by Scott McEwen
“He may wait until night,” Dragunov remarked.
“Only if he’s a damn fool. For all he knows, we’ve called for backup.”
“He’s as patient as a snake.”
“Yeah, well, so am I,” Gil said. “And we’ve got the fucker boxed in. I can send you for pizza and beer if comes to that. Meanwhile, they’re stuck in there.”
“A beer sounds good,” Dragunov said. “I’ll be back to check on you later.”
“Just don’t come back drunk,” Gil said with a grin. “Last thing I need is a drunk Russian stumblin’ around in the weeds to give away my position.”
“Fuck it, then,” Dragunov said. “We’ll drink after.”
“You’re buyin’.”
KOVALENKO HAD THE AWS rifle set up across the kitchen table on its bipod, scanning the terrain beyond the farm, but the glare of the sun on the kitchen window made it difficult to see with much detail.
“They have to be up there on the bluff,” he muttered.
“How in hell did they find us?” Vitsin wondered aloud. “There’s no way they could have followed us—none.”
“Satellite.” Kovalenko’s eye was still to the scope. “You came in a red car, remember?”
Vitsin suddenly felt very stupid for not having told Tapa—the team’s car thief—to steal something else. “Do you think that’s how?”
“That’s the American out there,” Kovalenko said, half to himself. “The damn Americans have everything. He probably had satellite surveillance in Paris too. Those fools we relied upon in the CIA are worthless. If we hadn’t needed their help planning the pipeline operation . . .”
He shook his head. “They fucked us somehow, but it doesn’t matter now. Lie down with a whore, you get what you pay for.”
“Maybe we could run for the cars,” Vitsin suggested. “Could he get all five of us?”
“We’d be dead before anyone could even turn a key.” Kovalenko wiped a bead of sweat from his brow, glancing down at Anton, who still lay half in, half out of the house, his head blown apart like a ripe watermelon. “The American has a rifle, which means his people are supplying him. And that means we don’t have all day and night.”
“For all we know,” said one of the others, a veteran named Zargan, “there could be an entire Spetsnaz team out there waiting to hit us when it gets dark. We should barricade the house.”
“Make the necessary preparations,” Kovalenko ordered. “And someone drag Robert inside so we can close the door.” Then an idea occurred to him. “Tapa, go upstairs to the bedroom and get the blanket from the bed to wrap the body.”
Tapa went up the stairs, and Kovalenko put his eye back to the scope.
Zargan used the poker from the fireplace to hook Anton’s belt and drag him the rest of the way inside. Vitsin kicked the door closed.
Tapa stepped into the bedroom, grabbing the wool blanket from the bed. A window pane shattered, and he was thrown against the wall with the force of mule kick, the ball of his shoulder joint shot completely away.
Kovalenko spotted the small dust cloud kicked up by Gil’s shot, shifted his aim a fraction of a degree and fired.
When Gil saw Tapa’s dim figure in the upstairs window, he squeezed the trigger and rolled immediately to his left, knowing that Kovalenko or someone else might be scanning the bluff. An instant later, a round cut through the air exactly where Gil’s head had been, close enough for him to feel the energy of the bullet as it passed. Both he and Dragunov pulled quickly back out of sight.
“That fucker’s fast!”
“I told you,” Dragunov said. “He’s been shooting since he was a child.”
“That was too fast! He sacrificed that guy to draw me out.”
Dragunov’s face was grim. “That’s why he’s called the Wolf. Kovalenko is willing to do whatever it takes to win.”
Gil sat back on his haunches, holding the sat phone in the crook of his neck and lighting a cigarette as he spoke with Midori. “Keep an eye on things,” he told her. “We’re eyes off target for the moment.”
“Nothing’s happening,” she said. “Are you hit again?”
“No.” He drew from the cigarette to settle his nerves. “But that bastard’s almost killed me three times now. I’d like to get just one shot at him.”
Dragunov reached for Gil’s smokes. “Maybe if you had waited,” he said under his breath.
