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“Which way, sir?”

Major Limanova opened his mouth to answer but realised he was not one hundred percent sure so he knelt, taking his torch from his breast pocket, his map from the thigh pocket, and there then followed a patting of pockets and a despairing look back the way they had come. At some point he had lost his compass, probably upon falling and there was absolutely no chance of finding it again until day break, well not tactically anyway, but he was damned if he was going to embarrass himself further by waving his torch around trying to find it.

Left or right?

He tossed a mental coin.

“We head to the right…you lead.” he directed Petrov, but Petrov held out the radio’s telephone-type handset.

“It’s the boss, ‘Al’fa Odin’, and he sounds unhappy, sir.”

When didn’t Lieutenant Colonel Boskoff sound unhappy? Major Limanova thought, but kept it to himself.

“Al’fa Dvukh receiving Al’fa Odin, over?”

He reached behind Petrov and undid the locking screw securing Petrov’s headset lead, unplugging it before answering the commander of Militia Sub-District 178. Further embarrassment was something he could well do without right now.

“Go ahead Al’fa Odin from Al’fa Dvukh, over.”

The duty watch keeper at Moscow Air Defence Centre had contacted Lt Col Boskoff regarding the major’s sighting report, and now Boskoff saw fit to give his deputy an ear blistering for wasting the time of the air defence forces and more seriously, embarrassing Lt Col Boskoff.

Limanova stood his ground, explaining what had occurred and his intention to reconnoiter the old airstrip.

“Phantom aircraft indeed…you are letting you imagination get the better of you, so get your head out of your ass and get your ass back here immediately Limanova…do you hear me? Immediately!” there was the briefest of pauses, too brief in fact to give even a one syllable reply “Al’fa Odin, out!”

Like hell he was.

He knew with absolute certainty something illicit was taking place at the airstrip and that a jet aircraft had taken off, and he was damned well going to prove it.

The major reconnected Petrov’s headset lead, and acting as if nothing were untoward he sent Petrov away on point.

Pulling the butt of his elderly AKM-74 into his shoulder he allowed Petrov to get ten feet ahead before he followed on. It was odd how less secure you felt at night the darker it grew he mused to himself, and turned to look back down the track briefly.

Everything looked the same; he concluded and turned back, immediately feeling a stab of panic as he could no longer make out his driver.

He increased his pace despite the way ahead being as black as pitch.

He walked into the back of Petrov who had a moment before walked into the back of an armoured fighting vehicle which was sat unattended in the firebreak.

It was a BMP-1, or to be more precise, it was their BMP-1.

They had become completely turned around and had re-emerged from the trees close to where they had originally started out an hour or so before.

“Okay, this is not as bad as it seems as I know exactly where we are now.”

“You mean you didn’t know before, sir?”

The major ignored the remark and with a nudge directed Petrov to continue in the direction they had been heading.

The logging trail was indeed where the map had shown it to be and Petrov followed it to the left, feeling more uneasy with every step that took them further away from the solid armour of his vehicle.

Two pairs of ears registered a slight discord in the normal sounds of the night in this forest. Neither would be able to say precisely what it was, and a layman would use the term ‘sixth sense’, but it was that keenness of the senses that comes with being in tune with your environment.

Neither man could see particularly well but they were after all a listening post and not of the observation variety.

The earlier radio conversation had not gone unnoticed at the airstrip command post where they had been monitoring the radio transmissions of the militia, floundering about in the woods twelve miles away to the south. It was not something the Green Beret detachment was going to begin an immediate evacuation for, but half of a field radio conversation taking place just less than a mile north had caused concern.

The listening posts rapid clicking of their transmission switch now initiated a general ‘stand-to’.

* * *

Ten more minutes walking brought the major to where he believed the runway began to run parallel with the trail they were on.

Now was the time to stop and listen.

Despite the major’s conviction that there was some form of illegal activity that had taken place here, he nonetheless felt the need for some form of confirmation that he was in fact right, and therefore his immediate superior, the sub-district commander, was again wrong on all counts.

He could smell the heather and the scent of the pine forest, he could hear the very faint rustle of some animal but he could discern nothing else.

They broke track with Major Limanova taking point now, but after just a dozen steps another frightened hare broke from cover by his feet and crashed directly away, straight into the killing area of the hasty ambush the Green Berets had set up on hearing their approach.

The major and Petrov hugged the ground, their eyes wide with shock at the unexpected thunder of a claymore mines detonation and accompanying automatic fire.

The violent sundering of the quiet of the forest echoed beyond its southern boundary.

“Al’fa Dvukh receiving Al’fa Odin, what the hell’s going on out there?”

Major Limanova was well aware that only blind luck had spared them from a sudden and brutal death. He could smell the odour of warm urine as Petrov pissed himself.

“Al’fa Dvukh receiving Al’fa Odin, answer me Limanova! What’s happening?”

The major could not help himself, he had been insulted, treated like an imbecile in front of his men and abused all day.

His self-control now snapped and he groped angrily for the radio handset.

Not thirty metres away a dozen Special Forces troops were laying waste to a small area of woodland and the roar of automatic weapons was such that he had to shout into the mouthpiece in order to be heard.

“Al’fa Odin from Al’fa Dvukh, nothing is happening, nothing at all…haven’t you heard imaginary Phantoms having a firefight before? You…Fat…Stupid…Moronic…ASSHOLE!”

* * *

The MiG-29s had drunk deeply and returned to their previous station, and the Mainstay switched its radar to standby before departing its racetrack orbit for its own turn at tanking. The timing could have not been much better.

"Four minutes to IP, two more minutes to weapon release…everything is green back here."

The Nighthawk crested a low hill and dropped down above the Medveditsa River which it would follow to the IP at the foot of the hill valley in which their target was situated. A hard left turn at the Initial Point would be followed by them opening the throttles and performing a pop-up maneouvre two minutes later to toss the weapon towards the mine shaft.

If the shaft was indeed housing the Russian Premier's bolt hole it had very disciplined defences. The screens had no more than tinted yellow with low power radar radiation since departing the vicinity of Moscow's formidable air defence zone.

Luck was with them this nigh…

The mainstay suddenly banked right, breaking off its approach to its tanker support and a wave of pink washed over the At-A-Glance plasma screens as the Soviet AWAC turned its attention abruptly toward the national capital at the Nighthawk's 5 O-Clock.