"Exit wound" - читать интересную книгу автора (McNab Andy)

2

We swooped between two tower blocks. I knew Dex wouldn’t be able to resist whipping out his torch again. He probably wasn’t going to get another chance.

With the Cold War in its death throes, the Warsaw Pact boys were holding the mother of all closing-down sales. Every KGB agent – like the one we were about to meet – had turned into Del Boy Trotsky. They were auctioning off apartment blocks they didn’t own in Moscow and St Petersburg. Generals were using entire infantry battalions to shift heavy plant for sale at their Western borders. Some army conscripts were even being rented out as slave labour by the high command. They still had a quarter of a million troops fighting in Afghanistan, but no matter what the Soviet PR machine claimed, they were getting their arses kicked big-time over there.

Red Ken, Tenny and I had spent most of ’86 running around the mountains with the men in beards. The Regiment dropped every bridge that came within reach so the Russian armoured convoys couldn’t move around the place. Then we built IEDs to blow them to pieces if they did. Dex was busy doing supply runs for the muj when he wasn’t ferrying us.

Even in those days, the level of Soviet corruption had been outrageous. Dex brought back shed-loads of brand-new Russian weapons and equipment that had been sold by their high command. Most of it ended up being used against their own twenty-year-old conscripts. These kids were dropping by the hundred every day.

Now the entire Soviet bloc was in meltdown, the East Germans were going for it big-time. They were flogging as many military secrets as they could get their hands on. Even the Stasi, the state secret police, were doing a roaring trade in secret documents. Anything to bring in a few dollars before the whole system went to rat shit. The West encouraged it. Once the Wall fell, a new world order would have to be fought over – and if we didn’t grab as much technology and intelligence aswe could while the going was good, there were plenty of other buyers in the queue. We had to know what kit was about to flood the market so we could build better stuff to defend against it.

Red Ken and Tenny had been seconded to Brixmis, the British Commanders-in-Chief Mission to the Soviet forces in Germany. They’d needed another body for this particular job and had given Hereford a call to see if I was available. These two were tighter with each other than with me, but we’d always liked working together.

Brixmis was set up after the Second World War to foster good working relations between the occupying forces in the British and Soviet sectors. The French and Americans reached their own agreements with the Russians. For some reason the Brits were allowed as many liaison staff in the Soviet zone as the other two missions combined. Maybe they liked the PG Tips.

Red Ken had served twenty-two years in Para Reg and the SAS, and his face told the whole story – although his roll-up habit must have contributed something to those deep crevasses. He’d spent the last three years driving about in his matt-green Opel, taking pictures of tanks and helping defectors across the wire, but was getting out of the Regiment after this tour. He claimed he had no plans beyond sitting full-time on the terraces at Barnsley FC, but I knew he was talking bollocks.

Tenny was also from D Squadron. He was taking over from Red Ken, but for how long, nobody knew: when the Wall crumbled, so would Brixmis. He was about thirty, very smart and hard. You’d have to be, growing up with a hairdo that looked like a rusty Brillo pad. ‘Tennyson’ wasn’t a name you normally heard shouted across an inner-city playground, but his drop-dead gorgeous fiancee seemed to like it, and I guess that was all that mattered.

Tenny had always been a star. After university and a spell in the OTC, he decided he wanted to hang out with squaddie lowlife rather than do what he should have done – become a doctor or lawyer or something that lined his pocket. Tenny had been going places. He had golden balls. We all knew he was destined for better things. For me, being in the Regiment was the best I was ever going to get. For him, it was just another stepping-stone to global domination.

‘“Jol-ly boat-ing weather, /And a hay har-vest breeze, /Blade on the fea-ther, /Shade-”’

‘Shut the fuck up!’ Dex was doing Red Ken’s head in.

Dex threw the aircraft into a tight right-hander. I had to throw out an arm to stop myself sliding across the cabin.

‘Now, now, Red – manners. You guys should like it. The music was written by a Rifle Brigade chap at the North-West Frontier. I think his name was-’

Red Ken had had enough. ‘Shut the fuck up, crap hat!’ To Para Reg, that meant anyone who didn’t wear a red beret.

These two had always been like a couple of fishwives. They bickered 24/7, but couldn’t do without each other to bicker with.

Dex’s tone suddenly changed. ‘Border crossed.’

Down below it looked like someone had taken an axe to the Christmas-tree cable. Even the navigation lights had been doused.

‘Over the sterile zone.’

A Bronx growl filled our headphones. ‘I can see that. Just tell me when we’re going to goddam land.’

Tenny kept his voice low and controlled before Red Ken had a chance to tell our American friend where he could shove the Special Relationship. ‘It’s OK, Spag. We’ll get you there, don’t worry. We can’t do anything right now apart from lie here and let Dex get on with it.’

I’d met Conrad Spicciati three days earlier and known straight away I didn’t like him. It wasn’t just because he was small and so overweight he looked like Humpty Dumpty – he didn’t know how to behave with us. For a low-grade CIA agent he had a Pentagon-sized swagger. We had to take the piss. Dex started calling him Spaghetti. Ten seconds later we’d shortened it to Spag.

It got him so worked up his porn-star moustache was in a permanent twitch. He kept stroking it with his thumb and forefinger, possibly to calm it down. I wondered if he’d grown it especially for the job. But I didn’t give it much thought. As far as I was concerned, we’d get this shit done and never see him again.

He sat with his arms locked around a black nylon sports bag in the dull red glow of the aircraft interior, gripping it like he thought we were going to mug him. I probably would have done if I’d thought I could have got away with it. The bag contained Vladislav’s twenty thousand US dollars. It didn’t sound like a lot for a bit of top-secret kit, but it would have been a life-changing sum to me.

Tenny needn’t have worried. Dex ignored him. ‘“Bang, bang, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang…”’

Red Ken’s and Tenny’s shoulders heaved in unison.

Spag bellowed into his headset that nobody sang on his goddam watch.

Biggles segued straight into ‘Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines’.

Odd smudges of very East German light appeared – dull and yellow, not the fairground stuff their Western mates went for a few thousand metres away. We called them nein-watt bulbs.

Red Ken cut in: ‘OK, that’s it, enough. Let’s switch on.’