‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘The last of the Russian crew have been secured.’
‘That’s secured as in shot, right?’ Richter asked.
Ross nodded. ‘What we call nine-millimetre handcuffs,’ he said.
Three minutes later an SAS man severed the hasp of the second padlock, while another dragged an oxy- acetylene kit down the passage. ‘Cut around the lock,’ Richter said. ‘If we can punch it out, we can probably lever the bolt out.’
The sound of a telephone ringing was skilfully woven into Dmitri Trushenko’s dream, and only gradually impinged on his conscious mind. Then he woke rapidly. Only Genady Arkenko knew the number of his mobile telephone, and he had strict orders to ring him only in an emergency. Trushenko reached out, picked up the mobile and pressed a button. ‘Yes?’
‘It’s Genady, Dmitri. I’ve had a message from the
‘What?’
‘Under attack, Dmitri. They said the ship was under attack. But,’ Arkenko added, ‘I thought that the
Trushenko didn’t reply for a moment, then responded abruptly. ‘Thank you, Genady,’ he said. ‘I’ll take care of it. Don’t you worry about it. Good night, my old friend.’ His voice was calm and controlled, but his mind was racing. If the
Trushenko ended the call, got out of the bed and stood up, his clenched fists the only outward sign of his inner rage and turmoil. Four years of planning, of scheming, of concealment, and at the eleventh hour somebody – some Western intelligence service, he supposed – had discovered what was going on. There had to be a leak, Trushenko knew that without a doubt. Knowledge of the
The leak wasn’t Genady, of that Trushenko was quite certain, so it had to be one of the three soldiers – SVR Generals Nicolai Modin and Grigori Sokolov, and GRU Lieutenant General Viktor Bykov. When this is all over, Trushenko promised himself, I’ll see all three of those bastards on the table at the Lubyanka. Then Trushenko smiled to himself, because despite this unwanted interference in his plans, it still wasn’t too late. The American weapons were already in place and the strategic neutron bombs were positioned all over Europe, except for the London weapon, but that didn’t matter. Implementation, Trushenko decided, would just take place a little sooner than he had originally planned, that was all.
Anton Kirov
It was a warm night, and it got a lot hotter in the narrow passageway with the oxy-acetylene torch running. Like all watertight doors, the hold access was solid steel, about half a centimetre thick, and the torch made slow progress. It took nearly fourteen minutes to cut a rough circle round the lock. Wearing heavy gloves, because the cut edges of the metal were still red hot, the trooper tried pushing the lock through the hole, but it wouldn’t budge.
‘Try a kick,’ Richter suggested. The trooper kicked hard, hitting the combination dial with his heel. This time, the lock moved. A second kick, and the lock went straight through the hole, the bolt pulling out of the bulkhead recess. They opened the door and stepped inside. Richter looked round the hold, a seemingly cavernous structure, three decks high. There wasn’t by any means a full load of cargo, but there was enough to make the immediate location of the weapon impossible. He found a switch and flooded the hold with light.
Ross had followed Richter inside. ‘What are we looking for?’ he asked.
‘A steel chest,’ Richter said. ‘It’s about ten feet long by four feet high and five feet wide. But it’ll probably be inside some sort of a crate, so look for something with slightly larger dimensions than that.’
Four minutes later one of the troopers called out. ‘Here.’ They moved over to the corner, picking their route through the other hold cargo.
‘That’s probably it,’ Richter said. Predictably enough, the wooden chest was locked, but the bolt-cutters swiftly disposed of the padlock, and the trooper swung back the lid, dropped the side panel and they all peered inside. The steel chest looked exactly like the one that had housed the London weapon. The trooper used the bolt-cutters to sever the hasp of the padlock, and Richter lifted the lid of the chest cautiously. Another trooper brought Richter’s nav-bag over, while he read through Professor Dewar’s instructions one more time.
‘I suppose there’s no point in taking shelter anywhere?’ Ross asked.
‘Not,’ Richter said, ‘unless you’re a sodding fast swimmer and can make it around to the other side of the Punta de Europa in about ten minutes. Even then I wouldn’t want to guarantee you wouldn’t fry. This baby—’ he pointed into the chest ‘—was designed to turn the Rock into the sort of stuff you put in egg-timers.’
‘Ah,’ Ross said.
Richter referred again to Dewar’s notes and picked up the wire-cutters. He took his gloves off, checked the wire colour coding, identified and located each of the seven wires that controlled the anti-handling device, and took a deep breath. ‘Here we go,’ he said.
Trushenko walked briskly out of the bedroom and into the lounge where the dying embers of the fire still glowed. He snapped on the light, sat down at the table and opened up his laptop computer. He plugged in the data cable, and attached the other end to his mobile telephone, then switched on the computer and waited patiently while the start-up programs loaded.
Anton Kirov
Richter’s hands were sweating. He wiped them on a napkin, and picked up the wire-cutters again. ‘Would you read out the sequence of wires for me?’ he asked. ‘And hold the paper so I can see the list as well.’
‘Right,’ said Ross. ‘First – yellow with a green stripe.’ The cutters were sharp, and the wire parted easily. ‘Second – plain blue.’ The last wire was red, and when Richter cut it, Ross heaved a sigh of relief. ‘Thank Christ for that,’ he said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
‘Sorry,’ Richter said. ‘That didn’t disarm the weapon. That just made sure I wouldn’t get blown to pieces trying.’
‘What?’
‘That was only the anti-handling device,’ Richter said, undoing the butterfly nuts. He lifted off the aluminium plate and put it to one side, where hopefully nobody would tread on it. Ross and the two troopers peered into the box. ‘This,’ Richter said, pointing, ‘is the bomb.’
‘That’s it,’ Dmitri Trushenko muttered, watching the screen. Through his mobile telephone, the laptop had logged into the mainframe computer nearly fifteen hundred miles away. His identity and password had been accepted, and it only remained to select the weapon and initiate the firing sequence.
Anton Kirov
Richter traced the wires attached to the trigger, and carefully snipped off all the ties securing them, taking extreme care not to damage the wires themselves. Freeing the wire ties would mean he could place the trigger on the floor outside the bomb chest. Assuming he got it out, of course. He took out the socket set and assembled the ratchet handle with the Allen key in the end, and carefully inserted it in the head of the first of the six bolts holding the trigger assembly in place. He steadied the ratchet with one hand and started to pull with the other.
‘Stop!’ Ross shouted. ‘You’re turning it the wrong way.’
Richter stopped and looked at him over the open chest. ‘They’re left-hand threads.’
‘Oh. Sorry.’
