by Scott McEwen
Gil stared at the table for a moment and then looked Putin in the eye. “Mr. President, I’ve come to respect you very much during our short time together, but you know that I can’t talk about Iran.”
“I suppose not,” Putin said with a sly smile. He fell silent, but after a pause, he spoke again in Russian. Savcenko translated for Gil. “You also rescued Warrant Officer Sandra Brux against orders, correct?”
Gil realized that Putin had been thoroughly briefed, and he understood there was no point to denying his actions in the Panjshir Valley. “I did, sir. Yes.”
Putin drank from his tea as Savcenko turned to Gil. “I’m curious how many more times you will need to disobey orders to pay for the sins of your father.”
Gil thought about that. “It’s a good question, sir. I don’t know the answer myself.”
“Would it surprise you to hear that Major Dragunov has accepted responsibility for bringing the girls home?”
“Not at all, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’ve fought together, sir. He’s saved my life, and I’ve saved his. Combat forms a bond, Mr. President, and warriors like us—well, sir, we tend to take all that gung-ho shit seriously.”
Putin laughed, his eyes suddenly much less lifeless than they had been, but the moment of levity was short lived. “I wanted to talk with you to learn the mind of an American Special Forces operative. This is a rare opportunity for me.”
Gil smiled. “I understand, sir. May I ask a question of my own, sir?”
“You may, yes.”
“Will Major Dragunov be punished, sir?”
Putin didn’t answer for a long time. Finally, he said, “Sasha Kovalenko has been spotted in Belarus. By now, he’s making his way back to South Ossetia. Would you be interested in another opportunity to face him?”
Gil felt his blood begin to pump. “Very much so, Mr. President.”
“Major Dragunov will be pleased.” Putin took another drink of tea. “He would very much like the opportunity to redeem himself. But I will need for you to give me your word that you will not deviate from the mission this time.”
Gil held Putin’s gaze for a long moment, hoping that Pope would never get such a bright idea. “You have my word, Mr. President.”
“Very well,” Putin said. “Major Dragunov is preparing your weapons and equipment. Your plane leaves in an hour.”
“Excuse me, sir, but I was told that I’d be meeting with someone from my embassy this evening.”
“Well, you can if you like,” Putin replied, “but that will mean missing your chance to accompany Major Dragunov.”
Gil chuckled. “In that case, sir, will you give the American ambassador my regards?”
“I will do that,” Putin said with smile. He then addressed Gil in English: “Shall we drink to your mission, Master Chief?”
“Absolutely, Mr. President.”
They toasted the mission, and it was all Gil could do not to gag on the pint-size shot of vodka.
49
IN THE SKY OVER THE CAUCASUS MOUNTAINS
The Russian An-72 transport jet cruised along at three hundred miles per hour, not much more than three thousand feet off the deck.
Gil sat across from Dragunov dressed in Russian combat gear. “This is fucking insane.”
Dragunov smiled, drawing calmly from a cigarette. “Not as crazy as jumping out the back of a 727 over Iran.”
Gil smirked, shaking his head. “I don’t know where you people get your information.” He knew that Dragunov was referring to Operation Tiger Claw, the mission in which he had infiltrated Iranian airspace via a Turkish Airlines flight almost two years earlier.
“From a reliable source,” Dragunov assured him.
“Yeah? Maybe you’ll introduce me to that source sometime.”
“Maybe.” Dragunov’s gaze was confident, much more so than when they’d gotten off the helo back at the Kremlin. “Tell me about your meeting with Putin.”
Gil shrugged. “There’s not much to tell. First he complained about what a huge pussy you are, and he then asked if I’d go along to look after you.”
The Spetsnaz man laughed.
“I felt bad for the guy,” Gil went on. “I couldn’t tell him no.”
Dragunov sat smiling. “You used an SVD for the Iran assassination, correct?” An SVD was the Dragunov SVD sniper rifle in 7.62 × 54mmR (rimmed), invented by Ivan’s grandfather.
Gil’s eyes narrowed. “I was never in Iran . . . Ivan.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Dragunov said. “The rifle you have now is even better than the one you carried in Iran. It’s a match weapon taken from the Kremlin Armory.”
