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Gavin Smith: Special Purposes: First Strike Weapon

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Gavin Smith Special Purposes: First Strike Weapon

Special Purposes: First Strike Weapon: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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1987, THE HEIGHT OF THE COLD WAR. For Captain Vadim Scorlenski and the rest of the 15th Brigade, being scrambled to unfamiliar territory at no notice, without a brief or proper equipment, is more or less expected; but even by his standards, their mission to one of the United States’ busiest cities stinks… World War III was over in a matter of hours, and Vadim and most of his squad are dead, but not done. What’s happened to them, and to millions of civilians around the world, goes beyond any war crime; and Vadim and his team—Skull, Mongol, Farm Boy, Princess, Gulag, the Fräulein and New Boy—won’t rest until they’ve seen justice done.

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“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.

“We lost the Spaniard today,” Vadim told him.

The colonel nodded. “I see, I’m sorry. He was the last of the old guard, wasn’t he?”

Vadim didn’t answer. The colonel reached into his greatcoat and pulled out a long hip flask and offered it. Vadim took a long pull from the flask, feeling the rough vodka hit the back of his throat and start to burn.

He was nine years old. Back in Stalingrad, standing over the body of a German soldier, his hands red and dripping. That was how a young Dmytro had found him. He had told Vadim that his first kill had earned him his first drink. Even then, Vadim had known that Dmytro had just been trying to help, but had no idea what to do with the boy. The ‘vodka’ – apparently made from potatoes and white spirit – had blinded him for the better part of an hour.

Vadim handed the flask back.

“Death to Hitler,” the colonel said, and took a long swallow from the flask himself. “I’m sorry for your friend.” He handed the flask back to Vadim. “He seems like an earnest young man.” He nodded in the direction Razin had gone. Vadim was aware of raised voices. The rest of the squad had presumably started to give the new recruit a hard time.

The colonel wasn’t praising the boy. The Spetsnaz didn’t need earnest young men and women, it needed ruthless ones.

“He’s good,” Vadim said and then after a few more moments: “Perhaps I’m trying to make up for past mistakes.”

“Timoshenko?” the colonel asked, meaning Gulag. Vadim nodded and took another drink before handing the flask back to the colonel. “Being a killer doesn’t make you a good soldier.”

“He likes it too much.”

Gulag had been transferred from his Siberian work camp to a Motor Rifle Penal Battalion. His company had been caught in an ambush, and Vadim and his squad had been first on the scene. The penal company had given a good account of itself, but they had all been killed, bar Gulag. They found him amongst a pile of mujahideen bodies.

“Perhaps he’s perfectly suited for this war,” the colonel suggested. Vadim had thought the same thing. “You’ll look after my fellow Cossack, though?”

“This place gets us all in the end,” Vadim said quietly.

“You know I can have you court-martialled for calling me an old fool?” the colonel asked. Vadim smiled.

“I think you’ll be at the end of a long queue.”

“Yes, I noticed the good Lieutenant Ivack didn’t make it back with you.” The colonel’s expression remained carefully neutral.

“He chose to stay,” Vadim said, and the colonel nodded. “Why’d we get sent there?”

“Ivack went over my head. I’m sorry.”

Vadim took a deep breath and looked away from his friend. The sun was up now, the mountains casting long shadows over the plain. The thin air was so fresh it hurt to breathe up here. There was just the slightest taint of oil and aviation fuel in the air.

“Why is a lieutenant in the KGB giving a colonel in the GRU orders? And why didn’t the border guards do it, or OsnazA?”

“Because they knew… we knew somebody would get killed.”

Vadim almost wished he could feel betrayed, but he knew the colonel would have had no choice.

“Gorbachev has been arrested,” the colonel told him, his voice even. You had to know him as well as Vadim did to see the emotion the old colonel was holding back. Mikhail Gorbachev, with his perestroika and glasnost, had seemed the best chance they had of an end to this grinding war. “He has been charged with treason against the State. For all I know they’ve already taken him into the yard at Dzerzhinsky Square and shot him.”

Vadim had lived through Stalin’s purges as young man. He didn’t expect to feel such disappointment anymore. It was like a cold knife between the ribs. He was surprised to find he was frightened. He hadn’t realised that he’d had enough hope left to invest any in Gorbachev.

“I should go in there,” Vadim said, nodding towards the zastava, “and put a bullet in each of their heads. It would be quicker.” He felt the colonel’s hand on his shoulder.

“I do not think that it is what men like us do,” he said. Vadim broke free of his grip and looked up at the mountains.

“Who’s in charge now, in the Kremlin?”

“Varishnikov.” Varishnikov was the hardest of the hard-liners and the head of the KGB. That explained the KGB pushing the GRU – Army intelligence, the parent organisation of Spetsnaz – around. “It was relatively bloodless, at least.”

“They’re going to kill us,” Vadim said.

“Yes, both of us. A sad way for two Heroes of the Soviet Union to die, don’t you think?” There was no humour in Vadim’s answering laugh. “We have value to them only as good soldiers; the moment we stop…”

“We’re bad soldiers, but excellent hunters,” Vadim said. The colonel frowned, but held his peace. There hadn’t been much light at the end of the tunnel, just a glimmer, and now it seemed like that had been snuffed out. Vadim didn’t feel much like going on, but the colonel was right. They’d both lived through Stalingrad. They weren’t the kind of men to put guns in their mouths. When they came for him, they would have a fight on their hands. He looked up at the Antonov.

“That’s a big plane for just two people, even an officer of your stature,” Vadim pointed out. The colonel, smiled but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. Vadim wondered if this was it. A flight back to Bagram, and then two in the back of his head in the KGB compound in Kabul.

“We’re going back west,” the colonel said. “The whole brigade.”

“Kiev?” Vadim asked, cursing the hope in his voice. He rarely went back to Stalingrad. The beautiful Ukrainian city where he’d done his officer training was the closest he had to a home.

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