In fact, we were perceived as a more dangerous threat than the real terrorists. Why? Because, when we penetrated a base’s security (and we always did), the can’t cunts in charge took it personally. Instead of learning from us, they took our report and our suggestions, round-filed ’em, and breathed huge sighs of relief when our plane was finally wheels up. They believed, you see, that their fitreps would suffer because of Red Cell. And bad fitreps mean no promotions. And in today’s Navy, promotion is more important than counter-terrorism, right?
Ditto now, ditto Moscow. We were treated like personae non fucking gratae. Which meant we had to be watched carefully. Our quarters were far removed from the embassy compound. The minute we came through the gates, we had all been assigned permanent chaperons. We’d been given passes with a big red V—visible at ten yards—on them, the better to identify us as outsiders. We were not allowed to walk the embassy halls unescorted. Our conversations were monitored. Our schedules were rigorously scrutinized. Obviously, my men and I were considered more dangerous than Russkie spies.
So, of the dozen messages awaiting me, eight of them were rockets from the nasty man who ran the embassy. No, they were not from the ambassador. Ambassadors are all too often political appointees these days. They know nothing of statecraft, or history. They have bought their jobs by fund-raising for the president’s campaign, or slipping him some kind of other under-the-table help. That was the case here. The ambassador to the Russian Federation, Throckmorton Limpdick Numbnuts the Fourth, or some similar moniker, was a nice enough fellow—a billionaire from the awl biz, or bond markets, or whatever-the-fuck—who had his own private Gulfstream III which he used to commute to Saint Andrews, Scotland, every other week or so to play eighteen holes of golf with his pal Prince Charles and bring back two or three cases of twenty-five-year-old single-malt Islay Scotch, which he drank sans ice, in a Baccarat crystal tumbler, with a splash of branch water, commencing at 0900. Yes, 0900. Diplomacy? Don’t be silly. But did he ever give great parties.
Meanwhile, the real business of realpolitiks in Russia was carried on by the rezident éminence grise, the DCM, which, as I explained not so long ago, means deputy chief of mission.
And you already know about the DCM here. Nutshell: he’s an asshole, and…. Hey, do you hear all that commotion in the hallway? It’s that dweeb of an editor, screaming he’s heard enough fucking backstory already. Okay, okay, okay, every now and then he’s actually right about something. Solet’s move on.
I pulled off my still-damp clothes, stood under the lukewarm shower for ten minutes, toweled off applied Betadine where necessary, then pulled on a pair of running shorts, donned my half glasses, sat on the edge of the narrow bed, a towel on my lap, fieldstripped and cleaned my weapons and magazines, lubed them carefully, rubbed them dry, and then cleaned and dried each round of ammunition I’d carried with me. The submachine gun and USP pistol went into the steel lockbox.
In exchange. I pulled out a slim-framed P7 9mm autoloader, two eight-round magazines, and a well-broken-in small-of-the-back holster for daytime wear. I filled the magazines with Winchester’s Black Talon ammunition, loaded one. chambered a round, then topped off. Yes, Black Talon is restricted for civilian use these days. But then, as you know, I ain’t no civilian.
That done, I arranged the messages into their proper chronological order, and scanned them. The first one queried where I was and why I hadn’t checked in with the embassy security officer in more than six hours. Each subsequent message, delivered, I noted, on the precise quarter-hour, was more pompously hysterical than the preceding one. The final one—which had been received at about the same time I was discovering the Air France waybill at Andrei Yudin’s dacha—demanded that I present myself at Bart’s office first thing in the morning to explain, “in microscopic detail,” my actions of the past twenty-four hours. “It has been brought to my attention that you have exceeded your authority and mission parametrics.” the message concluded. “Therefore, I must be brought up-to-date immediately in order to evaluate what consequences should be undertaken.” Have you ever heard such fucking gibberish, friends?
Stevie Wonder, who had wrapped himself up in the room’s only extra blanket and tucked himself securely into bed, was wide awake now, studying a CIA street map of the Moscow suburbs so he’d know where to take his pair of Navy drivers for their defensive countermeasures instruction.
He watched my reactions as I went through my message traffic perusal with characteristic Wonder amusement. “I guess Bart’s the nervous type,” he said. He gave my mashed face and black-and-blue-splotched, Betadine-accented body a critical once-over and grinned at me. “Geez—what the hell happened to you? You look like you’ve been through the kielbasa grinder.”
