by Brad Taylor
After twenty-four hours of waiting, the men had become restless. Why should they live in the woods when the town was right next door? They began to surreptitiously slip out, using official business as an excuse.
Quinton let them go, turning a blind eye to the supposed “resupply runs.” A Mustang, he’d been one of them once, and understood that a blanket clampdown would be counterproductive. Let them pretend to sneak out. As long as they had a senior NCO with them, he knew they’d be okay, because he’d fostered a layer of trust in his battalion. The NCOs, like all NCOs from the beginning of time, took that trust to heart. They’d go out, but they’d sure as hell bring everyone back. And because they were professionals, they wouldn’t allow any gap in security.
He’d actually begun to think this diversion into Ukraine would be good for the battalion, giving the two companies he’d brought a taste of anticipation without the threat, sharpening their edge. And then he’d received the intelligence reports the night before. The Donetsk airport, held in rebel hands and utterly destroyed, had shown movement on the runway. Someone had begun to prepare the demolished area for reception. Nobody knew why, but it couldn’t be good. He was ordered forward, into the rebel-held Luhansk territory, to provide support for the evacuation of the dead from Air Force One.
He’d had one night to prepare, and was now late on the LD time he’d set for the battalion, the refueling taking longer than expected. As Clausewitz once said, Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.
Only this wasn’t a war. Was it?
The refueling finished, and the tactical assembly area broke down, with all tanks lining up in order of march. He gave the command, and they began rolling east, in radio contact with the Stryker brigade and the 82nd Airborne.
He spent the majority of time while they moved coordinating exactly that—the movement. One would think just driving a caravan of tanks would be easy, but it wasn’t. Every ten kilometers there was another call. Another reason to pull over. Another problem to solve.
During the march, he didn’t give a lot of thought to deploying for a fight, but it was there in the back of his mind. Always present, hovering just on the outside of the current decision, like a bad hangover that shrouded his brain.
He knew there was a reason he’d been held up in Kiev. He just didn’t know what it was. He hadn’t been told anything specific, only having been given the order to laager. He’d done so, and then had been given the order to move out literally four hours ago. He’d responded that he couldn’t turn on a dime, getting exasperation from the Black Sea Rotational Force commander—someone who clearly had no armor experience. The beasts required a windup. They were called Iron Horses for a reason.
The abrupt call to move concerned him, not the least because it had happened in the middle of the night, with no warning. He’d asked if it had anything to do with the Donetsk airport, and had been told they didn’t know, because this wasn’t a Black Sea NATO mission. This had nothing to do with NATO. He was controlled by an organization that actually had no control. He couldn’t be NATO. He was the United States, pure and simple. In the hodgepodge creation of his mission, his command in Europe had become nothing more than a radio relay, simply because they had the architecture. That would change once he made linkup with the 82nd Airborne. He’d fall OPCON to them, leaving the rotation force for good.
Quinton was a student of history, as most military officers were. He understood the application of force, but also the deterrent threat that force implied. He was willing to go toe-to-toe with anyone on earth, but understood his true purpose was exactly to prevent that. To keep someone from even wanting to fight. He knew the Russians were watching his advance. In the new world of satellites and drones, he had no doubt about that.
He was rolling forward with more firepower than an armored division in World War II, facing a threat that had more firepower than the entire armies of Patton, Montgomery, and Hitler combined. He understood that he’d been held up in Kiev for political reasons, giving the Russians time to capitulate.
And now he’d been ordered into the Luhansk Oblast.
He was afraid to question why that was.
61
Mikhail waited until the men had disappeared into the crowd before crossing the street. He held the door for an old couple, then entered the nave and quickly descended the stairs. He reached the landing, finding one of the overcoat wearers at the base. A man two inches taller, with a thin layer of blond hair cut razor close, stared at Mikhail with piggish, marble eyes.
In Russian, Mikhail said, “Mass has started. You’re going to be late.”
The Russian showed a flicker of recognition at the bona fides, and responded, “I’m attending the later one.”
Getting the correct response, Mikhail moved past him into the hallway, saying, “Where is the Colonel?”
“Go to the first intersection, then take a right.”
Not good. Not his plan. The intersection led to a dead end with an alcove housing skulls cut into the rock. Once in, with the beefy Russian behind him, he’d be trapped, his stairwell exit useless.
He started down the arched tunnel and felt the Russian fall in behind him. Keep cool. They want the money more than they want you.
He reached a T intersection, the tunnel to the right much more narrow than the one he was in, with barely enough room for a single man to pass. The other pipe-swinger was standing just inside. Beyond him, he saw the fedora-wearing older gentleman, holding a briefcase.
The second pipe-swinger stepped out, leaving one in front of Mikhail and one behind. He held his hand out, as if he were inviting him down the narrow passage. Mikhail hesitated, and he said, “Don’t worry. We’ll prevent anyone from interfering.”
Mikhail nodded and entered the tunnel. He walked about forty feet, and the man in the fedora turned, a smile on his face. Speaking in Russian, he said, “Simon, I presume?”
