Ian Slater - World in Flames

“Ja,” said Schwarzenegger, he and the new man moving forward, Williams as tail gun Charlie. Making no attempt on three and four until they had covered Schwarzenegger and Co.’s advance along the left side, Brentwood and Aussie waited till Schwarzenegger was halfway down, away from any direct line of fire from the two closed offices, before they opened up with angle fire, their nine-millimeters chopping through the Party’s utilitarian plywood doors that had been used to segment the older, huger rooms of the tsar. Schwarzenegger and Williams were already “renovating” the third office on the left, just to make sure, but no one was in it. Coming out as quickly as they’d gone in, Schwarzenegger, the B trooper, and Williams moved farther down the hallway.

The explosion was like a whoof of gasoline, the hallway engulfed in smoke, Schwarzenegger’s legs hitting the roof, falling amid the debris, the blood from his severed thighs spurting from them like hoses, the smell of his burned flesh mixing with the stringent afterfumes of the Astrolite, the liquid mine which, sprayed onto the ground or in this case on the red hall carpet, had been detonated by foot pressure. Schwarzenegger was still alive, barely — a grotesque dwarf slithering in his own blood and intestines that were oozing out of him. The moment the Astrolite — a mine of American invention which the SAS did not know the Russians possessed — had exploded, the door of the office before number six was flung open. Three SPETS, so big they completely blocked the hallway, stepped out and fired. But Aussie, with the long SAS hours of “nondistraction” training, had resisted the natural temptation to immediately look down at his wounded comrades and instead had gone for the target with a full burst — its backwash searing the hairs on his hands — the burst cutting down the three SPETS. The man who had been immediately behind Schwarzenegger, miraculously saved from the blast because of Schwarzenegger’s taking the full impact of the mine, was now reeling back, already dead from one of the Russians’ shots, the bullet having passed clean through him, clipping Choir Williams on the shoulder.

“Into the rooms!” Brentwood yelled back to Aussie as he fired a long burst to dissuade any more SPETS from coming out of number six as a blur of two or three of Cheek-Dawson’s C Troop, having come up from the second level, now joined Lewis and Williams in the last office before number six.

“Bloody carpet was mined,” David heard the Australian yelling out at more members of Troop C who were now reaching them from the second floor and about to run down the hallway. “Stay where you are!” Aussie warned. “Fucking carpet’s pressure-triggered.”

His MAC in his right hand as he backed into the cleaned-out office now occupied by the Australian, Choir Williams, and the other men from Troop C, David, not putting down the MAC for a second and still watching the hall, reached across with his left hand, pulled out his Browning pistol from its holster, and shot what remained of Schwarzenegger through the heart.

“Let’s go for six!” shouted Aussie. “One or two of us’ll—”

“Negative!” said Brentwood. In Pyongyang some of Freeman’s troops had found connecting doors between several of the offices in Mansudae Hall, and the NKA regulars had used the connecting doors to backtrack through the offices and bushwhack Americans in the hallways from behind. David decided that, given the short time remaining and the further delay any Astrolite explosion would cause, there was only one way — but he had to raise his voice loud enough to be heard over the battery fire alarms that were now screaming all through the hallway, their beams boiling with toxic smoke. Suddenly another fire alarm started screaming above them in the office. “Fish is done!” said Aussie — but no one laughed, all of them knowing they only had at most five minutes to do the job and get out of COM — one man, visibly in shock, shaking violently, unable to look at Schwarzenegger’s remains.

“All right!” said David. “We haven’t got time for musical chairs. C troopers — plastique! On the far wall — five of diamonds. If we start taking fire through the wall, hit the deck. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Right! Go!” By this time, several more troopers from C Group had entered the room.

“Fucking traffic jam,” said Aussie grimly.

“Ten-second delay!” David called out to the sappers, placing the charges in a three-foot square, the fifth lump of plastique in the middle, the detonator wires connecting. The sappers turned, signaling to one of their colleagues, who ran forward with another khaki vest load.

“Feels like brick,” the sapper nearest the wall said quietly, quickly packing double the amount of plastique into the square.

“Blow us into the fucking river!” said Aussie, standing next to Brentwood ten feet back from the wall, their MACs at the ready, the newly arrived troopers from Group C making a line of seven SAS ready to charge through to number six the moment the wall blew — if it did.

“How many in all?” asked one of the troopers. “Besides Suzlov, I mean.”

“Twenty-nine,” said Brentwood. “Don’t sweat it. There’ll be plenty of targets.”

“Plus SPETS,” added Aussie. “They’re the pricks I want.”

“Calm down,” Brentwood cautioned him. “Can’t help ‘em now, Aussie.”

The Australian said nothing, knowing that Brentwood meant Schwarzenegger, Thelma, and the others with whom they’d shared the indissoluble bonds of the SAS.

“All set!” announced the corporal who’d directed setting the charges.

“Behind the desk!” ordered Brentwood, but there was no need. The long desk of dark, highly polished hardwood that reflected the flares streaking up from the tank columns outside was over on its side in seconds, the SAS men down behind it, chin straps undone lest the concussion lift their Kevlar helmets.

“On safety!” ordered Brentwood — a precautionary order against accidental discharge from weapons hit by falling debris. “Aussie, you—”

The room blurred, the sound like a cracking iceberg, an avalanche of plaster falling on them, the snap of one man’s collarbone distinctly heard, followed by the shattering of the long room’s chandelier, its fragments lacerating the portraits of Lenin, the Politburo, and KGB chief Chernko into thousands of pieces.

“Go!” shouted Brentwood, and within seconds after the blast, the line of seven SAS moved into the choking fog of dust, MACs erupting in an enfilade of orange-tongued fire, none of them knowing whether the wall had in fact been penetrated but taking no chances. As they ceased firing, their bodies still tense as compressed springs, they moved forward over the rubble.

Brentwood had prayed that a hole at least the size of the three-foot-wide pattern would allow them an attack point. In fact, almost the entire brick wall had disappeared, a great gaping hole appearing in the eerie light afforded by the burning Soviet flag behind the desk, a pile of rubble looking like the steaming remains of an earthquake. Then David Brentwood saw three shadows, a sparkle of light — the fire from AK-47s — before them. It was a brave attempt, but the three SPETS, with the loss of one of the C troopers, were dissected by the hail of SAS bullets. Then quite suddenly all was deathly quiet, except for the low moans of the SAS trooper whose broken collarbone made it impossible for him to move, two other troopers coming into the room, dragging him out after one of them had given him a shot of morphine in order to get him downstairs and out of the building as soon as possible.

For a reason no one could explain, the room’s fire alarm was still screaming, though its light had gone out. Lewis reversed his Ingram, using the butt to silence it.