Ian Slater - Arctic Front

It wasn’t funny to Nefski. In his late fifties, his sexual appetite hadn’t abated, but his wife’s had. She had become more interested, it seemed, in the Japanese and Chinese delicacies that he had been able to “acquire” from ship’s captains whose vessels had docked at Vladivostok. He had thought of using the promise of the expensive clothes and other bric-a-brac he could weasel or threaten from the merchantmen of the ports in his old jurisdiction, and it might have bought him her favor. But she was so enormous, so off-putting, he had ceased trying, encouraging the worst of the rumors he’d overheard, namely that he couldn’t do it anymore because he’d lost it — that search parties had failed to find it in her taiga.

Nefski’s face reddened at the very thought of the humiliation he was suffering. No one, of course, would dare hint at his nickname of “Limp Dick” to his face. If they had, he would have had them shot on “corruption” charges — he had enough evidence among his “forbidden imports.” Or he could have sent them to one of the perms, the far-flung Siberian labor camps that had been reopened after Gorbachev’s idiot regime.

He drew heavily on his Winston, the thought of having his detractors put in a shizo, the four-by-eight punishment cell, more and more appealing. No blankets, with a hard fir plank for a bed and the steel-grated light that was left on twenty-four hours a day. If they broke the forty-watt bulb — another month. Then let them joke about Colonel “Limp Dick.” He felt his erection throbbing. Like him and the corporal, the Jewess was perspiring heavily in the overheated room, her sackcloth prison dress sticking to her like wet brown paper, her nipples tantalizingly outlined but not clearly visible, sweat trickling down the alabaster whiteness of her throat, disappearing between her breasts, her dress also clinging to her thighs. The comparison between her and his wife was like that between two entirely different species. “Whom,” he asked her quietly, “did you give the photographs to at Irkutsk?” He was staring at her, the bluish-gray cigarette smoke wafting idly above him before being caught in the sultry currents of the stuffy room.

“What photos?” she shot back innocently.

“Not their actual name,” he said amicably. “I don’t expect that. A description of who it was. Man? Woman? How old?”

“I don’t know anything about photographs.”

Nefski indicated the small, narrow, black bench by the door, where overdue borrowers of state-approved books had once sat obediently before being summoned by the librarian to give good reasons why they should not be fined. “Tie her down,” he told the corporal. “On her back.”

She sat up rigidly, the hatred in her eyes shot through with fear.

Nefski called in two more guards. It was astonishing how strong even half-starved prisoners were when their fear overtook them. Besides his subaltern needing help, Nefski reasoned that with three other men as witnesses, it would put an end to Colonel “Limp Dick” talk.

She fought violently as they tussled with her. She didn’t scream, not once, but was huffing and puffing like a dumb animal who knew instinctively it was destined for the chopping block.

“No,” said Nefski, “leave her head free.” He would pull her long, black hair down behind her with one hand, kissing her neck and squeezing her breasts with the other. Suck them.

After they tied her down, her breathing became even more rapid as she made futile attempts to loosen the binding tape. Nefski took the long pair of scissors from a plastic stand on the blotter and, walking over, straddled the bench. Looking down at her, he took the scissors and slit the dress open. The three other KGB men were fixed where they stood by her saturnine beauty, the subaltern so aroused he was squeezing his tongue hard between his nicotine-blackened teeth. Nefski tossed the scissors back on the desk, spat into his right hand, and wiped his hand between her legs, then did it again and again until he thought she would be wet enough. He undid his belt and unzipped his fly, letting his trousers fall down to the bench as he lowered himself onto her. She started to whimper, and he slapped her hard, snapped his fingers for one of the men’s handkerchiefs, and stuffed it in her mouth. As he entered her they saw her stiffen, but Nefski only pushed harder, and the subaltern, trembling with envy, saw his chief’s eyes close in ecstasy, one hand clasping one of her breasts, the other wrapped in her hair, jerking her head down hard on the bench.

After, breathless, exhausted, he stepped back, almost stumbling, telling the others it was their turn for sverkhurochnye chasy— “overtime.” It was a good joke, he thought, and, more importantly, it would assure their silence.

None of them knew the rape would change the course of the war.

Pulling on Siberian uniforms taken by Freeman’s forces from Siberian militiamen captured in Khabarovsk, the twelve-member S/D, as the SAS/Delta team was designated in Freeman’s HQ, were lost in clouds of steam rising from the long-nozzled de-icing hoses spraying the rotors of the two Super Sea Stallion choppers. The Stallions, their crews also in Siberian uniforms, would carry the team seven hundred miles, skimming over the vast taiga, in a nap-of-the-earth flying mission that would take them to Tankhoy on the southeastern shore of the lake, twenty-seven miles across from Port Baikal, the latter situated on the ice-free outflow of the Angara River.

The rotors of the two escorting Cobra attack helicopters-dwarfed by the Super Stallions, much larger at 99 feet long — were already cutting into the softly falling snow. David Brentwood would have preferred a smaller-silhouette chopper, but the big Stallions had a range of 480 nautical miles, each powered by three T64-GE-416 turboshaft engines. Strong enough to lift a 150-millimeter howitzer and the gun’s five-ton truck, each of them could certainly carry four of the three-man Arrow vehicles Freeman had insisted on for the mission; above all the big choppers could carry hefty extra fuel tanks.

As important as any of its other attributes, the Stallion could be refueled in flight from a KC-130 tanker so that by using additional drop tanks for the seven-hundred-mile run in and partway out, it would be able to be refueled in the air on its way back, beyond the deadly AA missile and gun batteries around the lake. In addition, the chopper had a remarkable 27,900-foot ceiling and also had two.50 caliber machine guns mounted starboard and port beneath the engines’ cowling, which two of the S/D could handle if necessary.

Though it wasn’t snowing heavily, the snow was bothering the pilots of the two attack Cobras more than the Sea Stallion crews, who had already done a lot of bad-weather flying in “pickup and deposit” rescue missions after, and sometimes during, the Baikal-launched missile attacks, taking litters of wounded to MASH units, and in some cases flying them as far back east as Khabarovsk. One of the Cobra pilots in particular seemed spooked, grumpily ordering his weapons officer/copilot to double-check that all red tapers had been taken from the sixteen Hellfire antitank missiles. The copilot had already done so, but the pilot thought the de-icing steam had momentarily obscured the ground crew who in turn might not have seen his thumbs-up signal. Meanwhile the seven crew members flown in from the USS Reagan to join Robert Brentwood, bringing the team up to twenty men, were adjusting their S/D-issued, extremely-cold-weather gear.

Freeman shook hands with every man, including the four chopper crews who were going on the mission.

“Remember now, engineers have assured us that the noise of the Snowcat Arrows is similar to the kind of engines the Sibirs use on their snowmobiles, so the noise in itself shouldn’t draw undue attention. And as you can see, we’ve spent all night painting your transport in snow/gray Siberian camouflage pattern. So what more could you want?”