“No, Colonel, I’m his representative.”
The answer made the man’s smile falter. Mikhail could swear he saw a flicker of fear, but was unsure why. He said, “I was told Simon would be here.”
“Simon is here, for all practical purposes. I’m empowered to transact on his behalf. You are speaking to him when you talk to me. Is that the sample?”
“Yes.” The man bent down and opened the briefcase, exposing a cylindrical tube two inches in diameter with a thick glass window about an inch square, covered with metal mesh. Inside, Simon could see a white powder that appeared to glow. The Colonel said, “It’s pure. As promised.”
“We’ll need to test it.”
“I know. I brought the necessary equipment.”
From the briefcase, he withdrew what looked like a voltage meter with a rubber cord hanging out. He plugged the cord into a valve in the top of the cylinder, cinching it tight, then twisted a control knob, and the needle spiked into the red zone.
“See?”
Mikhail said, “Colonel, no offense to you, but Simon has stressed that we must test it with our own equipment. We’ve been burned in the past with the seller providing the testing.”
The Colonel scowled and said, “That’s not happening. And Simon must be at the transfer of the rest of the Cesium. Him, and him alone. I’ll give you an address to pass to him. It won’t be here in Poland.”
The statement crystallized what this was about. The Colonel wasn’t trying to sell Cesium. He was selling Simon. Somehow, Putin had gotten wind of the purchase, and he’d rightly determined that it wasn’t for something benign. He might have even put together that Simon was behind the death of the United States’s president.
And now he was fighting back.
Carefully, Mikhail said, “Okay. I’ll talk to him. But I need to take the specimen. He’ll be here for the transfer, but obviously, he can’t be here now. And he’s not going to arrange a meeting for the rest if this d
oesn’t prove worth it.”
“No. The specimen stays here. I’ve showed you the worth of it.”
Mikhail realized he was losing the race, and decided to back out completely. “Okay, okay. Where do you want to meet for the transfer?”
The Colonel’s demeanor shifted, and Mikhail knew he’d capitulated too early. The man didn’t believe him. He said, “We’re done here.”
He snapped his fingers, and the crew-cut beast closed in, now showing a suppressed pistol. The Colonel said, “I don’t know who you are, but there are powerful men who would like to talk to Simon, and you will lead us to him.”
Mikhail saw the pistol and realized he’d been mistaken. The stakes at play far outweighed any fear of being a Russian security man in Poland.
He held his hands up and said, “Wait, this is supposed to just be an exchange.”
The second thug searched him, finding the Browning Hi-Power against the small of his back. The Colonel said, “You can call it that. You’re exchanging your life for Simon’s. You will tell us where he is, or you will suffer the consequences. Let’s go.”
They exited the crypt in the middle of mass, nobody paying them a bit of attention.
—
After being loaded into a sedan, sandwiched between the two bricks of muscle, Mikhail kept track of their location as they left the old town, driving through the steel of the city. When they stopped, he couldn’t help but feel the irony.
They forced him out in front of a dilapidated tenement house, with makeshift clotheslines dangling out of windows, the concrete blocking all light.
Outside the tenement was a plaque delineating the buffer zone for the Jewish Ghetto that had seen a valiant uprising in World War II. They were taking him into a location where the Jews had fought to the death against Nazi Germany. He hoped that was a good sign, even as he realized they had no idea he was of the same faith.
The pipe-swinger to his left said, “No talking. No quick movements.”
They left the sedan on the street and walked through an entranceway into a center courtyard. Built by the communist regime after the war, the structure was falling into ruin. The courtyard was designed to provide light for the people in the building, but whatever had been bright and happy here had long since departed. The concrete was grimy and soiled, and trash littered the ground. On the left side were the skeletons of four bicycles, still chained to a rail, all missing their seats and wheels. They were an apt analogy for those who lived here.
Shells of life.
A woman on the fourth floor looked out a window, the glass long since gone, her body backlit by the illumination of candles behind her. She saw them and scurried back into the room.
The man to Mikhail’s right nudged him, pointing to a darkened doorway lacking an actual door. They went up dilapidated stairs, the wood so old he thought it would give way, stopping on the third floor. One of the men opened a door, and they entered a small den with a threadbare rug. In a kitchen off to the left, the vintage appliances sat rusting, telling him it had been a long time since anyone had lived here.
He was led through the kitchen into a back room smelling of urine, then searched more thoroughly. His cell phone, wallet, and passport were placed on the table, then his right hand was handcuffed to an old iron bed frame, the mattress long gone.
The goons faded back, and Mikhail finally said, “Colonel, we had a deal.”
The Colonel said, “We never had a deal. Simon had a deal, and he’s pissed off too many people to complete it. Some men will be here soon. They will question you, and they’ll get the answers they want.”
Fighting for leverage, Mikhail lied, saying, “I’m willing to pay you right now. Give you the money. And you can keep the Cesium.”
Setting the briefcase on the ground next to the dresser, the Colonel said, “This is about more than money. It’s about the future of Russia.”
