“I might be able to do something there.” Brognola turned to Price. “Get back in touch with whoever’s sitting on this Bolivian back in Santa Fe. Once his lawyer shows up, I want to cut through a few middlemen and broker the plea bargain myself. I want that bastard to help us get to the Colts while they’re still alive.”
“That’s assuming they still are,” Delahunt murmured.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Antwerp, Belgium
“I can’t get through to him,” SVR Deputy Director Alek Repin told Evgenii Danilov as he lowered his cell phone.
“Maybe he’s already landed,” the Russian financier suggested.
Repin shook his head. “Tramelik is at the airport. Vishnevsky hasn’t shown up yet. He says it looks like the authorities have, however.”
“That’s the last thing we need.”
The two men had reconvened in Danilov’s office at GHC’s Antwerp headquarters. There was no sipping of cognac this time around. Both men were struggling to maintain their composure in the wake of the grim news they’d been receiving from New Mexico. Cherkow was dead, Melido Diaz was in custody and it now appeared Vishnevsky was about to blindly wander into some kind of trap in Taos. Hopefully Tramelik’s crew could help prevent the latter setback and there was word that Christopher Shiraldi and some private investigator were about to be silenced before they could shed light on Global’s subversive takeover of the facilities at Roaming Bison, but Repin and Danilov both had the sense that bandages were being applied to a hemorrhage. In a matter of less than twelve hours, Operation Zenta had turned from a viable means to compromise the United States on its own turf into something more akin to an operatic farce.
“How could things have deteriorated so quickly?” Danilov wondered.
Repin’s first instinct was to lay the blame on Mikhaylov’s ineptitude, but with his own favorite son suddenly incommunicado he’d lost some of his righteous leverage. Besides, he felt there was little to be gained in pointing fingers. He’d just learned that investigatory agents, most likely from the U.S., were sniffing around not only GHC’s business dealings but also those of the SVR, looking for links between the two entities and the Russian Mob organization Dolgoprudnenskaya. If Washington were to succeed in verifying the troika’s grand plans in New Mexico, the political fallout would be every bit as widespread and damaging as the drifting of a nuclear cloud across the American Southwest. Repin’s hopes of replacing Grigoriev atop the SVR pecking order would not only be dashed, most likely the director would see to it that he, Repin, was first in line for reprisal.
Danilov was beset by his own equivalent broodings as he wandered back to the window overlooking the city. The unseasonable snowfall had picked up, blanketing the rooftops of lower buildings as well as the steeples of the nearby cathedral. The bleak pall depressed him still further, but it also yielded a possible course of action for dealing with his rapidly compromised situation.
“I’ve been meaning to spend some time at my villa in the Caribbean,” he told Repin once he’d turned from the window. “Perhaps it’s time I followed through.”
“I assume you’re speaking about your villa on Isle St. Louise.”
Danilov nodded. “It’s the best time to be there. The weather is perfect, and all the island flowers are in bloom.”
“And then, of course, there’s the matter of their nonextradition status.”
Danilov smiled. “A fortunate coincidence. Are you interested?”
Repin didn’t need to be asked twice. “How soon could it be arranged?”
Danilov shrugged. “How soon can you pack?”
Taos, New Mexico
TAOS MUNICIPAL AIRPORT WAS easily the smallest of New Mexico’s public airport facilities. No major carrier provided service to the town and the entire main terminal could have fit within the confines of the local high school’s gymnasium. As such, Carl Lyons and a combined response team made up of members of all three local law-enforcement agencies had been hard-pressed to be discreet in their efforts to lie in wait for Dmitri Vishnevksy’s Cessna Citation. The black-and-white units had already taken the precaution of parking down the road beneath a carport at Olquin’s Sawmill, after which the ten officers had crammed into Lyons’s rental car as well as a KIA Sedona minivan they’d borrowed from the mill owner. After the short ride to the airport, the men had conferred with TMA’s manager as well as the four uniformed officers providing security at the terminal.
