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  “I have my own snipers hunting him.”

  “Then let us hope they can salvage something from your failure,” Ivack snarled, lips pulled back from his teeth. He was trying to brazen his way through his obvious horror at the Spaniard’s ruined body. It was clear Ivack had not been in Afghanistan very long; this sort of thing was positively commonplace. Vadim hadn’t stopped maintaining situational awareness either – it was a good reason not to have to look at Ivack. He was aware, and less than pleased, that Gulag had moved in closer, presumably to better hear what Ivack had to say. Farm Boy had moved in as well. Skull’s AKS-74 looked like a toy in the big Georgian’s hands. At close to six and a half feet tall, blond, blue-eyed, Private First Class Genadi Nikoladze looked like some kind of Aryan ideal. He was by far the fittest member of the squad.

  Birdcall. Vadim looked over at the Fräulein. She’d heard it and was speaking urgently to the VDV officer, who ordered his men not to shoot as Skull and Princess grew out of the snow-covered landscape. They pushed the hoods back on their concealment suits as they made their way into the village. Princess made for Farm Boy, pulling the concealment suit off, and Skull headed towards Vadim and the KGB lieutenant.

  Princess, at four months, was the newest member of their squad. Private Tasiya Yubenkova was athletic, slender, with crystalline blue eyes, platinum silver hair and the cheekbones of a Romanov. She was quite striking, a trait that tended to cause her nothing but trouble. Vadim tried not to grind his teeth as Ivack leered at her. His weren’t the only eyes following her, however, as she slid her Dragunov sniper rifle into a hard leather back sheath and crouched down to fold the concealment suit back into her pack.

  “Report!” Ivack demanded as Skull approached. The Chechen sniper ignored him. After the Spaniard, Skull had been with Vadim the longest. He had been part of the ‘Moslem Battalion’ that had spearheaded the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and assassinated Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin. Junior Sergeant Elimkhan Kulikova’s nickname was well-earned: dark-haired, olive-skinned, and always trying to grow a beard in the field, he had a gaunt face, and the skin on his head looked oddly taut, as if stretched across bone. Some of the more superstitious soldiers in the Soviet 40th Army, those who were frightened of Asians, considered him a spectre of death, a reputation only enhanced by his aptitude as a sniper.

  “How’d she do?” Vadim asked. He couldn’t help himself. He knew that Princess was more than capable: she was a world-class shot and had been attached to an anti-assassination squad within the Russian Olympic team, until the war had become such a drain on personnel that she had been transferred to a combat unit. For some reason, however, he couldn’t force himself to stop feeling protective of her, something she knew and resented.

  Skull hesitated for a moment as he unscrewed the homemade suppressor from the barrel of his .303 Lee Enfield rifle. He’d taken the old bolt-action rifle from a mujahideen sniper he’d had a two-day-long duel with. It was more accurate than the Dragunov SVD rifle that most Soviet snipers carried. The previous owner had carved designs into the wooden furniture of the rifle, but they were obscured by the white pieces of fabric that Skull had tied to the weapon to camouflage it. The slight smile on the sniper’s thin lips was almost a grimace. It made him look more like a death’s head than ever.

  “She did fine,” Skull told him.

  “Soldier, I gave you an order!” Ivack shouted. Eyes turned their way, and Vadim saw the squad tense. Princess had shouldered her pack and taken her AKS-74 back from Farm Boy. Her eyes were boring into the back of Ivack’s head like a pair of blue lasers. The two snipers were very close, understandably. Skull ignored the KGB lieutenant.

  “Find anything?” Vadim asked.

  “He shot from about half a mile out, moved position each time. Whatever he used was big and heavy, much more than even big bore hunting rifles.” Skull removed a magazine of sub-sonic rounds from the .303 and replaced it with a magazine of normal rounds. The brigade armourer had to custom manufacture ammunition for Skull’s rifle, though the sniper took a lot from dead mujahideen as well.

  “Soldier, that weapon is clearly not regulation!” Ivack had drool running down his chin now.

  “Local footwear,” Skull continued, still ignoring the KGB officer. “But judging by the tracks, length and depth of stride: tall, heavy...”

  “Well fed,” Vadim finished. Skull nodded. Their American mercenary.

