by Jack Carr
“Jonathan?” Thorn said, indicating he was finished.
“Just one thing, lads,” the old warrior began. “That you are doing this for our son and daughter means more than my family can ever express. There isn’t enough money in the world to compensate you for taking this risk but as a small expression of my thanks you will each receive two hundred thousand dollars for your work. It’s the very least I can do. If you don’t come back, your family will be taken care of. That, I assure you.”
Reece looked around the room, not knowing what to say next.
“Sir.” Chavez stood and addressed the man before him. “I certainly can’t speak for everyone but please give my money to Freddy Strain’s kid, the one with the special needs.”
Reece swallowed hard as a chorus of voices followed suit.
“I’m not one for this kind of emotion, as Caroline can attest,” Jonathan said, “but, thank you, lads. The deposit will be made. In whose name?”
Reece looked around the room, “From the Warrior Guardians.”
CHAPTER 67
Medny Island, Russia
ALEKSANDR DESCENDED THE SPIRAL stone staircase into what most would call a dungeon. The intelligence officer thought of it as his hypogeum, the intricate final staging area for man and beast before they were raised into the floor of the ancient Roman Colosseum to meet their fate. In this case, the cages were jail cells with two entrances and exits. One opened to the inside, the area into which Aleksandr now ventured, and one on the opposite side opened to a ramp leading outside, into Aleksandr’s coliseum: Medny Island. Sergei followed close behind, carrying a large leather satchel.
Most people thought of the gladiatorial games as pitting the fiercest fighters in Rome against one another in barbaric battles for the joy of the crowd, but Aleksandr preferred the venation. It was a spectacle in which the beasts of the republic were set loose against venatores, the most respected hunters in Rome. Though Aleksandr hunted humans, he thought of them as game. They were his dentatae.
The level had room for eight single cells. Six held the Africans from the Central African Republic who had arrived on the latest flight, criminals from the mines who would be executed in Africa or hunted in Russia. Better they have a fighting chance against Aleksandr and his clients than die on their knees as slaves in the red dirt of their homeland.
Aleksandr and Sergei passed the seventh cage, now empty after its occupant had given Aleksandr a good warm-up two days prior. He was ready; his skills were sharp. He was hungry. They stopped at the last cage and Aleksandr came face-to-face with the adversary he’d been seeking.
“S. Rainsford, a clever pen name. I am Aleksandr Zharkov.”
Raife remained silent, studying his foe with an intensity that sent a chill down Aleksandr’s spine.
A worthy opponent.
“My sister,” Raife said.
“Your sister is dead. But just like the deer that comes to the feeder, or the leopard who climbs the tree after rotting zebra meat placed there by those who hunt him, you are here.”
“You are a sick fuck,” Raife spat.
“Oh, come now, S. Rainsford, your writing on our sport is so eloquent. Do not stoop to such a level. Leave that to the Africans. Tomorrow we hunt, or I should say, I hunt. You will be fed well tonight and just before dawn the cell doors behind you will open. A ramp will lead you up to ground level, where another door will be open. Sergei will have you in the sights of my very capable Dragunov. It’s the only time he uses a modern weapon and rest assured, he will not miss if you force him to take a shot. Some have chosen this option, but I know that you will not. You want to kill me. I had to ensure you would come and that you would play. It’s a pity that your friend James Reece isn’t here with you. How I would have loved to hunt you both.”
“If I don’t kill you tomorrow, he’ll finish the job.”
“Unfortunately for us both, that will not be the case. Your friend Reece is on his way here now with a makeshift band of misfits. In all likelihood they will be slaughtered by my security forces as they make landfall. You look surprised, S. Rainsford. Do you think our intelligence apparatus died at the end of the Cold War? I can assure you, it is still very much in place, stronger now than it ever was.”
“And, if I don’t play?”
“Ah, you will play, S. Rainsford. You will play because that is your only chance to kill me. I hunted your sister out of this very cage,” Aleksandr said, looking around as if recounting a fond memory. “Don’t worry, she was treated well. She was not violated. I needed her in top condition. She was strong, that one. Strong and smart.”
