by David Archer
“Donnie Jefferson has your flight ready to go,” Wally said. “You'll be leaving from Kirtland airport by helicopter, rather than driving all the way to Denver. We took the liberty of packing you some luggage to save time, so you can head for the airport right now. Let’s face it, you don’t have a lot of time to waste.”
Noah shook his hand. “Thank you, Wally,” he said. “Don’t forget to send my toys.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Wally said. “They’ll go to Denver with you, but the diplomatic flight that's picking them up will actually arrive in Moscow before you do. One of our people will have them waiting for you when you get there.” He shook hands with the rest of them, wished them the best of luck and then turned to go back to his office.
Noah looked at his team. “Anybody need to make any stops?” No one did, so they loaded their new luggage into the back of the Hummer and climbed in. They got to the Kirtland airport in only twenty minutes and were directed to a spot on the tarmac where a helicopter was just starting up. Eight minutes later, they were in the air and on the way to Denver.
The flight to Moscow departed Denver at just after four that Saturday afternoon and made two stops along the way. The first was in Reykjavík, Iceland, where they changed planes for the second leg of the flight to Stockholm, Sweden. From Stockholm, they flew directly to Moscow, arriving at Sheremetyevo Airport at eight P.M. on Sunday evening, even though it was only eighteen hours after departing Denver.
As they left the baggage claim area forty-five minutes later, Sarah tapped Noah on the arm and pointed at a man who was holding a sign. Written on cardboard with a marker was the name “Samuel Winston,” and Noah instantly recognized Larry Carson, E & E’s man in Moscow.
Sarah broke into a smile. Carson had been instrumental in saving Noah’s life the last time they had seen him, after Noah had been severely wounded in a confrontation with Nicolaich Andropov, a former FSB senior officer who had gone rogue. Andropov had captured Sarah and used her as bait to draw Noah into the trap that almost killed him. Working together, Noah and Sarah had escaped, but not before a bullet had nicked the artery in Noah’s leg. But for Carson’s quick action, Noah would have bled out before he could have gotten any other kind of medical attention, but the U.S. Embassy in Moscow had its own small but efficient clinic.
“Mr. Winston,” Carson said as they approached. “I'm Larry Carson, from the U.S. Embassy. I hope you had a pleasant flight, but I'm sure glad to see you. Our phone system has been acting screwy for weeks.”
Noah gave him a friendly smile. “Well, we’ll see if we can’t get it straightened out,” he said, staying in character. “I've brought my A team. This is my wife, Marcia, and these two gentlemen are Dennis and Harold. I don’t think it will take us long to sort things out.”
“Glad to hear it. Shall we go? I've got a car waiting out front right now.”
Since the cover story for the team was that they were coming in to straighten out a phone service problem at the embassy, Carson made no attempt to conceal his destination. As soon as they were in the car and away from the airport, he looked at Noah with a grin.
“Good to see you again, Camelot,” he said. “When all this broke a few days ago, I actually let myself hope they would send you in. My orders are to give you any assistance we can, and I've got a box of Christmas presents for you sitting in my office. It came in about two hours ago, just before I left to come pick you up.”
Noah nodded. “Good. The tall, skinny guy is my intel man. He’ll need access to anything you got on Lefortovo, and I want to talk to anybody who knows anything about that place. Have you heard any update on our people there?”
Carson scowled. “They’ll be tried today, but it's really just a formality. They’ve already been convicted as far as the Kremlin is concerned. Now it's just a matter of putting the rubber stamp on it and sentencing them. Word we got is that they will be executed publicly, hanged in Red Square three days from now.”
“Oh, shit,” Neil muttered, but Noah ignored him.
“That doesn’t give us a lot of time, then. I'm going to need a package van, something that can’t be traced back to the embassy. Can you handle that?”
“I will,” Carson said. “There are a few dozen quiet assets in Moscow, deep cover agents. This mission has high enough priority that I can call on any of them, and I'm sure there's a van available somewhere among them.” He started to say something else, but then stopped.
Noah looked at him. “What is it?”
Carson grimaced, then let out a sigh. “When I got the communiqué yesterday, telling me you were coming, I talked to our Colonel Towers. He was an army colonel from the Corps of Engineers and our resident expert on buildings and architecture. He claims there’s no way in the world to get into Lefortovo’s secure detention areas, even if you had an entire platoon to back you up. The place is literally designed to go into a physical lockdown in the event of an attack, and it's built to withstand multiple hits by artillery. Any explosive powerful enough to break into it would destroy it and everyone in it.”
“That's what Dennis said, too. That's why you got that Christmas box, it contains the things I need to get in and out before anyone can react.”
They arrived at the embassy a couple of minutes later and Carson took them inside. Noah was introduced to Towers, who took them all into his office to begin discussing the details surrounding Lefortovo prison.
“I've got blueprints of the building,” Towers said, “but I've got to say there’s no way I can imagine that you're going to get in and out of that place. It's one of the most advanced prisons in the world, controlled by a computer system more than by staff. There are sensors inside the building that can detect an unauthorized presence and lock the whole place down instantly. If you did manage to get inside, you’d only find yourself sealed into an area you can’t escape from.”
