Arctic Gold

by Stephen Coonts

  The NSA possessed the technology to hijack security camera networks anywhere in the world, but doing so required gaining access. Many networks used the Internet for their security cam systems, which made the NSA eavesdropper’s task simplicity itself.

  The security cameras at Kotenko’s dacha, however, were on their own, private network, with no outside connections and, apparently, no computers to sort, clean up, or channel the data. That made tapping into the network more difficult. They also used universal cable connections rather than wireless LAN or Ethernet connections and that, too, made stealing the signal harder.

  But not impossible.

  The camera, a small black box with a sunshade extended over the barrel of the lens, was set up to scan the entrance to the property twenty feet below. On the display, the cable emerged from the back of the camera, ran down the side of the pole a few inches to where it was stapled to the wood, then extended out into the night in the direction of the house.

  “Damned primitive crapola,” Palatino muttered. “Haven’t these people heard of wireless networks?”

  “That’s okay,” Rockman told him. “That’s why the dragonfly has a sting. Go ahead. Take a bite.”

  On the pole behind the camera’s field of view, the remote-operated flier edged a couple of careful sideways steps, bringing it to rest directly above the cable. Targeting brackets appeared on the big wall display, centering on and closing around the cable, and flashing when the device had locked onto the target. There was a tiny whine of servomotors, and a slender needle, like a mosquito’s sucking proboscis, extended down from the device’s head, delicately piercing the cable.

  “Okay,” Rockman said, looking at another monitor. “We have a signal.”

  At Palatino’s touch, a second needle bit the cable just below the first. A window opened in the lower left-hand portion of the big screen, showing the grainy, low-light black-and-white image currently being transmitted by the camera.

  The remote dragonfly probe was now wired into the dacha’s security camera system.

  “We’re recording,” another Art Room technician reported.

  “Okay,” Rockman said. “Nothing’s happening. Get about a twenty-second loop.”

  The seconds passed. “Got it. Ready to repeat.”

  “Good. Okay, Lia, Ilya. We’re hooked into the network. You can proceed.”

  “Moving,” Lia replied.

  Kotenko Dacha Sochi, Russia 2340 hours, GMT + 3

  Lia led the way as the two agents scrambled down the slope, making their way toward the dacha property. Both of them wore black head-to-toe, with light-intensifier goggles over their faces, which gave them the look of curious four-limbed insects.

  For this op, they were going in semi-sterile, which meant that with one key exception, all of their equipment, everything except their communications implants, anyway, was available through commercial European markets or low-security military sources. The exception was the satchel Lia carried at her hip, which carried the bugging devices they intended to plant inside the dacha.

  Once they disposed of those, they would have nothing on their persons that would identify them, if the worst happened, as agents of an American intelligence organization.

  They reached the base of the hill and worked their way to a point close to the property entrance. Black figures crouching against black shadows, they waited for long minutes, watching the solitary guard at the gate. He looked bored and not particularly attentive, but Lia wanted to wait for the best opportunity.

  “Gordon, are you ready to transmit?”

  “We’re ready here, Lia,” Rockman replied. “Waiting on your word.”

  “Copy.”

  That opportunity came ten minutes later, as the headlights of a car swung across the driveway, illuminating the guard and the open gate in a glare immediately stopped down by the automatic filters inside their LI goggles. The car pulled up alongside the guard, who leaned over to look inside, then stepped back and saluted. The car, a long, black sedan, eased past the guard and onto the drive. “Now,” Lia whispered.

  The two figures separated from the shadows and slipped into the clear-cut zone outside the wall, angling toward the gate.

  The Art Room NSA Headquarters Fort Meade, Maryland 1654 hours EDT

  “Now,” Lia’s voice said from the speaker.

  Jeff Rockman looked up at the display on the monitor, which now showed two inset windows, both with identical images from the security camera. On both, the guard at the front gate could be seen standing a few feet from the wall, shifting his weight from foot to foot and managing to look dead bored, even though his face could not be seen.

