"I know who you are. You are Akula, the Shark. What have you done with the device?"
"I tell you, I have no device."
"Don't fucking lie to me!" I shouted.
"Or I'll blow your bloody head off' That seemed to change his mind.
"You are too late," he said.
"The device is not here."
"I know. I'm asking where you've sent it."
"You are American, yes?" There was a hint of mockery in his voice, of condescension.
"It doesn't matter what I am.
"Well you should send message to British Government."
"Yes?"
"Tell them, release the Chechen men they have arrested."
"What Chechen men?"
"Twelve persons.
"What have they done?"
"Nothing. But the police arrested them. Unless they are free, London will be sorry.
"What are you saying?"
"Only that. London will regret."
"You mean you've sent the bomb to London?"
I was so hyped up by the thought that Orange was going to be used against us that, without any conscious decision, I fired a burst into the floor beside the Shark's right leg, then another that hit him in the thigh. As the rounds struck, he gave a convulsive jerk, then began to writhe around on his side, blood flowing out fast over the birch floor.
All at once there was a commotion at the far end of the room.
A door flew open. As I looked in that direction, Akula tried to take advantage of the diversion and began dragging himself away along the edge of the pool. In a split-second I took in the fact that the newcomer was Sasha, who dashed in with his Gepard levelled. Before I could move or speak he'd opened up with three short bursts. The first missed, but the second caught the Shark full in the flank. As he rocked on his hands and knees, the third raked him again and toppled him sideways into the pool.
Behind me, from the changing cubicle he'd been in, came a sudden noise and movement and the door flew open. Out burst a young blonde woman, stark naked, holding a pistol in her right hand.
Before she could pull the trigger, Sasha cut her down with a burst into her back from point-blank range.
He was on a total high, uncontrollably violent, half mad. He fired two more bursts into the ceiling, splintering the planks, and rushed up to me with a triumphant roar of "ZHEORDIE! WE KEELL THEM ALL!".
With a couple of bounds he reached the edge of the pool. The man's body was half-floating, face-down in the water, feet on the bottom. Blood had flooded out all round it, staining the water, dark red close in, paler farther out.
"Akula in the water!" Sasha shouted.
"Breelliant! We make him kneel! We make him swim!" Again he let drive a burst into the body, causing it to bob violently up and down.
Men came pounding into the room. Our guys. One, two, three.
"Out!" yelled one of them.
"The place is on fire. Gotta go downwards."
"Here!" I pointed towards the door.
All five of us flew down the concrete stairs and through the wooden door. The inner store-room was empty. The hostages had gone.
Outside, the impact of frosty air cooled all of us down. I realised I'd been on just as vicious a high as Sasha.
As we drew away from the building and up the hill, we could see flames raging inside the ground-floor windows. Then a great tongue of fire burst out of the roof. Out of breath, I got down -on one knee, jabbed my press el and called, "Pat?"
"Yes?"
"Geordie here. I'm east of the building. Where are you?"
"Straight above the villa. The Chinooks are coming in."
"Great. Is there a medic on board?"
"Should be. I asked for one."
"The hostages are in a bad way.
"OK. RV on the helipad, soonest."
"Roger."
We started through the trees, but we'd only gone a few yards when another explosion burst out above us. I heard later that the guys in Party C saw somebody sneak up into the cockpit of the Alouette, so they put a 66 rocket into its fuel tank.
The fireball lit up the trees all around. By the time we reached the scene the chopper was blazing from end to end. There was no chance of shifting the wreck quickly.
Over the radio I heard Pat call the Chinook captain and redirect him to the LZ in the forest.
By now some of our guys had wrapped Pay and Toad in space blankets and sleeping bags and lashed them into nylon stretchers. There followed a desperate struggle, as relays of us carried them along the rough mountainside, bundled them over the wire and lugged them away through the forest.
Towards the end we could hear the Chinooks circling. Then rounds began to go down behind us and bullets came cracking through the trees.
By the time we reached the edge of the field we were sweating like pigs. One man, in the lead, ran out and shone a torch to bring the first Chinook in. At the same moment I heard Pat calling the second to put down an air strike "Into the trees!" he was shouting.
"One hundred metres west of the LZ. One hundred metres and farther."
The air was full of the heavy, thudding beat of big rotors.