He knew exactly what had happened to me and so he was being a smartass. “Fuck you,” I said by way of reply.
He shrugged and swiveled his head in his trademark right-left-right, left-right-left imitation of … Stevie Wonder. “Hey, no pain, no gain, Dolboeb.”
I was gratified to see that he’d learned to say dickhead in Russian. Wonder always treats me with such respect. Well, he’s allowed to be irreverent. He’s killed almost as many Japs, which is how we SEALs refer to bad guys, as I have. More to the pernt, as they say in his part of Noo Yawk, he has pulled my singed Slovak butt out of a bunch of fires. My extended middle finger told him that he was still Number One with me. “Yeah, well tonight I had a lot of goddamn pain but no fucking gain. Our friend wasn’t home. He skipped. Clean, too, from the look of it.”
I was leery about using proper names or virtually any other specifics in a Moscow hotel room. All those years of Cold War paranoia, y’see, have had their cumulative effect on me. I still have a problem trusting Russkies and anything to do with them—you saw the OMON colonel and his brand-new Rolex. Not to mention the fact that most Moscow tourist hotels still have the bugs that were installed by the old KGB as a way of targeting the odd agent of influence every now and then. The KGB loved agents of influence. They were businessmen, artists, politicians, and journalists recruited to covertly push Moscow’s line all over the world. Anyway, do those chandelier mikes, phone taps, and parabolic pickups still work? Probably not—but then, I wasn’t about to take any chances.
Wonder let the map and his magnifying glass drop onto his lap and pulled the blanket up around his shoulders. “So, nu, what’s next?”
I pointed at the light fixture and gave him the silent signal for We’ll talk later. Then I said, “Dealing with all this message traffic crap.”
“Cool,” he said, pronouncing it “kuul.” He went back to his map.
I took the messages and tore them into little pieces. “There,” I said, “all done.”
Wonder glanced up and saw me pulling on dry clothes. He put the map and glass down, groaned audibly, looked at his own clothes, which in true, chaotic, Dennis the Menace fashion were heaped haphazardly atop a creaky chair.
He gave me an RDL—a Real Dirty Look, pulled himself out of bed, unwrapped himself from his precious blanket, slipped into his skivvies, his T-shirt, and as thick a pair of socks as he could find, stuck a leg into a rumpled pair of jeans and slipped an S.O.B. holster on his belt. He dropped the magazine out of his compact Glock 27 9mm onto the bed, pointed the muzzle in a safe direction, unchambered the round in the barrel, reset the mag, chambered a new round, then released the magazine, topped it off, slid it back into the pistol’s butt, and placed the now cocked and locked weapon into its holster. “Fuuuck you,” he said, searching through the clothes pile for a sweater.
As an ex-Recon Marine who has seen more than his share of the cold, wet boonies, Wonder really hates the great outdoors.
0251. I rousted the rest of the team and after a suitable litany of grousing we headed out. At first, our path was seemingly random as we cut down one, two, three, four narrow side streets, walked past the rear entrance of the Minsk Hotel, then strolled around the corner and past the Baku, an Azeri restaurant that served
great Turkish food. In the old days-pre-perestroika according to Boris—Baku was where fashionable young Kommies from the old Komsomol used to eat. From there we headed north, checked our six as we passed the Moscow Cinema, then began circling through a series of narrow, one-way streets.
Yes, we were checking for surveillance. Once I’d determined that no one was following, we cut back the way we’d come, and began walking eastward alongside the twelve lanes of the Garden Ring Road, our shoulders hunched against the moist, cold wind that blew in our faces. The traffic was light—an occasional Mercedes blew by, its back windows curtained. There were a few trucks, their diesel engines grumbling in the cold, and a couple of Zhiguli police cars, blue lights flashing. But the sidewalk was deserted.
Master Chief Hospitalman Doc Tremblay’s right arm rubbed up against my left. I’ve known Doc since I was a wet-behind-the-balls tadpole, getting my butt busted by Chief Everett Emerson Barren’s big boondockers in his Second-to-None Platoon at UDT 21. To my right, Stevie Wonder, whose real name as you probably know is neither Stevie nor Wonder, muttered rude imprecations about my parentage as he marched with his hands in his pockets. He was doubly upset: first, because he was out here in the cold, and second, because he’d left his gloves in the room.
