Overkill (61 page)

Richter pointed at it. The two men moved to the door and took up positions on either side of it. Richter stretched out his arm, turned the door handle gently, and then pulled. The door
didn’t budge, but suddenly the clamour of an automatic weapon erupted and a pattern of holes appeared, ripped through the wooden door at chest height.

They flattened themselves against the steel bulkhead. Richter caught sight of a movement opposite, and saw the other door start to open. He was still slow and hurting, but he brought up the
Heckler & Koch and selected auto. As the muzzle of the Kalashnikov turned towards them, Richter opened up. The machine pistol took just under a second to fire the eight 9mm rounds he had left
in the magazine. A tight pattern appeared in the wooden door, and the AK47 dropped. As Richter dropped the magazine out of the Hockler and inserted another one from his belt pouch, the SAS trooper
took out his Browning, ran over and kicked open the door. He slid inside, and Richter heard a single shot.

‘No problem,’ he said, as he emerged and took up his position again on the other side of the Radio Office door. ‘Nice shooting.’

The trooper opened the magazine on the Arwen and inserted two shells from his belt pouch. ‘Stand back,’ he said. He stepped back into the passageway, took aim at the bottom steel
hinge on the door and fired. Richter had time to see that the hinge remained more or less intact, but the wood on the door beside it had simply disintegrated, before he fired again, at the top
hinge. The door toppled slowly outwards into the passageway, and as it fell the trooper lobbed a stun grenade into the Radio Room.

Three seconds later they were inside. The sole occupant was lying in a corner, AK47 beside him. He was alive, but the stun grenade had ensured that he would take no part in the proceedings for a
while. The trooper pulled out his Browning, but Richter stopped him. ‘I have to ask him if he used the radio,’ he said.

Richter picked up the Kalashnikov, put one round through each radio set, extracted the magazine and cleared the breech. The communications equipment installed was comprehensive, but in no way
unusual. All the radio sets had appeared to be switched on, but again that was probably normal practice. Richter’s hope was that the man lying in the corner was simply a crewmember who had
taken refuge in the Radio Office, and not the ship’s radio operator. What bothered him was the unmade cot in one corner of the room.

The Russian showed signs of coming round, and Richter knelt beside him. ‘Listen to me,’ he said, in Russian. ‘Can you hear me?’ The Russian shook his head, trying to
clear the fog. ‘Did you signal Moscow?’

‘What?’

‘Did you signal Moscow?’ Richter repeated.

The
Spetsnaz
trooper looked up at Richter then, his pale blue eyes defiant. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘As soon as you attacked. I sleep here, and those are my orders.’

Richter stood up. ‘I’ve got to get to the hold,’ he said. ‘Deal with him.’

As Richter picked up his Heckler & Koch and walked out of the Radio Office and down the stairs, he heard another shot from the trooper’s Browning. ‘Ross, this is Beatty,’
Richter said into the microphone.

‘Ross. Where are you?’

‘Coming down from the Radio Room. They signalled Moscow, so if they’re going to detonate the weapon we can expect it at any time.’ He paused, still catching his breath.
‘Have you reached the hold yet?’

‘No. We’ve eliminated most of the opposition apart from a group on the first deck of the accommodation section. I’ve got men above and below them, but we can’t get them
out.’

‘Don’t worry about them,’ Richter said. ‘If we can’t get into the forward hold we’re all going to die.’ He had reached deck level. ‘I’m on
the main deck now, starboard side. Can you meet me there?’

‘On my way.’

Richter saw a trooper standing beside the guard rail, and a figure in civilian clothes seated beside him. ‘Who’s that?’ he asked.

‘Ship’s officer. He wasn’t on board – we caught him as he came running down the Mole when the fire-fight started.’

‘Good,’ Richter said. ‘Bring him along.’ The trooper yanked the man roughly to his feet and pushed him forward. ‘My name is Beatty,’ Richter said in Russian,
‘and I would like your help.’ The Russian spat at Richter’s feet. The trooper kicked him behind his left knee, then dragged him to his feet again. ‘Please listen to
me,’ Richter said. ‘The hold of this ship contains a very powerful nuclear weapon which I believe will be detonated within minutes by radio signal from Moscow. You and the
Spetsnaz
troopers were probably never intended to get off the ship or unload the weapon. You were unknowing suicide bombers. Can you help us disarm it?’ The Russian continued to stare.
‘Right,’ Richter said. ‘Bring him.’

Ross stepped out of the accommodation section. ‘Who’s that?’ he asked.

