Critical Exposure

by Don Pendleton

  The three consulate staff members all looked suddenly and properly demure.

  Bindler cleared his throat. “Okay, well, I guess that answers any questions about use of the helicopter. So what’s your plan?”

  Bolan scratched his chin and studied the map for a minute. “That’s going to be pretty rugged territory. Even if we can get in close with the chopper, we have no idea what we’ll be up against. Not to mention there’s the question of possible security or other resistance.”

  “You think they’ll have the place guarded?” Maxwell asked.

  “I’d bet money on it,” Bolan replied. “A house that size can’t be easily defended by just man power. There’s probably a full security system in place, to alert them if anyone comes around. That means we’ll have to approach from the hillside and drop in via air assault mode. I don’t think Amocacci or his people would expect that.”

  “Makes sense,” Serif said. “I’m an experienced climber, so it won’t be a problem.”

  Bindler looked at her with surprise. “You’re going?”

  “I am,” Serif said immediately. She pointed to Bolan and said, “Colonel Stone promised I could accompany him when he brought down the Council of Luminárii. I’ve been following this group for a very long time and I deserve to be there as part of the team that brings it down.”

  Bolan thought about arguing the point, but he realized, given the resolve in her face, it would be futile. Besides, he’d given his word and he was a man who kept his word. Under the worst circumstances he might have gone back on it—he couldn’t find any reason to do so this time. At least not one he could defend.

  “It’s true,” Bolan said. “And frankly, I could probably use her help. She’s much more familiar with Amocacci’s operational background. And she also knows a lot more about the Council than any of us. Her strategic input may come in quite valuable.”

  “I don’t know,” Bindler said. “I don’t think this is a good idea. But I’ve been told to cooperate with you, Colonel, and that’s what I intend to do.”

  “I don’t blame you, sir,” Bolan said. “But we all have to follow orders and we’re all on the same side. Goes without saying, then, your cooperation is appreciated. One officer to another.”

  Bindler nodded.

  “Well, if that wraps up the details, I guess we should get cracking,” Grimaldi said. He looked at Maxwell. “Major, would you mind giving me a hand with the chopper?”

  “Not at all.”

  When the two were gone, Bindler made small talk with Serif and Bolan before dismissing himself to other duties, leaving Bolan and Serif alone.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “Keeping your word. You know...letting me tag along.”

  “There’s one condition,” Bolan said with a firm but level gaze.

  “I know, I know...you’re in charge.”

  “Smart lady,” Bolan replied.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Kirklareli, Turkey

  “And you believe Gastone?” the voice of Hurley Willham queried.

  Quon Ma hesitated only a moment before replying. “I don’t know if I believe him. I simply know that what he said is quite feasible. There could have been someone operating between us, manipulating the situation from the beginning.”

  “And why do you have any bloody reason to believe he’s telling you the truth?”

  “Because he gave me an actual name,” Ma replied.

  The long silence on the other end of the line both surprised and worried Quon Ma. He’d never trusted Hurley Willham. Worse yet, the guy had sent Jiao Pei to courier a message to him, with some miraculous guesswork involved that Ma was actually alive, and then she’d been wasted just hours after taking the assignment. Part of this didn’t make a bit of sense to Ma, and he was very hard pressed to think that Willham would have had anything to do with her death. After all, her demise would not have benefited Willham in any way any more than Ma’s death would have. Not to mention that his reaction had been proportionately shocked when Ma contacted him directly to advise of Pei’s assassination.

  Ma decided to test Willham. “Have you spoken with the others?”

  “No—why?”

  “I just wondered if either of them was as concerned as you seem to be.”

  “I had no reason to talk to them,” Willham said quickly. “My assumption was that since Gastone was calling the meeting he would contact each of us, as per protocol.”

  “But of course he didn’t know to contact me until you told him.”

  “I assumed you would want him to know, and that you among all of us would have the most reason to want to attend this meeting.”

  “I do at that.”

  Despite Quon Ma’s attempt to trap Willham, the guy seemed legitimate. Instead of lying and saying he’d spoken with Penzak or Ryzkhov, he’d let Amocacci handle it personally as they had agreed should always happen. Amocacci always called the meetings, and he was the sole person to contact each of them in turn. None of them talked to each other outside the official circle. The only reason Ma had even attempted to contact Willham directly was because of Pei’s death.

  “Naturally, he thought I was dead,” Ma said. “So he wouldn’t have tried to contact me unless you told him.”

  “Correct. Which is the only reason I told him.”

  “The situation has changed,” Ma said. “We may no longer be able to follow the letter of the protocols we put in place. Especially not now that someone within our own ranks may be working with our enemies.”

  “I have the feeling we’ll be able to expose the evil bastard behind all this turmoil that’s been created for us. And when I do, I will personally take great pleasure in watching his hide being stripped off him a little at a time.”

  “You mean after I’m finished with him,” Ma said.

  “Of course, of course.”

  “I look forward to seeing you, my friend.”

  “My sentiments, as well. And I’m glad my assumptions were correct about you. Your loss would have been felt for a very long time to come.”

