Deep Black db-1

by Stephen Coonts

  A Barrett 82A1, however, could make a kill at 2,000. During the Gulf War, the.50-caliber rifle adapted from the M2 machine gun had been used at least once to kill a man at 1,600 meters — roughly a mile.

  Move the range.

  If they moved the range out to 2,000 meters, the courtyard entrance would be in range of another office building.

  Two, in fact.

  “What kind of access to weapons would this guy have?” Dean asked Lia.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Could he get a Western rifle?”

  “It’s best to assume he could get anything he wanted,” she said. “Why?”

  “We’ve been thinking of a Russian gun. They’re accurate at eight hundred, a thousand meters. If he used a long-range American weapon he could almost double that.”

  “And still be accurate?”

  “Accuracy depends on the shooter, and there are always trade-offs. But yes.”

  Lia found a place to park. They checked the first site again using the new range criteria; there wasn’t a tall enough building there.

  “So basically, we just extend the circle on the Education Building,” she said.

  “These two buildings,” Dean said, leaning close to show her.

  She gently leaned her head against his chest as she examined the screen.

  “Let’s do it,” she said, pulling up right and hitting the gas.

  69

  The satellite image showing the troop movement came into the Art Room about ten seconds before the translated intercept was delivered, and in that small space Rubens feared that they had missed something, that their massive network of sensors and stations had somehow failed to pick up the command for the coup to begin — or worse, that they had picked up the signal but failed to interpret it properly.

  But then it was like the start of a thunderstorm, information pouring in from every direction, more units starting to move.

  “We have confirmation,” said Rubens, looking at Hadash. “Launch Piranha. Initiate the rest of the attacks.”

  Hadash nodded. Telach pushed her button. The Piranha unit, ensconced in its own bunker in another part of Crypto City, unleashed the viruses. Within thirty seconds, Russian computer systems began to overload and fail. Meanwhile, the jammers began disrupting communications, and the other virus attacks were launched.

  “Time to alert Kurakin,” Rubens told Hadash.

  Hadash nodded. He told the aide on the other end of his phone line to put President Marcke on.

  “They’re putting through the call now,” said Hadash. He listened for a second, then relayed a question from President Marcke. “Where is Kurakin?”

  “Still at the Kremlin,” said Rubens.

  “Negative,” corrected Telach. “He’s just getting into his limo to go out to the Education Building. We have that marked in sector three. He has a passenger.”

  “Who?” asked Rubens.

  “We’re working on it,” said Telach. She had to practically shout to make her voice heard over the din. “But we think it’s Vladimir Perovskaya, the defense minister.”

  “Can’t be,” said Rubens. “He’s orchestrating the coup.”

  70

  Dean craned his head upward, not so much looking at the buildings as absorbing them into his brain. If he were the sniper, where would he be?

  He was a sniper a million years ago under completely different circumstances, called on to do completely different things.

  If he were the sniper, where would he be?

  The buildings had about equal views, if the simulation on Lia’s handheld computer was accurate. So Dean would opt for the apartment building — there’d be less coming and going during the middle of the day.

  Three, possibly four rows of windows would have a shot. Which would he take?

  Dean would go to either the most obvious place, which would be dead center in the top row, or a considerably more obscure spot at the left side of the building, where the window offered a narrower view but probably just as good an angle.

  His position would depend on all sorts of things, starting simply with access.

  If he were the sniper, he’d think about how he was going to get away. One of his instructors had pointed out, aeons ago, probably on the first day they met, that you weren’t really successful unless you lived.

  “How do we get in?” Dean asked Lia when she returned from casing the block. There was nothing suspicious.

  “We just go in,” she told him. “Why this one?”

  “Because it’s an apartment building,” said Dean. “Less people to run into.”

  “No, it’s crammed with people,” she said. “These especially — they get four or five families to an apartment. You could have six people in a room. He couldn’t chance someone coming in, even if he took the others hostage.”

  Dean shrugged. Lia played with her handheld for a few seconds. “That building is mostly vacant.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s on our inventory of government buildings.”

  She turned the screen toward him, but Dean didn’t bother looking at it; he’d already turned to examine the building.

  A little higher than the apartment building, different angles but essentially the same choices.

  Lia nudged him toward it. “We only have time for one. Austin says Kurakin’s on his way.” She began to trot; Dean fell in alongside.

  Was this the ultimate irony: two Americans — hell, the entire NSA, CIA, and God knew who else — working to save the life and government of a Russian president?

  In Dean’s day, the Americans would have applauded if there was a coup; they might even have engineered it.

  This was Dean’s day. Still. He was in it as deeply as he’d ever been.

  The door was carded. Lia took a card with a set of wires on it from her pocketbook. She inserted the card into the reader, the wires hanging down, then attached what looked like a small, thin travel clock to the wires. There was a loud buzz; the lock popped on the door.

  “Which floor?” she asked, trotting toward the steps.

  “Top,” said Dean. “There’s no elevator?”

  “I doubt it works,” she said. “Come on.”

