Nicolai laughed. “You don’t give last names to beautiful young women in a place such as this,” he said. He looked at Chris. “And your name, sir?”
“It is Christopher.”
“Ah, yes, the man who discovered America,” Nicolai said. “Tell me, Chris, would you like to see these two beautiful young women perform a sex act for us? They offered to do it for me, but I did not want to pay as much as they ask. So, I told this one to find another person to divide the cost.”
“You will like it, I promise you,” Tanya said. Moving over to Natalie, she stuck her hand down into the scoop neck of the blonde’s top to grab her breast. Leaning toward her, she kissed Natalie, full on the lips.
“Come,” Nicolai said. “We must see this show.”
Getting up from his seat, Nicolai started after Natalie and Tanya, who were holding hands as they walked in front, leading them toward the stairs at the back of the club. Chris followed.
“Do you need another to watch the show?” a man from one of the nearby booths called out.
“I found them, they are mine,” Nicolai replied. “But you are welcome to come watch, if you will pay for it all.”
“I thought you would let me watch for free,” the man said, and all who were in his booth laughed.
When they reached the top floor, both Natalie and Tanya removed their tops, even as they were walking down the hall, so that the few they encountered were treated to the sight of their near nakedness. The four stepped into a room, then closed the door behind them. Tanya turned on music, then she and Natalie put their tops back on.
“I hope you didn’t mind the little charade,” Nicolai said.
Chris smiled broadly. “Believe me, I didn’t mind it at all.”
“I didn’t think you would,” Nicolai said. He pointed to the two girls. “Tanya is my daughter, Natalie is her very good friend.” He laughed. “However, they are not that kind of friends,” he added. “It was just a way of getting you up here so we could talk.”
“Natalie will watch the window and I will watch the door,” Tanya said.
“Nicolai, I thank you for agreeing to help me,” Chris said.
“At first, I wasn’t going to help,” Nicolai said. He shook his head. “I don’t know what has happened in your country. I hear that America is no more.”
“That is true,” Chris said. “Our country has been destroyed by incompetence and arrogance.”
“But this man, Ohmshidi, he was elected, was he not? By the same democracy that you Americans have always been so proud of?”
“It’s as Benjamin Franklin said,” Chris replied. “‘When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. ’ I’m afraid that is what happened, and Ohmshidi was the result.”
“Tell me, Chris, where are the men like Truman, Kennedy, Reagan, Khrushchev, Gorbachev, and Yeltsen? Those were men, my friend. They stood at the abyss and kept the world from destroying itself.”
“We lived through some historic times, you and I,” Chris said. He wasn’t sure where Nicolai was going, so he made his response as vague as possible.
“Since you first contacted me, I’ve done some looking around. Alek was right. Colonel Shaporin did not commit suicide,” Nicolai said. “He was murdered by Lieutenant Colonel Leonid Trutnev, his second-in-command.”
“You know this for a fact?”
“Shaporin discovered that five nuclear warheads were missing,” Nicolai said. “When he tried to find them, he was ordered killed. The warheads are being sent to South America.”
“To South America? To what country in South America?” This was a surprise to Chris, who didn’t expect them to be going there.
“Not to a country,” Nicolai said. “To one man.”
Chris nodded. Now this wasn’t a surprise. Bryan had already told him that he believed the nukes were being bought by Warren Sorroto.
“Have they been sent yet?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know when they are being sent, and I don’t know how. But I know where we can find out.”
Sharapovo
The sign on the frosted glass door read: LEONID TRUTNEV, COLONEL, COMMANDANT.
Nicolai had paid the young private at the front gate of the military compound 2,500 rubles to let them into the headquarters building. Once inside, they used a sock-covered flashlight to cut down on the glare as they searched through the filing cabinets. They had been inside the office for only five minutes when Nicolai let out a little exclamation of victory.
“I found it!” he said, looking at the documents in a file folder he was holding. “They were loaded onto a fishing trawler—the Andre Pashkov, Russian flagged, 62 feet long, IMO number 8606862. They are to rendezvous at 0900 Zulu on 1 July with a Venezuelan destroyer called the Felipe Gomez at latitude minus 15.792254 longitude minus 84.550781.”
Chris punched the numbers into his satellite phone, then sent it by text message.
“Inside the building! Come out now!” a voice shouted.
Moving quickly to the window, Chris looked between the blinds. There were at least twenty soldiers standing outside, all pointing their weapons toward the building.
“Damn, this doesn’t look good,” Chris said.
“This way,” Nicolai suggested, pointing to a door at the back. “It leads to the furnace room.”
Chris stepped through the door with Nicolai, but just before they left, Nicolai tossed a NFDD (noise and flash diversionary device) grenade back into the room. They heard it go off just as they reached the furnace room. Immediately after the flash-bang grenade went off, the soldiers arrayed around the front of the building opened fire. For fully one minute unabated gunfire continued from the automatic weapons the guards were using.
Because of the season, the coal-burning furnace was cold. But the coal bin was filled with coal, awaiting the winter. Nicolai tossed a thermite grenade into the pile of coal. Within a matter of seconds the coal bin was on fire and flames leaped from the burning coal onto the wooden walls of the bin, then to the walls of the building itself.
