Special Purposes: First Strike Weapon

CHAPTER THREE

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.

“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?”

“What do you think?” the colonel asked.

THE COLONEL HAD returned to the Antonov; there were more members of the 15th to pick up from various airstrips in the north. Then they would return to Bagram before joining the rest of the brigade to fly west en masse. The colonel felt that it should be Vadim himself who told his men.

He could hear them arguing, good-naturedly. The Fräulein was divvying out the Spaniard’s belongings to the rest of the squad. They would have given Razin any gear that he needed, and the rest would be shared out according to sentimentality and requirement. The Spaniard didn’t have much family. Given his off-duty habits, he almost certainly had bastard children everywhere he’d served, but they’d been unknown to him. Farm Boy had his parents and siblings back in Georgia, Mongol had a large extended family back in Mongolia, and, oddly, Gulag spoke of his father with near holy reverence, but none of them had immediate family. Their life wasn’t really conducive to partners and children.

As he approached he could hear them calling Razin ‘New Boy’. That’s what he’d be called now until he earned back the nickname he’d been given in basic training, or a new one. He was new in from Kiev, so the rest of the squad would be going through his gear, looking for anything that was difficult to get hold of in Afghanistan – which was just about everything, but particularly sweets, alcohol, pornography and cigarettes. How New Boy took this blatant theft would play a large part in how he was accepted by the squad. You had to strike a balance between generosity and assertiveness. Even so, the rest of the squad would keep their distance until he had proven he wasn’t a fool.

Their tent was pitched in a hole and surrounded by sand bags; you had to walk through a warren of trenches to reach it. It tended to turn into a boggy swamp when it rained, but in the snow, it was just cold. Gulag was lying across the top of the sandbags, smoking what Vadim assumed was one of New Boy’s cigarettes.

“He didn’t have any porn. I can only assume he’s a monk. Didn’t Marx have some quite strong things to say about religion?” Gulag took another drag of the cigarette. Vadim wasn’t really in the mood for Gulag’s brand of humour tonight. He started down the crumbling earthen steps into the tent. “Cosy little chat with the colonel: you both being heroes and everything?”

The Spetsnaz may have been more relaxed than the regular army, but even so, this crossed the line.

“You weren’t beaten enough during basic training, were you?” Vadim asked. He was wondering if at his age he still had it in him to deliver a beating to a savage like Gulag. He wasn’t sure he would like the answer.

“Oh, I was beaten,” Gulag told him.

“I get that, just not enough.”

“I was beaten growing up, I was beaten in the gulag, and I was beaten in basic training.” He took another drag of his cigarette. He wasn’t wearing his gloves now, despite the cold. Vadim could see the stumps of the two fingers on his left hand. “Made me the man I am today.” Gulag sat up on the sandbags and grinned down at Vadim. “They don’t beat me anymore, though. Now they just try and kill me. Tell me, captain, how many men under your command have made it back to Russia, or whatever disgusting shithole they come from?”

Vadim stared up at Gulag.

The criminal smiled back at him. “You’re going to try and kill us all, aren’t you?”

Not me, he wanted to tell Gulag, except it was his command, they were his people.

Gulag pushed himself off the sandbags, landing right in front of Vadim. He leaned in close, smelling of sweat, cigarettes and bad breath.

“Well you’re not going to kill me, do you understand?”

Then he turned and stalked into the tent.