by Earl Merkel
From the darkness to her left came a sudden crash, the sound of something hard and heavy smashing on a concrete floor.
Every sense heightened to an unnatural pitch, April stared into the dark as if she could, by sheer force of will, force her eyes to penetrate the inky blackness. She shifted her position slightly, aiming at where the sound had come from. April braced her gun hand on the crate and waited.
She stayed that way for several long minutes, unmoving, feeling her muscles stiffen. There was no movement, no sound except what she fashioned in her own mind.
As she pressed her body even closer to the rough wood of the shipping crate, she heard, or thought she did, another sound to her rear. Then April sensed Trippett’s presence behind her, imagined that she felt the muzzle of his pistol brush against the back of her head.
Her head snapped to look, and she saw the dark form. It was crouched, arms extended in a two-handed Weaver stance, not more than ten feet away.
April O’Connor spun around and fired two shots into the third man she would kill that night.
That was how a tactical response team from the Columbia Falls police found her, seven minutes later. April was kneeling on the hard concrete floor beside a torn and bloody figure, her pistol within reach on the unfinished surface. Despite being near exhaustion, she was still performing cardiac compressions on a body the team leader could tell, with a single glance, had been dead before CPR started.
Wide in a surprise that would last forever, the already clouding eyes of Jesús Robles stared transfixed on a horrible emptiness.
For an instant, April fought the hands that tried to pull her away from Robles’s body. Then she accepted what she too had known all along, and allowed one of the TRT members to half-walk, half-push her toward the outside. They followed the cold strong draft that blew in from the front of the warehouse. As they moved, April felt something heavy in her hand; it was her pistol, and she realized that she must have snatched it up without conscious thought.
When April was gone, the team leader, a lieutenant, squatted behind the same wooden box that had shielded April. He was armed with a shotgun, which he trained into the darkness. Around him, he saw his tac team in similar positions.
“We still have a suspect in here, and he may be armed,” the team leader said. “Where the hell are the damn floodlights? Get ’em fired up, fast.”
When they were mounted on their tripods, he made a thumbs-up gesture. Immediately, the cavernous warehouse lit up with several million candlepower of white light.
Of Orin Trippett, the lieutenant saw no sign. But movement on the floor next to a small packing crate that had smashed on the floor caught his eye.
“Hell is that?” he muttered to his second, a sergeant. “Looks like a rat, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” the sergeant said. “What’s the matter with it? Damn thing’s having a fit or something. Shit. There’s another one.”
The team leader squinted at the convulsing rodents. They reminded him of something, and he frowned in concentration, trying to—
Then it hit him, and the hairs rose on the back of his neck.
“Red ball, red ball!” His voice was unnaturally shrill as he called the code to abort. “Everybody! Pull back to the cars outside.Leave the fucking lights, dammit! Everybody move,now !”
As he moved, counting the heads of his team as they retreated, the lieutenant thumbed the microphone clipped to his shoulder.
“Eleven-Bravo—be advised, I got a haz-mat alert,” he said, and he wondered if his voice broadcast how shaken he felt. “This is not, repeat,not a drill. I think we’re dealing with some kind of poison gas here.”
Day Two:
July 22
Chapter 9
52,000 Feet over Northern Spain
July 22
Beck shifted, uncomfortable in the nylon webbing, Nomex flight suit, G-pressure pants, life vest, parachute strapping, oxygen mask and flight helmet into which he had been inserted. He tried his best to keep his eyes down, fixed on the green hues of the instrument panel. He rarely succeeded for more than a few minutes at a time. Then Beck would look outside the acrylic-composite canopy, at the dizzying blackness where no visible point of reference existed, and feel the wave of vertigo wash over him yet again.
Right then, the world tilted sharply, a fact felt by his inner ear if by no other sensory organ, pressing him sideways against the five-point harness. He felt the air bladders inflate against his legs as the pressure suit automatically worked to squeeze his blood back to where it was needed.
The voice of Major Carl Frankel, USAF, crackled in his headphones.
