December (31 page)

Alex poked his head round the corner of a window in the bottom floor of the TV station that hadn’t been shot up yet. He waited for the first troops to break cover from the office building and then yelled into his walkie-talkie to the volunteers stationed above the entrance, ‘Now!’

The six guys had each prepped two grenades and lobbed them out of the loophole window at the troops. They then ran for their lives along the corridor away from the windows as the twelve grenades went off outside and the full weight of attacking fire came smashing back in where they had been. Two guided missiles slammed into the thick concrete and
blew in the wall, sending dust and fragments down the corridor after them.

After that Colonel Vronsky brought up a BTR to lead the assault into the lobby. It growled up next to the office block as the attackers reloaded and readied themselves for the final push. The smoke grenade launchers on the front of the APC banged and a fan of six grenades shot out. Soldiers lobbed more out into the open. The grenades spun around in the snow, spraying out oily fumes that dispersed into a thick red smoke screen over the open ground leading up to the foyer. Shouts and whistles sounded and a hurricane of gunfire opened up on the entrance, the loopholes over it and any other potential point of return fire.

Alex peered carefully down through a hole blown by an RPG explosion in the wall of an office. This was it: the final assault, and he had run out of options. There was nothing he could do to stop it now.

All the attacking soldiers were focused on this final push, firing at points in front of them, and didn’t notice two civilians running along the front of the office block, right across their line of fire. Where streaks of red machine-gun tracers spat out of ground-floor windows they just ducked their heads down and ran under them. They got as close to the tower as they could and then kneeled down between two windows, breathing hard in the swirling red smoke all around them and eyeing the fifty-metre gap to the foyer: it was filled with smoke and machine-gun fire.

Sergey stood up to run and looked back at Fyodor, his face distorted in desperation.

‘Come on, we can make it. Let’s go!’

Fyodor stared back at him. His eyes narrowed and flicked out to his right, over the hellish no man’s land, and then
back to Sergey, calculating the risks. He nodded and Sergey turned to run.

As he burst out away from the building something made him glance to the right to check that Fyodor was with him. He saw the impassive face standing still by the wall looking at him and then it turned and disappeared back into the swirling red mist.

Sergey was already out in the open; he was fully committed. He threw his arms out, shouted, ‘
Russkaya dusha
!’ and ran for his life.

The attacking soldiers were hunched over their sights, focused on hitting the foyer, the loopholes or the TV station above. The appearance of a single, screaming, unarmed madman running at full speed across in front of them took them by surprise.

‘What the fuck…?’

‘Is he ours?’

Fire slackened off as confused faces flicked towards commanders.

Before they had time to even answer the questions, the figure disappeared into the red fog, charged in through the shattered lobby, vaulted over the furniture barricade and disappeared.

Colonel Vronsky saw the madman’s dash and ordered renewed effort. ‘Keep going!’

The eight-wheeled BTR-80 charged forward through the smoke, leaving red whorls in its wake. Its engine roared as it drove up the shallow flight of steps to the foyer and smashed into the remains of the furniture barricade. Files of troops ran forward on either side of it, rifles and RPGs held ready. They flattened themselves against the tower base and prepared to make the final dash through into the basement to get at the generators.

Having cleared a way through the barricade, the BTR reversed out and the soldiers around it threw a shower of fragmentation grenades into the room, which exploded, sending out bursts of metal splinters.

The BTR also exploded and blew over onto its side. The deep thumps and shockwaves of more explosions came from the direction of the office block. Tracer rounds started streaking in at the assault troops from the north of the tower. Men about to run into it were dashed against the wall and spun round. The others threw themselves on the ground.

Shouts came from confused men: ‘What the fuck is going on? Which fucking idiots are firing at us?’

Soldiers crawled away into cover behind the burning BTR. Engines roared in the red fog around them and more gunfire crashed out. Guided missiles streaked in from the south of the tower as well. They were taking hits from both directions now. A BMP-3 on the edge of the woods took a missile and exploded with a deep boom.

