by Ted Bell
Hawke looked at his watch and said, “Not just yet. More are asleep inside. Gator’s going to blow the gate in four minutes . . .”
“Got it, sir.”
“The two outside on my signal. The main assault starts in three minutes, Fat,” Hawke said. “Take out every guard you see as they come out the door. Then the rest. Wait a beat. Anything else presents itself, you stay here and do your job. Otherwise, double-time it and get with us on the way inside that building. You strong, Fat?”
“Army strong, sir.”
“Attaboy. There are your targets, son. On my mark . . . mark . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . FIRE.”
There was a barely audible phfft-phfft and the targets dropped, instantly dead of head shots.
“Gator? Situation report,” Hawke said into his lip mike.
“Gator’s in position, sir,” Hawke heard in his earbuds. “Charges set. Ready to trigger . . .”
Hawke said: “Mark . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . FIRE.”
The night lit up. There was suddenly a hole where the gate used to be . . .
“Let’s move!” Hawke cried, breaking out into the open and racing toward Gator’s new position inside the perimeter. Stoke and the others were right behind him, charging through the hard-packed snow and racing through the blown gate. Almost immediately, more off-duty guards burst out the door, weapons at the ready.
And, almost instantly, they were dead, smoked by Fat over in the woods.
“Heads up, Fat!” Hawke cried, taking a knee in the snow next to Gator. A group of six more Spetsnaz came busting out of the HQ, weapons up and charging toward their position . . .
“Fat, fire at will!” he shouted. He and Gator and everyone who had a shot took it. Even Ambrose, who was carrying a Bullpup AR-15 Stoke had given him, was spitting lead with the best of them.
It was over in seconds. The Stokeland Raiders had not only met the enemy, they had shredded them. The team bunched up at the foot of the steps up to HQ; their blood was up now.
“Gator! Go rig those charges around the base of the main door. Fat, grab that cover over there and waste anyone you see.”
“Charges set!” Gator said, moving away from the door.
“Gator. On my mark, breach and clear . . . on three. Mark . . . two . . .” The steel doors blew off the hinges and sailed out into the night.
“Go, go, go!” Hawke cried.
Hawke and the Raiders were up the steps and inside in a heartbeat. Hawke, his eyes darting everywhere at once, saw staff, military and clerical alike, throwing themselves to the floor. These men were in a blind panic at the sight of heavily armed military types, in ghostlike white regalia, who had just burst into their lives; all were stunned that this isolated and top secret enclave of the top KGB brass was not as inviolate as they’d been told.
“Chief Inspector, would you please translate something for me?”
“Fire away.”
“Everyone stay right where you are,” Hawke said, “facedown on the floor. No one will hurt you if you keep quiet and don’t move.”
“Done,” Congreve said, and told them what to do in Russian.
“Brock, get us a head count, please, and check them all for weapons . . . I said, don’t move!” Hawke shouted at a man who was rolling over onto his back with his hand going inside his jacket.
“GUN!” Stoke cried. “Boss, he’s got a gun!”
Stoke made a move to kick the small automatic out of the man’s hand, but he was a second too late. Hawke had pulled his 9mm sidearm from his shoulder holster and put a round between the man’s eyes.
Everyone got very still.
“That’s much better,” Hawke said. “Now, who in this room speaks English? And who is the highest-ranking officer? Please identify yourself.”
There was silence.
A moment later, someone on the floor in the far corner spoke up loud and clear and in English with a strong Texas accent.
The big man in khakis said, “Well, since you just shot Major General Yuri Andropov, I guess it’s me. Guilty on both counts.”
Hawke swung around and stared at him and said, “Beauregard?”
“That’s what they call me.”
“Stoke, escort that Yank soldier over there to the nearest conference room. Cuff his wrists to a chair and see what you can get out of him. I’ll be there in two minutes—need to find out what the hell happened to Gator and Fat. They seem to be MIA and I don’t—”
At that very moment, Gator entered the building and a second later he was speaking in Hawke’s ear: “You gotta come outside and see this. Fat was helping me finish rigging charges when we saw this guy diving into the backseat of that black Audi out front. Crawled out a bedroom window on the far side of the building and—”
“Let’s go,” Hawke said, headed for the door.
