First Strike Weapon Read online

  An Abaddon Books™ Publication

  www.abaddonbooks.com

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  First published in 2017 by Abaddon Books™, Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.

  Editor: David Moore

  Cover Art: Clint Langley

  Design: Maz Smith

  Marketing and PR: Rob Power

  Editor-in-Chief: Jonathan Oliver

  Head of Books and Comics Publishing: Ben Smith

  Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley

  Chief Technical Officer: Chris Kingsley

  ISBN: 978-1-78618-079-7

  Tomes of The Dead™, Special Purposes, Abaddon Books and Abaddon Books logo are trademarks owned or used exclusively by Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited. The trademarks have been registered or protection sought in all member states of the European Union and other countries around the world. All right reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  To Kiera & Bill, who are also fans of splattery messes.

  CHAPTER ONE

  1604 Eastern Standard Time (EST), 16th November 1987

  Grand Central Station, New York City

  THE SCREAMING WAS more distant now, and the gunfire had stopped.

  Captain Vadim Scorlenski had blood on his face and meat in his mouth. He spat out the gobbets of raw flesh and tried not to look at them.

  He held his Stechkin pistol loosely in his right hand and looked across the Park Avenue Viaduct over 42nd Street, towards the dark mouth of the Park Avenue Tunnel. At his back was the colonnaded frontage of the huge, square, neoclassical building that was Grand Central Station. Ancient Roman imperialism, complete with statues of Hercules, Minerva and Mercury, reimagined in the early 20th century and transplanted to America. It was dark now, or as dark as it seemed to get in this city. The tall buildings running down either side of the viaduct were well-lit. Focusing on them, it was easy to believe that nothing was happening. They provided a counterpoint to the wreckage spread out in front of him: the bullet-riddled police cars and yellow cabs, the Emergency Services Unit SWAT van on its roof, cars crushed underneath it where the RPG hit had flipped it into the air, and the burning wreckage of an NYPD helicopter. Everywhere, a carpet of empty shell casings, and so much blood on the ground; but so few bodies.

  Other than the distant screaming echoing through the concrete and glass canyons, the only other sounds were the steady drip of blood and tinny music coming from someone’s transistor radio. The insipid American teen, singing about how they were alone now, contrasted obscenely with what he’d done, they’d done. The crime he’d helped commit. Vadim had thought himself a monster. He believed that he had come to terms with it. Now he realised he had never really known what a monster was. It had been a long time since Vadim had felt capable of weeping, and now the tears could not come. He was not as he had been. Instead he started to laugh, until the laughter became a dry, painful sob. Or it would have been painful, if pain were something he still felt.

  He had no idea how he’d ended up out front of the grand train station. He was missing time, and his face was covered in someone else’s blood. The last thing he remembered was being in the lower levels, amongst the platforms, looking for a way out for his squad. He had turned to find a terrified New York City Transit Police officer raising his revolver. He had been little more than a boy. Vadim hadn’t been able to bring up his AK-74 quickly enough. The police officer had just been doing his job, protecting the passengers on the platform. For some reason, Vadim found this comforting. He hoped the boy and the passengers had lived, though he knew it was unlikely.

  He saw the bright light first. He closed his eyes and it shone through his eyelids, but not bright enough to damage his retinas permanently, assuming that was still an issue. They hadn’t targeted New York itself; the detonation had been to the west somewhere. Another bright light followed moments later; the oil refineries in New Jersey, maybe. The high-rise canyons of New York protected Vadim from the worst of the skin-burning flash.

  The white light turned the city into a photographic negative for a moment. Then another flash from the south and he knew that Philadelphia had gone. The ground and the mighty buildings shook, the road over the viaduct cracked. The firestorm had blown itself out by the time it had reached Manhattan Island, leaving only hot, radioactive winds to howl through the artificial canyons.

