Gavin Smith: Special Purposes: First Strike Weapon

“Put him down,” Vadim told his second-in-command. Reluctantly the Fräulein let Ivack go and he slid, gasping, down to the snow. “Leave the hammer and the nails!” Vadim shouted over the noise of the Hind-D as it came in to land, whipping the snow up all around them.

THEY LEFT THE hatch to the passenger compartment open, letting in the frigid alpine wind as the gunship banked over the village. Vadim watched as the villagers gathered around Ivack. He was sure he saw one of the children pick something up from the snow.

Vadim laid his hand on his friend’s body. He’d told Ivack there wasn’t room; after all, the Spaniard had been one of them.

0540 AFT, 8th November 1987

Fayzabad Airport, Badakhshan Province, Afghanistan

VADIM COULDN’T JUST stare at the poncho-wrapped corpse of his old friend. He had to look away, watch the rock walls of the twisting valleys following the course of the frozen Kokcha River below them. Normally they would be trying to suppress the anxiety of a possible missile attack, that feeling of helplessness that came with being a passenger in a flying target. Vadim had been in his fair share of helicopter crashes, as had most of the squad.

The passenger compartment was cramped, and the dripping body wasn’t helping. They’d left the hatch open to deal with the inevitable smell of evacuated bowels. It was an undignified way to die, but they all were.

“You shouldn’t have hit him with the three-oh-three,” Princess admonished Skull. Skull was trying to adjust the scope on his rifle. The impact with Ivack’s face had knocked it out of alignment.

“Watch yourself,” Gulag snapped. The rifle was ungainly in the cramped passenger compartment of the gunship. Vadim understood wanting to keep busy, he understood that Skull wanted everything working optimally before they returned to Fayzabad. Their camp was little guarantee of safety; they had been hit by any number of mortar attacks, and at least one frontal assault.

“Take it easy,” Farm Boy told Gulag. The big gentle Georgian and the stolid medic were two of the very few people the gangster actually listened to.

Skull stopped fussing with his scope and pointed the weapon up, out of everyone’s way. Farm Boy went back to staring out the hatch. Clearly the Georgian didn’t want to look at the body either, although it was stretched across his lap. The captain had thought Farm Boy was simpleminded the first time he met him. As time passed, Vadim had realised the Georgian was a quiet, thoughtful man, whose experiences in Afghanistan troubled him deeply. Softly spoken, Farm Boy was too gentle for the Spetsnaz, or for this war. Vadim had no idea how the boy had made it through the meat labyrinth, the maze of viscera-filled channels designed to inure recruits to the gory horrors of the battlefield, in basic training.

Mongol’s lips were moving, presumably praying to whatever it was he believed in. The captain had decided a long time ago never to interfere with their beliefs. Only Skull really made his beliefs obvious; some form of rebellion, Vadim guessed. It did sometimes cause problems. This hadn’t been the first member of the KGB they’d ‘misplaced.’

“Boss?” It took Vadim a moment to realise Farm Boy was talking to him. He moved slightly, making the body shift. They were flying over a gorge that emptied out into a broad, snow-covered plain. Fayzabad, a small city of some fifty thousand people, lined the right-hand bank of the river, a sprawling collection of low timber, clay and mud brick buildings, contrasting with the brutal poured concrete of Soviet state architecture. “Do you know why he was called the Spaniard?” His nickname held nearly as much mystery as Vadim’s own.

“It’s because Vadim and the Spaniard both fought with the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War,” Gulag said and laughed at his own joke. Pavel had been popular with everyone, except Gulag. Gulag didn’t give a shit.

“Shut up, Gulag,” the Fräulein told him. He blew her a kiss and she narrowed her eyes.

“How old do you think I am?” Vadim asked. There were a few dry chuckles. The helicopter was descending towards Fayzabad Airport.

“I think you stood at Lenin’s side,” Mongol suggested. A few more laughs, though Gulag’s face looked sour for some reason.

“Maybe the colonel,” the Fräulein suggested. Now there was more laughter, and even Vadim chuckled. Colonel Dmytro ‘The Red Cossack’ Krychenko, the de facto commander of the 15th SpetsnazBrigade, was something of a legend, but not quite old enough to have fought in the October Revolution.

“Boss?” Farm Boy asked, prompting him. They were coming in to land. It was little more than an administration building and their zastava , their fortified camp, what the Americans called a Forward Operating Base. The Hindu Kush mountains towered above it. Vadim turned to look down at his friend’s body and shook his head.

“I don’t know, he never told me.”

HE SAW THE Fräulein start as she stepped out of the helicopter, and Farm Boy and Mongol, who were carrying the body, looked in the same direction as they emerged. Vadim stepped out onto the perforated steel planking of the runway behind them, to see an unexpected Antonov AN-72 transport plane. There were two men standing in front of it.

The younger of the two figures was wearing the heavy winter version of the VDV’s khaki drab. There was no insignia on his uniform, which marked him as a member of the Spetsnaz. He had chiselled features and a square jaw, like a Western comic character, or a figure in a propaganda poster; but his expression was grim.

As Vadim approached, he recognised the young man as Private Orlov Razin. He had been a razvedchiki , a scout for the VDV airborne forces, when Vadim had noticed him and sent the boy back to Kiev for training.

More meat for the grinder, he thought grimly.

“Comrade captain…” Razin started as Vadim reached the two men.

“Vadim, or ‘boss,’ not ‘captain’; do you understand me?” Vadim demanded. “Where are you from?”

“Ukraine, si—” Years of indoctrinated military discipline warred within Razin as he tried to bring himself to say Vadim’s first name.

“Are you a Cossack, like this old fool?” Vadim asked, nodding towards the colonel. Razin actually blanched.

“Er… I mean… I’m…”

“Eloquent? It was a simple question, what are you ashamed of?”

Razin bristled, which pleased Vadim.

“Yes, I am a Cossack, Vadim.” He pronounced the captain’s name with just a little venom.

He has a backbone, Vadim thought.

“You see the big East German woman?” he asked.

“Yes si—” Razin looked down, shaking his head.

“You report to her.”

Vadim watched as Razin, obviously uncomfortable, grabbed his pack and weapon and made his way toward the zastava .

“Bit hard on him, weren’t you?” Colonel Krychenko asked, and Vadim turned to face his commanding officer. Tall and thin, the colonel had a narrow face that looked as though it had been formed by wind shear. Dark eyes and a goatee, he wore his salt and pepper hair almost down to his shoulders, because nobody could tell him otherwise. He wore a heavy grey greatcoat and a ushanka ‘ear hat’ made of real mink fur, as opposed to the synthetic fur hats that the rest of them wore, for much the same reason. He had an old, holstered Nagant M1895 revolver on one hip and a real Cossack sabre on the other. The colonel was in his mid-sixties, but Vadim couldn’t help but think, as he pulled his winter smock tighter against the cold wind blowing in from the mountains, that his old friend looked in better shape than he did. Of course, the colonel wasn’t jumping out of helicopters and shooting people on a daily basis anymore.