James Barrington - Overkill

‘Probably,’ Modin replied. ‘You must realize that Dmitri Trushenko has dedicated the last four years of his life to Operation Podstava , and he will not willingly see the plan fail. He is a driven man, Mr Beatty, and driven men are dangerous. I think he will go ahead because it is his plan, and his plan might still work. It might still work,’ he added, ‘because Europe is Europe and Britain is Britain. Whatever your European Parliament might say, and despite the Channel Tunnel, Britain is still an island and it is possible – or Minister Trushenko might believe it is possible – that Britain would not intervene if Russian forces invaded Europe.’

Richter digested this for a moment. ‘You said there were three things, General. What is the third?’

Modin looked at him. ‘Really, it’s another aspect of the same thing,’ he said. ‘You haven’t asked all the right questions, Mr Beatty, and there is one answer that you really do need. You know about the American devices, and you know about the neutron weapons in Europe, but you haven’t asked about how the plan was to be initiated, about how Minister Trushenko was going to convince the nations of Western Europe to agree to our demands.’

‘Go on,’ Richter said.

‘In the final stage of Podstava statements will be issued to all Western European governments. These will specify what we want, but Minister Trushenko didn’t seriously expect that just telling the governments would be enough. So he’s planned a demonstration first.’ Modin waved his hand in irritation. ‘I tried to stop that too, or at least get it moved somewhere else, and I failed in that as well. I wanted him to detonate it in a desert or somewhere where there would be little or no loss of life, but he over-ruled me. Trushenko wanted a location that was sufficiently far from major centres of population to avoid a catastrophic death toll, which might provoke an immediate nuclear response from either the French or the British in retaliation. But he also wanted a significant loss of life, to prove his serious intent, and he also wanted a really spectacular demonstration of the power of the strategic neutron bomb.’

Richter’s mouth was going dry. ‘Where is it?’ he asked. ‘Where is the demonstration?’

‘Gibraltar,’ Modin replied. ‘A Russian freighter – the Anton Kirov – has already arrived there with “engine trouble”. The crew is almost entirely Spetsnaz , and the ship’s hold contains a neutron bomb with a calculated yield of seven megatons, sufficient to reduce a large proportion of the “Rock” to rubble and certainly sufficient to kill every living thing in Gibraltar as well as most of the populations of La Linea and Algeciras. The Spetsnaz have orders to defend the ship and its cargo with their lives. The weapon is scheduled to be unloaded at Gibraltar tomorrow and positioned in a local warehouse, but it can be detonated while still aboard the ship.’

Modin passed a hand over his brow. ‘I cannot be certain, Mr Beatty, but I think that within hours or perhaps even minutes of my message reaching Moscow, Minister Trushenko will detonate that weapon by signal from the satellite.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s now seven in the evening. My guess is that you have no more than twelve hours to stop Gibraltar from being blown off the face of the Earth.’

Wednesday

The Walnut Room, the Kremlin, Krasnaya ploshchad, Moscow

The Russian President looked across at Yuri Baratov, Chairman of the SVR. ‘Find Minister Trushenko,’ he growled. ‘Immediately.’ Baratov said nothing but stood up, nodded respectfully towards the head of the table and left the room. The President looked, in a somewhat hostile manner, down the table and Sokolov could feel himself start to tremble.

‘General Sokolov,’ the President said, ‘in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I am prepared to accept that neither you nor General Modin were aware that this Operation Podstava was not official government policy. However,’ he added, ‘if any such evidence is subsequently found, well – I need hardly dwell upon the consequences.’ He bestowed a wintry smile upon the old man. ‘Now,’ the President went on, ‘we have to formulate a course of action to recover the situation. Yevgeni, what are your recommendations?’

Yevgeni Ryzhkov, Vice-President of the Supreme Soviet, glanced round the table. ‘We have, Comrade President, only two options, as far as I can see. The first option is to make a clean breast of it. Contact the White House on the hot-line and explain that the whole thing was an unauthorized venture, which we will stop as soon as we are able to do so.’

The President looked unconvinced. ‘From what Ambassador Karasin has told me,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure that the Americans will accept that. And even if they accept that what we’re saying is true, that does not mean that they will stand down their forces.’

‘And what is the other option?’ Anatoli Lomonosov asked.

‘As the Americans would say,’ Ryzhkov replied with a shrug, ‘we go with the flow. We implement Podstava .’

Autoroute A26, vicinity of Couvron-et-Aumencourt, France

Richter jumped out of the Transit van as soon as Modin stopped speaking, and took Colin Dekker and Colonel Lacomte off to a secluded section of the rest area. He told them what Modin had said, and what they had to do. Dekker contacted Hereford on a secure circuit using Lacomte’s comprehensive communications equipment and explained the situation. Immediately, operational control passed from him to the major in charge of the duty troop. Dekker was told to await further orders, but to begin formulating plans for an assault on the Russian ship.

This seemed to Richter a somewhat pointless exercise, as they knew nothing about the number of the freighter’s crew, or the vessel’s size, type, or even location at Gibraltar, and Modin wasn’t much help when Richter went back to the van to ask him. He thought the crew numbered about twenty-five, but all he knew for certain was that they were all – apart from the captain and perhaps one or two other ship’s officers – Spetsnaz personnel. However, Colin Dekker dutifully sat down with Trooper Brown at a picnic table and started work.

Ten minutes later, Trooper Jones told them that Hereford had activated the three remaining four-man SAS patrol units from the duty troop, and that they would be flown by helicopter from Hereford to Northolt, the RAF airfield located a few miles north of Heathrow airport in north-west London. They would then fly to France by a C–130 Hercules transport aircraft from the Special Forces Flight of 47 Squadron, Royal Air Force, departing Northolt no later than nineteen hundred hours local time – seven in the evening. Permission was sought by the RAF, and immediately granted by Lacomte, for the Hercules to land at Reims, the closest airport to their position on the autoroute.

Lacomte raised the French Minister of the Interior at home and, using a scrambled circuit, explained the new development and what he proposed to do. When he had received the Minister’s approval, he instructed his Headquarters to make the necessary arrangements for the Hercules’ arrival at Reims, which would include briefing the French area radar units on the unscheduled flight. He also told his staff to organize a carte blanche clearance for the C–130 to depart from Reims that evening and route directly to Gibraltar. ‘No delays, no re-routes, no exceptions,’ he said. ‘If you get any objections from anyone – and I do mean anyone – refer them immediately to the Minister of the Interior himself.’