Day of Reckoning (Shadow Warriors)

by Stephen England

  “Andropov’s mistress,” the Russian replied, glancing toward the kitchen. The fluorescent glare of a tripod-mounted construction light illuminated the scene, casting strange shadows against the bare white walls. “If we allow our assault to be slowed…”

  His implication was clear. And he was right. There were only the two of them—they had to maintain the element of surprise if they were to remain alive.

  Yet she was an innocent. Harry pulled back the charging handle of the UMP-45, chambering a round. He raised the submachine gun to his shoulder, making sure the sling was adjusted properly.

  “No.”

  Vasiliev arched an eyebrow. “These lines you draw, tovarisch—they are pointless, aren’t they? And who will know of your lofty principles when you’re dead?”

  “I will,” came the quiet response. Harry turned without another word, leading the way into the kitchen. His stun grenades lay on the counter near Carol’s laptop—their only edge once surprise was lost.

  “Don’t use these until I give the signal,” he cautioned, handing one of them to Vasiliev.

  “I have been to this dance a time or two,” the Russian chuckled. “I think I can promise not to embarrass…”

  His voice trailed off and Harry looked back to see Vasiliev’s phone in his hand, a strange look on his face. He put up a hand for quiet. “I have to take this.”

  “Who?”

  “Vournikov,” Alexei replied, opening the phone. “Da? This is Vasiliev.”

  He listened for a long moment, a frown spreading across his face. “Where am I? I’m in a hotel at the moment—the Best Western out on the 405. No, no I’m not alone. Would you like to speak to her?”

  The Russian winced, gesturing with his phone toward Carol.

  She froze, slowly realizing his intentions. And the part she was being asked to play. Her throat felt dry as she reached out for the phone, bringing it up to her ear. “Who are you?” came the first question, a heavily accented Slavic voice ringing in her ears.

  “Maria,” Carol responded, her voice trembling ever so slightly. As many times as she had seen this done…

  “And you’re in a hotel with Alexei?”

  She hesitated a moment before responding, making up the script as she went.

  “Si. If that is his name?” She stammered. “Por favor, senor, only little English.”

  It was the final straw, and the other end of the line exploded in curses, punctuated by the gravelly command, “Put him back on, whore.”

  A smile crossed her lips as she extended the phone to Vasiliev, watching as he took it. His brow furrowed as he continued listening to the consul. “Nyet, I’ve been here most of the evening. I can contact my men at the safehouses to confirm, but if this has been done, it has been without my knowledge.”

  An emphatic shake of the head. “We have no men at that location—haven’t for several weeks. Perhaps a breakin? Da, I can check. Just give me a couple of hours to look into it.”

  Vasiliev closed the phone and turned without warning, smashing it against the granite countertop.

  “What’s going on?” This from Han, entering the room behind the Russian.

  “Someone got to him,” Vasiliev replied, his eyes locking with Harry’s. “Someone is putting pressure on Vournikov to find you—and they know for certain you were at the consulate.”

  The Russian’s air of self-assurance was gone, completely gone. “He said all this?” Harry demanded.

  “No,” Vasiliev replied, reaching for his jacket. “It’s what he didn’t say. He doesn’t trust me.”

  “Imagine that,” Han murmured. Harry shot him a dark look, but if the ex-KGB officer had heard the remark, he took no notice of it.

  “Do they have your location?”

  “Nyet.” Vasiliev gestured to the destroyed phone. “This phone was set up to receive calls forwarded from my consulate-supplied Blackberry. It is in a motel on the 405. And that is the GPS signal they’ll be tracking, if they get that far.”

  Someone had taught the old dog all the new tricks. But it would buy them precious little time. Harry turned toward Carol. “Is everything in place?”

  A brief nod was her only reply, her long fingers dancing over the keyboard as she entered the final commands.

  He looked down at the luminous dial of his watch, noting the time. “Let’s do this, gentlemen.”

  8:49 P.M.

