Echo Six: Black Ops 4 - Chechen Massacre (8 page)

"You can’t be happy with this?" Guy questioned him. "The whole thing has more holes than Swiss cheese."

"I can't argue with that, but Brooks gives the orders, and I have to follow them."

"This Barrington," Rovere said, "we might stand a chance if we did things our way. But the Major, he's a policeman, and not trained to operate the way we do. Doesn't he realize he won't be patrolling Fort Bragg with a billy club to bring in soldiers who get drunk and go AWOL? This is different."

He chuckled at the idea of the elegant Barrington rounding up Saturday night drunks.

"I don't think that's ever been his specialty, Dom. He's more into the high-tech, stolen data side of criminal investigation."

"Exactly," the Italian nodded enthusiastically, "so he should stick with what he does best, and we'll do the same."

Talley shook his head. "Admiral Brooks doesn't see it that way, and he has the last word."

He went to walk away, but Guy hadn't finished.

"These Mafiya goons, Boss. They can't be serious? Do they know what they'll be up against with crack North Korean troops?"

"I don't know. I intend to talk to Brooks one last time, and try and make him see sense. But you should remember I screwed up badly, that business with the Colonel, so my opinion isn’t valued too highly right now."

"It wasn't just you," Rovere objected. "We were all there."

"It was on my watch, and that's what counts."

I only wish I was going up against Colonel Ho, man to man. I can see him gutshot, screaming in agony, dying slowly, the slower and more agonizing the better. Justice for those nurses, who pleaded for their lives, yet were brutally cut down in a hail of bullets, left lying on the concrete like unwanted baggage. But Ho is in Pyongyang, the current favorite of his homicidal boss, Kim Jong-un. A pity he won't be there for me to put a bullet in him.

There was little time to attend to more than basic preparations. They'd be dropping into Siberia in winter, which meant Arctic camouflage. Drew Jackson, their demolition specialist, secured a small quantity of C4, enough to destroy the tracks to stop the train, and sufficient to destroy the warheads.

"They'll have explosive packed around the plutonium core. It's the way they initiate nuclear fission. All I have to do is set the C4 close enough to the warheads, and we're in business."

"And the fallout?" Roy Reynolds growled.

"Yeah, the fallout. It'll be bad, so we'll need to make sure we're upwind when it detonates, and if possible, keep it away from any civilian areas."

No one asked what would happen if they couldn't protect the civilian areas. All they could do was their damndest. If there were casualties from radiation, they had to hope the Russians would help them out. Hopefully, more effectively than after Chernobyl, when thousands died and suffered horrific radiation poisoning. The two snipers wrapped their Arctic Warfare rifles in white camo, enough to hide them from an enemy. The men drew supplies from the military stores, made final checks on their communications equipment, and they all looked over the latest satellite images with Admiral Brooks.

Finally, after dark, they climbed into a truck that took them to the far corner of the airfield. The huge American Airlines 747 waited on the tarmac, loaded and ready with its engines already idling. Vice-Admiral Carl Brooks had gone to the flightline with them. He offered his hand to Talley and they shook.

"Good luck, Commander. If there's anything you need…"

"There's no way you can get it to us," he finished the sentence.

Brooks at least had the grace to look abashed. "I guess that about sums it up. But if you do get into trouble, we'll do our best."

He turned to Major Barrington, and they spoke for several minutes out of earshot of the men. Talley wondered what it was about. He shrugged inwardly.

If they want me to know, Barrington will tell me, won't he?

They dumped their backpacks on the floor in the middle of stacks of crates and cartons, and tried to make themselves comfortable for the long flight. There was no cabin crew to go through the emergency drill, not on a cargo aircraft, just a disembodied voice from the cockpit advising them to strap in for. The operation was run on a strictly need to know basis, the pilot and co-pilot. The engines roared, and they screamed down the runway. The heavy jet finally lumbered into the air. The wheels rumbled into their housings, and they were on the way. After an hour, when they were starting to shiver with the intense cold, the cockpit door opened, releasing a current of warm air, and the pilot entered the fuselage. He looked to be in his late forties, with a face that was rumpled, probably from flying too many hours. Regulations for carrying cargo were more relaxed than with passengers. His sharp, clear eyes were heavily lined from squinting out the windshield, always searching ahead for dangers. At least he looked competent enough.

