Condor

by M. L. Buchman

  Jon tried to shout no, but his throat wasn’t working.

  “That would be wonderful,” Holly effused with appropriate enthusiasm.

  Tom, with his camera up, was already shifting toward a small windowless utility shed rusting beside the hangar. There were dozens of similar structures tucked in various corners and spaces around the edges of the main hangars. Whatever leading edge manufacturing happened inside the building, out here it was still the depths of the Soviet era.

  “I think this would be the best angle. Really capture the plane in the background. Could you call them over, Tatyana Tarasova?” Tom appropriately used the polite form of her name whereas he and Holly were already on a first name basis with her.

  As the crew arrived, smiling easily and happily flirting with Tatyana, Tim and his microphone circled around behind them.

  Jon could only stand and watch as the other three slid into easy action.

  He tried to reconstruct it many times in his mind’s eye, but never quite succeeded.

  Tim came up from behind and delivered knockout shots with a needleless jet injector about the size of a slim energy drink can. He just pressed it against the neck of each of the four members of the flight crew and Tatyana Tarasova, there was a click, and he moved to the next one.

  Before their bodies totally failed them, Holly and the two STS operators had linked arms with the fading crew and hostess.

  He himself should have been there to unlock the door.

  To help.

  Somehow.

  But it didn’t seem to matter. Holly shattered the lock and walked Tatyana into the shed even as she collapsed. Then she turned to help hustle the four other crew members into the tiny space.

  And all Jon could do was watch.

  Suddenly Holly/Hulda had him by the arm and was dragging him into the shed as if he too was one of the drugged.

  It was run-down and stank of old oil and rust. Broken tools and odd bits of machinery were lying about. Hopefully no one would be checking it in the next six hours.

  Tim and Tom already had two of them stripped of their uniforms and had pulled them on.

  Holly shook him. “Now, Jon. We’re committed. Without Tatyana, we can no longer safely traverse security back out of here. Let’s go!” She shook him again.

  Jon nodded twice. Once to Holly and once to himself.

  He’d flown C-5’s right through the heart of the Iraq and Afghan wars. Starting in the early years when field conditions were unknown, right through the peak era in the early 2010s where combat-landing a C-5 was as natural as breathing.

  “Okay. Got it.” He reached down to peel the suit off the next crew member.

  “No,” Holly stopped him. “You’re the captain now. Take the captain’s uniform.”

  Okay, maybe he didn’t have it.

  The small shed was crowded and there was a lot of elbow bumping. Hard not to notice a few things about Holly as they all changed in the cramped space. That was one crazy-fit woman.

  Also fast. She was in her flightsuit in half the time it took any of the men.

  “Let’s go after the two loadmasters. We can’t have them aboard either.”

  “Tom and Tim. You stay here. Find something to make sure they won’t freeze to death before they wake up. Keep an eye out, we’ll try to get the loadmasters over here.”

  “Twelve hours, they won’t freeze,” Tim poked one guy in the gut now bulging prominently above the waistband of his underwear.

  “Living on too much beer,” Tom agreed.

  “A little fried brown bread.”

  “With that cheesy mayo-ketchup dip.”

  “Syrniki fried curd fritters.”

  “With honeyed sour cream?”

  “Ah, Russia,” they sighed happily in unison.

  Holly just shook her head.

  Then she thumped Jon hard enough in the gut that he lost most of his breath.

  “Do I have your attention now?”

  He nodded as he rubbed his gut.

  “Just remember. You’re the captain now, Major Karlov,” she tapped the name on his uniform hard enough to hurt. “Act like it.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  And she was out the door.

  “Not a man around who could keep up with that,” Tim stated flatly.

  “Be fun to try though. You going for it, Major Karlov?”

  Jon rubbed at his gut again. “Do I look like I’m insane? Get to work, you two.” He snapped out the last with an outrageous Russian accent that earned him a laugh, then he followed Holly.

  He had almost caught up to her when he spotted the refueling trucks.

  One was just disconnecting from the left-wing refueling port. And there was no truck waiting behind him.

  Under the right wing, the refueler was still connected to the two big fill-pipes in the side of the airplane. But even as Jon spotted him, he cycled down his truck’s fuel pumps.

  He strode over as the man was reaching for the disconnect.

  “Let me see the fuel manifest.”

  The man waved a hand at a clipboard resting on the fuel truck’s rear bumper and again reached up to disconnect the first of the six-inch semi-rigid hoses.

  No, they were in Russia, it was—he didn’t know what their standard hose sizes were here.

  Twenty-five centimeter?

  Thirty?

  What the hell else didn’t he know that was going to kill them?

  He forced himself to focus on the manifest.

  One hundred thousand pounds of fuel?

  That was never going to work!

  Kilos. It was in kilos.

  Two hundred and twenty thousand pounds of fuel.

  That was…it took him a moment to realize that probably wasn’t going to work either.

  “Hey! I need at least another twenty thousand kilos.”

  The fueler froze with his hands clenched around the coupling still attached to the fuselage. “You need what? We gave you exactly what you asked for.”

  It would get him to Vostochny, but not to Japan. “I changed my mind.”

