The Lone Patriot

by JT Brannan

  Eight o’clock was just around the corner and it was still dark, only the very dimmest of light discernable above the horizon. Proper sunrise wouldn’t be for another hour yet, and that suited Cole perfectly.

  Another work-shift was about to start, and already the compound beyond the woodblock was crawling with suited executives, collars turned up against the cold as they made their way from the huge parking lots on the other side of the complex to their respective buildings, where their day’s work would soon begin.

  Except for the armed patrols that were occasionally visible, it looked much the same as any other office complex in any country in the world; and Cole knew that much of the work that went on inside wouldn’t differ too dramatically from that of many other businesses either. Although plots and strategies were dreamt up here, infiltrations and assassinations, Cole knew that most of the several thousand employees would never see anything more exciting than the screen of their desktop computer. Data was what counted for the modern intelligence service, and the sudden expansion of the SVR headquarters a few years ago was almost certainly down to employing more number-crunchers to process that data than it was to hiring more operational agents.

  The CIA, he reflected, was much the same; indeed, this compound at Yasenevo reminded him of central intelligence headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

  But, he told himself, it was still enemy territory, however familiar it might have been to him, and he had to be careful every step of the way.

  The building Cole wanted was the tallest in the compound, and easy to see from the edge of the trees, many of its office lights still on inside. It was shaped like a giant ‘V’, and to get there, Cole would have to walk along the long concrete avenues that led past several other smaller buildings. He would have to mingle with other workers, but he didn’t think this would be a problem; it was too cold for anyone to be looking up at faces. Everyone had their heads down against the bitter wind, and most had hats on. Besides which, nobody who worked in a place like this knew everybody by sight, it was an impossible task. Most of the kids at Cole’s high school had had trouble remembering the couple of hundred other kids in their own year group; some couldn’t even remember all the people from their homeroom. How would anyone recall the faces of the thirteen thousand people that worked here?

  Cole knew that they simply couldn’t, and the thought gave him confidence as – choosing his moment carefully – he emerged from the block of trees into a patch of shadow that led to the corner of the nearest building, just ten feet away.

  Cole strode the distance quickly, then turned the corner onto the main thoroughfare and immediately blended in with the men and women walking there.

  He went with the flow, the darkness broken here by high-power street lights, and he allowed himself to be carried along toward the twenty-one-story skyscraper at the end of the avenue.

  He knew Devlin was still in the trees, ready with his Marine Corps special, a 7.62mm M40 sniper rifle with which he could hit a dime from a thousand yards. But Cole also knew that he was on the other side of the buildings to his teammate, and – for now at least – he was on his own.

  The intel dump from Michiko indicated that the skyscraper housed not only Directorate S, but also the directorates of political intelligence, external counter-intelligence, operational planning and analysis, and – on the twenty-first floor – the office of Feodor Kravchik, Director of the SVR and his staff. Security was therefore arguably the tightest here out of all the buildings, except perhaps for the small unit that housed the Zaslon special operations group.

  Her information also indicated that – for access to the twentieth floor – security came at three levels.

  The first was at the front entrance, where ID cards would be checked and examined, and people would be scanned for weapons and explosive devices; as such, it was very similar to airport security around the world.

  The second check came at the bank of elevators, where passes would be checked again, and the elevator guards would only allow access to an officer’s own directorate level, unless they had authorization from another department. Cole knew that Directorate S was one of the smaller departments, and so there was more chance of being identified as a stranger there – especially by the security guards manning the checkpoints – and that was why he’d been issued with an authorization pass from ‘his’ section, Directorate OT, Operational and Technical Support. Ostensibly, he would be there to provide briefing information to one of the section chiefs.

  The third stage came on the twentieth floor itself, when officers leaving the elevator bank were checked by yet more guards. These last-stage procedures were apparently the most stringent of all, but – because nobody in western intelligence had ever been granted access to the Illegal Intelligence section, and no one from that directorate had been ‘turned’ in recent years, the exact details were unavailable. Michiko reported that best guess estimates were thumb or palm-print recognition, or perhaps an iris scanner or facial recognition program.

  Cole knew that he would have to cross that bridge when he came to it though; he was going to receive a little help from his teammates at that point, and he hoped that it would be enough.

  As he entered the first-floor lobby, he wondered how Navarone had done it. But Jake had been deep undercover for months, and he’d got the job as White House bodyguard for real, which meant his ID had been real, and his genuine thumb, palm and iris scans would have been on file, and therefore usable. ‘Aleksandr Petrushkin’ could have sweettalked his way into getting authorization to visit Directorate S, and then all he’d had to do was break into Dementyev’s office and . . .

  But that had been as far as Navarone had got.

  Cole hoped he could do better.

  Cole flew past the first checkpoint with no problems; there were so many people swarming in and out at the change of shift that it would have been impossible to double-check everyone passing through.

  The lobby was large, clean and neat, and – like the security checks themselves – put Cole in mind of an airport. It was functional, that was all Cole could say of it.