"I came to give you an update. I'm sorry about the temperature, but it’s not normally a problem back here as we only carry freight. Flight time is around six hours, so we have a fair way to go. We'll be flying north along the Sea of Japan, and then we turn west across Siberia and Russia, heading for our scheduled destination of Moscow. We'll need to detour a couple of hundred klicks from our course, so I'll put that down to equipment malfunction, the same problem that forces us to drop down to low level. My instructions are to open the cabin door at two thousand meters and wave goodbye to you from there."

"Is the door adjusted to open in flight?" Barrington asked crisply.

"Sure, it's all fixed. The safety interlocks have been disabled. All that will happen is a warning light will go on in the cockpit. As soon as you've gone out, one of us will close the door. We can declare the emergency over and climb back to our normal cruising altitude. That's about it, although I'm glad it's you guys going out there and not me. I flew C130s in the first Gulf War, and at least if we had to put down, we weren't up to our balls in the snow."

He caught sight of Alessandra and did a double take. "Apologies, ma'am, I didn't realize there were ladies on this trip."

"No problem, Captain," she smiled, “I’ve heard worse. Much worse.”

He nodded and went back into the cockpit. The rest was routine, trying to keep moving to keep the circulation working in the unheated fuselage. Fifty kilometers outside Irkutsk, the pilot declared his emergency, and the aircraft dropped like a stone. Cargo pilots never felt the need for gentle course changes, cargoes never complained. They felt the pressure pop in their ears as the 747 slowly depressurized, and they began strapping on their equipment and parachutes. Several minutes before they reached the jump point the co-pilot, a younger man, came back and prepared for the drop. He opened the rear door, nearly dying of exposure as the bitter air over Siberia attacked the slightly warmer interior of the Boeing.

“Oh, fuck, that is cold. I pity you guys going out there.” He recovered and reported to the pilot, "Ready!"

The cockpit door was left open, and the pilot called back, "Two minutes."

The rest was straightforward, as straightforward as jumping from a low flying 747 could ever be. It was a tossup what was worse, the massive slipstream from the aircraft or the Arctic temperature. Either way, there were no complaints when they hit the frozen ground. Not that it was much warmer than up in the sky, but a few degrees difference when the temperature was in the basement was more than welcome.

* * *

The railroad was less than a hundred meters ahead of them. They lay in the snow, waiting, almost invisible in their snow camouflage. It was a freezing night, with a hard moon reflecting off the snow. It seemed to make the icy chill feel even colder. The city of Irkutsk lay five kilometers to the west of them. The train always halted there while they took on a new crew and refueled the locomotive. This particular train carried no passengers. It was freight only, a mixture of wagons and flatcars loaded with machinery and autos. All destined for shipment to the markets of Siberia, Vladivostok, Mongolia, and China, other than one particular wagon en route to Pyongyang. Overhead imagery from American intelligence-gathering satellites showed the train had four passenger cars, as well as the wagons for the guard force.

Major Barrington checked his wristwatch for the tenth time.

"Damnit, where are those Russians? They should have been here and hour ago. At this rate, we'll miss that train."

The men of Echo Six looked at each other and said nothing. Barrington had already demonstrated his lack of SpecOps training. Talley would have had the men spread over a wide area, watching for the approach of Borodin's party and any hostiles who may be in the vicinity.

"You will not miss the train."

The voice was soft and spoken with a strong Russian accent. Barrington whirled, raised his rifle, and saw a huge man only a meter away from him. The MP’s assault rifle was an M16-A4, the fourth generation variant of the venerable rifle originally generated by the Armalite Corp, and the Major had his finger on the trigger, about to fire. Talley leaned over and pushed the barrel down.

"It's okay, Major. These are our people."

The MP looked around him and made out the dark shapes of a large squad of men crouched around them in the shadows. The Mafiya had arrived. He let out his breath.

"Why the hell didn't you tell me? I might have killed that guy," Barrington snarled.

"We saw them coming. We assumed you'd seen them too. They didn’t look like they were a threat."

The man snorted, got to his feet, and looked at the man standing next to him.

"My name is Major Barrington. I need to speak to Vladimir Borodin."

The Russian didn't answer at first. He just looked around at the NATO unit. Then he glanced at Barrington.