  “Why did you return before you had completed the task set to you!” Ivack was all but screaming now. Vadim felt like backing away from the lieutenant and into the lee of the transport helicopter; he was sure the American sniper would be able to hear the KGB officer no matter where he was.

  “Because I told him to,” Vadim snapped, with command in his voice. Ivack’s mouth snapped shut, though he glared at the captain. “Anything else?”

  “Present for you,” Skull said and produced a shell casing from one of the pouches on his webbing and handed it to Vadim. “He was careless.” Vadim examined the shell casing. He checked the figures stamped into the metal on the bottom of it. Ivack held out his hand.

  “Give me that bullet, captain,” he said.

  “It’s not a bullet, lieutenant,” Vadim said mildly, still studying it. “It’s a shell casing. The bullet probably blew a hole in that wall over there, or bounced off the gunship’s armour.” He looked up at Ivack. “Or blew my friend’s head off.” He held up the casing. “This is a fifty-calibre round. NATO use these in their heavy machine guns. Why is it being fired from a sniper rifle?” Ivack still had his hand out.

  “I said –” Ivack started.

  “Captain, may I?” Skull asked, glancing at his watch.

  “Of course,” Vadim told the sniper. “Tell the lieutenant – the other lieutenant – that I said the prisoners can as well.” Vadim watched as Skull walked over to where the Fräulein was looking after his gear. He grabbed a rolled-up mat from his pack and crossed over to the airborne lieutenant and spoke with him. The VDV officer glanced Vadim’s way, but nodded to the sniper.

  “What’s he doing?” Ivack demanded. Skull was talking to one of the elderly men with the prisoners. Vadim knew the sniper had only a few words in Dari, which the Tajiks spoke, but the sniper spoke Pashto quite well. It looked as though the sniper was managing to make himself understood, though distrust visibly radiated from the villagers. Skull unrolled his prayer mat and knelt down as the villagers turned to face Mecca and began to pray.

  “It’s called the Fajr prayer. Fajr means ‘dawn’ in Arabic,” Vadim told Ivack.

  “That man’s a disgrace, and presumably you know the State’s position on Islam! I’ll have you both on a charge. Now give me the shell casing, captain!”

  Vadim was worried that if Ivack didn’t stop shouting at him, one of the squad was going to kill him. Vadim tucked the shell casing into a pouch on his webbing and turned to face Ivack. The captain had starved during the siege of Stalingrad as a child, and since then had never managed to put on any weight. His physical fitness belied his gauntness, of course, though age was catching up with him quickly. He was tall, though, much taller than Ivack, who was the sort of person that it was easy to look down on.

  “Lieutenant, I think my men are here as bait.” He leaned in close to Ivack, who took a step back. “I think there is a CIA-backed mercenary sniper in these mountains with a new weapon, a heavy sniper rifle, and I think it would be something of a coup for you to capture it.”

  The truth of it was written all over the ambitious young fool’s face. Ivack swallowed and then glanced at Skull, praying with the prisoners.

  “There’s no man of fighting age here,” Ivack snapped. “This is clearly a mujahideen stronghold. I want these prisoners executed!” And Ivack was probably right. The men would be up in the mountains, waiting until they had gone.

  “And what purpose would that serve?” Vadim asked.

  “It would teach them the futility of opposing the will of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics an
d the Red Army!”

  Somehow Vadim was still surprised at the nonsense he had just heard. Ivack turned to glare at Gulag, who was openly laughing at the KGB lieutenant.

  “No, it wouldn’t. It would just make them angry, more committed to the fight.”

  Now Ivack leaned in closer to Vadim, though he had to look up.

  “Captain, it is clear that this squad is a hotbed of sedition, possibly treason. Now either follow my orders or I will have no choice but to put you under arrest.”

  Vadim gave this some thought.

  “Very well,” he said. “But we’ll do it at the very last moment before we take off, as the menfolk are probably watching us right now. The VDV will have to leave first so we can get the Hind down.”

  “Do you think I’m a fool, captain?” Ivack asked, and it took everything Vadim had not to answer. “You would watch me leave and then disobey my order. I will stay and see that the executions are carried out.”

  Are you sure you have the stomach for it, little man? Vadim wondered.

  “Lieutenant, the Hind is only capable of carrying eight men. I’m afraid there is no room for you,” Vadim pointed out.