  “Okay,” Jeff said. “Insert the recorded signal.”

  There was the faintest flicker of static on the left-hand window, and the image of the guard seemed to jump to one side by about a foot. Several seconds later, a black figure entered the lower edge of the right-hand window, easing between the wall of white-painted stone and the guard’s back, then vanishing. A moment later, a second figure came into view, stealthily slipping behind the less than fully attentive guard.

  By physically tapping into the length of cable on the security cam pole, the Art Room had been able to record a twenty-second segment of video, which they were now feeding into the security network while blocking the real-time signal from the camera. Somewhere inside the dacha, a presumably bored security guard was looking at the monitor, which showed absolutely nothing unusual happening outside the front gate. If he’d noticed the static or the shift in the guard’s position, chances were good he’d shrug it off to a fault in the cable… which wouldn’t have been far off the mark.

  There were any number of ways to penetrate a secure target such as the Kotenko dacha. The best and simplest, however, was generally through the front gate. The dogs patrolling the perimeter were trained to pick up strange scents and alert their handlers if they detected the trails of intruders coming over the wall… but at the main gate the ground would be a jumble of crisscrossing scent trails, of guards, of automobiles, of guests coming and going. Even if the dogs were well enough trained to alert their handlers that intruders had passed that way, the handlers would probably discount the warning. After all, everyone went through that way.

  There were motion sensors and sound detectors along the base inside the wall, but again, the security personnel would be alert to intruders coming over the wall elsewhere around the perimeter, not coming through the main gate where the guard’s scuffings and pacings, the noises from car engines, and the conversations as the guard challenged each arrival all rendered sonic data useless.

  As for the lone guard, he was standing on the driveway inside the open gateway, his AKM carelessly slung over his shoulder, his night vision utterly blasted by the headlights of the car that had just passed through. He didn’t see the two figures in black approach the wall behind him, or notice as, one after the other, they slipped silently past his back. He wasn’t paying careful attention to the night around him because after all… that was what dogs and security cameras were for.

  Watching from fifty-five hundred miles away, Rockman breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay, Lia,” he said. “You’re off the monitor. You weren’t seen.”

  “Okay,” she replied. “We’re approaching the house.”

  “The flier is on its way.”

  On the pole overlooking the driveway entrance, the UAV broke off an inch-long section of its own head, leaving the piece attached by its two slender probes, then launched itself into the air. With a soft flutter of hard-beating wings, it arrowed through the night and came to rest on the outside sill of a second-floor window.

  “I feel like a damned Peeping Tom,” Palatino muttered, shifting the remote device to walking mode and moving it higher until its camera could peer through the glass.

  “Yeah, but it’s peeping in the line of duty,” Rockman told him. “Let’s have a look.”

  The room beyond the glass was darkened, but the probe’s CCD visual
pickups could resolve images in almost total darkness and could operate in the IR as well as visual wavelengths. At the same time, two slender wires, like antennas, extended from above the camera and rested against the glass, picking up faint vibrations.

  The room might have been dark, but it was definitely occupied-rather enthusiastically so-by two people sharing a large bed.

  “Oops,” Sarah Cassidy said, smirking. “I don’t think we want to go in that way.”

  “Go to the next window,” Rockman told Palatino.

  The next window was also a bedroom, but this one appeared to be empty. Rockman passed the word to Lia and Akulinin, who were already climbing up a pilaster to reach the second floor.

  This part of the dacha had a roof extending out from the second story over a trellis-enclosed porch. The Deep Black insertion team had already made the assumption that the first-floor windows would be protected by some sort of security system but that the second floor might be clear. Targets who were lazy, cheap, or both sometimes left obvious holes in their security. Unfortunately, that was not the case here. Sensors inside the slender body of the flier had already detected the trickle of electrical current through a slender wire inside the closed window. If the window was opened or broken, the current would be interrupted and an alarm would sound. Rockman passed the news to the team.

