A noise to his left made him look over his shoulder as the Vityaz burst out of a screen of birch trees and roared over him.
‘Where are they?’ Yamba barked into his headset in frustration.
Arkady shrugged next to him in the cockpit, and they both continued scanning the ground out of the windscreen.
The Russian scratched his stubbly chin anxiously and grunted. His hands were cold on the controls, despite the heating being on full blast; they had the rear ramp open, ready for the extraction, and the wind howled around the cockpit.
The Mil had been circling for five minutes, burning up precious fuel. Yamba got out of the co-pilot seat and looked out of the side door just behind the cabin, scanning the woods in the grey dawn light for some sign of the Vityaz.
Arkady shouted, ‘There! Portside!’
He had seen its broad headlights flick on and off three times. He swooped in low and flared hard over the LZ. As he hovered, the heavy rotors thumped away and blew a blizzard of snow off the ground, exposing the two-foot tree stumps left after logging; there was no way he could land.
Yamba stood at the side door, peering out and shouting directions back over his helmet mike on the intercom. Arkady couldn’t make out the ground in the weak dawn light and the mass of snow blasting up around them. It was crucial
to be able to hover low enough for the men to climb onboard, but at the same time not hit a stump. The slightest bump would tilt the whole machine, meaning that the rotors would then hit the ground, shredding them and flipping the machine on its back.
‘Thirty feet!’
‘Twenty feet!’
‘Ten!’
‘Five!’
‘Hold!’
The Vityaz had pulled up on the edge of the clearing and the five remaining men jumped down—four in white combat smocks and one in ragged black prison garb. They stood next to it, shielding their faces from the blast of snow.
Once it was obvious they could go no lower, Yamba waved across to them from the rear ramp and they stumbled forward, clutching their weapons; one hand over their faces against the wind.
Alex clambered up on a stump, pulled Roman up next to him and gave him a leg up to Yamba, who grabbed his jacket and pulled him onboard.
The rest of the team clambered up and lay exhausted on the floor of the cargo bay as Yamba hit the hydraulic switch to close the door.
7 A.M., CHITA PROVINCE TIME ZONE, TUESDAY 16 DECEMBER
The helicopter swooped in out of the dark sky over Krasnokamensk airport.
Alex watched the control tower closely from the co-pilot seat, using binoculars to see if the news of the raid had reached the MVD guards there. The mercenaries had blown up the phone lines, radio hut, helicopters and Vityazs at the camp to make sure that it was sealed off from the world. He knew they would have auxiliary radios and generators somewhere but, with the chaos caused by the armed prisoners, it would take them a while to get them working and then raise the airport.
The plan was that they would have bought at least the half-hour it took to fly from the camp to the airport and take off. If they hadn’t, and the guards came out shooting, then there would be a hell of a firefight before they managed to take off—if they did at all.
They had fired off all their rockets, their main armament, and then landed quickly en route to detach the pods so they weren’t seen by the tower. However, they still had a lot of firepower. Colin and Pete waited with their Shmel launchers
ready by the rear door and Yamba had the AGS-30 30mm grenade launcher set up there. If there was any resistance then Arkady would spin the tail round, drop the ramp and they would unload a lot of munitions.
Arkady called up the tower.
‘Krasnokamensk Tower, this is GeoScan team, landing for outbound flight to Novosibirsk in Gulfstream G550. Request permission to take off.’
No response.
Alex twisted the magnification slightly to improve the focus; he could see the wide windows on the tower overlooking the runway. The lights were on inside but from this angle above he couldn’t see if there was anyone there.
Was this just a sleepy provincial airport at 7 a.m. or a trap?
‘Try them again,’ he instructed Arkady without taking his binoculars off the tower.
‘Krasnokamensk Tower, this is GeoScan team, landing…’
‘GeoScan team, this is Krasnokamensk Tower, you are cleared to take off.’ The man sounded groggy as if he had just woken up.
Alex exhaled and then turned round in his seat and shouted through to the cargo bay, ‘Stand down!’
Arkady took them in behind the large hangar and they quickly hurried over to the side door.
Stepping inside and seeing the white plane all fuelled up and ready to go was a huge relief. But they weren’t out of it yet. Yamba hit the switch on the main door motors and Arkady fired the engines and then taxied them forward.
They strapped themselves into the big white seats for take off.
It was only when they had passed the tower and Arkady eased back on the yoke, the wheels lifted up and they rocketed away skywards that the whole team let out a huge whoop.