“Hey, smoke your own,” Gil told him.
Dragunov gave him the finger and shook a cigarette from the pack, lighting it with a wooden match and lying back in the dry grass to stare up at the sky. “We’re going to have to fight them in the dark again. I hate fighting in the fucking dark.”
29
WASHINGTON, DC
General Couture was in the White House kitchen drinking coffee and chatting with the French chef, who was making him an early breakfast, when the White House chief of staff came looking for him.
“I heard I might find you in here,” Brooks said with a smile.
Couture shook his hand. “I learned as a second lieutenant to make friends in the kitchen.” He gave the chef a wink. “Whattaya got?”
Brooks hesitated, glancing at the chef, who stood over the stove sautéing a pan of mushrooms.
“Don’t worry about old Jacque,” Couture said, patting the chef on the shoulder. “He’s on our side. What’s up?”
“The SDV team’s been transferred aboard the Ohio,” Brooks said. “She’ll be on station off the point of San Vito Lo Capo within the hour, ready to bring Shannon and Dragunov aboard.”
“Comms?”
“They have a sat phone. It’s less than ideal, but it’s going to have to do. As we speak, they’ve got Kovalenko cornered in a house outside of Palermo. Pope’s technician says it’s still touch and go.”
“Sicilian authorities?”
“Still searching for them to the south in Corleone.” Brooks shrugged. “Don’t ask me why.”
Couture answered with a shrug of his own. “Small mercies.” He took a drink from his coffee. “Latest intel out of Georgia says the Spetsnaz are moving against Umarov, so with any luck, Shannon won’t have to go to Georgia.”
“Speaking of Georgia, the president is wondering whether to call a meeting with British Petroleum. He thinks maybe we should brief them on the pipeline plot. Thoughts?”
Couture shook his head, leading Brooks away from the stove and out of earshot from the chef. “Fuck BP. It’s not even an American corporation. We’re not letting that camel’s nose back under our tent. If the pipeline gets hit, they can learn about it in the news like everybody else. All they have to hear is a whisper about trouble along that pipeline, and they’ll have their Obsidian mercenaries tear-assing all over southern Georgia—doing God knows what—and the last thing we need is a bunch of corporate warriors getting in the way if Shannon ends up in-country.”
“Okay. So how should I put that to the president?”
“Just like that,” Couture said evenly. “You don’t have to sugarcoat shit with him anymore. He gets it now. That fucking idiot Hagen is out, and you’re in. No more dog and pony show.”
“About Hagen . . .” Brooks lowered his voice even more. “I’ve just been given reason to believe that Pope may have something clandestine in mind for him.”
Couture took another drink of coffee, locking eyes. “Glen, do you know how many men I’ve lost under my direct command during my long and storied career?”
Brooks shook his head.
“Six hundred forty-three men and women,” Couture said. “That’s not counting the suicides among those who made it home. Tim Hagen’s no better than any of them, and if Pope’s got something clandestine in mind for him, then I’m guessing he’s earned it—in spades.”
“Okay. Suppose I had direct information—proof?”
“Do you?
”
Brooks thought it over and then let out a sigh. “I don’t know. Not for sure.”
“Then look at this way,” Couture said. “If not for Pope, we’d have lost two supercarriers and a huge chunk of the Pacific Fleet to that nuke last summer—not to mention half a million lives or more. Now, I know you’ve never met Hagen personally, but I know the little prick as well as anybody, and I wouldn’t piss in his mouth if his teeth were on fire.”
Brooks grinned. “Senator Grieves speaks rather highly of him.”
Couture’s scarred face turned to stone. “Senator Grieves would. Leave Hagen to Pope—that’s my recommendation.”
30
NORTH OSSETIA,
Russia
Yakunin and his Spetsnaz were in hot pursuit of Dokka Umarov and his men, charging through the forest in a running battle against a stubborn Chechen rearguard action designed to buy time for Umarov’s escape. The staccato of automatic-weapons fire was constant, interspersed with exploding 40 mm grenades and the occasional burst of fire from the supporting Hind helicopter, which by now was running low on ammo.