  “We’re on it,” Lia said.

  Kotenko Dacha Sochi, Russia 2358 hours, GMT + 3

  “We’re on it,” Lia murmured. In one hand she held a small device similar to the unit she’d used to look for security systems at the warehouse door on the St. Petersburg waterfront. The LED readout indicated an electrical current, and as she moved it around the edge of the window, she found the point where the sensor wire on the glass connected, through a metal contact, with a wire inside the window’s frame.

  That was the weak point, the point of attack.

  The flier clung to the wall a foot away, watching, looking like an odd and science-fictional mingling of large insect with small robot, its wings now folded along the length of its body and hanging off behind like a stiff, gauze cloak.

  “This is a guy who takes his security seriously,” Akulinin whispered, double-checking the electrical circuit.

  “Any security system can be breached,” Lia replied. “Jeff? We need the drill right here.”

  In response, the flier moved to the spot she was indicating with her finger. Again, a slender needle extended from beneath the robot’s head, touching the white-painted frame of the window. There was a faint whine as the drill bit chewed into the wood.

  “Okay, Lia,” Rockman’s voice said a moment later. “We have a complete circuit.”

  Akulinin tried lifting the window. It appeared to be locked. Extracting a jimmy tool from a thigh pouch, he inserted the flat blade between window and frame at the bottom, gently applying a steady downward pressure. There was a creak, but the window remained shut.

  “Shit,” he said. “The damned thing’s locked.”

  “Try the direct approach,” Lia suggested.

  “Yeah.” He ran a gloved hand over the glass. “It might be damned noisy, though.”

  The two listened for a moment. The sounds of laughter floated clearly across from the other side of the house, followed by a loud splash as someone hit the pool. “Laminated glass,” Lia said. “Should be more of a crunch than a crash. Go ahead. Give it a try.”

  “You’re the boss.” He reversed the pry, wrapped the handle in a piece of cloth, and slammed the tool into the glass.

  The window was plastic-coated and shatterproof, but the glass crazed and yielded under a second, harder blow. The two agents held their position for a moment, listening carefully for a full minute, waiting for some indication that they’d been heard.

  Another splash sounded from the rear deck.

  The security system wires attached to the inside of the pane were broken, but the needle drilled into the window frame by the robot was now shorting the contact, tricking the system into thinking the circuit was unbroken. Using the cloth to protect his already-gloved hands, Akulinin pushed in the now flexible sheet of fragmented glass, working it in and out until it popped free of the frame.

  Replacing the jimmy, Akulinin drew his weapon and wiggled through the opening, headfirst. Lia followed.

  “We’re in,” she said. She glanced around the room, verifying that it was, indeed, empty… though rhythmic creakings and moans were coming from the room next door. Her LI headset revealed the space clearly in monotone shades of green. “Tell us where we need to go.”

  “Straight ahead,” was Rockman’s reply. “Through the bedroom door and to your left.”

  Silently the two agents slipped forward through the darkness.

  17

  Kotenko Dacha Sochi, Russia 0007 hours, GMT + 3

  DOWN A DARKENED HALLWAY, then right to a flight of stairs. Lia descended while Akulinin covered her from above, then returned the favor, holding her SIG-Sauer P220 gripped tightly in both hands. The weapon had been threaded to receive a sound suppressor, and the ungainly length of the thing extended beyond the ball of her hands like a police officer’s baton.

  “There’s a security camera in the hall in front of you to the left,” Rockman whispered in their ears. “Wait one…”

  The broken-off piece of the dragonfly probe still attached to the cable on the pole at the front gate now gave the Art Room a physical connection with the dacha’s security network, with the parked van as a communications relay. Back at Fort Meade, they would be running through a number of camera views, calling up the correct one, and feeding it a twenty-second loop of an empty hallway.

  “Okay, Lia,” Rockman said. “The hall is empty and the camera is happy. You’re clear to move.”

