War with Russia

A moment later, from the roof of the university, came three deliberate, aimed shots: the unmistakable sound of a sniper. Morland realized he had heard that sound before on the range only a week earlier, when the Latvians had given his team a demonstration of Russian infantry small arms. In fact, he had been allowed to fire it himself and its high-pitched crack was distinctive, as was the weapon itself, the special sniper rifle developed for the Spetsnaz: the VSS, also called the Vintorez or “thread cutter.” It fired a subsonic, 9 millimeter, armor-piercing cartridge, tipped with tungsten, and was capable of penetrating a 6 millimeter high-density steel plate at 100 meters.

Morland remembered joking how he hoped he never got on the wrong end of one of these and here he was now, a week later, and some bastard was using one to fire into the crowd below.

Then, a second later, there was a haphazard burst of half a magazine on automatic. “That’s a bog standard AK 47M,” Morland muttered to himself. Now the shooting sounded as if it was the work of a lone lunatic and no longer a trained professional.

Morland saw the crowd part and start to run and, unable to see exactly where the shots had come from, he switched his binoculars there. On the ground, gushing blood, writhing and twitching in their death throes were the targets.

A TV crew from Russia Today, conveniently close by, rushed to get their close-up shots: three young, ethnic Russian girls murdered by a crazed, doubtless “nationalist,” gunman. But shot, Morland would swear, by one or more Spetsnaz snipers from the top of the university building. Those terrible images would be circulating the globe in moments.

Any more victims? No. That extra burst had definitely been for deception and had been aimed to miss. But Morland knew that the black-fleeced Russian with the mobile phone, the man whose picture he had in his camera, was the man who had planned this atrocity; the man who had given the kill order and who had as good as pulled the trigger.

“One day I’ll get you, you bastard,” he vowed.

0700 hours, Wednesday, May 18, 2017

National Defense Control Center, Moscow

FYODOR FYODOROVICH KOMAROV arrived early that morning at the National Defense Control Center, the NDCC, where the War Cabinet meeting was to be held. The news from Riga had been phoned through to him on Tuesday evening, just as he arrived back at his apartment behind Tverskaya Street. He’d been at the gym working out on the judo mat with the President. Komarov had checked again the arrangements for this morning’s meeting and was drinking tea in the office of the Commander, Lieutenant General Mikhail Filatov, as he waited for the President to arrive.

In the corner of the office, Russia Today was running and re-running the story of the killing of the three ethnic Russian girls on its 24-hour news bulletin. The open, smiling faces of the three girls, all promising students at the University of Riga, stared out from the TV screen.

Komarov raised his glass of tea in silent salute to Major Vronsky. He had chosen the victims well. They were beautiful. That alone would cause maximum impact and outrage and reinforce the messages being broadcast by Olga Bataman, the highly photogenic, articulate presenter on the morning news. Outrage that young, hard-working, well-educated Russian girls, their lives ahead of them callously snuffed out by a fanatic’s bullets. And all the while peacefully exercising their democratic right to protest against the discrimination imposed on them by the fascist Latvian state. Followed by desperate pleas from the Latvian Russian Union for Russian protection. Russian mothers in tears, fury on their faces, demanding protection for their children. The outrage of a sniper allowed to escape by the Latvian police. Who would be next?

Meanwhile, Filatov sat nervously at his desk. The youthful-looking Commander of the NDCC who, with his perfectly coiffed hair and full lips, seemed more like a fashionable hairdresser than a Russian general, clearly knew that this was a big day for him. But it was also a dangerous day. It was rare for the War Cabinet to meet here and that meant he and his staff had to get everything exactly right.