‘A ship’s officer – or maybe a
Spetsnaz
officer,’ Richter replied. ‘He was grabbed by your men on the Mole. I’m hoping I can talk him into unlocking
the forward hold for us.’

‘You’re sure it won’t be in the aft hold?’

‘No,’ Richter said. ‘That’s for bulk cargo – it’s got no security at all. The weapon will definitely be in the forward hold, and the hold will certainly be
locked.’

They descended three decks before they found it. A steel door labelled, in Cyrillic characters, ‘Forward hold. No unauthorized personnel’. It had concealed hinges, two large
padlocks, one top and one bottom, and in the centre a combination lock. ‘Shit,’ Richter said. The padlocks wouldn’t be much of a problem, as long as they could find some
bolt-cutters, but the combination lock was a different matter. Richter turned to Ross. ‘Get someone to find some bolt-cutters and a welding kit – try the engine room. And I need my
nav-bag. It’s on the Mole behind the crate opposite the gangway.’

While Ross gave the orders, Richter turned his attention back to the Russian, who was watching with a slight smile on his face. Richter opened a door behind him to reveal a small storeroom.
‘In here,’ he told the trooper. The SAS trooper roughly shoved the Russian into the room. Richter followed, switching on the light and closing the door behind him.

‘What’s your name?’ Richter asked.

‘Zavorin,’ the Russian said.

‘Well, Comrade Zavorin. We will get through that door into the hold,’ Richter said. ‘The only thing I don’t know is how long it will take. What I do know is that if we
can’t get in before your masters in Moscow decide to press the button, we will die. All of us on board this ship will die. So will most of the population of Gibraltar, and of La Linea and
Algeciras in Spain. People you’ve never met, people who know nothing about this, people sleeping peacefully in their beds. Innocent bystanders.’

‘There are no innocent bystanders,’ Zavorin said. At least he was talking.

‘I have only one question. Do you know the combination of that lock?’ Zavorin said nothing, just stared. ‘I’ll ask you again,’ Richter said, ‘but if you
don’t know or won’t tell me you’re just going to get in the way.’

He moved the firing selector on the Hockler to single shot, slipped the safety catch off, and levelled it at him. ‘Five seconds, Comrade Zavorin. Do you know the combination?’

Zavorin said nothing for ten seconds. He was probably relying on the fact that English gentlemen don’t shoot unarmed men. Richter had never claimed to be a gentleman, and was more Scots
than English, so he lowered the Hockler and fired one round through Zavorin’s right thigh. It probably shattered the femur, because the Russian fell instantly, screaming.

Kutuzovskij prospekt, Moscow

The alarm bell rang softly and persistently in the top-floor apartment, but it was several minutes before Genady Arkenko heard it. He had drunk perhaps a little too much
vodka the previous evening, and had been deeply asleep. When the sound finally penetrated, he rolled over in bed, glanced at the bedside clock and got groggily to his feet. Cursing, he walked
across the living area and into the small back room of the flat. Arkenko sat down in front of the short-wave radio set, turned off the alarm, put on the headphones and played back the message which
had been stored on the automatic tape recorder.

Three minutes later he was back in the main room, notepad in hand, pressing the speed-dial code of Dmitri Trushenko’s mobile telephone. His hands were shaking, and it wasn’t because
of the vodka.

Anton Kirov

‘There’s a reasonably good hospital in Gibraltar,’ Richter said, raising his voice above the noise Zavorin was making. ‘You can be out in a few
weeks. You’ll be limping, but you will be able to walk.’ He paused. ‘If I put the next round through your knee, you’ll probably never walk again. Let’s try one more
time. Do you know the combination of that lock?’

Zavorin stopped screaming and spat at Richter.

‘I’ll take that as a “no”, shall I?’ Richter said. He raised the Hockler again, and pointed it at the Russian’s left knee. ‘This really is your last
chance,’ he said.

‘Wait, wait,’ Zavorin shouted.

‘Yes?’

‘I don’t know the combination,’ Zavorin lied. ‘It was sealed when we left Varna.’

‘Was that where they loaded the device?’

The Russian nodded. ‘The crate was supposed to be off-loaded here, tomorrow.’

‘This is your last chance. You really don’t know the combination?’ Zavorin shook his head. ‘Then I’m sorry,’ Richter said, shot him twice in the chest, opened
the door and stepped back into the passageway.

‘Any luck?’ Ross asked.

‘No,’ Richter replied. ‘He said he didn’t know, though I’m not certain I believed him.’

