All this got him thinking again about the situation back in New York, which of course made him think of Dominique. His jaw still hurt where she’d slugged him.
She said he would never understand, and she was right. He was convinced that she was no longer the person he remembered. But now, as he passed Montauk Point, still dwelling on everything that had happened in the past few days, he couldn’t help but wonder what she was doing at that very moment.
Chapter Forty
The sex between Zmeya and Dominique had lasted thirteen hours already.
Not thirteen straight hours—the sessions were interrupted by many radiophone calls and meetings Zmeya had to run. And no real sex. Not quite yet.
But that’s how it worked. As she’d explained it to him, sex meant much more to her than the act itself. She called it tantric sex, where all aspects of one’s lustful desires are discussed first and at length to heighten the pleasure that would eventually come.
It got off to a bizarre start. Dominique had turned Zmeya’s cameras on him as if he were a common criminal and made him confess to all his fatal encounters with women over the past few years, including names and descriptions. One turned out to be the daughter of a Politburo member.
Then he took video of her as she dressed up, stripped down, and bathed. She obeyed all his commands but always stopped short of taking that one last step.
As promised, she’d used the tip of her hunting knife on his arousal. But these episodes were surprisingly short, because Zmeya would pass out whenever he spotted even the tiniest drop of blood on her blade. His reaction had been so odd that Dominique had asked him, “What did your parents do to you?” He’d replied, “Not my parents, just my father.”
She’d let him watch her have sex with one of the Cuties, and then with two of them at once. And he’d filmed the encounters. Because of Dominique, he’d let all participants live.
But now, just before midnight, he declared the long mystical foreplay was over. It had to be—because he couldn’t think of anything else to do but the act itself.
And neither could she.
Zmeya was sitting in his darkened bedroom, staring at the unpainted walls. Not moving, barely breathing, he was trying very hard to push the rest of the world out of his head for a little while.
This was it, finally. Dominique came into the room naked. No knives, no cameras, no other people. Just them, having sex. Making love.
He’d never wanted anything more.
She slipped under the sheets with him, smelling like a flower and wearing bright red lipstick. His favorite.
“Count to ten,” he whispered to her.
She did as he said. Then she asked him why.
“This is your perfect opportunity to murder me,” he told her. “Dark, secluded, a good escape route. No one would stop you from leaving. But I suppose if you were really an assassin, you would have killed me by now.”
“That’s not very romantic,” she said dryly.
“What did you expect?” he asked, pulling her naked body closer. “That ‘tantrum’ thing was strung out over half the day. Are you sure that’s the way it’s supposed to go?
“Some people do it over the course of weeks,” she insisted. “And besides, you kept getting distracted by answering the phone and taking meetings.”
He sighed deeply. “I’m sure this is how Nero felt.”
She leaned even closer to him. His heart began racing.
“How about giving me credit for keeping my half of the bargain?” she said. “I’ve done all you’ve asked.”
“Where’s the credit you owe me for keeping mine?” he shot back.
She found and squeezed his manhood. “On the way,” she said.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” he replied, but he was beginning to pant.
Using her other hand, she put on another layer of red lipstick.
“Those people up in the stadium,” she said, gyrating a bit. “You’ll let them go, right?”
Zmeya was standing at attention to the point that small capillaries were bursting at different points throughout his body. The minor knife wounds from earlier were threatening to bleed again. He would have agreed to just about anything.
Except that.
“Not part of the bargain,” he replied, his head back, eyes closed. “You’ll have to earn it.”
She tied her hair back to get it out of the way.
“Then I hope your constitution is strong enough to handle what’s coming,” she said, taking him in both hands.
“I’ll die a happy man if it isn’t,” he whispered.
Dominique had just begun to adjust herself on the bed when the radiophone rang.
It wasn’t the usual sequence of three rings. This was just a long constant bleating.
Zmeya was out of the bed in a shot. He ran to his desk in the next room, seeming almost desperate to answer the call.
Dominique stayed where she was, as she was. But she could hear every word he said and even had a partial view of him.
It was no ordinary conversation, not for the commissar. For one, Zmeya was hardly talking; mostly, he just listened. She saw him write a lot of things down on his desk calendar and even heard him say “yes, sir” a few times.
This wasn’t anyone in Moscow he was talking to; he would have addressed his very few superiors there as Comrade, not sir.
He also usually ended each phone conversation by hanging up on the other person. But not this time. He hung up only after saying good-bye.
He came back to bed with his shoulders slumped, mumbling, unable to look at her.
“Who was that?” she asked.
He rolled away from her and hugged the pillow. “That was my father.”
Chapter Forty-One
The three Su-34s arrived above New York Harbor in a tight, triangle formation.
JT, Ben, and Crunch had descended from five thousand feet off Coney Island and were now just two hundred feet above the deck. Once Lower Manhattan was within view, they centered their FLIR fire control pips on the throngs of Chekskis deployed around the World Trade Center.
