6. Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express
Phfft.
The guard – walking with measured step across the moonlit trainyard – staggered, clutching his neck, before collapsing bonelessly.
A slender black clad figure seemingly ghosted out of thin air, catching him beneath the armpits and lowering him silently to the gravel before his submachine-gun could clatter to the ground. The figure then proceeded to drag the body into concealment behind a rubbish filled skip.
The train – a heavily armour plated behemoth painted in dull khaki and olive camouflage started to pull slowly away, at first travelling at nothing more than a lazy walking pace. Wheels clanked and creaked, clouds of steam hissing softly in the cool air.
A second black clad figure darted from the cover of deep shadows, sprinting soundlessly, then leaping agilely onto the train's back end. The guard standing there, smoking surreptitiously and only half awake, didn't even start to turn around until a hand came over his shoulder and squirted something in his face.
His cigarette tumbled end over end, a flashing red ember in the dark night. The hand clamped over the man's mouth to prevent any unexpected outbursts before consciousness faded, then lowered his limp form silently.
By now the train was moving at the equivalent of an easy jog, accelerating steadily all the time.
The first figure sprinted rapidly to catch up, the second leaning out and extending an arm to catch her as she leapt. Both of them safely on board, the second figure bent down, rifling quickly through the fallen guard's pockets to retrieve his gun, code-key and comm. unit.
"All done?" The first asked.
Svetlana nodded shortly.
"Good." Anna levered her foot beneath the unconscious guard and casually tipped him off the train's back end. He hit the tracks with a dull thud, bouncing out of sight. "Get comfortable. Now we wait."
* * *
"The train technically belongs to the Russian Army, though General Yuri Moradin has commandeered it for his personal use. We've known for some time now that Moradin was corrupt, but it has been more advantageous simply to keep an eye on him than try to put him out of business."
Up on screen there was a high-resolution satellite photograph of a trainyard. At the centre of the picture was a massive armour plated train with half a dozen equally heavily armoured carriages attached.
"The rearmost carriage is a guardhouse with accommodation for twelve. It will normally travel with a full compliment, and intelligence gives us no reason to suspect anything different tonight. The guards are all Moradin's men. Ex-Army whose loyalty he bought off when their wages weren't paid for several months back in 93.
"The next two carriages are freight transport, and as far as we have been able to determine they should be largely empty. The front three carriages are luxury accommodation, including advanced server facilities and a satellite uplink. There will be two technical operatives on board, plus a four man catering staff, all of whom belong to Moradin and are military trained. Then we have your target. Barbets and two bodyguards, likely to be quartered in the frontmost carriage. Finally we have the driver and his relief." Director Karpuchin looked around the briefing room. "Any questions?"
"We're not expecting Moradin himself?" Svetlana asked.
"No. Moradin is in Moscow right now. We understand that he owes Barbets for a number of unspecified transactions and allows him to use of his train as a kind of payment in favour. Anything else? Good. You're both booked on a flight inside the hour. Barbets is due to meet up with the train in Novosibirsk at 10:00pm tonight and the train itself is due to depart at 11:00. You'll penetrate the trainyard's perimeter and board as it departs. Then you'll conceal yourselves and wait."
The director flicked a button on a hand unit and the image on screen changed to display a lower resolution satellite photo of a section of track somewhere in Siberia. "You'll wait until you reach this position before making your move. Barbets won't be able to summon back up to that location inside of two hours, and we'll have a support team waiting in place to extract you by helicopter at fifteen minutes notice. The train should reach here at approximately 3:00am if everything goes to schedule."
* * *
The co-ordinates on the GPS terminal ticked over steadily before Svetlana's eyes. Her watch said it was 3:04am.
She lay flat on her stomach atop the roof of the train's rear carriage, wind buffeting her hard in the face. A couple of yards ahead of her there was a hatch that gave entrance to the carriage below. To either side were low, forested hills, seeming to stretch out endlessly, no hint of civilisation to be seen in any direction save for this railway track. Overhead clouds scudded rapidly across an inky midnight-blue sky, pale silver shafts of moonlight intermittently penetrating the overcast.