  The Andropov Estate

  Whenever possible, Valentin Andropov surrounded himself with people he knew. People he could trust, as far as that went. It was why he had hired Sergei Korsakov. And now he was wondering if that had been a mistake.

  “Da, everything is cleared to proceed, Sergei,” he replied over the phone, rolling his eyes at the head of his security detail. “Vournikov confirms that there are no consulate personnel on site.”

  His old comrade had changed over the years, despite his many successful contracts. Grown more cautious, hesitant even. And it was testing his patience. “Stop acting like an old woman, Sergei,” Andropov snarled, biting sarcasm in his tones. “Just get in there and complete your contract. Call me when you have the girl.”

  He placed the phone on the desk in front of him, shaking his head as he glared across the room at his chief of security. “It appears that I may have overestimated Korsakov’s usefulness. Sergei and his team…they won’t be leaving the country.”

  The former MVD colonel nodded his understanding.

  “Betraying a comrade is not something I would do lightly,” Andropov said, using a guillotine cutter to trim the end of the hand-rolled cigar in his hand. “You understand this, Maxim. Sergei was an old friend—we fought together in the war. But I can no longer trust him implicitly. And that is something I require.”

  The oligarch fished a lighter out of his pocket, holding the open flame to the tip of his cigar. “I can count on you in this, da?”

  There was no time for a response—the next moment, the room was plunged into darkness, the only illumination coming from the flickering ember at the end of Andropov’s cigar.

  “All the taxes I pay to this state,” Andropov swore, “and still these blackouts.”

  8:51 P.M.

  Impact. Harry landed in a bed of Serbian bellflowers, throwing out a hand to catch himself as he pitched forward. He heard movement behind him, Vasiliev surmounting the wall, but he paid it no heed.

  The door. Propelling himself upright, he hurtled forward, feet pounding across the turf toward the patio, his eyes focused in on the keypad.

  He was halfway there when he heard the dogs begin to bark.

  Vasiliev heard them too, from his position in the shadow of the wall. He dropped to one knee, the suppressed Ruger Mark II clutched in both hands, a rock-steady grip.

  Back in the van, the SEAL had called the weapon a “hush puppy”, exhibiting a dark sense of humor that Alexei hadn’t seen from him before. Time to see if it lived up to its name.

  Volkodav. Wolf crusher. The dogs came around the corner of the house at full gallop, great slavering beasts. In Chechnya, they had accompanied he and his men into the mountains, but they seemed larger than he remembered. Perhaps it was all a matter of perspective.

  Nichols was at the door, his dark form obscuring the keypad—but the dogs had him spotted now. Moving too fast…

  No time.

  Raising his voice just loud enough for the dogs to hear, Vasiliev spat out a command in Russian, one of several he remembered from that long Chechen winter.

  They slowed, hesitating at the sound of the familiar command. The foremost dog let out a howl of frustration, turning his massive head toward Vasiliev.

  Sight picture. The Russian’s finger closed around the Mark II’s trigger, squeezing ever so gently.

  A whisper of death spat from the long, dark barrel, barely audible even to Vasiliev. The subsonic .22-caliber round slammed into the dog’s nose from fifteen feet away, smashing through bone and tissue until it reached the brain.

  The dog swa
yed sideways, sprawling across the grass. His companion turned, a snarl escaping his lips as he recognized the new threat in Vasiliev.

  The Russian’s first shot caught the dog in the flank, a splotch of red appearing against the fur as he sprung toward him.

  Not enough.

  Vasiliev rose as the dog charged, firing the Ruger offhand, emptying the magazine as his right hand stole toward the Grach at his hip, jerking it from its holster.

  Last resort.

  Eight rounds and the dog’s body crashed against his legs, quivering in its death throes as the Ruger’s slide locked back on an empty magazine.

  It was only then, as Vasiliev stared down at the blood staining his pants, that he realized he’d been holding his breath ever since the dog charged.

  He inserted a fresh magazine, putting one final round through the Volkodav’s head before looking up to find Harry waving him in.

  This night had only begun.

  8:53 P.M.

