Red War

by Flynn Vince

  It wasn’t much to work with, but still Rapp could make some fairly solid assumptions. Krupin was cornered in that room with at least one guard, and he wanted the man to go out and neutralize whoever had just shot up his door. The guard, being a top operator and not a complete fucking idiot, wanted to stay under cover and wait for the reinforcements he hoped were still breathing.

  More shouting preceded a boot flashing into view and kicking the door open a few more inches. Rapp backed along the curving corridor until he could just barely keep the edge of the doorframe in view. A gun appeared around it a moment later and the shooter emptied half his mag in a random pattern down the hall.

  Rapp responded with three carefully placed shots, stitching them across the wall to the right of the frame. They penetrated and at least one hit its target. Not that it did any real damage, but the impact with the man’s bulletproof vest was enough to cause him to stagger across the crack in the door. Starting to get used to his Russian weapon, Rapp managed to put his next shot into the guard’s temple, dropping him onto the plush carpet.

  Rapp rushed forward, kicking the door hard enough to push the body out of the way and then rolling into the dimly lit room. A man in a white smock was coming at him but Rapp recognized him from the pre-op briefing Claudia had put together. Dr. Eduard Fedkin—by all reports a decent human being who had the bad luck of being Krupin’s personal physician.

  The reason for his charge became obvious a moment later. The Russian president was behind him, crouching for cover and shoving him forward. Fedkin slammed into Rapp, knocking him back as Krupin went for the gun. His hand clamped down on Rapp’s wrist with shocking force as the three of them collided simultaneously with the wall.

  Krupin kept Rapp’s gun hand pinned to the wall while he rammed a fist into whatever target he could find. Rapp deflected the frenzied blows to the degree he could while trying to figure out what the fuck was happening. This wasn’t the dying old man the Agency had sent him after. The son of a bitch was faster than most twenty-year-olds, and he hit like a Mack Truck.

  When Krupin lined up a roundhouse to the side of Rapp’s head, the CIA man finally reacted, ducking and letting the man’s momentum throw him off-balance. A kick to the side of the knee created an audible crunch as the bones gave way.

  Krupin should have collapsed screaming in pain but he didn’t seem to even notice the injury. Rapp hit it again, this time hard enough to fold the joint sideways. The Russian finally dropped, but instead of staying down he crawled frantically for the far wall, dragging his injured leg behind him.

  Rapp was starting to wonder if he’d given Kennedy’s brain trust too much credit. No medical equipment was immediately evident. The room was dominated by a four-poster bed, an overstuffed chair, and a bank of televisions silently feeding news from various international organizations. Finally, his eyes fell on the doctor who was partially visible behind a massive armoire.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Fortunately, Fedkin not only spoke English but understood the question.

  “Stimulants,” he said, pointing to a series of pens lined up on a writing desk. Upon closer examination they were syringes—two of which appeared to be empty. “They’re extremely dangerous, but he forced me to administer them.”

  “Who are you?” Krupin said, trying to push himself to his feet but finding his shattered knee unable to support the maneuver. His bloodshot eyes bulged noticeably and his hands were shaking.

  “You know who I am.”

  “Mitch Rapp,” he said through clenched teeth. “What are you going to do? Kill me? And then what? Escape unharmed from this building and then make it across Russia to a friendly border without being captured?”

  “Something like that.”

  Krupin laughed, through his visibly quivering jaw. “Your president and the Europeans are worried about Latvia? If it’s discovered that I was assassinated by a CIA operative, Latvia will be nothing. You’ll have started World War III.”

  “Are you sure?” Rapp said, aiming his gun between the man’s eyes. “Who are all these people who are going to give a shit that you’re dead? The generals you got into this clusterfuck? The nationalists who just watched you get half their navy sunk? Or all the backstabbing Russian politicians waiting to take your place?”

  Some of the man’s rage was replaced by uncertainty as his amphetamine-fueled mind began to grasp the precariousness of his situation. “I . . . I can give you Andrei Sokolov. He’s in the building.”

