December (11 page)

When the team had dumped their gear in their rooms they assembled downstairs in the Regency dining room, overlooking the lawn where the helicopter was parked.

All seven of them seated themselves at one end of the long polished dining table.

Alex stood up at the head of the table with his hands on his hips and began his briefing.

‘OK, so first of all, welcome to Team Devereux,’ he grinned, enjoying being back in charge. ‘Some of us have worked together a lot before, but for those of you who haven’t, let me do the intros so we all know where we are coming from.’

He gestured first to the tall, slim man sitting at the edge of the group. ‘This is Captain Magnus Løndahl, formerly of the Royal Norwegian Army.’

Magnus nodded to the others but his face remained immobile.

‘I met Magnus years ago when I did an arctic warfare training course up in northern Norway. He was an NCO then, helping run NATO courses, and we ended up spending a lot of time together freezing our arses off in snow holes.’

The faintest flicker of a smile flitted across Magnus’s face.

The two men had got on well and Alex had developed a huge respect for the Norwegian’s quiet strength and integrity. His main memory was of trying to keep up with him on gruelling, day-long, cross-country ski marches. The lanky figure would always be ahead of him in white camouflage gear, his rifle on his back, sometimes lost in gusts of snow, but always re-emerging with arms and legs still gliding forwards in an easy rhythm. The more he had to endure, the quieter and more committed he became.

The understated exterior, however, belied an adventurous heart. Magnus had gone on to serve in the Forsvarets Spesialkommando, the Norwegian Special Forces, as a sniper, and had seen action in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Alex had stayed in touch with him over the years and helped him get some defence contractor work when he had left the Norwegian army two years previously. When a mission in the middle of a Siberian winter had come up, he was the first person who had come to Alex’s mind as an arctic warfare specialist.

Alex moved on now to the man sitting next to Magnus, who looked like a cross between a surfer and a builder. Just as he was about to start his introduction, the man stood up and gave his own mock intro.

‘Hi, my name’s Peter Bridges and I’m an alcoholic,’ he said, and then sat down again.

A worried look crossed Lara’s face and she looked across anxiously at Alex.

The others laughed. As experienced mercenaries they were confident enough in their professional abilities not to care a great deal about military formalities; in fact they hated them.

Alex laughed and then continued the joke. ‘Well, as you can see, Pete has some issues to deal with, but I hope we can all help him work through them on the op. He has been working on his problems with the Australian SAS on a rehab course in Iraq for a couple of years but finally became clean and serene and decided to join the mercenary fraternity.’

Colin, Yamba and Arkady cheered and Pete acknowledged them with a facetious nod. Alex had worked with him on only one previous operation, in Africa, but he had been impressed by the grit he displayed there.

With his heavy-boned face, shaggy sideburns and long hair tied back, Pete looked like a pirate, but he came from a rare group of men, such as racing drivers and extreme sports fanatics, who only responded to events that occur above a certain threshold of violence. Anything below this level didn’t register with him as being significant enough to merit a response. However, once events did go over it he acted very fast indeed.

He had been born on a sheep farm near the small town of Dagaragu on the edge of the Tanami Desert. The life was hard there and had taught him self-reliance, but it had not been able to satisfy his thirst for danger and he had left for the army aged seventeen.

Alex continued, ‘Pete also has a lot of experience of kicking in doors in Iraq so he will be advising us on the latest FIBUA tactics just in case events develop further.’

Fighting In Built Up Areas was something that Alex was conscious of not having much experience in. He knew the basics from a tour in Northern Ireland, but his more recent African work had been in savannah or jungle environments and he knew that if things did get messy in Moscow then they would need someone with more up-to-date knowledge.

He moved on. ‘Now, Col and Yamba have already worked with Arkady a lot but for those who haven’t, this is Captain Arkady Voloshin.’

The Russian grinned broadly at them, his slanted eyes creased up and the gold tooth winked in his mouth, which for once he didn’t have a cigarette in.

