Ian Slater - World in Flames

Approaching the third floor, Schwarzenegger, Aussie Lewis, Thelman, and Choir Williams behind him, David heard the scream of an SAS man hit somewhere behind them, but not for one second did David look back. Suzlov’s office was all he cared about — number six on the right side of the third floor’s east wing, the mockup in the Hereford house as vivid to him as the first time they’d run through it. It was a long room, four or five times the size of a Western executive’s office, with a highly polished light wooden floor, dark wood desk, and grape-red Persian carpets. To the right of the desk and its neat row of four ivory phones there would be high, scalloped and ruffled white curtains. Behind the desk, a Communist flag and a fifteen-foot-high beige panel between the window and the far door — a door that might connect to the next room. And above the door he would see the burnished brass emblem of the Soviet Union and, though it should be out by now, a large, multifaceted chandelier below which Suzlov and his “merry band,” as Cheek-Dawson was wont to call them, would now be clustered behind elements of the elite guard, on station during Politburo/STAVKA meetings.

David heard a bumping, like a heavy ball, somewhere on the stairs above him. “Grenade!” he shouted, dropping to the stairs, firing the MAC into the darkness, the grenade’s explosion a crimson flash, its shrapnel taking out a window and zinging against the high walls. In the light of the grenade he saw two figures above him and fired. They both dropped. His group, having paused for only a split second, was virtually untouched by the grenade as it bumped past them, exploding on the second-floor level.

At the top of the stairs David saw one of the four-bulb chandeliers reflecting light from an emergency battery lantern. He gave the lantern a burst and there was no light. He knelt to put in another clip — suddenly a door flew open along the hallway. David flattened, Thelman shot dead, taking the full impact of the SPETS’ burst, which now stopped, snuffed out by Aussie’s return fire. Schwarzenegger bent down by Thelman.

“Leave him!” shouted Brentwood. “Keep moving.” He waved Aussie, Schwarzenegger, Choir, and another man, from B Group, forward. From outside came the approaching rotor slap of a Hind chopper, either bringing in reinforcements or possibly trying for a rooftop evacuation of Suzlov and his crew. The fire from the SPETS told Brentwood he wouldn’t have time to play safe and clean out each room, but that they’d have to run a possible gauntlet straight through Suzlov’s office. He was also wondering whether Laylor’s troop had managed to fight off the determined SPETS attempt to break through the cordon of fire with which Laylor had secured the COM’s northern entrance.

There was an enormous explosion, a shattering of glass, and a gust of desert-hot air, the Hind E disintegrating above the COM, sending down a golden liquid rain of gasoline and huge charred segments of what had been the chopper’s engines falling down the side of the building, Laylor’s M-60 machine guns now in a steady rip, their gunners using the light of the burning chopper to better rake the shapes that tried to make it from the old cannons and trees that flanked the arsenal across from the COM in what was now knee-high snow.

“Watch for more grenades!” Brentwood cautioned as his party split either side of the corridor that led to Suzlov’s office about sixty feet away. The cacophony of sound was so deafening outside as Laylor’s fire teams kept changing their position and the SPETS counteroffensive grew that Brentwood had to shout to be heard as he prepared them for the rush. Quite suddenly he realized he hadn’t had time to be frightened.

Because of the noise, he didn’t hear the sound of the opening door, second down on the left, but the light from the chopper lit up the SPETS the moment he’d opened the door to get his line of fire. Schwarzenegger’s burst literally punched the Russian back into the room. They heard a high, terrified “Please!” and saw some kind of cloth being waved from the second office, and then, hands high above them, one woman in uniform, the other a civilian in a yellow dress, came scuttling out. David cursed, ordered Aussie and Williams to frisk and “tape” them. It was thirty seconds lost, but for a fraction of a second in that time, Brentwood’s action delineated the fundamental difference between the two elite forces joined in battle. It was a microcosm, he realized, of what they were fighting about— about how the trainload of nurses and women like Lili and wounded men would be treated by one country as opposed to another. God knew the SAS were no angels, but David knew from bitter experience that a SPETS team would have simply blown the two women away.

He glanced at his watch. They had been in the COM seven minutes. They’d have to be out in another fifteen minutes, allowing three minutes at least to get well clear of the massive building before C Troop’s charges blew. But there was no point in the building coming down until they could confirm that Suzlov and friends had been dealt with.

“Suzlov’s office,” he reminded the group, “sixth on the right.” Suddenly the silence of the building was deafening, and for a moment all he could hear was the ringing in his ears caused by the fierce battle still raging outside, and through one of the shattered west windows he glimpsed small, dark figures of SAS men, four or five of them, who had landed on the Palace of Congress, three still pouring down deadly fire into the arsenal, one crumpled, writhing in the snow. To his right, David could hear the creaking of tanks in Red Square beyond the Kremlin’s east wall as more man twenty or so T-90s positioned their 135-millimeter cannons and 12.70 machine guns for the maximum enfilade of fire, all the way from the Historical Museum at the top of the square down past St. Nicholas’s Tower Gate to the island that was St. Basil’s outside the walls, the variegated hues of the church’s onion domes flickering in the light of the SPETS’ flares. No doubt the entire Kremlin was surrounded now by armor. The cannons had laser-guided fire control, but aiming, David knew, would hardly be a problem for the Russian gunners. It would all be point-blank. If a 135-millimeter hit you, as Aussie had once told Williams in a cheery aside, there’d be nothing left to identify, the hydraulic punch and superheated shell exploding blood and bone, in effect cremating you on the spot.

As Schwarzenegger quickly finished frisking and taping the two women, the other man from Troop B joined him in covering Brentwood, who was now moving along the right wall of the corridor, quickly ducking across into what had been the office of the two secretaries to make sure it was clear before moving farther down the hall. As he did so, Schwarzenegger pushed the two secretaries back inside the office and moved ahead of Brentwood, taking the left-hand side of the hallway, followed by the new man from Troop B, with Choir Williams behind.

Williams, taking up the rear, could hear a squeaky sound, like unoiled carts. It was the sound of more tanks wheeling into position in the vast square. Choir realized that refusing to take up Aussie’s bet about how many SAS would get out after the mission had probably been one of the better decisions of his life. Not that he’d get to spend what he’d saved.

David glanced back, seeing that Schwarzenegger, the new man from B Troop, and Williams were right behind him.

“Fritz,” he whispered, motioning to the new man and Williams behind, “you three go forward. Aussie and I’ll take rooms three and four, with you covering from halfway down.” He indicated the two offices on the right, which, unlike the two on the left, still had their doors shut and so were unknown quantities. “Everybody joins for the party at number six. Got it? No grenades until six. Don’t waste time on the doors. Automatic fire. Keep ‘em or kill them inside. We haven’t got time for housecleaning. Aussie and I’ll zip open six. You two as backup. Ready?”