He walked up to her, set the glass on the desk, and put a hand to her left cheek, narrowing his eyes while nudging back her hair to expose a fine scar traversing her right temple. He traced it with an index finger.
“That’s new. Where did you get it?”
“Dubrovka theater. 2002.” She tilted her head, letting her hair fall back over it.
Putin grunted and sipped his vodka while grinning with pride, eyes following the tattoo as it disappeared into her cleavage.
“I haven’t seen the entire compass in a while.”
“Seriously, Vlad? And please tell me that child isn’t charged with protecting your life.”
“Would you like the job?”
“I’m not a babysitter.”
“Are you calling your president a baby?” He set the glass back on the table, embraced her, and tried to kiss her scar, which he found incredibly sexy.
She pushed him away. “We have a problem.”
“But it’s been so long. Can it wait until after—”
“The Taliban definitely has our bomb.”
He narrowed his gaze, remembering her report from a few days ago. “You mean to tell me that—”
“It’s the RN-40 that my dad lost in—”
“Afghanistan,” Putin slurred, his face sobering as he looked away. His gaze panned over the endless volumes of fat and dusty tomes surrounding him. Then he glared at the portraits, stared into the lifeless eyes of his predecessors.
One or two missteps is all it would take to bring all that back.
Realizing that losing a tactical nuclear weapon to religious fanatics could easily turn into one of those missteps—especially if al Qaeda was able to get it operational and deployed—he added, “Is your plan—”
“Already in motion,” she said, taking a moment to bring him up to date on the meeting with Prince Mani al Saud.
“The battery powering the GPS tracker is good for a month. After that we lose the signal, so we need to move fast,” she added.
“What happens if we do lose track of it?”
“Our fail-safe is that the replacement gun primer circuit board will not trigger a pulse strong enough to ignite the conventional explosives, so the uranium projectile will not be fired into the uranium target.”
“So the bomb will not detonate?”
“Correct,” she said. “But with some expertise they can still turn it into a dirty bomb, thus the reason for the whole sting operation and the GPS tracker. We need to find it, Vlad.”
“Dammit,” he said, looking away. “We certainly do—and quietly. The world, and especially my enemies here and abroad, can never know.”
“Agreed,” she said. “It’ll make Dubrovka seem like … child’s play.”
“Child’s play,” he repeated, remembering what a political mess that had been.
Reaching for the Stolichnaya, he gulped it down, and contemplating the empty glass he said, “Anything you need, Kira. And I mean anything you—”
A knock on the door, which inched open just enough for Anton’s head.
“Speaking of child’s play,” Kira said, tilting her head toward the intrusion.
Putin frowned. “Dammit, Anton! I thought I told you that—”
Anton held out an encrypted satellite phone. “It’s the president of the United States, sir. Says it’s urgent.”
Putin considered that for a moment before thrusting his free hand at his aide, who rushed in, placed the phone in it, and just as quickly left the room.
Kira pointed at herself and Putin motioned her to stay while pressing the Speaker button on the phone. He trusted very few people in this world, and Kira was among them.
“Good morning, Kovboy,” Putin said, calling Bush by the nickname he had given him, meaning “Cowboy” in Russian, while also realizing it was midmorning in Washington, DC. “To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”
“Good evening, Pootie-Poot,” Bush replied. “This one’s about the nuke you lost in Afghanistan back in eighty-eight. Rumor’s that the Taliban has found it. Know anything about that?”
Putin stared at Kira, who widened her stare.
“First time I’m hearing about it,” he finally replied. “Back in eighty-eight, you said?”
“That’s how you’re gonna play it? ’Cause it’s gonna bite you right in your Pootie ass.”
“I’m afraid that happened well before my time”
“Before, during, or after, we’re still talking about a Russian nuke, so it makes it your problem. And because it’s in the hands of those camel jockeys, it also makes it my problem.”
“I will have my people look into it,” Putin said.
“Yeah, have your people call my people and then we can all do lunch while those bastards nuke one of our cities.”
“I said I will look into it, and then I will get back to you, yes?” Putin said.
“Yeah. You do that. You do that, indeed.”
The connection ended, and Putin used the phone’s antenna to point at Kira while repeating, “Anything you need.”
53
Family History
SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
The headache awoke her.
Vaccaro sat up, feeling light-headed, her mouth dry and pasty, her back throbbing from the dozen-plus g-forces that had compressed her spine when she shot out of that cockpit like a damn cannonball.
Slowly, blinking rapidly, she tried to get her bearings, eyes shifting west, where the sun danced just above the rim rock, its dying burnt-orange glow giving way to a full moon.
Eyeing the glowing hands of the Laco Trier, Vaccaro frowned. She had been out for nearly thirty minutes—a lifetime in her situation.
Where the hell’s my ride?
First she checked her emergency locator beacon, which should have gone active the instant she ejected, providing a homing beacon for the rescue crew. Satisfied that the small gadget integrated with her survival vest was broadcasting her position, she reached for her AN/PRC-148 MBITR, strapped to the side of the same vest.