The SVD in Gil’s load-out was essentially brand new, with a black polymer stock, and equipped with the standard-issue PSO-1 scope, suppressed. The SVD held a ten-round box magazine, and Gil carried eleven mags. His main combat weapon would be a 5.45 x 39 mm AN-94 assault rifle with a GP-34 40 mm grenade launcher. His sidearm was a 9 mm Strike One Strizh. The rest of his load-out consisted of an NR-40 Russian combat knife, a dozen 40 mm grenades for the GP-34, six RGN hand grenades, medical bag, Russian third-generation night vision, radio headset, high-energy food bars, a water bladder similar to a CamelBak, and various incidentals.
“What speed are we jumping at?” Gil asked. “A couple thousand?”
“No,” Dragunov chortled. “One hundred miles an hour from five hundred feet. How fast was the 727 flying when you jumped into Iran?”
Gil ignored the question. “We should be HALO-ing in. This is fucking nuts.”
Dragunov crushed out the cigarette against the sole of his boot. “This way we’ll hit the ground exactly where we want to be.”
“With a pair of broken legs. Nobody uses drag chutes anymore, Ivan.”
The Russian double-checked his equipment, which was essentially identical to Gil’s. “The moon is waxing,” he said. “Umarov’s people watch the sky, and they have early warning patrols all over the mountains.”
“Well, with this noisy pig buzzing the treetops, I’m sure they won’t expect a fucking thing.”
“That’s right,” Dragunov said. “Only a fool would jump out of a jet plane at five hundred feet in the middle of the night.”
Gil pulled on his helmet and gathered the drag chute into his arms. “Fuckin’ nuts,” he muttered.
The red jump light came on a few moments later, and both men got to their feet, standing side by side as they waited for the ramp to drop.
“How much trouble are you in back in Moscow?”
“Enough,” Dragunov said. “But if I bring back Kovalenko’s head, all will be forgiven.”
“What if we bag Umarov, too?”
“If we can kill Dokka Umarov, I’ll be made a Hero of the Russian Federation.” This was Russia’s version of the American Medal of Honor.
“And what about me?”
“You?” Dragunov bashed him on the shoulder and laughed. “You, my friend, you’ll be given a cheap bottle of vodka and a free plane ride home.”
Gil laughed.
The ramp went down, and the light turned green sixty seconds later. They walked down either side of the ramp and tossed their drag chutes into the wind. The drag chutes were caught by the slipstream, and their main chutes deployed instantly, jerking them both from the ramp and out into the night sky. The engines of an An-72 are mounted on the tops of the wings, near the fuselage, rather than beneath the wings like most jet aircraft, so there was little jet wash to contend with. Still, when the chute deployed, the harness jerked into Gil’s groin so hard that he thought his testicles might have ended up in his throat.
There was barely enough time to stabilize their descent and get their bearings before they were dropping through the treetops three hundred feet apart.
Gil landed with both
feet together in the crotch of a hardwood ten feet off the ground. He got loose from the harness and attached the night vision goggles to his helmet, scanning the terrain below for signs of movement. Seeing nothing, he shinned down the tree and unslung the AN-94.
“Typhoon to Carnivore,” he said quietly into the headset. “Do you read? Over.” He waited ten seconds and tried again. “Carnivore, this is Typhoon. Do you read?”
He began to move slowly in the direction of where he had seen Dragunov drop into the forest. A stick snapped, and he froze, lowering himself into a combat crouch near the base of a tree, scanning the gray-black woods through the digital night vision goggles.
“Typhoon to Carnivore,” he said in as low a voice as possible. “Do you copy my traffic? Over.”
Nothing.
He switched the channel. “Typhoon to Archangel. Do you copy?”
“This is Archangel,” answered a voice in Russian-accented English. “What is your status? Over.”
“Archangel, be advised I am on the ground but unable to establish radio contact with Carnivore. Over.”
“Copy, Typhoon. We will attempt to establish contact. Stand by.”
Gil waited a full a minute.
