by Peter Telep
“Because it’s not on the GRU’s radar. They’ll check out all the obvious places like we did and assume he’s a man of creature comforts and wouldn’t give them up. We might’ve blown off this place if it weren’t for the pendant.”
“So your gut tells you he’s there,” said Grim.
Fisher made a face. It was always his gut versus her facts. “Look, he probably doesn’t plan to stay long. He’ll wait it out until the Russians have to pull back most of their field assets. But for now, I say he’s lying low. Why not there? It’s hard to reach and a real shithole.”
“So he probably flew in to the nearest airport by jet, maybe took a chopper up to the city,” said Grim. “Charlie, get on it. Maybe you can find a charter company that ferries people up there, get into their records, get us anything.”
“You got it.”
“I’ll assist on that,” said Briggs.
“Kobin, you got any contacts in Peru?” Fisher asked.
“There was a guy in Lima who used to transport some stuff for me. I know he had some ties to a cartel that bought a lot of gold. Couldn’t hurt contacting him.”
“Do it,” said Fisher.
“Hey, guys,” Charlie called from his station. “Looks like the nearest airport is in Juliaca. It’s about seventy miles southwest. It’s a real hub for contraband. I’ve already got the list of charter companies operating out of there. Working on getting into their records now.”
Grim and Fisher crossed to the SMI table, where Grim brought up a map of Peru and zoomed in on Juliaca. “Population a quarter million, and it’s the capital of the Puno Region. They call it ‘The Windy City’ just like Chicago.”
“That airstrip long enough for us?” Fisher asked.
“Most of the military airstrips we use are at least fourteen thousand feet. Checking . . .” Grim zoomed in on the airport and keyed in a request for statistics. “Well, there we go. Runway length 13,780 feet.”
“Should be enough?” Fisher asked.
“A C-17 like this once landed at a civilian airport in Tampa with a runway no longer than 3,400 feet. That pilot must’ve hit the brakes pretty hard and that’s cutting it as close as it gets.”
“No kidding.”
The big screens behind them lit up with a video call from President Caldwell. She looked exhausted but managed to lift her voice: “Checking in again, Sam. The CIA charter to pick up Nadia will arrive in less than thirty minutes. How’s she doing? I want to speak with her.”
“Right now we’re having a tracker removed from her back, but after that, I’m sure she’ll be able to talk.”
“Good. We’ll be transporting her to a safe house near Langley. I want you to assure her that she’s in good hands and that we’re doing everything we can to assist her and her family.”
“Of course. And now we have some actionable intel on Kasperov, all pointing to Peru.” Fisher gave her a capsule summary of what they’d found.
“If you find him,” said Caldwell, “I want you to offer him more than just asylum. Impress upon him that we’ll help rebuild and restructure his company. He’s dedicated his entire professional life to Internet security and probably thinks his career has ended. Well, it hasn’t. Tell him America can keep his dream alive—no matter how complicated he thinks that’ll be. And we’ll clear his name of all these preposterous allegations the Kremlin is leveling at him.”
“What allegations?” Fisher asked.
“They’re saying he embezzled funds, that officers of his company accepted bribes to disclose top secret documents, and the list goes on and on.”
“Wow, all right. We’ll take care of it,” Fisher assured her.
“We’ll be in touch.”
The screen went blank, and Charlie once more said that the doctor was calling.
Fisher and Grim met him outside the infirmary, where he handed Fisher a small plastic bag containing the translucent capsule/tracker, one Fisher had seen before used by the SVR and FSB.
“Simple operation. Four stitches. She’s sleeping now.”
“Excellent,” Fisher said.
“Well, other than some blunt trauma to her face, she seems to be doing okay,” said the doctor. “She’ll need to have the new stitches removed in a week or so. If there’s nothing else, I guess I’m ready for my blindfold.”
“We appreciate your cooperation,” Fisher said.
Grim called to one of the analysts to escort the doctor out. As she strode away toward the control center, Fisher drifted back into the infirmary, where Nadia had just rolled over to face him.
