by Tom Clancy
Now that that was the old Snegurochka. Never giving up hope. Already plotting her escape despite the utter futility of it all.
Before she could scan the base any further, they lifted her into the back of an idling Ural-4320 6×6 truck whose flatbed was covered by an olive drab tarpaulin. That a few of their hands had found her ass was no mistake, the bastards. She grimaced at the stench of diesel fumes filling her nose as Gorelov levered himself inside and collapsed beside her.
“Welcome home,” he said grimly.
With the rear tarp tied open, the truck lurched forward, and they left the tarmac, turning around toward the southeast and the mountains.
The president’s jet turned and taxied away. She lifted her gaze farther out toward the fighters queued up outside a line of Quonset hangars whose curved roofs rose like speed bumps across the valley. Behind them hung a broad expanse of gray-bellied clouds promising afternoon snow.
Sensing his gaze on her, she turned to Gorelov and lifted her voice: “I wish you believed me about your wife.”
“You think I’m that pathetic?”
“Obviously.”
“Well, then, Colonel, you’re a terrible judge of character, which strikes me as odd, given your past. I always assumed you were a student of human psychology.”
“More a study in . . .”
“You’re finally right about something.”
She hardened her tone. “Did you love your wife?”
“What kind of a question is that?”
“Did you?”
“I’m letting you talk because I find it amusing, but soon you’ll be answering questions, not posing them.”
“What do you want to know? Should I tell you about the nuclear accident in Estonia that wound up killing my husband and brother? Or about how the president helped administrators cover it all up? Should I give you the encryption code so you can read the documents and confirm that I’ve got irrefutable proof of this? Are these the kinds of questions you’ll ask? Or would you like me to discuss all the illegal assassinations I’ve committed on behalf of your president? Or maybe how General Izotov ordered me to stage my own death and go underground to penetrate the Green Brigade Transnational?”
“Why are you saying all this?”
“Because we both know it’s all bullshit. The only reason I’m here is that the president wants to make an example out of me, and when you see what they do, you need to decide if these people are your blood brothers, if this is what you call honor and duty and allegiance to the motherland . . . or are you just a spineless little man being directed by animals?”
He leaned in close and spoke through his teeth. “You can stay out of my head.”
“I was just like you—brainwashed into thinking that their orders were always in the best interest of the federation. But they’re not. Kapalkin worships money and power and nothing else. What he does is only in the best interests of his political cronies, not the country. Trust me on this. And watch what they do to me. You watch.”
“I won’t be around. I’m not your interrogator. I’m only in charge of your transfer.”
“Then don’t forget. Don’t forget about me. General Izotov doesn’t work for the motherland. And if I’m right, he’s going to do what I never could. The government is going to collapse . . .”
“All right, no more crazy talk now, otherwise the gag.”
She leaned in closer to him. “Please. Think about it.”
He frowned and glanced away.
She took in a deep breath and tried to suppress the urge to rub her eyes. A moment later, the truck lurched and bounced as they left the paved road, with rooster tails of dust rising from the rear wheels.
For nearly thirty minutes they rumbled through dense forest, the grade increasing to nearly fifteen percent by the time they reached the cliff access, turned, and now wove their way parallel to the summit.
Within another fifteen minutes they neared the checkpoint. The truck stopped, and the Snow Maiden’s pulse mounted as guards came around the back of the truck to inspect the cargo. She locked gazes with one man, whose jaw fell open.
Her likeness had circulated around the country . . . around the globe, for that matter. Pictures with the long dark locks, then the spiked haircut, her face more curvaceous, then gaunt as she’d gone underground. Her skin once soft, now weathered and worn like the truck’s tires.
She turned back to Gorelov. “Open my shackles. Let me run for it. Let them gun me down. Let me go out with some dignity.”
“What about the men you killed back on Sakhalin Island—and all the others? Did they die with dignity?”
She pursed her lips.
The truck jerked forward, and the deep reverberations of the reinforced doors sliding open boomed across the mountain as they drove past them and into a long tunnel festooned by pipes, cables, air ducts, and other assorted electrical and plumbing equipment, along with strings of halogen lights. This was the two-lane passage to the headquarters’ main entrance burrowed nearly half a kilometer into the mountainside.
The last time she’d been here she’d been sitting in the back of a Mercedes with General Izotov, and she trembled as she remembered the awkward sex they’d had in that backseat. He was a pig she had manipulated to get everything she wanted out of him, and the ploy had worked for a while.
While this was the Black Mountain, they were taking her to its darkest place, dubbed the “Deep Campus,” where the prison and interrogation chambers were located.
Designed in a series of concentric circles through which ran a central elevator system with six separate lifts, the headquarters was nearly five hundred meters in diameter, with seven distinct levels: motor pool, command and control, intelligence, research and development, housing and hospital, weapons storage, and confinement and interrogation. The facility was designed to withstand a nuclear strike, bunker-buster bombs, and even a kinetic bombardment from the Joint Strike Force’s “Rods from God,” those telephone-pole-sized tungsten projectiles that wreaked total devastation by knifing through the atmosphere and slamming into the earth.