  He moved swiftly to the elevator banks, selecting the one that went straight up to the top five floors, and started queuing.

  As he waited in line, he subtly looked around him, taking in his environment with a practiced eye. Now he was past the first set of guards, they paid him no more attention, dealing as they were with the next influx of workers.

  Other guards – the second line of defense – were stationed in each elevator, checking the passes of the people getting in. This held things up substantially, but as the doors opened, closed and then – a minute or two later – reopened, Cole got a look at the men inside and saw they were alert and focused. Their elevator was their own personal fiefdom and they seemed to enjoy the power it gave them.

  As Cole edged closer, he could feel the nerves building. If he was discovered, what would be his best course of action? He knew that getting caught was out of the question, but would it be possible to escape?

  He was still only a short sprint from the front exit; if he kept the element of surprise, he thought he would be able to be out onto the avenue beyond before the guards could react. He would try and get back to the fence-line, use the darkness to get back to the woods, use Devlin to keep his pursuers at bay; he’d call in the car, get it to come around and meet him and Devlin on the road on the far side of the park.

  Maybe it would work.

  Maybe . . .

  Either way though, he knew it would be a lot easier to escape from here than it would be to escape from the twentieth floor. There, he decided, his only option would be to take some high-level hostages and hope for the best.

  Then he was near the front of the queue, waiting for the doors to open once again.

  They did moments later, and Cole moved forward to get his papers checked once more. There were two men in front of him, and the man gave their cards a good look before letting them onboard. Then he held out his
hand for Cole’s.

  Cole handed over both the ID card and authorization pass that would enable him to access the twentieth floor. The man looked at it, then looked up at Cole’s face, scrutinizing it carefully. He stared at Cole for several uncomfortable moments, then looked back down at the card as if checking what it said.

  ‘You are from Operational and Technical Support?’ he asked, eyes honing in on Cole’s.

  ‘Yes,’ Cole confirmed. ‘I require access to the twentieth floor, Directorate S. You have my authorization pass.’

  There were mutterings of annoyance from behind Cole at the extended wait, but the guard ignored them. He just looked down at the pass in his hand, as if seeing it for the first time, and then started to reach for the phone on the inside wall of the elevator.

  Shit.

  He was calling upstairs, to see if ‘Yevgeny Kozyrev’ – the name Cole was using – was indeed expected.

  Cole prepared himself to run; he would hit the guard as hard as he could, then just turn and run. And if any other guards got in his way, then they’d soon regret it, he told himself.

  The man’s hand was on the phone, and Cole primed himself to strike. But the mutterings from behind were growing louder and more impatient, and – for a fraction of a second – Cole saw indecision in the guard’s eyes.

  He held fire on hitting the man, waiting to see what he would do.

  And then, mercifully, the hand came away from the telephone and the documents were handed back without another look; the guard had already moved his attention to the lady behind Cole.

  It was over, and after a few more people were inside, the guard closed the door and the elevator started its ascent to the upper levels.

  ‘Where is he now?’ asked Gary Hart, from his position high within the trees on the opposite side of the compound to Devlin. He too was armed with a rifle, although he preferred the McMillan TAC-338 chambered in the enormously powerful .338 Lapua Magnum.

  Julie Barrington, who was watching the compound through her binoculars, checked her watch. ‘Should be in the elevator by now,’ she said. She went back to her binoculars, moved them to observe the road leading to the main gates of the SVR complex. ‘Ken and Daw are moving into position now.’

  Ken Walgren was a Special Forces officer who had once helped train the Afghan mujahedeen against the Soviets, way back in the eighties. He was one of Force One’s oldest operatives, but what he lacked in youthful athleticism, he more than made up for with hard experience.

  Daw Chaiprasit sat next to Walgren in the news van, pleased that she was with such an experienced veteran. Not that she was a rookie herself; born in Thailand but naturalized when her parents moved to the US when she was just three, Chaiprasit had been one of the first women to pass Ranger selection, at the tender age of eighteen. She’d gone on to serve in Delta Force years later, and had seen action all over the world.

  Walgren rolled their van up to the gates of the SVR compound, and she composed herself. It was unusual for her to be going into a situation armed only with a video camera, but she accepted that she and Ken were only offering a diversion.

  She checked her watch and glanced at her partner.

  ‘Time to move,’ she said.

  7

  The elevator doors opened on the twentieth floor, and Cole stepped out with three others, two men and a woman. He was second in line as they filed out of the doors, and Cole welcomed the chance to watch the third stage of security in action.

  There was a barrier a little way beyond the elevator doors, manned by three guards, pistols on their hips.

  The man in front of him stepped forward, presented his credentials to the guards and – as one of them checked the papers – he was called forward to the barrier. He bent down and presented an eye to the scanner, which flickered over the man’s retina.

  So that was it.

  Retinal scan.

  That was going to be a problem, Cole knew; for although his papers were in order, he didn’t know whether Michiko would have been able to hack directly into the SVR system to plant Cole’s biometric data alongside the Yevgeny Kozyrev identity.