A huge metal monster burst through the smoke in front of the foyer, smashed into the back of the burning BTR and spun it out of the way. The big gun traversed round towards the office block and fired with a white flash that swirled the fog violently.

The assault troops broke and ran as the tanks and BMP-3s of the 568th chased them back into the woods, chainguns spitting out defiance at them.

Alex led the team out of the lift and into the shattered foyer.

They moved carefully with their weapons held ready. They still couldn’t believe that the 568th had arrived and they were actually alive.

Like the others, Alex’s face was caked with blood and dust from the missile explosions. Their eyes flicked round the lobby, taking in the devastation. As they stepped slowly forward their boots crackled on a carpet of broken glass. Every wall and surface was pockmarked with bullet and RPG holes and stank of cordite. A red fog swirled around in patches on the floor, stirred by the gentle wind coming in where the glass wall had been shot out.

They moved forward and took up defensive positions behind the bits of furniture still scattered around. They could hear the 568th troops still out in hot pursuit in the woods. The black hulk of the BTR burned on the steps in front of them and bodies were strewn across the open ground to the office block, which was also now on fire from all the tank rounds and missiles that had hit it.

‘Foyer is clear. You can come down,’ Alex said into his walkie-talkie. Another lift shaft hummed as Lara, Roman and Grigory descended. They too walked out in stunned silence as they surveyed the devastation.

Something rattled across the hall and five assault rifles swung round at it. Sergey pushed the bullet-riddled door from the stairs open and it fell off its hinges.

Lara shrieked and rushed over to him, throwing her arms around him. ‘Sergey! Sergey!’

Chaos broke out as everyone forgot their imminent demise and ran over.

‘What the fuck happened to you?’ Roman demanded delightedly.

Sergey was grinning from ear to ear and was only too pleased to tell a good tale. ‘They chucked us off the Metro at Tsvetnoy Bulvar so we decided to walk here, but then someone in the crowd said there was a police cordon. Fyodor wanted to play it safe and take it slowly so we had to stop to buy some new coats and hats.’ He held out his cheap parka; he had lost the hat in his mad dash. ‘Then we hid in a public toilet until I made him carry on. We walked through a back route, around all the housing estates and then over the railway line.’

‘Where’s Fyodor?’ Grigory asked with a concerned look.

Sergey looked confused. ‘Well, he was right here,’ he gestured to his side with both hands, ‘and then I went to run in here. I looked back, but he had stopped.’ He paused and looked shocked. ‘Then he just turned and went…’

The others looked at him, trying to work out what had happened.

Lara’s mood turned icy. ‘I think our gallant general probably looked at the situation here and decided that his best interests lay elsewhere.’

The others looked down at the ground, but from what they knew of Fyodor’s motivation for the coup, they could see that it made sense.

Sergey, typically, was the least affected by it. ‘Hey, but we are alive!’ he shouted.

Other staff were coming down out of the lifts now, looking at their smashed building. UCO supporters were less bothered about the damage and ran out of the lifts with blue flags flying, down the steps outside and over to the 568th soldiers, who were returning.

Tanks, APCs and Tunguska anti-aircraft vehicles rumbled back in from the woods. Captain Darensky stood in the turret of his huge T-90 tank, grinning, and ordered his troops to take up 360-degree defensive positions around the tower.

Blue Revolution supporters jumped up and down on top of the tanks, waving blue flags for the cameras, and the media girls went mad kissing soldiers. A huge cheer went up from the troops as Lara did a lap of honour round the base, stopping continually to kiss her fans.

On CNN, General Fyodor Mostovskoy sat next to President Krymov in the Kremlin press office as if they were, and had never been anything but, close allies.

Sergey was incensed. ‘That fucking son of a bitch traitor! How the fuck can he just sit there next to Krymov! We only just betrayed him!’

‘Sergey, darling, will you shut up, please? I’m trying to listen!’ Lara snapped, reached for the remote and turned the volume up louder on the large TV in a conference room.

The Kremlin press room was buzzing with chatter between correspondents from all the foreign and domestic media as they speculated about what might be said. Journalists moved around in front of Mostovskoy, hunched down on the floor shifting their microphones about amongst the mass of them on the table, like a large flower arrangement, or trying to slot small tape recorders into it. Captain Bunin shepherded them out of the way, trying to get the press conference going as fast as possible.