The co-ordinates hit the value she was waiting for. "We're entering the target zone. Confirm readiness to move." The wind noise drowned out her voice before it had gone more than a couple of yards, but her microphone picked it up easily enough.
"Ready." Anna's voice came back immediately, coolly professional.
Svetlana put the GPS away, then reached down and unhooked the tether around her waist that anchored her in place. The train had slowed significantly over the last five miles as it traversed a huge looping bend in the track so it was relative safe to do so. Pulling out a small remote-control unit with a slim black-gloved hand, she flicked a couple of buttons on its top.
Directly ahead of her there was a loud crack accompanied by a brief, brilliant flash of light. A pair of micro-charges blew out the bolts holding the roof hatch shut and it fell inwards with a clatter. Crawling forward swiftly, she pulled the pin from a large metal canister and dropped it into the gap. Thick clouds of gas billowed from it as it fell.
Pulling a gasmask from her pack, she slipped it on over her head, counting beneath her breath. From inside the carriage came a couple of stifled yells. These were followed moments later by heavy thuds.
As the count reached twenty she moved again, swinging forward gracefully through the hatch and landing cat-like on her feet.
Infrared goggles enabled her to see through the clouds of smoke inside the carriage. There were slumped bodies all around her. Six, she counted quickly, three of them caught asleep on their bunks, another three fallen from chairs, apparently in the middle of a card game.
She caught the movement of a seventh figure out of the corner of her eye. He was on his hands and knees, a towel wrapped around the lower half of his face as he groped blindly through the smoke towards a rack containing four Abakan AN-94 assault rifles, coughing violently. Moving quickly before he became aware of her presence she kicked him in the side of the head.
Another look round confirmed that everything was well. "Carriage secured."
Immediately the door at the back end of the carriage opened and Anna walked in, also wearing a gasmask. She walked down the carriage quickly, gaze sweeping from side to side. "We're missing two."
Svetlana had reached the same conclusion, counting a total of nine bodies. She nodded.
Anna strode past her, oozing confidence. "Get my back."
* * *
The next carriage appeared to be deserted. There were packing crates secured against one wall but no sign of any other occupation.
Anna moved ahead through the gloom, a silent and deadly shade. Several steps back Svetlana had her pistol drawn, suppressor fitted, barrel point towards the carriage's ceiling – a slightly out of kilter shadow.
As they reached the end of the carriage voices could be heard faintly beyond the door. The noise of the train drowned out the exact words, but the tone of the conversation didn't seem to contain any urgency. They contained a level of desultory boredom that didn't fit with someone who was trying to raise an alarm.
There was the sound of a door opening. Anna moved to one side of this carriage's door, waiting poised and Svetlana simply stopped moving, merging into the shadows and seeming to vanish.
"And tell Yevgeny he can suck my . . ." The door slammed shut again, drowning out what exactly Yevgeny could suck, though the inference was obvious.
Then the door to this carriage opened.
A guard walked in, head down, hands deep in the pockets of his coat. Anna stepped out behind him, smoothly looping a wire garrotte around the man's throat, stamping down on the back of the man's knees to drop him and take away his height advantage, then pressing her own knee hard into the small of his back to increase her leverage.
He tried to struggle, but the garrotte had already bitten deep. As blood sheeted down his throat he made a thin, gasping, whining sound.
The carriage door opened a second time.
"Wait up, Yegor. You forgot . . ." The voice choked off abruptly as the speaker caught sight of Yegor and Anna.
As he fumbled with his Kiparis submachine-gun – which in his haste he'd manage to get tangled in his coat – Svetlana leaned around Anna and shot him twice in the chest. He toppled over backwards even as Anna was lowering the now motionless Yegor to the floor.
She looked up and favoured Svetlana with a short nod that might have been thanks.
* * *
Svetlana slipped the keycard into the lock. After a fraction of a second the LED next to it flashed green and there was a click.