"I am Borodin, Major. We've been observing the train schedule. The Trans-Siberian Express will not be here for another half-hour."

Talley looked at the Russian with interest. The icon of Russia was the bear, and the Mafiyoso resembled a bear more than he did a man. He was a fully six and a half feet tall and dressed in thick furs that made him look even bigger. The Siberian style fur hat, the heavy fur coat that dropped to his ankles, everything about him was larger than life. He moved away to speak to one of his men, and then came back. He moved like a predatory animal, like a huge bear, but unlike a bear was armed with a weapon Talley hadn't seen in a long, long time. A Soviet PPSh submachine gun, the iconic weapon with the drum magazine; made during in the Second World War and carried by the Soviet shock troops who steamrollered their way across Eastern Europe all the way to Berlin.

Similar to the Thompson submachine gun, the gun had been manufactured in the millions. The magazine carried seventy-one 7.62mm rounds and was of a crude design, almost antique by modern standards. He also carried a big automatic pistol tucked into the wide belt that nipped in the waist of his shaggy fur coat, a Stechkin, the big Russian pistol that was still in use with the Russian military. The Stechkin was a handgun capable of selective automatic fire when required. Borodin saw Talley looking at the PPSh.

"You like? My grandfather carried it from Moscow to Berlin, between 1944 and 1945." He looked thoughtful. "He said he never knew how many Germans he'd killed, but there were plenty. If he carved a notch into the butt for every one, there'd be no wood left." He burst into laughter, but all the time his black eyes, rimed with frost, were glancing around Talley and the rest of the men, measuring, assessing. Borodin was clearly not a man to take chances, not with strangers.

"My men tell me I should carry a new a gun, but this one has always served me well."

"I'm sure it has, Mr. Borodin,” Barrington replied with some irritation, “but tell us about the train."

The Russian shrugged. "They were refueling in Irkutsk." He roared with laughter: "It took longer than usual to fill up the tanks. I guess some bastard stole the fuel from the train. You can't trust anyone these days."

Talley stepped forward. "Do you have an idea of the layout of the train, and how to stop it?"

Before he could answer, Barrington elbowed him out of the way.

"We've set a charge on the track to derail the train if you were delayed, but we were hoping we wouldn't need it. We'd prefer something that wouldn't alert the authorities."

Borodin looked at Talley, amused by the obvious friction, then his eyes returned to Barrington.

"It's all taken care of, Major. I’d be careful with planting explosives around the railroad. You'll have the FSB on you very quickly if a maintenance crew spots them. But you have nothing to worry about. I bribed the signalers, and they'll put the signal to red and stop the train right here. My men are waiting to deal with the North Korean guard force. It’s up to you to deal with the rest. To get the warheads away from these people."

As he spoke, he gestured, and his men climbed to their feet, shaking the snow from their clothes. Ten of them were armed with RPG7 missile launchers, and a half-dozen with PK general-purpose machine guns. The Kalashnikov designed weapon fired a 7.62mm cartridge and was still in use in Russia, as well as scores of countries worldwide. The combination of missiles and machine gun fire would cut a swathe through the defenders. There was no doubt Borodin had planned well.

"Satisfied, Major?"

"Yeah, that looks good. I heard Commander Talley asking you about the layout of the train. What are we looking at?"

Borodin gestured again, and a man came over to him; younger than the Mafiyoso, even though he was wearing furs, like his boss. He was armed with a more modern Russian AKM assault rifle.

“Yuri, tell them about the train."

The man thought for a few moments and then replied.

"It's big, like all the Trans-Siberian outfits. I'd guess it must be almost a kilometer long, a mix of flat cars and goods wagons, as well as four passenger coaches for the guards. The coaches are positioned two right behind the engine and two at the rear."

"You know what we're looking for?"

Yuri grinned: "Of course, nuclear warheads. I didn't think you came here to steal cigarettes and vodka. But I guess you want to know which wagon they're traveling in. I'm afraid we don't know, except that it's sure to be next to one of the guard coaches. Front or back, take your choice."

Talley looked at Barrington. It was his show and up to him to plan the attack. The Major glared at Borodin.

"We must inspect those wagons before you blow them to pieces with rocket fire, Mr. Borodin."