One of the remaining Russians on the right opened fire, dirt and rocks flying up within inches of McGarvey’s head as he buried himself facedown in the dirt.
“Sesfir!”—Cease fire!—one of the operators shouted, and the shooting stopped.
SEVENTY-THREE
“Sherman, are you okay?” McGarvey shouted.
“I’m good,” she called, but her voice sounded distorted.
“Leaves only yourself and one other operator,” McGarvey said into the lapel mic. “The odds have changed.”
The earbud was silent.
McGarvey raised his head a few inches and scoped the rise ahead, but nothing was visible. The Russians hadn’t retreated; they were just keeping low. “Dawn will be in a couple of hours. We can wait until then.”
Still there was no answer.
“The EUTELSAT won’t be down forever. Maybe another half hour or so, and then you’ll be screwed.”
“What do you propose?” a man speaking broken English came back in Mac’s earbud.
“You have an exfiltration plan; leave the field now and go home.”
“How do I know you won’t shoot when I retreat?”
“You don’t,” McGarvey said. But something about what the man said and his tone didn’t sit right.
“Then what are my alternatives?”
McGarvey suddenly knew. The man had said: When I retreat. Then what are my alternatives? He was stalling for time.
“Sherman, incoming!”
* * *
Alicia rolled over, bringing her Glock up, when one of the black-clad operators rose up just a few inches directly behind her and pointed the room broom at her head.
“Nyet,” he said softly.
Sherman tensed, ready to bring her gun hand around and take the shot anyway, but the Spetsnaz operator shook his head.
After a couple of seconds, she relaxed. Very carefully, she lowered the pistol to the ground and pulled her hand back. “Do you understand English?”
“A little,” the Russian said.
“I have no other weapons,” she said, and she spread her hands. “I am surrendering. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to get to my feet now,” she said, and before he could do anything, she slowly got to her feet, careful to keep her outstretched hands in plain sight.
The Russian said something into his lapel mic.
“I’m giving up!” she shouted toward where she figured the other Russians were positioned. “My name is Alicia Sherman; I am the assistant special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s office in New York City. I want to speak with your squad leader.”
No one answered.
Without glancing back at the Russian on the ground behind, and keeping her hands out, she started across the open ground.
* * *
Vetrov was in a position now that he’d never been in before. For the most part, gun battles were fairly easy affairs and usually only lasted a few minutes. But watching the woman approach, he had to admire her guts, and yet she was a part of the opposition force, and his inclination was to simply shoot her.
“Come no farther!” he shouted. The woman was fifteen yards out.
She kept coming, her pace slow but even.
“Stop, or we will be forced to shoot you!” Vetrov shouted.
“You should have had the man who’s hiding back there in the dirt do it when he snuck up on me in the dark like a coward.”
* * *
“Have you got a good sight line on where she was?” McGarvey asked, keeping his voice low.
“Yes,” Pete said.
“Keep on it. Anyone shows his head, don’t hesitate—just take the shot, and keep shooting even if he goes down.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going to finish it,” McGarvey said. Staying close to the ground, he scrambled up toward the operator he’d been talking to.
“Why’d I think he was going to say something like that?” Pete said to herself as Mac left.
* * *
Alicia stopped about halfway between where she’d been ambushed and where she thought the operator who’d given her orders had to be. Maybe twenty yards out.
“I’d say shit or get off the pot!” she shouted.
She could almost feel the laser gun sights on her back and chest.
It seemed like forever to her, the night silent except for her own breathing. The side of her head where she been hit with the buttstock was on fire and already swollen, and yet, although she was afraid for her life, she’d put that in a separate compartment. Now it was between the operator behind her and the one in front, and McGarvey and Pete down the hill.
Coming out to provide a distraction had been her only remaining option to help.
“Well, you sons of bitches!” she shouted. “What’s it to be?”
“Nyet!” the Russian ahead of her shouted.
Alicia dropped to the ground and covered her head with both arms. “Your turn, guys,” she said softly.
* * *
The Russian behind Alicia popped up, his figure perfectly showing in Pete’s night vision optics.
He started to raise his weapon, and Pete fired, missing with the first rounds to the right, but walking them left and hitting him center mass with at least three rounds, sending him backward.
