Spenser pointed down at the map. “Say we manage to get in, find the dacha, take out the guards and get Pope. How do we get out again?”

Control dragged his finger down the screen, adjusting the map. “You make your way south to Privolzhsk … here. Sixteen kilometres. Provided you get there in one piece, the Russians will give you a ride back to Kubinka and you’ll fly out again on the Hercules from there.”

Milton looked at the five soldiers, gauging their reaction to the plan. They did not look impressed but there was little to be done about that. He would be able to fill them in on the smaller details en route, but there was nothing to be done about their obvious antipathy and suspicion towards him. That was something that he have to live with.

* * *

The four Allison AE turboprops were fired up and the six-bladed propellors started to spin. Milton strapped himself into his seat and prepared for the flight. He needed something to distract himself and so he took out his Sig Sauer P226 and started to disassemble it. He released the magazine, pulled the slide, checked it was unloaded, separated the slide from the frame and took out the recoil spring. He removed the barrel from the slide and then, using a cotton bud and a small pot of oil, he cleaned and lubricated it. It was a ritual that he had followed throughout his career, especially when he was facing a situation that concerned him. That word, concern, didn’t quite do justice to what he was now proposing to do. He was going to fly into Russia, skydive from ten thousand feet and then trek across the frozen tundra to a confrontation with Russian special forces where they would be outnumbered and outgunned, with no guarantee that the man they were going to rescue would even be there. He emptied the magazine, counted the bullets and slotted them all back again. The cabin of the Hercules was large and sparse, the cargo bay empty with temporary chairs screwed into their housing. The agents were going through their own routines: reading, listening to music, looking out of the tiny porthole windows as the buildings at the edge of the runway accelerated into an indistinct blur. He didn’t trust Control. There was nothing to say that he wouldn’t call Milton’s bluff and there would be nothing he could do if he did. The other agents had made their disdain for him obvious and there was no doubt in his mind that they would shoot him if given half the chance.

Callan turned to look at him and, noticing that he was watching him, held his gaze.

Milton looked away.

He was not among friends.

As the Hercules reached the end of the runway and lumbered into the air, Milton started to put the gun back together.

PART SIX

RUSSIA

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The six minute call. The ramp of the C-17 opened, slowly lowering and letting moonlight spill into the darkened cabin of the plane. The fresh air was a welcome relief. Milton used the fabric ties attached to the walls of the plane to pull himself upright and took a step forwards. They were up high, thirty thousand feet, and the landscape below was indistinct. Milton was wearing arctic battle gear: his field jacket had a hood concealed in a zipper pocket at the back of the collar, four large cargo pockets and a double zipper. He had buttoned in a separate Gore-Tex liner for additional warmth, he was wearing polypropylene knit undergarments and full face goggles over a balaclava that was unrolled all the way down to his throat. Right now, he was breathing pure oxygen through a mask to prevent nitrogen bubbles forming in his bloodstream. He stared out of the open end of the plane. It was minus forty outside and, were it not for the goggles, his eyes would have frozen instantly.

The jumpmaster signalled that they were ready to start the jump. Milton stood back as they released the drogue parachute that was attached to the first of the three Snowmobiles on which they had stowed the rest of their gear. The chute snapped open and dragged the skidoo backwards. It clicked across the metal rollers that were arranged across the width of the cabin, started to pick up speed as it rolled down the ramp and then disappeared out the back of the plane. They opened the chutes on the second and third skidoos and watched as they followed the first into the night. The plan was to drop their vehicles and gear first and then have the agents follow behind. Milton watched as the three main parachutes opened and the skidoos started their slow, gentle descent onto the snowy plains below.

The plan was simple enough. The Russians had permitted the C-17 free passage into their airspace. It had taken four hours to reach Kubinka. The Hercules had been refuelled and the Russians had loaded the three skidoos. They had been on the ground for an hour, long enough for Milton to stretch his legs and smoke a couple of cigarettes before they took off again. The jump point was over the horizon from Plyos to ensure that the guards at the dacha didn’t see their chutes. Surprise was critical. Their chances of success would be drastically reduced, practically eliminated, if Shcherbatov’s men knew that they were coming. A High-Altitude, Low Opening jump was the best way of ensuring stealthy infil; they would exit the aircraft while it was still plenty high, open the main chute after a long freefall and then glide the canopy all the way to the target. They would land twenty kilometres away from the jump point.

Milton did his last-minute checks and, satisfied, walked to the ramp.

The jumpmaster pointed out the back.

Number Two jumped and then, a moment later, so did Six, Eight and Nine. Milton was left with Ten at the lip of the ramp, both of them looking down at the ground, mantled with ice, thousands of feet below.

“After you,” Callan shouted, making an extravagant sweeping gesture with his right arm.

Milton nodded, not willing to engage him, and dived off the ramp.

He fell for seventy-five seconds at terminal velocity, following the line of dots below him. He had an altimeter strapped to his wrist but he had jumped hundreds of times before and didn’t need it. He knew the time to open the canopy and, as he reached the right moment, he yanked the handle and watched the main chute billow out overhead. His speed sheared to twenty miles an hour and his body pulled five Gs. The noise of the airplane’s engines and the whistling rush of the wind disappeared and everything was silent. The stars spread out above him, diamonds sprinkled over the vault of night. Milton tugged the straps to make himself a little more comfortable and aligned himself with the others, further along in the descent, their black canopies swooping out like wings above them as they stacked for landing. Milton closed his eyes for a moment and composed himself. The only sounds were the chute snapping overhead and his breathing, deep and easy. Milton opened his eyes again and, with his right hand, snapped the night vision optics down from the rail system that was attached to the side of his helmet. The landscape below was suddenly bathed in a wash of eerie green. It looked peaceful and, more importantly, empty. He touched the controls and selected infra-red; he saw a couple of heat sources but satisfied himself that they were animals. A couple of Elk, drinking at a stream, about to get a surprise.

The agents below swooped in, landed twenty feet from the nearest skidoo and immediately began to stow their chutes. Milton dropped to twenty feet, flared the parachute and landed on his feet. He unhooked his harness worked it over his shoulders and away. He heard the flapping of Callan’s canopy as he circled overhead, dropping suddenly and landing alongside with the same practiced ease that comes of repetition. Spenser and Underwood used retractable shovels to excavate a narrow trench and they each stuffed their canopies inside, covering them up again with the snow until the only sign that they had been there was the disturbed drift.