  “Fools,” he tried to say to himself. His voice sounded dry, like the crack of wood snapping in a fire. It didn’t sound like him anymore. He wondered, if he stood up and looked to the west, would he see mushroom clouds?

  Lights in the surrounding buildings winked out, but he could still hear the tinny American pop music; the electromagnetic pulse had apparently not reached Manhattan. Presumably, it had taken out a facility that supplied power to the city. Lights flickered on in some of the surrounding buildings as emergency power kicked in. Some of the light was red, which seemed appropriate to Vadim for a number of reasons. He almost started laughing again, but he knew that if he did, he wouldn’t stop, until he put the Stechkin to his head and blew his brains out. Even then, he wasn’t sure that would stop him now.

  He felt cold. No, that wasn’t true. He didn’t really feel anything. He knew he was cold, though. He couldn’t feel his heart beating, his chest rising and falling, he couldn’t even feel his wounds. The only thing he felt was the hunger; the need to hunt, to feed. It was all-encompassing. It took everything he had to remain sitting there, not to answer the hunger’s call, not to let go of himself. He wondered if he’d still be there, locked in behind his eyes, witness to atrocities at a new level. He suspected, however, that it would be a sweet release from the war inside himself. He had to do the right thing.

  Just for once, he thought. He tasted the Stetchkin’s barrel, felt it grind against his teeth as he angled it up. He started to squeeze the trigger, watched the hammer click back.

  Then he saw her. The Fräulein, his massively built East German second-in-command. Sergeant Liesl Sauer of the East German Army had been transferred to the Spetsnaz company he now commanded. After Skull, the Fräulein had been with him the longest. She was moving between the bullet-riddled police cars amongst the flames, covered in blood. Some of it was undoubtedly hers, but the blood on her face probably wasn’t.

  Vadim had no idea why he was still in control of his body, still sentient, but he owed it to the Fräulein to put her out of her misery before seeing to himself. He stood up and made his way across the viaduct towards her. The Fräulein’s head twitched around to look at him as soon as he moved. Vadim raised the pistol as he approached. She was staring at him.

  He needed to get close. He had no idea where his rifle was, and he had to shoot her in the head, at least twice. To make sure that she was at peace before he followed.

  She waited for him, her flat, brutish face lit by the orange flickering flame of the burning helicopter. Then he saw it in her eyes: recognition, intelligence. Liesl was still in there somewhere.

  “Vadim?” a Ukrainian-accented voice asked from behind him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  0452 Afghanistan Time (AFT), 6th November 1987

  North-Eastern Badakshan Province, Afghanistan

  THE VILLAGE WAS burning, and the Spaniard was dead. The Hind D attack helicopter had dropped incendiaries to soften up the mujahideen before landing
Vadim and his people. The helicopter had then circled the area, staying low and using the surrounding mountainous terrain as cover, whilst providing the squad with air support, should they need it. The nap-of-the-earth flying was prudent; after all they were here hunting American Stingers, man-portable surface-to-air missiles. The missiles were the mujahideen’s most effective weapon against the Shaitan-Arba, or ‘Satan’s Chariot’, as they called the fearsome Hind gunships. Vadim and his squad were acting on intelligence provided by the KGB. An American mercenary in the pay of their CIA was rumoured to be bringing the Stingers in from nearby northern Pakistan.

  Vadim shifted slightly, his boots crunching the snow underfoot. He was watching a burning tree, foolishly destroying his night vision. Beyond the tree were the snow-covered peaks of the Hindu Kush. The mountains were truly what people meant when they used the word ‘majestic’; ancient and enduring, they couldn’t care less about the petty squabbles of humans that set villages alight and bloodied the crisp new snow.

