Mariupol, Ukraine
It had taken the seven-man team Tate was part of less than four hours to reach the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Novoazovsk from Mariupol. Led by a former Ukrainian Spetsnaz officer, Victor Boyko, they’d scurried across fields and taken paths through the woods but on nearing the town had been forced to use an insurgent checkpoint. Dressed in mismatched camouflage fatigues, each had a white band affixed to the left arm of their field jackets to distinguish them as fellow members of the DNR – the Russian-backed and funded Donetsk People’s Republic. Carrying gifts, they’d passed with smiles; a team returning from a successful incursion into Ukrainian-controlled territory.
But the men with Tate were not DNR, they were members of “The Shadows”. A pro-Ukrainian partisan group who had attacked Russian fuel depots, cut supply lines, eliminated key personnel, and most recently hijacked a shipment of anti-tank weapons. What the group lacked, however, was the kind of intel that only the intelligence arm of a nation state could provide, and that was where Tate entered the frame.
Tate had been seconded to a clandestine unit known only as “E Squadron”. Operated by the Secret Intelligence Service, it utilised serving members of the UK Special Forces for ad hoc missions that were deemed too sensitive for overt British government action. Tate’s ability to pass for Russian, and his tenure with the SAS, made him the first choice to lead the direct-action part of their current fully deniable mission in Ukraine. Whilst Tate’s mission controller – his SIS officer brother Simon Hunter – sat safely in the British Embassy in Kyiv, Tate was sweating at the sharp end in the heat of a Ukrainian high summer.
Satellite intelligence had confirmed that an assault group numbering in excess of thirty members of Russia’s Baltic Fleet Spetsnaz Unit were barracked in Novoazovsk. Further intel indicated that they were planning an imminent amphibious assault on Mariupol in preparation for the establishment of a “land bridge” to Russian-controlled Crimea.
Leaving the unsuspecting militants at the checkpoint behind, Boyko had led the group further into occupied territory to an abandoned dacha – a tumbledown summerhouse, where their heavy weapons had been cached in a tarpaulin-covered hole under rusting agricultural equipment. Boyko had done little to suppress his pride as he showed Tate four packing crates containing anti-tank weapons, a mixture of units of the RPG-30 Kryuk (Hook), and the RPG-28 Klyukva (Cranberry). The RPGs had been designed to defeat modern armour so, Boyko confirmed, a crumbling concrete building would prove no problem. The two-storey, blocky Soviet building had once been a local government administrative office and was the largest structure in the street.
Tate and Boyko had taken turns watching the Baltic base while the remainder of the team lay low in the woods behind the OP – the observation post. During the course of the day, there had been movement outside the target building – regular Russian troops bringing food supplies and irregular militants scrounging. Given short shrift by the professionals, the militants had wandered off complaining loudly. The weather, an oppressively hot Ukrainian summer, had made them sweat during the day but now thankfully as evening approached had dropped to a less antagonising level, and more importantly the mosquitos had drifted away. Tate scratched a bite on his arm; he’d remember to use more DEET next time. Checking his watch, he calculated that there was only one more hour of Ukrainian daylight left.
Lying prone in the ruined house, Tate studied the base through a pair of field glasses. As the heat made the dusty tarmac shimmer, he counted the number of Russian troops outside the building. Four stood around smoking and idly chatting in the shade of the entrance porch while a further two, shirtless, worked on the engine of an APC – armoured personnel carrier, which sat hood up on the grassy verge. The relaxed posture of the men belied their identity and purpose. These were members of the Baltic Fleet Spetsnaz unit, and they were preparing for combat. Like Tate, they were Special Ops operators who knew the risks associated with their jobs; unlike Tate they were about to be tasked with taking by force a friendly city. Tate had no qualms in taking them out if it meant safeguarding the residents of Mariupol.
The mission was black, deniable. If Tate became compromised, neither the SIS nor the Ukrainian government would be coming to his rescue. And any scent of British involvement would cause an international incident. Tate knew if captured, he would have to rely on his Russian language skills to talk his way out; but up against Russian Spetsnaz, there was little chance of this. Tate wasn’t planning on messing up; neither were the men around him. The Shadows consisted of not only Ukrainians, but also Georgians with previous experience of Russia’s aggression, Chechens no longer loyal to Kadyrov, Poles and Lithuanians, wanting to protect their cousins, and Russians who did not believe the Kremlin’s lies. The Shadows were, in effect, a “Ukrainian Foreign Legion”.
Tate took a momentary breather to wipe his face when a sound reached his ears – distant, amorphous, and becoming louder. Like approaching thunder but regular, repetitive, mechanical, manmade. A low rumble, heavy engines.
‘Armoured vehicles!’ Boyko confirmed, appearing at Tate’s shoulder. Tate hoped it was APCs rather than anything heavier. Boyko read his mind. ‘Our rockets should be able to penetrate their plates. Have no worries.’
