to zero in on Black’s weak spot.

Black didn’t know. His crew always looked to him for the answers. If he had one, he’d give it to them. If he hadn’t he’d give them some possibles. Always something. They thought of him as the smartest: the guy who was going to get home, get to college and go up in the world, be a teacher like his Mom, maybe. But Blackburn didn’t know where he was going. His judgement had been shaken. Nothing in the world looked how it used to. Campo, his former friend, sat staring out at the sky. He’d almost killed him earlier. He had to hold it together. Who or what was waiting for them? Perhaps only God. Perhaps nothing. He thought of his father, in the Vietcong’s cage in the water, from brave soldier to terrified teenager: what had he expected to face in the end?

The images from the CCTV screen in the bank vault flashed back to him. Bashir had been easy to ID. The more he thought about the second man, the more a voice in his head clamoured for attention. A guy cuts a Marine’s head off with a sword on the Iraqi border; thirty-six hours later he’s moving nukes around with Al Bashir in downtown Tehran. Andrews and Dershowitz hadn’t looked convinced. Now Blackburn was having his own doubts. Felt himself headed into a whole tunnel of self-doubt: not a good way to be going into a mission.

The mountains reared up like a great barren wall, the only patches of green being the vegetation down below in the valleys. Blackburn tried to imagine the hard, sunbaked rock covered with snow, shut his eyes for a moment and took himself back to a day out with his family, swooping down Blacktail Mountain in Montana, breaking the rules and going straight down. The trick was knowing when to break them.

‘LZ three miles. Prepare rope!’

44

Alborz Mountains, North of Tehran

The distance from the gate to the chalet was two hundred metres. Dima drove at walking pace to maximise the time they had to take in the buildings and scan the surroundings.

Kroll piped up from the back.

‘Hey, guess what — both nuke signals just stopped.’

‘Is the scanner fucked again?’

‘Nope. Still getting a signal from the third device.’

‘Any ideas?’

‘Could be underground. In some kind of vault.’

As they got closer to the house they saw a Mercedes G-Wagen: black with black glass. Kaffarov’s? There were two other vehicles, a brand new Range Rover Evoque and a battered 1990s Peugeot.

Amara pointed.

‘The Range Rover — that’s Kristen’s.’

‘So she’s free to come and go?’

‘Only with minders.’

‘For the world’s most notorious arms dealer, he’s not exactly overburdened with security,’ said Kroll. ‘Either he’s smart enough to know that it just provokes the wrong sort of attention, or he’s mad enough to think he’s untouchable. Maybe both.’

‘Facts would be a lot more useful than speculation,’ said Dima.

‘Only trying to help.’

‘Right,’ said Dima. ‘First golden rule: stay in touch.’

Each of them had a radio headset. The plan was to send in Amara, with Zirak and Gregorin. They would scope the place, give Dima a sitrep and pinpoint Kaffarov. It was the sort of operation Dima relished: a plan made on the hoof using whatever available assets there were — in this case Amara and a small tight crew of utterly dependable men all capable of thinking on their feet. They had stayed with him on this, when many saner people would have bailed out. He watched them walk up to the house. The young blonde from the photos waved ecstatically from one of the balconies.

It all looked much, much too easy, he thought.

The first rocket landed exactly where Kristen was standing, as if it had been aimed right at her. She didn’t even have time to react. One moment she was waving, then she was gone. The balcony disappeared in a cloud of atomised concrete that engulfed Gregorin, Zirak and Amara below. He heard Amara scream, then the second rocket smashed into the mountainside fifty metres away. Dima felt himself flying backwards, then cartwheeling, until a wooden fence brought him to a halt just in time to see the two gun towers flattened by another strike.

Dima was up first, looking for Kroll and Vladimir. They were pulling each other to their feet. He pointed at the downed gun towers.

‘Get to the AAs. See if they still work. Whoever’s up there, stop them — now!’

He was moving towards the chalet, not thinking about Gregorin and Zirak or Amara and Kristen: only Kaffarov and the nukes. That’s what he’d come for. He’d made it this far, paid too high a price not to collect his prize. No one was going to take it from him now.

He picked up speed as he got to the pile of rubble, and found some steps, half broken, jutting out from the facade. He scrambled up them on to a chunk of balcony that immediately broke away when he stepped on to it, nearly sending him crashing to the ground with it. He could hear someone screaming under the rubble. A fire had broken out inside the building, belching acrid smoke. No mask, shit. All the kit was still in the SUV. All he had was his AK and a knife. He climbed through a window, grabbed a shredded curtain which he tore a strip from and wrapped it over his face.

A big drawing room, with nice paintings on the walls. A Matisse. And a Gauguin: two voluptuous island girls, topless, gazing out at him. Could they be real? Maybe that was what the non-Muslim heaven looked like: quite possibly not virgins, but he wasn’t fussy. He saw a giant marble chess board on a glass coffee table the size of a lake: a game midway through. No players in sight: white two moves from checkmate. From a doorway, a huge man with cheeks that squeezed his eyes into slits was aiming an Uzi at him. Yin or Yang? Dima would never know. His knife thudded into the man’s carotid artery, making a mess of Gauguin’s Tahitians. He hoped it was a fake.

Dima jumped on him, retrieved the knife, grabbed the Uzi and tore off his radio. Another blast echoed deep inside the building — the boiler or a fuel tank? The floor lurched and half a wall collapsed, sending a huge mirror down like a guillotine on to the expiring Korean. He saw the chess set glide away: game over. Four rooms on this floor. Two completely blown away. Kaffarov could be under the rubble as well. Two more — a library. He didn’t dare think about what precious first editions might be in there. A desk and a laptop, but a small one, white. Kristen’s? Check it later. He found the internal stairs. Intact. Took them three at a stride. Outside he heard the AA guns. A short sharp burst. Someone conserving their ammunition: Vladimir. He marvelled at how you could identify someone by the way they shot.

Bedrooms: one untouched, fresh flowers in a vase. Roses. A swimsuit on the carpet — wet. Tch, tch. A towel as well. Young people today, never clear up after themselves. His mother’s voice. You would have liked this room, mother. Silk cushions, triple-mirror dresser with matching curtain along the front: all the things you never had. A masked man in each of the mirrors. Himself. The en suite bathroom all marble: massive.