“We have to get out of here now,” Nicolai said.
The two stepped through the outside door of the furnace room, then dashed through the dark to the car they had left parked behind the building. Just before they reached the car two soldiers appeared. The soldiers opened fire and Nicolai went down.
Chris, armed only with a pistol, fired back, dropping both the soldiers. He hurried over to Nicolai.
“Nicolai, my friend,” he said.
“Go,” Nicolai said. “Leave me.”
“No,” Chris said. Scooping the Russian up, Chris pushed him into the backseat of the car, then getting behind the wheel, he started it, driving away just as three soldiers appeared in front of him.
“Halt!”
Instead of stopping, Chris accelerated. The soldiers opened fire on the car and bullets smashed through the windshield and Chris lay down in the seat, steering without looking. He felt the impact of hitting one of the soldiers, then he sat up just in time to miss the building. He started toward the gate but saw two men pushing a barricade across the road. Chris turned the wheel so that the fast moving car was headed directly for the soldiers. At first they tried to speed up closing the barricade, but seeing the car coming fast toward them, they abandoned their efforts and leaped to safety just as the car sped through.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Chris was driving through the dark, without lights, doing more than ninety miles an hour. Once he opened up a little distance from the camp, he slowed the car until he reached a curve in the road. A long, high growth of shrubbery edged the road at this point and he steered the car behind the shrubbery, then stopped.
There was another car in front of them, but this was by design because according to their plan, whether they had encountered difficulty or not, they were going to change cars here.
Tanya got out of the other car and ran back.
“Papa!” she shouted.
“You are a good driver, my friend,” Nicolai gasped.
“Papa!” Tanya said again, this time a cry, more than a shout.
“Don’t worry, daughter, I have been shot worse before,” Nicolai said. “Chris has shot me worse before.”
“I’ve never shot you, Nicolai.”
“No? Well, no matter, I have been so many times shot that I can no longer remember who has shot me.”
“Can you walk?” Chris asked.
“With help, I can walk.”
Chris helped Nicolai from the car then, supported by Chris and Tanya, Nicolai managed to walk to the other car.
“Put him in here,” Tanya said, opening the trunk.
Chris helped Nicolai get into the trunk, then was surprised when Tanya pulled a false bottom down so that he was completely hidden.
Even as they were getting into the car two military cars, coming from the Sharapovo camp Chris and Nicolai had just left, drove by very fast on the road on the other side of the hedgerow, not having seen the two cars parked in the dark. Tanya pulled up onto the road behind the speeding military cars, then started back toward Moscow at a normal speed.
“I’m sorry about your father, Tanya,” Chris said.
“As Papa said, he has been shot before,” Tanya said. “My father is very strong. I think he will be all right.”
Chris chuckled. “He is a tough old buzzard, all right, I agree with you on that,” he said.
Ahead, they saw a military car pulled across the road to block traffic. Chris pulled his pistol.
“No, wait, put the gun away,” Tanya said. “It will be better to bluff our way through. Reaching into her purse, she pulled out a tube of lipstick. “Put a little smear on your mouth,” she said. “Then reach behind and unsnap my bra.”
Chris did so and Tanya wriggled out of her brassiere. Then leaving the top three buttons of her blouse open to expose her bare breasts underneath, she lay the bra across her lap.
She slowed the car, then stopped as they approached the roadblock. A young soldier, carrying a flashlight, came toward them. “Cover your face with your hands,” Tanya said as she rolled the window down.
When the soldier reached the car, he shined his light inside.
“Why have you stopped us?” Tanya asked.
“Isn’t it late for you to be out driving?” the soldier asked.
“The kind of business I am in is best conducted at night,” Tanya said.
“What kind of business would that be?” the soldier asked.
Smiling seductively at him, Tanya turned her body in such a way as to open a gap in her shirt, allowing the soldier to see her bare breast. Unabashedly, the soldier shined the beam of his light on her breast, which was exposed all the way to the nipple.
“If you were not such a young virgin boy, you would not have to ask that question,” Tanya teased.
“I am not a virgin!” the young soldier responded adamantly.
“Oh? Too bad,” Tanya said. She took the soldier’s hand and placed it just inside her blouse, on her bare breast. “I do virgins for free.”
“What’s going on there, Khristenko?” the other soldier called to him.
Khristenko cleared his throat. “Nothing, sergeant, I am just examining the car.”
“You,” Khristenko said to Chris. “Why is your face covered?”
“He is an important businessman who lives in Moscow. I think his wife would not want to see him with a girl like me,” Tanya said. “Are you going to arrest us? When did the army start enforcing such laws?”
“Put your hands down,” Khristenko ordered.
Chris lowered his hands and the soldier shined the light on his face. The bit of lipstick smear was clearly visible in the beam.
“Why, you are an old man!” Khristenko said accusingly. “You should be ashamed for being with such a young woman.”
“Darling, old men are my best customers,” Tanya said. “Now, are you going to let us go, or arrest us?”
Khristenko stepped back from the car and waved them on. “They are of no importance,” he called to the other soldier.