  “Thank you,” Ma said and then he hung up.

  The MSS specialist turned to his men and said, “Get prepared. We’re going to the meeting place. I think I’ve found our assassin.”

  * * *

  AS SOON AS he received the call from Gastone Amocacci, Lev Penzak put into motion the preparations he’d made. The very fact that Amocacci’s intent was to release the name of the true traitor among them made Penzak nervous. Their situation was precarious enough without publicly revealing the single individual among them who had allegedly masterminded this entire affair. Of course, he was pretty confident he knew who the traitor was already. He and Ryzkhov had agreed that Willham was the obvious choice. He was the only one who knew the identity of the contact that Amocacci had been dealing with, a contact Amocacci now planned to reveal to the rest of them.

  Could Willham really act so surprised? Penzak highly doubted it, and Ryzkhov had agreed. There was no other choice but to attend the meeting, but Penzak didn’t plan to attend it alone. He knew that Amocacci would bring guns, and there was no way he planned to be left without any sort of escape plan. If Amocacci or any of the others turned their people loose on him, or each other for that matter, Penzak planned to be ready. Yes, it was entirely possible that the foothills of the Strandzha would run red with blood.

  But there was no way Lev Penzak would allow any of it to be his own.

  * * *

  AS SOON AS Willham had finished his call with Quon Ma, he picked up the phone and dialed Savitch, who answered on the second ring.

  “I’ve been sitting around here waiting on you for hours!” Savitch told him. “When are you going to come up with some new money? I can’t retire on
the small change I’ve made.”

  “Just shut up and listen, you dumb arse!” Willham barked. He didn’t wait for Savitch to protest. “They’ve called a meeting of the Council.”

  “And you’re planning to go?”

  “Yes,” Willham replied. “So are you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t care what you think, you’re bloody well going to go. But we can’t be seen together, so you’ll have to find your own way there.”

  “And once I’m there, just what exactly is it you expect me to do?”

  “You said you wanted to make money?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, then, today is your day because Amocacci has plenty of it at his estate in the Strandzha. You got something to write with?” When Savitch confirmed he did, Willham gave him the exact coordinates of the meeting place. “I want you to make sure there’s a clear escape path for us.”

  “How do you suggest I do that?”

  “There should be a flight out of Istanbul tonight, a charter that can take you to Malko Tarnovo. That’s a major city near Amocacci’s residence. Once you’re there, I want you to arrange for some sort of transportation. You’ll need a utility vehicle of some kind, something that can handle rough terrain. We’ll use that to get back to Malko Tarnovo, and it should be large enough to haul a whole lot of cash.”

  “What about Amocacci and your other pals, eh? They aren’t just going to let you walk away from this with all of that money.”

  “You’re the one who’s supposed to have all the connections. Get help from Wehr, if necessary. I don’t care if you decide to hire a bloody fucking army. Just get it done and be ready for me because I’ll probably be coming out of there like my ass is on fire.”

  “What about our plans in the U.S.?”

  “What about them? It’ll happen just as scheduled. Stop worrying about the stupid shit I’ve already handled and start worrying about how we’re going to save our arses when this thing blows wide open.”

  “Do they know it’s you?”

  “Not yet,” Hurley Willham replied with a maniacal laugh. “But they will. They will know very soon.”

  Istanbul, Turkey

  “LOOKS LIKE THE ball’s in play, Sarge,” Grimaldi said as he entered the small briefing room. “We just got confirmation that a charter for Malko Tarnovo left twenty minutes ago.”

  “And Amocacci—” Bolan looking up from a scaled-down version of Serif’s terrain map he’d been committing to memory “—was on board?”

  “The one and only.”

  Bolan nodded. “Excellent. We leave in two hours.”

  “You don’t want to get going right away?”

  Bolan shook his head. “No, we need to wait for all the pieces to fall into place. I want to make sure before I go in that everyone is present and accounted for. I’ll only get one chance at this, and we can’t afford stragglers. Too much is at stake.”

  Grimaldi nodded and then sat at the table. “Mind if I ask you a question?”

  Bolan gave the pilot his full attention. “Shoot.”

  “Do you really think letting Serif tag along is such a good idea? I mean...she has no field training. She’s hardly equipped for this kind of mission. I’d think you’d want to go it alone so you can move fast and improvise if need be without adding an innocent factor to the equation.”

  “I’d like to be able to do this one alone, Jack,” Bolan said. “But the fact is I gave my word. I can’t go back on it.”

  “Even if it means she could get killed?”

  “She’s a big girl,” Bolan said. “She knows what she’s getting herself into. And besides, as she pointed out during the briefing, she’s earned a right to see this through. Without her insight we would never have gotten this far. I don’t think it’s asking too much to let her be a part of it. She’s promised to knuckle under and do as she’s told.”

  “And you believe her?”

  “No,” Bolan said with a knowing smile, “but I’ve already accounted for that.”

