Free Echo Six: Black Ops 4 - Chechen Massacre by Eric Meyer

basic preparations. They'd be dropping into Siberia in winter, which meant Arctic camouflage. Drew Jackson, their demolition specialist, secured a small quantity of C4, enough to destroy the tracks to stop the train, and sufficient to destroy the warheads.
    "They'll have explosive packed around the plutonium core. It's the way they initiate nuclear fission. All I have to do is set the C4 close enough to the warheads, and we're in business."
    "And the fallout?" Roy Reynolds growled.
    "Yeah, the fallout. It'll be bad, so we'll need to make sure we're upwind when it detonates, and if possible, keep it away from any civilian areas."
    No one asked what would happen if they couldn't protect the civilian areas. All they could do was their damndest. If there were casualties from radiation, they had to hope the Russians would help them out. Hopefully, more effectively than after Chernobyl, when thousands died and suffered horrific radiation poisoning. The two snipers wrapped their Arctic Warfare rifles in white camo, enough to hide them from an enemy. The men drew supplies from the military stores, made final checks on their communications equipment, and they all looked over the latest satellite images with Admiral Brooks.
    Finally, after dark, they climbed into a truck that took them to the far corner of the airfield. The huge American Airlines 747 waited on the tarmac, loaded and ready with its engines already idling. Vice-Admiral Carl Brooks had gone to the flightline with them. He offered his hand to Talley and they shook.
    "Good luck, Commander. If there's anything you need…"
    "There's no way you can get it to us," he finished the sentence.
    Brooks at least had the grace to look abashed. "I guess that about sums it up. But if you do get into trouble, we'll do our best."
    He turned to Major Barrington, and they spoke for several minutes out of earshot of the men. Talley wondered what it was about. He shrugged inwardly.
    If they want me to know, Barrington will tell me, won't he?
    They dumped their backpacks on the floor in the middle of stacks of crates and cartons, and tried to make themselves comfortable for the long flight. There was no cabin crew to go through the emergency drill, not on a cargo aircraft, just a disembodied voice from the cockpit advising them to strap in for. The operation was run on a strictly need to know basis, the pilot and co-pilot. The engines roared, and they screamed down the runway. The heavy jet finally lumbered into the air. The wheels rumbled into their housings, and they were on the way. After an hour, when they were starting to shiver with the intense cold, the cockpit door opened, releasing a current of warm air, and the pilot entered the fuselage. He looked to be in his late forties, with a face that was rumpled, probably from flying too many hours. Regulations for carrying cargo were more relaxed than with passengers. His sharp, clear eyes were heavily lined from squinting out the windshield, always searching ahead for dangers. At least he looked competent enough.
    "I came to give you an update. I'm sorry about the temperature, but it’s not normally a problem back here as we only carry freight. Flight time is around six hours, so we have a fair way to go. We'll be flying north along the Sea of Japan, and then we turn west across Siberia and Russia, heading for our scheduled destination of Moscow. We'll need to detour a couple of hundred klicks from our course, so I'll put that down to equipment malfunction, the same problem that forces us to drop down to low level. My instructions are to open the cabin door at two thousand meters and wave goodbye to you from there."
    "Is the door adjusted to open in flight?" Barrington asked crisply.
    "Sure, it's all fixed. The safety interlocks have been disabled. All that will happen is a warning light will go on in the cockpit. As soon as you've gone out, one of us will close the door. We can declare the emergency over and climb back to our normal