  Stealthily the two agents turned the corner and walked down the hall. Lia noticed a half sphere of darkened glass mounted on the ceiling-the security cam-and resisted an unprofessional impulse to wave. A few feet farther on, light spilled from beneath a closed door.

  Damn…

  “We’re at the door to the office,” Lia whispered. “Do you have a camera inside?”

  “That’s negative, Lia,” Rockman replied. “It looks like there may be a hookup for another camera on the circuit diagram, but it’s switched off.”

  Akulinin tried the doorknob, which turned easily, and gently edged the door open. Beside him, Lia slipped a length of fiber-optic cable through the opening, with the near end attached to her cell phone monitor. Twisting the cable gently between her fingers, she turned the end this way and that, checking out the room’s interior.

  A man sat at a computer monitor, his back toward the door. The image resolution was too low to let her read over his shoulder, but he appeared to be about ten feet away, his fingers clattering over a keyboard.

  There was no one else in the room within the reach of the fiber-optic viewer, though she did see another of the black hemispheres on the ceiling. Why was the security camera turned off?

  Then the answer came to her. The man at the desk was almost certainly Grigor Kotenko, and as the head of one of the more powerful families within the Organizatsiya, he would be afraid not only of outside enemies breaking into his personal fortress but also of traitors among his own people. The camera’s position on the ceiling would have let his own security people see what was on his monitor; switching it off while he was working gave him an extra bit of peace of mind.

  It also suggested that Kotenko was more afraid of betrayal from within his own organization than he was of outsiders, an interesting bit of intelligence.

  The figure at the desk turned his head just far enough that Lia glimpsed the shaggy corner of his walrus mustache.

  “I see Kotenko,” Lia whispered. “Back to the door. I can take him from here.”

  “That’s a negative, Lia,” a new voice, Rubens’, replied. “Find another way.”

  She bit off a silent expletive. She had the bastard in her sights… the thug who’d given the orders that h
ad ended with Tommy’s death. It would be so easy to take him out. Two taps to the center of mass, a third in the back of the head…

  “Lia, Ilya,” Rubens said. “If the op is to succeed, we need Kotenko alive.”

  Lia closed her eyes, forcing the muscles of her hands and arms and jaw to relax, bringing herself back from the edge. God, she wanted to kill the man… but Rubens was right. She and Ilya had come here tonight to plant bugs that would give Desk Three an unparalleled window into the Tambov group’s operations. If Kotenko’s people came into the office later and found their boss dead, American intelligence would have to start all over again as some other crime family came to the fore, or as another leader within Tambov-Braslov, perhaps-took over.

  In the long run, they could do a lot more damage to the Russian Mafiya-and not just the Tambov group-if Kotenko survived this night.

  “Okay,” she whispered. “Ilya, you’re up. Remember, Russian only.”

  “Da,” he murmured, and grasping his H &K P9S in both hands, he eased the door open with his shoulder and rolled through.

  Lia followed, breaking left and cutting across the room as Akulinin moved right, lunging at Kotenko’s back. Attempting to sneak in quietly invited disaster-a squeak to a floorboard, a flicker of movement glimpsed from the corner of an eye… even a psychic awareness of someone else present in the room. Kotenko heard the movement and began to turn, one hand snapping toward the top drawer of his computer desk, but Akulinin was on him in three swift strides, reversing the pistol in his hand as he moved, grasping it at the meeting of muzzle and sound suppressor, and swinging the butt around from the side, aiming at the base of Kotenko’s skull.

  But Kotenko raised his arm, blocking the swing, and for a terrible moment Akulinin and the Mafiya boss struggled in front of the computer desk. Then the office chair scooted out from beneath Kotenko and he fell, heavily. Akulinin’s arm came up, then slashed down, the pistol butt striking the man’s head with a sickening crack.

  Lia held her position at the far side of the office, her SIG-Sauer pointed at the half-open door, covering Akulinin as he checked the pulse at Kotenko’s throat, then peeled back one eyelid, then the other.