Special Purposes: First Strike Weapon

CHAPTER FIVE

1500 Eastern Standard Time (EST), 16th November 1987

Grand Central Station, New York City

VADIM PUSHED HIS way through the door and into the cavernous edifice of Grand Central Station, New Boy beside him. Gulag and Farm Boy were a little way behind, far enough that the four didn’t look as though they were together. At the other side of the concourse, the Fräulein and Princess, Mongol and Skull would be doing the same thing.

Looking around surreptitiously, he made his way down the grimy marble stairs into the main concourse, hefting his luggage, which carried much of his weaponry. There was no doubt it was a grand building, but it had seen better days; it reminded him a little of Leningrad in that respect. The domed ceiling high overhead was encrusted with soot. The dirty marble floor was covered in rubbish, which haggard-looking janitors pushed around with a brush. Ticket booths ran down one wall. A display board above them showed arrivals from places that Vadim had only heard of during intelligence briefings. A dirty, once-grand four-faced clock sat atop an information booth. Tawdry adverts covered the walls, offering a technicolor capitalist utopia for just the right amount of money. All of which seemed at odds with the hundreds of Americans crowding into the huge edifice, their heads down, moving with purpose as though performing some complex dance.

A raised walkway ran around the main concourse: Vadim caught a glimpse of the Fräulein pulling her wheeled suitcase around the long walkway, but he couldn’t see the others. The idea was that the snipers and machine-gunners would act as fire support from an elevated position if things went wrong, while Vadim’s team retrieved the package.

Vadim reached the bottom of the stairs, put his own wheeled suitcase down onto the grimy marble floor and looked around. New Boy joined him.

“Anything wrong?” New Boy asked quietly. Vadim was aware of Gulag and Farm Boy surreptitiously moving into covering positions on the stairs behind him. There wasn’t anything wrong – not that Vadim could see – but something didn’t seem right. He looked around at the commuters scurrying back and forth, on their way to and from work, going home, on their way to visit friends and relatives, families with children. It was hard to think of them as enemies, but he couldn’t see the American authorities wanting to start a gunfight in the midst of them. Vadim shook his head and headed down the chandelier-lit slope between the stairs into the lower concourse.

WHERE THE MAIN concourse had been cavernous, the lower concourse seemed cave-like, perhaps thanks to the lack of natural light. Or perhaps he just felt trapped because this was a poor place for a fight. The sloping ceiling felt much lower than it actually was, and people buffeted him as they ran for the platforms on either side of the concourse; the air smelled of fried food, overflowing garbage bins and too many people, and it felt like every single transit cop was watching them as they passed.

The luggage storage area was in an alcove set back from the lower concourse. There were ten long rows of lockers. Vadim checked the key that Eugene had given him. They had discussed killing the spy, but decided to let him live in case he proved useful later on.

The locker they were looking for was in the fifth row. Gulag and Farm Boy took up position further back in the lower concourse, though still within view of the alcove. With a final look around them, Vadim and New Boy plunged into the luggage area.

They found the locker. Vadim took the key out, New Boy stood off a little. Vadim turned the key and opened the locker, revealing a brass cylinder filling the space inside. Vadim’s heart sank. It was a biological or chemical weapon. He had been hoping for something conventional; even a tactical nuclear suitcase bomb would have felt cleaner somehow. Then he heard a click. He looked on in horror as the top and bottom of the cylinder unscrewed itself. There was a distinct hissing noise. It made no sense to Vadim. Why send them all this way, just to kill them as part of a chemical weapons attack? He did something he hadn’t even done as a child amongst the ruins of Stalingrad: he froze.

Then he heard movement coming from amongst the rows of lockers. The clink of weapons against webbing, the pad of booted feet trying to move stealthily. Instinct took over. The Stechkin APB was in one hand, a spare magazine in the other. Movement in his periphery. He turned to the left, made out the armoured, helmeted figure of a SWAT team member coming around the corner, triggered a three-round burst. The gun bucked in his hand, and the figure disappeared behind the lockers again. Vadim had no idea if he had hit him or not. New Boy was kneeling and opening the cases, rooting through their weapons. Vadim checked right and saw movement at the other end of the row. He fired a burst that way, then another. Then back to the left, firing again, alternating suppressing fire at each end of the row of lockers. It didn’t matter who you were, you didn’t walk into automatic weapons fire. He had no idea why they hadn’t used a grenade yet, or used snipers on the way in. Perhaps it was some American sense of fair play. The twenty-round magazine in his pistol ran dry, and he ejected it, slid the fresh mag home and continued firing. The Stechkin was far from accurate on full automatic, but in an enclosed space like this it was good for making people keep their heads down.