‘Formerly in the Russian airforce, then spent many years flying anything that moved—fixed-wing and rotary—for Viktor Bout in Africa, supplying various wars. Whatever you want, Arkady will fly it in or out for you: arms, drugs, diamonds, TVs, fags, hookers. You name it, he’ll get it.’

Arkady took it as a compliment that he worked for a man labelled ‘The Merchant of Death’ and continued grinning in a shameless manner. Like a lot of Russian men he’d had any sense of morality removed by the experience of communism, and would do anything for money without asking questions.

However, over the years of working with Alex he had developed a strong personal loyalty to him. Through numerous combat operations he had come to respect the Englishman’s leadership as intelligent but decisive.

When Alex had initially outlined the plan to him he had had a brief moment of doubt because of the massive political implications for his homeland, but, when the huge amount of money on offer was mentioned, any personal scruples died instantly.

Alex then faced the tricky task of what to say about Lara.
He didn’t want to give any details of the political side of the operation. To emphasise this point he kept it very brief, introducing her quickly and adding, ‘Lara is here to act as liaison with our political partners.’

She looked down at the table nervously as all eyes scrutinised her carefully. Alex could see a lot of thinking going on but no one said a word.

He quickly moved on to the final two regular members of his team, Colin and Yamba, who sat together and grinned back at everyone else.

‘The two old-age pensioners over here are Colin Thwaites, formerly sergeant major in the Parachute Regiment, and Yamba Douala, of the South African Defence Force, 32 Battalion. Both of whom have been selected so we can make use of their free bus passes.’

This met with giggles from Yamba and, ‘Ah, booger off,’ from Colin.

Alex ignored them. ‘Right, let’s get on with planning then.’ He motioned behind them and they all stood up and moved to the middle of the long table, which was covered in the maps and photos that Alex and Colin had spent much of yesterday laying out.

‘OK, so first of all, Arkady will fly us out in a Gulfstream jet to Transdneister.’

The mercenaries were all familiar with the tiny breakaway republic between Moldova and Ukraine. It had declared independence from the USSR in 1991 but after a short war had been left with an ambiguous international status ever since, which made it a major transshipment point for drugs, weapons and people trafficking.

‘Arkady is well connected in smuggling circles there and has already been in touch with his suppliers, so they will have our weapons and ammunition order ready for us to
collect quickly and then fly straight on to our Forward Operating Base. The whole flight from here to Siberia will be eight hours and four thousand miles, so we are going to be a long way from home.’

There were a lot of serious expressions around the circle as the enormity of the distance sank in.

‘OK, that’s the big picture. So let’s switch to the detail. We are going to assault the Yag 14/10 Krasnokamensk Penal Colony.’

He pointed to a regional map laid out in the middle of the table with the location marked on it.

‘The camp itself is actually located fifty miles north of Krasnokamensk. There just isn’t anything else nearer to name it after.’ His finger looped over the empty terrain around the camp. ‘That’s because the camp is in a Closed Area roughly a third the size of England, where no one but the prisoners and their guards are allowed. Our FOB will be here on the outskirts of the town on the east side.’ He pointed to some sparsely distributed huts and warehouses that petered out into the woods.

‘Right, that’s the background for you. From now on this is a planning session. It’s not going to be an easy job so I want your suggestions.’

They all leaned in over the table around him, faces serious now, eyes darting back and forth, taking in the locations and distances on the maps. They were comparing what was in front of them with countless raids they had been on, balancing theories and practicalities, trying to envisage conditions on the ground: the terrain, the weather, infiltration and exfiltration routes, enemy positions and responses.

Alex continued to feed their busy minds with details.

‘Our FOB is the operations base for a mining company in the region belonging to our political contact.’ Again he didn’t elaborate and no one asked.

‘We will have access to a company helicopter.’ His eyes flicked across to Arkady. ‘Mil Mi-17 IV?’

The Russian shrugged and nodded. ‘No problem.’

‘We have access to a hangar and a repair shop for any military modifications we want to make on it, plus full refuelling facilities. We’ll also have access to a Vityaz all-terrain vehicle for any cross-country movement.’