“Is it over?” she asked.
“Yes, we removed the chip. Your plane should be here very soon. I’m sorry about the wait.”
“Are you really going to help my father?”
“I work for the President of the United States, and she tells me that we’ll be doing everything we can. That means something. Those words come from the most powerful woman on the planet. Do you understand?”
She nodded. “Thank you.”
“The president wants to speak to you, when you’re ready.”
“All right. I just realized I don’t even know your name.”
“It’s Sam. And to be honest, you remind me of my own daughter.”
“Really?”
He nodded.
A shadow passed over them.
“Hey, Sam, my guy in Lima just called back,” said Kobin. “Oh, sorry to interrupt. But hey, don’t you think she’s a little young for . . .”
Fisher closed his eyes, trying to contain the explosion forming at the back of his throat.
“Sorry, yeah, well, anyway,” Kobin stammered, “My guy in Lima’s got intel that’ll blow your mind.”
21
“THAT’S him,” said Briggs.
Fisher zoomed in with his trifocals on the man entering the Corporación Minera Ananea’s tin-roofed office lying in the shadows of the towering, snowcapped peaks of La Rinconada.
“You get a shot of his face?” Fisher asked.
“Got it,” Briggs answered. “And uploaded.”
“Charlie, transfer that photo back to the safe house in Virginia,” Fisher ordered. “See if Nadia can ID this guy.”
“Already done. You want fries with that?”
“Nice. Get me confirmation ASAP.”
Fisher eased back along the mountainside, slipping behind the ice-covered boulders along the cliff that overlooked the mining headquarters, which was no more than four double-wide trailers lying in the cowl of the glacier. The buildings were identified by a small sign bearing the company’s tiny blue logo. Seven dust-covered SUVs were parked near one trailer, their off-road tires pinpricked with chips of stone.
Fisher and Briggs were perched at more than eighteen thousand feet in the Peruvian Andes, the wind like knives across their cheeks, the night washing away into a saffron haze to the east.
The past sixteen hours had felt like only two, and ironically, Kobin—once the selfish, self-absorbed, egomaniacal crackhead smuggler—had come through for them in spades.
“Follow the money, find the man,” he’d said.
Trouble was, Igor Kasperov was too damned shrewd to make mistakes. Kobin believed that he’d rely upon favors, stashes of cash, or other such underground or even illegal means to procure both transport and living quarters, and to pay off those who needed to remain quiet regarding his whereabouts. Sure, he’d attempt to limit his contacts as much as possible, but he couldn’t do everything alone.
And he couldn’t pay off everyone.
That’s where Kobin came in. He always boasted that he was the go-to man with a direct line into the seedy exploits of smugglers, cartels, mercenaries, and guerilla-backed incursions across the globe. Sometimes the hype outweighed the facts, but not this time.
“Okay, teammates, prepare to be schooled,” he’d told them, holding court in the control center as though he owned the plane.
“Teammates?” Briggs asked, as though the word had gone sour on his li
ps.
“Shuddup, Action Jackson. So . . . I’ll put it to you this way. La Rinconada’s gold mining operation is a money-laundering wet dream for the cartels. Here’s how it works. The cartel-backed banks use American dollars to buy the gold from the mining company at one hundred and ten percent over current gold spot prices—that’s the standard fee for money laundering. The cartels have a team of gold and silver bullion traders, and these greedy little fuckers sell the gold in the open market, and you know with the volatility we have today, they usually recoup more than their premium fee. So my guy in Lima has run guns, drugs, and even gold for these guys, meaning he’s tapped into what’s going on up there. His contact at the mining company office says that somebody’s been drafting checks drawn against some Swiss and offshore accounts to buy untraceable U.S. dollars, ten percent over face value, which is the fee for what we call remote and discrete ATM services.” Kobin began to gesticulate wildly, a half-crazed glimmer flooding his eyes. “Boys and girls, think about it. Who the hell but a rich man would be drafting off of Swiss and offshore accounts? Sam’s right. Kasperov is up there, and he’s no dummy. He’s doing more than just lying low. That fucking Russian is picking up some serious cash so he’s untraceable and good to go for his next trip.”
