by Tom Clancy
Hansen chuckled. “It’s all the surplus store had. Got a bargain, though. A dollar a piece.”
From his bunk, Ames called to Fisher, “Hey, boss.”
“Sam will do.”
“Okay, sure. Explain it to me again: This arsenal—why aren’t we just blowing the hell out of it? I mean, we’ve got Semtex. Why not just rig the whole lot of it and call it a day?”
“Two reasons,” Fisher replied. “One, I doubt whoever arranged this auction is stupid enough to keep it all in a big pile; we’re talking about tons of equipment. We don’t have enough Semtex for that. Two, these people are going to be our Trojan horses. Once they leave here, we’ll track them wherever they go. In the space of a week, we’ll learn more about these groups’ logistics and transport routes than we’ve learned in the last five years. When they arrive at their destinations, we mop them up, along with anyone else we find.”
“That’s all assuming the bad guys don’t find your trackers.”
“Safe assumption.”
“It’s a big decision for you and Grim to be making on your own.”
Hansen said, “Make your point, Ames.”
“No point. Just sounds like Sam here’s going a little cowboy on us.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” Fisher said. “If this all goes to hell and we’re both still around when it’s over, you can say you told me so.”
THIRTY minutes after the lanterns were turned down the yurt was filled with sounds of snoring. Fisher waited until eleven, then sat up. Two bunks down, Hansen was doing the same. Fisher nodded at him and got one in return. Silently they put on their cold-weather gear, then padded over to Ames’s bunk. Fisher reached into his jacket pocket, unscrewed his pen, and dumped the lone dart into his palm. Hansen moved around to the head of Ames’s bunk and knelt down. Carefully Fisher reached out and pricked Ames below the ear. Hansen clamped his hands over Ames’s mouth until he stopped struggling and lapsed into unconsciousness. While it was more guesswork than science, Fisher had worked with the darts long enough to know that Ames had gotten a fractional dose. He’d be under for ten or fifteen minutes.
Working together, they lifted Ames from his bunk and laid him across Hansen’s shoulders, fireman-style. Hansen headed for the door of the yurt and slipped outside. Fisher waited five minutes, then lit one of the kerosene lanterns. One by one he shook awake Gillespie, Noboru, and Valentina. All three were alert and upright in five seconds.
“What’s up?” Noboru asked.
Gillespie noticed the empty bunk. “Where’s Ames?”
“Get your gear on and grab your OPSATs,” Fisher commanded. “It’s time for show-and-tell.”
FISHER led them across the clearing, where they mounted the steps to one of the four-person yurts and slipped inside. Dangling from the center beam was a kerosene lantern, its sputtering flame bright enough only to illuminate Hansen’s face beside it. He reached up and turned the knob until the yurt was filled with yellow light.
Wrists and ankles bound to the bed frame, Ames lay spread-eagled on a bunk in the center of the space.
34
“JESUS,” Valentina muttered.
Gillespie turned to Fisher. “Sam, what is this?”
“Better you hear it from Ames.”
To Hansen, Noboru said, “And you’re okay with this? I mean the guy’s a weasel, but . . . this?”
Hansen said, simply, “It’s necessary.”
Fisher looked at Gillespie, Valentina, and Noboru. “I want you to listen carefully: You’re going to have to trust me. When Ames wakes up, it’s going to get ugly. Then it’s going to get uglier. Nobody interferes. Once you know what’s going on, you’ll understand. Agreed?”
He got delayed but firm nods all around.
Fisher said to Hansen, “Go get it.”
Hansen slipped outside, was gone for a minute, then returned carrying a two liter bottle filled with liquid. He set it at Fisher’s feet, then resumed his spot by the post.
AMES woke up five minutes later. Groggily he tried to sit up once, then fell back and tried again before rotating his head and staring at the flex cuff around his right wrist. He blinked at it, then lifted his head and checked his feet. He lay back again. He turned his head and saw Fisher.
“What is this? Why the hell am I tied up?”
Fisher was mildly surprised that Ames hadn’t started cursing and thrashing.