  Rapp closed one eye, focusing on Krupin’s increasingly pale face over the sight of his Serdyukov SPS. “What’s Sokolov to me?”

  “This is his doing. He wanted this war. Not me. I’ll admit to being ill. We can say that he took advantage of my situation and I’ll order a retreat.”

  Rapp just kept aiming. “I’m not State Department, Maxim. I don’t work for the negotiating part of the U.S. government.”

  “Wait!” he shouted. “I’m willing to make concessions. Tell me what you want.”

  Even half-dead and high as a kite, Krupin wasn’t a stupid man. Russia was an almost purely destructive force in the world—a country consumed not with improving itself but with bringing everyone else down to its level. And Krupin was behind all of that. An offer of major concessions from him wasn’t something to just shrug off. On the other hand, what was that offer really worth? Even assuming he survived his illness and managed to maintain power, he’d walk away from any promises made while staring down the barrel of a gun.

  Like the consummate politician he was, Krupin read his hesitation. “There’s a communications room in the building. We can use it to call President Alexander. I’ll talk to him personally. We can make a deal.”

  Rapp kept his gun on target but looked over at Dr. Fedkin. “What’s his condition?”

  “Serious,” he responded hesitantly.

  “I’d rather not shoot you, Doc. But I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.”

  “Likely terminal,” the man quickly corrected. “He’ll continue to decline and probably be dead in three months. It would be a miracle if he lasted six.”

  When Rapp turned back to Krupin, the man’s face had gone blank. One of the by-products of being a brutal dictator was that people tended to softball everything they told you. The unvarnished truth spoken in such a matter-of-fact way didn’t seem to be sitting well. Not that it mattered. Rapp hadn’t come there to make deals. He squeezed the trigger.

  Instead of the comforting buck of the weapon in his hand and scent of gunpowder, there was nothing. The piece-of-crap Russian pistol had jammed.

  He swore quietly under his breath, trying to work the stuck slide as Krupin crawled desperately for the door. He’d made it over his dead guard and halfway into the hallway before Rapp grabbed him by the foot and dragged him back. The Russian leader thrashed wildly, but his broken leg prevented him from getting any real leverage. The syringes on the desk were within reach and Rapp picked one up, slamming it into Krupin’s calf.

  The reaction was immediate—his strength and desperation increased to the point that it was like trying to hold on to a wildcat. Rapp grabbed another syringe and dropped his weight onto the man, this time breaking the needle off in the man’s collarbone. There was enough of a barb left, though, to get it into his neck and depress the plunger.

  That was the one that pushed Krupin over the edge. His body went rigid and his breath caught in his chest. Rapp backed away, watching the Russian convulse for a few seconds before finally going still.

  The shit had now officially hit the fan.

  CHAPTER 52

  AZAROV kept his back pressed against the polished wood behind him, sliding slowly along the curved wall. There was little doubt that he was on the right path. The passage had gone from simple hospital corridor to a level of opulence that would have been at home in the Kremlin.

  A finely carved door came into view, confirming the description given by the medical personnel he’d intercepted a few minutes before.
Even more telling was the dead man lying near the threshold and the bullet holes near the latch.

  The door opened onto an opulent room furnished with a massive bed and various wall-mounted televisions. Rapp was gone but had left his handiwork behind. Krupin was on his back, staring at the ceiling with a grotesquely broken leg and syringes still hanging from his calf and neck. Not the CIA man’s customary head shot, but no less effective.

  Azarov knew that there was nothing for him there, but still he found himself unable to move from his position on the blood-soaked carpet. What would he have become without the man lying dead before him? Without the training, money, and education? Without his upbringing by the state, first in the Soviet athletics program and then in the army?

  A farmer like his parents and their parents before them? The possibility of that seemed almost laughable now. Those days came to him only in brief flashes now. Triggered by smells, sounds, or briefly glimpsed images, the memories disbursed like smoke the moment he tried to grab hold of them.