Fisher drew back his head. “Holy shit, Kobin. Nice work.”
“I plan to verify all this,” said Grim.
“Be my guest,” said Kobin. “I keep telling you fuckers how valuable I am. When are you dumbasses gonna learn? Schooled? Oh, that would be you people.”
“I don’t think so,” said Briggs.
Kobin ignored him and faced Fisher. “You see? You never want to turn me over to Kestrel. I’m way too valuable.”
Grim stepped between them and said, “I hate ’im. But he’s earned his keep—for now.”
“Agreed,” Fisher said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
After transferring Nadia to the CIA charter, they had taken off. The flight from Incirlik to Juliaca, Peru, was over 7,300 miles, meaning they had about 2,700 miles between each midair refueling. With a cruising speed of about 515 miles per hour, the flight had taken more than fourteen hours, giving them ample time to sleep and prep.
In the meantime, Grim had coordinated with the Special Activities Division. They sent a paramilitary ops officer to Juliaca to reconnoiter the airport, searching for any spotters Kasperov might have planted there.
Grim had also pointed out that Paladin’s arrival might raise a few suspicions, so they’d planned to land at about 0200 local time and have the plane met by refueling services to make it appear as though this was only a brief layover.
Presently, they displayed bogus tail numbers along with the letters “AETC” and additional markings for the 97th Air Mobility Wing out of Altus AFB, Oklahoma. Altus AFB was the Air Education and Training Command, or AETC, for C-17s and KC-135s. Mission permitting, Paladin’s tail markings were changed every ninety days, and it was imperative that the transport always displayed them, lest they be immediately pegged as a spec ops unit.
Their CIA contact in Juliaca had reported no signs of spotters at the airport or its environs; however, there was still no way to tell if Kasperov had someone on the inside who worked at the airport and who’d been overlooked.
Charlie’s research on helicopter charters up to the mountain was inconclusive because several companies operated daily, ferrying, he assumed, mining executives, engineers, and reps from equipment manufacturers. None of those records indicated anything more than the numbers of passengers, not descriptions, names, IDs, or anything else useful. Some of the companies might’ve kept hard-copy files of that data in their offices, but Charlie found none available electronically. This was, after all, Peru.
Once they’d landed, Fisher and Briggs had rented an old 2003 Toyota Tacoma crew cab pickup. They headed up for the seventy-five-mile drive to the city along a road notorious for bandits who preyed upon miners returning with their pockets stuffed with cash.
Adjusting to the altitude had been a significant challenge, more so because they parked their rental about a mile outside the city and hiked in on foot, arriving in the early-morning hours, their weapons and goggles concealed under heavy parkas purchased at the airport.
Fighting for breath, they’d worked their way along the perimeter hills to avoid being spotted, then had descended to overlook the city, a shantytown of tin huts built at precarious angles and glittering like a hellish oasis.
Perhaps that was an understatement.
This was a slum more garbage-laden, more foul-smelling, and more . . . sad . . . than any Fisher had ever encountered—despite his world travels. According to the team’s intel, as many as fifty thousand people braved the stiflingly thin air and bitter cold to work in the deep tunnels and pick along the mountainsides. There was no sewage system, no running water, no paved roads, no sanitation of any kind. The gold found here was, as Grim had earlier mentioned, processed with mercury, one of the planet’s most toxic elements, and it had found its way into everything. The only reason why electrical wires spanned the huts like the circuit board of an old operator’s system was because the mining company had brought in that convenience to power their drilling machinery and recharge their shuttles that rumbled through the maze of mine shafts.
Up on the side of a mountain the locals ironically called “Sleeping Beauty,” bulldozers were already plowing deep gashes into the earth, with whole families wading out into the icy pools of contaminated mud, fishing for gold. Women in broad skirts were struggling up the cliffs of loose shale, heaving bags of ore, believing they could find some gold flecks hidden among the waste. Even more disturbing were the children stumbling behind them, shouldering bags of their own.
