Condor

by M. L. Buchman

  But that someone had tied one of her current identities to her past should be impossible. That implied that her file alone had been exposed, not all of Zaslon’s. Which was even worse. Command might assume that was her doing and they’d task one of her own unit with taking out the threat.

  “Ms. Egorova?”

  “I’m sorry, proceed with message.” She leaned her forehead against the cold glass and stared at the jet that had just delivered her to Sheremetyevo Airport. It was too late to get back on it and escape. To anywhere. A heavy March snow was already blurring the plane. No way out.

  “There is a satellite going to the sky. It won’t get there and only you know why.” There was a long pause.

  “Is that it?”

  “Da. Do you know what it means?” The woman asked as if she didn’t know either.

  “No. You really don’t?”

  There was a silence over the phone as if the snow had settled over their conversation as well. Finally the woman spoke softly.

  “I don’t know who you are. The person who gave me the message said you were Zaslon. I’ve never talked to a Zaslon agent before.”

  That’s when Elayne heard something wholly unexpected in the woman’s voice—fear.

  The same gut-wrenching fear she felt to be talking to a counterintelligence agent.

  “Okay. Let us both breathe. Just breathe.”

  The woman actually did, her breath heavy over the phone. “Yes, that is better…a little.” The last was accompanied by a lovely laugh; brief but welcoming, setting Elayne’s own shoulders at ease. A little.

  “Maybe we can figure this out between us.”

  “Da. Maybe.”

  “I don’t suppose you’re willing to tell me who you are?”

  “Nooo,” she said slowly. “I would not be happy doing that. But since I know your first name, I suppose you should know mine. I’m Vesna.”

  “Okay, Vesna. Can you tell me about the person who left the message?”

  “She is a…friend. Of a…friend.”

  Elayne tried to read into the pauses. “But you spoke to her yourself?”

  “Yes. She called him and asked him to hand the phone to me. I don’t know how she knew I was there.”

  From one woman to another. Skipping over the middleman. If this Vesna truly was FSB Counterintelligence, which she’d almost have to be to have today’s encryption code, she’d been tasked with watching the man. The snow falling from the heavy sky was becoming thicker, yet the snowflakes were more visible.

  Daybreak was happening behind the heavy storm.

  Vesna had just spent the night with the man she was watching—watching as a lover—and had only now gotten free to place this call.

  “Your friend knows nothing of what the other woman said.”

  “That is correct. And she gave me your number.”

  How the hell had she gotten that? “Did she say anything else that might be useful?”

  Vesna hesitated. “She made…threats. She knew what I did and the men I do it for. She also knew that I report to the FSB and threatened to expose me and all of the other women I work with.”

  Counterintelligence. Vesna and her friends would be well-paid spies. Spies paid to use their bodies to watch over some segment of the Russian elite. And if they were exposed, the FSB would either drop them back into the desperate cesspool of common whores or, more likely, they’d quietly disappear and never be heard from again because of the things they knew.

  Elayne stopped worrying about the woman and returned to the message. “‘There is a satellite going to the sky.’ Do you know which one?”

  Again the hesitating silence.

  “Vesna, I can’t help you if you don’t help me.”

  Another deep breath. “My friend. He tells me that an important satellite is just finished and ready to send for launch. A ‘Person?’ Something like that.”

  A Persona surveillance satellite! It had to be. That wasn’t just important. That was a major national asset. A new Persona launch was only a once- or twice-per-decade event.

  Then her thoughts ground to a halt.

  The second part of the message.

  There is a satellite going to the sky. It won’t get there and only you know why.

  “But I don’t know why.” Elayne thumped her forehead on the glass and all she got back was a dull bass note as the glass vibrated.

  “Are you okay, miss?”

  Elayne snarled at the gate attendant who’d come up to her. She made a few observations about his shriveled excuse for male anatomy which he certainly possessed before he could scurry off. Then she moved to the center of the void between two adjoining gates for some privacy.

