“How far is this commander extending his search, as far as our farm?”
“Possibly, and possibly they will search the forest also, it is an obvious place for deserters to hide but only now are there enough militiamen available to do that.”
“How did you find out all of this?”
“The baker, his son-in-law is a militiaman, and they both like people to know they are in the know.”
Lying in the darkness with the contact leaning against the vehicle’s side, eating Tvarok and Chyorny Khlep, local cottage cheese and black bread purchased from the talkative baker, Patricia was silent for a moment as she weighed up the correct course of action to take.
“We have to go back, collect the others and get to the forest.”
“Da.” He wrapped the remains of his snack in a tissue to be finished later, and fished out the vans keys. Five minutes later they were heading back.
A thousand feet above the forest one of the helicopters in question slowly quartered the area. In the observer’s monitor, the heat sources showed up as lighter outlines. Birds, small animals, silka deer and wild boar, all left their traces on the screen, but humans thus far had been the only cause of excitement all day. It had landed in a clearing to drop off five militiamen before taking to the air once more, ready to provide fire support. It had proved an anti-climax to find two elderly men from a local village cutting wood, and after collecting the militia the patrol had continued.
The presence of the helicopter was of great concern at the airstrip. The Green Berets positions were all covered with heat sensor defeating material, grey woven, man-made fabric that could be cut to size. Even up close the strip looked disused, its surface fractured by the hardy bushes and grasses growing through the cracks they had made, but the downwash of the helicopters blades would literally blow away that deception, if it landed there or even hovered a few feet above.
The entire detachment had stood-to when the sound of the aircraft had reached them, moving to the dug in positions circling the strip, but it was almost an hour before anyone saw it. The detachment commander had picked up the field telephone and received the report. The report had been concise and accurate, identifying the threat as a single a Mi-8R Hip with military markings. The detachment commander had questioned the observers identification because of the similarities between the Mi-8, the ageing workhorse of the rotary wing fleet, and the Mi-171 which was more heavily armed, carried more armour and also a modern ECM suite, however the soldier qualified his identification of it by stating the tail rotor was on the right of the tail assembly not the left, and there was an absence of the bulbous additional filters, a feature of the Mi-171, on the turbine intakes above and slightly aft of the cockpit. The Mi-8R was a reconnaissance aircraft and as such could only carry eighteen troops, six less than its troop carrier sibling, but the Mi-171 could carry twenty-four also. Either way, if properly trained and handled, those troops could tie down his men until reinforcements arrived.
The Green Berets could easily bring the machine down but that would be letting the cat out of the bag and at the end of the day, if the enemy discovered their presence then the mission was a failure. If Major Nunro was not able to fly the F-117X out then the weapon would have to be removed and the aircraft destroyed. What would then follow that course of action would be the E&E from hell, and the detachment commander didn’t give a lot for their chances of survival if that came about because the priority would be to keep the weapon out of enemy hands, and that meant staying together as a unit rather than scattering in pairs.
The American Special Forces troops watched the helicopter, kept their FIM-92A Stingers close to hand, and settled down to a long day.
The journey back had been a nightmare, thanks to a broken hose that had been temporary fixed with a roll of duct tape, and a puncture and further complicated by a frozen wheel nut, which had sheared off, consequently it was gone midnight before the van had halted a quarter of a mile from the farm. Patricia, stiff from the long confinement left the van and made her way cautiously across country, her heart pounding in the expectation that the militia had beaten them here and were just lying in wait for her return.
Like most aircrew Patricia had posed for a photo in flight school, clad in flight gear with helmet under one arm and a Beretta 9M featuring prominently in its shoulder holster, it was the warrior bit, but like most aircrew she hadn’t spent a great deal of time at the range. The two English police officers had made her and Caroline put several hundred rounds down the range before taking them through CQB, close quarter battle scenario’s to gain familiarity with the weapon, and therefore confidence. She wasn’t bubbling over with confidence as she’d set off with a handgun supplied by the contact, reminding herself to make use of shadow and remain still when the clouds gave way to the moon, using the time to memorise the ground between her present piece of cover and the next.
When cloud covered the moon once more she moved cautiously forward with her Beretta held before her, straight-armed and the weapon in a two handed grip. The bulbous, six-inch long sound suppressor destroyed the balance and she had been warned that both range and stopping power would be inhibited, so she had to be close for it to be of any use. Where her eyes went the weapon followed and after several hundred yards she was feeling a lot better about this, the Lara Croft of the flight line, but then she swore under her breathe, calling herself some very unflattering names as she knelt and cocked the weapon, wincing at the noise it made before standing once more and continuing. Why the hell hadn’t she thought to make the weapon ready whilst still inside the van?
The house, when it came into view, was in darkness and she paused for a few minutes to listen, realising that ears were at least as important a sense as the eyes at night, before moving around the house in a circle. Once she reached the side of the house where the old ladies herb garden lay she paused again, waiting for the moon to appear through a gap in the scattered cloud covering in order to look at the well-tended and raked surface for boot prints, there were none. Surely anyone surrounding and then searching the place would have walked across it at some point, wouldn’t they? Off in the direction of their nearest neighbour a dog barked, its sound carrying across in the nights stillness, Patricia couldn’t remember hearing that before and peered in the direction of the disturbed canine but the other farm wasn’t visible from ground level.
Inside the dark house she paused inside the kitchen to listen, but found that her heart rate was so high the coursing blood in her veins was inhibiting her hearing and she had to wipe the sweat off her palms, rubbing them against the material of her jeans whilst holding the Beretta one handed, before fishing out a pen light.
She had experienced problems with this back in Scotland, holding the weapon with sound suppressor in one hand and the torch in the other before finding what Pc Pell had called ‘her girlie solution’, resting the suppressor on her other forearm whilst holding the penlight cack-handed.
Trying to remember all she had been taught she checked each of the ground floor rooms, but all appeared in order, the signs of a search were not evident. Keeping to the edge of the stairs to minimise the risk of creaking floorboards she made her way upstairs. The first bedroom was Caroline’s, and Patricia had to put the pen light between her teeth in order to turn its handle before resuming her stance. The penlight revealed an unmade yet empty bed with the sketchpad lying open upon it.