CHAPTER 80
The escapee, of course, was Uncle Joe.
Fat had him flat on his back on the ground, hands cuffed above his head, the muzzle of Fat’s semiauto two inches from Joe’s pale, sweaty forehead. The man’s eyes were bulging, sheer terror coming off him in waves. His fingers were tapping on the snow as if he were playing an invisible piano.
Hawke looked down at him and said, “Are you Joe Stalin?”
“Nyet.”
“You sure as hell look like him.”
“Da.”
“Seriously? You’re a direct descendant of the man who inspired fear in countless millions? You? Sent millions more to their deaths in the gulags? You have got to be kidding me. Who the hell are you, really?”
“He’s nuts, this guy,” Fat said. “He comes crawling out of his bedroom window over there, ass-backward and wearing those funky red pajamas . . . I mean, seriously, is this really somebody important?”
“Bring this prisoner inside, Gator. We’ll find someplace where we can find out just how important he really is. Come on, Fat.”
“Right behind you, Cap’n.”
“Gator,” Hawke added, “you place those charges around the HQ? Everything rigged?”
“Bet yo’ ass, sir. I can turn this place into a Siberian wasteland in about thirty-one seconds.”
“That’s exactly what I wanted to hear. Fat, you hear all those damn sirens blaring in the distance?”
“Yeah. Three or four klicks away. Those are warning sirens. Coming from the direction of KGB I, I’ll bet. Somebody’s onto us, skipper. We’d better grill this gentleman, level this combat control center, and get ourselves out of here faster than a bug wink.”
GATOR WALKED INTO THE CONFERENCE room with Uncle Joe, took one look at the tall man in khakis, already bound to a chair with his back to the wall, and stopped dead in his tracks.
“Colonel?” he said.
“Hell, yeah, it’s me. How you doin’, Gator? Long time no see. Hell you doing here, sweetie?”
“How about you shut up?” Stoke said to him.
“You’re the boss,” Beauregard said amiably. “I see you caught the big fish, Gator. My newest pal, Uncle Joe himself. Nice goin’. He tell you he’s a people person yet? He will.”
“I said, shut up,” Stoke said.
Gator cuffed Uncle Joe’s wrists behind him and sat him down in a hard chair, right next to the chair where Stoke had stowed the Colonel. Civilian worker, advisor, Hawke had thought, by the looks of him. But apparently not. This was the American who’d built the terror operations command in Isla de Pinos.
“Gator, you say you know this man?” Hawke said, walking up to the Texan.
“Yes, sir, yes I do. That there’s Colonel Beauregard himself. I told you about him earlier. Used to work for him at Vulcan. In Saudi.”
Hawke looked at the man. “So you are the infamous Colonel, are you? The man who blows women and children out of the sky and blames it on the Chinese.”
“Fuck you.”
“Your place or mine, you common bastard,” Hawke replied.
“Who the hell are you, anyway?”
“Haw
ke. Commander. British Royal Navy.”
“You’re Hawke?”
“Last time I checked. Why?”
“Well, hell, Commander, I’m honored to finally meet you, sir. I’ve been following your exploits for years. Even stole a few moves out of your playbooks.”
“I don’t kill civilians, Colonel.”
“Hell, neither do I. You want to meet the man who does, however? This little shit sitting right next to me. He’s the sonofabitch who gave me the orders to bring down that airplane. Told all of us we were taking down a Chinese military transport plane en route to Beijing. Ask him.”
“He’s lying!” Uncle Joe said, stamping his tiny feet.
“You speak English all of a sudden, Uncle Joe?” Hawke said.
“I spent some time at NYU, that’s all. What of it?”
“Did you order the Colonel here to shoot down that civilian airliner over the Chinese borderlands?”
“No. Technically, no. Did not do it,” Uncle Joe said.
“Who did? Technically.”
“Putin. Wanted to use it as a media diversion to cover his tracks along the borders of certain countries. That crash got a whole lot of airtime on CNN, the Communist News Network. And me? I conveyed the orders to Colonel Beauregard, that’s all. So, like they say, please don’t shoot the messenger, okay?”
Hawke and Congreve looked at each other in utter disbelief. Uncle Joe had all the earmarks of a visitor from another planet.
