by Tom Clancy
Izotov smiled. “I hate them.” He seemed utterly calm and unreadable.
“I know, but the Euros and Americans have people trying to get to us every day—not to mention the terrorists, whether we’re working with them or not. Your safety has to come first.”
“Of course.”
Kapalkin stared up at the cannon. He thought a moment, then said, “Sergei, I was thinking this morning that we’ve known each other for nearly thirty years now.”
“Has it been that long?”
Kapalkin nodded. “You’ve always been my friend, even during these past few years, when our jobs have divided us.”
“It’s just politics. Nothing personal, right?”
They chuckled briefly, and then Kapalkin stared hard into the man’s eyes. He gestured to the cannon. “I brought you here because yes, I wanted to get some air, but this is my favorite place in the Kremlin—and do you know why?”
“No.”
“Because it reminds me of you. You’ve always been solid. Stable. Formidable. My big gun, as our enemies might say.”
Izotov studied the cannon a moment, then faced him and said, “Nothing’s changed. I’m here for you, Mr. President. Whatever you need.”
“I need you to submit to a full interrogation, including a polygraph exam.”
For the first time in their conversation, Izotov reacted, but his frown seemed mild, almost forced. “Is this because of my leave?”
“It’s because we’ve captured Snegurochka.”
Again, Kapalkin expected a much larger reaction from the general—a burning hatred he knew was there; however, Izotov simply cocked a brow and said, “That’s great news.”
“Yes, but she’s made accusations about you.”
Izotov smirked. “She’ll say anything now that we have her.”
“I agree.”
“But you don’t trust me.”
Kapalkin put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “I don’t trust our enemies. Perhaps they’ve gotten to you, and you don’t even know it.”
Izotov glanced up, his gaze now falling upon the secret police in their long black coats stationed around them, watching him. His tone hardened: “Mr. President, I’m at your service. I’ll submit to any and all interrogations. My loyalty is unquestionable, and I’ll prove that to you and to the interrogators. I don’t know what that terrorist traitor has told you, but rest assured you can take my word over hers, as the director of the GRU, and as your friend.”
“Of course. This is just a formality, but I would hope you would do the same, were you in my position.”
“I would. And I’m hoping that after this is over, you’ll allow me to question our prisoner myself.”
“I cautioned you against a relationship with her, and now look what it’s come to . . .”
“A mistake, yes. Let me make things right.”
“No, I’ll be questioning her.”
“Where is she now?”
“Fort Levski.”
“Why not here?”
“I sent her to the darkest hole I could find.” Kapalkin turned away from the cannon and gestured to Izotov that they begin to walk. “What she did to us during the Canadian invasion is inexcusable, and she’ll be punished for that—for everything.”
“We’re responsible,” said Izotov.
Kapalkin froze. “What do you mean?”
“When I met her, she was a beautiful young woman. I think we just asked too much of her. We turned her into a succubus.”
“Well, she’s a demon, all right, a demon who bit the hand that fed her. We both had a special affinity for her. But that’s over now.”
Izotov nodded. “When do you leave?”
“I’m flying to Bulgaria this evening.”
“Very well.”
Kapalkin stopped as the security teams moved in. “Once again, Sergei, I’m sorry about this.”
Izotov smiled, and a weird light came into his eyes. He strolled off with the security team as Kapalkin watched them go. He was about to leave, but then he chanced a final look back at the cannon.
A chill wove up his spine. He dismissed it and hurried back toward his office.
TWENTY-TWO
Seychelles Archipelago
East of Mainland Africa
Christopher Theron stood on the forward deck of his 370-foot-long motor yacht, DreamRunner. Life wasn’t just good. It was damned near spectacular. In his hand was a warm mug of coffee made from Indonesian kopi luwak beans—the most expensive in the world. He took a long sip, then turned his head. Silhouette Island lay off to the west, with its five peaks jutting up into a powder blue horizon.
“Can I warm you up, Mr. Theron?”
He turned back toward his chief stewardess, Deborah, as curvaceous as the carafe she held. “Thank you, my dear, I’m fine.” She beamed at him, then retreated as Theron sighed into the breeze. Never sleep with the help.
He enjoyed these moments alone on the yacht, from where he conducted all of his business, surrounded by his loyal crew of twelve. He’d personally interviewed and hired them from all over the world, stolen them from other crews to be honest, but now he’d assembled some of the most proficient stewardesses, deckhands, engineers, and chefs that money could buy. By treating them with the utmost respect and paying them nearly double what they’d earned at their previous jobs, he’d created a staff whose devotion was nothing short of remarkable. His captain and co-captain had been with him for more than ten years now, as had his bodyguards—two martial arts experts he’d found in the Philippines. They considered themselves a family—
The family he’d never had.