The CNN Moscow editor, Gerry Kramer, standing at the back of the room, managed to squeeze in a quick broadcast to his anchor before they got going. ‘Well, Mike, this is the latest in an extraordinary morning here in Moscow. We can hardly believe that it was only a few hours ago that Roman
Raskolnikov flew back into the capital in such a dramatic fashion. Since then there has been an alternative government announced at the Ostankino tower, an appalling massacre to rival Bloody Sunday, a huge gun battle and now this. One of the original plotters has realigned himself with the Krymov regime. We have no idea what is going on here, and it’s not often you’ll hear me say that, Mike.’

There was a loud cough from the front and Captain Bunin spoke to quieten down the feverish journalistic babble. Lara and everyone were watching CNN on a satellite feed—they weren’t relaying it on from Ostankino on the terrestrial network for obvious reasons. That meant that Russians without a satellite dish couldn’t see it but enough had dishes that the coverage could still deal a serious blow to the support for the revolution, depending on what Fyodor said. They all waited anxiously to hear.

‘Please, ladies and gentlemen, Lieutenant-General of the Airforce Mostovskoy will now address the press conference.’

Fyodor didn’t bat an eyelid. He was sitting behind a desk dressed once again in his full airforce uniform and acted as if he had never had any notion of disloyalty to the regime. Krymov sat next to him with his arms folded across his chest and his chin in the air, with the look of a man who was master in his own house again.

‘Mr President, people of Russia, ladies and gentlemen of the press, I have called this press conference because I wish to make plain to you what I have learned from my penetration of the foreign coup attempt this morning. It was important for an agent of the Russian government to shadow the plotters in order to determine the full extent of their connections with foreign governments.’

‘Head-fucker!’ shouted Sergey in outrage, before Lara slapped him to shut him up again.

‘This “Blue Revolution”,’ he uttered the words with icy contempt, ‘is exactly the same as the Orange Revolution, the Rose Revolution, the Tulip Revolution and all the other criminal movements inspired by fascist governments. As Russians we must be on our guard against these foreign saboteurs. We have been infiltrated!’ Fyodor let slip a rare flash of anger.

Next to him Krymov shifted in his seat, nodded and muttered, ‘Fascists.’

‘Through my work inside the coup, I have been able to confirm to our air units, who had been misled by them, that the real reason for the plot is to allow the fascist agent Shaposhnikov to take over control of all areas of the United Aircraft Corporation whilst extending his grasp of the media that has distorted and misrepresented so much freedom in Russia.

‘If anyone questions this information then I am happy to provide them with the name of a well-known British mercenary commander hired by the British government to organise this coup in retaliation for Russia’s entirely justified withdrawal of its energy services to that country, following their unjustified aggression against the peace-loving people of Russia.’

Alex froze. He could imagine Harrington, the PM and the Cobra committee watching this in their bunker under Downing Street.

Oh fuck, this is heading towards World War Three. We have just started a fight with a nuclear-tipped psychopath who now has concrete proof that Brits are involved.

Alex knew that no matter how ‘deniable’ Harrington claimed he was, at the end of the day he and Colin were former British army officers and that was enough in any ordinary Russian’s mind, let alone Krymov’s, to label the whole coup a foreign-backed plot.

He had to hand it to Mostovskoy, though; his volte-face was unbelievable, performed without a hint of irony. It was vintage Soviet era stuff—claim that black is white and just stonewall any naysayers.

After Fyodor had finished reading his prepared statement, Krymov took over the mike, and leaned forward, jabbing his finger at the journalists.