“I'm not exactly planning to break in,” Noah said. “I intend to walk right in through the front door, and I've got some interesting little weapons to help me accomplish that. Instead of bullets, they use compressed air to shoot gel capsules that burst on impact and release a gas that instantly inhibits initiative. All somebody has to do is get a whiff of it and they just stop wherever they are and do nothing. We can walk right past them, take keys away, whatever. I'm hoping that will let us get in and out without setting off any of those defenses.”
Towers shook his head. “I don’t think there’s much chance,” he said. “The system is designed to keep track of all authorized personnel, and just detecting one additional body inside is enough to set it off. Once that happens, it requires a manual override from a control booth on the top floor of the building. The officers in that booth can release a poison gas anywhere in the building, and they're trained to be absolutely certain the situation is under control before they give the override command. If that means they have to kill everyone in a particular section, they’ll do it.”
“He’s right,” Neil said. He was sitting at a table in the room, looking at the screen on his computer. Towers had given him access to the embassy’s intranet so that he could look at every bit of intelligence they had on Lefortovo. “Noah, there’s no way in the world we can get them out of the prison itself. We’d all die in the process, so I'm looking at other possibilities.” The tremor in his voice told Noah just how serious he was as he looked up at Towers. “As far as I can tell, the only point of vulnerability on this place is its garage. Now, the garage itself is secure, but what I'm thinking of is when they bring them out for the execution. Larry says that will be in Red Square, is that right?”
Towers nodded. “Yes. They’ll have the gallows up by tomorrow, most likely, but I’m gonna correct your guy, there. That garage is every bit as hard as the rest of the prison, and if you tried anything inside it, you’d end up with a hundred heavily armed guards suddenly up your ass. ”
“Then we need to know exactly when they’ll be bringing our people out of that garage, and the route they’ll take.
How do I get that information?”
“I don’t know that we can,” Towers said. “One thing about the Russians, they don’t like to do anything on a computer they can do on paper. Lefortovo is still in the 1950s as far as digital information is concerned. All of their execution plans are done on paper, and we've never managed to find anything on them electronically.”
“Where would they keep it?” Noah asked. “The execution itinerary, where would it be kept?”
Towers turned to a print-out of the prison layout that he had tacked to his wall and pointed to a section just inside the front entrance. “Here,” he said. “That's the operations office. The execution plan would be in a file cabinet in that office.”
“Is that section part of the automatic lockdown?”
The colonel made a face. “No, but it's pretty secure. There are probably a dozen people in that section, and security watches over it through hidden cameras. You’d have one hell of a time getting in there, let alone finding the itinerary for a particular execution.”
Noah glanced at Neil, who was watching and hoping. “If our only chance to rescue our people is while they're being transported to Red Square, then I don’t think we have much choice. Neil, start planning it for me. I need to know the best possible time to hit them, and the most likely place to find that execution plan.”
Neil nodded and turned back to the computer. “I'm on it,” he said.
Towers scowled. “This sounds like total stupidity to me,” he said. “You need a much better plan than this, if you want to have even the lightest chance of success. All you’re going to do with this one is get yourselves killed.”
Noah looked at him for several seconds, then nodded once. “You may be right,” he said. “Luckily, I've just thought of one.” He turned to Carson. “Larry, I want you to send all my Christmas presents back to Santa. Is there any way you can get me Tasers, instead?”
Carson squinted at him as he nodded. “We’ve got a pretty good batch of them, and I could get you a few. What have you got in mind?”
Noah looked at Neil, who was suddenly watching him closely. “I think our best bet might be to get me and Marco inside with Jenny and the others. If we’re captured while trying to steal the execution itinerary, they’ll automatically connect us to them, so we ought to be taken to the same area, right?”
Towers grimaced. “Probably, but all that means is you’ll be locked into cells. Under the way things work here, you can automatically be adjudged part of their crimes, so all they’d do is add a couple more gallows and execute you right along with them.”
Noah nodded. “That’s what I’m counting on,” he said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“This scares me,” Sarah said. She and Noah were in the room they had rented at the Moscow Marriott Hotel, just a short distance from the embassy. “If you were going in to get them out, that would be one thing, I could understand the risk, but…”
“We can’t do that,” Noah said. “The place is just too secure for that kind of rescue operation, so we had no choice but to rework the plan. We need the Russians to think we plan to take them while they're being transported to Red Square, and in order to do that I’d need to know the schedule for that day. That’s what makes this ploy believable.”
“But now you’ll be captured, too, and if even one thing goes wrong with the rest of your plan, we lose all of you at the same time. Noah, I'm scared. If anything happens to you, I don’t know what I would do.”
Noah put his arms around her and pulled her close. “If anything were to happen to me,” he said, “I want you to get out of the country as fast as you can. You'll be at the embassy while this goes down, so Larry can put you on a diplomatic flight. You take Neil and you go home, that's all you can do.”
