Spider's Web: A Collection of All-Action Short Stories by Stephen Leather

well-separated targets that attacking the aircraft, fuel dumps or the weapons and ammunition compounds and bunkers would be pointless. Even if he succeeded in destroying one or more of them, fresh supplies could simply be brought in from other dumps within twenty-four hours. Instead, he decided that any attack should focus on the one area that would be guaranteed to paralyse the base: the Officers’ Mess. He knew that at a time of heightened tension, all aircrew would be called into the base, which would then be locked down. An attack on the Officers’ Mess at that point would wipe out all the available aircrew and effectively shut down the base without even touching the aircraft. Though the base might be in lockdown, a trained and ruthless operative could find a dozen ways to breach the perimeter, carry out his attack and escape afterwards.
    Having completed his recce of the target, he moved away, walking cross-country for ten miles before burying his packs in a copse of trees at the side of a road. All the equipment and explosives in the attacks were Czech-made, not Russian, so that, were the cache ever to be discovered, the finger could not be pointed directly at the Russians. Across a manicured stretch of parkland complete with ornamental lake, he could see a stately home and, next to it, what looked like a re-creation of a Roman amphitheatre. He permitted himself a thin smile at the thought of what his driver of the previous day would have had to say about such a bastion of privilege, and then moved away through the trees, unaware that he had been within half a mile of a target monof a taof unsurpassed propaganda value: the school where the sons of the British royal family were educated.
    That mission had been years ago now. The Cold War had never turned hot and the cache had never been used for its original purpose, but there had never been anything to suggest that it had ever been discovered and Tchorek was now returning to it. He knew of scores of other similar Spetsnaz caches hidden throughout the UK and western Europe, also buried against the day when the Cold War might blaze back into life and they might be needed once more.
    Once the twenty per cent deposit for the Ilyushin contract had arrived in his bank account in Singapore, Tchorek hired a car from a small-scale car rental firm on the outskirts of London and drove through the night all the way north to the shores of the Moray Firth. He then lay up for the day, observing the site and monitoring all people and traffic moving through the area. After dark, he dug up the packs, put them in the car and drove to a remote part of the Cairngorms before opening them. The large one had been so well sealed in layers of waterproof material that it was particularly hard to open, but he eventually succeeded and found the contents still in pristine condition despite their long years underground. The larger pack contained everything he would have needed to attack Kinloss: weapons, Semtex explosive, detonator cord and electric detonators.
    He selected what he needed from the explosives – some Semtex, a length of det cord and an electric detonator – and also took a Skorpion V261 machine pistol, slightly larger than a normal pistol and with a metal folding butt, and some spare magazines and ammunition. From the smaller pack he took a large quantity of US dollars, silently offering thanks that, while other nations periodically called in their old currency and replaced it, to catch out criminals, drug dealers and tax avoiders with large stashes of undeclared cash, the US Treasury was pledged to honour all dollar bills, for all time, however old they might be.
    Tchorek resealed the packs and drove back to the Moray Firth, where he reburied them in a different location, close to the Lossiemouth Golf Club. His reason for burying them in a semi-public site rather than in a remote area was entirely logical. If they were discovered, it would be almost impossible for the authorities