  The fueler shrugged, then went back to his disconnection.

  “Look, asshole—”

  The fueler stopped what he was doing, hooked this thumb behind his front teeth, then flicked it at him.

  Jon stuck his thumb between his clenched fore and middle finger, then flicked that at the fueler. He gave it the sideways twist and upswing that meant, roughly, Forget about it, you asshole. Rather than Go to hell!

  Then, in unison, they gave each other the finger, just as if they were in the West.

  They both laughed.

  “I don’t have another twenty thousand kilos. And if you call for another truck, the paperwork…whoosh!” He grunted, but he didn’t go back to the decoupling.

  “There’s this storm coming in,” Jon waved at the slowly thickening clouds that were barely an excuse. “I want more maneuvering room.”

  “It is seriously shitting snow and ice on Moscow, as it should.” He spat on the pavement. “That to all of the politicians. It will not come to Samara.”

  Jon sighed; he knew when he was beaten. “What have you got left?” Besides, his nerves wouldn’t survive waiting for another truck to be called up.

  The refueler shrugged.

  “I want it.”

  He wiped his hands on his seedy coverall, pulled out a cigarette, looked up at the massive wing close above his head filled with kerosene-based jet fuel, grimaced, and stuck it back in his pocket.

  “Who can tell with this old piece of shit. Hit the damn lever, let’s see what you get.”

  Jon looked at the control panel, spotted the pump speed lever, and slapped it to high.

  “I’m only filling the center tank, so your load should stay in balance.”

  That was good, because Jon wasn’t so sure he could figure out how to rebalance the wing tanks without a little time to study it—like a month-long training course.

  Then, from his perspective, he cou
ld see that Holly had done something so that two men were trotting toward the disused shed.

  And there go the loadmasters. Sleep well, boys.

  Two more bodies in there, it was going to be damn crowded. That should keep them warm.

  59

  Once Elayne Kasprak was out of the plane at Samara and standing on the ground, she dumped any thought of an aerobatics lesson.

  All that mattered now was that bitch Holly Harper.

  The tower parked them well away from the Progress building and there were no ground vehicles nearby.

  She broke into a run. If someone came to arrest her, she’d commandeer their vehicle. But the Antonov was still on the ground and her Fendi calf-high boots were surprisingly good for running. They might have cost nine hundred euro, but she’d had to have them from the moment she’d spotted them at the Berlin airport last month.

  She could sprint the American mile in under five minutes wearing track shoes.

  She made it the kilometer to the plane in four, looking awesome.

  The last fuel truck was pulling away. Close, but she was in time.

  If they’d already taken off, Elayne could have ordered them back, or given them a fighter escort if Holly had already taken control.

  But she wanted this one for herself.

  The big clamshell rear doors were closed; the nose was swung down into place. But one of the crew was still fussing with something near the fold-out stairs to the passenger door.

  She slowed her pace enough to even out her breath.

  As she came up behind him, she made sure that her hair wasn’t caught in her coat collar and it could flutter in the chill breeze—warm for late March at almost five degrees above freezing. An early spring.

  “You, what’s your name?”

  The man glanced at her over his shoulder, then a predictable smile lit his face as he turned fully to face her.

  He made a point of looking her up and down.

  “What do you want it to be?”

  “Name and rank?” She managed to keep her tone friendly. Holly Harper must be here, somewhere.

  “Flight engineer Senior Sergeant Tomas.”

  “Is there a Holly Harper here, Senior Sergeant Tomas?”

  He made a show of looking around them.

  The refueler had driven off and the only people anywhere around were the two ground traffic controllers with their batons.

  He even looked at the bottom of his boot.

  “Just you and me, pretty one.” There were only slight variations to the Russian language, but she heard the strangeness in him. Kamchatka or perhaps Yakutia. Definitely somewhere east past Siberia. They bred hardy souls out in the taiga forest, as she knew well from where the zone wrapped around her own native home in the far northwest. She liked him for that.

  “I need to inspect this flight.”

  “Specialized cargo. It hurts me to say no, but I must.”

  She pulled out her normal high-level false identification card. “I need to inspect this flight, airman. In fact, I’m going to be with you every step of the way from here to Vostochny. Major Elayne Kasprak, Spetsnaz.”

  No one ever admitted to being Zaslon.

  Thankfully, no one dared mess with Spetsnaz either.

  Tomas did make a careful study of her identification. He earned points for that. But he didn’t call in to verify it, which lost him those same points even if she didn’t have the time to waste on such things.

  He handed her card back.

  “Fine. You’ve got the clearance to do what you want, Solnishko.”

  Little sun. A nickname her first real lover had used when he toyed with her bright blonde hair. It was sweet.

  “Personally, I’d be glad to have you along for the flight. Even if all I get to do is admire the view.” Again he looked her up and down, but his smile was a little more tentative, appropriate considering he now knew her rank and association with special operations forces.

  She patted his cheek as the first engine began winding to life. His thick beard coarse against her hand. “Keep dreaming, Sakhorak.”