The noise of firing from above stopped abruptly, and Ross used his radio to find out what had happened. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘The last of the Russian crew have been
secured.’

‘That’s secured as in shot, right?’ Richter asked.

Ross nodded. ‘What we call nine-millimetre handcuffs,’ he said.

Three minutes later an SAS man severed the hasp of the second padlock, while another dragged an oxy-acetylene kit down the passage. ‘Cut around the lock,’ Richter said. ‘If we
can punch it out, we can probably lever the bolt out.’

Razdolnoye, Krym (Crimea)

The sound of a telephone ringing was skilfully woven into Dmitri Trushenko’s dream, and only gradually impinged on his conscious mind. Then he woke rapidly. Only
Genady Arkenko knew the number of his mobile telephone, and he had strict orders to ring him only in an emergency. Trushenko reached out, picked up the mobile and pressed a button.
‘Yes?’

‘It’s Genady, Dmitri. I’ve had a message from the
Anton Kirov
. They claim –’ Arkenko swallowed ‘– they claim that the ship is under
attack.’

‘What?’

‘Under attack, Dmitri. They said the ship was under attack. But,’ Arkenko added, ‘I thought that the
Anton Kirov
was at Gibraltar, so that can’t be
right.’

Trushenko didn’t reply for a moment, then responded abruptly. ‘Thank you, Genady,’ he said. ‘I’ll take care of it. Don’t you worry about it. Good night, my
old friend.’ His voice was calm and controlled, but his mind was racing. If the
Anton Kirov
was under attack, that meant that someone, somewhere, must have found out almost everything
about
Podstava
.

Trushenko ended the call, got out of the bed and stood up, his clenched fists the only outward sign of his inner rage and turmoil. Four years of planning, of scheming, of concealment, and at the
eleventh hour somebody – some Western intelligence service, he supposed – had discovered what was going on. There had to be a leak, Trushenko knew that without a doubt. Knowledge of the
Anton Kirov
’s special cargo was confined to four people only, apart from Trushenko himself, Hassan Abbas and the
Spetsnaz
personnel actually aboard the ship: Genady Arkenko, and
the three principal military officers involved in
Podstava
.

The leak wasn’t Genady, of that Trushenko was quite certain, so it had to be one of the three soldiers – SVR Generals Nicolai Modin and Grigori Sokolov, and GRU Lieutenant General
Viktor Bykov. When this is all over, Trushenko promised himself, I’ll see all three of those bastards on the table at the Lubyanka. Then Trushenko smiled to himself, because despite this
unwanted interference in his plans, it still wasn’t too late. The American weapons were already in place and the strategic neutron bombs were positioned all over Europe, except for the London
weapon, but that didn’t matter. Implementation, Trushenko decided, would just take place a little sooner than he had originally planned, that was all.

Anton Kirov

It was a warm night, and it got a lot hotter in the narrow passageway with the oxy-acetylene torch running. Like all watertight doors, the hold access was solid steel,
about half a centimetre thick, and the torch made slow progress. It took nearly fourteen minutes to cut a rough circle round the lock. Wearing heavy gloves, because the cut edges of the metal were
still red hot, the trooper tried pushing the lock through the hole, but it wouldn’t budge.

‘Try a kick,’ Richter suggested. The trooper kicked hard, hitting the combination dial with his heel. This time, the lock moved. A second kick, and the lock went straight through the
hole, the bolt pulling out of the bulkhead recess. They opened the door and stepped inside. Richter looked round the hold, a seemingly cavernous structure, three decks high. There wasn’t by
any means a full load of cargo, but there was enough to make the immediate location of the weapon impossible. He found a switch and flooded the hold with light.

Ross had followed Richter inside. ‘What are we looking for?’ he asked.

‘A steel chest,’ Richter said. ‘It’s about ten feet long by four feet high and five feet wide. But it’ll probably be inside some sort of a crate, so look for
something with slightly larger dimensions than that.’

Four minutes later one of the troopers called out. ‘Here.’ They moved over to the corner, picking their route through the other hold cargo.

‘That’s probably it,’ Richter said. Predictably enough, the wooden chest was locked, but the bolt-cutters swiftly disposed of the padlock, and the trooper swung back the lid,
dropped the side panel and they all peered inside. The steel chest looked exactly like the one that had housed the London weapon. The trooper used the bolt-cutters to sever the hasp of the padlock,
and Richter lifted the lid of the chest cautiously. Another trooper brought Richter’s nav-bag over, while he read through Professor Dewar’s instructions one more time.