“Are you awake?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m awake. What did you do to me?”
“I darted you.”
“Why?”
Fisher didn’t answer but simply nodded at Ames’s bound limbs.
“Why?” Ames repeated.
“You’re a traitor,” Fisher said.
“That’s crap! I’m a Splinter Cell just like you guys!”
“You’re nothing like us. When you went to the outhouse, you made a call.”
“How’d I do that? My cell phone is in the Irkutsk sewer system.”
Fisher held up his OPSAT. “With this.”
“That’s for tactical comms. It routes to us, and the op center back home. You can’t—”
“You can text with it if someone teaches you how. Somebody with enough power to bypass the system.”
“This is stupid. . . . Check my OPSAT. Check if I did what you’re talking about.”
“You cleared it,” Fisher said. “Lucky for us, I have a transcript.”
Fisher nodded at the rest of the team and pointed at their OPSATs. In unison they studied their screens. It took thirty seconds. Gillespie said, “This is Ames.”
“Yes,” Fisher replied. “Talking to Kovac at Fort Meade—but not actually Kovac. Grim intercepted the message. Ames gave up everything—our location, the make and model of our vehicles, our weapons, what few details he had about the auction and our plan to track the 738 Arsenal. . . . Everything.”
“Why?” asked Noboru.
“Ames has been working for Kovac for a while. We’re not sure how long, but we’re about to find out.” Fisher went on, telling them the truth behind the Vianden ambush and Karlheinz van der Putten. “Since he got my position from Kovac, he needed a scapegoat. Since he worried I would go visit van der Putten, he had the man killed.”
“You have proof?” asked Valentina.
“We have van der Putten’s financials. No deposits before or after Ames says he paid for the Vianden tip.”
“But how did Kovac know you were headed to Vianden?” asked Gillespie.
“Actually, we don’t think it had anything to do with Vianden. It had to do with the guy I was there to visit—an Austrian named Yannick Ernsdorff. He’s the banker for this auction we’re chasing. Kovac was nervous because he and Ernsdorff are working for the same man.”
“And who is that?” asked Noboru.
“We don’t know.”
“Does he?” Valentina asked, nodded at the prone Ames.
Ames barked, “I’m not following any of this, you idiot! I don’t know anything! Fisher’s making this up. He doesn’t like me. Never has. He’s—”
Fisher cut him off. “Best case, Ames is working for Kovac so he can push Grimsdóttir out. Worst case, Kovac is a traitor and he’s helping whoever is behind this auction. Either way, Ames has been betraying you from the start.”
“It’s worse than that,” Hansen added. “Ames thought he was talking to Kovac on the OPSAT. He probably knew Kovac was going to pass on the information. When we reached the auction site, we would’ve been walking into an ambush.”
“That’s a lie!” Ames shouted. “I wouldn’t do that. Hey, Maya, come on! Nathan, man, we’re friends. . . .”
Gillespie said, “There’s a lot of ‘ifs’ in there, Sam.”
“True. We can settle this pretty easily. We know Ames is working for Kovac. We have the proof. What we need to know is whether Kovac’s just an ass or a traitor, and whether Ames is in on it.”
He nodded at Hansen, who walked to the canvas wall, picked up the straw mattress lying
there, and shoved it beneath Ames’s bunk. Fisher leaned down, picked up the two-liter bottle, and unscrewed the cap. Almost immediately the stench of gasoline wafted through the yurt.
Ames’s eyes went wide. “No . . . no!”
“You’ve got a thing about fire, don’t you?” Fisher asked. “Your family died in a fire, didn’t they?”
Gillespie said, “Sam . . .”
Fisher kept going. “You saw it, too. Watched the whole thing.”
Ames was rapidly shaking his head from side to side. Fisher tipped the bottle over Ames’s body and soaked him from head to toe. Ames sputtered and coughed and began bucking against his restraints. The bunk banged on the wooden floor. Ames started babbling, his words running over one another.