Anna immediately kicked open the door, barging through. There was a startled yelp from inside, cut off quickly by the sound of two suppressed gunshots. Phfft, phfft.
"Hey . . ."
Phfft, phfft. Another two suppressed gunshots were followed by silence. By the time Svetlana entered the control room it was all over, two dead bodies slumped over a pair of control consoles.
"Glad you could join me," Anna said dryly.
Svetlana ignored her, moving quickly to the nearest console and trying to ignore the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. The man Anna had shot looked to be scarcely into his twenties, facedown on the keyboard, wire-rimmed glasses fallen half off. Gingerly she shifted the body aside just far enough to allow herself access.
The terminal was already logged on, so she didn't need the hack chip Sergei had provided. Using the trackball to flick rapidly through the system menus, she began to power down the security systems that guarded the main living quarters.
Across from her, Anna perfunctorily tipped the body of the second technician out of his chair. Pulling a remote modem from her pack, she clamped it in place on top of the monitor, and then typed something quickly into the keyboard. "Base ops, this is Lonewolf. Ready to transmit."
There was a crackle of static. Then. "Copy, Lonewolf. Ready to receive."
"Uploading server contents now." Anna pressed enter.
"Upload received. Estimated transfer time twelve minutes."
"Acknowledged, base ops. Twelve minutes. Resuming radio silence." Anna glanced across at Svetlana. "Well?"
"Security systems disabled. I've locked down the rear two carriages so we don't get any surprises from that direction. The safe isn't connected to the central computer though. We'll need another way in." Svetlana's voice was brisk – businesslike.
Anna nodded impassively. Both of them had been inwardly expecting this eventuality. "And the power system?"
"Ready to be brought down. It may alert anyone still awake that something's wrong if I disable it before we're ready to move in."
"Do it now." Anna's voice was flat.
"The upload . . .?" Svetlana started.
" . . . will take care of itself. We move in now."
Svetlana just nodded wearily, not willing to start an argument about it. Besides, Anna was right. They needed to get the train stopped before the twelve minutes were up if at all possible. "Powering down now."
Anna was already moving. Svetlana followed quickly on her heels.
* * *
Svetlana burst through the door.
Lying on the lower bunk, the man made a low groaning noise as he stirred from sleep. His eyes went as wide as saucers as he dimly made out the black clad figure standing over him, but before he could make another sound Svetlana elbowed him hard in the face, snapping his head back against the headboard. He was already unconscious, but she sprayed him in the face to make sure he stayed that way.
Phfft, phfft. Across the corridor she heard two more suppressed gunshots as Anna chose a rather more ruthlessly terminal method of dealing with her opponents. They where slightly louder than before as the efficacy of the suppresser slowly faded with repeated use.
As they met up again Anna held up two fingers. Svetlana held up one finger in answer. Both knew without saying that that still left one member of the catering crew unaccounted for.
"Is there a problem back there? I heard something . . .." The bodyguard, entering through the far end of the carriage, flicked a light switch. Nothing happened, the carriage remaining shrouded in darkness. "What the . . .?"
Anna whirled and fired off a snap shot. The bodyguard was already scrambling for cover though and the bullet clipped his shoulder rather than taking half his head off. His gasp of pain drew another couple of bullets, but they only managed to raise puffs of stuffing from the padded leather couch he'd ducked behind.
A second or so later he fired blind round the side of the couch back at them. Both Anna and Svetlana had already taken cover in the doorways they'd just emerged from so the bullets went harmlessly wide. Unsuppressed, and echoingly loud in the close confines of the carriage, these would have alerted anyone else still conscious on the train.
"Cover me," Svetlana hissed across to Anna. She heard the bodyguard start to speak urgently into his radio and thumbed a frequency-jammer to cut him off in a squall of static.
Anna gave no verbal acknowledgement but leant round the doorframe, emptying the remaining six bullets in her clip in a tight, accurate pattern next to the bodyguard's hiding place.