“Grenade!” New Boy shouted in Russian and threw the grenade to Vadim’s left into the next row of lockers. Another grenade was thrown to the right, also behind the lockers. Vadim was kneeling, head down, as he holstered his pistol and dropped the empty magazine down the front of his shirt. New Boy slid the captain’s AK-74 along the floor, and Vadim grabbed the weapon; the safety was off. The first grenade exploded. Lockers toppled and bodies were flung into the air. There was another explosion, bright light and thunder. Presumably one of the SWAT members had been about to throw a stun grenade. New Boy’s second grenade exploded. Over-pressure buffeted them, shrapnel tore at their clothes and Vadim only narrowly missed being decapitated by a spinning locker door. Blinking away spots of light, Vadim tried to shout at New Boy to clear right while he cleared left, but nothing came out. That was when he realised he’d gone deaf. He glanced behind him to see the younger man already stalking through the wreckage, rifle tucked into his shoulder. Vadim shouldered his AK-74 and did the same in the opposite direction.

There were two broken bodies at the end of the row, blackened from the explosion, red from shrapnel. One more was staggering around, probably as much from the effects of the stun grenade as anything else. It didn’t look as though he could see. A fourth was curled up on the floor, hands over his ears, mouth open in a silent scream. The one on his feet was aware of Vadim somehow, he was grabbing for his sidearm. The captain squeezed the trigger, twice. The rifle kicked back into his shoulder and he leaned into it. The goggles the agent was wearing under his helmet filled with red and he collapsed to the ground. Vadim put two rounds into each of them. They couldn’t leave anyone behind them.

Quickly Vadim checked the rest of the locker area. The SWAT team’s members had the letters FBI painted on their body armour: American state security. They were not just police officers; they had been waiting for Vadim and his people.

The captain made his way back to where they had left their luggage. New Boy was already there. There were another four dead FBI agents amongst the wreckage at the other end of the row. New Boy had done his job. He was shaking his head as though trying to clear it; Vadim couldn’t hear anything either, except a high-pitched whine. He signalled New Boy to cover him whilst he shrugged off his coat and grabbed his webbing from the suitcase, pulling it on and securing it tightly in place. He strapped on the back sheath holding his KS-23 shotgun, then straightened up and readied his rifle as New Boy put his webbing on. He was starting to hear muted sounds now: a voice shouting through a loudhailer in English and screaming, a lot of screaming and distant gunfire. The chatter of a light machine gun, Mongol’s or the Fräulein’s RPKS-74. Skull’s .303 firing sounded like a cannon, and Vadim knew that up in the main concourse someone had just died.

Vadim and New Boy moved through what was left of the lockers into the mostly intact row closest to the lower concourse. They would provide only flimsy cover. Vadim ignored the demands to surrender from an authoritative voice, full of tension, shouting at them through a loudhailer. He signalled to New Boy to go left, and turned to check right.

At the end of the row he risked a glance into the main concourse. He had a moment to register the SWAT team officers in the open lower concourse before they opened up on him. He ducked back into the row, although all that really stood between him and the Americans’ bullets were two flimsy pieces of sheet metal. If he was lucky the lockers had luggage in them. Fortunately the majority of the SWAT team were armed with submachine guns and shotguns, both fairly low-velocity weapons. Though he was still seeing holes appear in the lockers close to where his face had been.

As soon as the SWAT team had started firing, New Boy had moved around the opposite corner and returned fire. Their attackers switched target and New Boy ducked behind the lockers. Vadim swung round the corner. Three-round burst, the muzzle flash from the barrel, leaning into the hard kick of the recoil, shell casings flying into the air. Shift, aim, repeat. The SWAT team were probably highly trained, knew they had to cover both corners, but training is one thing, the adrenalin kicking in under live fire is another. They would not be used to facing trained special forces soldiers, armed with military weapons, with the sort of actual combat experience New Boy had gained with the VDV in Afghanistan. And Vadim had been fighting in wars since he was nine years old. He ducked back behind the lockers. He’d seen SWAT members go down under centre mass shots, but they were wearing body armour and he had no idea if they were dead or not.

Vadim heard the familiar pop of a grenade launcher. There was just a moment of panic, but the explosion was outside, in the lower concourse. The row of lockers buckled, threatening to topple over, as shrapnel from the 40mm fragmentation grenade tore through the flimsy metal. He didn’t go deaf this time, though his ears were ringing. He heard the flat, hard staccato of AK-74s firing, burst after burst. Vadim and New Boy moved around the corners of the lockers. Broken bodies were scattered around on the ground. There were a few SWAT guys staggering around; fewer still had their weapons. Vadim and New Boy concentrated on those.