“Uh, just a minor course correction there, Dr. Casey,” he said, and Beck wondered if all jet jockeys were sent to a secret school where they learned to talk like Chuck Yeager. “Madrid’s got a little more turbulence than usual, so we’re being vectored to new refueling coordinates south of León.”
They had been in the air for slightly more than four hours, and Beck was no longer certain he could feel his own feet. In Washington, he had traded what in retrospect had been Cleopatra’s barge for travel accommodations that were far more Spartan, though incomparably faster.
At first, it had sounded interesting—exciting, even—to be flown across the nighttime Atlantic to greet the morning sun as it rose over Europe. Beck had logged an impressive number of flight miles in his time, more than a few of them in small aircraft. But he had never before flown in a F-15J Eagle, the latest two-seater version of the Air Force’s first-line fighter. It was capable of speeds in excess of Mach 2.Significantly in excess, particularly when afterburners were engaged—a fact that Major Frankel seemed intent on proving to his passenger.
But what they gained in speed, they lost in fuel efficiency. They were coming up on what was the last of three scheduled in-flight refuelings.
During the first two, Frankel had nudged the fighter in what to Beck seemed an alarmingly close proximity to the KC-135 tanker, itself visible only as a looming shape slightly blacker than the surrounding night sky. The tanker trailed a stingerlike retractable boom that ended in a ridiculously undersized docking coupling; he knew this because of Frankel’s running commentary, not because any part of the fueling appendage was visible without the night-vision goggles the pilot had donned.
The Eagle’s refueling probe lifted from a hatchway behind the cockpit, which gave Beck a ringside seat to the intricacies of docking. It seemed to him a perilous sort of mating dance. Nor was he comforted by the thought of thousands of pounds of flammable jet fuel pulsing over his head into the Eagle’s tanks.
Presumably, they had been over terra firma for some minutes. To Beck, that was mere rumor, optimistic conjecture that he suspected was the pilot’s attempt to soothe his passenger’s nerves. When Frankel had announced landfall, Beck looked outboard, expecting that even from fifty-two thousand feet the vast geometric gridlights of modern cities would be visible. No such luck; a strong low-pressure wave off the Atlantic, unusual at this time of year, had socked in the larger part of Spain. They were approaching French airspace, and according to the pilot no break in the thick cloud cover was expected soon. That, and the fact that the sliver of new moon provided virtually no ambient illumination, only added to Beck’s disorientation and jet-lag gloom.
He reached down to the panel and gingerly thumbed the only button he knew how to use. The omnipresent crackle in his headphones flattened, and he spoke.
“What’s our time to Russia, Major?”
There was a slight dead-air pause until he remembered to release the intercom switch.
“—so our ETA is about seventy-two minutes, give or take.” Frankel’s voice came in midsentence. He chuckled. “I don’t imagine Moscow logs many F-15 landings, Dr. Casey. Hope they remember we’re friendlies. You let me know if their SAM batteries light us up, will you? It’ll give me a chance to go evasive.”
Beck hoped he was kidding.
There was a burst of static over the radio, and a woma
n’s voice came in loud enough to make Beck wince.
“Uh, Night Rider, this is Auto Club,” she said, and Beck wondered if Yeager had a daughter—make that a granddaughter—in the service. “We have you on scope as range oh-three-seven, two-two-five relative. You wanna take your foot off the pedal, we’ll get set for a fill-up. Uh, while we’re at it, you want us to check your oil?”
“Hang on, Doctor,” Frankel said, and once more the Eagle banked hard right. “Guess you know the drill by now. This won’t take long. Next stop, Sheremetyevo International Airport.”
Moscow,Beck thought.
His stomach lurched again, though this time not entirely because of the aerial maneuver. The only heartening aspect was a thin sliver in the darkness, still too weak to be called daylight, that was etching its faint line on the far horizon.
