Gathering her clothes from the chair with one hand, he applied the safety catch of the weapon with the other and let it hang, muzzle down by its harness.
Serge carried the clothing to the girl and knelt. Soothing her with his voice, the survivor of battles from Afghanistan to Chechnya stilled her tears if not her shaking, before leaving the room and closing the door behind him.
“Did you find anything?” he addressed the two troopers who stood in the corridor. They nodded toward the bedroom and he entered to see they had found and opened Peridenko’s safe. He ignored the substantial bundles of high denomination US Dollars and rolls of gold coins for the moment. After a few minutes reading the documents from the safe he stuffed several printed sheets into an inner pocket of his coveralls and zipped it back up.
The wardrobe revealed a number of women’s outfits; Peridenko had apparently retained some of the more expensive clothing of the unfortunates he invited here when he had a special event to celebrate. He selected the two sable coats that he supposed had belonged to two, probably exceptionally attractive call girls now buried somewhere in the forest.
Stuffing a bundle of dollars and a roll of gold coins into one pocket of a sable coat, he left the bedroom with both the coats.
“Gather up the money.” He told one, and to the other.
“Collect all the watches and jewellery you can find and distribute it to the men who took part tonight.” He knocked on the living room door and waited a moment before entering. The girl was dressed but still trembling and looked at him with worried, uncertain eyes as he entered. He regarded her thin but relatively smart uniform overcoat and draped one of the sables over her shoulders and pressed the other into her hands.
“Do you have everything you came with?” Frowning in puzzlement at him the girl nodded.
“Come with me,” he ordered and walked from the room. Both his men waited.
“Take this young lady in my vehicle, see that she gets home safely and then rejoin us at the aerodrome,” he told one. When that man had departed the dacha with the girl in tow, Serge looked around him at the walls and expensive furnishings. To the remaining trooper he said simply.
“Burn it,” and strode out into the night.
The constant buffeting from the turbulent air above the waves had reduced most of the forty-two strong team of Royal Marines to states of misery.
Having emptied their stomachs into the vomit bags, some still experienced dry heaving. In the close confines of the aircraft, the cold, discomfort and stench of vomit had overshadowed any concerns the Royal Marine Commando’s may have had regarding the dangers involved in their mission.
After refuelling at Bodø in Norway, the 47 Squadron C-130 Hercules had flown out to sea before losing altitude and turning toward North Cape.
Squadron Leader Stewart Dunn and Flight Lieutenant Michelle Braithwaite had held the troop carrying aircraft fifty feet above the waves for almost four hours’. Instead of the light of dawn they had entered the half dark of the arctic day for this time of year. Below them the waves had given way to snow and ice and they now approached their initial point.
Sorties of RAF Jaguars and Royal Norwegian Air Force RF-16s, the reconnaissance version of the F-16 Fighting Falcon, were keeping the Russian radars busy. The C-130 would climb to the minimum height necessary to drop its load of men and equipment before descending again. Once on the ice the Marines would be on their own until they had evaded clear enough for extraction.
Down in the hold the RAF loadmaster’s donned arctic clothing, even though they themselves would not be leaving the aircraft and this warned the Marines who mentally prepared themselves.
Each Marine wore ‘Arctic Whites’; white trousers and hooded smocks made of thin parachute material covering multiple layers of warm clothing. Once they were on the ice and moving they would stop whenever they began to feel warm and remove one or two layers of their clothing. Layers go on and off prior to the marines getting too hot or too cold; it is a basic operating drill. In sub-zero temperatures it can be fatal to work up a sweat, because the sweat will soak into the clothing and freeze once they had stopped exerting themselves so exposure and pneumonia would soon follow.
Major Richard Dewar, RM, was no different from each and every one of his Marines in wanting nothing more than to escape the purgatory of their journey and leave the aircraft.
Red on, the sound of the engines altered as the pilots throttled up in preparation for a rapid climb to a safe jumping altitude. The marines in their two sticks stood up and hooked up. The business of buddy checking and last minute strap tightening commenced, their Bergen’s hampered their legs as they shuffled along and waited. The red lighting came on and transformed the interior, allowing the troops and ‘Loadies’ to still see without providing a beacon for unfriendly eyes. The dispatchers opened the side doors and the rear cargo ramp lowered. The merely cold air within plunged to sub-zero and all commands had to be conveyed by hand signal.
The Hercules banked slightly and climbed steeply.
Green on, and led by Major Dewar both sticks went out of the side doors, heavier equipment out of the rear.
Twenty-seven seconds after completing its climb the C-130 descended and turned through 160’ onto its egress route.
Hokkaido, the northern most island of Japan had slipped over the horizon astern of the Prince of Wales group during the night. The eight surface combat and three support vessels were under EMCON, electronic emission control, radios and radars on standby.
HMS Prince of Wales FA/2 Sea Harriers and ASW Merlin’s were on deck alert, as were the other ships in the group. One of her dedicated AEW Merlin’s was aloft and the other on deck alert along with the rest.
Further north HMS Hood was still trailing the Kuznetsov group, with the Chinese covert picket’s also heading north but unaware their perimeter had been breached.
The Russian Oscar II, SSGN Admiral Dumlev and her St Petersburg class SSK diesel escort Irkutsk, that Hood had detected, had already turned about. The northbound heading of the Prince of Wales group had not gone unreported by Chinese agents in Japan.
The Mao had ceased her constant circling and was heading south, her original timetable scrapped and her air group at varying stages of ability with regards carrier flight operations. In four hours’ time the Kuznetsov would turn about and slow, allowing the Mao group to join with her and her group in the early evening. In southern China, marines were rehearsing for their role in the invasion of Taiwan as were the airborne troops assigned to that operation and the assault and capture of Singapore.
Ben Dupre had a very personal interest in this particular operation, leaving his deputy in charge in Washington he had flown to New York State. Ben was not there to run the operation; he had a very able man in charge already. Once collected from the field where the Bureau helicopter had delivered him, a car dropped him in a small side road off the Route 84 near the Putnam County line. ATF, FBI and their SWAT command members were clustered around the vehicle employed as the mobile command post. Stood in the background was a USAF colonel, Ben shook hands all around and stood with the colonel to listen to the briefing.
The Fascists of America of had been infiltrated a year before by a young female agent who had moved up in the organisation hierarchy to close to the leadership. She had passed on to her handler a rumour she had heard that a foreign government had offered them assistance. The only stipulation, she had heard, was that in return for the FA attacking several targets of their choosing simultaneously with bombs they would supply, financial aid would be forthcoming. One such attack would be somewhere in New York City and she had learnt where the operation was to be staged from. The young woman had been requested to discover solid details, however, she had been found dead in a field instead. The circumstances of her death were not elaborated upon, at least two persons present at this briefing knew her personally and the agent in charge did not want this turning into a grudge match.