Gulag was stalking down the concourse past cowering commuters, firing at the remaining SWAT team members. Farm Boy was backing along behind him, firing in the other direction, exchanging shots with uniformed police officers. Between Gulag, New Boy and Vadim, the remaining members of the grenade-shocked FBI SWAT team were cut down in a vicious crossfire.

“Reloading!” Gulag shouted, pulling his magazine out and turning it over to insert the second magazine taped to it. A burly civilian launched himself off the ground and leapt on him. Gulag staggered, dropped the magazines, and almost went down. He awkwardly dragged his knife out of its scabbard with his left hand and stabbed the man repeatedly in the neck. The man staggered away from Gulag, clutching the wound. Gulag kicked him back, knocking him into the wall close to the entrance of one of the platforms, picked the magazine up, slid it home and shot his attacker twice in the face. Then it was quiet except for the cries of the injured and the whimpering of the terrified. Whoever had been shooting at Farm Boy had stopped. They took turns covering each other as they reloaded their weapons. Gulag reloaded the GP-25 Kostyor grenade launcher fixed to the barrel of his AK-74.

Vadim was looking around at the cowering commuters. The wrong place at the wrong time. Bullets, and shrapnel from the grenades, had hit a number of the civilians. Blood and shell casings covered the floor. Gunfire echoed down from the main concourse above them. He heard the LMGs, the sniper rifles, returning fire from SMGs, handguns and shotguns. He understood the civilians’ response. There was nothing cowardly about it; simple self-preservation in the face of a threat they could do nothing about. Then he wondered about the chemical/biological agent they had triggered in the locker. He didn’t feel any different, which suggested that it was biological rather than chemical. He had never liked fighting amongst civilians, but knew that sometimes it had to be done. Even so, the guilt of what he had done here gnawed at him. He glanced over at the corpse of the man that had attacked Gulag. Perhaps these Americans weren’t the weak, decadent capitalists the Soviet Union wanted people to believe they were.

“Keep your heads down, stay out of our way and do not attempt to resist and we will not kill you!” Vadim shouted in English, making for the ramp that led to the main concourse. The other three followed in a diamond-shaped formation: Gulag and New Boy flanking him a little way back, Farm Boy directly behind him keeping an eye on their rear. People kept their heads down or scuttled into the platforms out of their way. They passed the uniformed transit police officer Farm Boy had killed.

VADIM AND GULAG were on one side of the sloping tunnel, New and Farm Boy on the other. Vadim watched as the blaze of tracers bounced off the marble floor. Either Mongol or the Fräulein was unwittingly firing at them. Their path passed under the double stairs leading to the raised walkway around the main concourse; it also led to one of the entrances. Vadim guessed the SWAT team had come in that way and got pinned down by the Fräulein’s fireteam. Blood was dripping down into the mouth of the tunnel. Vadim communicated the plan to the others with hand signals. They nodded. They had to hope that when they moved, the Fräulein’s fireteam didn’t cut them down.

Vadim let his AK-74 drop on its sling and pulled a hand grenade from a pouch on his webbing. He removed the pin, let the spoon flip out and held the live grenade in his hand, cooking it, letting the fuse burn down. He stepped out of the tunnel mouth, the other three already moving behind him, and threw the grenade up over the railings onto the walkway. He heard cries of alarm, and followed Gulag out of cover. The grenade exploded almost immediately. Two bodies flew over the railings and landed on the edge of the ramp. Vadim and Gulag climbed the stairs, the criminal already firing. The SWAT team, already stunned and hurt, were dropping in front of them. Vadim heard the boom of Skull’s .303 and the quieter crack of Princess’s Dragunov sniper rifle.

Gulag reached the top of the stairs and moved sideways, still firing. Vadim reached the top of the stairs and did the same. Farm and New Boy remained on the stairs, catching the SWAT team in another crossfire. Sensing movement behind him, Vadim started to turn, seeing an agent levelling an SMG at his back. The top of the American’s head came off as either Princess or Skull killed him.

A tracer round flew out of the barrel of Vadim’s AK-74, telling him he only had three rounds left. One more burst and another SWAT team member was falling to the ground, but his comrade was still on his feet, frantically grabbing for his sidearm. Vadim let his AK-74 fall on its sling and grabbed the cut-down grip of the shotgun on his back, tearing it out of its sheath. He fired the 23mm buckshot round at nearly point blank range into the American’s face. The face disappeared. It felt like the recoil had nearly torn his arm off, but the SWAT team were all on the ground. These ones had different uniforms. They were NYPD, the letters ESU on their body armour. Vadim had no idea what it stood for.