  Nothing was how it was supposed to be. He was supposed to be second-in-command of the company, but the major had been killed more than three months ago. So he had ended up in command, except their operational tempo had been such that he had less than a squad left. Thanks to bullshit like this morning’s mission. They hadn’t been allowed to plan the operation themselves. One squad in one gunship for an entire village of Tajiks. It was a platoon-strength job, for at least two gunships. Vadim hadn’t wanted to drop incendiaries on the village. His company had a rule: don’t kill them unless they’re armed. It had nothing to do with sentiment. They just didn’t feel like providing the various Afghan peoples with any further reason to hate them. That said, he had a moral responsibility to get as many of his people home as possible, and if that meant burning a village, then so be it.

  The surviving villagers were mainly frightened children and weeping women, and a few very old, but still steely-eyed men staring at the Spetsnazcommandos with undisguised hatred. All of them were kneeling on the open ground where the village met the high plateau. Against Vadim’s better judgement, Gulag – Private Nikodim Timoshenko – was watching over the prisoners. Like the rest of them, the Muscovite wore a white snow smock over his uniform, but the hood was down and Vadim could see the prison tattoos creeping up over his neckline. The tattoos marked him as one of the Bratva, the ‘Brotherhood,’ Mother Russia’s unacknowledged organised crime network. His gloved hands hid the two fingers he’d lost to frostbite in the Siberian forced labour camp. His face was lean and hungry, and there was something animalistic just under the surface. Calculating eyes always looking for a weakness. Open contempt on his face as he looked down at the villagers.

  The sun was little more than a distant glow behind the mountains in the east; most of the illumination came from the fires still burning in the village. He could make out the Fräulein standing a little way from him, watching his back. She was holding Princess’s AKS-74, her own RPKS-74 light machine gun slung across her back. The snipers, Princess and Skull, were above the village in the mountains, hunting for the Spaniard’s killer. The Hind gunship was playing bait for the snipers; recklessly, to Vadim’s mind. He checked his watch; Princess and Skull were due back soon and he hadn’t heard any gunfire. Not that he necessarily would.

  He glanced at the Spaniard’s body. Not even he knew where Sergeant Pavel Orlinsky had gotten the nickname, and out of everyone in the squad he had known him the longest. They had met in Angola, and spent time in Cuba, and South and Central America together.

  They had been debussing from the helicopter; Vadim had been last out. The squad had taken up positions surrounding the Hind, checking all around them, and Pavel had stood up to move. One second he was there, the next he was on the ground, six feet back from where he’d been standing, his rib cage hollowed out and his head blown clean off. They’d scattered for cover as another round hit the Hind, sparking off the flying tank’s armour as it took off and peeled away from the village. A third round had blown a hole the size of a car wheel in the mud-brick wall of one of the houses. The shots were still echoing over the plateau when Skull and Princess had shouted out that they were dropping their carbines and heading into the mountains. Vadim had told them to be back before 5am. Skull, the Chechen sniper, would want to be back for morning prayer anyway. The two snipers had pulled the hoods of their concealment suits over their heads and run into the rocks above the village. Another shot had echoed out, powdering a boulder behind Princess’s heels. Vadim still had no idea where the sniper was, but judging by the delay between the report and the hit, it was quite some distance. He’d heard the whoosh of rockets being fired from the pods under the Hind’s stubby wings; he guessed the crew of the gunship had seen something. A line of fireballs rolled across a steep, shale-covered slope in the distance. The gunship closed and strafed the impact area with rounds from the 12.7mm four-barrel Yak-B machine gun under its nose. Vadim had no idea if the rockets had hit anything, but no more shots were forthcoming. It was still a while before they emerged from cover.

  “Boss,” the Fräulein said quietly. On day one of the brutal Spetsnaz training, every recruit was given a nickname, hence ‘the Fräulein.’ Some stuck, others didn’t. Vadim had never liked his nickname, but Spetsnaz units tended to be informal, so he answered to either Boss or Vadim.

  “I can hear it,” he told his newly promoted second-in-command. A lone helicopter – a Mi-8 transport helicopter, at a guess – making its way through the twilight gloom, threading in and out of the high mountain passes at close to its operational ceiling.

  “We expecting anyone?” she asked.

