When I tried to go through to Kars, my anxiety rose a notch.
No response. I suspected the blizzard was to blame, and that the snow was blocking contact with the satellite. Comms are notoriously fickle. They go up and down, and often there seems no reason. I fiddled with the dish aerial, turning it this way and that, and then moved out of my lair on to a more prominent site.
Still no contact. I tried again and again, to no avail.
Lying on my front, I realised how the snow was blotting out every sound. Work on the fence, which had been proceeding intermittently, seemed to have stopped completely, and a heavy silence lay over the compound.
Then I heard a noise of an engine, labouring up the hill from the barrack area. Presently it came into view a mid-grey, square-bodied truck with big snow tyres, weaving slightly as it slithered over the snow. The driver swung up on to the flat area outside the summerhouse, crunched into reverse and backed to within two or three yards of the doors.
He and another man jumped out, and one of them opened the truck's rear door to release a third. All were wearing dark green overalls and brown fur caps with ear-flaps tied up over the crowns. The driver produced some keys, unlocked the doors of the shed and slid them back. A minute later, out came all three, lugging, between them, one of the components of Orange.
Snow or no snow, there was no chance of me making a mistake the men were only sixty metres from me, and through the glasses I could see those orange markings perfectly. The sight set my adrenalin racing. Again I had to fight down my instinct to make a direct intervention. A 203 grenade into the front of the van would rearrange Akula's plans pretty swiftly.
But, again, that might mean the end for Pay and Toad.
The three men went back in and brought out the second half. I snatched up the Satcom receiver and switched on. Nothing.
Again nothing.
Shit! The bomb was about to disappear, and I couldn't report it.
The men locked the shed, slammed the doors of their truck and climbed aboard. I watched helplessly as the driver started up and drove off downhill, nosing his way carefully through the bends. By now the snow was falling so fast that, even as I watched, the vehicle's tracks were becoming blurred. In a few minutes they'd be obliterated altogether.
In spite of my anxiety, I realised that what had happened carried one small advantage: now, if the HALO drop did come in as planned, Sasha wouldn't see the bomb, and wouldn't know anything about it.
The next hour was one of the most miserable I'd ever known.
I spent it shitting bricks that the head-shed might call off the free-fall. They might decide to leave Sasha and me to try and spring the prisoners. I could just hear Bill saying, "Make your own way out as best you can." Fucking thanks, I thought. I kept reasoning, No, they can't do that they'd be four guys down rather than two. But for all my wishful thinking I couldn't be sure.
As the snow kept floating down in a dense pall, I speculated about where the bomb might be heading. Back to Moscow, I felt certain. What if the Chechens used it to threaten the Russian government, just as the Americans had been planning to do?
What an irony that would be.
I convinced myself that the blizzard was going to continue all day and all night, and that Akula's men had come up to move the bomb while they still could, before everyone got snowed in.
At last the snowflakes began to thin, and the sky lightened as the storm moved on towards the north-east. I waited till I could see a patch of blue sky among the clouds, then tried the Satcom again.
This time, thank God, the call went straight through.
"Bill," I exclaimed.
"They've moved the fucker!"
"I know. Where the hell have you been?"
"Nowhere," I told him.
"The com ms went down in a snowstorm.
"I see. Well, the device has been on the move."
"I was trying to tell you that. Some guys came and carried off the components in a truck. Bill how far's Grozny from here?"
"Fifty ks. That's where it's gone. The Yanks have tracked it that far."
"The damned thing'll be airborne by now," I said.
"If it's gone off the air again it means it's inside a plane. What do we do?"
"Wait one.
I held on, hearing nothing but a roar of static. Then Bill came back and said, "We're going ahead with the drop, weather permitting. We're just waiting for the latest forecast."
"The sky's clearing here," I told him.
"It's bloody cold, too."
"OK, Geordie. I'll come back to you in a minute."
I waited tensely, longing for the hit to be over and done with.
"Let's just grab our guys," I said to myself, 'and get out of this arse hole of a place."
Then Bill came through again. The forecast was good: clear skies behind the storm, and a hard frost. The plan remained on.
What was more, they'd decided to advance the drop by half an hour, moving it to the original time of 1900. The two Chinooks were on their way to Nalchik, and would sit there waiting to hop over the mountain as soon as they were summoned.
"We passed all your data to the R.A.F," Bill said.
"They've done an appreciation and decided to approach you from the north, down the slope. They don't fancy coming up the valley an dover the compound entrance."
At 5:30 I gave my press el a double jab and said, "OK, Sasha. I'm on the move. We're off to the DZ. I'll come round and pick you up. Stay still till I reach you.
"I wait."
Stars blazed overhead, and even though the moon hadn't risen yet the night was alarmingly bright, the snow reflecting all the remaining light from the frosty sky. This white blanket was something we hadn't planned for: the patterns on my DPMs were clearly visible, and I could have done with a snow overall.
Moving cautiously, and keeping to bare rock ridges as much as possible so that I didn't leave a continous trail, I worked my way round to the helipad. Sure enough, the chopper was still on the ground an Alouette, painted some light colour, its rotor blades drooping under a three-inch load of snow. If it remained in position there'd be nowhere for a Chinook to land. No matter the hostage recovery team could fast-rope down while the aircraft hovered. Then, if we couldn't shift the Alouette, we might have to exfil from the DZ in the forest.
I found Sasha ready to move. Instead of heading out to the left, in the direction of the DZ, we put in a bit of a detour and made our way straight up to the top fence, which was still unfinished After watching for a couple of minutes we climbed the wire at a point where the wind had blown the snow off a rocky spine, leaving no tracks on the inside. The outside was a different matter. We landed in what turned out to be a gully, filled with snow to a depth of a couple of feet, and we couldn't help churmng up the surface as we floundered out of the drift. I snatched up a pine branch and frisked it back and forth behind us, levelling the surface as best I could; but the moonlight was so bright that a trail still showed.
There was no time to mess about. Clear of the fence, we turned left, to the west, through the forest, and again followed the contour. Navigation was simple: I knew that if we held our height, we'd come out on the farm track that led up from the valley to the high hay field
Except when we brushed into tree branches, our progress was utterly silent: the dry snow lay like six inches of the softest powder, and our boots made not the slightest sound as they pushed through it.
We reached the track at 6:40 and stopped to listen. Twenty minutes in hand. Suddenly, into the silence, floated a wolf chorus, coming from much farther off than the howling the night before. Turning to look behind me, I saw that the moon had appeared over the eastern horizon, enormous and pale. For maybe a minute the distant, eerie wailing rose and fell. Then it died away.