Something thumped into the meat of his upper right arm, spinning him around. It burned, feeling like something was burrowing through his flesh. Then he heard the gunshot and the smashing glass. He was facing the entrance now. It looked like everyone in New York had guns and was trying to get into Grand Central: uniformed police, plain-clothes officers, SWAT, all firing into the station. Vadim was backpedalling, working the slide on the pump-action and firing. The shotgun kicked back hard, and a police officer was taken off his feet.

He saw Farm Boy staggering back as a volley of bullets struck him, sending him tumbling down the stairs. Gulag was screaming. The police’s relief force was in the station, on the walkway now. Tracer rounds started flying over the main concourse as the other fireteam rained fire on the police. Vadim fired the shotgun twice more, backing away, then switched the empty weapon into his left hand, drew the Stechkin and started burst-firing that. Gulag hadn’t moved; he was screaming, firing his AK-74 in long, undisciplined bursts. A shotgun blast caught him in the chest, and he staggered back, but didn’t go down. He tried to raise the AK-74 again, but several more rounds followed the first: undisciplined, inaccurate fire from frightened combatants, but it was enough. He hit the floor.

Vadim made it to the walled stairwell at the corner of the main concourse and took cover. He slid the shotgun back into its sheath, reloaded and holstered the Stechkin, and then reloaded the AK-74. He risked a glance through the doorway he’d just come through. The advancing police were being led by SWAT now. Bullets ricocheted off the stone, fragments cutting his face as the police closed in on his position. He removed the pin from another grenade, placed it at his feet and sprinted for the stairs, heading down. Above him, he heard the grenade exploding, followed by screams and cries of pain as he reached the doorway to the main concourse.

He edged out of the door, staying close to the wall. The police were on the walkway directly above him. On the other side of the main concourse, the other fireteam were conducting a fire-and–manoeuvre withdrawal, taking turns to lay down covering fire and move down the stairs. Vadim couldn’t see Mongol. Terrified, cowering civilians lay on the floor of the concourse in the spreading pools of blood, interspersed with the dead.

Vadim edged along the wall, exposed. If he opened fire on the reaction force shooting at the other fireteam, it would warn the police directly above his head.

He heard the shot, distinct from the SMGs, shotguns and pistols: a rifle, a marksman’s weapon. He saw Skull’s head snap back, and the sniper crumple on the stairs. Princess and the Fräulein glanced back, saw Skull was dead, then turned away and concentrated on the task at hand.

Vadim raised his AK-74 to his shoulder and fired on the police, across the main concourse, above the heads of civilians now too terrified to scream. One burst and then another, moving quickly, making for the ramp to the lower concourse. He swung around and looked up at the walkway just above him, seeing the police officers that had survived his grenade leaning over to locate him. He squeezed the trigger, shattering the stone balustrade, and the officers disappeared from view.

Vadim reached the ramp, where he was joined by New Boy. Princess and the Fräulein had already disappeared into the lower concourse on the other side of the station. New Boy covered him as he changed magazines. He was backing down the ramp when he noticed a SWAT shooter, who’d been lying in a puddle of blood in the middle of the main concourse, was standing up now. He must have been playing dead after being ambushed by the Fräulein’s fireteam. Now he was standing up in the middle of a gunfight, just staring at Vadim. Vadim finished reloading his AK-74 and raised it to his shoulder, but didn’t shoot. The man didn’t have a weapon in his hand. He just stared until Vadim had backed out of sight. It was strange, but Vadim had been in enough battles to know that combat could do odd things to people’s minds.

“DOWN! DOWN!” NEW Boy ordered in English. The civilians on the ground were trying to crawl out of the way of the two Spetsnaz commandos as they sprinted through the lower concourse. Vadim was looking for Princess and the Fräulein. If they could meet up with them, then they could escape along the tracks. He pushed away thoughts of how pointless escape was – presumably they’d be affected by whatever biological agent had been in the locker. All escape could provide was the opportunity to choose how to die. Somehow that seemed important.

Vadim glanced behind him and almost tripped over a commuter lying face-down on the floor, hands over his head. He couldn’t see any police behind him. This would be a nightmare for them, hunting well-armed, well-trained, experienced soldiers in the tangled warren of tunnels beneath the main concourse. It reminded Vadim of hunting mujahideen in the qanāt irrigation tunnels, except now they were the guerrilla fighters.

Not guerrilla fighters: terrorists, he told himself. It wasn’t evident yet what they had done, what he had done, but enemies or not, he was sure he had committed a monstrous war crime against these people.