She continued firing until her room broom went dry. Ejecting the spent mag, she picked up a spare, knocked it against the weapons handle, rammed it home, cycled a round into the chamber, and brought it up.
There was nothing moving, nothing left to shoot at. And after the terrific noise of the unsilenced weapon in her hands, the night was suddenly silent again, except maybe for a police siren from down across the bay.
* * *
The Russian had raised up a few inches, his room broom pointed to where Alicia had dropped.
McGarvey rose up and touched the back of the man’s head with his room broom’s muzzle. “Nice and easy now,” he said.
Vetrov lay perfectly still.
“Despite everything, I don’t want to kill you. All I want are answers.”
“Mr. McGarvey, I presume?”
“Yes. You?”
“Senior Lieutenant Boris Vetrov.”
“Spetsnaz?”
“The 329th.”
“I’ve heard of your unit,” McGarvey said. “But frankly, I’m surprised that you and your operators chose a dishonorable discharge and some money to take on a job like this. Who hired you?”
“I won’t say.”
“Won’t or can’t?”
“I’m not going to sit out the rest of my life in an American prison somewhere,” Vetrov said.
“And I’m not going to let you walk away,” McGarvey said. “We’re clear up here,” he called.
“You okay?” Pete shouted back.
“Yes. Alicia, how about Bender?”
“He’s dead,” Alicia said.
“Did you bring any restraints?”
“Flex-cuffs.”
“Bring them up,” McGarvey told her.
“I’m not going to let myself be taken to jail,” Vetrov said. “I’ll kill anyone who tries. The chance will come somewhere in transit, and I’ll take it. You must understand.”
“You’re well trained, and you’ll be treated with respect, but it won’t be local cops. Who knows? Maybe we’ll even trade you for someone the GRU is holding.”
“So my only real chance is right now,” Vetrov said. He rolled over all of a sudden, a silenced Glock pistol in his left hand.
“I guess I can’t blame you,” McGarvey said, and he pulled the trigger, emptying the entire forty-round magazine of 4.6×30mm rounds into the man’s chest, neck, and head.
“Too bad,” he said half to himself as Pete and Alicia both came running. “But it’s late, and I’m tired of people gunning for me and my people, and I just didn’t feel like seeing what you could do in hand-to-hand. So, fuck you, comrade.”
EPILO
GUE
As Dr. Franklin explained it ten days later, McGarvey’s below-the-knee plastic leg was headed for the trash bin, which would effectively put him out of commission for six to eight weeks.
“After what you’ve been through, you need some time off, though it won’t be much of a vacation,” the doctor said at a meeting at All Saints. “In any event, you should retire, go back to Sarasota, and take up teaching again.”
McGarvey was seated across from Franklin in the third-floor waiting room, the only space in the hospital large enough to accommodate him, plus Pete, Otto, and Mary, who’d insisted they be present for the pre-op pep talk, as Pete called it.
“Good luck with that,” Mary said.
“Amen,” Otto agreed.
Pete was holding her husband’s hand. “We got the gist of what you want to do, but why the long recovery period?” she asked.
“He’s going to have to learn to walk all over again before he can get back to running around the world shooting at people.”
“Only people who shoot at me first,” McGarvey said.
“Don’t be a curmudgeon,” Pete said. “Go on, Doctor.”
“We’re making him a new leg—actually, with technology that Otto suggested. The bone structure, for want of a better term, will be made of titanium, over which we’ll attach bundles of carbon fiber interlaced with near microscopic strands of a gold-carbon fiber material that conduct electricity. The bundles will be shaped to mimic the natural muscles of a leg, ankle, and foot and will be grafted to the nerve endings in the stump of Mac’s real limb.”
“What’s the catch?” McGarvey asked.
“You’ll think, bend your knee, but it’ll take some practice—a lot of practice—before your new leg will understand what’s being transmitted to it. When the carbon fiber bundles get educated, and the command comes down the pike, the bundles will contract, and your leg will bend. But that’ll be the easy part. Learning to walk, to run, to crouch down and then jump, to climb a ladder, to swim, and do every other movement that we pretty much take for granted after the age of two will have to be relearned.”
“When do we start?” McGarvey asked. He wanted to get it over with so he could finish what had been started in Georgetown.
“MIT is sending down your leg sometime next week, and we’ll have to run a series of tests before the actual operation. Say ten days from now?”