Now, less than ten minutes later, Lyons was out on the tarmac dressed in coveralls and an orange reflective vest, seated at the controls of a small luggage cart. Sheriff Officer Gibson and TPPD Lieutenant Zimmer were similarly attired, stationed alongside a maintenance truck. Three other members of the strike team lingered just inside the doorway leading from the terminal to the runway. One was disguised as a ticket agent while two plainclothes officers passed themselves off as locals awaiting the arrival of loved ones on other flights. The other four officers were still in the parking lot, two in Lyons’s Impala and two in the minivan. Both vehicles were parked wide of the terminal, allowing an unobstructed view of the runway. There were no fences or other obstacles between the parking lot and the tarmac; on Lyons’s signal, should it come to that, the drivers would race out to the runway to provide backup. On the other hand, were there a need to deal with matters from afar, one officer in each vehicle was equipped with a high-powered sniper rifle.
“I think we’ve got it covered,” Gibson called to Lyons. “If anything, we’re on overkill.”
“Given who we’re dealing with, I’ll take overkill,” Lyons countered.
As they waited for Vishnevsky’s arrival, Lyons scanned the nearby holding area, where a handful of Piper Cubs and other small planes rested on the tarmac near a newly constructed maintenance hangar. Inside the hangar was a strange-looking helicopter with stacked coaxial rotors and pair of large propellers mounted perpendicularly to the tail assembly.
“I take it that’s Orson’s speed chopper.”
“Yeah. AirFox I,” Gibson told Lyons. “We had a big turnout last week when he had the sucker out for a test flight. Two hundred and ninety-three miles per hour, if you can believe that.”
“That’s even faster than that X2 Sikorsky’s working on,” Lyons said.
“I think that was the idea,” Gibson said. “Throw in the armor plating and he figured to go to the head of the line for one of those bazillion-dollar Defense contracts.”
“Well, at least the commies didn’t get their hands on it along with everything else.”
“I think they would’ve had a little trouble loading it onto the Silverado,” Gibson joked.
“Incoming,” Zimmer interrupted, glancing up into the clearing skies overhead. Lyons tracked the tribal officer’s gaze and saw the Cessna Citation come into view, taking the same approach by which he’d arrived at the airport a few hours earlier. As the jet began its descent, Lyons reached for the borrowed com-link transceiver clipped to his vest collar.
“On your toes, everyone,” he said. “It’s showtime.”
“STAY DOWN,” PETENKA TRAMELIK told Franz Khartyr and Bertrand Gustavo, who were hunched low in the rear of his Land Rover. Vladik Barad was sitting up front beside him. They were parked just off the access road that led to the airport, their vehicle partially concealed alongside the framework of a half-built convenience store three months away from its grand opening. They’d pulled into the lot after spotting Lyons and a handful of others pile out of the Impala and KIA minivan that had arrived at the airfield moments ahead of them. Wary of the implications, they weren’t about to show themselves at the terminal. If it turned out to be a false alarm, they would arrange to have Vishnevsky walk down the road and meet them once he’d disembarked from his Cessna, which was just now making its landing approach.
There was one small problem with the contingency plan.
“The idiot still isn’t answering,” Barad complained, glaring at his cell phone.
“Keep trying
,” Tramelik told him.
The four men were each armed with automatic handguns, but Tramelik was beginning to wonder if they might soon be in need of more firepower. Glancing in his rearview mirror he told Gustavo, “If you can do it without too much commotion, reach behind you. Beneath the tarp there are a few extra weapons I brought up from the farm. Track down the launcher and carbines.”
“I knew this Vishnevsky would mean trouble,” Gustavo said as he lowered the middle seat and reached beneath a canvas coverlet draping the weapons cache. He had no problem identifying each item by touch and, one by one, he retrieved three Russian-made Bizon 2 submachine guns as well as an RPG-7 grenade launcher and stacked the weapons on the floor in front of him. “What about the hand grenades?” he asked.
“We might as well have them ready,” Tramelik said.
Moments later, the Russian Vymper agent saw the Citation touch down on the runway and roll past the terminal. Beside him, Vladik Barad had finally gotten through to Vishnevsky aboard the jet.