  Ivack pointed at the Spaniard’s body. “You forget, there’s only seven of you now.”

  “Comrade lieutenant, you make an excellent point.” Vadim turned away from Ivack and beckoned to the VDV officer.

  THE SUN WAS up and Fajr prayer, which Vadim had always found quite beautiful, was over by the time the Mi-8 clawed itself up into the cold, thin mountain air and clattered off between the snow-covered peaks. Vadim was still more than a little surprised that Ivack had decided to remain.

  He’d had Farm Boy radio the Hind and tell the crew to get ready to pick them up. The gunship crew had done an exemplary job in supporting the squad, particularly given the potential threat from SAMs.

  “Well?” Ivack demanded, nodding towards the prisoners.

  “Oh, yes,” Vadim said. “Gulag?” Gulag wandered insouciantly over to both the officers. He pulled a claw hammer from his webbing and a bag of nails from a pouch.

  “Gulag used to have another nickname,” Vadim told Ivack. “He was called the Carpenter. Do you know why?”

  “Just get on with it, captain!” Ivack demanded. A number of the squad bristled, but Gulag just smiled his predatory smile.

  “Do you know how Spetsnaz execute prisoners, comrade lieutenant?” Gulag asked. He held up a nail and the hammer. “Tap, tap, crunch. In the back of the head. Saves bullets. Run out of nails, you can use shell casings.” Gulag dropped the bag of nails and the hammer at Ivack’s feet.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” the KGB lieutenant demanded. “Just get on with it!” He hadn’t noticed Skull and the Fräulein moving closer to him.

  “You want them dead, then you do it,” Vadim told him. Ivack stared at him, fear and anger warring on his face. Vadim was almost impressed that anger won out.

  “I’ll see you all in a gulag. No! I’ll have you all shot! This is treason!”

  Vadim spent a moment looking at the prisoners, and then the village. The low buildings were mostly smouldering now. He wondered how many charred bodies were amongst the wreckage. He looked down at the snow at his feet. Even churned up by their boot prints, it was still pristine, white. It looked so pure.

  “You’re right, it is,” Vadim said and then looked up at the lieutenant. “But only a small one, and out here, who’ll notice?”

  Ivack was staring at him, perhaps only now realising the mistake he’d made. Vadim nodded to Farm Boy, who started calling the gunship in.

  The butt of Skull’s .303 caught Ivack in the face, spreading the KGB lieutenant’s nose across it, putting him on his back in the snow. Then the Fräulein was on him, kneeling on his throat as he clawed at her massively muscled leg. She removed his knife and pistol, handing them off to Skull. Then, with a roar, she grabbed him by the neck and lifted him into the air. She had been a power lifter on the East German team during the 1980 Olympics in Moscow; when she’d joined the army, she’d had to wean herself off steroids and reduce her bulk, but she was still powerfully built and heavily muscled. She rammed Ivack into a mud brick wall.

  “You never speak to one of us that way, you do not eye-fuck Princess, and you certainly never raise your voice to the captain, do you understand me, you little KGB shit?” she screamed. The Fräulein was properly angry, it seemed. Ivack didn’t answer, because breathing was a significant problem for him. The Fräulein may have quit steroids, but sometimes Vadim wondered if the rage had ever left her. She turned to look at him. Vadim knew he was being asked if he wanted the KGB officer killed.

  Gulag was watching, smiling. Skull was wiping blood off the carved butt of his rifle with snow. Farm Boy was watching what was happening as he talked to the approaching gunship over the squad’s radio. He didn’t look happy, he’d never liked this sort of thing. Only the Mongol, the hulking, bullet-headed medic, was keeping an eye on their surroundings. This was sloppy, but they were all so tired.

  Private First Class Nergui Tsogt was the only other member of the team comparable in body mass to the Fräulein, though he had more fat on him. The Mongol had grown up hunting in his native Mongolia. Vadim wasn’t sure how he’d ended up in the Spetsnaz, though the USSR had close links with Mongolia, but the cheerful medic had been a very useful addition to the squad.

  “Put him down,” Vadim told his second-in-command. Reluctantly the Fräulein let Ivack go and he slid, gasping, down to the snow. “Leave the hammer and the nails!” Vadim shouted over the noise of the Hind-D as it came in to land, whipping the snow up all around them.

