James Barrington - Foxbat

The man in front of him squeezed the trigger, sending a stream of nine-millimetre bullets screaming over Richter’s head to smash into the wall and windows of the bar behind him. As glass shattered, he heard shouts of alarm intermingled with cries of pain. Sighting down the barrel of the Yarygin, he loosed off two snap shots, barely aiming, just wanting to discourage the barrage of fire.

Both his shots missed, but the two men began running again, then abruptly disappeared from view as they reached the far edge of Kama Boulevard, and ran on down a flight of stone steps leading towards the river.

Richter jumped to his feet and chased after them, but slowed to a walk as he approached the top of the steps. That was just as well, because the moment he raised his head over the low parapet bordering the pavement, the guy with the Skorpion opened up again, a hail of copper-jacketed slugs knocking lethal chips of stone out of the wall as Richter dropped back down. A couple of the flying shards hit him in the face, opening up a long but shallow cut across his forehead.

He raised his right hand over the top of the parapet and fired two shots in the general direction of his quarry, then slid sideways until he was lying right beside the gap in the wall at the top of the steps. Behind him he could hear the sound of running footsteps. Glancing to his left, he saw Bykov approaching, pistol in hand, and gestured for him to keep back.

Cautiously he peered around the solid stone, ready to draw back at once. But there seemed no immediate danger as the two men had by now moved to the water’s edge, where a third figure was waiting in a boat with a hefty outboard motor attached to the stern. Even as Richter watched, the boat swung away from the jetty and began accelerating fast towards the opposite bank of the river.

‘Shit,’ Richter muttered, realizing there almost certainly wasn’t enough time to get the Perm police to arrange a reception committee on the other side. He stood up and hurtled down the steps, the Yarygin ready in his hand.

At the water’s edge he stopped, feet apart, and raised the pistol to take careful aim, supporting his right hand with his left to steady the weapon. The boat was probably thirty yards away as he fired his first shot. It was bobbing and bouncing on the water as it gathered speed, its three occupants crouching low.

The moment his shot rang out, one of the figures turned, and seconds later the Skorpion began to return fire. But a bouncing boat is too unstable a platform from which to shoot accurately, and although Richter flinched when a couple of rounds struck the jetty a few feet away, he knew it would be a miracle if any of the bullets hit him.

His advantage was to be standing on solid ground, so he concentrated on making each shot count. His second shot also missed, but the third scored a hit. One of the men gave a yell of pain and slumped forward, while the boat suddenly veered to the left. But it was Richter’s fourth bullet that did the real damage.

It hit the outboard motor’s fuel tank, sending a spray of petrol right across the open cockpit. The man armed with the Skorpion was still firing, and whether it was due to muzzle flash from the machine-pistol or a spark from one of Richter’s bullets ricocheting off something metallic he’d never know, but with a sudden roar the vessel erupted in a ball of flame.

Richter lowered his pistol, the weapon instantly irrelevant, and just watched the conflagration. The petrol-soaked clothing of the fugitives caught fire immediately. Illuminated by the burning fuel, their three indistinct figures gyrated in violent, panicky movements as they frantically tried to beat out the spreading flames with their bare hands.

It was never going to work, and almost simultaneously they reached the same conclusion and leapt overboard. The water doused the flames straight away, but the boat was still fully ablaze and only a madman would attempt to climb back on board. Richter guessed that the three men would try to swim for the opposite bank of the river.

‘I had hoped to question them.’ Bykov was panting slightly as he stopped beside Richter and looked out at the ball of flames where the powerboat was now drifting slowly on the current.

‘We might still be able to, if any of them manage to reach the shore.’

‘I’ve asked Wanov to send some of his men over to the other side, and to organize a couple of boats to recover the wreck, but they’ll take a while to arrive and it’ll be dark soon. This is his town, and he really should have arranged something to cover the river.’

‘We should have thought about it ourselves, Viktor. With hindsight it’s an obvious escape route. You can’t blame Wanov – he did exactly what we asked him to.’

Bykov shrugged. ‘You’re right, but it’s too late now. Maybe we’ll find some clue on whatever’s left of that boat. It has to be registered to somebody.’

Pyongyang, North Korea

Kim Yong-Su sat in his office in the centre of Pyongyang and checked everything one last time. When Pak Je-San had first explained his plan back in the autumn of 2003, Kim had realized two things.

First, the timing was absolutely crucial: they had to make their move when the nearest American aircraft carrier was at least forty-eight hours sailing time distant, and no Aegis cruisers were in the vicinity of the Korean Peninsula. In its final phase, the plan would only work if they could achieve some measure of air superiority – though he knew they could never achieve total control, because the South Korean aircraft were much more up-to-date than those of the DPRK. That meant having no American carriers around, with squadrons of F/A-18 Super Hornets embarked.

Second, and equally important, they had to maintain an appearance of normality until the last possible moment. That involved two operation orders. The first, ‘Silver Spring’, had been prepared for public dissemination: just another routine, no-notice exercise to check the operational readiness of the North Korean forces to respond if faced with an unprovoked assault from south of the DMZ. He’d sent copies to Seoul so that South Korea would be pre-warned about this exercise, and had also alerted Moscow and Beijing. All nations advise their neighbours whenever they plan to run military exercises, just to ensure that such operations are not mistaken for anything else.

And following this convention, Kim believed, was his master-stroke, because while the South Koreans and their American lackeys were carefully watching the ‘Silver Spring’ manoeuvres, the preparations for ‘Golden Dawn’ – his hidden plan for the occupation of South Korea – could continue undetected. And once it was executed, the results would be as devastating as they were unexpected.

Kim nodded in satisfaction, then instructed his aides to send the preparation signal for ‘Silver Spring’, as an unclassified message, while simultaneously dispatching a Top Secret signal to begin the initial phase of ‘Golden Dawn’.

T’ae’tan Air Base, North Korea

Less than two hours after arriving back at T’ae’tan, Pak Je-San was called to the station commander’s office to take an urgent telephone call from Pyongyang. He ran up the stairs and into the room, and snatched up the receiver. The commander was still sitting behind his desk, so Pak dismissed him with a curt gesture, and waited until the man had left the room before he spoke.

‘This is Pak Je-San.’

‘I have been waiting to speak to you for almost five minutes,’ barked the unmistakable voice of Kim Yong-Su. ‘We have begun the countdown. Begin the dispersal of your assets.’ And the line went dead.

For a few seconds, Pak still held the receiver to his ear, listening to an echoing silence. Then he slowly lowered the handset to its cradle, and turned to go. Outside the door, the station commander was waiting to regain possession of his office. The expression on Pak’s face instantly told him that the call from the capital had been important.