“Bravo Niner Six, Bravo Niner Six, Red One One on the ground. Where’s that helo and driver?”
“Red One One, Bravo Niner Six. Glad to hear your voice. Hook Seven Five en route. ETA fifteen minutes.”
Vaccaro frowned, wondering if she even had half that time left when anyone within five miles probably had heard the explosion and saw her ejection booster and canopy.
Thirty minutes ago.
She gathered her parachute into a neat lump before reaching for her holstered Colt 1911, one of two that had belonged to her father. Lieutenant James Vaccaro had had the other one with him during his final stand.
The semiautomatic was made of polished stainless steel, which was frowned upon because it could be easily spotted at night, the reason most military personnel preferred the matte black semiautomatics offered by SIG Sauer and Glock.
She released the magazine, verifying it held eight .45 ACP rounds, plus one in the chamber. She stared at the last round in the magazine, the one at the bottom, wedged against the spring.
The one with her name on it.
If it ever came to that.
Sighing, and praying that history didn’t repeat itself in the Vaccaro family, she reinserted the magazine, thumbed the safety, and secured it back in the chest holster of her vest with a Velcro strap.
The wind intensified, sweeping down the mountain.
She hugged herself, shivering, thinking of her survival training, which commanded her to seek some form of shelter while waiting for the rescue helicopter to arrive. At the same time, Vaccaro needed concealment, had to remain hidden from an enemy who thrived on capturing, torturing, and beheading pilots.
Plus whatever else the bastards might do to a woman.
Focus!
And that meant selecting a spot out of the ordinary that would not attract the enemy, which disqualified clusters of trees and caves.
The manual recommended using rocks or boulders for both
shelter from the elements and as a hiding place. Fortunately, Afghanistan had plenty of both, so she selected an outcrop at the edge of the gorge that had a natural recess deep enough to disguise her presence while also shielding her from the howling wind.
She crawled down into it, beyond the ledge, careful not to miss a step and risk tumbling down the side of the mountain. She wedged the parachute into the hole, using it as a cushion as well as a blanket, before reaching for the Colt with her right hand and removing one of her two MK-13 flares from her survival vest with her left.
The clearing projected just above her head now, where she hoped a helicopter would come in time to get her the hell out of this place. The steep and rocky drop below her boots led to a canopy of trees bordering another ledge almost five hundred feet below her.
Staring at the second hand of her Laco Trier, Vaccaro did a quick mental check to make sure she had not overlooked any critical steps in her survival training.
Satisfied she had done everything by the book, the air force pilot did the only other thing she could do: she prayed that the Chinook helicopter found her before the enemy did.
54
Baaligh
SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
Pasha never stopped running, cruising through the increased darkness with his dozen handpicked warriors, charging toward a single objective with unyielding determination. He pushed everyone to the breaking point, ignoring their labored breathing just as he ignored his own body, every step bringing him closer to the downed American pilot.
The goat trail narrowed as the grade increased while curving north, as the air progressively thinned—as temperatures dropped. They rushed up the incline in a single file, armed with a mix of weapons, from RPGs to AK-47s, a Russian RPD light submachine gun, and even a new SVD Dragunov sniper rifle to replace his broken Remington.
They lacked night vision equipment, but Allah had been merciful this night, providing all the illumination they needed from the moonlight filtering through the trees. The vegetation thickened with altitude, in sharp contrast with the desolate and rocky terrain in the warmer valley leading to the sand dunes surrounding Lashkar Gah.
Pasha recalled the downed Soviet pilot when he was just eight years old. He could hear the man’s screams as he and Akhtar had cut him with the curved steel of their pesh-kabz knives. Pasha could almost feel the blood in his hands, the pilot’s body writhing in the calculated pain Akaa had taught them to inflict.
That night had been his initiation, his coming of age, becoming baaligh, reaching the age of maturity in Islam. Akaa had opened his eyes to the world through blood that glorious night long ago, as he crossed the bridge into Sharia-wise adulthood.
And so he ran, a hand feeling the holstered Makarov, his shooting finger resting on the muzzle, feeling the Russian pilot’s inscription, confident it could not possibly be a coincidence that the winds had carried an enemy pilot to a clearing similar to the one seventeen years ago.
This was the work of Allah.
This was his fate.
They finally reached the location where the parachute had vanished less than forty minutes before, out of breath, having covered four miles in record time. He spread his men efficiently around the twenty-meter-wide ledge extending for nearly a hundred meters along the face of the mountain, shadows moving slowly now in the moonlight, silently shifting in the darkness, waiting for his order.
His eyes scanned the narrow clearing, bounded on one side by stone pines and other vegetation and on the other by the rocky outcrops at the edge of the gorge.
Where would you hide and wait for a rescue helicopter?
He remembered the Soviet pilot choosing an obvious spot near the edge of the woods. But his men found no one there.
No, he thought. This pilot is smarter than that.
But he didn’t need to order his warriors to search anywhere else to flush out the hidden American aviator.
