But now, falling at over 130 feet a second, a glance at his wrist altimeter telling him he was at twelve thousand, with just under eight thousand — fifty-nine seconds — to go before all chutes would be pulled, David saw the would-be rescuer desperately trying to cut himself out of the tangle, but now falling out of starfish pattern and tumbling himself, dangling by one foot from a maze of twisted nylon. Two seconds later, David saw the wounded man’s chute “thin” to a Roman candle and lost sight of both of them. Suddenly, frighteningly, everything was black. He had a sensation of hurtling into the stark vortex of some gigantic wind tunnel, his face mask hissing under the onslaught of granular snow, stinging his face and drumming off the IR goggles like hail on a metal roof.
Looking down for the blobs of infrared heat emission they said he should see coming up from the drop zone — particularly from the two domes on the Council of Ministers Building, the smaller one on the western side, the larger on the eastern — he saw nothing. Then suddenly, bursting out of the snow cloud, he could see the two blurred orbs and other traces of heat emission from the roofs of the Kremlin complex, though from the fuzz veiling the infrared, he could tell it was still snowing. On one hand, it would make spot-on landing difficult, even given the relatively large area between the buildings. On the other hand, the snowfall would soften the impact. The real key, however, was whether the SPETS guards would have any forewarning.
He glanced at the altimeter needle, saw it was forty-two hundred feet, a gust of wind pushing him hard left. Quickly he corrected, going into a right-hand drop, and before he was ready for it, he heard the whiplike crack of the chute opening above him, the sudden deceleration, so that now his descent seemed to be taking forever — and he felt that the whole of Moscow must be able to see them — all about him the white blurs of starfish flipping, changing into men. There was another crack, then another — a trooper so close to him that he had thought for a second it was the crack of rifle fire. He had no idea who the two men were who had gone down in the tumble. All he could hope was that the trooper who’d gone to help had freed himself from the chute foul-up and that the other had plummeted to earth either in the trees southward in the Taynitsky Garden or into the river itself — well away from the drop zone.
In fact, both men had come down in Red Square just to the north of St. Basil’s, not far from the red-star-topped Spasskaya, or Savior’s Gate. One of the two gate guards, hearing a snow-soft thud, moved forward, but unable to see very far in the falling snow and forbidden to leave his post, he rang for two other guards in the warming room beneath the gate’s barbican to go and investigate, suspecting it might be a piece of equipment from the snowplow now working the square. The plow’s half-slit yellow headlights were barely visible in the blackout as it worked to keep the square as clear as possible for the members of the Politburo and STAVKA for when they left the emergency meeting now under way in Premier Suzlov’s office. The plow also had to keep the square clear for the twenty or so T-90 tanks parked in the lot behind the corner arsenal tower, should they ever be needed quickly in the square — loose, unpacked snow particularly annoying to the machine gunners, who, unlike the main gunner, did not have laser sights.
A minute later, one of the investigating guards pulled out his walkie-talkie. ‘ Parashyutisty!”—”Paratroops!”—he yelled. “Parashyutisty protivnika!”—”Enemy paratroops!” The guards at the Spasskaya Gate alerted the KGB guards officer and the commander of the arsenal SPETS troops. Thirty seconds later, 345 men were pouring out of their barracks within the arsenal, quickly donning winter battle smocks, snatching arms from the racks, the general alarm whooping at all gates, all entrances and exits to the Fortress closing — SAS already landing in the area between the arsenal on the western side and the COM, a half dozen or so running forward from the old Tsar Apartments five hundred yards south, the snow roiling in beams of searchlights that began crisscrossing the sixty-three acres like enormous headlight beams sharply defined in the frozen, snow-thick air.
David Brentwood’s MAC 11 was already spitting flame as he, with six other troopers, who he could see were also firing, came down in the large open area between the Council of Ministers on his right and the Church of the Twelve Apostles to the south. Suddenly his face was smacked violently to the left — there was a ripping, tearing sound on his mask, a flurry of some enormous bird, its talons into his neck as he hit the ground. Before he had time to realize it had been one of the Kremlin’s goshawks, he heard a tinkle of broken glass somewhere behind him. A searchlight died. Next there was a stuttering burst of AK-47 fire, and David saw two of his troop, snow flicking up about, dead, but not before the SAS troopers from A Troop, landing on the broad, flat section of roof on the Palace of Congress, had killed four SPETS as the Russians emerged from the southern end of the arsenal, trying to make it to the trees in front of the COM. Another SPETS was shot, mistaken by a plainclothes KGB for one of the attacking Allied force.
But if the SPETS had moved fast and were in action within seconds, as became their elite status, then so had the SAS — all expertly trained, in Olympian condition, and superbly practiced in what to do and above all how to adapt with ingenuity as well as rapidity when confronted by a plan that David Brentwood recognized was off to a bad start. The SPETS had begun engaging them, albeit in poor visibility, before a good many of the SAS were even out of harness. But against losing the edge of complete surprise, Brentwood knew his men’s adrenaline was up and racing in a way that that of men, however good, just hauled out of bed could not be.
“Zdes!”—”Over here!”—called Aussie in one of the Russian phrases. “Zdes!” he repeated to three SPETS making heavy going of it near a wind drift of snow as they cleared the end of the park between the arsenal and the COM, Aussie pumping his forearm in the Russian infantry signal for “hurry up.” Hesitating for only a second, they turned toward him. When they were seven yards from the Australian, a flare changed night into day, but it was too late. In two quick bursts, Lewis felled them. Crouching low, running for the COM door and calling out to three members of Laylor’s A Group and Choir Williams, like himself from B Group, to cover him, Lewis quickly pushed three balls of Play-Doh plastique from his left pouch against the lock of the big door, the ten-second-delay detonator-firing unit inserted like a small matchbox in putty. The searchlights were nearly all out now, easy targets for SAS men, especially those on the Palace of Congress roof.
“Clear!” called Aussie. Choir Williams and the three men from Laylor’s group moved quickly to the protection of alcoves on either side of the door. Now there was a veritable rain of parachute flares fired by the Russians, brilliantly illuminating the yellow sides of the COM building, the trees fifty yards or so in front of them, and beyond, the roof of the arsenal, where a parachute had wrapped itself around a chimney, the SAS trooper crouched behind the chimney, raking the trees below. The dull thump of the plastique was followed by a tremendous crash as one of the doors buckled, its falling weight ripping out its hinges as it slid down the marble stairs into the snow, black, acrid-smelling smoke pouring out of the building, rising quickly, billowing into the snowy air like some abandoned locomotive, the echoing sound of AK-47 fire erupting from inside the building. Another two SAS men, using the explosion as cover, were sprinting through the knee-deep powder now, one of them David Brentwood, who, without so much as breaking his stride, went through the snow-curtained smoke, returning fire, shooting down the two guards, not SPETS, he noticed, who had been blasting away at the door with more panic than accuracy. Probably KGB auxiliaries.