“Typhoon, Carnivore does not answer.”
“Roger that, Archangel. Will attempt to locate on foot.”
He moved out again, covering some two hundred feet before the sounds of voices drove him to cover behind a group of boulders. The voices were low, but the tone of conversation sounded confused.
Letting the AN-94 hang from its three-point sling, Gil drew his pistol and screwed the silencer to the end of the barrel. Then he moved forward through a gap in the rocks, spotting five bearded Chechen soldiers standing in a loose huddle. They gestured at the surrounding forest, shrugging as if they’d been unable to find something. Gil noted they had no night vision, but a small amount of light from the sliver of moon shone down through the bare limbs of the trees.
He was maneuvering through the rocks when he spotted Dragunov dangling from a tree twenty-five feet off the ground directly above the Chechens. He was swaying slightly with his arms dangling at his sides, his chin resting on his chest as though he were unconscious.
Gil hunkered down, balling a green and black shemagh over his mouth so that his whispering wouldn’t carry. “Carnivore, this is Typhoon. I have a visual on you from your left at ten o’clock. If you can hear me, open and close your hands.”
He watched as Dragunov opened and closed his hands three times.
“Okay. Give me some time to figure this out. Don’t go anywhere.” He backed away around the boulder, detaching from both rifles and making sure the sheath strapped to his right thigh was unsnapped.
50
THE WHITE HOUSE
Chief of Staff Brooks hung up the phone and turned to where the president and General Couture sat eating a dinner of prime rib and red wine. “That was Jay Tierney.” The US ambassador to Russia. “Shannon just made his shit list.”
The president looked at Couture as he poured himself a third glass of wine. “He’s been known to have that effect on people. Where is he now?”
Brooks retook his seat at the table. “Apparently he and Dragunov parachuted into the Caucasus about fifteen minutes ago. They’re going after Kovalenko and Umarov.”
The president lifted his glass. “What business does Tierney have being pissed about that?”
“None, sir.” Brooks reached for his glass of ice water. “He’s pissed because Shannon had lunch with Putin this afternoon and then took off without bothering to call Tierney to tell him what was discussed.”
Couture kept quiet, waiting to hear what the president would say.
The president sat back and sipped calmly from his glass of Merlot. Neither Couture nor Brooks was aware of it, but Pope had phoned two hours earlier to let him know about Gil’s meeting with Putin and that Gil was en route to the Caucasus. Pope had also mentioned to the president that he no longer had anything to worry about concerning his celebrations after the Iowa caucuses.
He smiled at Brooks. “Get Tierney back on the phone.”
Brooks wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “Sir?”
“Yeah, get him back on the phone.” The president gave a wink to Couture. “Tell him now he knows what it’s like to have Shannon treating you like you don’t fucking count.”
Couture chortled, and Brooks realized the president was kidding about the callback. “You don’t seem surprised that—”
“I’m not,” the president said. “It’s been Pope’s plan all along to send Gil after Umarov. The pipeline is still under threat, and Putin has saved us valuable time.” Then he chuckled, unable to deny feeling the wine. “I sure wish I could be there to see Putin’s face when Shannon finds a way to fuck him.”
Couture was caught completely off guard and laughed out loud.
“Hey, you really wanna laugh?” the president asked. “This is true: Pope told me Putin made Shannon give his word that he wouldn’t deviate from the mission.” He threw back his head with a raucous guffaw, slamming his free hand down on the table. “Goddamnit, how come we never thought of that?”
Couture choked on his wine, putting the glass down as he laughed.
Brooks, who hadn’t had a drop to drink all evening, sat gaping at them both.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” chortled the commander in chief. “Lighten the fuck up, Glen. After all, you helped train the disobedient son of a bitch.”
In truth, Brooks had had nothing at all to do with Gil Shannon’s training, but he knew there wouldn’t be any use in trying to make that point, so he smiled and reached for the bottle of wine.
“Drink up,” the president said. “We leave for the Pentagon in five minutes. We don’t want to miss the show.”