  Vadim just shook his head.

  “This can’t be good.”

  Vadim and the Fräulein moved towards where Gulag was standing over the prisoners as the ungainly-looking Mi-8 clattered in to land. A platoon of VDV airborne troops piled out of the transport. Vadim vaguely recognised the lieutenant in charge of them. He didn’t know the man with him, but he wore the rank and uniform of a lieutenant in the KGB border guards. The Fräulein glanced at Vadim as the two officers approached. The KGB officer’s uniform looked crisp and clean. They came to a halt and the KGB officer saluted, earning a withering look from the VDV officer.

  “Put your damn hand down,” Vadim snapped. The KGB officer looked as though he’d been slapped.

  “Comrade captain, I am Lieutenant Ivack. And I may well just be a lieutenant, but I am a lieutenant in the KGB. My position holds more authority than my rank. I was merely showing courtesy.” Young and keen and rake thin, he would have been handsome but for the familiar fanatic’s gleam in his eyes. Children like this made Vadim feel every one of his fifty-three years. That and the all the pains in his joints, how much he now felt the cold, and how easily he got out of breath these days.

  “Your courtesy could get him killed,” the VDV officer muttered.

  “We don’t salute out here, lieutenant. It tells any watching snipers who’s in charge,” Vadim explained before turning to the VDV officer. “Lieutenant, I have a squad covering a lot of ground. Could we rotate your men onto security and guarding the villagers while I bring my people in?”

  The VDV officer nodded. He looked haggard, like every other soldier serving in this war.

  “Thank you, please coordinate with Sergeant Sauer.” Vadim gestured to his second-in-command. The VDV officer nodded curtly and strode over to the Fräulein and began conversing. He didn’t even introduced himself; probably too tired.

  Vadim turned back to Ivack, trying not to sigh. “Frankly, lieutenant, I could have done with the extra manpower and another helicopter three hours ago.”

  “Did you find the Stingers?” the lieutenant all but demanded. Vadim narrowed his grey eyes. It was clear what Ivack had done: let Vadim and his squad do the dirty work so he could fly in at the last moment, with a platoon of VDV no less, and claim the find as his own.

  “I’m afraid not,” Vadim said, through clenched teeth.

  “What is the re
ason for your failure?” Ivack demanded.

  “Mostly the absence of any Stingers.”

  “The intelligence was good!” Ivack insisted.

  “And yet...”

  “Did you find any trace of them? Did you take any of the mujahideenprisoner?”

  “Anyone fit enough to hold a gun is in the mountains,” Vadim told him. We burned this village for nothing, he decided not to add.

  “So you found nothing, but still managed to get one of your men killed. What extraordinary incompetence,” Ivack said, smiling coldly. Vadim knew he was trying to goad him, and frankly, he was doing a good job. Under normal circumstances he would have ignored the young fool, but he’d had little sleep in the last ten days.

  “We think we encountered your American, though,” Vadim said. He saw the rest of the squad approaching out of the corner of his eye. They weren’t bunching together, they were sticking close to cover and keeping up their situational awareness. They were, however, close enough to hear Ivack, which probably wasn’t ideal for morale. Vadim nodded towards the Spaniard’s body. They’d laid him on his poncho, used two fence poles to turn it into a stretcher. The Mongol, the squad’s hulking medic, had lodged their dead comrade’s severed head in his ruined chest cavity to stop it from rolling around; he was their friend, but they were all practical people. Ivack blanched when he saw the mess the corpse was in. “Looks like he’s been hit by a Dashka, doesn’t he?” The Dashka was the DShK 12.7mm heavy machine gun. “Except it was fired from a sniper rifle. That’s a big round for a sniper rifle. Is there anything the KGB wants to share?” Vadim stretched his aching back and shifted his slung AK-74 into a slightly more comfortable position.

  “Do you have the sniper?” Ivack managed. He looked as though he was about to throw up.