Red Ice

by James Phelan

  So … Babich had been tasked to trawl the state’s most secret archives to find this protocol.

  Then Babich left government service, using his money and smarts to pick up as many of the old security operators and political guys as he could.

  Babich had found it, Yakovlev had confirmed its existence to Yeltsin, and it became public in 1992. Babich left the office two years after this job. He’d disappeared off the CIA’s grid for those last couple of years:

  Roman Babich, whereabouts currently unknown (21 March 1992).

  So this job corresponded with the blank space in his personnel file, and then he’d quit. That document would never have come to light if it were not for glasnost. But what was Babich doing in all that time, between ’89 and ’92?

  Glasnost … McCorkell could almost taste that he was closing in on something, but what? And what would it look like? He probably wouldn’t know until after the fact … Jesus. He got up, went to the drinks cart to make a cup of tea. Rummaged through the tea bags in the jar that hardly anyone else dipped into—they all preferred to be jacked up on coffee—looking for his Irish Breakfast … There. No, it was a peppermint, similar green label. Glasnost … openness … Babich had opened the most secret archives his state had ever known, looking for something. He dug around … Searching … Stopped. Looked at the similar green tag on the tea.

  What if Babich had been looking for this secret protocol, and found something else? He was deep in Stalin’s secret archives for months … maybe years. McCorkell looked over at the teams—they were looking for Babich. Babich was looking for something once and he had found something; something that he’d never fully played, but it had been hot enough to protect him all this time.

  38

  GIVERNY TO PARIS

  “Time for some fancy driving!” Gammaldi said, ducking down again with Kate as another stream of rounds ricocheted off the road outside his window.

  Fox checked the rear-view mirror—the Audi was coming, faster and much better armed than the four of them in the Golf.

  “Where are your cop buddies?” Fox asked Zoe.

  “Five minutes!” she replied, checking her phone.

  He pushed the car with everything its little engine had, holding each gear change to the last moment as his foot was planted to the floor.

  “They’re closing fast!” Zoe said.

  “I know!” Fox replied, zipping in and out of the overtaking lane, then out onto the emergency lane and around other vehicles.

  “Faster!”

  “We’re in top gear!” Fox said, seeing the speedometer needle was about to pass one-ninety … moving slowly towards its two-twenty max. Why hadn’t he sprung for an Audi S8 back at the car rental? That’d solve some problems now. Behind, the massive Audi was within a hundred and fifty metres; the gunner opened up again with a spray of submachine-gun bullets that fell to the left as Fox tweaked the steering wheel to the right.

  “Get off the highway!” Zoe shouted.

  Loud impacts rang inside the Golf as incoming rounds shredded the rear hatch—it wrenched clean off the car and clattered in their wake.

  “Give me the shotgun!” Zoe said. Gammaldi passed it through, barely able to get it into the front seat because of the long barrel. Zoe leaned out her window, her knees on the seat and her arms braced on the window frame.

  “Wait till he’s closer!” Fox said, using the emergency lane to bypass a traffic jam.

  Zoe pulled herself back in, still facing the rear.

  “You say when and I’ll tap the brakes—let them get close before you fire!”

  She nodded.

  Fox veered back onto the highway, slalomed through the traffic, racing towards an on-ramp—a stream of cars merging.

  “Hold on!” Fox just made it through by splitting the two lanes.

  The Audi tried to squeeze after him—skidding—sparks flew as the Audi ground along the side of a truck, forcing the passenger gunner back in—but they monstered onwards, closing the gap to a hundred metres.

  “Hang on!” Fox said, weaving through some congestion, a van swerving off into the emergency lane and locking up its brakes in a cloud of smoke …

  The Audi was leaving a trail of totalled cars behind them. Fuck it. Fox hit a few cars too, light taps into corner bumpers, making his pursuer navigate the mess. He may have been able to shed the cops earlier, but not these guys, not on the open road. This car, they had to fight. It was eighty metres behind, the passenger gunner getting back out to fire.

  Zoe leaned out the window, braced herself with her butt against the dash.

  “Brake now!” Zoe said, aiming the shotgun straight back. Fox touched the brakes and the car slowed fast—he saw the Audi’s nose dip as the driver reacted and braked; Fox hit the accelerator when it was twenty metres behind.

  Zoe unleashed both barrels. The Audi’s gunner fired at the same time, but shot wide as he was clipped with pellets. Their windscreen looked like it had been sandblasted, and the driver lost control, spinning to a stop in a cloud of smoke. Fox kept on the gas, wanting to put distance between them while he could.

  39

  WASHINGTON, DC

  “What have we got?” McCorkell asked, falling into step next to Bowden as they arrived at the DoD op team. Members from each service were working consoles and manning phones.