As she did so Svetlana darted out of cover, sprinting forward. She ran down one side of the carriage to minimise her exposure, leaping up on to a chair, then running from tabletop to tabletop, breathtakingly surefooted. As she ran out of tables she launched herself into a flying leap towards the sofa.
She landed feet first on the sofa's back, a human missile. There was a loud splintering crack as the bolts securing the sofa in place were torn from their anchor points by the impact, and the sofa toppled over backwards.
Caught completely by surprise the bodyguard could only manage an anguished wail – swiftly cut off – as the sofa, Svetlana atop it, smashed down on him, crushing him to the floor.
Anna walked calmly forwards and stamped on the bodyguard's exposed head to make sure – though it was probably completely unnecessary. "Nice moves," she simply said.
Before Svetlana could respond the carriage door burst open. Submachine-gun fire cackled with no pre-emption or challenge.
Outside the field of fire, Svetlana flung herself tight against the wall. Anna tried to do likewise, but took at least two bullets in the chest, sprawling over backwards in a heap. She was wearing body-armour, but Svetlana couldn't tell whether it had held or not.
Barbets' second bodyguard didn't seem aware that he had an opponent still standing. He stepped through the door and moved to stand over Anna's supine form, apparently intent on making sure she was definitely dead.
Svetlana moved. The bodyguard started to turn, apparently catching a flicker of motion in the corner of his eye.
Too late. Her foot snapped into his wrist, knocking the gun from his grasp and sending it clattering against the wall. Then she punched him in the jaw, sending him reeling away from her but not managing to put him down.
Spitting a mouthful of blood, he charged back at her. She snapped a kick up towards his midsection, but his bulk and momentum barrelled him right through the blow and his shoulder smacked hard into her stomach. Their combined momentum sent them tumbling back over the upended sofa.
He landed on top of her, the impact enough to blast the breath from her body. She tried to swing a knee into his groin but lacked the leverage to generate any real power behind it. Instead she used the heel of her hand to lever his head back, then head-butted him hard in the middle of the face, crunching his nose flat. His grip on her didn't slacken in the slightest though, and he was considerably stronger than she was, shaking her violently. A punch to the stomach left her gasping, and he started to pummel her with brutal efficiency.
Suddenly, without warning, he went limp, collapsing lifelessly on top of her.
Groaning in pain as she struggled to draw breath, Svetlana saw Anna standing over them. She calmly pulled her combat knife from the back of the man's neck, wiping the blood from its blade on his jacket. Straining with the effect, Svetlana rolled his two-hundred and fifty pound bulk off of her, then pulled herself somewhat gingerly to her feet.
Anna was already turning her back on her, showing no outward ill affects from being shot. Moving forward swiftly she threw a handful of flashbangs through the door to the next carriage, then rolled through after them.
Again Svetlana followed.
* * *
The first bullet missed Anna so wildly that it blasted out one of the carriage's windows, letting in a roaring blast of wind and noise. The second – Barbets still dazzled from the flashbangs with his nightvision completely shot – missed by an even greater margin, slamming into the ceiling.
There was no chance of a third bullet. Anna knocked the gun from Barbets' grasp then backhanded him hard across the face, knocking him sprawling across the bed. He tried to kick out at her, but she simply caught hold of his leg. A sharp twist to the right produced a very nasty snapping sound. Barbets screamed piercingly, but the roaring from the shattered window almost managed to drown it out.
Before he could react any further Anna had grabbed hold his wrist, yanked it up over his head, and handcuffed it to the bed frame.
"My leg! My leg! You fucking bitch! What have you done to my leg?"
He groaned, almost shrieking in pain, sweat pouring from his face. Anna backhanded him casually across the face again to shut him up. She glanced back at Svetlana. "Go stop the train. I'll get the information we need."
For a moment Svetlana, looking at Barbets on the bed, hesitated. His face was taut and sweating, and he wasn't quite writhing because even that amount of movement hurt too much. Instead he just lay twitching and spasming. Finally she nodded reluctantly, feeling something sick and ominous in the pit of her stomach. "Okay."
