The Soviet Comeback by Jamie Smith (best ereader for academics TXT) 📕

but no troops are based anywhere near Norilsk, so we may be some way ahead of them.”

Nikita was silent, not interested in bandying words with his unpredictable superior. He longed for a drink, picturing a whiskey on the rocks, but was determined to keep his mind fully clear. A slight sweat broke above his upper lip. He thought of Elysia, focusing all of his attention upon her. He felt himself calm as the engines fired up and the craft taxied to the nearest runway.

He could see through the window a queue of other aeroplanes which had been forced to pause to allow their take-off. As the Antonov An-32 boomed along the asphalt and forced its way into the Moscow skies, still heavily powdered with snowfall, Nikita sat back in his chair. The military craft sliced through the white night and climbed above the clouds to reveal an inky black, star-studded sky. Nikita forced himself to close his eyes.

“I am coming for you, Taras,” he whispered to himself.

It was only four hours later that the plane scudded down on the cracked, icy runway of Alykel Airport in Norilsk, one of the world’s northernmost cities, sitting deep inside the Arctic Circle. Thick snow drifts lay at either side of the runway from where they had been cleared. In this part of the world, it was easier to count the days on which it didn’t snow that those when it did.

A gentle glow sat on the horizon, signifying dawn. The sun would not rise much higher in this polar winter.

The plane had barely ground to a halt when Nikita was up and waiting impatiently by the door. ‘What if I am too late?’ kept looping around his mind. Brishnov would show no mercy, and it would be even worse if he had taken the Pamyat thugs with him. Nikita shook himself to rid his mind of the thoughts. Brishnov would not likely have access to a high-speed aircraft able to land in Norilsk. Even with his head start of many hours… it would be very close.

As he crossed the tarmac to the waiting four by four, for the first time in his life Nikita looked up to the inky blue skies and prayed.

He waited for Klitchkov to descend the steps, his body humming with nervous adrenaline. The moment Klitchkov entered the car and sat beside him, he hit the accelerator before the door was even closed.

“Patience, Allochka,” Klitchkov snapped. “These roads cannot be traversed in a hurry.”

Never had a truer word been said, as even with Nikita’s prodigious skill behind the wheel, the roads were caked in hard packed snow and ice, forcing the chain-clad wheels of the UAZ-469 Soviet military off-road vehicle into a throaty roar as he had to rev hard in low gears to avoid spinning off the road. Regular inclines of the pure white Arctic tundra surrounded them for miles, with only the occasional truck coming the other way as a sign of any life. The heater on the dash was turned up full, but still their breath rose in front of them, steaming the windows. After forty minutes of driving in silence, they passed Norilsk itself, but Nikita ploughed straight past, skirting the city’s edges.

The few people they passed looked tough and hardened, collars up against the harsh winter. In this unforgiving corner of the world temperatures rarely rose above minus seventeen degrees Celsius at this time of year.

As they left the city behind, signs of life became fewer and further between, with only the occasional stone house set back from the road, candlelight glowing behind the windows and smoke billowing from chimneys, and scrubby, ill-looking trees dusting the white expanse.

Thirty minutes later, they passed the town of Talnakh, an expanse of low concrete buildings spread across a flat plain, surrounded by distant hills. A misty, green glow seemed to hover across the town in the twilight-like haze, inhabited by only the hardiest of people, driven there by the deep nickel mines.

Again, Nikita drove on, the location etched in his memory, despite his only previous visit being well over a year ago.

“What is your plan, agent?” asked Chairman Klitchkov, as they took the narrow winding road beyond the town towards the mountains.

“To secure the safety of my family and eliminate any threats to them or to the state,” Nikita said shortly.

“Excellent to see you have thought through every detail of this potentially explosive scenario,” Klitchkov said with mock joviality.

Nikita tightened his mouth. “The path to the izba cuts across the top of a low hill before curving down to the building. We will have a good vantage point from the hill top, and any foreign bodies should be easily identifiable in the surroundings.”

“And if the enemy is already there?” Klitchkov asked.

Nikita’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. “They must not be,” he replied.

Klitchkov laughed coldly.

“Whose side are you on, sir?” Nikita exploded, before he was able to stop himself.

Klitchkov turned to look at him, his pale blue eyes unreadable. “What did you say to me, agent?” he asked in a horribly controlled tone, eyes looking almost psychopathic.

“You say you will look after my family, but maroon them in outer Siberia. You shoot me in Kamchatka — yes, I know it was you — and then you treat me, you look at me like something on the bottom of your shoe, but then accompany me on a rescue mission. What the hell sort of game are you playing?” he shouted, the words pouring from his mouth like champagne from a corked bottle, his shoulders shaking with the release.

“ENOUGH!” shouted Klitchkov. “Who do you think you are, Allochka? I should kill you now for talking to a superior this way, you insubordinate little shit. Perhaps Brishnov is right and your tiny African mind is incapable of comprehending the greater workings and the grander plan, of