| Under Pressure | ||
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Popov's Office June 18, 2008, 0020 hours Pressure. It was something he had experienced many times in the field, doing the many different dangerous things he had done in a life that had been filled with all manner or risks and threats, and yet the pressure he felt now seemed to surpass everything before. At least back then it had mainly been his life on the line: if he made a mistake it was he who would suffer. Now every mistake he made could potentially lead to the suffering of a great many people. That weighed down on him. Command was never something he had aspired to. Even back in his early days of taking orders, the traditional resentment at being told what to do by someone else had not made him wish to be in the position to give out the orders. Instead he had been content to simply be a line animal under the control of others, doing their bidding without question. Doing his job well had been his aim. As he grew older and advanced through the ranks, picking up experience and accolades from the successful missions he had been a part of the offer of leadership had been made to him. He declined, not wishing to take on a burden of responsibility that he felt he was still too young to accept, he nonetheless found himself taking charge of a Spetsnaz team that had run into difficulties on a mission. That success had meant that the offer of leadership had once again been offered, and after finally relenting he had grown to accept that he was indeed a leader, and a fine one at that. The only problem was that the pressure was never far away. Like now. The past few weeks had been extremely interesting, and in this business that could be either good or bad. He had a strong feeling it would be bad this time. The contents of the Dictaphone recovered from Volkv's agent had caused all manner of hell in the Intelligence section, with Kovalenko especially concerned by it. Sergei had listened to it numerous times, but each time the content didn't change, and neither did the feeling in the pit of his stomach: fear. It was something that all good officers had, even if they denied it. Fear stopped you from acting recklessly� most of the time. This was different though. This was a whole new level of fear, for if the information on the Dictaphone proved true then the whole world could be about to change, and not for the better. They were still trying to confirm the information of course. Single source information was always open to scepticism, even if the source was regarded as gold-plated, and in this case there was no way that he could act on this information without having confirmation. The problem was that the information was so explosive that there was little chance of ever finding a source to back it up. It just wasn't the type of thing to be discussed with anyone, and he was certain that the Japanese had no idea of the disc's existence. If they had then Nikolai and Maksim's rescue efforts would never have succeeded; the dropping of a small bomb falling on the area would have been preferable to this information escaping. Kovalenko had spent virtually all of his time searching for other information that could either serve as confirmation or shed new light on the problem, but so far there had been very little found. That in itself was worrying to Sergei, because a standard tactical play was to reduce or cease communications before the commencement of hostilities, and this could be construed as such. He leant back in his chair and let out a long sigh. This line of work was never meant to be easy, and at times it could be frustrating in the extreme, but this was just something else. Yet he could not let it consume his thoughts, despite the seriousness of it if it did prove to be true. There were other things happening that required his attention; if he ignored them then there was every chance that more incidents could occur. He could not lose sight of his mission, and that of the organization. Intelligence June 16, 2008, 0037 hours He entered Intelligence and immediately scanned the room in search of Kovalenko. After a couple of seconds his eyes found and identified the figure he was after and he made his way over. There was a lot of commotion in this room, he noted as he moved. This part of the organization alone had increased by thirty percent alone since it had been established, and this fact was displayed to him by the amount of noise from the various people at work. "Commander?" Kovalenko said, looking up from a printout in his hand. "I need to discuss the Volkv information again." This statement told Kovalenko that he wanted to find out how the intelligence gathering was going, and this would require privacy, and so he followed his Intelligence Chief to his own office tucked away in the corner. The door shut behind then, and Anatoliy Borisovich Kovalenko sat down behind his desk and slid his hands underneath, turning on the `noise disrupter' that meant that the conversation would not be picked up or recorded by any bugs that had somehow gotten into the room; an extremely unlikely scenario. It also meant that the RGZS's own communications devices would similarly be unable to pick the speech up. "You wish to know where we are?" Anatoliy asked. "Yes," Sergei replied. His mind was up and running, ready to take in and process whatever information it was given. "Well, we still haven't found a source to corroborate the Volkv Intel, and we also have little other evidence to link it to anything�" Sergei sensed there was more. "Continue," he said simply. "We have uncovered a possible link with the group Iron Bear. They appear to be set up in Siberia, not sure on the exact composition of the site but it certainly isn't your typical winter camp. I've set up some sat passes but we're going to have to wait on them. I'll let you know when they've been completed." "Good," was Sergei's reply. He knew there was nothing he could do to speed up the satellite, and so he didn't grumble. "Anything else?" he asked, just as another thought entered his head. Anatoliy paused for a second, then responded, "We may have to put a team in place." Sergei smiled. That was exactly what he had thought. Return |
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