  “If you are still confused, I am supposed to ask you a question that makes no sense to me to ask.”

  “Go ahead, Vesna.”

  “The woman said I should say, ‘Where am I?’”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  Vesna started to speak, but Elayne cut her off.

  “No, wait.” A Persona satellite. The Progress Rocket Space Centre. Samara. She knew exactly where Vesna was. What was more, she knew who Vesna was sleeping with—a high-level worker of Progress—because the state counterintelligence wouldn’t spend so much effort on a mere employee. Either a department head or an executive.

  But that wasn’t her concern.

  It won’t get there and only you know why.

  “Okay, I know where you are and roughly who you’re…” there were many unsavory jobs for the State that must be done. “Who you’re watching. I’m still not sure of the last part. Why me?”

  “When you ask that question, I’m to tell you the very last thing that was said to me. Arfist.”

  “Arfist?” Are fist? ArFist, like misspelled artist? Perhaps an acronym.

  “Yes. Arfist. Do you know what it all means now?”

  Arfist! Russian for someone who played a harp. Harpist. Harper.

  And she knew.

  Holly Harper.

  Who’d gotten her cell number from the ever-so-friendly Mike Munroe. She’d given it to him originally because she’d needed to know what happened to the sixth flight crew member.

  “Tell me, Vesna?” Elayne smiled out at the swirling snow that no longer obscured anything. “Is there a Condor waiting to deliver the satellite?”

  “A condor? Like the big bird?”

  “Yes, an Antonov AN-124 Ruslan transport jet. Is there one sitting at the Progress factory in Samara?”

  “I don’t know the name, but the waiting jet is the biggest I have ever seen.”

  “Thank you, Vesna.” Elayne resisted the urge to crow with delight. “You take good care of your friend. Very good care.”

  “He is kind to me. And is hanging very much like a horse.” It was the first piece of idiom she’d gotten wrong.

  “Hung, Vesna. He is hung like a horse. For you I hope he is hung like Catherine the Great’s horse.”

  Vesna giggled.

  Men wishing to denigrate Russia’s finest ruler, the Empress Catherine the Great, had spread rumors of her taste for bestiality. Her death was widely publicized to be caused by the breakage of the truss lowering a horse onto her for her pleasure. Rather than being crushed by an equine lover, she’d died at her desk after saving Russia from itself for thirty-five years—starting with staging a coup against her insane husband-emperor.

  But the story lived on.

  They both hung up.

  Elayne would worry later about flaying Vesna’s lover for any betrayal to the Motherland—whoever the man’s ‘friend’ was on the phone, she was connected to Holly Harper. That probably meant American intelligence. If Elayne was in a good mood, she might protect Vesna. She seemed nice for what she was. But …she also hadn’t turned in the man she was watching either.

  Elayne would deal with them both—after.

  First, Holly Harper.

  In Russia.

  Stealing a Persona satellite.

  It was too pe
rfect.

  And Holly had made it personal, throwing down the gauntlet at Elayne’s feet.

  She’d take that challenge.

  And when she delivered the Australian’s head to the world’s media as an American spy, they would give her the Order of St. George medal. Perhaps even the gold star of Hero of the Russian Federation medal.

  Elayne dialed her phone as she spun around and began striding through the airport’s crowded passenger halls.

  “I need the fastest jet you have in Moscow. And make sure they include a field kit. I’ve been traveling and have no weapons.”

  The idiot started to protest.

  “Now! Or by end of day you’ll think that Lubyanka Prison is a luxury hotel.”

  Despite the thick crowd, a path opened wide before her as she strode ahead.

  “And have them pick me up at Terminal D at Sheremetyevo, the first gate. If there is another plane there, get rid of it. You have fifteen minutes.”

  She hung up the phone.

  It was just long enough to hit Sheremetyevo’s Bosco store and replace her damaged jeans and jacket.

