by Greig Beck
Alone in the conning tower, Borshov lit one of his stinking cigars and exhaled the smoke into the freezing, salty wind, waiting patiently for the call to arrive. The large man towered over and intimidated the crew, and he knew they were as glad as he was that he’d separated himself from them, even briefly. Borshov was descended from the Bogatyrs, an ancient race of warriors from the Volga Region of central Russia. They were known for their great strength, ferocity and mercilessness in battle – traits that were in demand for the jobs he was called upon to do.
He stretched and stood upright. At six eight, around 300 pounds and as wide as a doorframe, Borshov didn’t enjoy traveling in a submerged coffin. He would have made the entire journey back to Russia topside if given the choice, no matter how bitterly cold it was. He had felt suffocated and compressed within the steel confines of the submarine’s metal walls. If ever he were captured, he would kill himself rather than be incarcerated in a small cage for the rest of his life. Borshov hated confined spaces – a little psychological tic he had picked up during a mission below the Antarctic ice, where he had spent days in caves under miles of rock, some so thin that each inch forward had to be fought for, slid under, or squeezed through.
Borshov pulled the draw cords on his hood, tightening it around his face to protect his nose and cheeks, and slitted his single good eye against the icy wind. He was tired and had been traveling for many days without sleep. There had been speeding vans, a relay of ultra-fast helicopters up the coast of Canada, and then out along the lonely cliffs up to Alaska’s western coast. From there he and his package had been ferried out to the center of the deep, dark, cold Alaskan bay to be picked up by the Yeltsin.
As ordered, Borshov had captured Captain Robert Graham, the American military scientist, and now had him alive and secured in the hold. That should have been the end of his mission and involvement, but when the man was drugged he had babbled about his work with the Alpha Soldier Research Unit at Fort Detrick’s Medical Command Installation. Borshov’s curiosity was pricked, and had exploded when Graham mentioned the experimental Arcadian treatment. He knew that name, knew what it referred to.
He had questioned the man further. Graham was not a brave soldier, and Borshov had only needed to break a single finger before the man started to unload his secrets. It had turned out that he was the man responsible for rescuing Alex Hunter and literally bringing him back from the grave. It was his treatment that had made Hunter stronger and faster than before. Now Borshov understood the value of this man to his command. Perhaps he would one day benefit from this Arcadian treatment. And if he had that power, even for a day, he would crush the life from the HAWC who had cost him an eye and left him buried beneath miles of rock and ice in the Antarctic.
The call came through. The big man dragged on his cigar and listened – an entire Turkish Special Forces team had been decimated, followed by a regular army base – eighty soldiers. Borshov grunted; regular military he couldn’t give a shit about, but he knew of the SFC – they were well trained. Not the best, not like the American HAWCs, but certainly hard to kill. Taking down a whole squad would have been difficult.
He puffed and nodded as he listened. A biological or chemical weapon was suspected. The few bodies that had been retrieved had been taken away for analysis, and details of the killer or killers had been suppressed. Borshov was intrigued. Turkey had been involved in several political skirmishes – their relationship with Israel was fraying due to a surge of Islamic political power in their own country; and there was trouble with Greece over ownership of the disputed Aegean Sea. In addition, there were ongoing tensions with China over its occupation of East Turkistan. But these battles were fought in closed-door meetings by old men in suits. They were not likely to generate a military response, or even an incisive covert attack. Someone or something else was in play.
Borshov blew more smoke, his mind plotting scenarios. Could it have been a weapon test? Possible; after all, Russia had been using Chechnya to field-test new weapons for decades. Borshov gripped the phone tighter, his knuckles becoming locked from the cold. He knew what was coming. If there was a formidable new weapon in existence, especially one so close to the motherland, Russia wanted it.