In his blood and smoke-stained battle gear, Alex jumped out of his seat and punched the air, yelling with the others. They all danced around the cabin, jumping up and down and shouting.
‘Fucking did it!’
‘Fook you, yer bastards!’ Col jabbed a V-sign back at the airport.
Pete ran into the cockpit and slapped Arkady on the shoulder. The Russian was celebrating with them and trying to fly at the same time.
Pete came back through the galley and found some champagne bottles in a rack, which got sprayed all over Sergey’s expensive white carpet, walls and ceiling. Eventually they sank back down into their seats, exhausted.
Roman was still sitting in his filthy black clothes looking shocked but pleased. After two years in hell this was a monumental change for him.
When the assault team had calmed down, Alex was able to stop laughing and actually think straight. He pulled his mobile phone out of his webbing, but had to wait until they flew over Irkutsk until it acquired a signal. First he sent a text to Sergey, Lara and Grigory: ‘Baba Yaga is returning with her stupa’—Sergey’s idea, as ever: something about the bronze pestle that she flew round Russia in. Alex grimaced and pressed send.
Then his phone bleeped as incoming texts registered. He opened the one from Grigory, which told him to get to Moscow as fast as possible so Raskolnikov could make the morning news programmes. If they landed on schedule at 7.30 a.m. it would be a tight squeeze to make the 7.45 bulletins. Roman would need to be prepared to go on air as soon as he arrived.
Alex sent an acknowledgement and then turned to Roman
to explain what was going on. He took him into the aft section of the aircraft and told him who was behind the raid and what the plan was when they got to Moscow. Roman gaped as he grappled with the enormity of what was being planned for him. Grigory had prepared a pack of cuttings and a briefing paper to bring him up to date on what had happened over the last two years so that he could write his speech.
Before he settled to that, though, Roman disappeared into the shower unit and, for the first time in two years, was able to wash without using freezing cold water out of a concrete trough. He shaved and, looking in the mirror, was horrified by how emaciated his face looked: eye sockets hollowed out and cheekbones sticking up into his skin. He scrubbed the filth out from under his fingernails, trimmed his overgrown, yellowing toenails, and luxuriated in being warm and clean. A fresh suit of clothes was laid out there ready for him and he changed into the dark suit and tie, baggy because of his weight loss. He felt the texture of the cloth of his shirt and suddenly felt the urge to cry at how clean and soft it was after so much dirt and hardship.
Once he was ready, he settled down with a laptop in the rear section. He thought back to his footballing days and planned how he was going to give the greatest team talk of his life.
Alex slipped forward to see Arkady. ‘OK, we need to get a move on. Any power you can give it, please do. We need to buy every minute of broadcast time at the start of the day so we can to get the revolution rolling.’
Arkady nodded and shoved the throttles forward.
The assault team expected that they could well be in action in Moscow as well, so they all settled back and began stripping and cleaning their weapons, removing the cordite dust
from the working parts that could cause stoppages and cost their lives. Fresh weapons were also prepped from the crates in the back of the aircraft.
Magnus pulled Russian army-pattern helmets out of a box and began trying them on for size. Colin looked across at him and shouted, ‘Oi! Magnus, shouldn’t you ’av horns on that, like?’ He gestured with two hands to indicate Viking horns sticking out of the top of his helmet.
Magnus looked up and nodded quietly. ‘Hmm, yes, you’re right. I had forgotten them; I think maybe I left them on my longship.’
‘Yer silly booger, I’ll have to find you another pair now.’
They ate a heavy meal of field rations and caviar and quails’ eggs, scrounged from Sergey’s fridge, before crashing out asleep on the big chairs. The cabin filled with snores as Arkady sat at the controls, swigged champagne from a bottle and powered them on to Moscow.
Corporal Lermontov was the only radio operator to have survived the attack on the prison camp unscathed, after the main radio mast had been blown up and collapsed on the radio hut.
The surviving MVD troops had managed to rally themselves and find an auxiliary generator and radio in the wreckage, which they hoped to use to get through to Krasnokamensk airport.
A squad of six men formed a defensive perimeter in the ruins of the radio hut around Lermontov as he fiddled with the old set. Prisoners armed with assault rifles from the armoury and dead guards were still on the loose, and bursts of automatic gunfire were going off all around them. The main generator was still out of action so the only light came from the orange flames of burning wooden barrack buildings nearby. The fires crackled angrily and the smell of smoke drifted everywhere.
Lermontov shook his head to clear it as he switched on the set. He couldn’t believe the speed and ferocity of the attack on the camp. Within seconds the whole place had been blown up and set alight.