  53

  “That’s the craziest damn thing I ever heard.” President Roy was slumped back in his chair.

  But for all his apparent ease, Miranda suspected that his mind was highly engaged. He’d asked detailed questions throughout her presentation.

  Clark had only spoken once when he said, “Clarissa did what?”

  Roy’s brief response had completely squelched him, “Keep personal shit out of this room and out of your job, Clark. Clarissa has a job and it’s no longer yours.”

  Drake had added, “One of her contacts was the initial source, and she’s also orchestrating the team’s transfer from Ramstein to Samara. She is not cleared for any other aspects of this operation.”

  Clark’s nod had been tight—in the displeasure category—and he’d kept his silence since.

  Now, at the finish of her presentation, Miranda kept her eye on the screen. She’d ended on a world map on which she’d superimposed all of the moving pieces.

  “There’s a call for you, ma’am.” One of the NSC clerks announced.

  Jeremy’s face appeared on a side screen. “Well, it’s aloft and I’m not on the plane.”

  Mike chuckled for some reason.

  Miranda was simply relieved.

  Jeremy placed an image of the repainted C-5A Galaxy on the screen. The Boeing paint shop had transformed the dull Air Force-gray into a shining white aircraft with a long, blue pinstripe. The Russian flag perched proudly on the towering tail.

  The top crosspiece of the C-5 Galaxy’s high T-tail had been painted black.

  “The tail has a simplistic stealth coating. Nothing much, but enough to disrupt fifty-seven percent of the radar signature.”

  Lizzy leaned in. “What are the two stubs low on the tail? They’re not part of any C-5 I’ve ever seen.”

  “Those are actually horizontal stabilizer elements that we hijacked off the 767 assembly line. The way we attached them, they’re aerodynamically neutral and will simply flap up and down with any passing airflow, causing no significant induced-drag. Don’t look very big on the Galaxy’s tail, do they? However, they have highly radar-reflective coatings. They won’t fool a visual inspection, but between the two coatings on the two sections of tail, they should give any radar the impression that this plane has a standard empennage like an An-124 Condor rather than a T-tail. What do you think, Miranda?”

  “I think that’s a wonderful job, Jeremy.”

  Jeremy looked ready to explode with pride.

  “And the remote piloting is all configured?”

  “Absolutely. Those guys at Davis-Monthan did a great job putting the control system together. Flew us, remotely, to Seattle with it. We can even do a midair refuel, though we won’t need it. Her range with this little load is amazing. Also, did you know that if you’re really careful, you can fit a KC-135 “Stratotanker” fuselage inside a C-5’s cargo bay? We had to cut off the last twenty feet of the tail, but we got it in. We filled all those internal fuel tanks with just twenty percent of their possible fuel load—fourteen thousand pounds, about two thousand gallons. So, the tanks are mostly filled with explosive vapors. I hope that it’s okay? I got the idea from what happened to your parents’ plane.”

  Her parents had been killed by an accidental spark igniting the vapors in a nearly empty fuel tank. The explosion had ripped flight TWA 800 from the sky. It would shatter the C-5 Galaxy if done to the whole plane rather than just a single tank.

  A part of her wanted to go hide in the corner of the room, hug herself, and maybe fly the airplane that was her thumb.

  But a part of her knew Jeremy was counting on her. And Holly was counting on him.

  She looked at only the slice of the solution that was the mechanism of TWA 800’s crash and no other implications.

  “Jeremy, if you found a way to make some good come from…that. I’m…” she checked inside carefully. Even being cautious, she was never sure quite what she’d find when she thought about her parents. But… “Yes. Well done.”

  “We set sparkers in the tanks to make sure any attack will trigger them all at once. If we can entice the Russians to shoot it down, it should make an incredible show and leave nothing bigger than a pea. That’ll make them piss their pants. Pea, p-e-e, piss. Get it?”

  “Yes, Jeremy, we get it.” Mike was smiling.

