by Scott McEwen
He felt a slight pressure against his right shin and froze in place, but it was already too late. An empty mineral water bottle, stuck upside-down on a stick, tumbled from the shadows overhead and shattered against rocks, making a noise loud enough to wake the dead.
“Stupid motherfucker!” he swore silently, crouching to touch the black bootlace that had been stretched across the crevasse as a trigger for the ad hoc booby trap.
“Throw out your weapons!” called a voice with a Chechen accent. “You’re cornered. There’s no escape.”
Gil took a quick glance around, seeing no immediate line of retreat.
“Come and get me!”
“It was you in Paris, yes?”
Gil made a closer examination of the walls. They were too smooth to climb and too far apart to brace himself between them and shinny out.
“You can forget climbing out!” Kovalenko called to him. “That was you in Paris, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. So the fuck what?”
“Who told you to look for us there?”
“Fuck you care?”
Kovalenko chuckled. “I lost a good friend that night. I want to know who else to kill.”
Gil thought that over, deciding, “What the fuck? I just might die in this fucking rat trap.”
“His name’s Tim Hagen. Cocksucker wants me dead—don’t ask me why.”
“I will remember his name,” Kovalenko replied. “Now throw out your weapons.”
“Eat me.”
“I promise to let you live.”
Gil didn’t even dignify that with a response.
“Listen, I don’t need to kill you to keep you from following me.”
“Fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I give you my word as a soldier to only shoot you in the knee. That’s a healthy compromise, no?”
Gil laughed.
“Listen to me!” Kovalenko insisted. “I no longer want to kill you. You’ve proven a worthy adversary—and I’ve proven myself the better man. Let us settle this like those who came before us. Yield to me, and you will live. I swear it.”
Gil shook his head, believing the Chechen actually meant what he said. “I’m not volunteering to be shot in the fucking knee.”
“In the elbow, then. I give you the choice.”
“You’re a generous sukin syn, I’ll give you that.”
It was the Chechen’s turn to laugh. “I like you, but soon my people will arrive. They will have grenades. Do you want that?”
“Bullshit,” Gil said. “We both know ain’t nobody comin’ except the police. I’ll take my chances with them.”
There was a long pause, and Gil moved to the back of the niche, watching for Kovalenko to appear above him.
Almost an entire minute passed before the Chechen spoke again. “You have night vision, yes?” There was a perceptible urgency in his tone that hadn’t been there before, and his voice was coming from a lower angle among the rocks.
“Why you wanna know?” Gil inched forward with the pistol ready to fire over the lip of the opening.
“Throw it out to me, and I’ll leave.”
“No. Get your own.”
This time there was no reply, and after five minutes of waiting Gil began to feel as though he were alone. “What the fuck’s goin’ on?” he muttered.
An animal growled above him, and he looked up to see a Doberman pincer. It snarled and showed its teeth. Then a second Doberman appeared, and both dogs started barking crazily, letting their handlers know exactly where they were.
“Sorry about this, guys.” Gil aimed the suppressed M11 upward and shot both dogs through the bottom of the jaw, killing them instantly.
He moved to the opening of the crevasse and stole a look around the corner, seeing Kovalenko running away down the dirt road to the south, already well out of pistol range.
A police car came jouncing through the curve to the north, its red and blue lights dancing off the rocks, and Gil watched on as Kovalenko turned around, dropped calmly to a prone position, and pulled the rifle into his shoulder.
The Chechen fired two shots in quick succession. The police car swerved off the road, and Kovalenko was back up and running a second later.
There was a lot of shouting now coming from above and behind Gil’s position, the handlers calling excitedly to their dogs.
Gil stepped out of the crevasse and slid down the face of a boulder.
“Halt!” a voice shouted from above as he scrambled toward the road.
Pistol shots rang out, and bullets ricocheted off the rocks at his feet as he darted across. A bullet zipped past his left ear, and he disappeared into the darkness.
Three more police cars came through the curve with searchlights cutting back and forth. One of lights locked onto Gil, and he sprinted for the sea. The cars slid to a stop as he was running into the water, and a burst of submachine-gun fire stitched the surface. A bullet pierced his right calf, and he dove into barely thigh-deep water, bashing his face against the rocky bottom and stroking wildly for the safety of the deep.
He swam until he thought his lungs would burst, daring to surface only at the last possible second, still only fifty yards from shore. Gil was marked almost instantly by the beam of a flashlight and driven back under by more machine-gun fire. He swam harder than he’d ever swum in his life until at last the bottom fell away, enabling him to dive deep enough to strip his shoes and clothing, racing to the surface for another precious gulp of air.
He swam northward, managing to leave the searchlights behind, stroking smoothly beneath the surface. Entirely in his element now, Gil made his way back to the SEAL team extraction point, where the two frogmen had been shot. It took five minutes of cautious searching, but he found the dead SEAL’s dive gear and slipped beneath the surface to put it on. Then he poked his head out of the water one last time, pulling on the full-face mask equipped with through-water communications and disappeared for good beneath the surface.
“Typhoon actual to Typhoon main. Do you copy my traffic? Over?”