Just behind Wonder, Duck Foot Dewey’s short legs churned to keep up the pace Doc and I had set. Duck Foot—given name Alien—is a barrel-chested hunter from Maryland’s Eastern Shore. When he’s not stalking geese, grouse, doves, or deer, he’s hunting tangos with me. Duck Foot was flanked by the rest of the menagerie I’d brought to Moscow. On his starboard side was Gator Shepard; on his port, the Rodent.
As we walked, we talked. I gave them a quick sitrep on the evening’s largely unproductive enterprise. There were groans when I described OMON’s clumsy tactics. Gator Shepard’s pace quickened. He nudged his way between Wonder and me. “Do you trust Boris?”
It was a good question. I’d been put in touch with Boris Makarov by a man I do trust (you will meet him shortly). He’d vouched that Boris was a good guy—one of the few good guys in the Moscow police. But there are good guys you trust, and there are good guys you don’t trust. For example, I hadn’t shown Boris and Misha either the matchbook (if anyone knew where the Dynamo was it would be them), or the waybill.
To be honest, I’d been uncharacteristically uneasy since we’d arrived here; anxious and restive in a way that was new, unexpected, and frankly unsettling. Being in Russia was like being on an alien planet. I have always thought there was no place on earth I could go, and not fit in. Until, that is, I came here.
The fact that I felt as stuck out as your proverbial sore khuy bothered me. Because if you feel like an outsider, you are going to act like one—and that is going to put you at a tactical disadvantage.
I’d run the possibles without finding a solution. Finally, I rationalized that, since I’d spent virtually my entire professional life trying to hunt and kill the Soviet Bear, my us-or-them mind-set would naturally be hard to change, and therefore I’d just have to live with it.
So I told Gator the truth about trusting Boris. “I don’t know yet,” is what I said. And I didn’t.
By the time we circled back toward the hotel, I had passed around the matchbook—no one had heard of the Dynamo Club, which told me it wasn’t anyplace frequented by the Americans in Moscow. The guys also pored over the air waybill
Wonder kept it the longest. “So?” I asked.
He did a passable Jack Benny. “I’m thinking, I’m thinking.” We walked on. “Hot freon tanks,” he said. “I’ve seen that before. The question is, where.” His face scrunched up in concentration. “Iraq, I think,” he finally said.
“Iraq?”
“When I was there on the UN inspection team.” About five years ago, Wonder, whose nominal job cover was machinist’s mate first class at the Washington Navy Yard, had been slipped undercover into Baghdad by DIA—the Defense Intelligence Agency-to monitor the Iraqi nuclear program. He’d gone as part of a United Nations inspection team. He therefore knew a lot about nuclear facilities, and how they are put together. “Hot freon is what they call dual-use technology, Dickhead. That means it can be used for legitimate chemical processing—like in high-quality metal refining. But hot freon can also be used to clean the high-speed vacuum centrifuges they use to make nuclear weapons grade plutonium.” He scratched his chin like a twelfth grader pondering a geometry question. “From what I can recall, it’s a critical part of the final refining process.”
That was not welcome news. “How do you know whether the freon is being used militarily or not?”
“You don’t. That’s why you have to watch carefully where it goes.”
“That fits,” I said. “Paul was looking at dual-use shipments, too. And the mafiya.”
“Makes sense,” Doc said. “Russian organized crime’s been caught trying to sell surplus Soviet nukes—so why not the technology that makes the weapons, too.”
“Besides,” Wonder interjected, “the drop point is fake.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Mustique is about five square miles in size. There’s no industry. It’s a private resort—maybe a hundred or so million-dollar homes and one hotel.”
How Boy Wonder knows this sort of trivia I cannot fathom. But I am grateful that he does.
“Which means …”
“Which means,” he continued somewhat pedantically, “that this”—he shook the waybill under my sore nose—“is a phony.”