  Add pee and poo jokes as an entire humor classification that Miranda had never understood. Lizzy didn’t look to be smiling either. Perhaps that category was a boy thing?

  54

  Elayne resisted the urge to beat the shit out of the pilot when he showed up at Sheremetyevo.

  Did command send one of the brand-new MiG-35UBs capable of over two thousand kilometers per hour?

  No!

  They sent a thirty-year-old Su-28 that couldn’t even break the sound barrier.

  A twenty-minute flight was now an hour to reach Samara.

  Then they were tenth in line for takeoff.

  “Tell the tower that we are now first in line for takeoff.”

  “The snow is slowing everything. They’re thinking of closing the airport and all of the flights are desperate to depart before they do,” the pilot reported from the front seat of the aging jet.

  “Tell those assholes that if I’m not in the air in the next thirty seconds that I’m going to have you fire a missile into their tower.”

  “I’m not carrying any missiles.”

  “Do you have guns?”

  “This is a flight training aircraft, ma’am. It has no weapons.”

  A trainer? They’d sent her a training aircraft when she was in such a hurry? If Holly Harper slipped away from Samara, Elayne would never find her.

  No, she could. She’d find that odd Miranda Chase and Holly would come running. Maybe she’d start by sending Holly a few body parts first.

  Wait.

  She herself hadn’t known this was a trainer.

  “Pilot, tell the tower you’ll fire a missile at them anyway. I’ll bet they won’t know that you can’t.”

  “My pleasure, ma’am.”

  When he did, they were immediately instructed to turn onto a nearby taxiway and cross onto the active runway ahead of everyone else.

  “Is this enough room?” They were leaving a third of the runway behind them before they even started.

  “Oh, yes ma’am. He may be old, but this jet is very capable.”

  “Fine. Prove it.”

  The pilot’s answer was to throw the throttles wide open. They slid a little on the snow before it straightened out, but then it punched ahead. Hard!

  They were aloft before she remembered to breathe.

  When they were less than a hundred meters up, and the runway was still visible beneath them through the thick snow, he rolled the plane hard to the right.

  In as many seconds, he spun through three wing-over-wings like he was drilling a hole through
the sky. Then he pointed the nose nearly straight up and they shot aloft through the clouds.

  He leveled out in the sunshine above the clouds while her heart was still pounding.

  “He is also one of the foremost aerobatic performers in all of our air force,” the pilot announced proudly.

  “Captain,” Elayne’s body rippled from the forces that had slammed through her. “You have my permission to do that to me any time you want.”

  “It would be my pleasure, ma’am. But with my current fuel, Samara is at my range limit. Perhaps you would like a demonstration once we’re there?”

  Perhaps she would. She did so love taming a Russian officer’s easy arrogance. What Miranda saw in the simpering Major Swift was a mystery to her.

  55

  “Now it’s a question of timing,” Miranda had tracked the Turkish plane, temporarily flying with Polish registration, from Warsaw to Samara and it was now headed back to Warsaw.

  “We know Holly’s team safely cleared customs at Kurumoch International Airport forty minutes ago. As they are only thirty kilometers from Bezymyanka Airport at the Progress factory, they should be there in the next few minutes.”

  Lizzy brought up some images from the NRO’s satellites on one of the four large screens at the end of the table.

  “There’s the very edge of a storm over Samara, so we’re peering through clouds, but you can see here that the Condor is still in place. Here’s the image series we were able to capture in successive passes over the last two hours.”

  The images flickered by, one every few seconds. Sometimes the angle or lighting shifted, but Miranda could make out the ground action for herself as Lizzy explained it for the others.

  “Here we can see them loading several large containers. This one,” she circled it on the screen, “has the dimensions we’d expect for the Persona itself. Everything else we believe is auxiliary launch equipment, final fairings and such. The rockets would have traveled ahead weeks ago.”

  Smaller containers were loaded.

  Many people were crowded along the path between the building and the plane as the loaders moved objects between the two.