  “Be your piece of sugar anytime. Better hurry aboard if you’re coming. We’re twenty minutes past due for takeoff already. Some screw-up with the fuel,” he shouted the last of it as the first engine stabilized at somewhere incredibly loud.

  She sprinted up the stairs as the second engine started.

  Inside the massive cargo bay, only a few lights were on. Cases of equipment were chained down to the deck in neat order. Near the center was a large container, which must be the Persona satellite itself.

  It was like bad déjà vu.

  Yesterday at this time, she’d been standing in the warm Kentucky sunlight on the remains of an Antonov AN-124 Condor that she’d blown up herself. She’d also been busy worrying that one of the pilots had survived.

  Now, she saw that Holly and Mike had been manipulating her throughout most of that morning. Things she’d taken for incompetence and gladly brushed aside as a failing, hadn’t been.

  They hadn’t been fooled either, or she’d never have received the phone call that had led her here.

  No.

  Driven her here.

  Well, two could play that game.

  The crew would all be up in the forward cabin, directly over her head, starting the plane and preparing for takeoff.

  She pulled out the Grach MP-443 handgun from the kit they’d put on the old SU-28 jet for her. No aerobatics lesson today, not hot sex afterward. Pity.

  Starting at the cargo deck’s bow, she worked her way down the row of cases. Inspection time.

  Every box. Every container.

  No unsealed sides where a person could slip in.

  No unexplained voids or shadows.

  She checked the lids of everything except the satellite itself. If she needed to, she’d crawl up there and check it too.

  As she climbed the stairs up to the rear passenger area, she saw that the engineer had pulled up the folding stairs.

  It was a long flight to Vostochny. That would give her some time to interrogate Holly Harper on the way.

  Elayne could only pray that she’d be uncooperative.

  60

  “So, Mike, who was that Antonov inspector?” Drake’s nerves were definitely bugging him.

  It was just he and Mike in a small, auxiliary conference room, little more than a box with four chairs and a round table. Not a bad spot to hold a poker night.

  “Holly said that Elayne Kasprak was something dangerous—like the most dangerous Russian alive or something. Xerox, Zippo, Zabar’s…? I never heard the word before.”

  “Zaslon?” Drake whispered it because he now knew that was who must have murdered his Russian prisoner in Kosovo. Though he didn’t know that they had any women. Maybe that’s how the assassin had gotten by him twenty years ago.

  “Sure, that sounds right.” Mike was leaning back in one of the big chairs as if he really was there for a friendly poker game.

  “Zaslon?” It finally registered just what danger he’d sent this team into. Drake must be losing his mind. “Zaslon!”

  Mike nodded calmly. “Holly was afraid of this Elayne somehow coming back after Miranda. Said she was going to take care of it. Never quite said how.”

  “Is she nuts?”

  Mike nodded. “Not in the way you would use the word. But the way I as a civilian would have used the word, at least before I met her, yes. Brilliantly nuts, but definitely way out there.”

  Drake didn’t know quite what to make of Mike Munroe. What little he’d noticed of him had always seemed to be…trivial in some way. Mike always had a smile and an easy handshake. People always liked him. He wasn’t ex-military or very technical like the others on the team.

  But at the moment, Mike was completely the cool professional.

  “You think Holly is taking on a Zaslon operative one-on-one?”

  Mike nodded. “Based on the extended meeting she and I had with Clarissa, I’d say that’
s a near certainty. If her plan worked.”

  Drake hadn’t connected that, or even noticed that Mike and Holly had lagged behind. He’d been too busy discussing logistics with Lizzy, Miranda, and Jon.

  “And you’re calm?”

  “No, General Nason. I’m not calm. Not even a little. Holly’s got shit to deal with, past shit, just like the rest of us. She left the SASR for good reason. And now she’s chosen to jump right back into the middle of an operation that I don’t even begin to understand.”

  “You don’t understand that we’re stealing a Russian satellite?”

  “No, I don’t understand why we aren’t sending in specialists in undercover aviation theft. The CIA must have the assets for that, but chose not to release them. I’d very much like to know why. Personally, I don’t get why we’re risking four people’s lives by sending them into Russia—with no preparation—to steal a three-billion-dollar asset from a secure military base. And finally, I don’t know if Holly is angry, vengeful, has a death wish, or just thinks she’s that good. Or even worse.”

  “What would be worse than that?”

  Mike was glaring at the wall over Drake’s shoulder hard enough that he was surprised the wood molding didn’t start to burn.

  “Mike?”

  He just shook his head.

  “Mike?”

  This time he whispered. “Or what if she really is that good?”

  After that, he refused to say why that was a problem.

  Drake didn’t have any guesses.

  61

  Elayne finished checking the rear cabin while they were still taxiing. There were almost a hundred seats in the area formed by the very top of the hull.

  There were no windows, and several of the lights were broken; it was a dull, dreary place for a flight. About a third of the seats had slipcovers that said the seat was broken.

  Row by row.

  It was like stalking in a shooting gallery during training—each corner could hold death. She’d always loved the high adrenaline charge.

  And when she did stalk a target, they were never Special Operations. Political and rebel leaders were her normal fare.