Borshov flicked the damp stub of his cigar into the thrashing water, and concentrated on the instructions issued by the dispassionate senior official. Captain Graham would be handed over to the Security Division, Borshov’s role as minder over. He would be met on the water by a Mi-26 transport helicopter – a massive, long-range machine that could travel 1000 miles without refueling. He would be dropped in Poronaysk on the Russian east coast, for further travel by jet and then truck across the continent to Turkey. A team of his choice, fully equipped, would be waiting for him at the border. They must be in Istanbul within forty-eight hours.
‘Retrieve or destroy the weapon.’ The official’s voice was mechanical, almost artificial.
Borshov grunted.
‘Classification: vse deystviya vlasti – other priorities subsumed.’
Borshov grunted again.
‘All actions authorized.’ The line went dead.
All actions authorized. Borshov smiled. Good. He headed back down into the steel coffin to retrieve his things.
*
Borshov and his team crossed the Black Sea around two in the morning, coming ashore at Kumkoy. The weather was cool, but compared to where Borshov had just come from it was paradise. He had stripped down to a T-shirt, his huge arms bulging from the sleeves and covered in homemade tattoos that were gang badges earned in prison farms during his youth. Black grizzled hair bushed up at his collar from both his chest and back, and a protruding gut told more of an interest in power lifting than of overeating. He stretched his back and inhaled the Turkish air.
A covered truck met them, and Borshov stood aside and allowed his team to climb into the rear. As he took his own seat, he looked them over. Each of the six men he had selected were brutal-looking, icy-eyed, and gave up little in conversation, even to each other. They were his hand-picked Spetsnaz: the most efficient marksmen, electronics experts, explosives, unarmed combat specialists, and lethal assassins in the whole of Russia. If not for Borshov, these men would be roaming the underworld as muscle for crime gangs, or jailed for their psychopathic tendencies.
Borshov was larger and more formidable than any of them. A boxer in a former life, and a criminal who developed a talent for killing, he’d come to the attention of the Russian Security apparatus. He had risen in the ranks of the Spetsnaz, and eventually been withdrawn from standard duty to undertake international off-the-book missions. Quite simply, Borshov got the job done – if sometimes messily.
The truck eased to a halt to avoid the loud hiss of its pneumatic brakes. Each man jumped down into central Istanbul’s pre-dawn light, holding a duffel bag of equipment. More would be waiting for them at the apartment – everything they could possibly need for sleeping rough or carrying out an armed assault on a fortified building.
Borshov retreated into the shadows as a delivery van whizzed past. It was still a few hours before the city’s population would rise, and the more invisible they were, the more efficient and potentially less bloody their mission would be. He already knew they were only a few blocks back from the Basilica’s deep cisterns. The streets were modern and paved, and decades-old multistory apartment blocks dominated the landscape. The new entrance to the cisterns was an unassuming flat-roofed building; it could easily be missed except for the police cordon and floodlights. Borshov knew there were dozens of other less well-known entrances, all less heavily fortified. He’d also been informed that a low-ranking police officer who had been operating one of the surveillance cameras would speak to them … at a price.
At the safe house, Borshov and his team went straight to work, setting up satellite technology and computer equipment. His first task was to question their informant, and he called up the man’s image, address, and background data.
‘This man, he is here,
’ he briefed two of his men, pointing to a split screen image that showed a young smiling face, street map and number. ‘Bring him to me.’
The agents looked at the data, then spun and disappeared into the darkness.
The big Russian looked at his watch – just a few more things to prepare before his guest arrived. He hummed as he went about his tasks. Well-placed informants, especially those in police or security bodies, were highly regarded for their access to sensitive, high-value data. They were paid handsomely, and sometimes remained on foreign payrolls for decades. However, they could also procrastinate, be expensive, and worse, be time wasters if they thought it might drive up their price during negotiations. Borshov didn’t care about the money; it wasn’t his. But time … that was a commodity that was far more valuable to him.
Borshov had his orders – all actions authorized. There would be no wasting of time on this mission; he’d make that very clear upfront.