Raife and Aleksandr’s attention was drawn to a scraping sound as Sergei pushed a table across the cold cement floor, positioning it in front of Raife’s cage.
“I want you motivated tomorrow, S. Rainsford. I know you will be, but just in case, this should help.”
Sergei handed his master the leather satchel, which Aleksandr placed on the table, unclasping the two brass buckles that held it closed. With great respect and ceremony, Aleksandr reached inside and pulled out a large glass container. Looking admiringly at its contents, he placed it on the table in front of Raife’s cell.
“Good luck tomorrow, Rainsford,” he said, before walking to the stairs that led to the main level. Already thinking of the thick moose steaks Sergei would grill for their supper.
He left Raife alone in his cell, staring into the lifeless upturned eyes of his dead sister.
CHAPTER 68
Glacier Park International Airport, Kalispell, Montana
A GULFSTREAM G550, ALSO known as a GV-SP, is one of the most versatile and luxurious business jets that money can buy. With a $45 million price tag, it was built for comfort and speed over extended distances. Despite its spacious interior, which can accommodate up to nineteen passengers, it was not designed to accommodate five HAHO jumpers, a dog, and all the weapons and gear necessary to perform a clandestine night insertion into a foreign nation via parachute.
The aircraft’s interior was divided into three main sections: a forward club section with four leather seats facing one another over a small table, a four-place divan configured sideways with two seats across the aisle, and an aft sleeping compartment. This arrangement allowed every member of the rescue team a seat, leaving their gear distributed around the cabin and in the aft baggage area. For operators accustomed to making transcontinental flights on the nylon-strapped seats of military transport aircraft, it was a crowded but welcome change.
The team inspected, checked, and double-checked their gear before loading it into the plane. As jumpmaster, Farkus carefully inspected each parachute rig before they were loaded, since conditions before the jump would not be as ideal for doing so. If one didn’t know any better, it looked like a professional soccer or rugby team was boarding the aircraft for an away match.
“Farkus, can you rig this up for me?” Reece asked, extending the Echols Legend his father had given him.
“I knew you were going to grab a sniper rifle.” Farkus smiled. “Yeah, I’ll rig it up.”
“Just in case,” Reece said.
“Just in case,” Farkus acknowledged.
In the absence of a flight attendant, Liz performed the FAA-mandated safety briefing and indicated the location of the emergency exits. “The forward cabin door is the primary means of exiting the aircraft but additional exits over the wing can be accessed in an emergency,” she said, doing her best flight attendant hand sweep toward the window exits. “In the event of a high-altitude jump over a hostile nation, the aft baggage door is the preferred method of egress,” she said, evoking a laugh from the team.
The plane accelerated down the runway and surged skyward thanks to its powerful Rolls-Royce engines. Within minutes, they were at their cruising altitude of 40,000 feet, moving at a steady speed of Mach 0.83. What always surprised Reece was how quiet this aircraft was, its engineers obviously spending far more time and effort on passenger comfort than those who designed airliner
s. As soon as the plane took off, every operator went into their own world, listening to music, reading, or sleeping. Eli went into the crew rest compartment and began laying out medical gear in case the Gulfstream became an air ambulance. IV drips were prepared, bandages arranged, and various medications were lined up on the nightstand. Satisfied that things were as ready for an emergency as they could be, he returned to his seat and opened a Russian-language app on his iPhone. Reece couldn’t sleep. He spent his time deep in thought, going over the jump, the contingencies at every phase of the operation. With no backup, there were only two words to describe what they were about to attempt: suicide mission.
* * *
Those who were sleeping were jolted awake as the plane touched down in Anchorage and slowed to turn off runway 7-Right. The operators peered out the windows at the unique array of aircraft; everything from balloon-tired Super Cubs to various floatplanes were visible in what seemed like every direction. Due to Alaska’s size and the remote location of many of its cities, towns, and wilderness areas, it has the highest per capita rate of aircraft ownership in the nation.