  He aimed his weapon at Krupin but felt none of the expected rage or catharsis. There would be no pleasure to be derived from firing into his lifeless body. The few rounds he had left could be put to better use.

  Azarov retraced his route through the corridor, allowing himself to move somewhat more quickly than he had earlier. Krupin’s guards would have fallen back to defend him and the fact that there had only been one suggested that the threat inside the building was neutralized.

  He crossed into the building’s main medical facility and stumbled on a scene that reminded him of one of the low-budget horror films that Cara loved so much. They were usually poorly lit and atrociously acted, with improbable storylines that climaxed either in boiler rooms or abandoned hospitals.

  Andrei Sokolov, in full dress uniform, had barricaded himself in an operating theater made entirely of glass. Outside those transparent walls was a group of people in hospital gowns, some with partially shaved heads, others bleeding from where IV catheters had been recently removed.

  The glass had been damaged by gunfire but was holding, and Sokolov had taken refuge behind an MRI machine. One of the patients, a big man with forearms covered in tattoos, discarded his empty AK and sprinted toward the door leading into the enclosure.

  Azarov watched, transfixed, as the man’s ghostly compatriots followed at speeds that ranged from a full run to an unsteady lurch. Sokolov fired his service pistol, missing the big man and instead hitting a woman behind him. It was one of those minor errors that could be so fatal in a combat situation. His aim had been wide by only a few centimeters but now the man was on him. A few more muffled shots sounded but it was impossible to know if they hit anything in the frenzy that ensued.

  Azarov backed away as the patients dragged Sokolov toward an operating table that many of them had likely experienced firsthand. It would have been desirable to question the man, but it seemed unwise to try to get between those people and their tormentor. Nothing—not even Mitch Rapp—was going to stop them from tearing Sokolov apart.

  • • •

  “I lost her. Get her back. Now!”

  Azarov recognized the voice coming from the room ahead and strode toward it, avoiding the oxygen cylinders strewn across the floor. It appeared that they’d fallen from a medical cart that had been repurposed as a battering ram. A hasty, but effective improvisation. The steel door it had been used against now hung twisted and dented from damaged hinges.

  “I’m trying!” came a Russian-accented reply.

  Azarov stuffed his weapon into his waistband and stepped slowly into the doorway with his hands open in front of him. As expected, he found himself staring down the barrel of Mitch Rapp’s gun. The CIA man was sitting in front of a bank of communications equipment that was likely the facility’s only connection to the outside world. He lowered his weapon as Azarov took a position that would allow him to see anyone approaching.

  “There!” Eduard Fedkin said, typing frantically into a keyboard. “You should have her back.”

  “Irene!” Rapp said into the microphone in front of him. “Can you hear me?”

  “Is it done?” came Kennedy’s distorted voice.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is there any chance it could be played as natural causes?”

  “That’d be a stretch.”

  “Understood. What’s your situation?”

  “Not good. The doc knows the facility and he says there’s no back way out.”

  Rapp indicated to Azarov, who just shrugged and shook his head.

  “Yeah. We’re fucked. The men Krupin has outside won’t use any serious explosives because they’ll think they might injure him but they’ll get in here sooner or later.”

  “You being captured and identified isn’t going to go well for relations between the United States and Russia.”

  “It’s not going to go well for me, either, Irene.”

  There was a brief pause. “I have someone who may be in a position to help you, but it’s going to take time. How long can you hold out?”

  “Depends on—”

  Everything went dark for a moment before the emergency lighting came on.

  “Get her back!” Rapp yelled.

  “How?” Fedkin said. “There’s no power. I’m not an engineer, I—”

  “Shut up,” Rapp said, moving to the door. “Grisha. You got anything?”

  Azarov shook his head.

  “Then maybe this is going to go our way.”

  “How so?”

  “They cut the power from outside. They’re already seeing this as a hostage crisis and they’ll use the power as a bargaining chip. We can play for time.”