A long life of hard work to rise from his humble beginnings in that Cape Town orphanage had led to a level of success now fully alive before him, the yacht’s sweeping lines and aft helipad representing the kind of power he’d only dreamed of as a child. He’d thrown parties for more than a hundred people on the yacht, and no one had ever felt cramped or less than pampered. His hardcover library had more than ten thousand volumes. His flat-screen televisions spanned entire walls. His dance floor had a glass roof and was situated below the swimming pool so while you were dancing, you could look up and admire all the bikini-clad mermaids. His chefs prepared meals found only in the world’s finest five-star restaurants. He had people who did nothing else but scour the world, searching for the “very best” of everything and offering it to him.
But now, nearly two decades later and like other men of his stature, he’d grown bored with his excesses. So when the war had begun, he was, like everyone else, appalled by the terrible loss of life and contamination of the Middle East oil supplies . . . but then, like many others, he began to see opportunity in the ashes. The Bilderberg Group had charged him with looking for ways to secure the entire Indian Ocean theater of operations—part of a much larger and more complicated effort to manipulate the Euros, the Americans, and the Russians to benefit the group’s investments and long-term plans toward reestablishing stability. Seizing control of the Ganjin was Theron’s first major step in accomplishing his task. The second step was to capture Ragland. He lifted his head, closed his eyes, and imagined thousands of hypersonic aircraft like manta rays streaking across the sky.
“I didn’t hear you climb out of bed,” Dennison said, sliding her arm across his shoulders.
“I didn’t hear you come up behind,” he answered with a shudder as he snapped open his eyes.
“You made me a spy.”
“Yes, I did.” He leaned in close and gave her a gentle kiss on the cheek.
She beamed, her nipples hardening beneath her white silk robe.
“What are you staring at?” she asked.
He grinned and gave her another kiss.
“So, when do I get a chance to show you what I’ve done?” She eyed him like a schoolgirl begging for attention.
“Good. I’m all ready on my end.”
“So you’ve said.”
“What about General Izotov?” she asked.
“They’re going to interrogate him.”
“Are you worried?”
“No.”
She ran her hand down, beneath his own robe and across his chest. “Does anything ever bother you?”
“Yes, your hand.”
“You don’t like it?”
“I like it too much.”
She wriggled her brows. “Good. But why do you seem so far away?”
“I’m still thinking about our problem.”
Dennison’s expression soured. “Her.”
He shrugged.
“I should’ve killed the bitch when I had the chance.”
“You never had the chance.”
“Before you got there.”
“You had orders.”
She smiled. “I wanted to make you happy.”
He put his hand on her cheek. “It’s all right. We have Ragland. We have a pilot for the Wraith.”
“And we have each other.”
His smartphone vibrated: incoming message.
“Always the phone,” she groaned.
“A necessary evil,” he said, shoving his empty coffee cup into her hands. “I’ll meet you below in a minute.”
She reached down and flashed him her breast, glanced salaciously at him, then sashayed away.
He checked the phone. Encrypted message from Werner aboard the submarine. ETA: approximately twenty-one days. No issues thus far.
Just as he finished reading, a phone call came in from one of his operatives in Moscow.
“He’s in the interrogation room now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m the interrogator.”
“Excellent. Where is she?”
“He says they’ve taken her to Fort Levski, the Spetsnaz headquarters there.”
“We have a man there, don’t we?”
“As a matter of fact, we do.”
TWENTY-THREE
Mountains near Spetsnaz Headquarters
Fort Levski
Bulgaria
If he hadn’t been deep in the heart of enemy territory, Lex would’ve better appreciated the rich, pine-scented beauty of the Balkan Mountains—from the heavily forested slopes with snow-brushed trees to the deep ravines drawing delicate lines across them. A pale-yellow sun filtered down through the gathering clouds to cast a thousand beams that coruscated from the army base’s guard towers, comm dishes, and aircraft hangars.
A front was moving in, with heavy snow predicted before sunset. Leave it to the weather to tamper with an expertly planned rescue operation. Well, “expertly planned” was being generous. If the weather didn’t cause an issue, something else would. Lex mused that he and his Raiders had long ago pissed off the gods by overstocking hell with fresh souls, and those immortals were still exacting their revenge, one mission at a time.
“Boss, I can’t lie to you,” Vlad began, beginning to shake his head. “We’ve pulled off some crazy shit in our day, but now that we’re looking this devil in the face, I’m just gonna say it—this can’t be done.”
Lex shifted closer to the tree beneath which they’d established their forward observation post. He glanced up from his tablet computer. “They’ve got the place pretty well guarded,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Are you kidding me? Our plans are shit. If it all goes south, we still don’t have enough charges to blow those blast doors, they’ve got twice as many guards up there as we estimated, and the base is like Fort Knox. Plus they’ve got drones all over the fence line. I think we’d have a better chance of breaking into the White House and kidnapping the president . . .”
“Hey, you didn’t like my idea of the officer’s tour. We could’ve got all dressed up, with all the fanfare and fake IDs, and strolled around the place like VIPs. Maybe insult some of those bastards, check the dust on top of the computers, and generally bust their balls. Would’ve been good times . . .”