Mikhail saw the conviction on the Colonel’s face and knew he was done. No amount of pleading or negotiation would help. When the interrogators showed up, they would pry him open like a can of beans, learning Simon’s location. It wasn’t that he wanted to protect Simon out of goodwill. If he thought giving Simon up would allow him to walk away, he’d do it in a heartbeat, but he’d been on the other side of the knife, and he knew as soon as they located Simon, he was useless to them. Meaning dead.
In the old days, with the Mossad, he could at least hope a rescue force was on the way. But there was no such hope here.
62
Pulling my turn on radio watch, all I got from Retro was no change. He’d now been watching the building for close to ten hours, and nothing exciting had happened. I killed the time watching the BBC in our suite, and saw the beginnings of the television broadcasting of the events our intelligence community already knew. Kurt had called earlier with a report that added serious urgency to our mission: The Russians were attempting to surround our forces in Ukraine.
From the small den, I heard Jennifer ask, “Do we really need a sniper rifle?”
Knuckles replied, “Depends on what Retro says, but keep it out just in case.”
Sorting through equipment, they were preparing for an assault on the bed-down we’d located for Mikhail and his merry band of men. We’d tracked them from the church to a broken-down commie tenement house right next to the boundary of the old Jewish Ghetto on Walicow Street, and because of its location, it was looking like the best place to interdict them.
Retro and Veep had given us photos of the sedan they were using, and the rest of the team, split into three vehicles, picked it up and followed it from the church to the tenement. I’d left Aaron watching the squalid building for the short term, and had returned to pick up Retro and Veep. I’d given them a surveillance kit, then swapped them out with Aaron.
While I was positive this was the viper’s nest and that our wait last night had paid off, Retro wasn’t so sure and recommended we develop the situation a little further. He had some good points:
First, Mikhail had been sandwiched in the back, between two men who could only be described as paid muscle. The older man had driven, and the passenger seat had remained empty.
Second, and more important, Retro pointed out that if you were going to a tenement house for planning, why meet up in a church first? Why not just linkup in the tenement? If it really was the safe house, why meet in public first?
In his mind, it smelled a little, and maybe we were misreading the whole thing. His thoughts made sense, but I still believed this was the final stage before an attack. Maybe Mikhail had chosen to sit in back to discuss whatever they were planning, using a map or computer as he did so. And maybe he didn’t know where the tenement was and had tasked them to find a secure area, planning a linkup meeting beforehand to take him there. Or maybe he’d found the tenement, but didn’t know the men he’d eventually use and wanted to vet them first before taking them there.
Retro’s comments held weight, though, and I’d decided to watch for a little while instead of rolling right in, hopefully gaining a little clarity on what was happening. That choice had become moot after Kurt’s call.
While we were establishing a static observation post, I’d had Jennifer and Shoshana locate the first hotel she could find with a suite large enough for us to plan and prepare in. She’d settled on the InterContinental Warsaw, only about four minutes away. She’d given Aaron and me the room number, and we’d left Veep and Retro for the static surveillance, letting them figure out how they’d do it. Retro—who had earned his callsign because he was a miser and habitually wore clothes that were years out of date—would blend in fine. Veep would have to learn on the fly.
We’d checked in and had begun the mundane work of mission planning, shuttling the equipment up from the Rock Star bird—suppressed break-down rifles in .300 Blackout, Glock 27s, miniature battering rams, various electronic devices, you name it—an
d then had settled in to wait for information from our observation post.
And then Kurt had called on the VPN.
I was surprised, because it was my responsibility to initiate contact with him, not the other way around, but I learned quickly why he’d done so. Things had changed, and not for the better. When the screen cleared, I’d thought he had the flu. He looked like he hadn’t slept for a week. He ignored any perfunctory questions about the team, digging right into the mission.
“What’s your status?”
“We found the bed-down, but we want to develop more.” I explained what we’d seen, and the competing theories of what it meant, ending with, “Bottom line, if they stay, we can hit it, but we might still be wrong, missing the operational team.”
Kurt said, “Story of my life. But it’s irrelevant now. We can’t risk losing Mikhail. Hit them tonight.”
Which took me aback. I said, “Sir?”
Kurt rubbed his eyes and said, “This isn’t a developmental target anymore.”
I said, “Sir, you realize that this operation is bigger than we thought, right? This isn’t a single strike. This is more like a full-blown conspiracy. We need to sort it out.”
He sounded weary. He said, “Pike, the United States’s path is getting beyond our ability to control. Tensions are high, and all it will take is a single spark.”
“What’s going on?”
“The Russians cleared the airfield at Donetsk. The rebels have held it forever, but it was literally destroyed in the initial fighting and useless without a lot of work. It’s why we jumped into the Severodonetsk airport instead. We saw them working on it, and now we’re watching them fly in armor. A BMP battalion so far, but they’re still coming in. It’s to the west of the airfield we seized, which means they have a lodgment behind our own and can cut off our supply lines. They’re creating an encirclement around the two brigades we have in-country.”