Fisher told the group, “Unless I’m wrong, Kovac gave Ames the name of the man we’re tracking. Aside from him, there are only three people who know it: me, Hansen, and Grimsdóttir.” Fisher knelt down beside the bunk. “Ames,” he said quietly. Ames kept thrashing. “Ames!” Fisher barked.
Ames stopped abruptly and looked at Fisher, who said, “Tell the name of the man we’re tracking or I’m going to set you on fire.”
“Aariz Qaderi,” Ames said without hesitation.
Fisher stood up, tapped a few keys on his OPSAT, then nodded to the others, who studied their screens. Gillespie said, “I’ll be damned.”
“Son of a bitch,” Noboru muttered.
To Ames, Fisher said, “Ben’s going to ask you more questions. Answer him.”
Ames’s eyes were glassy, but he nodded emphatically.
Fisher nodded at Hansen, then led Noboru, Gillespie, and Valentina outside. They started back toward their yurt. Gillespie touched Fisher on the elbow and waited for the other two to get ahead.
“Tell me the truth, Sam,” she said. “Would you have done it?”
“All that matters is that Ames believed I would.”
“Answer my question.”
Fisher considered the question. “Interrogation’s an art, Kimberly. To be good at it you have to be able to stuff parts of your mind into boxes and use only the parts you need. The part I used in there would have done it. The part in charge of actually letting go of the match . . .”
Fisher shrugged and walked away.
35
“THINK he’s going to be okay?” Noboru asked from the passenger seat.
It was an hour before dawn, and they’d been on the road for ninety minutes, having packed up as soon as Fisher realized the storm was abating. A hundred yards behind, the headlights of Hansen’s SUV bounced over the rutted road. Somewhere in the blackness out the side window were the waters of Lake Baikal.
As he had been since the interrogation, Ames lay in the cargo area, flex-cuffed, gagged, and wrapped in a sleeping bag. After he’d finished questioning Ames, Hansen had done a decent job of washing away the gasoline, but still the stench of it filled the Lada’s interior. Hansen had learned nothing more from Ames. He knew no details about the auction or who was behind it. As for his association with Kovac, however, Ames did not disappoint. As Fisher had suspected, Ames and Chuck Zahm were at least partially cut from the same cloth: Ames had meticulously documented the relationship, including digital voice records that Ames swore would put Kovac on the gallows beside him.
“Ames is a survivor,” Fisher replied. “Like him or hate him, you have to respect that. Before we know it, he’ll snap out of it and be pissed off again.”
“That sounds almost sympathetic.”
Fisher shook his head. “Sympathy and respect are different things. Once they throw Ames in jail, I’ll be happy to throw away the key.”
A few minutes later both their OPSATs beeped. Noboru checked the screen. “Qaderi’s moving. There must be a little lag time. He’s already outside Severobaikalsk. Wait a second. . . . He’s heading south, back toward us.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah.”
“How far?”
“Thirty miles. Should we tell Hansen?”
“He knows.”
Fisher pressed the gas pedal down, and the Lada surged ahead.
“Still heading south,” Noboru reported five minutes later.
The minutes and the miles ticked away, and slowly the one-lane road widened and veered inland, away from the shore and behind a screen of pine trees. Sheltered from the wind and spray, the road lost its coating of ice. They were able to increase speed to fifty miles per hour, bumping over the washboard surface.
“Twenty miles,” Noboru reported. “Sun’s coming up.”
Fisher glanced out the passenger window. Through the trees, a pinkish orange glow backlit the mountains.
Seven minutes passed and Noboru announced, “Ten miles,” then a few minutes after that, “Five miles.”
Fisher checked his OPSAT screen and muttered, “Come on, where are you?”
“What?” asked Noboru.
“That.”
The Lada’s headlights swept over a left-hand split in the road. Fisher slammed on the brakes, eased up, then began pumping them as the Lada slewed right, then left, then corrected and came to a halt thirty feet beyond the split. Fisher glanced in the rearview mirror. Hansen’s SUV was fifty yards behind, sitting broadside in the road. Fisher put the transmission in reverse. Hansen took the hint and straightened out and began backing up. Fisher stopped, cranked the wheel to the left, and pulled onto the left-hand road. Hansen followed. The road took them up a grade, then through a series of S-curves. Fisher kept his eyes on the road but occasionally glanced out the passenger window.