The headquarters was similar to the Americans’ nuclear bunkers designed for their president and government officials. Walls of concrete and steel, along with the facility’s tremendous depth, afforded it a high probability of survival, and the officers the Snow Maiden had met during her first visit had boasted about that. They’d be the future of the Russian government or even the future of the human race. She remembered thinking that if those arrogant warmongers were the future, then she didn’t want to live.
The air grew colder as they neared the end of the tunnel, the truck stopped, and troops opened the tailgate and hopped out. Once again, they carried her off the truck and set her down, chains clanging as she followed Gorelov to the main lift doors with guards posted outside each, along with electronic eyes like the antennae of insects jutting from the ceiling.
Gorelov was accompanied by only two troops from the group now, the rest falling back to the truck. He placed his palm on a biometric security scanner, where his index finger was pricked for a blood sample, his pulse was taken, his retina scanned. Five seconds later, the lift doors hissed open, and they filed inside, the interior ten meters square, a service elevator used for moving heavy equipment.
Descending all the way down to level seven would take nearly sixty seconds, she remembered. After about thirty, she turned and faced the three men, their hands going for their sidearms.
She broke into laughter, feeling like a witch in the old-school chains and ready to enter a Salem, Massachusetts, courtroom. “What do you think I can do?”
Gorelov narrowed his gaze. “We know what you’re capable of.”
“Even with these chains?”
He nodded.
“I wanted to give you one last chance to release me.”
Gorelov smirked. “Or wha
t?”
“It’s your conscience.”
He leaned in toward her ear. “I think we can handle the guilt . . .”
“What did you say?”
He leaned in closer. “You heard me.”
The Snow Maiden had not planned to bite off his earlobe.
It just happened.
She clamped down with her teeth, pulled back, and the lump of flesh tore off in her mouth, warm blood oozing.
He screamed and the guards moved in, literally throwing her across the elevator, where she hit the wall, tripped, and collapsed onto her side.
The lift doors opened. She rolled up and spat. The earlobe arced in the air and landed on the boots of a captain in full dress uniform who’d been waiting for a ride.
He looked down at his shoes, eyes widening. Then his gaze traveled from her to Gorelov and he screamed, “Get us a medic right now!”
TWENTY
Vladikavkaz
Capital City
Republic of North Ossetia–Alania
Russia
With trembling hands, Thomas Voeckler had left Grozny and traveled west on Highway M29 toward Vladikavkaz. He’d stopped once at a small petrol station to refuel the fifteen-year-old M-class Mercedes loaned to him by Rykov, a field operative he’d recruited in Grozny. For a few seconds while holding that pump nozzle, Voeckler had suffered a terrible flashback, reliving that moment when he’d looked into the Bear’s eyes a second before the gun cracked. At that time, he’d been motivated by sheer anger, but now, with time to reflect, he had trouble believing what he’d done. George had always said the job was about gathering information, not murder.
The drive from one capital city to the next took just under an hour, but once he reached the outskirts, he noticed a military checkpoint set up on Highway P296, with early-morning commuters being stopped, inspected, and shown photographs. He slowed and called Third Echelon to verify. The news was not good. Checkpoints had been established at all the major roads leading in and out of the city, part of the military’s operation to capture the downed pilot, no doubt.
They had the pilot’s last known GPS coordinates, as provided to them by the Sixth Fleet tactical air commander. She’d landed in the mountains approximately thirty kilometers southwest of Vladikavkaz and northwest of Darial Gorge. She’d reported that she was moving northeast toward the city, following the mountain road IDed on Voeckler’s computer as A301.
Another, much more comprehensive update appeared in his e-mail client, and Voeckler nearly ran his car off the road when he read the downed pilot’s name: Major Stephanie Halverson, call sign “Siren.”
There was reciprocity in the universe, and this proved it. Voeckler owed his life to this very woman. During their operation to capture the Snow Maiden, when he and George had been attached to that Ghost Recon team, they’d been pinned down by Russian Ka-65 Howlers near the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst, just southwest of London. Halverson had swooped in, blown the shit out of those Russians in that chopper, and saved all of their lives.
Well, there it was. This wasn’t a mission anymore. He was personally invested, and he gritted his teeth and vowed to bring her home. He would do whatever it took. Lines would be crossed. Damage would be done.
More bad news, though. Halverson was supposed to initiate something those fighter jocks called EE protocol and was supposed to update her GPS every two hours.
She’d contacted the tactical air commander only once. After that, her beacon had gone silent. She’d sent out a decoy drone, but intel indicated the Russians had already found and deactivated it.
A new text popped up on his smartphone:
THEY’RE IN THE BUILDING! COMING FOR ME! THEY KNOW ABOUT THE CAR!
Voeckler pulled the Mercedes off the road and fired back a text to Rykov:
GET OUT OF THERE.
Something flashed in the rearview mirror. A car had pulled up behind him, doors opening, men getting out, reaching into the pockets of their long coats. He studied their faces: unshaven, a few deep scars, hard men who’d lived hard lives—men highly susceptible to recruitment in terrorist organizations, men whose “roadside assistance” consisted of a little air in the tires and a bullet to the head.