Farther up, inside the mines, men toiled in shafts sometimes flooded with lethal amounts of carbon monoxide and reinforced with timbers already threatening to collapse. Every year miners died from faulty fuses on dynamite cables, while others got trapped by the shifting glacier. They worked for thirty days without payment under the cachorreo system. On the thirty-first day they were allowed to take with them as much ore as they could carry on their shoulders. While the system seemed unfair, many of the multigenerational miners appreciated it and did quite well; however, like an Old West boomtown, there weren’t many places to spend their money, save for the local bars where they satisfied their alcohol addictions. The vicious cycle continued: work, eat, get drunk, sleep. Life here could not be much harsher, and Fisher could see why Kasperov wanted to help these people.
“I can’t even bear to look,” said Briggs.
Fisher shook his head. “I know.”
Less then thirty minutes later, they were in position to reconnoiter the mining office, and within another thirty minutes they had marked their target.
“Sam, I just got word back from Nadia,” Charlie said breathlessly. “That guy is definitely one of her father’s bodyguards. His name’s Anatoly.”
“Grim, you hear that?”
“I heard it.”
“Then you agree, he’s here,” said Fisher. “So, Charlie, I hope you followed up with a threat assessment.”
“Hell, yeah, I did. She said he usually travels with four or five bodyguards, plus we can assume he’s got his girlfriend with him. Don’t think she’ll be an issue unless she’s a martial artist, a gun expert, and a supermodel.”
“Just like me,” Fisher quipped.
Charlie went on: “I asked if she knew any way we could contact this Anatoly guy, and she said they took her cell phone, she doesn’t know the numbers, and that they probably wouldn’t answer their phones anyway.”
“That’s okay. We’ll talk to him ourselves. We’re moving in.”
Fisher gave a hand signal to Briggs. They crouched down and left their cover, shifting gingerly along the mountain, following a ridge whose edges were piled high with snow. His gut tightened at the sound of his footfalls, and he tried to ease his boots onto the next length of ice-encrusted snow.
“What?” Briggs asked.
“Thought I heard something up there. Ah, probably nothing.”
“I’ll do a sonar scan.”
Suddenly, down below, a trailer door swung open, and their target appeared. Anatoly was a barrel-chested man, well over six feet, and currently zipping up a parka that barely fit him. He’d obviously sold Kasperov on his sheer size and intimidation factor. Many of these apes knew how to bulk up, but their cardiovascular fitness was often lacking.
Unfortunately, Anatoly was about to prove Fisher wrong, even in this high altitude.
A small section of rock and gray ice went tumbling down into the parking lot.
“Wasn’t me,” stage-whispered Briggs.
“Came from above,” said Fisher.
They were being followed.
Anatoly glanced up, beyond Fisher and Briggs, then his gaze lowered and focused on them before they could duck.
He bolted. Shit!
They needed to stop him before his thumb reached his smartphone. One call would trip all the alarms and send Kasperov running.
Fisher was already analyzing the distance to the target and factoring in his equipment load.
Thirty meters.
Anatoly not only ran, but he knew exactly what to do, seeking cover first behind one of the parked cars, then drawing his pistol and firing four rounds into the ice just below.
Weapons drawn, Fisher and Briggs darted across the hill toward the next shoulder of rock jutting out about a meter and offering scant cover.
Anatoly was buying time to make that call.
Fisher held his breath. If they couldn’t stop the man, they could render the phone useless. He let fly one of his EMP grenades, the cylinder tumbling end over end like a dagger.
To be technical, the grenade was a flux compression generator bomb, and as it hit the ice, rolling within a meter of Anatoly’s boots, a fuse ignited the explosive material within. That explosion traveled up through the middle of the cylinder to create a moving short circuit. That short circuit compressed a magnetic field and unleashed an intense nonnuclear electromagnetic pulse. Fisher had set the target radius tight—just two meters.