Yakunin drove his men hard, determined to see the end of Dokka Umarov. He estimated that they had burned through half their ammunition, but he was confident they would soon finish off the middling force of Chechens.
All of his instincts were proven dead wrong, however, the second he and his men ran head-on into the defensive line set up by Prina Basayev and his Chechen force from the east.
A barrage of RPG-7s streaked across the forest, detonating among Yakunin and his Spetsnaz. Bodies flew into the air, were hurled into trees, blew apart. Fifteen men were obliterated in the blink of an eye, and the remaining few were quickly picked off.
Yakunin landed on his belly, bleeding from multiple wounds. He felt broken inside, reaching for his carbine only to find that his right arm was missing from the elbow down. The firing died off, and he blacked out.
He came too with someone kneeling on his back, rifling his trouser pockets. The Chechen flipped him over and began rifling his harness, jamming the spare magazines and grenades onto a battered rucksack.
“My men?” Yakunin croaked.
“All gone,” the Chechen said, not even bothering to look him in the eye as he flipped open Yakunin’s wallet.
“The photo.” Yakunin reached out with what was left of a bloody left hand.
The Chechen looked at him, took the photo of the major’s wife from the wallet and stuck it between Yakunin’s only two remaining fingers.
Yakunin stared at the photo as the Chechen stripped him of his gear and body armor.
Dokka Umarov appeared, waving the fighter away. “You are the commander?”
“Da,” Yakunin croaked, still staring at the photo.
“Who betrayed my location?”
Yakunin glanced up, knowing he didn’t have long to live. “You were observed by a reconnaissance team. We almost had you this time, ublyudok!” Bastard!
Umarov nodded sullenly, holding Yakunin’s carbine. “Yes, I admit I got lucky. But luck is the only quality in a commander that really counts.”
“True enough,” Yakunin admitted, choking on the blood rising up the back of his throat.
Umarov knelt beside him to poke a cigarette into the corner of his mouth, lighting it for him with a match. Then he gestured with the carbine. “You want to go quick? Or to wait?”
“I’ll wait,” Yakunin whispered. “It won’t be long.”
Umarov stood up and slung the carbine, giving orders to his men. “Leave nothing of value!” They could hear the Hind, long out of ammo, flying away to the northwest. “They may send more crocodiles, so we’ll travel southeast until nightfall, then bear west over the mountain to link up with Mukhammad.”
Umarov was joined by Lom on the march out. “It was close,” the younger man said.
“Yes,” Umarov agreed. “They should have killed us to a man. They had every advantage, but war is like that sometimes. The superior force does not always win.”
“It was the will of Allah. He was with us.”
“He is with us always, but you would do well not to place too much credit or too much blame where He is concerned. There will be days when He expects you to take care of yourself, and you will never know which days those are. Today may have been such a day.”
Lom thought about his uncle’s words as they marched along through the afternoon, attempting to reconcile them with those in the sixth surah of the Qur’an, verse seventeen: “And if Allah should touch you with adversity, there is no remover of it except Him. And if He touches you with good—then He is over all things competent.”
By sundown, Lom concluded that his uncle either possessed a deeper understanding of the Qur’an than he did, or he had allowed himself to become jaded after so many years of war.
He looked toward the head of the column, where Umarov marched alongside the Basayev brothers—Anzor and Prina. “He is Allah in the heavens and in the earth,” he whispered to himself. “He knows your secret thoughts, and your open words . . . and He knows what you earn.”
31
SICILY
“There goes the sun,” muttered Ivan Dragunov.
Gil glanced toward the horizon, the stock of the G28 still pulled into his shoulder. “I’ve been thinkin’. Suppose Kovalenko’s men brought night vision. We could be in for a shift in the initiative here.”
Dragunov considered the possibility. “If Kovalenko had infrared, we’d already be dead. It’s not likely the men brought night vision with them.”
