Keith Douglass
Countdown
PROLOGUE
Jackboots crunched through the shards of glass and splintered masonry littering a floor once richly carpeted, now charred by blast and fire. The tapestries that had covered one wall had all been torn down, as had the gilt-framed, life-sized portraits of Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and that bastard Leonov. Filing cabinets had been overturned, their contents scattered and burned. The smell of fire and high explosive still clung to the place. An ornate desk lay half buried beneath a fallen, inner wall, while windows smashed by the concussion of multiple RPG rounds gaped open to Moscow's leaden February sky, allowing a bitter swirl of snowflakes to dance across the debris.
Marshal Valentin Grigorevich Krasilnikov surveyed the wreckage of the office for a grim moment, then holstered the Makarov pistol he'd been gripping in one black-gloved hand. The traitor had fled, but damn it, how had he known? How had he known?
A soldier crowded past the half-opened, partly unhinged door to the shattered office. "Comrade Marshal!"
"Yes, Sergeant Borodin."
The soldier, an AKM assault rifle clutched at a rigid port arms, stiffened to attention. "We have searched the entire office wing, including the basement. He is not here."
"Has Doctorov arrived yet?"
"I do not know, Comrade Marsha-"
"Find out. If he has not, notify me the moment he does. And put your best men to searching and guarding the prisoners. It may be that some know of Leonov's whereabouts. It would be inconvenient if they died before telling us what we need to know. Most inconvenient. Do you understand?"
"Completely, Comrade Marshal."
"Good. I hold you responsible, Lieutenant Borodin."
The man clicked his heels and smartly slapped the bright orange butt of his AKM, sounding a crisp, military crack that echoed in the charred and smashed office. "Thank you, Comrade Marshal!"
He turned, and Krasilnikov was left alone once more in the ruin of what just five hours earlier had been the command center of a democratic Russia.
Demokratichyeskii Rossiya. Krasilnikov snorted at the absurdity of the thought. Pah!
The anarchy unleashed across the Rodina during the past decade was unmatched by that of any period of history since the Great Patriotic War, since even the epic sacrifices of 1917. First there'd been the so-called glasnost and perestroika of Gorbachev… followed by the abortive coup of '91, the accession of Yeltsin, and the wholesale dismemberment of the Soviet Union, she whom Krasilnikov had pledged to defend with his life. The Communist Party banned, the state-run economy plundered, the Warsaw Pact vanished with the winds of counterrevolution howling from Berlin to Vladivostok.
Krasilnikov and a dedicated handful of other senior officers had worked to set things straight, restore order where chaos reigned as a new and manic Czar. The puppet "democrat" who'd followed Yeltsin to power over the pathetic tatters of a great nation had been assassinated in Oslo ― ostensibly by western anarchists, but in fact by agents of Aleksandr Doctorov's revitalized and rededicated security apparatus ― and in the wake of that assassination, an alliance of KGB, military, and hard-liner party men had secured power once again in the capitals of the former Commonwealth of Independent States.
That had been only the beginning, of course, as the Soviet Union rose reborn from the ashes. The operation known as Rurik's Hammer, the lightning military conquest of all of Scandinavia, had been designed to solidify popular support for the resurrected Soviet government at home despite the rationing, the purges, and the KGB crackdowns; to cow a fragmented and weakened NATO already over-extended in the war-ravaged Balkans; and to remind continental Europe of the might of Soviet arms.
But Rurik's Hammer had failed… and failed miserably. The vaunted Baltic and Red Banner Northern fleets had suffered ignominious defeat at the hands of a single American aircraft carrier battle group operating off the Norwegian coast, and U.S. Marines had stormed ashore at Narvik, trapping an entire Soviet army above Trondheim and forcing its surrender. The twin naval engagements at the Freyen Banks and off the Lofoten Islands ― the Battles of the Fjords, as they were coming to be called ― were already being hailed as two of the classic encounters of military history. Even now, eight months later, the Red Banner Northern Fleet had not yet recovered but remained in Port, impotent and all but useless.
The military fiasco in Norway had led to the collapse of the neo-Soviet dream, of course. Krasilnikov and his supporters had been forced to strike shameful deals with Ilya Anatolevich Leonov and his Popular Russian Democratic Party simply to maintain some voice in Russian government, and then been made to stand by helplessly and watch the inexorable disintegration of Mother Russia, the destruction of all that the glorious Revolution was and could be, begin all over again.
Enough was enough! Not even the legendary patience of the most stolid of Russian Peasants could endure so much. The coalition of Soviet marshals and generals, KGB leaders, Communist Party hard-liners, and pro-Soviet nationalists had begun plotting the coup almost from the moment the shattered remnants of the Red Banner Fleet had limped into port at Murmansk. Their plans had culminated early this morning, as carefully screened, pro-Soviet army and KGB units stormed the Kremlin. Tanks now controlled every major intersection and boulevard in downtown Moscow, while crack Spetsnaz forces held all four of Moscow's international airports and the complex of military control and communications centers that ringed the city. This time, there would be no repeat of the Pathetic half measures and hesitancy of the leaders of the coup attempt during the summer of 1991. There would be no civilian mobs rallying at the barricades this time, no army unit defections or CNN special reports "live from Moscow."
"Comrade Marshal Krasilnikov," a smooth, familiar voice said at his back.
"Dobre den."
Krasilnikov whirled. Aleksandr Dmitrivich Doctorov stood in the doorway, hands buried in the pockets of his black trenchcoat, a fur schapska perched on his balding head.
"Doctorov," Krasilnikov said, deliberately ignoring the other's greeting.
"The bird has flown his cage."
"So I was informed on my way over here."
"It would seem we have had a major failure of intelligence."
The head of the Keomitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti ― the infamous Committee for State Security ― stiffened ever so slightly at that challenge.
Did he hold a gun within his coat pocket? "There was no failure, Comrade Marshal. Leonov was here. If he escaped, he must have had advance warning.
Perhaps from one of your officers."
Krasilnikov was careful to keep his own hand away from his holstered Makarov. "That is not possible."
Doctorov stared at Krasilnikov for a moment and then, surprisingly, he nodded. His hands came out of his pockets and he rubbed them together briskly, warming them against the bitter Moscow cold that had invaded the office of the erstwhile Russian president. "Actually, Comrade Marshal, I suspect that this time my opposite number with the Upravleniye is to blame."
"General Suvorov? Why should he-"
"An army helicopter was seen leaving the city twenty minutes before your men were to move in, Comrade Marshal. The tail number was that of an aircraft assigned to the GRU command staff."
Krasilnikov digested that. The Military Intelligence Directorate, the Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye, was larger and in some ways more powerful even than the more notorious KGB. Never had there been so much as a gram's worth of love lost between the two powerful intelligence agencies, and their rivalry had caused trouble for Soviet policy and image more than once in the past. But Krasilnikov had been certain that Suvorov was solidly in the coup's collective pocket. "The helicopter's destination?"