Omega

The image from the drone’s camera was grainy and monochrome, but it was a clearer picture than they’d get from the case’s diminutive screen. Owain gave a thumbs-up to the others on the ridge.

Van Oost joined him in the cabin. He’d unzipped his mask again and Owain did likewise to make conversation easier.

The drone was closing rapidly on the base, its flight steadying as Vassall got the measure of the wind.

Benkis and Sabrioglu were perched on the ridge, keeping an eye on the roads out of the base in case their radio signals were detected. The Spectre’s exhaust was also pluming into the air above the ridge. An alert sentry armed with an IR scanner might pick it up if they were unlucky.

Vassall took the drone at altitude over the perimeter wall. There were no sentry posts, though it was indeed an old military base, square utilitarian flats lining a road edged with skeletal deciduous trees. Smoke was rising from a chimney on one of the blocks.

The screen showed a building that was evidently an arms store, red-and-white drums stacked against its walls. A trio of men were standing outside it. Vassall took the drone down for a closer look.

Two of the men were smoking cigarettes, the third swigging liquor from a bottle. They wore a mishmash of flak jackets, coveralls and recycled headwear. Automatic rifles and bandoleers were slung over their shoulders, their belts hung with grenes and stuffed with pistols in an exorbitant display of firepower.

Van Oost started yelling at Vassall to keep the drone at a safe height and downwind of the men. The corporal was a late addition to the team, sent in just twenty-four hours before they flew east. A standoffish sense of self-importance meant that he had not endeared himself to anyone, least of all the major.

“What do you think?” van Oost asked Owain.

“They look like irregulars,” he replied. “Maybe they’ve taken over the place as temporary winter quarters.

The drone picked up a scattering of their laughter and an exchange in a language that sounded Slavic to Owain’s ears. Van Oost called Benkis back to the wagon, asking if he could identify it.

“Lithuanian,” Benkis said instantly. “With a little Russian and German mixed in.”

The major squinted at him. “Are you sure?”

Benkis gave a dry laugh under his mask. “They always cluck like turkeys, and this lot are worse than most.”

Benkis was Latvian, a large-framed, hearty man, unfailingly cheerful. As a child he’d escaped on one of the last boats out of Klaipeda before it fell to the Red Army in their 1984 offensive. That had been the nadir of the fortunes of the Alliance, when Berlin was obliterated, the Ukraine lost and the front rolled back to the Oder.

“What are they saying?” van Oost asked the big man.

“I’m going to disappoint you,” Benkis replied. “They’re talking about the joys of drink and the delights of loose women. Of course I’m putting it a little more politely than they are.”

The men were wearing various badges with insignia that not even Sabrioglu, their expert on partisan formations, could identify. This wasn’t surprising. Within the zone allegiances were constantly shifting between motley groups that might be made up of regionalists, ultra-nationalists and outright thugs.

Van Oost directed Vassall to take the drone up over the line of apartment blocks. Suddenly Owain was gawping at the screen.

The plain beyond the base was swathed with sheets of winter camouflage netting. There were mounded shapes underneath it, rank upon rank of them.

Vassall took the drone in low. At close quarters, just discernible under the netting, were phalanxes of tanks, self-propelled assault guns and infantry combat vehicles.

“What do you make of it?” van Oost asked him.

Owain was studying their shapes through the netting. “T-92s, AMXs, even a few Snow Tigers. They’ve really been scourig the scrap heaps.”

“I’m talking about the quantity, not the vintage. Have you ever seen so much armour in one place? Outside of a regular army?”

He hadn’t, of course. The armed bands within the zone rarely mustered more than a dozen vehicles, while their obsession with speed and manoeuvrability meant that they disdained heavy equipment, especially tanks.

The drone was now showing field guns and rocket launchers under the netting. Also trucks and heavy transporters.

“Chevrolets,” Owain said. “Chrysler Trojans. Late ’nineties models, by the look of them.”

The major shouted to Vassall to begin photographing. Of course the Americans had for decades bolstered the Red Army with supplies of trucks and support vehicles, but it was years since anything had been seen this far west. And these had to be recent supplies.

Vassall did a series of close-range shots before flying the drone higher to obtain a panoramic view. Although the actual picture on the screen was less than perfect, the processed photographs from the drone’s on-board image-bank would give good resolution.