  Overhead, the lights glowed once again, browning tremulously as the electricity surged back on, the massive generator straining to provide every last ounce of power consumed by the mansion. With a nod to Maxim, Andropov walked to the window, staring out at his neighbors.

  Most of them were still in the dark, or operating under only partial power. Wealth had its privileges. Even his dogs had ceased their barking—whatever had startled them apparently having passed.

  “Go check on Stacy, will you?” the oligarch said idly, tobacco smoke drifting from between his lips as he gestured to his security chief. “Tell her to put on something nice and be ready for me later.”

  8:54 P.M.

  The abandoned mansion

  “Are they in?” Han took his eyes off the SCAR’s scope, looking back to where Carol stood.

  He shook his head. “Impossible to say. The lights are back on—there’s no sign of an alarm being raised. No way to check in with them, either.”

  Using the equipment Vasiliev had provided, Carol had been able to jam the cellphone network and shut down radio comms for a mile radius. A must for an assault of this sort, but it came with a downside: the equipment wasn’t sophisticated enough to allow their own channel to get through without bringing everything back on-line. If Andropov was deaf and dumb, so were they.

  The former SEAL lowered his cheek to the buttstock of the rifle, Harry’s words running unbidden through his mind. A memory of an operation in the Egyptian desert. Years before.

  “There’s times when prayer is the only commlink that stays up.”

  “What did you say?” Carol asked from behind her computer, startling him with the realization that he had spoken aloud.

  He hesitated…it had been so long. Years. “I said, ‘Pray’.”

  Andropov’s estate

  Darkness. A low noise, voices—maybe from a TV, maybe not. The kitchen leading off the patio had been empty.

  Vasiliev at his shoulder, Harry led the way forward down the hallway toward the light streaming from an open door. The plush carpet muffled their footfalls.

  The voices were coming from a huge plasma TV mounted on the far wall as Harry came around the edge of the door. It was a soccer game, the excited voice of the sports announcer coming clearly through the speakers. A single man on the sofa, his face turned away from them as he watched the players. Alone.

  There was a large bowl of potato chips on the endtable, right beside a Glock.

  Threat. The UMP-45 came up in Harry’s hands, iron sights centering on the man’s temple. He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked back to see Vasiliev shaking his head, a finger pressed to his lips.

  The Russian took a step around him—into the room—his eyes betraying no hint of emotion as he squeezed the trigger of the suppressed Ruger. A small ragged hole appeared just back of the target’s ear and he swayed, his outstretched hand striking the table as he went down.

  “Never make a sound you don’t have to,” Vasiliev announced, looking for all the world like a hunter surveying his kill as he stood over the corpse. The Ruger was far quieter than even Harry’s submachine gun, but it had been a risk. “Room clear.”

  Harry glanced down at the red stain spreading over the fabric of sofa and nodded.

  No time to second-guess the decision—even as he stood there, a voice called from out in the hall. “Sasha?”

  Vasiliev swore under his breath, dropping to one knee by the corpse, his pistol aimed at the doorway. Waiting.

  The man that appeared in the doorway was dressed simply, jeans and a t-shirt. There was a gun on his hip and with the knife in his hand he was peeling an apple.

  He saw Vasiliev—saw the gun, his mouth opening in a perfect “O” of surprise. And those were the last things he ever saw.

  9:00 P.M.

  No signal. The oligarch stared at his phone in a mixture of astonishment and disgust. The blackout couldn’t possibly have taken down the entire cellphone network, could it?

  Maybe it was just his phone. Maxim could try to reach Vegas. He picked up the encrypted radio handset on his desk, keying the mike.

  Static. Nothing but static. They had never failed him before. A sudden feeling of dread clutched at his throat, punctuated by a muted thud from outside the room.

  A body falling.

  He pulled open the center drawer of his desk, his gaze falling on the small Walther stashed there.

  “Don’t even think it.” Andropov’s head came up, his fingers trembling as his eyes focused in on the masked figure standing in the door of his study. Ice-cold blue eyes staring forth from the holes in a balaclava ski mask, lips curled upward in an inhuman smile.

