Authors: Mark Dawson
“Stay where you are,” he said in Russian.
“Don’t shoot.”
Callan stepped up behind him and a second laser sight flashed across the woman’s face.
Milton held up a hand to hold him back.
“Who are you?”
“Just nanny.”
Two additional children appeared behind her, hiding behind the black fabric of her dress.
“Come forward,” Milton called out.
He kept the sight steady on her forehead as she did as she was told, the children holding onto her legs.
“You killed them,” the woman said. “They are dead.”
“Who are they?”
“Guards. The colonel’s men.”
Milton glanced beyond her. The night vision revealed a pair of feet in the doorway of the room, pointing up to the ceiling. Callan aimed down and fired two shots into the body, then aimed at the second body and repeated the trick.
“One, Group. Guesthouse secure at this time,” Milton reported over the troop net. He cracked a chemlight and dropped it at the guesthouse’s front door to indicate the the building was safe.
“Is the colonel here?”
“I believe,” she said.
“And the Englishman who was here a few days ago?”
“Yes,” she said. “Definitely. Guards for him.”
“Where? The basement?”
“No. In bedroom. Third floor. He is sick.”
“Stay here,” he said. “Don’t come out, not for anyone. We’ll be gone in ten minutes.”
Milton and Callan hurried the courtyard. “One, Group,” he spoke into the throat mike. “Pope is not in the basement. They may have moved him to a third floor bedroom.”
“Two, One,” Spenser said. “Copy that. We’re splitting.”
Milton slid behind a low wall and brought his rifle up to bear on the dacha. There were two exterior doors, north and south, and they had divided the team so that they could control both. Milton was not able to say for sure whether there was a corridor connecting the two doors. If there was, detonating charges on both doors at the same time could lead to explosive overpressure which would be unpredictable and dangerous. They had decided that Spenser and Underwood would attack the north door first and then Callan and Milton would breach the south. Blake and Underwood would retreat to the main gate for surveillance and crowd control and, if they needed it, reinforcement.
Callan prepared his charge, slapping it against the door and pulling back to wait for the order to blow it. Milton held his position, his laser showing green through his night vision as it danced across the wall of the building.
Spenser detonated the charge on the door on the other side of the building. Milton heard shots being fired: it was a close, controlled burst, from a weapon fitted with a suppressor. Likely an M4. There was a pause and then return fire, unsuppressed, the ragged
chack chack chack
of Russian AN-94s.
“Heavy resistance,” Spenser reported in a calm voice, bullets ricocheting nearby. “Five or six soldiers, all behind cover. This isn’t going to be easy.”
“One, Alpha. Get well back. We’ll blow the door from this side. Ten will attack from behind them. Use smoke. Copy?”
“Copy. What about you?”
“I’m going to go up.”
Milton heard suppressed fire across the radio. “Copy, One. We’re out of the way.”
He turned to Callan. “Initiate.”
Callan detonated the breaching charge. The rolling boom echoed around the courtyard and the door blew inwards. It fell so that it was blocking their path inside and so, with Callan covering him, Milton went forwards and yanked it until he had moved it out of the way. The blast had knocked a soldier backwards, the pressure slamming him into the wall. He was knocked out cold. Callan aimed and fired two shots into his head. Milton watched with a mixture of horror and appreciation; he was utterly ruthless.
“Successful breach.”
Callan took two smoke grenades from his bandolier, popped them and tossed them down the corridor to the room in which the Russians had made their stand. Alpha Team had already thrown their grenades and the room was quickly filling with dense, impenetrable smoke. Milton doubted that they would have been equipped with IR goggles. He heard the rattle of automatic fire, some suppressed, most not. The Russians were firing at shadows. Callan, Spenser and Hammond were picking off their targets carefully and efficiently
Like shooting fish in a barrel.
MILTON PUT the noise of the firefight behind him as he started clearing up the stairs. There were no lights and it was suspiciously devoid of activity. He took a right turn and made his way slowly up. The stairs were tiled, and a little slippery, and he moved with exaggerated care. Each stair was set at a ninety degree angle to the landing and half-landing above with the result that it would have been very simple to prepare an ambush; anyone with an automatic weapon would be able to unleash a volley as soon as he made the landing, holding him and anyone else behind him in place. And they could not afford delay.
