Major Artem Ivanov looked at the equipment in the back of the van.
“This should do the trick,” he thought. “It’s about time we get this show on the road.”
Ivanov’s Spetsnaz unit had spent three long months holed up in their safe house, anxiously watching the war play out in the news. It had been too long since their last attack order; his elite team of soldiers was itching to get back into the fight.
It wasn’t that they had been completely silent. When the war started, Major Ivanov’s team had carried out a complex attack against the critically important RAF base at Croughton — a major communications facility between the US and UK, responsible for coordinating the defense of Europe. On the opening day of the war, Ivanov’s unit had launched sixty-eight 82mm mortar rounds at the base, severely damaging its capabilities at a critical moment in the war.
That first mission had put a huge bullseye on their backs. They’d stayed in their position too long and nearly gotten caught. After a brief shoot-out with the police, they’d barely managed to get away and escape to a safe house. They’d spent the next few weeks constantly changing safe house locations, and at one point, they had hidden out in the back of a lorry being driven around Scotland for two weeks. Once things had cooled down a bit, Ivanov’s team had eventually settled into a safe house in the North Yorkshire area and waited for the next call to come.
In February, they were given six targeted assassinations to complete — members of Parliament from the Tory Party. Ivanov had correctly surmised that this might have something to do with all of the antiwar rallies he had been seeing promoted on the news by the head of the Labour Party, Anthony Chattem. The reason didn’t really matter, though, as long as it was in service to Russia.
Major Ivanov broke his unit into two-man teams and assigned each of them a Tory MP to kill and a timeline to accomplish their task. Each team had two weeks to figure out how and when they would take out their target. Once their task was completed, they would head to a new safe house and stand by to make sure they had not been found out. If it was safe for them to reconsolidate back to the Yorkshire area, they would wait there for further instructions.
Unfortunately for Ivanov, one of his teams was compromised when one of the team members accidentally left a fingerprint on the scene. His biometrics matched to an MI6 database on potential Spetsnaz members, and the British authorities followed him back to his team’s hideout. After two days of surveilling the two-man team, British authorities raided the house they were operating out of. Major Ivanov’s team fully utilized their combat training, taking several police officers to their graves. However, they’d ultimately died in a hail of gunfire, which had made for a very splashy headline across the country.
The other teams had succeeded in their missions, with one of the teams scoring a three-for-one when a group of three Tory MPs were killed during lunch. Several months had passed now though, and they were all becoming increasingly anxious for their next kill. The one consolation that they took was the story they saw unfolding on the news; their actions had clearly hurt the ruling party’s control of the government. Between the domestic turmoil and the high casualties in the war, Prime Minister Katherine Edwards was steadily losing her hold on the government.
Finally, the day they had been waiting for arrived. Their GRU handler left them a message. They would carry out a mortar attack against RAF Menwith Hill, a critical facility in the British early-warning system. Shutting it down would increase the potential success of an air or missile attack against the British Isles.
Their instructions had been specific; they were to be in position to bomb the base at precisely 2100 hours — not a minute before and not a minute later. Major Ivanov’s eight Spetsnaz piled into the two vans and headed out to the Darley Supersonic Bike Park, an off-road bike park. The location was relatively removed from any local population and within range for the mortars to hit the RAF base. This spot gave them the best possible chance of pulling off the attack and still being able to escape. His experienced team would be able to fire off all thirty-six mortar rounds in less than three minutes.
It took them nearly two hours to reach the bike park. When they arrived, it was already dark, so of course, the park was closed. One of the sergeants popped out of the lead van, whipped out his lock pick set, and made quick work of the padlock on the gate. After the vans drove through, the sergeant closed the entrance again, placing the lock on one side without snapping it shut. This way, hopefully no one would spot anything out of the ordinary while they prepared for their attack.
As they pulled up to their launch site, Major Ivanov began issuing orders in rapid fire. “Sergeant Morozov, I want you to work on getting the mortar tubes ready. Alexin, position the mortar rounds near the tubes, so they’ll be ready when the firing starts. Lieutenant Nikolaev, get in position to start calling in the rounds. Make sure they’re on target, and if they’re off, call in the adjustment so we can keep the rounds coming. We need to take those radar domes out — that is our primary mission.”
“Yes, Sir,” they replied in unison.
Lieutenant Nikolaev grabbed his small pack and his AK-104 and headed off to his observation point. As the other soldiers got the mortar tubes setup and ready, Ivanov ordered one of the sergeants to head back down the dirt road to the entrance of the park. The sergeant dutifully sought out a few bushes where he could hide and observe the road approaching their position. With a high-explosive round in his grenade gun, if someone did manage to find them, he’d be ready to take them out.
Major Artem Ivanov looked at his wristwatch — one minute until showtime. He keyed in his mic. “Viper Two, are you in position?” he asked Lieutenant Nikolaev.
“Viper Six, Viper Two is in position. I’m ready when you guys are,” he responded.
Ivanov pulled a notebook out of his pocket. He had been given a set of exact coordinates for their targets from their GRU handlers, so they had a pretty good idea where the rounds needed to land.
“Drop the first round,” he ordered.
Sergeant Morozov lifted the mortar above his shoulder and held it over the tube for just a second before he dropped the round down the tube. He instinctively moved to the side just as the propellant for the round ignited and launched the mortar into the air. The round flew high and true, over the protective perimeter fence of the RAF base, and landed just short and to the right of the central cluster of radar domes that they needed to take out.
“Viper Six. Adjust fire. Up 100 meters, right 50 meters. Fire for effect,” called Lieutenant Nikolaev.
Morozov made a quick adjustment to the mortar tubes, and the team of Special Forces quickly dropped rounds as fast as they could. In less than three minutes, they had fired all thirty-six rounds. Explosions and sirens both blared off in the distance, a sure sign of their handiwork.
Major Ivanov spoke loudly to the men. “Leave the tubes, and let’s get in the vans and get out of here.”
As the others quickly climbed into the two delivery vans they were using as cover, Sergeant Morozov pulled a pin on each of the three thermite grenades, making sure each of the three tubes was spiked and would destroy any physical or forensic evidence left behind.
While they were making their way down the trail to the park exit, Major Ivanov heard an unwanted sound — the telltale whoomphing of helicopter blades. Thump, thump, thump came the reverberating noise. It was clearly getting closer to their position.
He let out a stream of exceptionally crude Russian vulgarities. “They must have had a direction finder radar set up at the base. How did we not know about that?” thought Ivanov.