The Gulfstream taxied to Signature Flight Support, one of the field’s fixed-base operators, where the engines were shut down. The window shades were lowered, and Liz opened the cabin door to coordinate refueling. All five of the rescuers stayed on board and out of sight; no sense arousing any suspicions about the nature of their journey or cargo. The cold air blowing through the open door was a warning of the temperatures they’d be facing when they eventually exited the aircraft. Eli made a comment under his breath about these being “sub-Hawaiian” temperatures as he pulled a stocking cap over his head.
Once the plane was fueled, the pilots used an iPad application called ForeFlight to file their flight plan electronically. According to that plan, they would travel from Anchorage to Haneda Airport in Tokyo, Japan, via Bethel, Alaska, and onto route R220, which passed almost directly over the Commander Islands, though they had no intentions of following that route all the way to Tokyo. They also filed an eAPIS report with the Department of Homeland Security, a requirement when filing an international flight plan. Only the pilots’ names were listed on the report since the five commandos in the back would not be aboard when the plane made its next stop.
Since they had so recently landed, the pilots performed a “rotor-bow,” motoring the engines for thirty seconds to thermally stabilize them before the start sequence was initialized. All systems read normal as the engines idled and the takeoff procedures began. They were wheels-up within the hour and, once airborne, Liz announced they were three hours and twenty-six minutes out from the drop.
Reece leaned back in his seat. Next stop, Russia.
CHAPTER 69
AS THEY FLEW OVER the Alaskan Peninsula, Reece warmed up dinner: piping-hot bowls of venison chili and freshly baked corn bread, all prepared by Caroline Hastings in advance of their departure. They devoured what they knew could be their last meal.
Reece pressed his head against the window and looked down at the lights of sparsely populated villages. He wondered how many Americans remembered that the only land battle of World War II fought on American soil took place on the barren volcanic islands 30,000 feet below. The Battle of Attu was all but forgotten these days. Five hundred forty-nine U.S. troops lost their lives defending home soil from Japanese invaders in May 1945; 1,148 were wounded, and 1,814 were taken out of the fight for cold injuries and disease. The battle marked one of the largest banzai charges of the war. Of the 2,379 Japanese troops that began the battle, only twenty-eight survived to be captured. The battle also drove the military to improve cold weather warfare gear, innovations that continued to evolve into what Reece and his men would use on Medny Island.
One by one, they hit the lavatory and began dressing for the mission. When exiting an aircraft at this altitude, temperatures could be -50 centigrade. Without protection from the cold, they would freeze to death in minutes. These extreme temperatures required them to wear several layers of synthetic clothing specially designed for arctic warfare. The clothing system, known as the Protective Combat Uniform (PCU), was developed by the Army’s Natick Soldier Systems Center with input from alpine climbing legend and Gym Jones founder Mark Twight, and manufactured by Patagonia. White and gray splotched MultiCam Alpine combat overwhites completed the ensemble, topped off with body armor before donning specially designed HAHO gray synthetic thermal suits that would be discarded once they hit the ground.
Farkus received a weather update from the cockpit that he used to make his final navigational calculations. The Gulfstream was indicating winds from 250 degrees at 40 mph, which matched the earlier forecast and gave him confidence that the report was accurate. They would be at the absolute limits in terms of their gliding distance to the target. If the winds shifted or, worse, reversed, they would find themselves in the icy Bering Sea, dead within minutes. Farkus reinspected each man’s gear, physically running his hands across every strap, every buckle, every seam; there would be no second chances.
Route R220 ran parallel to Russia’s Air Defense Identification Zone, or ADIZ. It was important to stick to established commercial airline routes when making a covert insertion into denied territory. If they deviated too far from the official route, Russian radar operators monitoring the Petropavlovsk/Kamchatsky airspace would take note of their location and alert interceptor aircraft based in Magadan. A MiG-31 could shoot down the Gulfstream from two hundred miles away. To avoid that disaster, the pilots only allowed their course to divert slightly from the center of the route, putting them at the absolute edge of the ADIZ, 48.5 miles from the tip of Medny Island.
Devan let Edo walk among the operators, sniffing and saying hello. The dog handler wanted Edo to know the difference between friend and foe if he was given the command to bite.