Sarah clung to him and let out a sigh. “Don’t even talk like that,” she said. “I understand you have to do this, but you come back to me. Promise me.”
Noah held her in silence for another moment, then tilted his head back to look into her eyes. “I promise you that I'll do everything in my power to come back to you safely. That's the best I can do. Other than that, we stick to the plan.”
Sarah stared at him for a moment, then nodded her head. He pulled her close again and held her for another minute, then let her go and turned to Marco, sitting on the bed.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Marco stood. Like Noah, he was dressed in black and wearing a long, light trenchcoat, which was also black. Sarah followed as the two of them walked out the door, and all three rode the elevator down to the main floor. It was close to midnight, but the few people in the lobby ignored them as they walked out the front door and turned to the right.
The car Carson had arranged was sitting where they had left it, a four-door sedan that looked like a million others in the city. Sarah got behind the wheel as Noah took the shotgun seat and Marco slid into the back. She started the car and put it in gear, following the directions she had memorized to Lefortovo prison.
The plan was simple. Sarah would park the car just out of range of the prison security cameras and Noah and Marco would walk the rest of the way. Each of them carried two of the powerful Taser stun guns, special ones made for use by clandestine services like the CIA; a single jolt from one of them would instantly render the biggest man unconscious. They would pound on the front door until someone paid attention, then use the stun guns to immobilize whoever answered, then threaten the rest with the pistols they had tucked into their belts. Hopefully, nobody would try to play hero, because Noah wanted to pull this off without casualties on either side.
As soon as the room was under control, they would enter the office and start searching for the schedule. Towers had given them his best guesses on where to look, so they would start there. If they didn’t find it, they would keep looking, shooting the people in the room again if they began to stir.
Sarah pulled up at the spot they had chosen and the two men got out. She would wait in the car, where security officers would later assume she was ready to race forward and pick them up as soon as they came out. Each of them was wearing a Bluetooth-style communication headset, with Neil using a fourth to keep track of what was happening from the embassy.
“They're moving,” Sarah said. “Keep your fingers crossed, Neil.”
“I've got my fingers crossed,” he replied, “my toes are crossed, my eyes are even crossed.”
A light, apparently on a proximity sensor, suddenly came on over the prison entrance doorway. Sarah leaned forward onto the steering wheel, trying to get a better look, and saw the door open as Noah and Marco drew near. There was a sudden flurry of motion, and then the two men rushed inside the building and out of her line of sight.
“They got in,” she said. “Now all we can do is wait.”
Inside the imposing building, Noah and Marco were surprised to find only a half-dozen people present. Four of them were guards, and they froze instantly when the guns were aimed at them, and went down under the stun guns a few seconds later. The other two were clerks, and unarmed. Noah stunned one of them, then grabbed the other by the arm and spun the man to face him.
“Do you speak English?”
The clerk, obviously terrified, nodded his head. “Yes, but not good,” he said.
“Where can I find the schedule for the execution of the spies from America?”
The clerk stared into his face for a moment, then slowly pointed at a double-doored cabinet. Noah nodded to Marco, who snatched it open and began looking at the papers inside. There were a dozen narrow shelves, and it took him a couple of minutes to find what he was looking for.
“Got it,” he said. He turned back to Noah, triumphantly holding a sheaf of papers in his hand.
Noah turned to the clerk again. “Do you want to live?” he asked. The man nodded vigorously, and Noah hit him with the stun gun.
He dropped to the floor instantly, and Noah turned to where Marco was hurriedly photographing the papers with a cell phone.
<
br /> Noah stood patiently while Marco put the papers back where he had gotten them. They turned toward the door and Marco grabbed the knob, but then he stopped. He turned to Noah with a sickly look on his face and said, “It's locked.”
“Stay exactly where you are,” said a voice from speakers in the ceiling. “Put down your weapons or I will be forced to kill you where you stand.”
Noah looked around the room quickly, but there were no windows or other means of escape. He hesitated for only a few seconds, then dropped the stun guns and his pistol as he raised his hands. Marco let out a sigh and did the same, and Noah whispered the word, “Abort,” as security guards came rushing into the room to arrest them.
Sarah, out in the car, wiped the tears from her eyes as she put the car into gear and drove away. She made sure to speed past the security cameras as she did so.
* * * * *
Larry Carson was waiting when she arrived back at the embassy and took her directly to the room where Neil was still staring at his computer screen. He looked up at her as she entered and Sarah saw the tracks of his own tears, then she hurried over and threw her arms around him. The two of them wept together for a couple of minutes, and then Sarah forced herself to get her tears under control.
She turned to Carson. “What do we do now?” she asked.
Carson shook his head sadly. “There’s nothing we can do,” he said. “Camelot knew it was a high-risk mission, but now there’s no way we can get them out. My orders are to put the two of you on the next diplomatic flight, tomorrow afternoon. You'll be going back to Neverland for reassignment to another team.”