  The Heckler & Koch submachine gun in his hands was aimed at Andropov’s head.

  Stall. Buy time. The oligarch glanced at the dead radio, his foot creeping toward the silent alarm switch. “W-what do you want?”

  “Many things,” Harry replied in fluent Russian, centering the iron sights of his UMP-45 between the Russian’s eyes. “Mostly answers.”

  Behind him, Vasiliev entered the room, weapon drawn. Five of Andropov’ bodyguards were dead—eight more remained somewhere around the estate.

  If their estimate was correct.

  “Who paid you to facilitate the assassination of David Lay?” Harry demanded, circling Andropov like a predatory cat.

  “I have no idea what you are talking about.” The oligarch’s voice was too confident—too sure of himself. As if he knew something they didn’t. “You’ll never leave here alive,” he continued. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “I rather think we will.” Holding the buttstock of the UMP-45 tight against his shoulder, Harry pulled his phone out of his pocket with his left hand, thrusting it toward Andropov. A picture of a bound and wide-eyed Pyotr filled up the screen. “We have your son.”

  To his surprise, Andropov began to chuckle, his shoulders shaking in a paroxysm of laughter. “That bastard.”

  Harry exchanged glances with Vasiliev. Somehow, somewhere along the way, they’d made a misstep. And they were losing control of the situation. Andropov took in their look and laughed. “Oh, I’m not disparaging Pyotr—I meant that in the purest sense of the word.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Pyotr…is not my son.” The oligarch smiled. “A bastard, as I say. His mother…well, she was unfaithful to me. Perhaps you even know how it feels to receive such knowledge? As it happened, Pyotr was two months old when she was killed in a car accident. Brakes failed.”

  He was stalling. Harry felt the hairs along the back of his neck prickle with danger. “Get to the point.”

  Andropov shrugged. “My point? You don’t have my son—you have a teenager with a penchant for spending my money. I had high hopes for him in those days, and he has done nothing but disappoint. Like his mother.”

  A dismissive wave of the hand. “Put a bullet through his head if it pleases you. It is no concern of mine.”

  He wasn’t bluffing. Harry could tell that, reading the man’s eyes.
All the risks they had undergone—all for nothing. A grave miscalculation. Fatal?

  Before he could even finish the thought, the doors of the study flew open, revealing the man they had identified as Andropov’s security chief and two bodyguards standing there in the opening, SR-2 Veresk submachine guns trained on he and Vasiliev.

  Checkmate.

  9:05 P.M.

  San Francisco, California

  Everything was quiet, Korsakov thought, watching as two members of his assault team affixed a breaching charge to the door of the safehouse.

  Too quiet. He didn’t like the tactical environment—they’d had to dismount from the vehicles two blocks away and move in on foot. Too many things could go wrong, and they’d have no backup. “Do you still have a fix on the tracker?” he asked quietly, keying his earpiece.

  “Da,” Viktor responded from the SUV. “They’re near the back of the apartment—moving into a room on the far left. Maybe a bedroom?”

  Another few moments, and it wouldn’t matter. Everyone in the house would either be dead or in their hands. “Are you in position, Yuri?”

  A burst of static, and his second-in-command came on. “We have a clear line of sight on the back door.”

  Korsakov caught the signal from the man by the door and moved back, turning his face away from the blast and covering his ear with one hand.

  Two outstretched fingers. One…

  The shaped charges exploded, their concussive roar shattering the stillness of the night. The door flew inward, dissolved into flying bits of metal and plastic.

  Korsakov was on his feet before the noise had even died away, following his team through the breach, weapon drawn. The clock was ticking.

  9:05 P.M.

  Andropov estate

  “This little game is over,” Andropov announced. “Put your weapons on the floor.”

  “Not from my perspective,” Harry replied, his voice level. Conversational, even. The UMP-45 in his hands remained aimed at Andropov’s head. “I still hold the trump card.”

  “What do you mean?” Came the demand from behind him, the security chief speaking for the first time.