War with Russia

But now was not the time to be thinking about her; now was the time to go through his mental check list for tomorrow. Move out from here after last light, a five-kilometer tab through the forest to the final RV. Then move into position near the DZ—Drop Zone—ready to guide in the US Special Forces ODA, who were due to parachute in by HAHO—high altitude, high opening—with the radar transponder beacon Lukša had with him. Once they’d linked up with the Americans, the ODA would mark out an LZ—Landing Zone—for the helicopters bringing in the air assault force. His task was to then lead the Americans forward to recce the compound and bunker with its perimeter fence and minefield.

At the prospect of getting up close to the perimeter again, Morland felt the now-familiar cold grip of raw fear in the pit of his stomach. They’d chanced it last time and got away with it. To go back to that ring of steel and death was asking for trouble. But he consoled himself with the thought that, once they’d guided the airborne to the wire, it was job done. They were to step back and let the Americans do whatever it was they had come to do. The trouble was, in his rapidly increasing experience, he doubted it would work out like that once the bullets started flying. Plans seldom did. However, of one thing he was certain, there was nothing he could do about it right now. Instead, he closed his eyes and, body cushioned on a deep layer of last year’s pine needles, he slept.

1330 hours, Saturday, July 8, 2017

Headquarters, Kaliningrad Special Region, Kaliningrad

MAJOR ANATOLY NIKOLAYEVICH Vronsky marched into the temporary office of Colonel General Arkady Vasilyevich Kirkorov, the Commander of Western Military District, the man in charge of suppressing the Baltic insurgency.

Vronsky threw a smart, parade-ground salute. He then stood rigidly at attention, waiting for the general to speak, braced for another outburst of rage similar to the last occasion, five weeks previously, when he had debriefed him in St. Petersburg on the failure of the camp attack on the British guerrilla team.

Ordered by the President to oversee the capture of the British terrorists, Kirkorov had exploded in fury when Vronsky had blamed the failure of the attack on the poor discipline, training and weapons handling of the conscripts from the general’s beloved Motor Rifle troops. Vronsky was in no doubt that, but for the personal orders of the President, he would have been heading for the gulag.

Vronsky stood silent, eyes fixed firmly on the wall above the line of the general’s shaven bullet-head as he studied a Top Secret file spread on the desk in front of him. The key to survival in these situations, he knew—whether you were a highly decorated Spetsnaz officer or the newest recruit—was never to catch the senior officer’s eye.

Men like Kirkorov were not, in Vronsky’s experience, easy to deal with. An old-school Soviet type, he had first come to the attention of his superiors in Afghanistan in the 1980s for the scorched-earth approach he had taken to root out the Mujahidin in the Panjshir valley, regardless of the casualties to the civilian population. Subsequently, his promotion had been guaranteed as a result of the equally brutal tactics he employed as a Motor Rifle regiment commander in the Chechen wars; what he described with pride as “bringing discipline to the territory of the Chechen Republic,” but which left thousands of men, women and children dead, the capital city Grozny looking like Stalingrad, and a lasting legacy of hatred of Russia among the Muslim population of the Caucasus. A hatred that made it very much harder for the new generation of Russian Spetsnaz, like Vronsky, to establish networks of informers among the locals in order to root out and crush the insurgents.

The general was now doing much the same in the Baltics, but Vronsky’s current concern was not with them. His sole mission was to capture this British officer. Succeed and he would have the gratitude of the President. Fail and… he did not even want to think about it. His plan called for a sophisticated ambush by his Spetsnaz team, waiting downstairs for the “go” order right now. However, he had little doubt that the general would prefer to simply blitz the area and the British with it. And that was not what the President had ordered.

“Explain your thinking, Major,” the general finally said.

Vronsky caught the general’s piggy eyes looking up at him. He did not make the mistake of looking down. “Colonel General. Ever since the failed ambush, SIGINT has been trying to monitor the terrorists’ movements. They got a break when they realized that their patrol signaler has a distinctive way of signing off after a transmission. They then replayed all recorded intercepts and were able to track him as he moved south. First down through Latvia, then into Lithuania, and finally into Kaliningrad.”