Torneski herself dealt with unfaithful lovers, or if they were beyond her physical reach then someone would deal with them in the precise way that she did, following her instructions to the letter.
The Antonov 72 which had lifted off from Saratov West at the premier’s instruction was initially cleared westbound to the KGB-run nuclear weapon storage facility north of Kursk, where Torneski was to authorise the release of two battlefield weapons and personally supervise their transfer to the control of the front commander, General Borodovsky, for immediate use.
Ten minutes into the flight, Torneski ordered the pilots to divert to Rossiya Moskva where a Politburo Kamov KA-60 had taken them to a helipad ten minutes’ drive from her dacha. Her driver, another of her sponsored talent, had collected them in her Zil.
“Now there’s going to be fireworks” whispered one of his men as they’d drawn up outside.
Katriona, her latest squeeze, had not answered any of the calls on the government network cell phone Elena had given her, nor the landline at the townhouse she shared with Torneski. It could have been that the girl had left Moscow for safety reasons as the capital was a big and obvious target for a nuclear strike by the West, should things go that way, but the car owned by Katriona was sat outside the dacha, and so was another that no one recognised.
“Stay here, but wait for my call.” Elena had ordered sternly.
Ten minutes later the call had come and they had trooped upstairs to the same room they had waited in days before. Elena was in the basement emptying her safe of documents, cash and the means to access her secret funds, but her shoes were outside the door where she had left them.
The mattress was still where it had been that night but there were two naked bodies upon it now, green eyed, chestnut haired young Katriona had been astride her secret male lover, confident in the belief that Elena would be away until after the war was won. She had been very new, the tattoo all the boss’s girls wore was not complete, just an outline of a dogs paw on that buttock which had looked so good in tight jeans. She had not heard the door open or Elena in her stocking feet walk up behind her.
“Christ, look at the blood.” one of his men had said disgustedly. “This isn’t the first time she’s offed one of her sluts this way…can’t you sell her on strangulation, lethal injection or anything else that’s easier to clean up sir?”
Oleg had sighed wearily and knelt to retrieve a single empty brass .45 casing that sat upon the varnished pine floor. No it was not the first time, but it seemed to be the favourite method by which Torneski destroyed pretty things she had no further use for, at the same time denying anyone else the pleasure of gazing into the girls beautiful faces. Katriona had been shot in the back of the head, and the heavy round had exited through her face to enter her lover’s forehead.
“Just shut up before she hears you, and fetch a mop and bucket.”
An air defence alert had delayed their return to Rossiya Moskva airport by the same means but they had then flown to the Deputy Premiers bunker in the forest north of Borisovskiya.
Arten Strombolovich was the perfect deputy leader, loyal but less able than the Premier, and lacking the imagination that was required to be ambitious.
Pale faced and shaken at having just received confirmation of the destruction of the Premiers bunker, he had at first voiced surprise at her presence which had only slowly turned to suspicion.
The bunker’s guards, and the Deputy’s bodyguard, were all her people, so once his family had been dragged from their beds and had guns at their heads he had abdicated the Premiership in her favour. New heads of the armed forces were quickly on the job and the Front Commander had been arrested and replaced.
The 155mm PzH 2000s relocated their gun line to the top of the hill fort but the Ariete tanks were on the move west before their arrival.
So far luck had been with them, despite losing five infantry fighting vehicles and their compliments in the ambush at the cutting. That was Lorenzo’s opinion anyway.
Two of his tanks had been damaged but not seriously enough to warrant immediate repair, and they had destroyed five enemy tanks plus another five IFVs. What concerned him though were the American company commander’s sightings of vehicles on the forest firebreaks heading west. This was not something Pierre Allain had expected, an attempt to seize two of the vital junctions, and not just the one.
A quick radio conference with the English at the next junction had confirmed an attack by enemy tanks was ongoing,
although the Soviet armour was standing off and softening up the defenders, as it waited for the infantry that had escaped his own tanks.
Were there just four or five Soviet MBTs remaining, or was there another tank company out there?
His cavalry regiment’s recce vehicles were again leading the way, but more cautiously now. Two were three hundred metres apart in the forest to the north of Autobahn 2, trying to locate which route the enemy had taken. A second pair was doing the same thing to the south. The remaining Lince was driving in a zig-zag fashion along the autobahn so as to hard-target for enemy tank and Sagger gunners.
“Six, this is Echo Two Five, over?”
Lorenzo was up in the hatch of his damaged Ariete, again getting wet despite his best intentions.
“Six, send over?”
“Echo Two Five, we’ve been following the firebreak the IFVs took when they bugged out, the track marks are easy to follow, and then they are joined by more at a firebreak intersection.” The grid reference was added.
“Six, How many, and can you tell if they were tanks or IFV’s?”
“Echo Two Five, no way of telling what made them, but I reckon a squadron’s worth, the ground here is pretty chewed up.”
It went along with had been deduced regarding the numbers involved in the earlier breach between 3 Para and 1 Wessex’s positions.
Apparently the Soviets had got it wrong too, and had expected a NATO reaction from the north, not the east, and had committed a company against each of the junctions while having at least another company in a blocking position to the north straddling the valley road from Lehre and the Vormundberg beyond.
Consulting his map, Lt Col Rapagnetta saw the thick pine forests on the valley slopes either side of a road bordered by fields with stone walls typical of this area. A good spot for a tank company to halt a much superior force, probably from ambush. Fortunately Lorenzo had chosen the less tactical but speedier approach or they could have driven straight into that.
If he were the Soviet commander he would have relocated when the attack on TP33 failed, but would he merely reinforce the tank company attacking the junction at TP32 to ensure success quickly, or would he be covering the eastern approaches too?
Lorenzo ordered the tanks to halt briefly upon the autobahn while he carried out a hasty reorganisation, combining the tanks of the units into two groups, a full squadron and a troop of three.