He pointed them back to the location of the penal colony itself.

‘The camp is located on a flat, forested plain. They cut timber from it at the camp so we should find a clearing that will be big enough to act as an insertion landing zone.’

Arkady grunted. ‘Rotor diameter on new Mil is twenty-one meters. It’s a big fucker.’

Alex nodded and then moved along the table to the far end where a map of the camp was laid out. He had stuck a series of A3 sheets together to provide a detailed plan. Around the edge of these were a number of large format photos, each one with a piece of string Blu-Tacked to the point where it had been taken inside the camp. Alex and Colin had spent a lot of time getting them laid out and orientated correctly.

‘Right, now, we are lucky to have some very detailed int on the inside of the camp. This plan is a copy of an official one so it’s accurate and these photos were taken last winter so are pretty up to date.’

‘Where does this int come from?’ Yamba said abruptly, both looking and sounding fierce as he sought to confirm the accuracy of the details. Overconfident assessments by intelligence officers had caused many deaths on missions he had been on.

Alex was unruffled by his challenging tone, knowing that he was just being thorough.

‘The photos come from our political contact. He runs a
company that supplies the site and is a big local player.’ He didn’t want to give the whole game away and say he was the regional governor. ‘So he was able to get taken on a tour of it. He has been planning to get the prisoner out for a couple of years now so he used the visit to take covert photos. They were snapped from a camera hidden in his coat so they’re not perfect but they give us a good idea.

‘We are also lucky because we have some information on the prisoner—his name is Roman Raskolnikov, remember him?’—there were nods from around the table—‘from a source inside the camp.’ He looked at Yamba. ‘I can’t say who, but the intelligence is good.’

Yamba refrained from questioning this.

Alex continued, ‘Now, the approach to the camp is going to be tricky. They have got a two-hundred-metre-wide area cleared from the forest all around it, no tree stumps, no cover, no nothing.’

Colin gave a sharp intake of breath and there were pained expressions from the others. They could all see in their mind’s eye the view from a watchtower out over a flat white expanse and then imagined trying to get across it without being seen. An infrared imager would make it impossible, even in the dark.

Alex saw their looks and held up a hand. ‘OK, I know, but we’ll work it out. Let me just show you the inside of the camp. It’s made up of two rectangular areas, one set inside the other. The perimeter of the outer zone is a kilometre along its longest side, so it is a lengthy fence that they have to guard. It encloses all the support buildings for the camp—like the garages, store sheds, oil tanks and the sawmill. The actual prison is inside the inner fence.’ He circled the rectangle in the middle of the camp. ‘This inner perimeter is made up of three fences of razor wire
with a three-foot gap between each. The middle wire is lit by arc lamps and electrified so we can’t even touch it without getting frazzled or being seen from the watchtowers. There are four gates in it, one in the middle of each side of the rectangle, and each has got a watchtower with a machine gun.

‘Inside the wire there’s a kitchen and canteen here, and the armoury here, but mainly it’s these nine barrack huts. They’re just numbered one, two, three, etc.’ He ran his finger round the rectangle of long, single-storey buildings. ‘Each one has about a hundred prisoners in it and its own lot of guards in a block on each end so that no one can get in or out without going through a guardroom. There are one hundred and ninety guards in total, armed with assault rifles, and there are machine guns in all the watchtowers.

‘Apart from them, our other problem will be actually
finding
Raskolnikov. There are nine hundred guys in there and they all wear the same black uniforms so he will be hard to spot. We do know his prison number is D-504 and we think he is in Barrack 9 but we don’t know exactly where he will be inside the hut. The only time we know where he will be is during morning parade. For security reasons he is always put right in front of the commandant’s platform because they have a machine-gunner up there detailed to slot him at the first sign of any escape attempt.’

‘Oh, great,’ muttered Col.

‘Hmm,’ nodded Alex, ‘so basically we have to get in there quietly and strike fast when we do go for him, or we will just have one dead opposition leader to fly to Moscow.’

He returned to his original track of describing the camp routines.