  Dean was huffing by the third floor, and there were twenty-something to go. On the fifth landing he stopped for a breath and looked through the doorway. There was an elevator about halfway down.

  “Hey!” he shouted to Lia. “Let’s check the elevator.”

  “Go ahead!” she yelled, still running.

  He walked out into the foyer, still huffing. As he punched the button, someone emerged from an office a few doors down. Dean tried to turn his grimace into a smile as the man approached, praying the man wouldn’t say anything that he’d have to respond to. As he reached to punch the button again the elevator door opened. Dean stepped in and jabbed the button for the top floor.

  As the doors started to close, the man began to shout and run toward the car. Dean hit the close-doors button, pretending at the same time to put his hand out as if to stop the car. The man jammed his hand against one of the doors but failed to hold it; he jerked his hand away and they traded puzzled looks as the car began to move even before the doors had fully closed.

  While it sounded more like a garbage disposal than an elevator, the car actually moved swiftly toward the top floor. As it rose, Dean took out the small pistol Lia had given him in the car and made sure it was loaded and ready. The doors opened and he walked into the corridor calmly, trying to orient himself and calm the adrenaline that charged around his skull.

  There were a dozen doors nearly on top of each other lining the hall. Dean counted off five and stood outside the sixth. He put his hand on the knob gingerly, expecting, knowing, it would be locked.

  Except that it wasn’t. And now that it was moving, now that he had the knob in his hand, the door seemed to ease inward on its own — he was committed; there was no way to wait for Lia, no way not to jump inside the room gun-first, le
ft hand coming up to steady his aim.

  Nothing.

  Dean’s heart pounded in his mouth as he slid along the wall, angling to keep the open doorway on the left in view. He could see a window, something moving — he dived forward into the space, hitting the floor and just barely keeping himself from shooting a shade.

  Dust lay thick on the faded floor linoleum. Dean rolled up, started back to the hall — and walked right into Lia’s pistol.

  “Fuck,” he said.

  “Fuck yourself,” she said. “Shit.”

  They looked at each other, catching the same breath, catching something besides fear and surprise and anger in each other’s eyes.

  “Shit,” repeated Lia.

  “Shit.” Dean pushed away, back into the hall to the next door. “This one.”

  “No, there’s no one up here. I’ve seen the scan. You’re it.”

  “Shit.”

  He stood over her, peering down at the screen. “The building’s clean?”

  “No — we can only get this floor from the satellite. We’re going to have to look at the others. And listen, don’t go springing open any more doors. They may be booby-trapped.”

  “Let me see that 3-D again,” he said. He took the handheld from her as the view flashed up. “This office — let’s look at that,” he said, pointing to a window on the seventeenth floor at the far end of building. There’s an air shaft right next to it — see the roof?”

  Lia didn’t answer. Her hand was once more at her ear. “Car’s about three minutes away, maybe less,” she said, loping for the stairs.

  71

  Alexsandr Kurakin leaned back in the Mercedes, listening to the defense minister babble on about the Navy’s needs for an aircraft carrier as if Kurakin were some second-level bureaucrat who didn’t know a machine gun from an anchor. For the past two years he had endured such mindless lectures silently, nodding when appropriate, pretending that Vladimir Perovskaya was a military genius. They were now within sight of the Education Building and it occurred to Kurakin that he no longer needed to listen to such lectures.

  “Aircraft carriers are obsolete,” he said. “The American carrier battle groups can be sunk or disabled within an hour after I issue the order. The real difficulties are their satellites and missile systems, which will soon be rendered impotent. I have already given the order.”

  Perovskaya finally stopped talking. His jaw lowered slowly as he stared at the president in complete disbelief.

  Kurakin began to laugh. One of the phones on the console between the two men rang. Kurakin picked it up.

  It was his chief of staff. The president of the United States had an urgent personal message and wanted to talk to him directly — now, right now. It was more urgent than possibly could be believed.

  Kurakin could believe it. But while he had expected the Americans to discover the coup on their own — indeed, he had planted the clues — he had not expected a warning.

  Touching, in a way.

  “Well, the president of the United States,” he said, turning and looking at Perovskaya. He gave a snort of derision, which the defense minister didn’t react to. He held his hand over the mouthpiece; they were just turning into the complex.

  “You go in without me,” he told Perovskaya. “Keep the old comrades entertained until I catch up.”

  72

  Karr had climbed out of the train yard when a pair of police cars sped past in the opposite direction. He waited until they were out of sight, then jogged quickly down another road, treading his way into an area of small shops and apartments.

  About a mile from the train yard he found a table outside a small shop and sat down to take stock of his battered body. His pants were ripped in two places and his ankle was swollen; otherwise his legs were all right. His stomach was fine. His chest and side hurt like hell, but to check on the damage he’d have to take his shirt and vest off.

  No sense doing that. Just see really big bruises. If there were real damage there, he’d be dead, most likely.

  His head felt as if it had been taken off and put back on at an odd angle. He touched the skin near his right eye — the one he thought he could see out of fairly well — and nearly screamed with the pain. He didn’t dare try it on the other side.