“Bullshit,” Beauregard said. “Uncle Joe is the one runs the whole damn show. Nothing happens without his signature. Nada. Who do you think is the mastermind behind the massive troop movements last weekend? Into Poland and Estonia? The tank battalions on the roll? You’re looking at him. His orders, every last one. General Krakov, head of KGB ops here at Tvas? He even admitted it to me. He told me, ‘Putin runs Russia, but Uncle Joe? Uncle Joe runs Putin.’”
Uncle Joe laughed out loud.
“Me? Wait, I’m the bad guy? The evil dictator? I’m gay, f’crissakes! I love Streisand! I’ve got a cat!”
“This is such a load of crap he’s feeding you, Commander Hawke. His office in the Kremlin? I’ve been there. Many times. It’s twice as big as Putin’s! Everybody’s scared to death of the little dwarf around there. Just last Christmas he had the three most powerful oligarchs in Russia shot in the head and dumped in the Volga River just before it froze over for the winter. Hell, he even—”
“Putin did that!” Joe said, stamping his tiny feet again. “Putin, Putin, Putin!”
The Colonel continued his tirade. “See? Can’t control himself. KGB, Politburo, even Putin himself, they’re all terrified of him. You should hear how this character talks to Putin on the phone. It’s insane.”
“That’s ridiculous! I run Putin? Me? I don’t run anything. Not even my cat.”
“What exactly is it that you do, Uncle Joe?” Hawke asked him. He was having a hard time not laughing.
“Me? I’m just a second-rate actor, that’s all. Trying to make a buck like anybody else.”
“A what? Actor?”
“Yeah, yeah, you heard right, actor. Left Moscow to go to NYU Drama School back in the eighties, had a fifth-floor walk-up in Hell’s Kitchen. Busboy at P.J. Clarke’s. The whole enchilada. Then came back to Moscow to do theater. Ended up starring in a comic opera about Stalin at the Bolshoi Theatre. Called Me and Uncle Joe. My biggest gig yet. My breakthrough role. Nominated for a Tony if they had fuckin’ Tonys over here. Putin and his wife were in the audience opening night, front row center. Vlad was laughing his ass off, I’ll tell you that. I was great, what can I say? Mr. and Mrs. Putin came backstage to my dressing room and he offered me a job on the spot. That’s it, I swear, the whole story. What can I say? The guy was crazy about me.”
“Exactly what kind of job did he offer you, Uncle Joe?” Stoke asked.
“Basically? Reprise my starring role in the play. Every day in an office in the Kremlin. ‘Just come to work and be Uncle Joe,’ he says to me. ‘I’ll feed you your lines, don’t worry,’ he says a lot. And just look at me. Perfect casting, right? But, work? God, the hours of footage I watched on that old Commie, the original. Getting his moves down. Looking for nuance. But the look? That I had. Even when I was a baby my aunt Sadie said I looked like Stalin. The kids in my neighborhood screamed and ran when they saw me coming.”
“But what the bloody hell did Putin actually want you to do, Uncle Joe?” Hawke said, the frustration taking its toll.
“Easy. So, Putin says to me, he says he needs me to divert some inconvenient things away from his office and over to mine. Messy things, you know. Certain unpleasant facts or, you know, iffy events. Like that horrible jetliner thing in China. Messy. And can you blame him? Didn’t want to get his lily-white hands dirty on that one, I guess. Never got ’em clean, I’d say, but what do I know? I’m just an actor.”
“You sound like a bloody politician,” Hawke said.
“Oh, but I am! Now. But I’m also a people person.”
“Now, after all the crap he’s done, suddenly he’s a people person? What’d I tell you? He’s a people person like I’m a lazy babysitter,” Colonel Beauregard sputtered, barely able to control himself.
Hawke just stood there staring at both of them in amazement and bewilderment. Finally, he looked over at the most trustworthy man he knew.
“You believe this guy, Stoke? Uncle Joe?”
“You know what? Crazy-ass as it sounds, I do. I think he’s telling the truth here, boss. I really do. How could anyone even begin to make all that stuff up?”
“Ambrose? If anyone can spot a phony alibi, it’s you. What do you think?”