Gil adjusted the sat phone’s earpiece. “Midori, you still reading us?”
“Roger. I copy direct.” Midori was now monitoring both of their phones on separate channels back in Langley, and they could both hear her, but they could not hear each other.
“You still got visual on us?”
“Roger that as well.”
“Okay.” Gil took the 1911 pistol from the small of his back and gave it to Dragunov. “As soon as the light fades, you can work your way down close to the house on the blind side to the east. Stay away from the barn and the goat pens, though. If those fuckers start bleating, Kovalenko’s gonna know what we’re up to.”
Gripping the Italian cop’s Beretta, Dragunov tucked the 1911 into his belly.
“You know how to work a 1911?”
“Of course,” Dragunov said. “It was the preferred weapon of my enemy for a long time.”
Gil chuckled. “It’s still my preferred weapon.”
“I suppose you’re staying up here where it’s safe?”
“Well, this ain’t exactly a close-quarter weapon, Ivan. We have to play to our strengths.”
“I’ll man the rifle,” Dragunov said, taking the 1911 back out of his pants.
Gil moved away from the G28, almost preferring to take the fight to the enemy, and put out his hand for the pistol. “Okay, chief.”
His bluff called, Dragunov put away the pistol again. “Don’t miss, Vassili—and don’t shoot me by mistake.”
Gil repositioned himself behind the rifle. “Midori will make sure I know where you are at all times. Right, Midori?”
“Roger that.”
When the light faded, Dragunov moved out to the east, skirting the farm until he reached the edge of the road. Visibility was less than fifty feet in the darkness. “No movement outside the house?” he asked Midori.
“None,” she answered. “You’re exactly in line with the blind side of the house now. You should be able to advance without being detected. I’ll vector you in.”
Over the next couple of minutes, she fed him directions for the most expedient approach to the house, helping him to skirt copses of trees and brush without getting disoriented in the dark. He arrived at the eastern side and lowered himself into a crouch with his back to the wall, trading
the Beretta for the 1911. “Make sure Gil knows I’m in position,” he said in a low voice, knowing that whispers carried in the dark.
“Roger.”
Back up the bluff, Gil scanned the silhouetted terrain below. There was no light inside the house; not so much as a candle burning. “I can’t see much of anything from here,” he said. “It’s just too dark. Advise Ivan I’m moving in closer.”
He began to slither forward down the slope, knowing that if Kovalenko possessed even a chintzy nightscope, he was a dead man.
“Stop!” Midori said. “A man with a rifle just climbed out the opposite side of the house from Ivan.”
Gil backed into his hide among the brush. “What’s he doing?”
“Nothing. Just waiting.”
“Do I have line of sight from my position?”
“Negative,” she said. “He’s still around the corner. Ivan’s asking what he should do.”
“Tell him to hold position.” Gil knew that Dragunov would willingly defer to his judgment because he held the high ground. “We’ll give the situation time to develop.”
Inside the house, Kovalenko decided that his enemies did not have night vision capabilities. The badly wounded Tapa had voluntarily crept past the kitchen window three different times without taking a bullet. So Kovalenko sent Zargan out the side window with orders to stalk the American sniper. He understood they might be under infrared satellite surveillance, but there was simply no other choice.
“We have to put an end to this,” he said to Vitsin and two other Spetsnaz men. With Zargan outside now, there were only four of them left in the house, and though Tapa was bearing up well under incredible pain, he was fast losing what little remained of his combat effectiveness. “Either we fight our way out, or we die here on this fucking goat farm.”
“I’ll stay behind to cover your withdrawal,” Tapa said, holding a Kashtan submachine pistol against his leg, his right arm now bound tightly across his chest with a torn bedsheet.
Kovalenko patted him on the good shoulder, regretting having sacrificed him for a shot at Gil. He knew in his gut that the American was still out there and still very much alive, because the goats were still bleating in their pens, when they should have been bedded down for the night. “We’ll take you with us if we can. First, we have to find out whether we have an open avenue of escape.”