  The shop where he’d stopped sold secondhand clothes but also did a little bit of business in the morning and afternoon selling tea and drinks quite a bit stronger. A middle-aged woman noticed that he was sitting outside and came out to see what he wanted; she started to tell him that customers ordinarily came inside to get what they wanted but stopped abruptly, obviously put off by his face.

  “Bandits,” he told her in Russian. “But I’m OK. Scared ’em away with my face.” He smiled. “Tea?”

  She nodded, then backed through the door. Karr had to check in but decided he’d have to wait until she reappeared with his drink.

  Some parts of Moscow could be Brooklyn, New York. In fact, some parts of Brooklyn probably seemed more foreign than parts of Moscow, more Russian at least, stocked deep with e´migre´s who were consciously and in some cases desperately trying to re-create what they liked about their homeland. Here people weren’t trying to hold on to anything except what they needed to do to get by. Dean watched a woman push an immense baby carriage up the nearby hill, stopping every few moments to take a break and talk to her passengers — a pair of large mutts, not children. Two workers shared a cigarette as they passed across the street.

  The woman came out with his tea, along with a bowl of warm water and a washcloth. She wanted to wash his wounds. As gently as he could, Karr told her no, he was fine. “I’m OK; I’m OK,” he insisted. She was almost in tears as she went back inside.

  Rockman answered in the Art Room when he punched in.

  “Hey,” Karr told him. “Give me Rubens.”

  “All hell’s breaking loose,” said Rockman. “We’re under way.”

  “Yeah. Give me Rubens.”

  “Fuck, man. We’re busy.”

  “He wants to talk to me.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Just do it, runner.”

  “Mr. Karr, quickly,” said Rubens.

  “I had to shoot him,” said Karr. “No doubt about him being a scumbag. I’m guessing it went back some, too. They must’ve had a pretty important reason to blow the penetration on Wave Three, don’t you think?”

  Rubens didn’t say anything. Obviously, he’d already figured that out.

  That’s why he was the boss.

  “Sorry I bothered you,” said Karr.

  “Wait for Rockman,” said Rubens, going off the line.

  As he waited for the runner, Karr looked up and saw that the woman was now peering at him from the doorway. She had a bag of ice in her hand — and a bottle of vodka in the other. Karr waved her over. What the hell.

  Karr jerked away as the ice touched the side of his head, but the woman’s soft grip on his chin turned him back.

  “Thanks,” he told her, forgetting for a moment and speaking in English. He repeated it in Russian, adding that she was an angel; the woman smiled and told him he was welcome.

  73

  Rubens pointed to Rockman, signaling him to take the line back. As he turned back toward Telach, Johnny Bib ran into the room.

  “They’re using fractals,” shouted Johnny, arms flying crazily. His head bounced back and forth; he seemed to be having one of his fits.

  Perfect timing.

  “Excuse me, Johnny,” said Rubens.

  “Look,” said Bib. He shoved some pictures in Rubens’ hand. “They’re at the base of the photos, these sequences down here. We’re working on them, but the significant thing isn’t the cipher, it’s the pictures.”

  “These pictures are of Perovskaya,” said Rubens.

  “It’s a setup to discredit him. They’ve just started to circulate. From the president’s office, with information about a coup.”

  The pictures showed the defense secretary and a young male in bath
ing suits. Perovskaya had his hand around the man’s waist, reaching toward his crotch.

  “Oh,” said Rubens aloud. “Oh.”

  Rubens realized why it wasn’t clear who was behind the coup. Even before Martin had turned up alive, it had been obvious the Russians were hiding something important concerning the Wave Three target — now he knew what it was.

  He turned to Hadash.

  “Perovskaya’s the assassin’s target,” he said. “Perovskaya, not Kurakin. Kurakin set it all up.”

  “Why would he do that? He could just fire the defense minister.”

  “Yes,” said Rubens. “It’s a cover — the Wave Three target — we must strike the lasers immediately. This was all arranged by Kurakin to cover an attack on us.”

  74

  The car pulled into the lot flanked by two larger limousines carrying the security people. The assassin slid his finger ever so slightly against the edge of the trigger.

  This was the difficult moment, the point at which time suspended itself. The moment could stretch to an infinity.

  The reticule — the American scope used crosshairs rather than the pointer familiar on older Russian devices — was zeroed in on the left side of the car. He had a good, clean view, would see his target’s face clearly before firing.

  One shot. Then out. He could feel the people who’d been sent to get him already working the building, waiting for him to come. They’d have the entrances guarded, be on the roof. But he was ready.

  One of the bodyguards knocked on the car window, then moved away. There were others nearby, six or seven people, bodyguards and aides now trotting through the courtyard from another vehicle, a small bus. He ignored them all, waiting for the door to open. Finally, it cracked. His target put his foot on the pavement, hesitated.

  There was a noise in the distance as the moment floated in its infinity. A bodyguard moved. The target remained in the limo. The assassin’s finger remained steady on the trigger.