shoulder and stood upright.
The Russian was short compared with the rest of his men, standing a few inches below Stratton’s eye-line. His red hair was cropped, his sullen eyes grey and like the others it appeared he’d had his nose broken. More than once. ‘What are your names?’ he shouted above the noise of the engines and the beating rotors.
‘Mark Davidson,’ Stratton answered, equally loudly, the name on his false passport.
‘Derek Waverly,’ Jason shouted.
The Russian simply stared into the eyes of each man as he answered.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘We’re British engineers,’ Stratton said. He doubted that the Russians knew who they really worked for and why they were there. But these soldiers obviously suspected the two Englishmen of something. If they were guilty by their association with Vasily, killing the spy had not been the smartest course of action. The man would probably have revealed everything within hours. But they clearly didn’t care about that. The men’s cover stories as engineers wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny, anyway. They could be looking at the inside of a Russian prison for quite some time. Years, in fact. Stratton wondered what London’s reaction would be. Their release would depend on their value. On the scale of things Stratton didn’t think that he was worth much at all. And Jason not a great deal more. At the end of the day, Mansfield was a scientist and Stratton a common or garden special-forces operative. Both of them were easily replaceable. He thought of his house and envisaged the lads breaking in to clear out the perishables and cover the rest in dust sheets. It would be a long time before he saw his crockpot again. Funny how the simple things in life seemed so much more important at times like this.
The officer smiled thinly on hearing Stratton’s pathetic explanation. He looked over at his subordinate in the sunglasses and gave him a nod. The blond-haired guy gestured to another soldier. The two approached the Englishmen. They grabbed hold of them firmly, pulled them harshly into the centre of the cabin and placed them side by side with their backs to the rear opening, the edge only a few feet away.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to tell me what you are doing here?’ the leader asked loudly.
Stratton wondered how far the Russian was prepared to go with this intimidation technique. He could think of two possible options: one was to come up with a plausible explanation to appease the man, at least until the next level of interrogators took over back at the military establishment, wherever that was. The other was simply to keep quiet and call the Russian’s bluff. The problem was that he couldn’t think of a story good enough to cover the first option. And the second one didn’t feel right. It was never a good idea to call someone’s bluff when your own life was at stake.
‘Don’t doubt my threat,’ the Russian warned, as if he was reading Stratton’s thoughts. ‘I have the authority to deal with petty spies like you. In any way I see fit.’
Stratton doubted the claim. It would be unwise to give a field officer that much autonomy. But he seemed confident enough.
The officer nodded to his men.They responded instantly, turning Stratton and Jason around and shoving them to within a few inches of the edge of the opening. The wind whipped more violently at their clothes but neither of them could feel the bitter cold at that moment. The operative was surprised to discover that they were already several thousand feet above the ground. The patchwork steppe was white as far as the eye could see, spotted with black blotches of woodland and the scars made by roads. The squatting door gunner to Stratton’s right was looking up at him, still wearing a grin.
Turbulence suddenly buffeted the craft. Those standing splayed their feet to maintain balance. Stratton automatically reached out but he had nothing to grab. The craft’s erratic movements calmed a little and he regained his balance with the help of the soldier holding him from behind. This was not a lot of fun.
‘I will ask you one more time,’ the Russian officer shouted close to their ears. He motioned to his soldiers who leaned the Englishmen further out of the back, their toes right on the edge now. If the Russians let go they would plummet. ‘Why are you in my country?’
‘I don’t think he’s bluffing,’ Jason shouted.
Behind them the Russian officer smiled at the comment.
Stratton’s mind raced to find a solution but there was none to hand. Turbulence hit the craft once again.
Stratton’s lack of response was not helping Jason’s growing concern one bit. ‘If you kill us you’ll be making a big mistake!’ the scientist shouted in desperation, suddenly convinced that the Russians intended to murder them.
The officer also found that comment amusing. ‘I really don’t give a damn who you are or what you’re doing here. I spent many years in England. I hate you people. You have become soft! You no longer know how to rule, yet you continue to play your little games. Your day has come to an end . . . yours in particular.’
Another patch of turbulence rocked the helicopter. This time all those standing lost their balance momentarily as the helicopter dipped and juddered. Jason found himself falling to the side, the Russian behind him unable to hold on.
The soldier holding Stratton let go to secure himself. The operative stared down at the passing ground far below, managing somehow to remain on the edge yet unable to move away from it. What he did next was the result of a keen survival instinct and a belief that the Russian officer intended to kill them, one way or another. Against these zero odds of survival he could see only one wild option left to him. Even if he succeeded they would all most likely die anyway. But dying trying was better than not trying at all.
Stratton reached out and grabbed the door gunner by the collar, lifted the man out of his seat and with every ounce of strength he had threw him out into the void. Stratton looked doomed to follow the screaming gunner but as he fell he seized hold of the butt of the weapon that had turned outwards on its mounting. His feet left the edge of the ramp, his body swinging outside the craft. He hung for a second, far above the tundra, dangling in the wind, the gun the only thing stopping him from falling. Gripping the trigger guard, he swung his feet back up to find the edge of the ramp, the barrel now pointing back inside the helicopter. The soldiers went for their guns. The officer, standing a few feet away, opened his mouth in horror at the sight. Stratton couldn’t stop himself from squeezing the trigger even if he had wanted to. He was holding on to it for dear life. The gun chattered to life with horrendous power and the first rounds punched through the officer, hammering his instantly lifeless body back into the craft. Stratton yawed the deadly machine gun on its axis, one side to the other. The rounds chewed up the cabin and those inside it. They tore through the bulkheads, ripped up boxes and shattered the craft’s small windows. He hit each soldier with several rounds, at such close range tearing each man to shreds, the bullets passing through several of them at a time.
The machine gun ate hungrily into the ammunition belt that shuddered out of the feeder box, the empty casings flying into the air.
Rounds spat into the thin wall at the front of the helicopter and through both pilots beyond it, shattering the blood-stained windshields. Sparks flew from the holed instruments panel. The dead pilots released the controls, flopping in their seats, and the power went out of the rotors.
The weapon went suddenly quiet as the last link of rounds was consumed. The Haze’s engines had ceased to scream and although the rotors still turned their power was greatly reduced. The most dominant sound was the wind rushing in through the back and out of the smashed windows on the sides and at the front of the helicopter.
Stratton had killed them all, every last one of them.
The aircraft began to rotate as the tail rotor came to a stop, the gradually increasing rate of spin making it difficult for Stratton to climb back inside. He reached along the top of the gun and pulled himself in far enough to grab the framework from where he could get onto the deck.
Only then did he think of his travelling companion. A quick scan around suggested he had fallen out of the craft but then he saw the scientist’s hands wrapped around one of the door struts, the rest of his body dangling in the air, nothing below him but the Russian countryside. Stratton scrambled over to the side of the opening, hooked his arm around the bulkhead and reached down for Jason Mansfield.
The turning motion was making it increasingly difficult for Jason to hang on.
‘Grab my hand!’ Stratton shouted.
Jason needed both hands just to hold on. To relinquish one seemed to him to be fatal.
‘Now!’ Stratton yelled, his own position more than tenuous.
Jason went for it, pulling himself a little closer and lunging towards Stratton. The operative did not fail him. He gripped Jason’s wrist, planted a foot firmly against the door frame and pulled back with all the strength he had