"What do you want from me," she heard Barbets saying – pleading – as she walked away.
"Co-operation," was Anna's reply.
The door closed behind her. A second or so later there was a muffled cry of pain that sent a shiver down her spine. Svetlana stopped. For a moment she almost turned back and confronted Anna, but then she gave a small shake of the head. She had a job to do, and if you had a job you did it. You didn't put other agents at risk. You didn't put the mission at risk.
Besides, Vitor Barbets was hardly an innocent. She tried to tell herself that.
There was a second cry, louder and more ragged than before. "Please! Please!"
Svetlana gritted her teeth, walking past an open door to what looked like a storage cupboard on her left and continuing down the carriage. As she opened the door at the end, between the carriage and the main engine, roaring wind noise and the clanking of wheels on track drowned out the sounds of interrogation behind her.
For a moment she paused, watching the engine in front of her for any sign that the driver or his relief were aware of what was going on behind them. Nothing. She went to work.
Dropping into a crouch she took a small packet of C4 explosive and a detonator charge from her backpack, handling them with utmost care. The train tracks passing by below, just a couple of yards in front of her face, were strangely hypnotic as she began to rig the C4 to the coupling between carriage and engine.
She was almost done. Just the detonator charge to attach. Behind her came the sound of a pistol safety being disengaged. "Don't move."
Svetlana froze. She remembered the open door she'd walked past – the fact that one of the catering staff was still unaccounted for – and cursed herself for an idiot beneath her breath.
"Hands where I can see them." The man's voice was hard, though Svetlana detected a fractional quaver underlying it. He was afraid. He was also standing about five yards behind her – too far away to tackle without getting shot several times in the process.
"Good. Now, you have a gun." It wasn't a question, she sensed. "Take it out nice and slowly. Slowly I said! No sudden moves!"
Breathing deeply Svetlana did as she was told.
"Now slide it back towards me. Do it now!"
Svetlana nodded, surreptitiously attaching the detonator charge she was still holding to her pistol's magazine – setting it with a three second delay. Then she slid the pistol hard back towards him so that it only came to a rest when it hit his feet.
"Hands on the back of your head."
The detonator beeped.
"What the . . .."
Svetlana braced herself as the detonator exploded, ripping the pistol magazine open and shredding the man's shins in a spray of hot shrapnel. He screamed. Svetlana felt something like a giant fist shove hard into her back, knocking her forward.
She barely managed to catch herself, lying face first across the coupling, train tracks passing by rapidly only inches from her face. Behind her the man was groaning in pain. Heart thudding, adrenaline rushing through her veins, she quickly crawled back to safety then jumped to her feet.
The man – bleeding copiously from his shredded legs – was trying to crawl towards his dropped gun, knocked several yards back inside the carriage. She intercepted him, kicking the pistol out of reach then kicking him in the side of the head to render him unconscious.
Turning away from him, she returned to the explosives. She took a second spare detonator charge from her backpack and, hands shaking ever so slightly, attached it to the C4 charge. Taking a deep breath, she set the fuse for ten seconds then darted quickly back inside the carriage, slamming the door shut behind her.
The bang was muffled – surprisingly insignificant. The clanging and shrieking of tortured metal that followed was less so.
After several seconds, taking gulping breaths to try and calm herself, Svetlana forced herself back to her feet to check that the explosives had done their job.
Opening the carriage door she was greeted by a shower of bright orange sparks and flinched back, raising an arm to protect her eyes. Already the train engine had pulled away about fifty yards and the gap was growing rapidly. The broken coupling mechanism had fallen down and was being dragged along the track, causing the flying sparks. The carriages were still on the rails, decelerating steadily, as Sergei had assured her they would be. She turned away.
Her attention returned to the unconscious man. Bending down beside him she inspected his injured legs. He was bleeding heavily and both shins appeared to be fractured. On the bright side it didn't appear that any arteries had been severed, but she could see that several splinters of sharp metal shrapnel were still deeply embedded in his flesh. Flinching slightly, she started to try and bind the wounds, staunching the blood flow as best she could in an effort to keep him from bleeding to death.