He reached the first floor. No lights had been lit. There were three bedrooms, including the ones in which Milton and Anna had slept. The bedrooms were empty.
There was a long rattle of gunfire below.
“One, Group. Report.”
“Three down,” Spenser said. “Two, maybe three left. They’re dug in.”
“Copy that. First floor clear. Ascending to second.”
Milton turned the corner onto the second floor landing. There was a narrow hallway, featureless and spare, with a darkened archway at the end that should, if his understanding of the drone intel was correct, open onto a terrace running along the south side of the building. The corridor had four doors: the first two were near to where Milton was standing and the others towards the archway. Milton nudged his goggles so that they were more comfortably pressed against his eyes and made his way carefully down the hall, stopping at the first door before opening it with the point of his weapon and clearing inside. He opened the door to the adjacent room and cleared that, too. He continued along the corridor, clearing the remaining two rooms. All empty.
He moved towards the stairs.
He heard footsteps.
He saw a flash of movement just above and fired, his suppressed M4 announcing contact with a
BUP BUP BUP
. Moments later, a bloodied body, dressed in Russian army fatigues, slid down the stairs, flipped over onto its back and came to a stop. Milton put another two rounds into the man’s head. Blood slicked down the tile treads of the stairs like the glistening path of a snail.
“Shots fired,” Milton reported. “Tango down.”
Another one. Was that it?
The troop net buzzed with Blake’s voice. “Six, Group. We’re outside the main gate. We’ve got activity.”
“Two, Six. How bad?”
“Maybe a dozen coming our way. Lights on in a few houses.”
“Keep them back,” Spenser said. “Two, one. Update, please.”
Milton spoke, whispering into his mike: “Going to third floor. Proceeding now.”
There couldn’t be much further to climb. The stairwell was dark, no lights anywhere, but Milton’s goggles gave him a good enough view. It had grown narrow, especially for a man wearing thirty pounds of kit, and he moved carefully and diligently, taking no chances. He looked and listened for signs of movement, the sound of a round being chambered, anything; he got nothing. He was put in mind of the countless times he had been through the Killing House during SAS Selection all those years ago: a twenty mile run so that they were exhausted and then a smoke-filled series of rooms, cut out terrorists popping out from cover, live rounds fired into the cut outs, and do it all again. That had been hard, and Milton had often resented it, but not now.
He climbed, reached the top of the stairs and turned the corner, onto the landing. His palms and fingers were slicked with sweat and he wiped his right against his combat pants so that he had a better feel of the trigger. The landing was short, a waist high balustrade looking down onto the final flight of stairs, leading into a constricted hallway. There was a door at the end that led onto the balcony; he could see a narrow sliver of midnight sky through the narrow slit of window, a sprinkling of stars, a quarter of moon.
The shooting downstairs had stopped.
“Two, Group. Seven tangos down. Ground floor clear.”
Halfway along the corridor were two doors, one on each side.
Milton proceeded slowly down the corridor, his gun up.
A switch was flicked and light crashed into Milton’s night vision, blinding him, and then he was grabbed by the lapels and hauled into one of the rooms, the M4 pressed impotently up against his chest. He was still blind as someone yanked him around and slammed him hard against the wall, forcing the rifle from his grip and sending it clattering to the floor. He was punched in the gut once and then twice and then a third time, and then a fourth blow dinged him on the point of his chin and the room dimmed for a moment. He was bounced off the wall again and, when he stumbled back in the other direction, a garrote looped over his head and it was only instinct that saw him stab his right hand inside the noose to stop it closing around his throat. His assailant grunted as he yanked the wire tight; Milton staggered back into his body and felt slabs of muscle. The wire bit into the soft flesh of his hand as he stamped down with the heel of his boot, raking the shin of the man behind him. The man’s grip did not falter and so Milton brought both legs up and kicked off the wall, sending both of them stumbling across the room like drunks. They hit a bed, bouncing off the mattress onto the floor beyond.