The distant sound of an incoming helicopter would do that for him.
55
Bait
SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
“Red One One, Hook Seven Five. Two minutes out. Homing in on your beacon. Any hostiles?”
Vaccaro had lowered the volume of her MBITR to a mere whisper, hoping that the whistling wind would mask it from any approaching insurgent. She lacked the throat mike and earpiece accessories used by elite marine or Ranger units to maximize concealment.
She peeked beyond the edge of her cliffside hideout and saw nothing but moonlight dancing over the clay dust kicked up by the wind sweeping the clearing. And she heard nothing but the rustling of branches.
“Hook Seven Five, Red One One. Negative. Coast looks clear.”
“Roger that.”
The whistling gusts gave way to the sound of the Chinook’s double rotors echoing across the mountainside, and a moment later she spotted its red and green navigation lights.
The MK-13 flare consisted of a cylindrical tube roughly ten inches long. One end of the flare contained red smoke for day signaling. The opposite end held a red flare for night ops.
Holstering the semiautomatic and securing it with the Velcro strap, she crawled out of her hideout and up to the edge of the clearing, where she pulled the rings at both ends of the MK-13 and tossed it a dozen feet downwind from her. The flare ignited, bathing the clearing in pulsating red light while smoke oozed from the other end, rushing away from her.
“Red One One, Hook Seven Five has your flare in sight.”
“Roger, Hook Seven Five. Great to see you guys.”
* * *
Pasha set his new Dragunov rifle by his feet before inserting a PG-7VL HEAT grenade into the smooth-bored barrel on the front of the RPG-7 launcher one of his men had just handed him. He did this with practiced ease, making sure the shell was properly aligned with the firing mechanism. Shouldering the three-foot-long launcher, he held the pistol grip with his right hand and the secondary grip eight inches behind it with his left hand, keeping it taut against his chest.
Cocking the external hammer with his right thumb and lightly pressing his index finger against the single-action trigger, he positioned his shooting eye behind the PGO-7 telescope sight, which provided a 2.7x fixed magnification.
He brought the incoming helicopter’s center of mass to the center of the sight’s crosshairs before slowly shifting his sight to the left along the horizontal windage scales to adjust for what he estimated to be a ten-knot crosswind.
And he waited, aware of the weapon’s limited range, especially in a crosswind. At fifty meters, he should expect a clean shot, but the probability of a first-round hit dropped to the vicinity of 70 percent at one hundred meters and to below 40 percent at two hundred meters.
He had already passed the word to his men: no one was to fire until he did. And no one was to make a move on the pilot, which he now recognized was a woman, standing tall, red hair swirling in the wind, waving her hands at the rescue craft while surrounded by matching reddish and pulsating smoke.
Like the devil she is, he thought, staring at her figure half hidden in the crimson haze.
One hundred meters.
He inhaled slowly as the helicopter, a Chinook, approached the clearing, its rotor wash swirling the smoke in overlapping wisps curling across the ledge.
Eighty meters.
Pasha exhaled slowly as the craft entered a hover, rotating away from him, positioning the tail section just off the edge of the ledge.
He was momentarily confused. But then, as the rear ramp lowered, he realized that the Chinook crew didn’t intend to touch down but merely to bring the ramp to the edge of the gorge so that the woman could simply walk onto the craft. But in the process, the pilot had given him a clear line of sight directly into the interior of the massive helicopter.
At a distance of just under fifty meters, he made a final sight adjustment and exhaled before pressing the trigger.
A smokeless powder for recoilless-type launch thrust the
grenade away from the shooter. RCL gun action allowed for the initial propellant blast to escape through the rear of the launcher instead of following the projectile out the barrel and potentially hurting the grenadier. Upon launching, the grenade unfolded its stabilizing fins, and at a safe distance of fifteen meters from Pasha, the built-in rocket booster ignited, accelerating the warhead toward its target.
* * *
Vaccaro watched the ramp lowering over the edge of the clearing and saw a helmeted crewman waving her over.
She took off toward the waiting Chinook, kicking hard, trying to close the couple hundred feet of separation quickly, ignoring the gusts of wind fighting the helicopter’s powerful dual downwashes.
And that’s when she noticed a flash of light reflecting off of the crewman’s visor, and also just to her left, coming from the edge of the woods.
An instant later, a trail of light propagated toward the helicopter. It went right through the ramp opening, just missing the crewman, and shot straight into the cockpit.
Her last image of the Chinook was of the crewman kneeling by the ramp, turning his head when the RPG flashed by, a foot from him, but her mind was already screaming a single word.
RPG!
She shifted her forward momentum to the right, away from the helicopter and back toward her rocky hideout, running away as fast as her legs allowed.
The helicopter’s windshield exploded outward a moment later and a column of flames shot out the rear ramp, licking the clearing and even reaching the tree line.
But she didn’t stop. She couldn’t stop. Her instincts pushed her away from the inferno, from those rotating blades that she knew would soon become deadly missiles.
Without Fear Page 26