“Lieutenant… are you all right?” queried Alontov’s voice from without.
“Well Colin… am I?”
A dark shape separated from a deep shadow and stood, the dull clink of belted ammunition reached Nikoli’s ears.
“You can tell him you are fine, mate, but I have no intention of surrendering my arms just so you can put a bullet in the back of my head or pull my teeth without anaesthetic.”
Nikoli was a little puzzled but called.
“I am in no danger, Colonel General sir.”
“Good,” came the general’s reply. “But you have only three minutes young lieutenant… So use them well.”
“Your people kill our troops after they surrender, or are captured… even the wounded!” He explained what had happened at the river, and what he knew of similar events in Belorussia.
Nikoli could see that Colin was apparently relaxed, yet the nozzle of the GPMG that hung from his shoulders by a webbing sling never wavered from where it was pointing, at his own midriff. Colin continued.
“I thought I knew you better than that Fanny, do you agree with it … or just look the other way?”
“I know nothing of this Colin… honestly. You have my word that our orders are to treat all prisoners according to the rules of the Geneva Convention… to the letter,” he added sincerely.
Despite their different ranks, the two men had been friends at Brecon and Colin weighed up the Russian officers words. If he stayed here he would die, but if he left with Nikoli, he would always have the possibility of escape.
“Ah bollocks!”
He turned sideways on to Nikoli and opened the gimpy’s top cover, allowing the belt of rounds to fall away and carried out a complete unload. Nikoli let out a breath of relief as he watched the dark outline of the British soldier remove the gimpy’s butt, slide out the working parts and throw them into the darkness.
They emerged from the hole into the daylight where Nikoli nodded to two of his paratroopers who stripped off the Guardsman’s webbing and searched him. While this was going on Nikoli approached the general.
“Sir, do you know of any orders to kill prisoners?” Alontov frowned as his lieutenant related the British soldiers’ words.
“I know this man well sir, he is too intelligent to be taken in by propaganda, if he says it happened then it probably did.”
The colonel general was a complex man, who on the one hand had approved the destruction of entire cities if it restored his Motherland, the Rodina, to its rightful place, yet on the other hand the murder of fighting men who served their own countries bravely, disgusted him. As a professional, he knew that his enemies would fight all the harder if they believed they had nothing to lose. When it had been confirmed that only the Washington bomb had gone off, he had felt secretly relieved, although it only meant they would have a tougher fight on their hands.
During the planning of this war, the question of prisoners had naturally been planned for. Enemy troops were to be placed into internment camps until all resistance to the new Soviet Union had been overcome. The anticipated, massive destruction would require a workforce to rebuild the cities and infrastructure. Who better to serve as the core of that workforce than the captured troops?
“Blindfold him and bind him properly lieutenant, take him to the brigade headquarters here at the airport. I want to question him later but in the meantime you and your men are to guard him, understood?”
The US Embassy in Grosvenor Square is one of the few buildings in the British Isles to call its ‘ground floor’ the ‘first floor’. It is one of the little details that separates the British from the Americans, along with driving on the wrong side of the road and having not having roundabouts at road junctions.
Security for visitors is not oppressive once you enter the door; that begins once you try to go up, to the floors above. Scott Tafler and Max Reynolds were ensconced in the ‘clean room’ upstairs. Its construction and constant screening made it secure from all known forms of eavesdropping.
“No one is happy with our borrowing an entire squadron of F-117As, and a half dozen B-2s, even if it is only for one night for most of them. Those stealth fighters of the Ruski’s took us all by surprise, and NATO wants the Nighthawks over Germany to counter them.” Scott informed the head of the London station.
“The air force will do as its told, the joint chiefs have given the plan their full backing, plus there will be six Raptors arriving from stateside this lunchtime.” Scott was intrigued.
“Six Raptors, is that all they have?” The project had cost billions and was years behind schedule.
“Congress has a hard-on for one size fits all, one aircraft for all the services, that’s why the Tomcat’s the navy has are irreplaceable, all the tooling to build more was destroyed.”
Scott was appalled.
“How the hell are they going to replace the losses we’ve had… and which asshole ordered the tooling destroyed?”
“I am not at liberty to say… however, the SecDef was what the Brits would call ‘A right wanker’.” Scott grimaced at the appalling Hollywood cockney accent.
“At present there are only one hundred and twenty one Tomcats still in existence, I understand that there are some A-6 Intruders out at the bone yard that are being refurbished, made ready to replace the strike assets that have gone. As to the question of congressional stupidity… try writing to your congressman.”
“Wasn’t there a retired Admiral who proposed buying the production licences for Russian airframes and putting US engines in them, at a fraction of the cost?” Scott asked.
“There was, but the big US military manufacturing community, had too many people on The Hill tucked in their pockets for that to ever be realistic… I guess we are paying the price for electing some people who make straight for the trough. They have delivered on one aspect though; we are getting more anti-satellite missiles.”
Scott nodded and got back to the matter at hand.
“The buddy stores capability of the Spirits has helped a hell of a lot with the tanking aspect of the mission, according to the air force planners.”
“What about our crew and the weapon?” Max emphasised the last word.
“It arrives tomorrow, system checks have been completed and it’s good to go. So is the pilot and bombardier, the air force ran psychological tests on them both, they’ll push the button when the time comes. At the moment they are putting in simulator time before strapping in and scaring the sheep in the Highlands.”
“On the subject of nuking a piece of Russia, how are Major Bedonavich and Miss Vorsoff taking it?” Max asked him.
“Neither was naïve enough to believe that we would, or could put troops on the ground to capture or kill the leadership. I didn’t even try to pretend that we would even consider it as an option. Major Bedonavich has actually been in one of the bunkers, and that was a help in itself because it was the first that we knew, that particular one existed.” Scott rubbed his chin.
“He is not ecstatic about using a bomb on a bunker, in his country or anywhere else on the planet for that matter, but he believes it is the only way.”
“It has got to be hard on the man, it’s not a position I would like to be in if I were called on to facilitate the dropping of one on America… how about the girl?”
“I don’t think we have a problem with either of them, on that count.”
Max Reynolds forehead creased a fraction, he was a ‘people reader’, trained to read body language and pick up on minute clues as to what may be going on in another person’s head.