The other soldier shined his flashlight on the car as it passed, and Tanya gave him as big a smile as she had Khristenko.
“We need to get your father to the hospital,” Chris said as they drove away.
“No, not a hospital, they would ask too many questions. I know a place to take him. They do a good job and they ask no questions.”
“Good.”
“Did you get what you needed.”
“Yes.”
“I am glad. If my father would die from these wounds, I would not want his death to be in vain.”
“I’m not going to die from bullet wounds.” Nicolai said and, turning, Chris saw that the back seat was down and his friend was crawling through from the trunk. “But if I had stayed in there much longer, I might have suffocated.”
Fort Morgan
“General, we have a text contact from Chris,” Willie said, coming into the office Jake shared with Bob.
“What does it say?”
“Five nuclear devices were loaded onto a fishing trawler—the Andre Pashkov, Russian flagged, 62 feet long, IMO number 8606862. They are to rendezvous at 0900 Zulu on 1 July with a Venezuelan destroyer called the Felipe Gomez at coordinates latitude minus15.792254 longitude minus 84.550781.”
Jake plotted the coordinates. “That’s just off Guatemala. And oh nine hundred, zulu, that would be fourteen hundred our time, day after tomorrow.”
“That gives Virdin plenty of time to get there with the John Paul Jones,” Tom said.
“Yes, we’ll order him there to sink the ship,” Jake said.
“No,” Bob said. “Why sink the ship? Let’s board the ship and confiscate the nukes. Do you have any idea what that would do to our military status? We would instantly become a nuclear power, one of only nine such nations in the world.”
“What if something goes wrong and they decide to set off one of the bombs? It would take out the John Paul Jones and its entire crew,” Jake said.
“These are Russians, not Islamic extremists,” Bob said. “I don’t think there is much danger of them setting off the bombs and killing themselves.”
“I think Bob’s right,” Tom said. “And if you can get me aboard the John Paul Jones, I’ll lead the boarding party onto the Russian trawler, and we’ll take the nukes.”
“All right, Tom, I’ll get you on board. Willie, contact the John Paul Jones and tell them what we’re up to,” Jake said.
“Yes, sir.”
“What will you need, Tom?”
“Deon, if he’ll agree to go with me.”
Jake chuckled. “Once Deon gets word of this, you’d have to tie him down to keep him back. I think you can count on him going with you.”
“You’re damn straight I’m going,” Deon said when he was apprised of the mission. “When do we leave?”
“As soon as we can get our gear together and say our good-byes,” Tom said.
Tom and Sheri were standing out on the balcony of their sixth floor condo in The Dunes. From here they had a tremendous view of the Gulf, and the offshore drilling rigs that Tom had helped liberate.
“I know you have to do it,” Sheri said. “But I don’t have to like it.”
“Sheri, there’s no doubt in my mind, but that these nukes are meant to be used on us. We can’t let that happen.”
“But do we have to try and capture them? Can’t we just sink the boat they are on?”
“I have the authority to do that, and if I see that we can’t take them, I’ll do that. But they are on a fishing trawler. I doubt that the people with them are military, because from all we’ve been able to gather, none of this is sanctioned by the Russian government. And even if the people with the nukes are military, how many can you get on a fishing trawler? This will be a piece of cake. We have the advantage of surprise, and probably numb
ers. Don’t worry about it.”
“I have to worry about it, because you damn sure won’t.”
Tom smiled. “I don’t need to worry about it. You are worrying enough for both of us. And consider this. It’s like Bob said. Taking these weapons will give us a huge edge over the AIRE. Enough of an edge that it might even keep them from any military action against us.”
“I don’t have to tell you to be careful, do I?”
“I don’t know, maybe you should, otherwise I might not be.”
Sheri smiled. “All right, don’t be careful. See if I care.”
“Well, if that’s the way you feel about it.”
“Be careful,” Sheri said, kissing him.
The next day Tom, Deon, and eight more men were delivered by an SH-60 helicopter to the John Paul Jones. The helicopter touched down on the after helo-pad and as Tom stepped out he was met by Stan Virdin.
“Tom,” Captain Virdin said with a warm smile. “Welcome aboard.”
“It’s good to be here,” Tom said.
“Come on to the wardroom,” Virdin invited. “We’ll discuss great and weighty things.”
“Captain Virdin, this is army Captain Deon Pratt.”
“Captain Pratt, I’m pleased to meet you. Please join Commander—” Virdin started, then he stopped and looked at Tom. Just exactly what is your rank in this new military we’re putting together?”
“Why, didn’t you know, Stan? I’m an admiral now.”
“Is that a fact?” Virdin asked skeptically.
“I think that’s what Jake called me. Or was it ‘asswipe’? I know it started with an A.”
“Now that, I can believe.”
“Actually the subject hasn’t come up. I guess I’m like the NCIS, I’ll just assume whatever rank I need for the job.”
Virdin chuckled. “Now, that’s the kind of rank to have.”
Deon looked around the wardroom at the paneled walls, the leather chairs, the long, polished table. “Damn, you officers live fine, don’t you?”
“What do you mean you officers?” Tom asked. “You’re an officer too, now.”
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