Either side of the cars was the Go Team, to be deployed when Dima called them in. Until then they would remain on standby at an Azerbaijani airstrip just across the border. They were in full assault kit, everything black, and they carried AKSUs — short versions of the AK47, fitted with thermal imaging sights that were essential for seeing through smoke or CS gas. The AKSUs were also easier to conceal. With the stock folded they measured less than fifty centimetres. Some would also be packing PMMs or 6P35 Grach pistols. Saiga-12 shotguns would be handy for taking down doors and KS-23s armed with CS gas would help along the process of room clearing. Despite the volume of intelligence, they still had no real idea of how much opposition they would meet.
For some of these men, recent graduates, this would be their first hostile deployment. Dima felt a strong sense of responsibility for taking them on this escapade. I must be getting old, he thought. For a long time now he had worked alone, or just with Kroll. He used to have a reputation as a good leader, the sortmen would follow to hell and back — and quite often not back at all. But that was when he was a paid-up Spetsnaz. Now he was a freelance, a gun for hire. He’d heard Kroll say, ‘You never leave Spetsnaz — even if they fire you. Even if they put you in jail.’ Surely a few of these young men had to be asking themselves why they were putting their trust in a man who apparently had no allegiances, whose own masters had long been suspicious of him. But then he thought back to his own early days — when he was desperate for an assignment, any assignment. That was the point of Spetsnaz, to expect the unexpected.
Suddenly he realised that many of them would be the same age as the young man in Paliov’s photographs. He tried to put them out of his mind and concentrate on the job in hand. If he couldn’t focus, he would never get them and it would all have been for nothing. He had to separate himself from all emotions, completely.
He checked through the kit in each of the Peykans’ trunks. The same array of armour. In addition, five SVD Dragunovs — not the most accurate sniper gun but with the ten-round magazine and a 4x scope it was fine for the relatively close range work he anticipated. He’d demanded every kind of night vision optics — binoculars for the recce, goggles for close action. He planned on getting a firsthand view inside the compound walls before calling in the Go Team. That meant a rope kit for climbing and — when they were ready — rappelling. Whatever they had, there would be something they had missed. It was the nature of these operations, balancing enough kit with the need to be nimble.
Dima climbed up to the flight deck, the equivalent of two storeys up from the hold. He put on a spare headset and watched over the shoulders of the pilots as they pressed on into the moonless dark. The low cloud and fine rain almost killed what little visibility there was. The instruments kept them out of trouble, nosing the machine over sudden tall trees and power-lines.
‘Still reading quake tremors. It’s going to be a mess down there,’ said Yergin the co-pilot, waving a printout. ‘Keep your tin hat on.’ He grinned.
‘How long do you need to hold position over the compound to drop the Go Team?’
‘They get moving, I reckon three minutes max.’
‘You pay good attention to our recce report or you won’t know what they’ll have pointing up at you.’
‘Don’t worry: the force is with me.’ Yergin swished the air with an imaginary light sabre. ‘Get ready. LZ in two.’
14
Near Bazargan, Northern Iran
The rotors swatted the air above as they prepared to disembark the Peykans — Dima, Kroll and Vladimir in the lead car, Zirak and Gregorin in the second. The cars were facing to the rear. As soon as the doors opened and the ramp dropped Dima reversed in a neat arc and accelerated away, night goggles on, no headlights, at least until they were clear of the site and on a public road. They didn’t wait to watch the Mil pull away but they heard it all right, and hoped that Kaffarov’s captors in the next valley didn’t.
‘Welcome to Iran. We hope you have a pleasant stay,’ said Dima. Vladimir was awake now, lounging on the rear seat. Kroll looked more comfortable now he was back on terra firma. ‘And a bloody short one,’ he added. ‘I want to be back for lunch.’
It was three a.m., but they were pumping enough adrenalin to keep them awake for a week. Once he’d got the measure of the Peykan, Dima put on more speed. He almost lost it on a blind bend when a tanker came the other way, with its huge headlights blazing. Its driver couldn’t see them until the last moment, and they couldn’t see much but the sudden whiteness, followed by an almighty roar. Taking up almost the whole of the winding, uneven road, it brushed past them with inches to spare. Dima was relieved to find the brakes had been uprated with an anti-lock system, which enabled them to slew to a halt at the only place they could stop without tipping over the edge.
‘Quite responsive,’ said Kroll. ‘I wish my wife was as quick.’
‘She is, as it happens,’ said Vladimir.
‘Yes,’ said Zirak on the radio. ‘And unlike the gorilla, she sends flowers after.’
Dima smiled to himself. Despite all the danger, his mistrust of Paliov and the sheer insanity of the mission, he was back where he belonged, leading a team of the best to the very limits of their abilities. There was nothing so bonding as knowing you might all be about to die together — that and a good wife joke.
They went through a small village: a cluster of dozing houses with no evidence of occupation save for a single prayer mat on a washing line. It appeared deserted, yet there was no sign of damage from the quake. A sound, somewhere between a bark and a howl, issued across the cool night air.
‘Jackal,’ said Kroll.
‘Or your wife again.’
Leaving the LZ behind them in the distance, the road climbed out of the valley and did a hairpin left into the next one. Kroll examined the hills with a night sight. ‘Got it. Fuck me, it looks a lot smaller in the flesh.’
‘Yeah, like your dick,’ came the reply from the back.
‘The walls are still up. Doesn’t look like the tremors have had any impact’
The road forked where a drive curved up to the main gate. They slowed as they passed, taking in what they could in the gloom.
‘Tempting to just go and ring the bell — could be a lot simpler.’
‘Yeah, and get your head blown off.’
Two hundred metres beyond the drive Dima slowed to a halt, waiting for the second car to catch up. Once its lights were in view he carried on at a crawl until he found the track to the right that he’d seen on his friend Darwish’s pictures. The track was deeply rutted and the car bottomed after a hundred metres. The cypress trees made a good screen. Dima opened his door.
‘Okay guys: let’s get kitted up.’
The air was damp, and pungent with the aroma of the cypresses. A mountain grouse, surprised by the unexpected visitors, shot into the air from near their feet with a furious clatter of wings, but otherwise there were no sounds, no wind. Vladimir took the rope kit and helped himself to a Dragunov. One of the reasons he was on Dima’s must-have list was his climbing skill. As a boy of nine he had escaped from a juvenile detention centre down a four-storey wall. A few years later he was making frequent visits to his girlfriend’s second floor bedroom, scaling the outside of the block where she lived while her father waited on guard, oblivious, in the hallway. ‘Like Dracula,’ he said, grinning with his remaining teeth.