Mockba,it looked to Beck, the Cyrillic script disorienting in its dyslexic mix of forward and backward lettering. He remembered the sign on the main terminal, but much else had changed since his last visit. When the Eagle had nosed down into its prescribed landing pattern, his rear-seat vantage point had given him a panoramic view of the metropolis. Here, it was already late morning; sunlight reflecting from the streets and buildings made the city glitter.
Muscovites enjoy reminding their visitors that, like Rome, Moscow is built on seven hills. This is difficult to prove. Only the most expert eye can detect more than one or two of these, the topographical formations themselves having long ago surrendered to maniacally fanciful czarist architecture and the bleak geometric designs of socialist progressivism. Throughout much of the ’eighties, when every available ruble was being thrown into a desperate attempt to match Western arms expenditures, there had been little left over for construction. There was even less after the Soviet system skidded into virtual bankruptcy. Neither had the boom times of the ’nineties found its way into construction of anything exceptMafiya -owned dachas and walled compounds. This had brought an exhausted monotony to the Moscow cityscape that Beck had found somehow comforting.
No longer.
To the north, urban sprawl had settled in; towns and what looked like private estates had sprung up in what had, the last time Beck had been there, been open fields. The activity showed no signs of slowing; in the distance, along the route to St. Petersburg, he could see bright yellow earthmoving vehicles scraping the curves of new residential roadways.
Beck also was surprised at the number of shopping malls; some of them were as large as their American counterparts, though with far fewer cars parked in far smaller lots. They flew over near the city’s center, above the open expanse that was still called Red Square, and Beck sighted the Golden Arches of McDonald’s. Just east of the triangular walls and minaret spires of the Kremlin, the F-15 had swept over what from the air looked like a Pizza Hut.
And in the final approach, as the F-15’s wheels thudded into lowered-and-locked position, Beck looked closer at the glut of billboards he had noted from high overhead. They were also new and prolific as mushrooms after a spring rain. They advertised a cornucopia of Korean electronics, American cigarettes and Western European consumer goods. Capitalism, in all its forms and variations, clearly had come to the former workers’ paradise.
By now, they had received instructions. Frankel taxied the fighter away from the main Sheremetyevo II terminal, bouncing over occasionally cracked or weed-tufted concrete toward a hangar undistinguished save for its sheer size. It was unmistakably military, and the ground personnel who swarmed around the Eagle as it braked were efficient as army ants, carrying tire chocks and wheeling out a green cherry picker. The latter had been spray-painted either inexpertly or carelessly; faintly, just below the fresher tricolor ensign of the Russian Federation, Beck could still discern the single red star.
Frankel opened the canopy. Beck caught the usual airport scents of scorched rubber and burned kerosene, and more: a smoky, earthy, semiacrid tang that his memory immediately recognized as uniquely Russian. While the Air Force major supervised the fighter’s shutdown, Beck submitted meekly as a blond man in military-style coveralls disentangled him from the straps and wires he had worn for hours.
Within moments, Beck found himself hustled inside the hangar. He had left the helmet in the Eagle, but his Power-Book and canvas carryall bag dangled by their respective straps from either hand. His body was stiff from inactivity and his gait bowlegged from the awkward embrace of the tightly laced G-suit. He looked like the world’s most miserable tourist; as he walked, he waddled like a wounded duck.
“Ah, Beck Casey! You have injured yourself, my friend?”
Alexi Malenkov, wearing a Russian Army uniform, stood in jackbooted splendor near the open rear door of a Zil sedan. His tone was solicitous, but too much so; his face was split wide with a grin.
“Hello, Alexi. No, just not as flexible as I used to be.” Beck eyed the collar insignia on the crisp uniform. “A General, I see. Last time I saw you, weren’t you a Lieutenant Commander? In the RussianNavy ?”
Alexi looked down at his tunic, and shook his head mock sadly.
“True. And I much preferred the Navy’s taste in fashion. But what is there to be done, my friend? In our business, I have found it valuable to stay flexible.”
He made a gesture, and the blond Russian quickly helped Beck strip off the G-harness. Malenkov watched with polite interest as Beck unzipped the Nomex flight suit, peeling himself out of it like an arthritic snake shedding skin.
