Steve Abbott - Devil's Gambit

Sean’s eyes moved down the page. “When did this come down the pipe?”

“One of the comm. lads brought it to me just after midnight. You were still sleeping off your orange pop binge. Took me till now to decode the damn thing. These bloody burst transmitters are wonderful when you’re sending info, but they stink when you are on the receiving end.”

Sean checked his watch. It was just after three in the morning. He looked up at Harris and smiled. “So how’s your Russian?”

“About as good as yours.” Harris slapped Sean’s foot. “Come on. Grab your kit and pull your finger out. Shute said it was okay to nab one of the Land Cruisers. They can grab it back from the airport later.” He pointed to the flimsy in Sean’s hands. “Were thumbing a lift with Aeroflot.”

Sean swung out of bed and began to stuff clothes into his duffel bag. He stopped and looked at Harris. “Gear for an op wasn’t mentioned.”

Bill shrugged, “Short notice. It’s scrounger’s rules until this NEST lot can fully equip us. A big smart ape like you can dig up something.”

Sean frowned. “No gear, no plan, that’s just fucking typical. What the hell are they sending us up for? Do the brains in Whitehall think it was terrorists?”

Harris moved to the door, stuck his head round the jamb and peered down the hall. “What with the crap that’s going on these days? You know as much as they do, anything can happen.” Harris looked back into the room. “You not done yet?”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist. Where’s your gear?”

“Already loaded in the back of the Toyota.”

Sean shook his head and chuckled. “You know Bill, you make me look bad.”

“Don’t I though?”

Sean opened his door, “Once more into the breach.”

The trip to the airport from the Hilton where the UN observers were quartered was uneventful. Local authorities had learned to leave the white vehicles and their occupants alone, unless they were moving into a sensitive area; then they were like fleas on a dog’s back.

Getting into the airport turned out to be another matter.

“Papers please.”

Sean looked at the guard on gate duty, a pretty sorry specimen in anyone’s Army. His uniform was rumpled and soiled, the red checked Kafiya on his head, grimy and spotted. Personal hygiene did not look to be his strong suit. Sean held up his UN pass. It was supposed to guarantee access to any part of Syria, no matter how sensitive. In reality, it was not the most effective key.

The vigilant guard looked at Sean as if he were patently mad and, in his halting English, began his demand again. “Papers please.”

Sean’s knuckles grew white on the steering wheel. He suspected that teaching the gate guards this one phrase of English was a subtle ploy by the local government to drive the UN operatives mad. Harris got out of the Land Cruiser and walked to the guard. The guard tried to bring his AK-47 rifle to bear, but Harris was too fast. He jerked the weapon by the barrel from the man’s hands. Still holding the AK’s barrel, Harris drove the butt stock into the Arab’s chest. The guard went down in a whoosh of expelled air. Harris flipped the rifle around and pulled back the cocking lever. The guard had not even had the foresight to charge his weapon. Harris placed the barrel of the rifle against the man’s forehead. The guard had regained enough of his lung capacity to realize what was going on and he started to plead in rapid fire Arabic for his life. Harris kept the barrel leveled at the man’s head for a few long seconds before pulling the clip out of the gun and throwing it into the weeds. He ejected the round from the breech and threw the useless rifle at the guard’s feet.

“Next time, figure out who you’re dealing with.” Harris walked over and lifted the barrier to let Sean through.

Sean looked up and down the flight line for an Aeroflot plane. There were a number of Russian Air Force cargo planes lining the runway. They were supporting their country’s presence as part of the UN monitoring force. All of them were painted in a mottled dull socialist gray, red stars emblazoned on the fuselage and wings. The hammer and sickle flag on each tail had been painted over with the new red, white and blue tricolors. It was as if the Russians did not trust themselves to stay on the new path of capitalism. The old symbols were kept on the aircraft, hidden by layers of paint, just in case.

Only one of the aircraft on the flight line had its interior lights on. Sean had to hand it to the Russians, their cargo aircraft designs really stood out. He steered the Land Cruiser towards the hunchbacked shape of the Aeroflot An-72, parked at the far end of the flight line. The STOL aircraft had two Lotarev D-36 turbofan engines mounted on the far forward and top of its high wing. This strange design quirk protected the engines against foreign object damage and gave the plane its characteristic appearance. The door on the forward port side was open. He parked the Land Cruiser to the rear of the plane.

The two men, with what little gear they had, got out. A gruff, unshaven man with unkempt blond hair and grease-stained coveralls, which might have been white once, met the two men at the door.

“Da?” Despite what they might say in mixed company, Addison and Harris were fluent enough in Russian to get by.

Sean answered in Russian. “We are the passengers you are expecting.” He and Harris showed him identification. The two cards were glanced over. Their grimy host grunted once and motioned them inside. The interior of the small cargo bay was padded in a vain attempt to reduce cabin noise. Small, red bulbs ran the bay’s length, providing just enough dim light for the men to avoid smashing their shins on whatever cargo they were flying with. There were no visible windows.

Harris wrinkled his nose. “Smells like a barn in here.”

Sean shrugged. The plane’s interior did have the pungent smell of a cattle truck about it but, then again, it was a cargo plane and not all regions of the ex-Soviet Union were accessible by road. Harris folded down a canvas jump seat from the side of the bay. Straw fell from behind the seat to the floor. He grinned at Sean in the dim light of the bay and, in a deadpan voice, said, “Always nice to see that one is appreciated by one’s hosts.”

The cargo officer came to check that they had strapped themselves in correctly for takeoff. He tugged at each harness once. Satisfied, he grabbed a hard-wired headset with a mike, which was hanging from a peg on the forward bulkhead, and he spoke rapidly. The engines started to spool up seconds later. His last act, before strapping himself in, was to throw two sets of bulky ear protectors to Sean and Harris. The noise inside the bay continued to build. Even with the protectors on, it was still bone-rattling loud. With a soft jerk, the pilot let off the brakes and started to taxi to the runway.

Sean hated takeoffs and landings. The flying part in the middle didn’t bother him, and he rarely ever landed in the planes he took off in, but that first and last minute of flight were not his favorite. He gripped the hardwood sides of his jump seat and braced himself.

It amazed Harris that his friend could throw himself out of an airplane at thirty thousand feet, freefall almost all the way to the ground, open his chute and purposely steer into trees, but was worried by something as small as takeoff. But even Harris was forced to wonder minutes later, when the pilot put them through the most gut wrenching and violent takeoff, either one of them had ever endured.

Sergei sat in the middle of a bare-walled concrete room, naked and tied to a chair. He stared with utter hatred at Sturmovic and his men. “Is this how you treat honest citizens of a free Georgia?”