“Good,” McGarvey said.
Franklin got up, shook their hands, and left.
Pete got up, too, but McGarvey didn’t move, and she sat back down. “What?” she asked.
“It’s not over.”
“They were Spetsnaz, and they lost,” Pete said. “Bender’s funeral was three days ago, and Alicia was reprimanded but given the Bureau’s Medal for Meritorious Service—their second highest.”
“General Kanayev retired, and his son-in-law committed suicide,” Otto said. “Case closed, and you’re getting a new leg.”
“Thanks to you,” McGarvey said.
Mary had been watching him. “But it’s not closed, is it?” she said.
“Hammond.”
“No chain of evidence actually connecting him with anything,” Otto said.
“I’ll find it.”
Pete was exasperated. “For Christ’s sake, darling, give it up,” she said. “We won, they lost. Period, end of statement.”
“We lost Serifos. ETII”—the Greek national intelligence service—“convinced the government to seize the lighthouse and ban us from ever returning.”
“We’ll get another island,” Pete said. “Anyway, they paid us the fair market value.”
“Small potatoes,” Otto said quietly. “All that shit is superfluous. The main thing is the leak here in the States. The White House, the Pentagon, somewhere.”
“They won’t stop until I find them,” McGarvey said.
“We find them,” Pete said. “All of us.”
ALSO BY DAVID HAGBERG
Twister
The Capsule
Last Come the Children
Heartland
Heroes
Without Honor*
Countdown*
Crossfire*
Critical Mass*
Desert Fire
High Flight*
Assassin*
White House*
Joshua’s Hammer*
Eden’s Gate
The Kill Zone*
By Dawn’s Early Light
Soldier of God*
Allah’s Scorpion*
Dance with the Dragon*
The Expediter*
The Cabal*
Abyss*
Castro’s Daughter*
Burned
Blood Pact*
Retribution*
The Shadowmen*+
The Fourth Horseman
24 Hours*+
End Game*
Tower Down*
Flash Points*
Face Off*
First Kill*
McGarvey*
Gambit*
WRITING AS SEAN FLANNERY
The Kremlin Conspiracy‡§
Eagles Fly
The Trinity Factor
The Hollow Men
False Prophets‡
Broken Idols‡
Gulag
Moscow Crossing
The Zebra Network
Crossed Swords
Moving Targets
Winner Take All
Kilo Option
Achilles’ Heel
WITH U.S. SENATOR BYRON DORGAN
Blowout
Gridlock
WITH LAWRENCE LIGHT
Crash
NONFICTION WITH BORIS GINDEN
Mutiny!
*Kirk McGarvey adventure
+Kirk McGarvey ebook original novellas
‡Edgar Allan Poe Award nominee
§American Book Award nominee
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAVID HAGBERG (1947–2019) was a New York Times bestselling author who published numerous novels of suspense, including his bestselling thrillers featuring former CIA director Kirk McGarvey, such as Flash Points, Face Off, and First Kill. He earned a nomination for the American Book Award, three nominations for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award, and won three Mystery Scene Best American Mystery Awards. He spent more than thirty years researching and studying U.S.-Soviet relations during the Cold War. Hagberg joined the U.S. Air Force out of high school, and during the height of the Cold War, he served as a U.S. Air Force cryptographer. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Part One: Opening Moves
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Part Two: Middle Game
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
Forty-Seven
Forty-Eight
Forty-Nine
Part Three: Endgame
Fifty
Fifty-One
Fifty-Two
Fifty-Three
Fifty-Four
Fifty-Five
Fifty-Six
Fifty-Seven
Fifty-Eight
Fifty-Nine
Sixty
Sixty-One
Sixty-Two
Sixty-Three
Sixty-Four
Sixty-Five
Sixty-Six
Sixty-Seven
Sixty-Eight
Sixty-Nine
Seventy
Seventy-One
Seventy-Two
Seventy-Three
Epilogue
Also By David Hagberg
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
GAMBIT
Copyright © 2021 by Kevin Hagberg
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Paul Youll
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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New York, NY 10271
www.tor-forge.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-9423-1 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-7653-9424-8 (ebook)
eISBN 9780765394248
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
First Edition: 2021
Gambit Page 31