The locker they were looking for was in the fifth row. Gulag and Farm Boy took up position further back in the lower concourse, though still within view of the alcove. With a final look around them, Vadim and New Boy plunged into the luggage area.
They found the locker. Vadim took the key out, New Boy stood off a little. Vadim turned the key and opened the locker, revealing a brass cylinder filling the space inside. Vadim’s heart sank. It was a biological or chemical weapon. He had been hoping for something conventional; even a tactical nuclear suitcase bomb would have felt cleaner somehow. Then he heard a click. He looked on in horror as the top and bottom of the cylinder unscrewed itself. There was a distinct hissing noise. It made no sense to Vadim. Why send them all this way, just to kill them as part of a chemical weapons attack? He did something he hadn’t even done as a child amongst the ruins of Stalingrad: he froze.
Then he heard movement coming from amongst the rows of lockers. The clink of weapons against webbing, the pad of booted feet trying to move stealthily. Instinct took over. The Stechkin APB was in one hand, a spare magazine in the other. Movement in his periphery. He turned to the left, made out the armoured, helmeted figure of a SWAT team member coming around the corner, triggered a three-round burst. The gun bucked in his hand, and the figure disappeared behind the lockers again. Vadim had no idea if he had hit him or not. New Boy was kneeling and opening the cases, rooting through their weapons. Vadim checked right and saw movement at the other end of the row. He fired a burst that way, then another. Then back to the left, firing again, alternating suppressing fire at each end of the row of lockers. It didn’t matter who you were, you didn’t walk into automatic weapons fire. He had no idea why they hadn’t used a grenade yet, or used snipers on the way in. Perhaps it was some American sense of fair play. The twenty-round magazine in his pistol ran dry, and he ejected it, slid the fresh mag home and continued firing. The Stechkin was far from accurate on full automatic, but in an enclosed space like this it was good for making people keep their heads down.
“Grenade!” New Boy shouted in Russian and threw the grenade to Vadim’s left into the next row of lockers. Another grenade was thrown to the right, also behind the lockers. Vadim was kneeling, head down, as he holstered his pistol and dropped the empty magazine down the front of his shirt. New Boy slid the captain’s AK-74 along the floor, and Vadim grabbed the weapon; the safety was off. The first grenade exploded. Lockers toppled and bodies were flung into the air. There was another explosion, bright light and thunder. Presumably one of the SWAT members had been about to throw a stun grenade. New Boy’s second grenade exploded. Over-pressure buffeted them, shrapnel tore at their clothes and Vadim only narrowly missed being decapitated by a spinning locker door. Blinking away spots of light, Vadim tried to shout at New Boy to clear right while he cleared left, but nothing came out. That was when he realised he’d gone deaf. He glanced behind him to see the younger man already stalking through the wreckage, rifle tucked into his shoulder. Vadim shouldered his AK-74 and did the same in the opposite direction.
There were two broken bodies at the end of the row, blackened from the explosion, red from shrapnel. One more was staggering around, probably as much from the effects of the stun grenade as anything else. It didn’t look as though he could see. A fourth was curled up on the floor, hands over his ears, mouth open in a silent scream. The one on his feet was aware of Vadim somehow, he was grabbing for his sidearm. The captain squeezed the trigger, twice. The rifle kicked back into his shoulder and he leaned into it. The goggles the agent was wearing under his helmet filled with red and he collapsed to the ground. Vadim put two rounds into each of them. They couldn’t leave anyone behind them.
Quickly Vadim checked the rest of the locker area. The SWAT team’s members had the letters FBI painted on their body armour: American state security. They were not just police officers; they had been waiting for Vadim and his people.
The captain made his way back to where they had left their luggage. New Boy was already there. There were another four dead FBI agents amongst the wreckage at the other end of the row. New Boy had done his job. He was shaking his head as though trying to clear it; Vadim couldn’t hear anything either, except a high-pitched whine. He signalled New Boy to cover him whilst he shrugged off his coat and grabbed his webbing from the suitcase, pulling it on and securing it tightly in place. He strapped on the back sheath holding his KS-23 shotgun, then straightened up and readied his rifle as New Boy put his webbing on. He was starting to hear muted sounds now: a voice shouting through a loudhailer in English and screaming, a lot of screaming and distant gunfire. The chatter of a light machine gun, Mongol’s or the Fräulein’s RPKS-74. Skull’s .303 firing sounded like a cannon, and Vadim knew that up in the main concourse someone had just died.
Vadim and New Boy moved through what was left of the lockers into the mostly intact row closest to the lower concourse. They would provide only flimsy cover. Vadim ignored the demands to surrender from an authoritative voice, full of tension, shouting at them through a loudhailer. He signalled to New Boy to go left, and turned to check right.
At the end of the row he risked a glance into the main concourse. He had a moment to register the SWAT team officers in the open lower concourse before they opened up on him. He ducked back into the row, although all that really stood between him and the Americans’ bullets were two flimsy pieces of sheet metal. If he was lucky the lockers had luggage in them. Fortunately the majority of the SWAT team were armed with submachine guns and shotguns, both fairly low-velocity weapons. Though he was still seeing holes appear in the lockers close to where his face had been.
As soon as the SWAT team had started firing, New Boy had moved around the opposite corner and returned fire. Their attackers switched target and New Boy ducked behind the lockers. Vadim swung round the corner. Three-round burst, the muzzle flash from the barrel, leaning into the hard kick of the recoil, shell casings flying into the air. Shift, aim, repeat. The SWAT team were probably highly trained, knew they had to cover both corners, but training is one thing, the adrenalin kicking in under live fire is another. They would not be used to facing trained special forces soldiers, armed with military weapons, with the sort of actual combat experience New Boy had gained with the VDV in Afghanistan. And Vadim had been fighting in wars since he was nine years old. He ducked back behind the lockers. He’d seen SWAT members go down under centre mass shots, but they were wearing body armour and he had no idea if they were dead or not.
Vadim heard the familiar pop of a grenade launcher. There was just a moment of panic, but the explosion was outside, in the lower concourse. The row of lockers buckled, threatening to topple over, as shrapnel from the 40mm fragmentation grenade tore through the flimsy metal. He didn’t go deaf this time, though his ears were ringing. He heard the flat, hard staccato of AK-74s firing, burst after burst. Vadim and New Boy moved around the corners of the lockers. Broken bodies were scattered around on the ground. There were a few SWAT guys staggering around; fewer still had their weapons. Vadim and New Boy concentrated on those.
Gulag was stalking down the concourse past cowering commuters, firing at the remaining SWAT team members. Farm Boy was backing along behind him, firing in the other direction, exchanging shots with uniformed police officers. Between Gulag, New Boy and Vadim, the remaining members of the grenade-shocked FBI SWAT team were cut down in a vicious crossfire.