‘You lot need a lesson in journalism! You see, now you have clear evidence of everything I have been saying to you for years. I wasn’t making it up! These foreign bastards have strangled our economy. I call on all free Russian people to refute the efforts of Shaposhnikov, who has been behind this campaign of corruption and gangsterisation. Through his greed he has been responsible for driving out our valued foreign partners in the petrol refineries. I say to TNK-BP, Total and ExxonMobil and all other foreign investors that once we have crushed this unacceptable face of Russian capitalism then they will be able to operate in Russia again, free from the scourge of the harassment that Shaposhnikov has led. And we will crush them! Now that the airforce has been set right about the truth of this foreign plot they are once again in their true role of defenders of the Motherland. Yes, now they have learned who their boss is, and I have already issued tactical orders to them, so those sons of bitches in Ostankino will also be learning a lesson today.’ He couldn’t help grinning here. ‘Yes, they’re going to be meeting a
real
father-figure.’ He gave an odd laugh.

Bunin brought the conference to a rapid end, sensing that Krymov might be about to go off on one of his rants. ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the press, thank you for your time this morning and I would urge you to remain here in the Kremlin press centre, where we will be able to keep you updated with the rapid progress of the President’s reassertion of control. Thank you very much.’

Krymov and Fyodor stood up and walked out of the door at the back of the room and up the stairs to the President’s office.

The journalists stood up and either got on the phone to their editors or began doing live broadcasts standing away from the rest of the crowd. The room was full and they were all clearly there to stay.

Sergey continued to watch the screen in disbelief as Lara hit mute. He shook his head, muttering, ‘Fucking traitor,’ and then looked at her.

She was furious at Fyodor, but also more aware than Sergey of the irony of what he was saying, having himself just betrayed the government.

The evil shape of a Mil Mi-24 gunship roared past right outside the window and everyone ducked; its heavy rotors thumped the air in the room.

‘Let’s get up top, use the Kords on it!’ Alex shouted to the team.

They ran for their weapons and lugged the two heavy machine guns upstairs. The Mil Mi-24 was one helicopter he was very afraid of and he wished he had something more serious than just machine guns; its titanium rotors and armoured body were designed to withstand 12.7mm hits.

As the six members of the team ran up the stairs to the roof, Alex keyed the mike on his headset and called Captain Darensky, who was in charge of the 568th defence ring around the tower, over the local command net they had agreed. He shouted as he ran: ‘Darensky! We have a Mil Mi24 overhead! Can you hit it? Over.’

What he wanted to say was, ‘How the fuck did you let that get near the tower?’ but it was too late for that.

Darensky’s voice crackled back to him. ‘Negative! Major Devereux, aircraft is a friendly! Major Oleg Levin has defected
from the airforce and flown it from Torzhok.’ Alex knew that was the main Russian airforce helicopter base a hundred miles northwest of Moscow. ‘He requested permission to land on the roof and I gave it.’

Great, thanks for telling me, Alex thought, but said, ‘OK, we’ll go and see what he wants.’

‘Stand down!’ he called to the others, who were lugging the heavy guns ahead of him on the stairs. ‘Apparently, he’s a friendly, defecting to our side.’

Despite this report, they were still very careful, creeping up the stairs with rifles held ready. The Mil was sideslipping in to land, blowing a gale of snow across the roof. The Russian airforce nicknamed it the Krokodil and Alex could see why: it was a very long aircraft with a green and brown camouflage-speckled body, ending in a snout-like cockpit with a bulging double canopy; the Gatling gun and refuelling probe stuck out under this like jagged canines from a jaw.

It landed and settled onto its three wheels, winding its rotors down. The fearsome array of armaments, in the nose and on its short wings, was pointing directly at Alex, standing inside the doors at the top of the stairs. As Major Levin moved his head in the cockpit, looking around him to see if anyone else was coming, the 12.7mm, six-barrelled gun under the nose followed sensors in his helmet to stay on his line of sight, making it twitch as if it were alive. As Alex opened the door and walked out it flicked over to point straight at him.

Well, he’d better be on our side or I am mincemeat, Alex thought as he walked towards the double cockpit.

Levin saw him and waved, though, popped the cockpit and swung his leg out as it hummed open above him. He held up a hand, uncertain of his reception.

Alex waved back, walked over and shook hands. The short Russian in a green flightsuit climbed down from the large aircraft and removed his helmet, revealing cropped black hair and a rounded face.