  “I admire your optimism, Mitch. But I have to admit that I don’t share it.”

  CHAPTER 53

  RAPP continued sifting through the pile of weapons, picking up an AN-94 assault rifle and checking the magazine. Only a few rounds left. A 9A-91 was in a little better shape, with about half a mag remaining. The people watching him from behind makeshift barricades were all wearing the same expectant expressions and blood-splattered hospital gowns. According to Azarov, those stains were about all that was left of Andrei Sokolov.

  Most had never experienced combat before that day, but all were handling it with the fatalism that Russians were famous for. They were no longer strapped to beds being experimented on and had managed to serve themselves up a heaping plateful of revenge. Overall, not a bad day for a group of people who figured they’d soon be dead one way or another. At least now they had an opportunity to go down swinging.

  He finished his inventory and walked to where Azarov was watching a shower of sparks penetrate the wall. The steel there was flimsier than it was on the door, but still formidable. Whoever was outside had gotten their hands on some kind of cutting tool and was using it to inch his way through.

  “How much longer?” Rapp said.

  “I’d guess four hours. How much ammunition.”

  “Enough to make some noise, but that’s about it. Have you thought up a list of bullshit demands that’ll tie up Krupin’s men?”

  Azarov was going to identify himself as a Chechen terrorist and offer up a time consuming list of demands in return for Krupin’s release. As plans went, it was shit, but it’d buy some time. How much was impossible to know.

  “I’m still working on it. But I’ll be ready when they get through.”

  Rapp glanced back and motioned to Eduard Fedkin. Unlike the patients, he and his medical team looked scared. Until they’d been kidnapped and imprisoned there, all had been planning long, prosperous lives. Outside these walls, they had families, friends, and careers that they weren’t done with yet.

  “What do you have that we can use as a weapon, Doc?”

  “Weapon? What do you mean?”

  “Be creative. Could we pump anesthesia through that gash in the wall and knock the people on the other side out?”

  The physician wiped at the sweat building on his forehead. “No. It doe
sn’t work that way.”

  “Then what do you have that’s poisonous? Or that’ll blow up?”

  “We have medications that given in the right doses would be deadly. You’ve already proved that. But blow up? I don’t know. Medical equipment is designed not to blow up.”

  “There must be something.”

  “Our job is to save people. Not kill them.”

  Rapp dismissed him with a wave of the hand and started passing out the guns they’d collected. “Don’t fire unless I give the order. Understand?”

  Yuri Lebedev translated as he accepted an AS Val assault rifle with a nearly full magazine.

  “What happened to Krupin?” he asked.

  “Dead.”

  The former soldier smiled cruelly. “I wish I had been the one to pull the trigger.”

  “Me too,” Rapp responded sincerely.

  Unfortunately, Kennedy was right. He couldn’t be captured here. Even if he managed to hold out in the interrogation, it wouldn’t take Russian intelligence long to ID him. On the other hand, if they all died in that place, there was a solid chance America could get away with this. The Russians would likely assume he was just some mercenary that Azarov had hired and be anxious to bury him along with all the other evidence.

  The collapse of Russia’s government in the middle of a war with NATO would create enough chaos on its own without leaked stories about medical experiments and brain tumors. Krupin’s death would be blamed on a heart attack or unnamed foreign agents or whatever it took to keep the country from blowing itself apart at the loss of their strong man.

  The one thing that could change that was finding the CIA’s top operative locked in a building with Krupin’s corpse. The Russian hardliners would trot Rapp out as proof of everything they’d been telling their people about the West. Krupin would be portrayed as a selfless leader who had given his life to keep his country from being encircled by Western forces. Russia’s citizens, wary of the war effort until now, would get fully behind it. Fighting would spread to the other Baltic states and Ukraine. Assuming the nukes were kept in their silos, there would be hundreds of thousands of casualties. If they flew, then that number would climb into the millions.