He swept his arm upwards, knocking the goggles from his face. The big soldier who had surprised him was already up. He had short cropped hair, hate filled eyes, his shoulders and arms heavy with muscle. Milton recognised him: it was Vladimir, the driver of the car that had brought him to Plyos with Anna.
There was blood on his wrist from where the wire had cut into his flesh.
Vladimir shone a smile that was full of bad intentions at him, reaching down and unsheathing a knife from the scabbard on his belt. He brought it up, the bright light shivering down the serrated edge, and passed it between both hands as he prowled towards Milton. Milton had no time to go for his pistol as Vladimir swung the knife into his ribs; Milton swept his right arm around to block the swipe, their wrists clashing. He jabbed and Milton swung to the side, then he slashed down and the blade sliced through the fabric of his shirt and opened up a six-inch gash on his forearm.
Jags of pain scorched up from the wound.
The Russian changed tactics and charged him, driving him backwards again. Milton tripped on the edge of a rug and they fell, Milton underneath him, pressed down by the bigger man’s weight. He smelt the sharp tang of vodka and sweat. Vladimir pinioned Milton’s left hand with his right and, the knife in his left hand, pushed down. The knife started above his nose, close enough for him to see his own eye reflected in the steel, and then it jerked downwards, the point catching on the skin above his jawline and scratching a bloody furrow as it tracked down towards his throat.
Milton had his weaker left hand around Vladimir’s wrist, but all he could do was slow the progress.
“
Blyadischa
,” Vladimir growled through his grunts of exertion.
The point of the knife drew blood as it pressed down on his throat, the first few milimeters sinking into his flesh.
Milton worked his right leg free and drove his knee into the Russian’s crotch. His mouth gaped open and he released Milton’s right hand and he seized his chance, flashing down to the scabbard on his thigh and tearing out his own knife. He drew back his wrist so that the tip pointed upwards and punched it into Vladimir’s chest. The strength drained out of him immediately. Milton locked his hand around the hilt of the Benchmade, twisted it and thrust it up into his heart.
He pushed the big man off him.
He saw movement in the doorway.
His right hand went to his shoulder holster, bringing out the Sig.
He rolled onto his stomach and aimed in a single, fluid motion.
Pascha Shcherbatov was stooping for the M4 he had dropped.
“Don’t,” Milton said, his breath still ragged.
Shcherbatov stood. And raised his hands.
“I am unarmed. I surrender.”
Milton got up. Blood was running freely from the cut on the side of his hand and after he dabbed his fingers against his throat they were stained red. His jacket was tacky with the Russian’s blood. He wiped the gore from his hand against his trousers and took a step towards the colonel.
“Hands on your head,” Milton ordered.
Shcherbatov did as he was told, lacing his fingers and resting his hands on his head.
He indicated with the gun and Shcherbatov stepped away from the M4, heading back into the corridor. Milton gestured that he should keep going and he went back into the room adjacent to the one where Vladimir had hidden from him.
It was dark. Milton brought the goggles back down again.
Ahead of him, against the sloping wall, was a narrow bed. There was someone on the bed.
“Very good, Captain Milton. I am impressed.”
He activated the torch attached to his helmet rails and a sharp, bright beam of white light trained onto Shcherbatov’s face. He winced, a hand automatically coming down to shield his eyes.
“On your head!”
Shcherbatov replaced his hand and looked away.
“Anyone else up here?”
“No.”
“Just Vladimir?”
“That is right.”
Milton turned the light onto the bed. Pope was laid out there. He looked worse than when Milton had seen him before. He was unshaven, with thick curls of beard, brown streaked with grey. His eyes were rheumy and uncertain and there were fresh bruises on his face.
“I did not expect this,” Shcherbatov said. “It is Control’s doing?”
“No. All my own work, I’m afraid.”
“How many of you?”
“Six.”
He looked surprised. “An armed incursion onto Russian soil? That is a dangerous precedent for a little thing such as this.”
“Don’t worry,” Milton said. “We had help.”