He slipped the earphones over his head and the set whined
and crackled with static. He twisted the dial, trying to find the right command frequency.
‘Krasnokamensk airport, this is Yag 14/10 Penal Colony, come in. Over.’
Nothing.
‘Krasnokamensk air—’ He had to break off as one of the soldiers behind him ripped off a long burst of fire at a prisoner behind a wall.
He eventually got through to the drowsy officer at the airport.
‘We have been attacked by a superior enemy force and they have taken Prisoner Raskolnikov. Over.’
‘What?’
‘You need to get a message through to MVD command in Moscow immediately. Understood? Over.’
There was a pause before an incredulous voice repeated, ‘Understood.’
3 A.M. MOSCOW TIME ZONE, TUESDAY 16 DECEMBER
Major Batyuk banged on Krymov’s bedroom door at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence west of Moscow, and waited.
He knew that the President had been up late drinking with Sergey and would be passed out asleep.
He banged again, louder this time, before walking in and turning the light on.
Krymov rolled over onto his back and put his hand over his face against the light. When he took it away gingerly he squinted like a bleary-eyed pig. He had passed out naked on top of the bed after his drinking session in the banya. Batyuk tried not to look at his lumpy white body.
‘Mr President, I am sorry to wake you up but we have had a report from MVD command that Raskolnikov has been freed from prison and is now being flown to Moscow on a private jet.’
Krymov stared at him blankly and then suddenly sat up and looked scared. His face went white and his hands cast about the bed covers beside him.
Batyuk could see that someone needed to take charge of the situation.
‘I think we should go to Air Defence Command immediately,’ he suggested.
‘Hmm…’ Krymov seemed to have lost the power of speech and stood up to go.
‘You need to get dressed first, Mr President.’
Batyuk stood aside as the major-domo scuttled into the room and dressed Krymov. As he became more conscious, he suddenly turned to Batyuk.
‘What about Shaposhnikov?’
Batyuk didn’t know about the SVR report from London that Sergey had been linked to Alex’s journey to Krasnokamensk, so he just looked back questioningly.
Krymov continued angrily, ‘Bring him with us! I want him with us. Go and wake him up
now
!’
Batyuk nodded and ten minutes later the President and Sergey stumbled down the front steps to Krymov’s limo. The squads of Echelon 25 troops hurried around them and into their waiting vehicles.
The convoy drivers gunned their engines and swept out down the long driveway. Sergey sat opposite Krymov in the back of the Zil limo; both of them looked ill as the car lurched around the corners.
Krymov was in a state of shock; he had never really been a leader and liked to hide behind bureaucracy to cover it up. Now that he was presented with a shock he had lost his wits. All he felt was scared and he could not formulate a coherent plan of action. Somewhere in his mind he knew that Sergey might have something to do with all this but, at the same time, he regarded the man as his greatest source of comfort and understanding, and this emotion refused to let him see the man clearly for what he might be: a traitor.
Sergey felt sick with alcohol poisoning and fear. He had had to throw himself into his usual clownish routine last
night and had drunk more than usual to cover up his worries.
The convoy roared on through the night round the deserted MKAD ring road to the junction with the A-101 southwest of the capital. They turned off left and shortly afterwards drove through the barriers into ‘Moscow Military District Depot 5’ and got out inside the deserted factory shed. The guards all snapped to attention as the President’s entourage marched past them and they plunged eight floors down into the command centre.
It was 3.45 a.m., but luckily Lieutenant-General Mostovskoy was on duty. He walked calmly over to them as they came in, looking smart in his airforce uniform jacket and tie. He was surprised to see Sergey there as well, looking shambolic in his crumpled suit, diamond earring and messed-up hair, but his face betrayed no sign of it.
‘Mr President, the situation is under control, we are tracking the terrorists’ plane on the radar and we will shoot them down as soon as you give the order.’
Krymov still looked dazed and was relieved to see that someone had got a grip on the situation. He began to recover some of his normal bravado. ‘Very good, Mostovskoy. D’ya hear that, Shaposhnikov?’
‘Hmm,’ Sergey shrugged.
Krymov turned back to Fyodor. ‘Well, Mostovskoy, get this sorted out and maybe we can see if we can find a bit more control on the board of UAC for you, eh?’
For once, Fyodor’s face flickered slightly.
‘Yes, go ahead and blow them out of the sky.’ Krymov turned to Sergey.‘Looks like that Raskolnikov bastard’s going to kill himself even before Bolkonsky could, eh?’ He laughed heartily.