“Look sharp,” Fisher ordered. “They should be along anytime now.”
Fisher reached down and shut off the Lada’s headlights. Behind him, Hansen did the same. They rounded another curve, and to the right and below, through the trees, they could see a small lake no more than a half mile across. The rising sun glinted off the flat, calm waters.
“Sludjanka Lake,” Noboru announced.
On the opposite shore, another Lada SUV was heading south.
“That’s him,” Noboru said.
“Yep.”
“Where’s he going, though? The auction site?”
Fisher didn’t answer. He got out and Noboru followed. Hansen and the others had done the same. They met between the cars at the edge of the road.
“Auction site?” Hansen echoed.
“Maybe,” Fisher said. He lifted his binoculars and watched the Lada’s progress. “Can’t see who’s inside, but unless he dumped his computer and phones, it’s Qaderi.”
Suddenly, from inside the Lada there came three overlapping orange flashes. The SUV slewed sideways off the road, then back up, and coasted to a stop.
“Holy crap!” said Gillespie.
Fisher zoomed in on the Lada and waited. After thirty seconds the front passenger door opened and a figure emerged. The man turned around, leaned back into the car, and then came out with a briefcase. He slammed the door shut and turned around. For a split second his face was illuminated by the sun. It was not Qaderi. Nor his bodyguards.
“What the hell is this?” Hansen muttered.
“I think Qaderi just got uninvited to the auction,” Fisher replied.
WITH his back to Fisher and the group, the man knelt down beside the Lada and opened the briefcase. He rummaged around for several minutes, then closed the briefcase and stood up. He loitered around the Lada as though waiting for something. Ten minutes passed. Then, to the east, came the thumping of helicopter rotors. They saw the mist on the lake’s surface ten seconds before the helicopter appeared. Flying at twenty feet, the robin’s-egg blue and white Sikorsky S-76 swept over the Lada, banked south, and then stopped in a hover and touched down astride the road a hundred yards away. The cabin door opened, and four men in black coveralls jumped out and sprinted to the man standing at the Lada. Without a word passing between them, the man got back into the Lada and the four men began pushing. Once the SUV was pointing at the Sludjanka Lake, the driver climbed out an
d helped the other four until the Lada was rolling at ten to twelve miles an hour. With only a slight bump as it went over the berm at the edge of the road, the SUV plunged into the water and sank from sight.
The five men sprinted back to the Sikorsky and climbed aboard. Thirty seconds later the helicopter was heading east over the lake. Fisher and the others stood in silence until the sound of the rotors faded.
“They must have known Qaderi was tagged,” Valentina said.
“But not how. That briefcase they took was Qaderi’s. I saw it in Romania. Everything that can identify him and his bodyguards is inside—including their phones and his laptop. If their Lada’s ever found, they’ll be John Does.”
“So that’s what the guy was doing when he was kneeling,” Gillespie said. “Checking for beacons.”
“Safe bet.” Fisher told Valentina and Gillespie about the Ajax bots. He checked his watch. “Grim briefed him two hours ago. Just enough time for him to pass along the message. She left out any mention of Ajax, though, and he would have assumed she meant standard, Third Echelon-issue beacons.”
Hansen was studying his OPSAT’s screen. “The bots are heading due east at 150 miles an hour.”
“We’re still in the game,” said Gillespie.
“What now?” asked Noboru.
“We hide.”
HANSEN was the first to spot it on their foldable, topographical map of the area, an abandoned Stalin-era mica mine built into the cliffs a mile west of the lake. The dirt tract that led from the lake to the mine was littered with boulders and axle deep in a snow-mud mix the consistency of oatmeal, so it was an hour before they pulled into the clearing before the mine’s entrance. Fisher backed in his SUV, followed by Hansen. Everyone climbed out.
“Okay, now tell us: Why are we hiding?” Noboru said.