Through that came the violent racket of a chain-gun, putting down rounds at an incredible speed, making a noise almost like a chainsaw.
The next thing I knew, one chopper was coming in. The pilot put his nose down right on the torch. A storm of snow was thrashed into the air by the down draught We ran through it with our burdens, straight up the lowered ramp. Within seconds everyone was on board and counted, and we were lifting away.
Kneeling between the casualties, I got my back to Toad and shouted, "Pay. It's me Geordie."
When he answered, "Where've you fucking well been, you old bastard?" I knew he was well switched on.
"Pay," I said.
"What did they do to Toad?"
"Bolt cutters," he replied.
"One finger at a time."
"Ah, Jesus! How many's he lost?"
"Dunno. Four maybe."
"Bloody hell. Listen, what did he tell them about the device?"
"Nothing.
"Is that right?"
"Absolutely nothing. Toad was bloody brilliant."
"So they don't know about Apple?"
"Not a whisper."
"Thank God for that."
SIXTEEN.
We landed back at Lyneham to find a premier-league flap in progress. The Firm had been shitting themselves so badly that they couldn't wait till we reached Hereford before they started grilling me. Two men had been waiting in the airport arrival hall, and within five minutes of touchdown I was speeding westwards in a chauffeur-driven Rover.
The fact that the British Government was in a panic came as no surprise. When the Chinooks had put us down at Krasnodar in the northern Caucasus, we were amazed to find an R.A.F Tristar sitting on the airfield, waiting to fly us home. So desperate had the situation become that our normal means of transport, a Here, had been deemed too slow, and the big jet had been diverted from Cyprus to get us back at twice the speed. The result was one of those disorientating flights which end at practically the same time as they start. We'd taken off at 2200, and three and a quarter hours later we'd landed at 2215 local.
During our brief stopover at Krasnodar I'd spoken to Whinger on the Satcom. Naturally he was frantic to know what had happened, and I brought him up to speed. At his end, he said, the team job was staggering on.
"I was hoping to come straight back and rejoin you," I told him, 'but I'm off to the UK for a debrief first. Nobody's sure where the Chechens have taken Orange. London looks the most likely. As soon as the dust settles, I'll get my arse back to Balashika as fast as I can."
"Speak to you soon," replied Whinger laconically.
Back in England, scene after scene played through my mind as we headed westwards through the night: the chutes of the free-fallers coming in like bats out of the starry sky; the Chechens humping away the components of Orange during the snowstorm; Akula floating face-down in his own pool; the blaze from the villa lighting up the snow on the mountainside with a huge, ruddy glow.
My trouble in the debrief was that I'd already exhausted my small store of information. Talking to the CO in Hereford via Satcom from the Tristar, I'd already given all the details I could, and now, repeating my conversation with Shark for the benefit of the guys from the Firm, I felt as if the record had got stuck in the same groove.
I sat in the back of the car with one man beside me; the other, in the front, kept screwing round to talk. I could only suppose that the driver had full security clearance.
"Go through it again," said the guy next to me.
"The whole meeting only lasted a couple of minutes," I said.
"Akula just said, "You'd better send a message to the British Government."
"And?"
"That if we didn't release the Chechens who'd been arrested, London would be sorry.
"Was that all?"
'"London will regret." Those were his words exactly."
"From which you assumed he was sending Orange to London and planning to detonate it there."
"That's right," I agreed.
"Couldn't the Yanks track the plane?"
"By the time they knew what was happening it was too late.
There were several planes airborne over the Caucasus. Any of them could have been the one they wanted. The most likely candidate was a privately owned Gulfstream that went to Malta, which is one of the Mafia's overseas strongholds. We think the device may have been transferred to another aircraft there."
"What about at this end?"
"We've got a watch on all major airports. The difficulty is, a small jet could put down in dozens of different places on a private strip, anywhere."
"So you think the bomb may be here already?"
"We've got to assume that."
"And you can't search the whole of London."
The man next to me made a wry grimace. Once more I thought of the guys in furry caps, carrying the components out through the snow.
"I should have whacked them while I had the chance," I said.
"What's that?" The man in front twisted himself yet farther round, and I had to explain all over again.
Then I asked, "But do they know how to detonate the damned thing? Can the device be set off without the SCR?"