Using the buddy system, the band of mercenaries donned parachutes with ATAK, or Android Tactical Assault Kits, in a chest-mounted Juggernaut Navigation Board MFF-T2 with backup Garmin Foretrex GPS and Oceanic compass in case the primary system failed. The ATAK was a military-specific smartphone app that provided users with real-time geospatial situational awareness, communication, navigation, and targeting information. Their weapons had been fitted with tape to hold down anything they didn’t want flying off in the violence of exiting an aircraft moving at 500 miles per hour. The muzzle, ejector port, hand guard, optics, laser, and magazine all had riggers’ tape adhering them to the rifles, which were mounted horizontally across their waists. Reece had the added benefit of having the Echols Legend strapped vertically to his right side in a padded case with foam taped around the scope. Just in case.
Weapons were strapped to jump harnesses, and with a final check of NODs, helmets were secured in place, oxygen masks dangling to the sides. The G550 was flying at 35,000 feet but the cabin was pressurized for 8,000. An hour out from the drop, the cabin pressure was adjusted to 10,000 feet. The commandos took their seats and plugged into a supplemental O2 unit on the floor of the aircraft. Resembling a large Pelican case with dials and knobs that looked foreign to Reece, it allowed the jumpers to breathe 100 percent oxygen without depleting the small green tanks strapped to their chests. Edo had a nasal cannula rigged inside his muzzle. Reece always wondered how much O2 the dogs were actually getting.
Decompression sickness, otherwise known as “the bends,” is an ailment usually associated with scuba diving, but the risks of such a physiological event are equally as great during high-altitude parachute jumps. Residual nitrogen in the bloodstream can, upon descent, turn into bubbles that can migrate throughout the body and cause pain, paralysis, and death. To prevent the onset of decompression sickness, they pre-breathed for an hour. Any nitrogen remaining in their bodies, even any ingested while switching oxygen tanks, could be deadly.
The exercise of breathing pure oxygen prior to exiting the aircraft allowed them to get into the zone, running through the contingencies of the complex mission. Reece reviewed METT-TC: Mission, Enem
y, Terrain, Troops Available, Time, and Civilian Considerations. The mission was clear: find Raife and rescue Hanna. Enemy: the target package from the Agency briefing [Redacted] estimated that Aleksandr had a security detail of no more than ten private contractors. Terrain: mountainous, harsh, and cold. Troops Available: Reece looked around the plane at his assault force. Five plus a dog. Time: if they made it in without detection, they would have four hours to complete the mission and make it to meet Thorn and Jonathan in the Albatross at extract. Civilian Considerations: non-applicable. All civilians had been force-relocated fifteen years ago. Reece found himself wondering, why? Aleksandr didn’t have the island then. The Russian government had moved them.
Never mind that now, Reece. Focus.
At twenty minutes out, the silence was broken by Liz’s voice over the intercom system. Farkus switched to his portable bailout O2, moved to the rear of the cabin, and pushed open the polished door that led to the aft baggage compartment. The jumpers all wore clear goggles so the team medic could check for signs of decompression sickness: the bends, the chokes, neurological hits, and skin manifestations. Eli looked for pupil dilation or constriction, which could signify a nitrogen bubble expanding in the brain, and checked for signs that anyone was hyperventilating or scratching at their suits. The team looked ready.
At ten minutes out, the interior cabin lights were extinguished and everything went completely dark. Reece flipped down the L3Harris GPNVG-18 night-vision goggles attached to his helmet. The 97-degree panoramic view provided by the four images intensifiers helped eliminate the “tunnel vision” effect of the earlier NODs he’d used in the SEAL Teams. It wasn’t quite daylight with the goggles in place, but it gave them an advantage over those without them.
At the two-minute mark, oxygen lines were disconnected, leaving the men to breathe from their bailout bottles attached to their kit. Each jumper checked their buddy’s O2 system: pressure, regulator, indicator, connections, and emergency equipment. Reece considered the possibility that his oxygen system would freeze in the extreme air temperatures. If that happened, hypoxia would set in quickly and he would die a euphoric death, no doubt unaware of his fate. He shifted his thoughts to the jump sequence, suppressing the notion of when he’d last worn a parachute.