Ten seconds later, he was answered by the Ohio: “Go ahead, actual. We copy.”
Now that he had swim fins, Gil was quickly leaving the shore behind him. “Main, be advised the target has escaped due to intervention of local law enforcement. I am now in the water and safely away. Break.”
“Go ahead, actual.”
“Can you lock out a second SDV team to help me locate the first vehicle? I was unable to retrieve the transponder unit, so I’m swimming blind. Over.”
“Roger that, actual. The team is gearing up. ETA at outer marker twenty-five minutes. Over.”
“Copy, main. I’ll be standing by out at the outer marker.”
38
BETHESDA NAVAL HOSPITAL,
Bethesda, Maryland
Pope sat in his hospital bed talking on the phone with Vladimir Federov of the GRU.
“Dragunov is now safely aboard the submarine?” Federov asked.
“That’s right,” Pope said. “He lost a finger on Sicily, but other than that, he’s in pretty good shape. Our man is a bit more banged up. But they’ve both been tended to by the surgeon aboard the Ohio, and after thirty-six hours’ rest, we can put them ashore in Europe. All we need is for you to arrange the when and where.”
“What about Kovalenko?”
“That fish got away,” Pope said. “I understand your people attempted to take out Dokka Umarov yesterday? How did it go?”
Federov didn’t respond immediately.
“We overheard some radio traffic,” Pope volunteered.
“Well,” Federov said, “then you must already know how it went. Umarov wiped out an entire Spetsnaz team. Neither of us is doing very well, Robert.”
“These are still the early innings. Is Moscow giving you trouble?”
“My superiors are not patient men,” Federov said. “The French government has identified Yeshevsky and the other men that Shannon killed in Paris. Their Ministry of Foreign Affairs is giving our ambassador a difficult time.”
“I take it you’re no longer in Paris?”
“I’m in Bern now,” Federov said. “The DPSD wanted to question me. I thought it better to avoid that.” The DPSD was the French military’s Direction de la Protection et de la Sécurité de la Défense, charged with counterespionage.
Pope chuckled. “I can imagine you did. They’ve made a couple of subtle inquiries at our embassy, but our ambassador there doesn’t know anything.”
“My superiors are worried your State Department will leave us holding the bag on this if it goes public.”
“I can understand that,” Pope said. “And while I can’t promise that won’t happen, I do know that my president and his closest advisers are pleased by the level of cooperation we’ve enjoyed thus far. We both have mud on our faces, and if it went public today, I’m confident my president would be willing to accept an equal amount of responsibility—as long as your superiors would be willing to admit this has been a joint operation.”
Federov chortled. “That would certainly cause a certain amount of gossip within the NATO community.”
“I’m not sure gossip is the right word,” Pope replied, “but I take your point. Anyhow, it’s a new world. The Islamists are about to join the nuclear weapons community, so Russia and the United States are going to have to learn to work together. NATO may even one day become irrelevant. Regardless, it’s our job to make sure this little mess we’ve created doesn’t go public. In fact, the future of the CIA probably depends on it.”
“Senator Grieves is still pushing to dissolve the agency?”
“Yes, and he’s gaining influence within the Senate. Not nearly enough yet, but a scandal like this wouldn’t help our cause.” Pope did not go on to share that Grieves was now the subject of an FBI investigation into possible treasonous activities.
“Have Western oil companies been advised on the plot to disrupt the pipeline?” Federov asked.
“No,” Pope answered. “We’ve decided to leave them in the dark. There was some trouble six months back with an oil platform off the coast of Nigeria, and their mercenaries made our job ten times harder than it needed to be, so we’re leaving them out of it this time.”
“Fine. How soon will the Ohio be able to put our men back ashore?”
“That depends on where you make the arrangements.”
“How about Turkey?” Federov suggested. “I have a number of resources there.”
“Good,” Pope said. “I’ll run it through the proper channels and get back to you in twenty-four hours.”
“That will give me the time I need,” Federov said. “Now, tell me: How are you feeling? I was more than slightly relieved to hear you had survived the attempt on your life.”
“The doctors tell me I’m mending well. Thank you for asking.”
“And the filthy traitors who ordered the attempt?”
Pope was quiet for a moment. “Well, you know the old saying, Vladimir: it’s stupid to fail.”
39
ISTANBUL,
Turkey
Istanbul was Turkey’s largest city, with a predominantly Sunni Muslim population of fourteen million. It covered two thousand square miles and was the focal point of Turkish cultural, economic, and historical interests.
Gil and Dragunov were put ashore in the dead of night at Aytekin Kotil Park, where they waited among the Cretan palms for a half hour until Dragunov received a text message from their GRU contact telling them to rendezvous with him at the main entrance.
The contact was a big, dirty-looking Russian with an unshaven face, and at three paces he smelled as though he hadn’t bathed in weeks. His name was Vlad, and it was obvious that he hated Gil on sight.
“You brought an American,” he said to Dragunov in Russian. “Why wasn’t I told?”
“You were told there were two of us,” Dragunov replied in the same language. “That was all you needed to know. Now, let’s move. I don’t like standing around in the open.”