“There you are! Why the hell didn’t you pick up earlier?”
“I was busy and I just turned on my phone. I had to return a call to Repin,” Vishnevsky replied tersely. “He told me about Diaz being picked up in Santa Fe.”
“Well, brace yourself,” Barad told the other man, “because you’re next on their list.”
BY THE TIME VISHNEVSKY had finished speaking with Barad, the Cessna had rolled to a stop in front of the terminal. The ground forces reacted quickly. Officer Gibson pulled the maintenance truck forward, blocking the jet from moving any farther. Lyons, meanwhile, veered the luggage cart around to the rear, boxing the Citation in. Vishnevsky had a clear view of both maneuvers.
“Keep the engines running,” Vishnevsky told his pilot as he finished buttoning his shirt. He and Vanya had indulged in a lovefest during the fight and both had hurriedly dressed. The woman looked frightened as she stared out a portal window and saw two uniformed officers exit a Chevy Impala and KIA minivan parked behind the terminal, each brandishing a sniper rifle.
“My God!” she gasped. “They’re going to shoot us!”
“Not if I can help it,” Vishnevsky assured the woman.
“But what can we do?” Vanya was trembling. Vishnevsky moved to her, placing his hands on her shoulders.
“Vanya, you’re always telling me how you want to be an actress,” he told her calmly. “This is your chance.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“Rifle up!” Tramelik shouted to Gustavo and Khartyr from behind the wheel of his Land Rover. “Vladik, get the RPG and be ready to clear that truck away from the jet!”
Gustavo and Khartyr armed themselves with the Bizon subguns. Tramelik reached behind him for the remaining carbine. Barad, meanwhile, fed a single-stage HEAT round into the launcher.
Tramelik had spotted the police snipers the moment they emerged from their vehicles in the airport parking lot. They were drawing bead on the Citation, but he couldn’t tell if they were targeting the cockpit or the jet’s doorway, which had yet to open. At this point, it didn’t much matter. He was determined to take both shooters out of the mix.
“Gustavo, you’ve got the sniper near the minivan,” he ordered. “Khartyr, take the other. I’ll try to shake things up around the terminal.”
The way they were parked, Barad and Gustavo were both able to roll down their windows and take aim from inside the vehicle. Khartyr slipped outside and crept past Tramelik before raising his Bizon and extending the barrel across the front hood. Tramelik stayed put for the moment but had his left hand on the door handle, ready to throw it open.
“Start firing on my signal,” he advised the others.
Two seconds later the Citation’s cabin doorway began to open.
VANYA’S ACTING EXPERIENCE was limited to sexual antics, but she played well the role of a terrified hostage when she opened the cabin door and found no less than a half-dozen weapons aimed her way, not counting the Russian-made GSh-18 pistol Vishnevsky held pressed to her head as he used her for a human shield.
“Get the truck out of our way!” he shouted at Zimmer, the closest gunman he could see. The tribal officer was crouched behind the maintenance vehicle, his LAR Grizzly pistol aimed at the doorway.
“Let the woman go and surrender!” Zimmer retorted.
“Wrong answer!” Vishnevsky yelled back. “Do what I ask and nobody will be hurt!”
“I don’t want to die!” Vanya cried out. “Do what he says!”
Vishnevsky leaned close to the woman and whispered, “Well done, Vanya.”
Zimmer held his fire and signaled for the others to do the same. He did his best to avoid shifting his gaze to Lyons, who’d abandoned the luggage cart and dropped to his knees so that he could crawl beneath the idling jet. The Able Team leader was armed with his weapon of choice, a .357 Magnum Colt Python. Some considered revolvers obsolete in this age of automatics, but the handgun had served him well in the past and he hoped for a chance to prove its worth again. He couldn’t see his target at this point, but from what he’d just overheard it seemed clear that Vishnevsky wouldn’t be an open target. Lyons was counting on the element of surprise and the slight chance that from beneath the doorway he would find enough clearance between the Russian and his hostage to get off a close-range kill shot. He knew the odds were against him, but there seemed little likelihood of otherwise ending the standoff without allowing Vishnevsky to get away.