  THEY LEFT THE hatch to the passenger compartment open, letting in the frigid alpine wind as the gunship banked over the village. Vadim watched as the villagers gathered around Ivack. He was sure he saw one of the children pick something up from the snow.

  Vadim laid his hand on his friend’s body. He’d told Ivack there wasn’t room; after all, the Spaniard had been one of them.

  CHAPTER THREE

  0540 AFT, 8th November 1987

  Fayzabad Airport, Badakhshan Province, Afghanistan

  VADIM COULDN’T JUST stare at the poncho-wrapped corpse of his old friend. He had to look away, watch the rock walls of the twisting valleys following the course of the frozen Kokcha River below them. Normally they would be trying to suppress the anxiety of a possible missile attack, that feeling of helplessness that came with being a passenger in a flying target. Vadim had been in his fair share of helicopter crashes, as had most of the squad.

  The passenger compartment was cramped, and the dripping body wasn’t helping. They’d left the hatch open to deal with the inevitable smell of evacuated bowels. It was an undignified way to die, but they all were.

  “You shouldn’t have hit him with the three-oh-three,” Princess admonished Skull. Skull was trying to adjust the scope on his rifle. The impact with Ivack’s face had knocked it out of alignment.

  “Watch yourself,” Gulag snapped. The rifle was ungainly in the cramped passenger compartment of the gunship. Vadim understood wanting to keep busy, he understood that Skull wanted everything working optimally before they returned to Fayzabad. Their camp was little guarantee of safety; they had been hit by any number of mortar attacks, and at least one frontal assault.

  “Take it easy,” Farm Boy told Gulag. The big gentle Georgian and the stolid medic were two of the very few people the gangster actually listened to.

  Skull stopped fussing with his scope and pointed the weapon up, out of everyone’s way. Farm Boy went back to staring out the hatch. Clearly the Georgian didn’t want to look at the body either, although it was stretched across his lap. The captain had thought Farm Boy was simpleminded the first time he met him. As time passed, Vadim had realised the Georgian was a quiet, thoughtful man, whose experiences in Afghanistan troubled him deeply. Softly spoken, Farm Boy was too gentle for the Spetsnaz, or for this war. Vadim had no idea how the boy had made it through the meat labyr
inth, the maze of viscera-filled channels designed to inure recruits to the gory horrors of the battlefield, in basic training.

  Mongol’s lips were moving, presumably praying to whatever it was he believed in. The captain had decided a long time ago never to interfere with their beliefs. Only Skull really made his beliefs obvious; some form of rebellion, Vadim guessed. It did sometimes cause problems. This hadn’t been the first member of the KGB they’d ‘misplaced.’

  “Boss?” It took Vadim a moment to realise Farm Boy was talking to him. He moved slightly, making the body shift. They were flying over a gorge that emptied out into a broad, snow-covered plain. Fayzabad, a small city of some fifty thousand people, lined the right-hand bank of the river, a sprawling collection of low timber, clay and mud brick buildings, contrasting with the brutal poured concrete of Soviet state architecture. “Do you know why he was called the Spaniard?” His nickname held nearly as much mystery as Vadim’s own.

  “It’s because Vadim and the Spaniard both fought with the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War,” Gulag said and laughed at his own joke. Pavel had been popular with everyone, except Gulag. Gulag didn’t give a shit.

  “Shut up, Gulag,” the Fräulein told him. He blew her a kiss and she narrowed her eyes.

  “How old do you think I am?” Vadim asked. There were a few dry chuckles. The helicopter was descending towards Fayzabad Airport.

  “I think you stood at Lenin’s side,” Mongol suggested. A few more laughs, though Gulag’s face looked sour for some reason.

  “Maybe the colonel,” the Fräulein suggested. Now there was more laughter, and even Vadim chuckled. Colonel Dmytro ‘The Red Cossack’ Krychenko, the de facto commander of the 15th SpetsnazBrigade, was something of a legend, but not quite old enough to have fought in the October Revolution.

  “Boss?” Farm Boy asked, prompting him. They were coming in to land. It was little more than an administration building and their zastava, their fortified camp, what the Americans called a Forward Operating Base. The Hindu Kush mountains towered above it. Vadim turned to look down at his friend’s body and shook his head.