CHAPTER 11
Colonel Jack Hammerson made notes as he watched the VELA satellite images of Uli Borshov and his men jumping from the truck and entering a small apartment in Istanbul. Hammerson was familiar with the way the men moved, their kit, and the size of each individual – a Spec Ops strike force, he thought. Could Graham be in there with them? He pondered the question for a few moments, then dropped the pen and folded his arms. Unlikely.
‘Well, something’s going down’, he said aloud to the empty office.
Hammerson knew that if Borshov had abducted an American scientist one day, and then turned up in goddamn Turkey within thirty hours, there had to be a connection. The guy had been under a rock for two years, and now he was all over the place.
He tapped his chin with one callused knuckle, thinking. Where’s Graham then? Offloaded somewhere? If Borshov had stayed on US soil, he’d have made a run at Alex Hunter. Instead he’d been rerouted – which meant a higher priority had arisen. Hammerson reached across to a pile of string-tied folders on the corner of his desk, and sorted through them until he found the one he was looking for. An entire Turkish SFC squad had recently been reclassified as inactive – code for taken out. Seeing it had happened within their own borders, he hadn’t given it too much attention. This time he read further, until he found the location … just a few blocks from where Borshov was dug in now. In this game, there was no such thing as coincidence.
He read the intel about the blackout cordon around the Basilica Cistern, and bodies being removed in contamination bags. He also read about the strange indecipherable script within the newly discovered caverns. The intel report was detailed, but Hammerson also had another information source – MUSE, the trillion-dollar Military Universal Search Engine that was a lot more technologically accurate and invasive.
He dropped the folder – he needed to take it down another layer. He reached for the phone and dialed through to Gerry Harris.
‘Gerry, it’s Jack. Good work on the Borshov images, but it invites a truckload more questions.’
‘Yeah, I figured that,’ Harris said. ‘And still no sign of Captain Graham. We’re keeping eyes on them 24/7.’
‘There’s something else. What the hell is that big bastard doing in Istanbul?’ Hammerson stared at the image of Borshov in the darkened street. ‘This is getting weird. See if there’s anything else in the Askeri Komandos’ or Special Forces Command’s secure databases. Look at the interaction site in those chambers below the ground – I want to see it all.’
‘When?’
‘Now … I’ll wait,’ Hammerson said.
‘Give me ten – I’ll do it myself.’
Jack Hammerson could imagine multiple keyboards and screens being attacked furiously, and knew his wizard of a technical officer would be slipping under, around or punching straight through firewalls, data silos, and directory mazes to dive deep into databases on the other side of the world. He’d be using MUSE, probably the world’s most powerful penetration technology.
While Hammerson waited, he turned to his large window overlooking the training grounds at the USSTRATCOM base, and let his mind sift through the facts. Borshov had been acting alone when he was in the States, but something was important enough for the Russian high command to rush him and a team to Istanbul. Hammerson’s mind worked to connect dots – real or imaginary. At least Alex and Aimee are safe from Borshov for the time being, he thought.
Harris came back on the line. ‘Jack, got something.’
‘Go, Gerry.’
‘Okay, managed to pull a few interesting things from the Turkish Special Forces’ database. At the Basilica Cistern, the site where the operatives were taken down, they’ve recovered a backpack from the upper chambers, and now have a suspect in a robbery or act of terrorism. Unclear which they’re trying to hang on him, but they want him, bad – name’s Janus Caresche. I’ve also grabbed an informal autopsy report on one of the recovered Spec Ops agents. And as icing on the cake, I’ve got images of the writing or symbols they found in the deeper tunnels. You can read the notes yourself – some are in English – but the gist is that these catacombs seem newly discovered. Not even the Turks knew they existed until a few days ago.’ Harris exhaled. ‘And, Jack, they found something … well, not sure what, but it’s some pretty weird shit. Sending through to you now. Anything else, you know where to find me. Good luck.’
‘Thanks, Gerry.’
