Gavin Smith: Special Purposes: First Strike Weapon

“You’ve got all you need to equip your little army,” Vadim said. A nerve over Kerrican’s left eye twitched at the goad. Kerrican sat down behind the desk. Vadim’s weapons had been laid out on top of it. The captain was losing count of the mistakes these guys were making.

“So what are you, then? Other than dead, I mean,” he asked, looking up at Vadim. “KGB? GRU? VDV?” Vadim tried not to flinch at the mention of the hated KGB.

“Spetsnaz,” Vadim told him. Kerrican wasn’t looking at him; he’d picked up Vadim’s NRS-2 knife.

“What’s that when it’s at home, then?” he asked, only half paying attention. It made sense that he hadn’t heard of the Spetsnaz, very little was known about them in the West.

“Think of us as the Russian SAS,” Vadim told him. That got Kerrican’s attention. A shadow seemed to cross his face at mention of the SAS, as though he didn’t want to hear their name. Vadim wondered if Kerrican had failed selection, perhaps on psychological grounds.

“Yeah, I don’t think so, mate,” he said. “But I’m guessing you’re some kind of smart, Kremlin super-zombie sent over here to infect us with this plague, right?”

If I was, it would be foolish to let me get this close, he thought. Kerrican pointed at him.

“Ha! I knew it!” He turned to the guard to the left of his desk. “Ralphy, what’d I fucking tell you?”

“Aye, you were right enough, Stevie,” the guard said.

Kerrican turned back to Vadim. “Before the Wartime Broadcasting Service stopped working, we heard that your lads had invaded down south.”

Again Vadim said nothing.

Kerrican leaned back in his chair. “So I’m assuming you want something. What’re you here for?”

“I want my people, the ones you took on the beach,” Vadim said. “And get the two men in that pit out of it right now.”

Kerrican appeared to be giving this some thought.

“So you came on the ship?” he asked. “Always wanted to go to New York; you see it in all the films, don’t you? Well, maybe you don’t. Problem is it’s full of spicks, niggers and chinks, isn’t it?” Vadim tried to keep his naked contempt off his face. “What do I get?” the Englishman continued. The guard behind him chuckled.

“What do you want?” Vadim managed.

“If you’re just off the boat, then I don’t think you’ll have much sway with the occupying forces.”

“I’m a colonel in the USSR’s equivalent of the SS,” Vadim lied. The KGB were much more like the SS – and the Gestapo – than the Spetsnaz were. “Let’s assume that I’ll have more pull than you. Will you make me repeat my question?”

“All right, mate, calm down,” Kerrican said, leaning forward, raising a conciliatory hand. “I think the world would have been a much better place today if Hitler hadn’t broken the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. He shouldn’t have gone to war with the Soviet Union. You’ve seen what I’m capable of with next to nothing. I want control of this zone, ultimately under your command, but with autonomy to run it how I see fit. There’s gas fields offshore, a refinery, there’s people on the island who know how it all works. We could get it up and running for you. You give us the resources, we can take back Barrow-in-Furness, which means you get the dockyards.” He sat back in the chair and looked up at Vadim, expectantly.

The little speech reminded him of Gulag’s fantasy of carving out a kingdom. This is what it would look like: sad, pathetic and built out of other people’s misery. Even for Kerrican to be talking to him about this was clutching at straws; Vadim could have been anyone with a Russian accent. Kerrican was accepting him at face value because he wanted it to be true.

“And for this, you’d turn on your own people?” Vadim asked, intrigued now. Kerrican shot to his feet. He dropped the knife he had been toying with and slammed his palms down on the table.

“ I didn’t fucking turn on them! They fucking turned on me! First the niggers in the ’fifties! Then the fucking Pakis! But oh, no! It’s all right for young Stevie Kerrican to go and watch his mates get killed in Ulster, get fucking chewed up in the Falklands. I deserved a Victoria Cross for what I did down there, but you know what I got instead? Fucking binned, mate, that’s what! And meanwhile the country’s turning a funny colour!” Vadim wasn’t following every word but he was getting the gist of it.

“Calm down, Hauptsturmführer,” Vadim said. He didn’t like using the man’s assumed rank, but if he gave a little, he might be able to walk out of here with all the civilians. Then it would just be a case of exterminating these fools. “As you can imagine, our supply lines are somewhat stretched at the moment, so we would be grateful; and will reward any collaboration. I assume that you have worked out that we are in satellite communication with command? We can see what can be arranged.”

Kerrican smiled and nodded. “See, what did I tell you, Ralphy?” he said.

“Sweet,” Ralphy said.

“Of course, I’ll need my people back,” Vadim said.

Kerrican gave this some thought. “That’s not a problem,” he said. “But the nigger stays in the pit.”

“Why?” Vadim demanded, trying to keep a grip on his temper.

“Because he offends me.”

“How did he offend you?”

“No, he offends me,” Kerrican said. Vadim silently apologised to Harris. He would get the policeman out as soon as he could. “Anything else?”

“Let the women and children go,” Vadim said. Kerrican’s eyes narrowed. It had been a long shot, and straightaway he knew he’d gone too far. Suspicion was written all over Kerrican’s face. The guard standing to the right of the desk, Ralphy, shifted, bringing the shotgun up, but the so-called Hauptsturmführerraised his hand to stop him.

“Why would you want me to release the leverage I have over the people here?” he demanded. “Who’ve you been talking to?”

“It didn’t take us long to work out what was going on in here. You give people nothing to lose and they fight back. You want to control them, subjugate them, they need something to live for.” Vadim put both hands on the desk and leaned across it towards Kerrican. “And because this isn’t the way that soldiers behave.” He felt the twin barrels of Ralphy’s shotgun pressed against his temple. He was quite surprised his head hadn’t been sprayed all over the wall already, but it had been worth it. He’d managed to palm his knife off the desk and slip it up the arm of his jumper. He could feel it, pressed against the cold dead flesh of his forearm.

“No, mate,” Kerrican said, shaking his head. “Wars are won by those who have the will to do what others will not. Look at what your lot did in Berlin in Nineteen-Forty-Five.”

“Because having the will to do what others won’t worked so well for your heroes in the last war,” Vadim pointed out.

“Because they were fucking betrayed!” Kerrican was on his feet again. “One of the most shameful things this country has ever done. We should have been marching lockstep with the Germans. Instead the loony-left somehow took control and we fucking betrayed our whole race!” He pointed towards the prefab huts on the other side of the yard. “We’re doing these children a favour. We’re finally going to make Britain great again! All those women are doing is their fucking duty, for once! Breeding the next generation!” The madness was blazing in his face, now, panting and red. Vadim was struggling to control himself.

“What happened to Captain Schiller?” he asked through gritted teeth.

“He wouldn’t kneel, would he?” Kerrican told him. His eyes seemed to glitter. “He told me he’d made a mistake as a young man. He’d been conscripted, found himself in the engine room of a Kriegsmarine battleship. I told him that the only thing wrong with that was that he hadn’t volunteered. He said that the biggest regret of his life was that he hadn’t joined the resistance, fought the Nazis.” Kerrican took a knife from a scabbard on his belt: a Hitler Youth knife. “See that? Blut und Ehre . Blood and honour, as in your fucking friend the captain had none. He was a race traitor!”