Cold Red by Chris Ryan

Author:Chris Ryan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zaffre Publishing

Thirteen

They hit the Ukrainian border shortly before midday. Carter was surprised to find the area was relatively quiet. He’d expected to see long lines of people fleeing the country on foot, weighed down with their worldly possessions, sprawling tented refugee camps, news crews, reception areas policed by swarms of heavily armed border guards. Instead, the checkpoint looked like any other. There was a long line of articulated lorries and vans waiting to cross into Ukraine, a separate queue of saloons and hatchbacks and motorbikes, the three-lane road flanked by harvested fields on one side and a trash-littered rest stop on the other. Truck drivers stretched their legs and smoked cigarettes while a handful of guards and sniffer dogs searched their cargoes. A handful of people were crossing the border on foot, carrying rucksacks or shopping bags, some pushing along bicycles. Hard to believe there was a war going on to the east.

But then he reminded himself that the conflict had been raging for seven months. That picture – refugee camps, desperate crowds of fleeing civilians, terror stamped on their faces – belonged to an earlier time. The first days of the invasion. Things had dramatically shifted since then. The scores of old Russia hands, think-tank academics and Kremlin-watchers who had predicted a swift and brutal victory for the Russian war machine had been wrong. The defenders had not folded. President Voloshyn and his generals – men like Koltrov – had inspired their fellow citizens to resist the enemy at all costs. Slowly, the picture on the ground had changed. The Russian offensive had faltered, then reversed. The exodus from the cities had dwindled. People were choosing to stay and fight. Or returning home to take up arms.

McVeigh joined the tailback of civilian vehicles slowly crawling towards the checkpoint. After what felt like a long time, they reached the guard post on the Ukrainian side of the border. A couple of guards approached, McVeigh buzzed down the driver’s side window and handed over their passports to a surly-looking guy in an olive-green thermal hat, along with their official Ukrainian Ministry of Defence ID cards, issued to all four Blades on Koltrov’s BG team.

The guard took a long hard look at their documents while his scrawny mate stood close by, gripping his standard-issue AK-74 assault rifle and giving them his best screw-face. The guard in the thermal hat disappeared into the guardhouse to make a phone call, and there was a short wait before he came back a minute later, dragging on a cigarette. He thrust the documents back at McVeigh and waved the Suburban through. The boom barriers raised, McVeigh started the engine. Two minutes later, they were motoring through western Ukraine.

After five or six kilometres, they stopped again. McVeigh eased into a lay-by and kept the engine running while Carter hopped out, removed the SIM card from his dummy phone, crushed it beneath the heel of his boot, then tossed the handset and laptop into a thicket of gorse and heather.

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