  Malko Tarnovo, Turkey

  WHILE TURKEY WASN’T where General Mikhail Ryzkhov would have preferred to reside, he had to admit it beat some of the other places in which he’d lived throughout his career in the GRU. The fact of the matter was that he would have preferred to return to Russia. However, his commission had come with a price since his family was from a lesser house. It was almost as if the days of czars and royalty had returned to Mother Russia, and Ryzkhov had grown rather sick of the whole idea.

  No matter what else might have been going on, this wasn’t the worse assignment in the world. At least it had been going smoothly until Amocacci called the meeting. As per protocol, Ryzkhov hadn’t contacted any of the others. He’d also been very surprised to hear that Quon Ma was still alive, after all. So Amocacci’s assassination attempt had failed. Except that he knew it wasn’t Amocacci who’d pulled the strings.

  Why none of them had simply been honest from the beginning and realized that Hurley Willham had been manipulating the whole situation from the start was anybody’s guess. Frankly, as he sat there and drank, General Ryzkhov wondered why he’d put up with any of them this long. He had to admit he liked Quon Ma. Part of him had been very glad that Ma had managed to survive the attempt on his life, although that complicated matters now.

  It had originally been agreed among them that Amocacci should be the one to go if it turned out the job on Ma had been botched. Instead the Italian had somehow managed to turn the tables on the lot of them. His ingenuity surprised Ryzkhov in a number of ways, and he’d begun to wonder if they hadn’t made a mistake. After all, it was Willham who had cooked up the entire scheme from the beginning. Willham had been the one to accuse Ma of leaking Council secrets to their enemies, and Willham had been the one to hire his guy to dupe Amocacci into taking out the contract on Quon Ma.

  What nonsense!

  No, the more Ryzkhov thought about it, the more incompetent the entire lot seemed to him. It was probably time to cut their losses, and when he’d consulted with his people in the GRU they’d been in consensus. The thing was, each of the other men had probably called on his own resources for protection. That meant Ryzkhov could only win this game by employing superior numbers.

  He supposed he could implement a full-strength unit, including a tank and possibly a couple of armored vehicles, but that didn’t make much sense. He had a squad of Spetsnaz at his disposal and he saw little reason not to use their distinct talents to get the job done. More than likely, his former colleagues would have little more than thugs in place to cover their escape and nothing more. Ryzkhov would have to see to it that they didn’t escape, and he would have to ensure the elimination of their personnel.

  Ryzkhov considered for a moment if it would be better to try to take them individually, since the Council members were the high-value assets. He dismissed the idea after about three rounds of vodka. Too risky without a high enough return on investment. The best way would still be to wait until they were together in one place. Ryzkhov could then excuse himself and let his men come in to take care of business.

  “How will we get in ahead of them, Comrade General?” asked Captain Sergev, the head of the Spetsnaz commando team.

  Ryzkhov had summoned the man to his quarters, which occupied a small, nondescript building in a downtown section of the city. The buildings here were older but the population in the area sparse, so it had become the perfect place from which Ryzkhov could operate in relative obscurity. It was also convenient when he had to travel for meetings. The best part about the location was that nobody knew about it, not even the other members on the Council. They all assumed that he maintained a place in the Turkish capital of Ankara, and that he had a small base of operations out of Kirklareli. Ryzkhov had never seen any reason to refute their assumptions, seeing that it gave
him a somewhat tactical edge.

  “There’s a special entrance to the underground facility off this access road,” Ryzkhov said as they bent over a map of the area. It was a special map that the GRU officer had made not too long after their first meeting. “But that’s the one used by all of us. What I need you to do is to come through the house and take that access down to those chambers. As soon as the job is done, you can escort me out the same way. The others won’t know there’s a problem until it’s much too late.”

  “Yes, sir. We’ll not fail you.”

  “See that you don’t, Comrade Captain,” Ryzkhov replied, dismissing him. “For the sake of your own life as well as mine.”

  Now Ryzkhov felt a headache coming on and a chill in his body. He didn’t want to resort to this, but he was desperate. He didn’t see any other answers to the problem at hand. His former associates had become quarrelsome. They couldn’t be trusted, and Ryzkhov considered the irony of it. Here they had assembled with the purpose of tearing apart the U.S. military intelligence community. And indeed, maybe they still had a chance to do that. But Ryzkhov knew if nothing else he would need to be ready in case one of them attempted to perpetrate the ultimate betrayal.

  To hear Amocacci talk, it was as if he already knew who among them was the traitor. For all Ryzkhov knew, it might still be Amocacci. Somehow, he didn’t think so. He was still playing the odds that it was actually Willham, since the British SIS case officer had seemed to have his finger on this thing from the start. Unfortunately, Ryzkhov couldn’t deal with maybes. He had to be sure that he didn’t do something to expose his own ass and create a loss from which the GRU might not be able to recover.

  So since he couldn’t be sure, he’d take out the entire body and start anew. Perhaps he could find a group among his own kind that would be trustworthy enough to handle the operation they had planned from the beginning. That thought gave him even more of a headache. The ball had already been put into motion on that count, and Ryzkhov hoped he lived long enough to see the aftermath of their months of planning.