Pre-strike intelligence from Dozer’s 616 told them fifty-two hundred Chekskis were manning this gigantic perimeter around the Twin Towers. The semicircle of defense started in the south at the canteen near Battery Park and went up to the charred edges of Chelsea Piers. It looked impressive, but with manpower like that, it would have been more logical to put them much closer to the building itself, like troops around a castle, making it nearly impossible to take over.
But the human buffer of Chekskis wasn’t really there to guard Tower Two; they were in position to fight a small war in the streets of Lower Manhattan—against their brothers of the military. This rapidly spreading paranoia was further stoked by a second phony message that had been broadcast that afternoon. Breaking in on all military and NKVD frequencies, the same voice that had accused the NKVD of firebombing Midtown claimed that the Russian Navy had just received orders from Moscow to either shell or bomb the Chekskis sometime before daybreak.
“The Kremlin is not happy,” the voice had said. “The performance of our secret police this last week has not been upstanding. The firebombing of Midtown and a mysterious ‘failure at sea’? Wake up, Comrades. The NKVD is ruining the Okupatsi. Don’t let them. The time for revolution is now.”
The Su-34s’ FLIR screens confirmed that at least eight hundred Chekskis were gathered at the south end of Battery Place. It was a staging area where numerous Brozi gun trucks were positioned. This would be the Americans’ first target.
Down to a hundred feet now and passing under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, each pilot signaled one last A-OK by clicking his radio call button twice. Six clicks. They were all on the same page.
They swooped in off the river, over the docks, and over the canteen. On JT’s ca
ll, they dropped their ordnance a hundred feet above the end of Battery Place.
None of the Chekskis below sought cover; there wasn’t time. When the shower of bomblets hit, the NKVD fighters suddenly looked like they were dancing. So many bomblets were going off amid the fire and smoke, and so many Chekskis were being hit from so many different directions, they didn’t even have a chance to fall down dead. It looked like a horrible fiery ballet.
The three Su-34s climbed out quickly, did a sharp bank over the harbor, and came back again, just as low. This time, they were aiming for the Chekski concentration near Brookfield Place. Ten old MTA buses were parked here surrounded by at least several hundred Chekskis.
Once again, each of the three planes dropped two cluster bombs. The explosions walked right down the street, tearing into the NKVD positions before many of the gunmen could move away. Because the site was more closed in than Battery Place, the thousands of bomblets tore into humans and concrete alike. Blood and glass were soon mixed together on the street.
Another turn out over the water, then six more canisters were dropped on the extremely large NKVD checkpoint off Vesey Street. Though some of the Chekskis were now firing their AK-47s at the Su-34s, the jets were going too fast for it to have any effect. Some of the Chekskis found cover; many could not. There were only so many places to hide down here on a few seconds’ notice. It resulted in another surreal display of Chekski gunmen flailing away like puppets in the flames.
The fourth and last strike came against the only rear area the Chekskis could claim, this on the northern part of the WTC plaza itself. This time, the cloud of bomblets and shrapnel went out over a wide area, taking down fleeing Chekskis like a scythe and hitting the front entrance to Tower Two itself.
But that was it. Total time of the strike, one minute, seven seconds. The three jets circled the area once for a quick post-strike eval, then took off to the northeast at full throttle.
During the strike, no SAMs were fired at them, and none of the navy ships in the harbor turned on the antiaircraft batteries.
Chapter Forty-Two
For the second time in four days, Dominique was hastily packing a bag.
Zmeya hadn’t let her take her things when they’d evacuated 30 Rock, and she was not going to let that happen again. She needed her T-shirts, her lipstick, and her soap. Most of all her soap.
They’d seen the air strikes. Trying to comfort Zmeya as he stood by his favorite window, which looked out on Greenwich Street, Dominique probably had the best view of the brutal cluster bombing, because she was looking down on it.
They saw the three Su-34s approach, their sea-blue camo schemes clearly recognizable, as was the Russian naval insignia on each one.
“It’s not true,” Zmeya gasped as he watched the bombs fall from the trio of warplanes. “The navy can’t be doing this. It has to be someone else.”
Dominique had to turn her head—and so did Zmeya—when the bomblets started exploding. Even from 110 stories up, the resulting carnage was something nightmares were made of.
By the time the fourth target was hit, Dominique had already gathered her few meager belongings, including her knife.
Then she heard Zmeya crank up his suitcase phone and order someone to scramble his helicopter. Once again, it was time to go.
“You see what is happening here?” he was yelling to her from the other room where he was getting dressed. “No SAMs fired, and the ships in the harbor remained motionless. The army and navy and probably that fucking MOP, as well. They’re all against me.”
From his position on the subway platform, Dozer counted the four explosions up above.
The last was the loudest. That came when the Su-34s dropped almost four tons of cluster bombs on the big Chekski position at the WTC’s northern plaza, unloading practically on top of the subway station itself.
That was their cue.
Dozer blew his whistle twice. The two thousand Allied soldiers waiting on the platform jumped to their feet. They checked their weapons one last time.
