He saw the exhaust flare from the first Hellfire missile race through the air, and then from another, and then from a third.
There’s not going to be much left of that communications building.
Castillo then touched down, and immediately unfastened his seat/shoulder harness.
“Try not to get shot moving over here to the pilot seat,” he said, and then he was out the Black Hawk’s door.
He reached back in and grabbed his Uzi, then went quickly around the nose of the helicopter, passing Kingsolving as he did.
Castillo found that there was a sort of a standoff on the tarmac.
Dmitri Berezovsky—with his four ex-Spetsnaz standing behind him, more or less holding their weapons at port arms—was facing a half-dozen men wearing the strip
ed shirts of the Spetsnaz armed with a variety of weapons.
“I asked, who’s in charge?” Berezovsky said more than a little arrogantly.
And then there was a female voice.
“Lower that (expletive deleted) muzzle, you (expletive deleted) moron!” former SVR Podpolkovnik Svetlana Alekseeva shouted. “What the (expletive deleted) is wrong with you, raising a weapon to Polkovnik Berezovsky? Are you as (expletive deleted) stupid as you look?”
The muzzle was lowered.
One of the Spetsnaz stepped forward, saluted, and said, “Major Koussevitzky, sir.”
“Stefan,” Berezovsky said. “I didn’t recognize you.”
“Good to see you again, Polkovnik. May I ask what . . .”
“We are here to arrest General Sirinov,” Berezovsky said. “Where is he?”
“In the hangar, sir.”
“I regret that the circumstances require that I take your arms,” Berezovsky said. “Lower them to the ground.”
“You are here to arrest the general, Polkovnik?” Koussevitzky asked softly.
“I regret that is necessary, but I’m sure you know why.”
Koussevitzky considered that a full twenty seconds before he unstrapped his pistol belt and let it fall to the ground, then put his Kalashnikov automatic rifle on the tarmac.
“You heard Polkovnik Berezovsky,” he said to his men. “Lower your weapons to the ground.”
Berezovsky waited until the order had been complied with, and then spoke to one of the ex-Spetsnaz standing behind him.
“Have those weapons put aboard the helicopter,” he ordered, and then turned to Koussevitzky.
“Take me to the general, Stefan,” Berezovsky ordered. Then he pointed to Sweaty, to one of his ex-Spetsnaz, and to Lieutenant Colonel C. G. Castillo, USA (Retired), and said, “You, come with me.”
Castillo said, “Yes, sir” in Russian, hoping he didn’t sound like a Saint Petersburg poet of indeterminate sexual orientation.
The Tu-934A was inside the canvas-walled and -roofed temporary hangar. So were four very small travel trailers being used as makeshift barracks. As they walked toward the trailers, General Sirinov came out of one of them. He was dressed but he needed a shave.
I guess we woke the sonofabitch up.
“General, consider yourself under arrest,” Berezovsky announced.
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, Berezovsky,” Sirinov said.