“ ‘Iowa State,’ ” Malenkov read aloud, and pursed his lips theatrically. “Perhaps I could lend you something a little more . . .formal, my friend?” He shrugged at Beck’s expression. “No matter, eh? So. Your pilot will stay here; there are accommodations waiting. We have business to do. Come.”
As Beck settled in to the rear of the auto, Malenkov spoke to the driver in Russian.
“Yehat ’k Kremlin,”he said.
Beck automatically translated:To the Kremlin.
The trip from Sheremetyevo to the center of Moscow is no more than twenty miles, but it can take as long as two hours—unless, that is, one is a passenger in a state vehicle equipped with a siren. Cars swerved aside to let them pass, some with alacrity and others with a studied indifference to the show of official impatience.
The back seat of the Zil was spacious. Beck stretched his legs, feeling his muscles threaten mutiny as he did. Outside on the right, they were passing what appeared to be a forest of massive concrete obelisks: concrete antitank hedgehogs arranged as a monument to the counteroffensive that sent Hitler’s supermen reeling more than a half century earlier.
“I have missed you, Beck,” Malenkov said.
“Three years is a long time, Alexi. Director of state security; you’ve done well for yourself.”
“Bah.” Malenkov tried to look humble, and failed utterly. “I have become a bureaucrat—the type of person that as field operatives, we both loved to hate.”
There was an extended silence that threatened to become awkward.
“Your last visit to my country—” Malenkov frowned and shook his head. “Well, it is of no matter now. Necessary evils, eh?”
He lit a cigarette, without which no Russian feels complete. It was a Russian brand, the kind with the long cardboard tube that serves as a holder. Malenkov inhaled deeply of the fragrant smoke, and blew it toward the roof with obvious satisfaction.
“I myself have always feared torture,” Alexi continued conversationally. “I knew that I would be unable to resist. In the end, one always talks, yes?”
“Of course you talk,” Beck said tightly. “You answer every damned question they ask. If you don’t know, you make up the answers that you think they want to hear. And finally, when they run out of questions, you tell them everything else I . . . you can think of.”
“Ah, Beck—you are upset. I apologize. I thought it would be perhaps therapeutic, to talk of these things. And I am frankly curious. Few men survive an abduction by theMafiya .”
Beck looked o
ut the car window.
“Alexi, we’ve known each other a long time. I even enjoy your company. Sometimes, you’re so affable that I tend to forget what I know about you.”
“And that is?”
“That you were a KGB thug before you started shaving. You’re old school, Alexi—we both are, so please don’t tell me how uninformed you are about theMafiya . Half of the people who wired me up like a science project were working in yourDirektorate back in the early ’nineties. Now they’reMafiya .”
“Yes,” Alexi agreed. “A sad commentary, how many of these criminals are former KGB men.”
“And so convenient. They have such excellent contacts throughout your armaments industries. Even in those parts of it that make biological weapons.”
Malenkov shrugged expansively.
“It is difficult to restrain commerce, my friend. Many countries seek such items. It is unrealistic to think that the less idealistic of my countrymen would not attempt to fill this demand. That they did so as . . .private businessmen—well, neither is that particularly difficult to understand. The state could no longer afford their services, so they became entrepreneurs.”
“It’s always valuable for a government to stay close to its business community. To work in each other’s interests, so to speak. Of course, the relationship was very fortunate for me.”
“Beck, webought you from them,” Alexi said, as if he was explaining to a child. “You awakened in a Moscow hospital. Did you think the gentlemen of ourMafiya were so considerate?”
“I always wondered about that,” Beck said. “It wasn’t as if the CIA was working overtime on my behalf.”
Alexi laughed, and to Beck it sounded like genuine amusement.
“No, except for the usual inquiries between diplomats, the CIA was surprisingly inactive. While there were those in my government who wished simply to let the filthygovnos leave your body in Gorky Park, your survival was the result of Russian humanitarianism.”