‘Train, fight easy,’ Tate said.
‘Is that a motto of yours?’
‘I borrowed it from General Alexander Suvorov.’
‘For a Russian he was a wise man.’
‘He’s not here – he must be.’ Tate adjusted his field glasses to point at the far end of the street. He saw a dust cloud, and then the unmistakable shape of a Russian BMP-2 emerged. It was a light-armoured vehicle, faster than a tank and suited to urban warfare. Fitted with a 30mm auto cannon, a coaxial 7.62mm PKT machine gun, and an ATGM missile launcher; it was a deadly piece of hardware. ‘And here comes the worst.’
A note of worry sounded in the Ukrainian’s voice. ‘Your intelligence stated it would be no more than two vehicles.’
‘Yep, and here we have an armoured column.’ Tate started to count. The first two vehicles were BMP-2s. The next four were T-80 battle tanks, a model Russia had officially mothballed in December 2013 and in amongst these were two soft-sided green Kamaz military trucks.
‘This is not good,’ Boyko murmured. ‘Do you think this will be part of the assault?’
‘Not the first wave; that’ll use guile, not strength – hence the Spetsnaz. The armour will roll in later.’
The column became ominously larger as it grew nearer. The two BMP-2s came to a halt over in front of the APC as the tanks and trucks carried on past the OP and deeper into the city.
‘You were right, I think,’ the Ukrainian said, slapping Tate on the back.
‘True, but what was in those trucks?’
‘I do not care – it did not stop here.’
Tate let out a sigh of relief; although they were armed with the correct weapons to defeat battle tanks, it would not be possible to knock one off at a time without receiving heavy and sustained incoming fire for their trouble. A figure climbed out of the lead vehicle. Tate adjusted his focus to bring the newcomer’s face into sharp profile. A new intel package had arrived the night before, and this included an image of the intelligence officer from Moscow. The face Tate saw now matched a digital photograph from the pack. ‘Target confirmed. That’s Maksim Oleniuk.’
The troops, who had been smoking, dropped their cigarettes and snapped to attention, exchanging salutes with the man in charge. Oleniuk inspected the APC. He tapped the hood with his palm and spoke to the men working on it before he turned on his heels and entered the building.
As a former officer, Boyko was not used to taking orders and Tate could sense him becoming impatient at his side. The engine of the APC came to life. There was whooping as the soldiers congratulated their mechanics. More men now stepped out of the building to inspect the vehicle, joined by the crews of the BMP-2s.
‘We are ready,’ Boyko announced deliberately. ‘Just give us the order.’
Tate nodded. Killing was never easy, but if neutralising these professional soldiers safeguarded the innocent residents of Mariupol, there was no real alternative. He checked his watch. There was now about forty minutes of sunlight left. The Russians would at least get fed and watered before they launched their attack, and that would be when they were at their most vulnerable. Tate looked at the Ukrainian and tapped his watch. ‘Tell your men, ten minutes. Then engage.’
‘OK.’ Boyko let a smile split his dirt-stained face. He squeezed Tate’s shoulder and scurried backward out of the rear of the house and into the grassy field beyond. He would join the rest of his men who would now become three two-man fire teams.
Tate looked on like an angel of death; every man visible to him would be dead within the next quarter of an hour. He had the power; he could give the order to abort or he could warn the Russians. Tate did neither, as he counted down the ten minutes and waited. He heard a distant sound, an engine, low and laboured. It sounded like a heavy truck. He searched the road, with his field glasses, in both directions and saw nothing. And then it stopped. The evening became still again, and then it wasn’t …
There was a distinctive whoosh from behind and to the south of him, and then an all but inaudible keening as the first grenade whistled on an arc through the darkening Ukrainian August evening and then finally a thunderous explosion. The APC was hurled upwards and then crashed against the wall of the base, like a plaything thrown by a giant, petulant child. There was a moment of silence before flames engulfed the heavy troop transporter and leached up the walls.
The next RPG landed next to the side wall, ripping a gaping hole in the concrete. Figures ran out of the building into the dying daylight in time to see more grenades turn the remaining two armoured vehicles into expensive pieces of scrap metal. Angry shouts and gunfire now added to the mix as the Spetsnaz tried to resist the surprise attack, returned fire into the field and tried to escape the kill zone, but it was futile as RPGs tore into the concrete walls around them.
Tate continued to observe, knowing the images of the dead and dying would join the show reel of ghouls who haunted him when he slept. He’d seen enough. Unable to bring in his own weapons, Tate had an AK-47 on the floor of the OP next to him. It was simple yet lethal and had been the mainstay of the Russian infantry for generations.
Grabbing the AK, Tate carefully crabbed from the broken window at the front of the house to the collapsed rear wall and the open field. He froze. Movement. In the field, but in the wrong direction. He dropped to the floor. Russians. A group who had not been hit by the attack, had not been in the target building, and had been unsighted by either Tate or Victor Boyko, were now flanking The Shadows’ firing positions.