I round-robined the guys to see what embassy gossip they had picked up and was happy to hear they’d each managed some bit of helpful recon. Duck Foot had no specifics but nonetheless perceived something was awry. His instinctual hunter’s sensibilities were disturbed. The vibes around the embassy, he said, were bad. He wasn’t the only one to notice. Morale among the Marine guards was low, Wonder said. Lots of resentment, and not a lot of discipline. The gunny in charge was a weak s.o.b. who deferred to the powers that be. Wonder shook his head dejectedly. This wasn’t the Corps he knew and loved.
According to Gator, who is an ex-cop and attuned to law-enforcement’s distinctive gestalt, things weren’t much better in the LEGAT, or LEGal ATtaché’s, office. Gator and his lowly FS-3 (Foreign Service Grade Three) political officer escort had stopped by the cafeteria for a cup of weak coffee and sat two tables away from the FBI special agent who was posted to Moscow as the embassy LEGAT. Gator had made small talk with his minder—and listened as the disgruntled gumshoe complained to a fellow diplomat that it was getting harder and harder to do his job because of the fucking ninth floor’s interference. The ninth floor was where the ambassador and DCM had their offices.
From my aft port side, Rodent chirped that the second class petty officer he’d been teaching counter-surveillance techniques to had waited until they were alone on the street, then he confided that Paul’s driver—the one who’d been killed—had told him Paul was getting a lot of flak from the DCM about his intelligence work in nonmilitary areas. “He said that Terry-Ann—that’s the dead driver, Skipper—overheard the admiral and his wife talking one night, and that Becky Mahon told the admiral he should cut Bart Wyeth off at the knees—complain to Washington about him before things got out of hand.”
Now, remember I said I’d explain Red Cell’s covert mission when it was all clear? We’re getting close to our hotel now, so let me give it to you fast. It goes like this: Red Cell’s security assessment mission was a cover for its real assignment: active counter-terrorism. While one contingent of Red Cell shooters did the security training, another—much smaller—could slip off and neutralize the bad guys. It didn’t happen every time we went on the road. But it happened often enough (and was so effective that no one ever caught on) to make all the headaches caused by C2COs (those loveable Can’t Cunt COs) worthwhile.
Why do I tell you this? It is because the same dynamic was in place now. My guys were doing official NSMTT training. By the numbers. And. I can add with jus
tifiable pride, they were doing a great job, teaching the military personnel how to stay safe in this potentially hostile environment.
And while they taught, I’d gone hunting.
Now, however, it was time to expand our covert activities. I had a slim lead on Paul’s killers, and I wanted to exploit it in the few days we had left here.
A light snow began to fall as we strolled and made our plans. Doc, Gator, Duck Foot, and Rodent would finish out the training cycle full-time, Wonder would do double duty, and I would work the stealth side of the house.
Yes, they complained that I’d be having all the fun. And yes, they bitched and pissed and moaned about their sorry lot in life. And I had to grant them their point: it is more fun to hunt than to train. But if we were to be successful here—and I was willing to accept no less-then they would have to do their jobs while I did mine. Let’s all say this mantra together: Thou hast not to like it—thou hast just to do it.
Besides, they’d get ample time to play. Tomorrow night, we’d all go out and enjoy ourselves at a place called the Dynamo, sometime after 2130.
Kenny Ross and I had worked together once before. As the captain of the USS Humpback, a nuclear attack submarine that had been retrofitted as a SpecWar vessel, he had watched me and my Red Cell team as we infiltrated North Korean waters and took down a supply ship in Chongjin Harbor.
Chapter 3
THE LIGHT SNOW HAD TURNED TO A HEAVY, INSISTENT, BONE-chilling sleet by 0600, when the alarm in my head went off and I got up from my short combat nap. I pulled the curtain aside, and peered down into the hotel’s sooty courtyard, barely able to make out the dirty ice crust forming on the brickwork four stories below. I put my fingers to the window and cracked it a couple of inches higher to let in some fresh air. It was well below zero out there—perfect weather for an invigorating day on the Moscow streets.
Wonder’s bed was already made. No maid service for him. He always did his bed himself—Marine-style. You could bounce a damn quarter off the blankets, too. I knew he was already long gone. His pretraining assignment today was to locate, then recon, the Dynamo club and its environs, so we’d be well prepared for the evening’s festivities. Given the weather, and the fact that his cold weather boots were back in the States, he was probably cursing me in eight or nine languages right now. Well, he didn’t have to like this morning’s work—he just had to do it.
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