Hammerson hung up, and almost immediately his computer pinged with an incoming message from the technical officer. He opened the files, spreading them on his screen. He found the name of the suspect and copied it into MUSE; it immediately returned both a public and private profile of the man. Hammerson sat back and folded his arms. The man that stared back at him was young, confident and good-looking, with slightly olive skin and a healthy jawline. His public bio had him as an antiquities dealer and archeological detective; his unofficial bio said black-market antiquities thief, and persona non grata in several European countries.
Hammerson flicked to the next file, the autopsy report on the SFC agent, and read what he could of the mixed English–Turkish notes. He dragged the images up onto the screen, and leaned forward. ‘What the fuck?’
One image showed what looked like several broken statues; however, the details were too perfect, and close-ups of the facial areas showed imperfections like scars and raised moles. There were even individual strands of hair. The more he looked at them, the more they seemed like a person made from something like plaster. As he stared, a thought started to form. He grabbed the image of the statue onto the screen and rotated it slightly. Then he moved Janus Caresche’s image next to it, increasing the size so it matched the other image.
He sat back. ‘You gotta be shitting me.’
The images matched, right down to the small mole on Caresche’s lip.
‘What the hell happened in there?’
He exhaled and reached forward to enlarge Caresche’s face. There was pain etched into the frozen features, and even what could be a tear on one cheek.
‘Poor bastard.’ Hammerson clicked his teeth. ‘I don’t think they’re going to find you at home, are they, Mr. Caresche?’ He folded his arms. ‘What did you discover down there?’
Hammerson continued to stare at the image. He knew down in their own R&D labs they were working on pulse weapons to pulverize bones, or microwave devices that could cook internal organs hard but leave the outer skin intact. But this … this defied belief.
He quickly read through the attached data. The man had been super-calcified – turned to stone – source, initiator, method, promotion, all unknown. The next few pictures were a montage of the strange writing newly scratched into the cavern walls. It was indecipherable to him, but a mystery to the Turkish experts as well. Notes beside the images offered suggestions: Zoroastrian, Sumerian, proto-Greek … nonsense?
Hammerson steepled his fingers, and spoke to the screen. ‘So, Mr. Caresche opened up a new level in the Basilica Cistern catacombs and found something that turned him and an entire Speci
al Ops team to rock. Then vanished.’
He read the last few lines of the local police notes: It is on the move. Atsubay Kemel Baykal has assumed control and is commanding the search. Police are now under SFC sequestration orders.
Good, Hammerson thought. He knew Baykal. And now Borshov is in the mix.
He drummed his fingers on the desk, letting his mind work. New weapon? But why test it in such an obscure place? He drummed some more. Unless it was biological or chemical and needed an enclosed environment for testing. Aum Shinrikyo had used the Tokyo subway for its sarin gas attack. Maybe Caresche was after the tourists as test subjects and the SFC team just got in the way.
His fingers stopped and he frowned. Something was bugging him. He looked back at the notes. That was it … the police notes, the way they’d phrased those last lines: they’d written ‘it’ was on the move, not him or her or them.
Hammerson sat forward again. ‘And you want it, don’t you, Borshov? You son of a bitch.’
He exhaled angrily. Look out, Kemel – shark in your pond.
He looked back at the picture of the calcified body and narrowed his eyes. ‘What did you find down there, Mr. Caresche?’
*
Hammerson waited for the call to be routed through several different filters and code scramblers before Turkish Commander Kemel Baykal finally picked it up. He smiled as he heard the familiar deep voice’s heavily accented English.
‘Colonel Jack – I thought you were dead years ago. Perhaps you are, and this is a call from hell.’
Hammerson laughed. ‘Hell would send me straight back. Besides, only the good die young, you know that, Kemel.’
A snort. ‘Perhaps that is why I too am still here.’ There was a pause. ‘So, long time without speaking, and then you call me out of the air. What is it that brings us to your attention, Colonel Jack?’