Andy McNab - Battlefield 3 - The Russian

‘You going back near him?’

‘Can do.’

‘Sing again — only this time it’s I’m here in Paris.’

Thirty minutes passed. Or something like that. Blackburn had no means of knowing. The steps again. And the ladder. And then the song.

I’m here in Paris.

81

Paris

Dima tried to contain his surging rage. Tried and failed. Anger leads to mistakes, he had always told his recruits. And mistakes can cost you your life.

Had he not been so exhausted, had it not been so long since his head had touched a pillow, had he not been so consumed with anticipation about the nameless young man in the photograph, he would perhaps have had the good sense to leave the signaller right where it was. You’ve seen what you’ve seen. Stop, look and leave.

But he didn’t. He reached down, clasped it in his gloved hand and picked it up.

Only once it was in his hand did he see the wires. And then the flash blotted everything out.

82

Fort Donaldson, USA

The MedCenter team on Donaldson were short-staffed on the weekend. Jackie Douglis, a locum at Saint Elizabeth’s, had been drafted in to cover. Boy was she bored. ER was Jackie’s thing. That had been her plan since Sixth Grade and she was almost there. But sitting around in a half-deserted Marine base on a warm weekend wasn’t her idea of how to further her career. Besides, her friend Stacey was having a yard party and she was missing it.

The alarm made her jump. Wayne, the big sleepy-looking orderly waddled in.

‘We got a meltdown in the Brig.’

She didn’t know what a meltdown meant or what the Brig was for that matter. But it sounded interesting and she sure was in need of some distraction. So she followed along out of the MedCenter across the tarmac. There was a scrum of men in uniform crammed into the corridor. The bars on the doors told her what the Brig was. Some of them were kneeling down. Had someone collapsed, needed CPR? She began the timing rhythm in her head.

But the young man on the floor wasn’t in need of CPR. He was being knelt on by two guards as a third wrestled him into a set of leg irons.

One of them turned and saw Wayne.

‘Got a shot?’

Jackie saw Wayne fumbling with a syringe.

‘Hey, lemme through! I’m a doctor!’ she yelled for the first time in her life. All her life she’d been waiting to say those words for real.

83

Paris

The smell of urine brought Dima round. He remembered the apartment stank of it. It caught in his throat and along with the dust made him choke. But he couldn’t see the apartment, he couldn’t see anything. Nor could he move. There was another smell as well. Something burning. Then he remembered what had happened. And that brought him back to full consciousness. Rage at his own mistake. Okay, this time get it right. One thing at a time. He flexed his toes, check. Fingers, check. His nose was bleeding: he could feel the sticky warmth over his face and he could taste the blood. But he was trapped, buried.

‘I have to get out of here,’ he said out loud.

He called out, using the little strength he had, but there was nowhere for the sound to go. He tried straightening his legs and found that his head moved forward a little when he did. He discovered new areas of pain though, in his thigh and his left arm. His gun arm. Well he wasn’t too bad with his right. Think positively. That’s the only thing to do. Negative gets you nowhere.

Solomon had to have known they were coming. Known they were looking for the nuke, and that they had a scanner to track its signal. A fresh burst of rage engulfed him and he pushed forward again. Something gave and a cloud of plaster dust convulsed him in a coughing fit. His whole chest burned with it.

Something lifted and a sharp beam of light speared his face.

‘Fucking fuck. He’s here!’ called Kroll.

Dima peered at him, ghostly not only from the reflected torchlight but also the plaster he was covered in.

‘What the fuck did you do that for? You trying to kill us all?’

‘Just get me out of here, okay?’

He could hear the sirens of the emergency services. The sound gave him a much needed charge of energy. Kroll and Vladimir hauled him to his feet. They felt like rubber.

There was only one explanation. Rossin.

84

Fort Donaldson, USA

Jackie Douglis didn’t take long to figure that the young man on the floor was in need of her help. For one he was dehydrated, that much was clear from his complexion and the yellowing whites of his eyes. He clearly hadn’t been taking food and as far as she was concerned, whatever the guards had told her about him having killed someone, in her world at least you were innocent until proven guilty.

The senior guard, Halberry, didn’t help matters by calling her Little Lady . He may have been twice her age and old enough to be her father and all that crap, but this was the twenty-first century and he needed to get with it.

Eventually they came to an understanding whereby the inmate would be transferred to the medical unit secure room for observation and to undergo rehydration. He would have to be shackled. That was non-negotiable and Jackie conceded that yes, she didn’t know anything about this young man and that was one battle that she wasn’t going to win. But life in the Donaldson MedCenter had suddenly got a whole lot more interesting.

Eventually she shooed all the guards away and they were alone. She gave him a proper examination. Suddenly he spoke.

‘Doctor Douglis.’

Jackie was still not used to being addressed like that, but it sounded good. She looked at the young man whose name was Blackburn and smiled. His eyes came alive.

‘You smiled.’

‘I did.’

She smiled again.

‘Thank you,’ said the young sergeant. ‘I didn’t think I’d ever see one of those again.’

Four hours later, her head spinning from the tale she had just heard from the shackled soldier, she reluctantly left him in the care of the night shift. She went to bed to the sound of his story in her head, a story of nuclear bombs in suitcases, of Russians and terrorists. . Two hours later, still unable to sleep, she decided to call her father.

‘I’m sorry honey, his committee is pulling an all-nighter,’ said Senator Joseph M. Douglis’s PA, Sheila Perkis, aka Bulletproof — because nothing got past her. So now she seemed to have control of his private number — well, Jackie would see about that.

She emailed him to call. Emergency!

Two seconds later he called.

‘Honey, you okay?’

Thank God for his Blackberry addiction. Jackie told him what Sergeant Blackburn had told her.

‘ I hate to tell you, Hon, but the world is full of folk with all kind of stories. Guys out there in the war zone — it can get to them.’

‘Then I’m calling the New York Times: “Senate Security Committee member’s daughter discovers bomb threat to New York, but her Dad didn’t want to know”. Kind of a mouthful, but I guess they’ll get a headline out of it.’

Joe Douglis felt a tap on his shoulder from the usher. They were back in session. He let out a long sigh of defeat. She was headstrong all right — even worse than her mother.

‘Just leave it with me, okay, honey?’

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’

‘Now?’

‘I’ve said I promise.’

When Jackie Douglis returned to Donaldson next morning, Sergeant Henry Blackburn was gone. All she could discover was that a special team had arrived unannounced by air and flown him out. Destination unknown.