One more long whistle, and they were up a staircase six aisles wide, 130 steps in length.
Dozer and his guys were in the lead. Yet when they reached the top of the stairs, Jim Cook and the JAWS team were already there. Crouched atop the first step, the WTC loomed before them.
Dozer called the assault team to a halt.
“Any opposition anywhere?” he asked Cook.
The JAWS commanding officer shook his head. “Not yet.” He pointed to Tower Two and added, “They’re either otherwise indisposed, or they’re waiting for us somewhere way up there.”
Dozer contemplated the pair of 110-story buildings in front of him. He’d never been this close to them before. It hurt his neck just looking up at them.
“Jesus Eff Christ,” he swore. “This is going to be that fucking aircraft carrier all over again—except this time, it will be all up and down.”
The entire plaza was covered with the remains of the fourth cluster-bomb strike. The bombs had created a blizzard of shrapnel, and everything inside the impact zone—vehicles, buildings, Chekskis—had been perforated. The carnage was indescribable.
Dozer blew his whistle again.
“For the stars and stripes, boys!” he yelled. “Time to clean house.”
Hundreds of Allied soldiers began pouring out of the subway exit, moving as quickly and quietly as possible. With Dozer and Cook in the lead, they scurried across the concourse, heading for the ground-level entrance of Tower Two. But the Militsiya gunmen stationed inside the lobby saw them coming and began firing at them right away, forgetting, or not knowing, that the lobby glass was bulletproof. None of the raiders was hit.
They reached the main entrance of the massive building, but three sets of revolving doors separated them from Tower Two’s lower lobby. Going through the slowly moving doors would be suicidal. Cook solved the problem: He set up a handful of plastic explosive against the entranceway and took out a battery-operated plunger.
“Fire in the hole!” he yelled, pushing the plunger. The three revolving doors blew up in one great flash, killing some of the Militsiya inside and causing the others to flee.
The way to Tower Two was open.
Two more whistle blows from Dozer, and the American fighters charged into the building.
Chapter Forty-Three
On the 110th floor of Tower Two, Zmeya was shouting into his radio phone, ranting about his helicopter, when his aide-de-camp ran into the room.
No knocking, no asking for permission to enter.
“They’re here, sir,” he yelled at Zmeya. “They’re here.”
Others had won a bullet in the ear for bursting in on Zmeya like this, but the man was obviously terrified.
“Who is here?” Zmeya demanded. “The army? And they’re collaborating with the navy, right?”
“No, sir,” the man said. “It’s the Americans. They’re attacking us.”
Zmeya stopped for a moment. “The Americans are attacking us? What do you mean? In Queens? The Bronx or someplace? A diversion? They’re in league with—”
The man shook his head vigorously. “No—I’m saying they’re here, sir. The Americans are attacking this building. They’re on the ground floor.”
Zmeya froze for a moment, then fell into his office chair. He couldn’t believe it.
“How many?” he asked. “Is it a band of terrorists? An assassination squad?”
The aide could only shrug. “It’s not a small group,” he said fearfully. “There are at least several hundred soldiers, maybe even a thousand or more.”
“But … how?” Zmeya asked the officer, incredulous. “How did so many get this close? The bridges can’t be crossed. The tunnels are blocked. Someone would have seen them coming from miles away.”
The aide turned pale. “They used the subway, sir,” he sa
id. “Right underneath us. They came in on old commuter trains.”
Zmeya’s face turned a deep shade of red.
“But I was told the subways here didn’t work,” he said through gritted teeth. “And I think you’re the one who told me. …”
“But that’s what we all thought, sir,” the officer pleaded.
Zmeya was beginning to perspire. He needed his meds.
“But wait a minute,” he said. “Who just bombed the Chekskis? Unless …”
Suddenly, he was fighting to keep his composure. He was the head of the NKVD in America, and he’d just been double-crossed.
“Get the army on the phone,” he ordered. “Tell them to move every unit down here right now, starting with the tanks.”
“We already tried,” the officer said, his voice still trembling. “They are not answering.”
“Call that new CO—what’s his name?—Samsonov.”
“He’s not answering, either, sir.”
More sweat on his brow. A bit of a loss of balance. Zmeya held his head in his hands for a moment. While planning the America operation back in Moscow, he’d attended meetings in which senior officers gushed about how great it would be to claim Manhattan’s forest of skyscrapers for the Motherland.
Fools! They were the worst possible objectives to defend.
But he took a breath and changed gears. A fight lay ahead. But he’d been in fights before.
“You instituted my Plan B under defensive actions, correct?” he asked the aide.
“The personnel are getting into position now,” the man replied.
“And the stairways?”
“Everything is armed that needs to be armed,” the aide confirmed.
“What’s the number of our building security force?”
“There are two companies of our special police on the ground floor,” the officer replied hastily. “Four more companies in reserve per Plan B. Two more on the floor below us. Each company is four hundred men. That’s more than three thousand men, sir—all of them Militsiya.”
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