“Yeah, until one of us screwed up, said the wrong thing, and they’d already have us in their prison—”
“Which is why we’re here, dressed like Spetsnaz grunts instead of the big boys.”
Vlad sighed loudly for effect. “We don’t need enemy uniforms or munitions. We need a miracle.”
Slava crawled up on his hands and knees and scowled at Vlad. “Hey, Sergeant. I have some tissues if you want to cry.”
“Hey, dude, this shit goes south, you’re the biggest target we got.”
“I welcome the fight.”
Borya arrived at Lex’s side, out of breath. He dropped to his hands and knees. “Coming in from the north is our best bet,” he said. “Just mapped it out. Need to run camouflage all the way, though. Better slow than sorry, I guess.”
Lex accepted Borya’s tablet and studied the three-dimensional map drawn for them by the drone he’d sent forward to scout their path. The UAV had concealed itself by keeping tight to the trees and mimicking the passage of birds in the area, its heat source equally minimal. The locations of every Spetsnaz wireless security hub constructed within the trees was marked, along with the bunkers and snipers’ nests. All positions matched those they’d pinpointed via their initial satellite photos. No surprises.
Yet.
“You take measurements on the blast doors and check them against our gear?” Lex asked.
“I did. We got about twenty meters to spare.”
“Perfect.”
“Security up top?”
“Sorry, boss, I was getting a little too close to those bunkers. I got a little nervous and pulled back before I could get a good look. Hopefully it’s what we think.”
“No worries. We’ll scout it for ourselves when we get there. Let’s get ready.”
They all drew back from the tree, opened their gear packs, and withdrew their optical camouflage ponchos with attached hoods. The garments were constructed of a specially engineered metamaterial that mirrored the current operating environment. Fitted just behind the neck was the system’s featherweight microprocessor that constantly read and interpreted the background, displaying a near-perfect image that concealed the operator; however, the system worked best when motionless and created a constant blur during movement as the microprocessor struggled to catch up. The faster you moved, the greater the blur, which was why Borya had remarked that they’d best wear the ponchos but move more slowly. Optical camouflage uniforms and blankets were first fielded by the JSF’s Ghost Teams, then reached wider distribution to other special forces units like the Raiders.
As an added bonus, these newer ponchos had been fitted with an inner layer made of twenty rings of a material able to dissipate and channel heat to evade FLIR/thermal detection. This technology was based on principles of transformation optics and involved materials able to bend light around something rather than through it. Combine this brand of tech with the Raiders’ reputed tenacity, and maybe they didn’t need one of Vlad’s miracles. Maybe all they needed were the guts to pull it off . . .
“All right. I need to update higher,” Lex said, tugging free the satellite phone from his web gear. He plugged in the numbers, waited, then got the comm operator. They spoke in Russian. “This is Deep Raider Actual, over.”
“Go ahead, Actual.”
“Advancing on target area. Should be in position by eighteen hundred hours local, over.”
“Roger that. Eighteen hundred hours. Relaying to Fleet QRF and Standoff Ops Command per your request, over.”
“Roger. We’ll check in again when in position. Deep Raider Actual, out.”
“What’re the chances of them picking up the signal?” asked Slava.
“Pretty good. But by the time
they break the encryption code, we’ll be having our second round of beers.”
Slava flashed a crooked grin.
“Move out,” Lex ordered.
The team left the tree, looking for all the world like four men made of water, their disembodied faces floating in midair and drawing Lex’s grin. He put Slava on point, and he pulled up the rear, slipping down his situational awareness visor so the map overlay would appear in his head-up display. He marked their positions and all the contact points Borya had scouted.
They moved quite deliberately, pausing when they could between trees to allow the camouflage to grow steady. They would remain well outside the perimeter, meaning it would take them most of the day to reach the summit of the southeastern mountain overlooking the base.
After hiking for just fifteen minutes, Lex sensed something in the trees behind him.
He called for a halt, got down, and scanned the area with his binoculars. They’d begun to ascend a steeper part of the mountain where jagged seams of rock erupted randomly, with piles of talus and scree lying below them, the stones worn smooth by erosion.
Movement. He zoomed in.
Aw, shit . . .
“Mission brief only included that short paragraph on wildlife in the area,” said Borya, lowering his voice and studying the mountainside with his own binoculars.
“What do we got? Yeti or sasquatch?” stage-whispered Slava, reaching into his web gear.
“No,” Lex said. “Those guys already work for the Marines. These guys don’t.”
“How many you got?” asked Borya.
“I count five,” said Lex with a groan.
“Me, too,” Borya agreed. “Canis lupus. They look hungry.”
“The hunting of men is better,” said Slava, having a glance for himself. “But for now we hunt wolves.”
Lex scanned the rest of the mountainside, then paused on a ledge, where all five gray wolves were staring back at him. “Look at that,” he said. “They’re stalking us. Careful not to come in too close. Not yet. Waiting for the right time.”