“I agree with Stokely. He’s telling the truth, Alex. I believe him. Now, I’d like to ask Uncle Joe a question of considerable importance to me, if I may?”
“He’s all yours, Constable.”
“Recently, a colleague of mine from Cambridge University was here at Tvas on Kremlin business. His name is Stefan Halter. Stef fell ill during a meeting in this very room. You were there. Heart attack, I believe. I’d like to know exactly, and truthfully, what happened to him.”
“He was your friend, am I right on that?”
“Perhaps my best friend, yes.”
“Listen, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Mr. Congreve. Very, very sorry. Your friend passed. But it was no heart attack.”
“What are you saying? He was murdered? I hope not because I can assure that if he was, I will not stop until I—”
“Hey—hey, no way! No, sir. Sorry, please. You completely misunderstand what I’m saying here. Fact one, we have a trained medical staff here in the building. Upstairs. Fact two, I had them called as soon as your buddy collapsed there on the floor. We, me included, told the doctors the poor guy had suffered a coronary event of some kind. What kind, I had no fuckin’ clue, right? But when they checked him out upstairs, they found out that the heart attack thing . . . was not a factor—”
“Then what happened to him?”
“He had bitten down on a cyanide capsule, see, while the doctors tried to revive him. But here’s the thing, and you should know this. Your friend? That guy was the lucky one, I’m telling you. Think about it. That lucky, lucky man, he avoided death at the hands of Putin’s KGB interrogators. Whole lot worse than cyanide, and that’s the honest truth, so help me, God, if I’m lying.”
Ambrose was staring at the floor, straining to rein in his emotions.
After a very long time, he looked up and spoke, barely above a whisper. “He didn’t do it for himself. He did it for me.”
“Then he’s a great hero.”
“Yes. He always was.”
Congreve, overcome with grief, walked toward the door. He needed to breathe the fresh night air.
“I’m so sorry, Ambrose,” Hawke said as he walked by.
“Thank you. I shall miss him very deeply.”
The room fell silent for a long moment, out of respect. Everyone felt Congreve’s lo
ss, even Uncle Joe.
“So, Uncle Joe, tell us all about Feuerwasser. The Kremlin’s miracle explosive,” Stoke said.
“It’s all bullshit, that garbage. It’s no more explosive than a strawberry Frostee. It’s fuckin’ vodka, f’crissakes. Putin asked me to sell the explosive idea around town, so I sold it. I’m a very good salesman. Sell ice to an Eskimo. What else can I tell you? I was making a good buck there in the Kremlin. Gave me a lot of confidence. As an actor I mean, not a real person. Confidence. I got that in spades. And I’m due for a comeback. Next stop for me? Hollywood, baby. Count on it.”
Hawke laughed. “My God” was all he could say.
Joe said to him, “You ought to take a run at it yourself. Good-looking hunk of horseflesh like you? Hell. You’re the one who oughta be up on the silver screen, not me.”
“Highly unlikely, Uncle Joe,” Hawke said. “Colonel? What about it, then? You didn’t know about any of this? This so-called acting career of Uncle Joe’s?”
“Hell, no. Not an inkling. I feel like I’m in the middle of some bizarre reality show whenever I’m around this guy.”
“You still think he’s lying?” Hawke said.
“Maybe, I dunno. If he is, he’s the greatest damn liar since P. T. Barnum met Bernie Madoff. Or greatest actor. But I think he’s telling the truth, Commander. Putin’s been putting the pieces in place for this global real estate aggression for a long, long time. Uncle Joe? He was one of those pieces all right. He and Putin were a marriage made in heaven. Both of ’em totally batshit.”
“Where is Putin right now, Uncle Joe? If you don’t know, just say so. But it’ll save us all a lot of trouble if you do.”
The Colonel spoke up. “I know exactly where he is, Commander, I’ve been there. Hell, I’ll even take you to him.”
“Where?”
“A dacha northwest of Moscow. Top secret KGB hideout. Deep forest. Not on any maps. No marked roads. Ridiculous security. Called Rus. But that’s where he makes the plans to run this war. And that’s where he is right this minute.”
“Gator, cut these two gentlemen loose. We’ve got what we came for here. Let’s get the hell out of here and blow this place off the—”