Minutes passed as she worked – trying to ignore the nagging voice that told her it was pointless. That he was going to die anyway, whatever she did. Then there came another piercing scream.
* * *
For several long seconds Svetlana just stared. The world around her seemed strange and slow, as if she had somehow become detached from it. It was like she had inadvertently slipped through a crack leading out of the waking world and into a nightmare realm.
There was blood. So much blood that it didn't seem immediately possible.
Formally pristine white bedsheets were now an ocean of redness. The front of Vitor Barbets' shirt was in tatters, and it looked like a complicated relief map had been carved into his exposed chest, drawn in thin red cuts. After blinking a couple of times, she realised his left hand had been severed at the wrist, and blood was still oozing thickly from the raw stump. Somehow he was still alive, chest rising and falling rapidly in thin, wheezing gasps. His face looked gaunt – greasy and pale. Dark eyes stared up at the ceiling.
The roaring and the wind from the broken window was lowering in volume and force steadily. The slowing of the train seemed synonymous with Vitor Barbets' life draining away.
Finally she tore her gaze away – looked at Anna.
Anna was across the other side of the carriage, calmly cleaning out the safe. In one hand she held something partially wrapped in a cloth. It took Svetlana a second or so to realise it was Barbets' severed hand. As she watched, Anna tossed it casually back onto the bed where it lay like a huge pallid spider.
"What the hell did you do?" Her voice rasped weirdly as she spoke. She felt the urge to gag – vomit.
Anna just looked at her calmly, as if to say: what's the fuss. "The lock required a scan of his palm to open it."
Svetlana gaped. She was lost for words, scarcely able to comprehend. Without any conscious decision being involved she suddenly had the pistol she'd retrieved from the man who'd tried to ambush her pointed at Anna. "Then you uncuff him and force him to open it."
"He was being uncooperative. Uncuffing him was too much of a risk." Calm as you like.
"Too much of a risk," Svetlana repeated blankly.
"A judgement call, and one I stand by." Anna shrugged. "Now if you're not going to shoot me . . .?"
Gritting her teeth angrily, Svetlana lowered the pistol to her side.
"Perhaps you could use that on him instead? It'd be a kindness. More merciful than just waiting for him to bleed to death."
Svetlana holstered the pistol – kept on staring at Anna coldly.
"If you don't have the stomach for it . . .." Anna pulled her own pistol, slamming a new eighteen round clip home, then aimed at Barbets. He tried to raise himself, but was too weak to do so. The two shots she fired were so loud it scarcely seemed that the weapon had a suppresser fitted at all anymore.
Vitor Barbets fell back, twitched a couple of times, and was still. The sharp, bitter tang of cordite mixed in with sweet, coppery reek of blood. Svetlana felt her stomach flipping over.
The train finally came to a complete standstill. Svetlana started to walk past Anna.
Without warning, Anna pounced, grabbing hold of Svetlana and slamming her hard back against the carriage wall. Before Svetlana could react – could start to struggle, Anna had her bloodstained knife pressed against her cheek, almost but not quite firmly enough to draw blood. Their eyes locked together. Anna's breath was warm on her face. "Next time you pull a gun on me I suggest you follow through and pull the trigger." Her voice was whisper soft – deathly.
Svetlana said nothing. They simply kept staring into one another's eyes. Neither woman blinked. Neither woman flinched. The knife blade gleamed softly.
* * *
Svetlana stared out of the helicopter's window, down at the trees passing by several hundred metres below. She felt numb and lost, more unsure than ever about everything. The image of Vitor Barbets' tortured body – his vacantly staring eyes – was there every time she closed her eyes. Surely this wasn't who she was.
She glanced across at Anna, feeling a low, simmering anger – almost a hatred. The woman had her back to her and didn't seem to be aware of her scrutiny. She was looking back behind them at the train, burning on the tracks in the distance.
Her smile, reflected in the glass, was surrounded by a shifting wreath of flames.