51
THE CAUCASUS MOUNTAINS
Gil knew the Chechens might spot Dragunov dangling above them at any second. He picked up a fallen branch the size of a ball bat and hurled it through a gap in the trees behind his own position. The branch landed with a heavy thud, and the Chechens fell silent, bringing their AK-47s to bear. He watched as the leader gave orders to fan out left and right, and considered how best to deal with them; even a single rifle shot might be enough to bring the entire forest down on his head.
Two men flanked right around the boulders, and two flanked left, cutting into the forest at an oblique angle. The leader came directly toward Gil’s position. Gil drew his knife. The Strike One was loaded with subsonic ammo, but even with the suppressor, it would make too much noise given the close proximity. The Chechen leader came on, and he was almost within striking distance when one of the limbs supporting Dragunov’s weight snapped with a sharp crack. The parachute ripped, and Dragunov plummeted toward the forest floor, jerking to a stop with his heels twelve inches off the ground.
The Chechens scrambled back in that direction, calling out as they moved.
Gil pounced on the leader from behind, ramming the knife into the side of his neck to sever the trachea and ripping it out the front. He tossed the body aside and joined in the wild dash toward Dragunov’s position, taking advantage of the enemy’s confusion to sweep in among them as they converged on the helpless Russian dangling in the harness and struggling to draw his pistol.
One of the Chechens punched Dragunov in the face, and another slugged him in the ribs with the stock of an AK-47.
Gil buried the knife in the back of the slugger’s head, whipping around to open fire on the others at point-blank range. His assault was so swift and sudden, they scarcely had time to realize what was happening. He shot all three in under a second and holstered the pistol, retrieving the knife from the dead man’s skull. Then he cut Dragunov loose from the harness and helped him to rest against a log.
“You okay?”
“The ublyudok cracked one of my ri
bs,” Dragunov growled.
Gil wasted no time getting him ready to fight, attaching the night vision goggles to his helmet and unslinging his AN-94. “Rest here and catch your breath.” He shoved the rifle into the major’s hands. “I gotta grab the rest of my shit.”
When he returned, Dragunov was on his feet and shrugging out of his combat harness.
“What’s wrong?”
“You have to wrap my ribs. I can’t shoulder a rifle with this kind of pain.”
They stripped his gear, and Gil bound his torso tight with an elastic bandage. Dragunov was suited back up and ready to move within a couple of minutes.
He bumped Gil affectionately on the shoulder. “If that branch had broken before you drew them off, they’d have torn me apart.”
“There’s no accounting for luck in combat, partner—we got lucky.” Gil took out his GPS unit to double-check their bearings, and Dragunov got on the radio to Archangel with a situation report.
“Ready to go?” Dragunov asked, holding the cracked rib on his left side.
“Yeah, let’s get the fuck outta here before another patrol comes along. We got a lotta real estate to cover, and I wanna be in position to take that fucker out before first light.”
Kovalenko had been spotted in a truck near the South Ossetian–Russian border the day before, and they were headed for his projected insertion point: a one-lane bridge at the bottom of a river valley north of the remote Sba Mountain Pass. Dokka Umarov was known to have teams of insurgents operating in that region, and according to GRU intelligence, it was the most expedient location for Kovalenko to link up with Umarov’s people. The fact that Gil and Dragunov had already run afoul of a Chechen patrol seemed to confirm the intel.
They moved out with Gil on point, and he set a brisk pace, relying on their night vision to give them an edge.
An hour after Gil and Dragunov cleared the DZ, a hooded figure cloaked in a ghillie suit crept into the kill zone, gripping a suppressed AK-105 assault rifle in 5.45 mm. He carried a Russian-manufactured ORSIS T-5000 precision sniper rifle in .338 Lapua Magnum with folding stock slung over his back. Crouching low in the darkness among the bodies of Umarov’s men, he removed his night vision goggles and used a thermal monocular to scan the terrain for any lingering footprint-shaped heat signatures. When he was sure that he was alone, he examined the bodies and weapons, drawing back the bolt of each AK-47 to sniff the breach. The bodies were cool to the touch, and the breaches of the rifles smelled like clean gun oil.