The realisation struck Tate that he was in danger of being cut off from his group. He was alone in the house, the OP, whilst the three two-man fire teams were in the field behind. And then he saw the Russians were being led by the intelligence officer from Moscow, Maksim Oleniuk. How had he escaped the attack on the base? Tate barely had time to count the twelve men, spaced out, weapons up, advancing on The Shadows. More than enough to launch their own assault and outnumbering The Shadows two to one.
Tate had to react; he had to try to even the odds. His group were low tech, no radios or comms. Mobile phones only and urgent messages sent via WhatsApp. Boyko had boasted to him that with end-to-end encryption, the free service was more secure than the Russians’ own military network. But Tate didn’t carry a phone, in case he was compromised. Tate glanced around the shattered farmhouse, the rubble wall, the caved-in roof and the staircase leading to the first floor. He’d ruled out the first floor as an OP because it was too exposed from the road but from the fields there was half a section of interior wall he could use as a shield.
Tate darted across the open space inside the house to the steps, all the while expecting to be cut down by a Russian round. None came. There were irregular gaps between the steps but soon he was at the top. He knew The Shadows would keep on firing until they had exhausted all of their grenades or came under sustained attack. They would discard all heavy weapons when they retreated in order to exfil faster. He could still hear the shells so he knew they had not bugged out yet and the Russians knew this too.
Tate flattened himself on the bare wooden boards of the first floor. The exterior front wall of the room here had broken away when the roof caved in, leaving a hole that could be seen from the Russian base. Tate looked up, out of the building at the base. He could see no one moving, no one alive. Rising to his haunches he moved to the back of the space, and using the intact part of the interior wall as a shield he peered out.
He had an elevated view of the field and the Russians moving within it. Unseen like tigers in a forest they stealthily traversed the chest-high crops, including old sunflowers that had grown never to be picked. And past the Russians he could see Victor Boyko and his men. Tate switched the fire selector on the Kalashnikov to single shot, made himself as small as he could and looked down the iron sights.
Broader and slower than his men, although still moving with skilled steps, Maksim Oleniuk was an easy target. Tate had had no time to test-fire the weapon, and AKs were generally used for short bursts or spray-and-pray attacks to supress an enemy with volume of fire, not accuracy. It was a weapon that could be thrown around, buried in mud and then immediately used; it was the Tonka Toy of assault rifles. But Tate was not playing. He breathed out slowly and squeezed the trigger. The single 7.62mm round tore towards the Russian officer and blew away the head of a sunflower to his right. Tate swore.
Oleniuk turned, unclear about the direction of the shot, eyes searching for an attacker but at his own eye level, and then he carried on forward. Tate sighted again, acquired Oleniuk’s head and squeezed the trigger … at the very same moment, the Russian stopped dead and turned his face upwards. For the briefest of moments, it may have only been milliseconds, Oleniuk was staring directly at him. The 7.62mm round tore up the distance between the two men and struck just as Oleniuk jerked to one side. The round hit the man’s neck, blood flowed and the intelligence officer dropped to the ground.
Tate wasted no time and acquired a second Russian. This one he hit first time in his upper back, punching the man forward into the crops. He didn’t care if the man was dead or alive. Tate ducked as he started to take incoming fire. A volley of rounds sailed past him but one caught the top of the wall and kicked up a chip of concrete. Tate let out a breath and flicked the selector switch to “burst”. This would allow three rounds to leave the rifle with each pull of the trigger. It was less accurate as the recoil would in effect be trebled but he needed a higher rate of suppressive fire. He moved as far to the right as he could and popped up again. This time he sent a burst at a soldier who was facing Tate’s farmhouse and scanning for targets. The Russian jerked as all three rounds shredded his chest.
The RPGs had stopped and Tate saw The Shadows were exfiltrating from their positions and returning fire to the Russians in the field as they did so. He saw one go down from Russian fire and fall across an empty launch tube. Tate had bought some time, and just hoped it was enough for the rest to get away. But he still needed to escape himself. They had agreed on an ERV – an emergency rendezvous – two clicks past the woods at the next abandoned village, hopefully far enough away that the Russians would have given up any pursuit. Tate sought out one more target but didn’t open fire as the man was moving away with the remaining Russians on a tangent that took them away from his exfil route.
Tate took the steps down, weapon up, to the ground floor. Taking a deep breath, he burst out of the cover of the farmhouse and into the field, looking for targets, looking for trouble and finding it. Rounds whipped past his head and he threw himself down onto the warm Ukrainian earth. He pushed himself backwards with his feet, his back flat to the ground. A Russian soldier burst through the crops immediately above him. Tate sent a burst into his face before the man had time to react. Tate rolled away, got to his feet and traversed the field as quickly as he could.
Once again the sound of mechanical thunder approached, but the T-80 battle tanks were too late. Tate and his comrades slipped away into the Ukrainian night, like shadows.