They got into a small car with Gil sitting in the back, and Vlad drove out of the park onto Kennedy Avenue, a coastal road named for the US president John F. Kennedy. Gil saw the street sign that read “Kennedy Caddesi” and smiled. He was a long, long way from home, and seeing the Americanism was a comfort.
“Where are we going?” Dragunov kept a hand in the pocket of his US Navy peacoat, where he gripped a concealed 9 mm Beretta M9 pistol.
“Whorehouse,” Vlad answered, eyeing Gil coldly in the mirror. “We won’t be bothered. Prostitution is legal here, and we’re protected by the police.”
Unable to understand a word of what was being said, Gil pretended not to notice Vlad’s disdain, keeping his facial expression neutral and avoiding all eye contact. The last thing he wanted was to get into a pissing contest with the GRU in a Muslim country. Still, like Dragunov, he too had his hand in his peacoat gripping a navy-issue M9. Gil also had two spare magazines in his left hip pocket.
They drove through the lighted streets of the city until Vlad turned down a dark alley and pulled up to an unassuming-looking concrete building with two men standing outside in a dimly lit parking lot. A heavy fog was setting in, and the air was cold. There were six cars parked in the lot.
Vlad killed the motor, and they got out. A fat man with a bald head took Vlad aside and spoke with him in a low voice as Vlad lit a cigarette. When they finished talking, Vlad waved for Dragunov to follow him inside.
Gil nodded at the two men standing watch as he brought up the rear, keeping a wary eye out as they crossed the threshold into the building. The pervading scent was unmistakable: heavy perfume and marijuana. At a table inside the door, two more men sat watching television, and nine scantily clad young women lounged around on sofas and chairs in the shadowy foyer. A couple of the girls met Gil’s gaze, one managing a halfhearted smile, but most averted their eyes.
Gil felt his gut start to churn. “What the fuck is this place?” he muttered to Dragunov as Vlad stood talking with the men at the table.
Dragunov glanced around at the women. “What does it look like?”
“I thought we were going to a GRU safe house.”
“This is it,” Dragunov said. “What were you expecting? Something from a Jason Bourne movie?”
“Back here.” Vlad led them through a red-beaded curtain and down a long corridor of closed doors to a well-lighted kitchen area. Two more young women sat slurping soup at a card table, and he barked at them in Russian, causing them to get immediately up and flee the room.
“All they do around here is eat,” he griped to Dragunov. “If they’re not eating, they’re bitching about something. Ungrateful cunts.”
Dragunov nodded. “Coffee?”
“Over there.”
“Want some?” Dragunov asked Gil.
“Sure.” Gil took his cigarettes from the other coat pocket and lit one as Vlad walked out of the room through a blue-beaded curtain down a second corridor, growling orders at someone unseen. “He speak English?”
Dragunov shrugged. “Probably not, but watch what you say around him.”
“These girls are sex slaves. You know that, right?”
Turkey was one of the world’s most popular destinations in human trafficking. It was estimated that as many as eight thousand women may have been enslaved there, and the Russian mafia controlled a big part of the industry. They imported their women primarily from Russia, Poland, and Ukraine, but other crime organizations imported them from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Romania, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. This overt abuse of Turkey’s liberal prostitution policies had caused man
y Turkish municipalities to stop issuing licenses for new brothels and to refuse the renewal of licenses for existing brothels. This did little, however, to stem the flow of human traffic. The syndicates were too well established, and police officials were too easily bribed into compliance.
Dragunov took a seat at the card table with his cup of coffee. “It’s not our responsibility,” he said.
“What’s the GRU doing working with the Russian mob?”
A shadow crossed Dragunov’s brow as he sat looking up at Gil. “You’re saying the CIA never works with criminals? That no one ever gets fucked?”
Gil sat down across from him. “One of those girls out front can’t be a day over sixteen.”
Dragunov gazed at him. “What do you want me to do about it?”
Gil leaned back in the folding chair, exhaling with a sigh. “Nothin’.”
“Good,” the Spetsnaz man said. “Because there’s nothing that can be done. This is Turkey, and even if it was Ukraine or Belarus, what are we going to do, eh? Start a war with the Russian mafia?”
“Doesn’t sound like the worst idea I ever heard.”
One of the older women, perhaps twenty-six or so, came into the kitchen, her black hair flowing around her shoulders, and went to the coffee pot. It was empty, so she took a coffee can down from the cupboard. Her black nightgown was transparent and left nothing whatsoever to the imagination, her upturned nipples and dark patch of pubic hair clearly visible.
Gil couldn’t help being stirred, so he turned away.
Vlad came into the kitchen, grinned when he saw the woman making coffee, and said something to Dragunov.
Dragunov looked at Gil. “I guess she speaks English, if you’d like to fuck her.”
Gil glanced at Vlad and shook his head. “Tell ’im no thanks.”
“He says no charge—professional courtesy.”
Gil looked at the girl, who immediately lowered her eyes. “No thanks,” he muttered.
Vlad chortled, speaking at length with Dragunov before leaving the room again.
“What was all that about?”