Summoned so the Soviet Conquers! (GATE Fanfics)

Chapter VII -

'Towing in gallant fame, Scotland my mountain hame, High may your proud standards Gloriously wave.'

--

Two years ago in Chechnya, at an estate near Grozny.

The man died quietly, his last gasp of life stifled by the gloved hand clamped firmly over his mouth. The Kalashnikov rifle clutched firmly in his hands, slipped from nerveless fingers as he was lowered to the ground. Before his body was even cold it was pulled off the road and into the brush, hidden by the dense foliage. The man had been guarding a narrow, winding mountain road against intrusion. Now, several black clothed men moved quickly, unimpeded past his guard post. The operative known as Sabre 3 among them.

Chechen nationals had grabbed a bus full of Russian students doing an exchange in the region, taking them hostage and issuing a list of demands. They had been holed up in a theater building for the past four days with upwards of thirty hostages and an unknown number of gunmen. There had been sporadic communication between them and the police, with a devolving situation. Frustrated with a lack of progress, the Chechens had cut the finger off of one of the students and gave it to the police in an envelope to show that they meant business with threats to begin killing the hostages if their demands were not met. Even this, grisly as it was would not have warranted the attention of the elite GRU Sptesnaz, it was not their theater of operation. However, one of the students taken hostage was the only daughter of the widower Mikhail Lobov.

Now even the only child of a widower, while sad, would still not warrant the attention of the GRU branch. No, what warranted their attention was who the widower was. Mikhail Lobov was the secondhighest ranking military officer in the entirely of the Soviet Union. He was a General of the Army and a favorite to become the next Marshall of the Soviet Union. He was also a family man, who still grieved the loss of his late wife, never having remarried and he doted on his daughter lavishly, treasuring her above all else. So, with her life so threatened the man had flexed his great power and set loose men who were only ever supposed to be used outside of the Soviet Union. Men sometimes called Russia's pitbulls. On Lobov's word, men died.

Sabre 3 moved quietly and quickly, dressed all in black and armed with a special shortened Kalashnikov, but he was just one of many such men, no more than liquid shadows moving up the side of the mountain. There was no moon tonight, and the sky was overcast settling the mountain in a heavy blanket of inky blackness. The kind that you stare into trying to make out familiar sights from the day time, but are unable to see a man more than ten feet from you standing upright.

The reason that they were here was simple. They knew the identity of the leader of the gang of kidnappers and this was his home. He was a prominent man in the Chechen revolutionary world, with ties in old blood and new money. He and his men had taken hostages and shown that they meant business, so the GRU were going to do the same.

The villa was inspired off of old Russian Empire design, most likely constructed still in the time of the czars. It was a large two story affair, with tall curving arches and a flat roof with several domes. Ivy vines grew up the sides of the building and a garden with chipped and faded statues decorated the front yard. Lights were still visible from inside, as were men walking long circumferential routes around the estate grounds. They disappeared though. Every time they went behind a tall bush, or left the sight of the main house or went behind an outbuilding, the never reemerged. Quick applications of steel and wire was all it took.

Sabre 3 stacked up with the rest of his team at a set of doors leading into the kitchens. The sounds of voices in casual conversation and the scrape of cutlery and clatter of plates filtered in dimly from within. The leader of Sabre team, after confirming that the rest of teams were in place gave the signal to breach. Sabre 3 drew back his booted foot and with a mighty heave, kicked in the door.