Ahead of him he could see Princess and the Fräulein also sprinting through the lower concourse towards them. The surviving members of the other fireteam were almost level with the devastated baggage area when the fallen FBI SWAT team started standing back up. Vadim skidded to a halt and stared. It didn’t make any sense. A couple of them might have survived, badly wounded, but not all of them; and all of them were standing up. New Boy stopped so quickly he slipped over, sliding into some of the cowering civilians. Vadim had thought he had seen every horror the human race could inflict on itself, but this was something else: the supernature that Communism denied, or else science gone mad. He couldn’t quite process what he was seeing. Then the dead agents fell on the civilians. They didn’t move like people, but like animals, pouncing on the screaming commuters. Vadim watched as teeth were sunk into flesh, blood gouting from fresh wounds. He watched as they started to feed. Starving people had been forced to eat the dead during the siege of Stalingrad, but that had been nothing like the feeding frenzy that was unfolding before their eyes.

We did this.

“Move! Run! That way! Now!” Vadim screamed, the muscles on his neck standing out. He pulled civilians to their feet, helping them back the way they came with the toe of his boot.

New Boy had moved against the wall by the entrance to one of the tunnels, and was trying to get a clear shot: Russian, American, it didn’t matter. This was humans against something else.

“Run, you stupid bastards, run!” The panicking civilians knocked into Vadim as he tried to get a shot. He watched as one of the SWAT members pounced high into the air, bringing a screaming woman down. It reminded Vadim of lions hunting. Not lions, baboon packs. Another raised its head from its kill, tendrils of flesh dangling from a red mouth. A clear shot. The butt of the rifle hammering into his shoulder was almost comforting, the flickering muzzle flash turning the cave-like lower concourse into a picture of hell. The bloody-mouthed SWAT agent was knocked away from its prey by the three-round burst, but it was up again almost immediately. Vadim’s eyes widened. For the first time in over forty years of conflict, he didn’t know what to do. The thing charged him, dripping hands outstretched, reaching for him. Vadim fired again, convincing himself he had missed the first time, desperately searching for a rational explanation. Another hit. Three rounds, centre mass. The creature staggered slightly but continued charging.

Body armour, Vadim told himself. He was aware of New Boy firing as well, burning through ammunition. The charging, bloody creature was almost on him. Vadim flicked the AK-74’s selector to single-shot, raised the weapon slightly, and fired. The once human creature’s face caved in and it hit the ground, sliding towards him.

“Head shots!” Vadim shouted to New Boy. It was easier said than done. The SWAT team had been wearing Kevlar helmets. He could hear firing from the other side of the feeding pack: the Fräulein and Princess. Vadim realised that he had been so appalled by what he had seen he hadn’t even considered that the other two remaining members of the squad would be in their field of fire.

“We have to get out of here!” New Boy shouted, shooting another charging corpse in the helmet, its jaw already hanging off. It barely seemed to register the impact. New Boy adjusted his aim and squeezed the trigger again, blowing the thing’s brains out the back of its skull. He was right; they were about to be overrun. The Fräulein and Princess could look after themselves, and they had set up secondary and tertiary rendezvous points if things didn’t go to plan.

“Platform!” Vadim shouted, and both of them ran.

THERE WAS A train at the platform. The closest thing Vadim had to a plan was to get in front of the train and make their way out of the station on the rails. He’d had better plans in his life.

He stopped and turned. Five of the things had chased New Boy and him onto the platform. Two of them leapt onto the train and more screams joined the cacophony. Vadim raised his AK-74 to his shoulder. His breath burned in his lungs. He was too old for this, and he knew it. He fired, missed. Tried to steady his aim and only then realised that, for the first time in decades, his hands were shaking. He tried to control his breathing, remember everything he knew about shooting. One of the creatures dropped, taken down by New Boy. The younger man was a better shot than he was. New Boy fired again, and another dropped.

Come on, old man. He squeezed the trigger. The third creature went down. There was shouting from behind him, and his busy mind tried to translate the panicked English as he turned. There was a young black man, little more than a boy, in a Transit Police officer’s uniform. He held a revolver in two shaking hands, terrified civilians behind him. Everything seemed to slow down. He watched the hammer come down. The muzzle flash grew in slow motion from the barrel of the gun. The hammer blow to the chest. He was lying down, staring at the grimy ceiling.

I deserve this, worse than this. He had betrayed these people, these Americans, these humans. He was looking up at New Boy through a tunnel when one of the things jumped through the train’s window, taking the younger soldier to the ground.

THEN EVERYTHING WENT red for a while.