Gavin Smith - Special Purposes - First Strike Weapon

“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.

“I don’t know,” the colonel said. He sounded uneasy.

“Is the war over? Are they pulling us out?” That didn’t make sense; one of the main issues the hardliners had with Gorbachev was his intention to pull Soviet forces out of Afghanistan.

“Just the 15th Spetsnaz, and we’re being replaced. The 40th Army is being reinforced. At least two more Armies.”

Vadim suddenly felt cold.

“Two?”

“At least.”

Vadim knew that this could only mean one thing.

“Pakistan or Iran?” he asked. It made perfect sense, of course. They couldn’t control Afghanistan, so why not invade another country.

“I don’t know. I suspect Iran, and then try for the rest of the Gulf. They need the oil.”

Vadim stared at the colonel. He had wondered if it was going to happen in ’79 when he’d flown into Kabul with the ‘Moslem Battalion’.

“The Americans have to respond to this.”

The colonel just nodded. It made sense that the 15th Spetsnaz Brigade were being pulled out; they were effective, but they had a reputation for being insubordinate – bordering, at times, on the seditious. The colonel liked to joke that this was down to his leadership. They also did not have a good relationship with the KGB. “They want to fight a war they can’t win.”

“Just like this one, my friend.”

“But nobody can win this one,” Vadim said very quietly. The colonel didn’t say anything. Suddenly Vadim remembered how the gaunt, near-starving German soldiers thrown into the ruins of Stalingrad had looked like demons to him. Not for the first time, he wondered who the demons were now.

“Well, at least we’ll get to put our training to use,” he managed. Much of Spetsnaz training focused on cross-border, deep-penetration raids to destroy strategic resources, particularly nuclear weapons. He nodded towards the zastava where he could still hear the squad’s voices. “What do I tell them?”