Mark Blair - Stroika

‘Twitchy?’ said Viktoriya.

‘I’ve capital flight, you, and Yuri sending up distress flares. Yes, you could say so.’

She knew he was right; hadn’t she been telling him for weeks to up his protection?

Ivan kissed her on both cheeks without taking his eyes off the road and indicated the middle car, flanked by four security men, parked only a few feet away. Viktoriya slid in first, Misha next.

The first and last cars filled quickly. Waved on by a bodyguard, the convoy pulled out into the road, crossed Suvorovskiy and ran a red light into Rozhdestvenskiy Square.

Viktoriya reached for Misha’s hand and squeezed it, nuzzling her face against his black leather jacket, pleased to be free and in the company of her best friend.

He turned to say something, when the car in front disintegrated in a ball of fire. Deafened by the explosion, Viktoriya instinctively covered her ears. Wreckage fell like rain, heavily at first and then light, drifting in the smoke that pushed its way past them. There could be no survivors. The blazing carcass of the stricken Volga blocked the north exit.

‘South exit! Flat down! South exit!’ Ivan bellowed to the driver, who was already flooring the accelerator.

Black smoke rose from the spinning tyres and the car lurched forward, dodging debris. The windscreen shattered. Splintered glass stung her face as bullets thudded into the car. Twenty metres on, the fusillade stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The car behind moved into a blocking space. Ivan leant forward and smashed out what remained of the front windscreen.

Misha slumped forward in his seat, unconscious. Viktoriya grabbed him. Her hands came away wet and sticky with blood.

‘He’s been shot!’ she shouted, but where? It was then, in all the chaos, she saw the bullet wound to his head. She felt for his pulse. He was still alive.

‘Hospital!’ she shouted. Ivan nodded, but they had to survive the square first.

Intuition comes sometimes with divine clarity. Viktoriya knew beyond any doubt that the southern exit to the square was a death sentence. Whoever had planned this attack would expect them to take it.

‘Hard left!’ she screamed over the pounding of the car engine. ‘Hard left, into the square!’ They had to regain the initiative if they were to come out alive.

The driver swung the car through ninety degrees up onto the kerb. Wrenching the gateposts free of their moorings, the half-ton battering ram careered down a wide footpath to the small mountain of boulders that excused itself for a decorative feature. Once covered in alpine flowers, it was now a canvas for anti-police graffiti.

‘Behind that!’ she shouted. ‘We can take cover here. Ivan, the south exit, they’re going to be waiting there.’ She knew they only had seconds before their attackers figured out they had turned off the square.

Ivan jumped out of the car and signalled two men – Iosif and Vladek – from the car behind to follow as Vladimir and Roman shinnied up the rock, Kalashnikovs strapped to their back.

The three ran full tilt out of the square towards the south exit. A grenade whooshed passed Ivan to his left and exploded against the railings as he dived for cover behind a line of parked cars. Iosif ran in behind him, quickly followed by Vladek.

‘Did you see how many?’

Both of them shook their heads.

Ivan counted to three. Vlad and Iosif leapt to their feet and fired of a clip of shells. Ivan clocked the muzzle flash from two guns and a third man on the corner holding a GP-25 grenade launcher.

Using parked cars for cover, Ivan quickly worked his way to within twenty feet of his attackers. He shot the first as he swung an AK towards him, Vladek killed the second. Ivan watched the man with the grenade launcher raise it to his shoulder and Iosif run forward from behind, raise his gun and fire. The rocket grenade man froze and slowly toppled forward onto the pavement. Whether it was the force of the fall or the dead man’s final twitch on the trigger, the percussion cap detonated, sending shards of shrapnel in every direction. Iosif took a chunk in his shoulder and fell to the ground as a fourth man emerged from nowhere. Vladek took advantage of his blind side and loosed a burst from his Kalashnikov. The perpetrator, dead on his feet, smashed into a gate behind him and slid to the pavement.

Iosif stood up, clutching his shoulder, and gave the thumbs-up.

‘Vladek, let’s go… the square… we’ll be back for Iosif.’

Ivan paused at the mangled entrance to the square. Fifty metres to his front he caught sight of the limp figure of Roman dangling precariously from a high boulder he had seen him climb only minutes before. His Kalashnikov hung around his neck like a tourniquet pulling him downward. Blood trickled from his open mouth and his eyes stared unblinking.

Vladek touched Ivan on the shoulder and pointed at the dead body of one of their assailants, lying in the open to the side of a tree. Two others, using the same trees for cover, worked their way forward trying to get behind Vladimir, who was crouched behind a rock only a couple of metres from the dead Roman.

Ivan and Vladek were directly behind them. Neither of the two antagonists noticed their approach. When they were less than ten metres distant, Ivan and Vladek opened up with their automatics and kept firing until the two lay still on the wet grass.

Ivan looked up to the sound of spinning tyres. Two Volgas broke cover from behind the rock and raced forward. Ivan jumped into the first and Iosif and Vladek the second.

‘Vladimir… the Mariinsky!’ Ivan shouted at the second car, as his, with its critically wounded passenger, pulled forward and exited the killing field.

CHEREPOVETS

A blanket over his shoulders, wet through and covered in mud, Yuri sat with a mug of hot coffee squeezed between his palms in the officers’ mess at Cherepovets airport. Derevenko sat across the table, making notes while the crash was fresh in his mind.

‘What do you think happened?’ asked Yuri.

‘Fuel line, I guess, never happened before… ruptured, loose? Odd, though, it was inspected this morning. I saw the mechanic on the wing, making an inspection.’ The captain frowned.

‘And…?’

‘He wasn’t one of the usual ground crew. I know them all pretty well, see them every day. This guy was new.’

The double door swung open and a major marched into the room with two soldiers and snapped to attention.

‘General, Captain,’ he addressed the two seated officers.

‘General,’ the major looked awkward, ‘I have a warrant for your detention.’ The two soldiers stepped forward, fingers resting on the trigger guard and safety catch in the fire position. ‘Please hand over your firearm and come with me.’

Yuri rose to his feet, furious.

‘On what charge, Major?’

‘It doesn’t say, General.’

‘This is ridiculous!’ exploded Yuri. ‘Who is it signed by?’

‘Comrade Dubnikov, the minister of defence.’

Yuri inspected the fax now held out to him by the major.

‘Military police are flying out from Moscow later this afternoon to take you back to Moscow.’

‘I want to speak directly to the colonel general, General Ghukov, at the GSHQ.’ He would surely sort this out.

‘General, I have been trying to reach his office for confirmation but he is unavailable. I’m sorry.’

Yuri looked from the major to the two soldiers and shook his head.

‘Give me the fax again.’ He looked at the date and time of the warrant and up at the clock. It had only been issued half an hour ago, a good hour after the crash. Was this their fallback position?