They shook hands and, despite a naturally serious disposition, Levin couldn’t help smiling with relief that he had made the risky transfer between the two sides.

Alex led him down to the conference room and Roman, Sergey and the others questioned him.

‘Why have you joined us?’ asked Roman, smiling but reserving his judgement on the newcomer.

‘Mr Raskolnikov, you need to know that the tower is about to be attacked. The other officers in my squadron are meeting to discuss the situation in Torzhok now. Both General Mostovskoy and the commander-in-chief of the airforce, General Korshunov, have ordered us to change sides and support Krymov now.’ He became suddenly angry. ‘But after I saw those fuckers shooting people this morning, I said to myself, “Never! Never will I take an order from this government again!”’

He paused to control himself and carried on, ‘I don’t know whether they’ll agree but I think that in the end they will follow the chain of command because at least that way their arses will be covered.’ He shrugged. ‘We initially thought you guys were going to win but after Mostovskoy defected, nobody knows what the hell is going on so they’ll just take the safest route for now and say they were obeying orders.’

Roman looked at Sergey, who pursed his lips but said nothing. He then nodded to Levin, convinced by the sincerity of the anger he showed about the OMON massacre that his defection was genuine.

‘OK…and if they do attack? What will happen?’ Roman glanced across at Alex as well, who had been trying to work
it out. A Mil Mi-24 was a flying tank with a huge amount of firepower and the idea of a squadron of them attacking worried him greatly.

Levin continued, ‘Well, the orders were to attack and knock out any anti-aircraft capability that you have, especially the three Tunguskas. I’m not exactly sure why they want to degrade your anti-aircraft defences, presumably because they have something else lined up. I heard from our squadron signals officer that he had been liaising with Engels airforce base and the only unit based there is the 121st Guards Heavy Bomber Regiment. They fly White Swans.’

He looked round at the group with a regretful expression at having delivered such bad news. The Tu-160 Tupolev bomber was famous in Russia, as both the heaviest and fastest bomber in the world, capable of carrying forty tonnes of bombs at over Mach 2. The huge, swept-wing aircraft got its nickname because it looked as graceful as Concorde and was painted white to reflect the flash of the atomic weapons it drops.

‘The base is four hundred miles southeast of Moscow but they could be here in half an hour if their officers agree to back Krymov.’ Levin fell silent.

The others were looking at him with wary, calculating stares as they tried to figure out what their next move should be.

Sergey nodded and then spoke with quiet intensity:‘That’s what Krymov meant.’ The others looked round at him. ‘When he said we will be going to meet a real father-figure, in the press conference.’

Major Levin looked at him with a startled expression.

Sergey nodded back at him. ‘Yes, I think he would use it. Go on.’ He gestured to Levin to explain.

The small major looked round at the others and then spoke
guardedly. ‘The Father of All Bombs is a fuelair device they developed in response to the American MOAB—the Mother of All Bombs. The Americans used it to blow up the whole Tora Bora mountain in Afghanistan. The Russian version is even more effective. It’s the most powerful subatomic munition in the world; it weighs seven tonnes but yields the equivalent of forty-four tonnes of TNT. It’s dropped by a White Swan and it’s stored at Engels.’

He fell silent again.

Sergey continued in a grim voice, ‘Yes, Krymov is capable of using it. He always used to talk about the FOAB. It was his favourite defence project.’

In his mind’s eye Sergey was replaying the film he had seen of it being tested on the accommodation blocks of an old army base in the desert in Kazakhstan. The enormous bomb was dropped from eight thousand feet and fell slowly on three huge parachutes as sprayers underneath it dispersed a large cloud of liquid explosive into the air. When a volume several hundred feet wide was filled with explosive, a simple lighter on the bomb clicked and all the air vaporised. Filmed from a distance of over a mile there had been a huge flash of flame as the explosive cloud had detonated. An instant blast wave showed up as a distortion of the air that flashed out across the plain, but the explosion also caused a vacuum and then overpressure as air rushed in to fill it. Footage of the aftermath had showed whole, six-storey blocks of flats levelled as if by the sweep of an enormous hand.