As Zimmer continued to barter with the Russian, Lyons inched closer to his destination. That’s it, keep him distracted, Lyons thought. He had only another five yards to go.
TAOS P.D. OFFICER ROBERT Puckett was the first member of Lyons’s team to realize Vishnevsky had ground support. Standing alongside the KIA Sedona, the SWAT-trained sniper had been lining up a shot on the Cessna’s cockpit when he’d detected movement far off to his left. More than a hundred yards away, a carbine-armed gunman had just gotten out of a Land Rover parked next to a partially constructed commercial building and was taking aim at Puckett’s fellow sniper, Sheriff Officer Kevin Yount.
“Get down!” Puckett shouted to Yount as he shifted position and leveled his vintage Springfield M1903-A4 at Franz Khartyr.
Puckett rushed his shot and only managed to take out one of the Rover’s front headlights. His warning saved Yount’s life, however, as Khartyr’s return fire laced over the Impala’s front hood and through the vacated space where the officer had been standing.
Fast on the heel of Khartyr’s rounds, a 9 mm burst fired from inside the Rover caught Puckett just below his right cheekbone. Killed instantly, the police sniper slumped against the minivan and dropped to the asphalt.
“Son of a bitch!” Puckett’s partner, TPD Sergeant George Fernandez, bolted from the minivan and crouched beside Puckett long enough to see the man was beyond help. Enraged, he snatched up the fallen Springfield and charged forward to the raised concrete base support for one of the parking lot’s light fixtures. Behind him, Yount was advancing, as well, dodging another incoming round before taking cover behind an airport shuttle van.
Fernandez was drawing bead on the Rover when a cloud of smoke erupted inside the enemy SUV. The officer was just beginning to realize the smoke was discharge from a grenade launcher when he heard a resounding explosion out on the airport runway.
VLADIK BARAD’S AIM HAD been as true as Franz Khartyr’s but with far better results.
No one had been in a position to warn Officer Gibson that his maintenance truck was in the crosshairs of the Russian’s grenade launcher. Gibson knew something was wrong when he’d heard an exchange of gunfire out in the airport parking lot, but before he had a chance to react, the RPG-7 HEAT round fired from down the road had homed in on his truck, a far more vulnerable target than the armor-plated tanks the warhead was designed to penetrate. In an instant, the six-ton truck was turned into a shrapnel-spitting mass of twisted metal. Gibson was killed the moment the driver’s cab disintegrated and Zimmer, still standing behi
nd the vehicle, was knocked to the asphalt seconds later by flaming shards of steel. His right arm severed and a gnarled shiv embedded in his chest. The tribal officer’s last rememberance was seeing Dmitri Vishnevsky jerk his hostage back inside the Cessna’s passenger cabin and slam the door shut, even as it was being pelted by hasty rounds fired by panicked officers standing just outside the terminal.
SHOCK WAVES FROM THE explosion had knocked Lyons off balance just as he was about to dodge out from beneath the jet and try to get a shot off at Vishnevsky. He was lying flat on the tarmac when officers near the terminal fired over his head, inflicting minimal damage to the cabin door. Shrapnel had glanced off the jet’s nose assembly and cracked the cockpit window, but the pilot had apparently determined that the craft was still airworthy. Lyons had to roll to one side to avoid being crushed by a landing wheel when the jet began to move forward. The truck in front of it had been sufficiently flattened to allow the pilot to negotiate past its smoldering remains and head down the approach lane leading back to the runway.
“Damn it!” Lyons shouted, scrambling to his feet. He gave chase as the jet began to pull away from him. Once he was close enough he leaped forward, planting himself on the Cessna’s right wing. Smoke from the destroyed truck wafted past him as he slowly began to crawl toward the fuselage, still clutching his revolver. The Cessna veered slightly, picking up speed and angling toward turnaround at the end of the taxi lane. Lyons wasn’t sure what he could do to prevent the jet from taking off, but he was hell-bent on trying.
He wasn’t alone thinking along the same lines.
Blood Play (Don Pendleton's Mack Bolan) Page 23