  If she hadn’t managed it – and potentially she wouldn’t have, as there was no guarantee that the database would be open to external interference, especially if it was on a hardened, internal system – then all sorts of alarm bells would start ringing.

  But, Cole told himself, there were only three guards here; Cole knew he could probably take them.

  But what then?

  He was there a moment later, and he brought his concentration back to the present.

  A guard held out his hand, Cole handed over both his ID card and his pass, and another gestured for him to move over to the retinal scanner.

  Come on guys, he thought, where’s my diversion?

  The next moment, Cole saw the guards going for their radios, all at the same time.

  And all were listening intently.

  ‘Vy ne mozhete snits' zdes',’ the guard said, submachine gun half-way into the level position.

  Walgren and Chaiprasit were out of the news van, Walgren with a microphone in his hand as he spoke to the camera being held by his partner; he’d been giving a brief history of the SVR, along with a description of the compound and what he believed went on there, for the Australian news channel they were pretending to be a part of.

  ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about mate,’ said Walgren in a strong Aussie accent, pretending he didn’t understand Russian.

  ‘You cannot film here,’ said another man, this time in English.

  Walgren turned to this guard – who was backed up by six others, all similarly armed – and shook his head. ‘Hey man,’ he said in a strong Aussie accent, ‘this is a public road, alright mate? We can film here if we want.’

  ‘No,’ said the guard, edging closer toward the pair, ‘you cannot.’

  Chaiprasit saw one of the other guards talking into his radio, and smiled inwardly. Keep going, she willed Ken. With any luck, a full security alert would be issued.

  But it was a balancing act, of course; if they went too far, they could both be shot, or at least hauled in for questioning, and who knew where that would lead? She knew that Hart was covering them with his McMillan, but she didn’t want it to get to that stage.

  ‘Hand me the camera,’ another guard was saying to her, crowding her. She backed away, pulling the camera away from his grasp.

  ‘Leave her alone!’ Walgren insisted, inserting himself between Chaiprasit and the guard.

  She could see guns coming up toward them and – keeping in character – let out a frightened squeal.

  It was a balancing act, as she thought before.

  She just hoped that they got the balance right.

  Cole watched as the men listened on their radios, deciding what to do.

  He hoped that Ken and Daw were okay, that they weren’t going too far; the last thing he wanted was for them to be locked up too.

  But the tactic was working at least, as first one, and then another, guard moved through the barrier, walking past the waiting line to stare through the huge glass panes next to the elevator that looked out over the eastern side of the compound, toward the main gate.

  But that was as far as they went, and then they just stayed there, looking out of the windows.

  And the third man was still there, waiting for Cole to move toward the retinal scanner.

  Damn.

  Two out of three just wasn’t good enough.

  ‘Bastard!’ Chaiprasit screamed as one of the guards tried to wrestle the camera away from her. She resisted, pulling it away, and he reacted by grabbing it even harder, almost pulling her off her feet; and then a second man was there behind her, actually lifting her off her feet entirely, allowing the first man to finally whip the camera from her grasp.

  Walgren was there with his hands held out placatingly, trying to calm the situation down. ‘It’s okay guys,’ he said, ‘it’s okay, really. Look, put the girl
down, alright?’

  But the men weren’t releasing Chaiprasit and, still playing the role and hoping it was worth it, Walgren raced forward and pulled one of the men off her.

  The response of the other guards was instantaneous; they ran in and clubbed him with the butts of their rifles, felling him to the ground.

  Walgren, on his knees, put his hand toward his pocket.

  He knew it was a risk, but it was one he had to take.

  There was commotion from the area around the window, the two guards calling over their colleague.

  ‘Hey Piotr,’ said one, ‘come and look at this. Crazy damned news crew getting into a fight with Pavel and the boys downstairs.’

  The man behind the retinal scanner considered the matter for only a moment before his interest got the better of him and he also pushed past the barrier, ignoring Cole now in his desire to see the action.

  The man who’d been waiting with Cole followed the guard, also curious about the live circus outside; the woman, either in a hurry or simply with no interest in the affair, strode past Cole and right through the open barrier.

  And Cole, seeing that one of the guards had left his papers on the table by the barrier, decided to follow her, picking up his documents on the way.

  Walking just behind the female officer, he too passed through the barrier of the third security checkpoint, as the guards continued to watch the show outside.

  He hoped his teammates would be okay, but the plan had worked.

  He was inside.

  8

  ‘Thank you,’ Dementyev said to the man on the other end of phone. ‘Yes, I will be there soon.’

  He replaced the handset on his desk and stretched out his aching body. He had been putting in too many hours, he knew that. But what else could he do? There was still so much work to be done. The UN vote was coming up, and he needed everything in place in Athens and Warsaw, as well as all the other details that the plan entailed. He had to coordinate agents and units from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean, and that wasn’t all – he also had to make sure that such a colossal enterprise was entirely covert.