James Barrington - Overkill

Captain Valeri Bondarev stood on the starboard bridge wing, his sparse grey hair being blown awry by the sea breeze, and looked moodily down at the foredeck. With the ship at cruising stations, a group of the new crew had assembled and, with obvious military precision, was performing energetic callisthenics under the direction of a stocky Ukrainian. He detected movement to his left and turned. The leader of the new crew walked across the bridge wing and leaned on the rail beside him. Bondarev realized he still didn’t know the man’s name. ‘What do I call you?’ he growled.

‘My name is Zavorin, Petr Zavorin. You may call me Petr.’

‘I prefer to use your military rank,’ Bondarev said stiffly.

Zavorin looked briefly at the captain, then glanced forward again. ‘As you wish,’ he said. ‘I am a colonel in a tank regiment – that is all you need to know.’

Bondarev smiled slightly, unbelieving. ‘And those men,’ he said, gesturing forwards, ‘I suppose they’re all tank drivers and gunners, are they? Learned all about ships from reading books, I suppose. You’re all Spetsnaz , aren’t you?’

Zavorin looked appraisingly at Bondarev. The captain’s perception had surprised him – perhaps a more open approach would pay dividends. ‘Yes,’ Zavorin said, nodding, ‘your powers of observation do you credit, Captain. We are part of a Spetsnaz company.’

The Russian Spetsnaz are the most numerous special forces in the world, comprising some twenty-five thousand troops in all. Most are deployed with the regular Russian armed forces, but a significant number operate permanently or temporarily under deep cover in the West, as athletes, delegates or embassy staff. In the event of hostilities, deep-cover Spetsnaz personnel would be ordered to assassinate political and military leaders, disrupt lines of communications by sabotage, seize airfields and undertake other operations to make invasion by Russian regular forces easier. The competence and ability of Spetsnaz forces has already been demonstrated. In 1968 they seized Prague Airport immediately before the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and Spetsnaz troops were infiltrated into Kabul in December 1979 to soften up local resistance before Soviet forces entered Afghanistan.

Zavorin glanced round the bridge wing, then looked back at Bondarev. ‘I have my orders, Captain, as you have, but perhaps we can work better together if I am frank with you. Not here, though. We will go to your cabin.’

Bondarev nodded, and led the way off the bridge. As soon as Bondarev and Zavorin had left, two of the Spetsnaz troops stopped their exercise routine and ran aft. The first trooper picked up a cardboard package about a metre square and twenty centimetres thick, and carried it easily up the external ladders to the bridge. The second man followed with a small toolbox.

With the proficiency born of long practice, the two men climbed on to the bridge roof and began the assembly and installation of a gimballed satellite dish. When the dish was sitting on its mount, one of the troopers began the preliminary alignment process. The final alignment, and initializing communication with the satellite, would have to be delayed until the ship was stationary in harbour.

With the alignment completed, the trooper called to two other men who had climbed up to the bridge. The three of them manhandled four large plywood screens, painted to match the superstructure of the Anton Kirov , on to the bridge roof, and then erected them along the edges. The screens completely hid the satellite dish from view, except from directly above.

The second trooper attached a coaxial cable to the LNB on the dish and ran it down the side of the bridge, concealing it in an existing cable conduit. At deck level, he again made every effort to hide the cable, and finally passed the end through a small hole he had drilled earlier. The hole led directly into the forward hold of the Anton Kirov.

American Embassy, Grosvenor Square, London

Roger Abrahams swung open the heavy door and John Westwood followed him into the secure briefing room. The long table had seats for ten, but there were only two mugs by the coffee pot at the head of the table. The two men sat down facing each other, and Abrahams poured coffee.

‘Thanks,’ said Westwood as Abrahams passed the mug over. Westwood unlocked his briefcase, opened the lid and pulled out a large sealed envelope. Taking a clasp knife from his pocket, he sliced through the closed flap at one end and pulled out a slightly smaller envelope. In contrast to the plain brown of the outer envelope, this one was prominently stamped in red ink ‘Cosmic Top Secret. NOFORN. By hand of officer only’.

Abrahams raised his eyebrows and nodded towards the envelope. ‘NOFORN’ was the CIA acronym derived from ‘NO FOReign Nationals’ which prohibited non-US citizens from seeing a document. ‘CTS? NOFORN? What the hell have you got there, John?’

Westwood grinned somewhat wryly as he used the knife on the second envelope. ‘We’re not really sure,’ he replied, pulling out the file. The cover bore the title ‘Ravensong’. He positioned the file on the table in front of him, opened it and glanced at the minute sheet on the left-hand side. Then he took a sip of coffee and looked over at Abrahams.

‘None of this makes much sense yet, Roger, so you’ll have to bear with me while I run through the sequence of events. I’m not even sure if you’ll be able to help, but I hope so. We really do need something concrete to work on.’

Abrahams nodded. Westwood glanced down at the file and began his briefing.

Cambridgeshire

The Granada’s sudden burst of acceleration had taken the chase car driver by surprise, and the gap between the vehicles had opened from twenty to about a hundred yards. The pursuing car was a Jaguar XJ saloon, the version with the 4.2-litre six-cylinder engine. It was a good car for a chase, and Richter knew there was no way the old Granada could out-run it. Not for the first time, he cursed Simpson’s insistence on only using cars at least five years old. That was one of his worries. The other was the rest of the opposition.

If he had been setting up a hit, particularly a mobile hit, Richter would have made sure that he had a back-up vehicle somewhere ahead, just in case the first attempt failed. Richter had no reason to suspect that whoever had organized his attempted demise would be any less conscientious than him, so he knew he had to start going the other way, and quickly.

The dual carriageway was rapidly coming to an end, which provided him with the opportunity he needed. Richter hit the brakes, hard, and watched the speedometer needle unwind as the car’s speed dropped. When he had fifty-five showing, he span the wheel hard right, released the brakes, pulled on the handbrake, waited until the car was sliding sideways, then released the handbrake and floored the accelerator. The tyres screamed as the power broke their grip on the road surface and the Ford fishtailed up the opposite carriageway.

As he got it more or less straight, Richter ducked down as low as he could, because the Jaguar was right beside him, going the other way under heavy braking, and he’d seen the man in the back seat, with the dark mouth of a gun pointing straight at him. He heard three shots above the roar of the engine, and the driver’s door window fell in a million pieces all over him. One thing was clear – there was no way Simpson was ever going to be able to offer that Granada as a clean one-owner model. Richter straightened up in the seat and checked the door mirror.

He had better than a quarter of a mile on them, and the Jaguar was only just making the turn to follow, so Richter had perhaps half a mile to play with. The XJ6 was still visible in the mirror when Richter took the first left-hand junction, so he knew they’d follow. He started to breathe a little more easily, and started thinking straight.