Voeckler threw the Mercedes in gear and screeched back onto the highway, barreling toward the checkpoint ahead. Two battered APCs parked in a V shape blocked the road. To the left lay a dirt path onto which two soldiers were waving the cars they’d already screened, with another pair holding rifles at the ready.
His heart racing, Voeckler neared the line of cars, five deep, and his pursuers rolled up behind him. Once more, doors opened, and the men got out, hands in their pockets.
He willed himself to remain calm, assess the situation.
Okay, two men, one driver.
He glanced at the soldiers. Two had broken off from the checkpoint, with one moving down the line of cars and another shouting for the men to return to their vehicle.
Voeckler clutched the wheel.
The soldiers rushed past Voeckler’s car and confronted the two thugs. The taller one gesticulated wildly as he spoke, pointing several times at Voeckler’s car. They were feeding this grunt some BS story in order to have Voeckler removed from his car and searched.
No problem. Voeckler had returned his gear pack to the dead drop in Grozny, so they wouldn’t find any equipment that would betray his identity. His passport and paperwork for the car were perfect. He was unarmed, planning to gear up at the second dead drop in Vladikavkaz.
It was his word against theirs, and they were local thugs.
Bracing himself and taking in a long, hard breath, Voeckler suddenly climbed out of his car and marched back toward the group.
“Sir, these men are following me! I think they’re going to rob me!” Voeckler cried.
“Get back in your car,” ordered the soldier, a boy no more than twenty.
The other soldier, whose unshaven face showed signs of graying, lifted his voice and said, “They claim you stole this car from them.”
“You can search me. I have all the paperwork for this car. And I’m unarmed.” Voeckler pointed to their pockets. “What about them?”
The older soldier stepped back and leveled his rifle on the men, while the younger one ordered the driver out of the car.
The driver cursed and refused.
Eyes widening in fury, the young soldier began to scream and shove his rifle in the man’s face.
The other two thugs began yelling, as did the older soldier.
Voeckler stopped breathing—
And he saw it happen in his mind’s eye a second before it did:
The two thugs drew their pistols and shot the older soldier point-blank in the face.
As the younger one turned to them, they fired four more rounds, striking him in the face and neck, his gunfire going wild as he crashed onto the asphalt.
Voeckler was already coming around his car, ready to duck for cover, when the remaining two soldiers at the checkpoint ran forward, ducked behind Voeckler’s car, and began trading fire with the thugs who’d charged behind their own vehicle. One slid forward and opened a rear door—
And that was when Voeckler saw his chance. He dove for his door, jumped into the still-idling car, threw it in gear, and rolled the wheel, steering himself out of line and barreling straight toward the unmanned roadblock. He rumbled down into the embankment, around the trucks, then floored it, racing back onto the road.
He stole a look in the mirror—just as the rear window shattered.
TWENTY-ONE
Ivanovskaya Square
Near the Kremlin Armory
Moscow
President Kapalkin ordered his security team to clear the area of tourists so that he and General Izotov could have a long moment to themselves.
Izotov greeted him with a firm handshake. “Good
morning, Mr. President, it’s good to be back, but I have to ask, why are we meeting here?” He lifted his hand and regarded the square with a frown, the dome and tall columns of the former Kremlin Senate building and now the president’s home rising behind them.
Kapalkin did not answer. They walked a little farther, the skeletal trees to their left shuddering in the wind.
Finally, Kapalkin smiled tightly and paused near the poles and ornate chain fence encompassing the concrete pedestal and hulking form of the Tsar Cannon. Weighing nearly thirty-nine tons, it was the largest cannon in the world (though technically it was a stylized mortar because of the low ratio between its caliber and the length of its bronze-cast barrel). Eight brackets attached that massive, green-tinged barrel to a cast-iron gun carriage with reliefs of figured friezes, vegetation ornaments, memorial inscriptions, and an equestrian image of Tsar Feodor Ioannovich that complemented the rich ornamentation on the weapon’s wheels. It was as much a work of art as it was a killing machine.
Before the cannon’s pedestal sat four cast-iron projectiles stacked in a pyramid, each weighing one ton—too heavy for the cannon to have fired but interesting nonetheless.
Kapalkin ran his fingers over the cold chain, then suddenly clutched it. “I thought we should get some fresh air.”
Izotov tugged at the collar of his woolen overcoat. “It’s cold.”
“I’ve had a chill in my bones for several days now,” Kapalkin admitted.
“It’ll pass.”
“I hope so. How is your sister?”
“She’s doing better now. Still a long journey ahead. The radiation treatments have been difficult.”
Kapalkin had confirmed via his agents that Izotov had visited his sibling. “Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.”
The general nodded, his gaze lengthening in thought. “At least her children are grown now. She’s been thankful for that. It’s difficult to sit there and watch someone you’ve known your entire life begin to wither away . . .”
“I understand. I’ll admit, though, that I was concerned because you didn’t take your guards.”