  “We’ve got an unknown aircraft,” an Air Force operator explained. “Present location fits, it could have been at Hutchinson’s mid-air hijack.”

  “What is it?” Bowden asked.

  “Flight plan from this aircraft,” she replied, pointing to her screen, “was set as a flight from Sardinia to Kazakhstan. Currently entering Black Sea airspace, Turkish Air Force transport was just talking with it, and they were close enough for a visual.”

  “And?”

  “Flight was logged as Aeroflot, looks legit on radar and paper, but it has no livery—”

  Bowden asked, “Could it be Russian Intel?”

  “We’ve been through dozens of contacts that have checked out and this is our only remaining suspect aircraft on that flight path sir.”

  “Keep on it,” Bowden said. He turned to his CIA team: “Activate assets in Kazakhstan, ready to get to wherever they touch down—over the border with Russia too, he may be landing in Russia. He touches down, I want human eyes on him. Observe and report. Get to it.”

  His staff jumped on their new tasks.

  McCorkell watched the designated aircraft blinking its way across the Black Sea towards Kazakhstan. China bordered that country to the south-east—maybe this was going to be a refuelling stop, or maybe they were just flying over friendly airspace.

  “Bowden,” McCorkell said. The CIA man looked up from some NSA Echelon transcripts. “This flight path? Valerie’s hunch about China? We gotta talk…”

  40

  ROAD TO PARIS

  “Faster!” Gammaldi said, peering over the top of the back seats.

  “I know!” Fox replied.

  No time to lose. The Audi was back on his tail, unshakable. Fox threaded through the cars in front. The Golf was running hot, but slowing to save the radiator wasn’t on the cards.

  Behind, the gunner had kicked out the shattered windscreen and was taking some pot shots at them, the long muzzle flash ominous.

  Several rounds ripped through the roof and tore through Fox’s headrest.

  Zoe opened the breech of the shotgun, its barrel out the window.

  “No more shells,” Gammaldi called, crouched down flat against the back seat, Kate quiet beneath him in the foot-well

  Nothing about this car chase was fun. Fox knew from operating in Iraq and Afghanistan that a vehicle provided little ballistics cover; it gave you the option to bug out of trouble or use the car itself as a heavy offensive mass. They had no advantage against the Audi, certainly not on open road. He had to do something drastic. Now.

  They were nearing the outskirts o
f Paris and the traffic was building. The pursuers were gaining—two hundred metres back. Still no sign of Zoe’s back-up cops.

  “How many rounds you got in your pistol?” Fox asked, then took the emergency lane as the shooter took a sweeping shot at their back wheels.

  “Full clip: fifteen,” Zoe replied.

  “Swap you,” he said. “Take the wheel.”

  “What?”

  He drifted back into the lane and weaved between a couple of buses.

  “Here, slide over, now!”

  She slid across, sitting in his lap, before he let the seat back a little and moved into her seat, taking the SIG. Zoe struggled to keep their vehicle ahead of the more powerful Audi, which tried to spin them out by hitting their bumper. The gap widened as they manoeuvred through a group of a dozen antique cars.

  Fox said, “When they’re close again, hit the brakes like I did before, but harder.”

  “What?” she asked, expertly moving the car through the traffic as though she were a seamstress threading the eye of a needle.

  “When I say, hit the brakes—hard this time, let them close right in.” The Audi was a hundred and twenty metres back, one ten, one hundred. Matching their weave through the other vehicles on the road. Fox faced backwards, crouched in the seat, one hand tight on the pistol and the other on the lip of the open sun-roof.

  “Wait for it…” he yelled over his shoulder. The hatch door of the Golf was long gone and what remained were sharp pieces of jagged metal, hanging from the hinges—he wanted to avoid those.

  “Three seconds!” he yelled, then crouched, ready to jump up and out.

  The Audi closed, the gunner lined up, taking aim out of the windscreen, the wind buffeting him as his car moved at high speed—

  Fox let off two rounds; one pinged off the Audi passenger’s side pillar, sending the gunner for cover. Fox readied himself.

  “Now!”

  The Audi was twenty metres back. In a second, it was less than five and just before they hit, Fox moved.

  Up and out, he leaped onto the Audi’s bonnet.

  He hit hard, his pistol clattering into the Audi’s interior, its driver back on his accelerator, giving just enough change in momentum to slide Fox towards the open windscreen. The gunner aimed—

  Fox grabbed the foregrip of the passenger’s MP5 submachine gun as the driver swerved left and right to shake him. Neither he nor the gunner were letting go. Over his shoulder he could see the road ahead—swerving, the Golf now corralling its pursuer.

  Zoe braked long and hard, forcing the Audi to slow as well—they were moving as one in a cloud of smoke and dust from protesting tyres and brakes.

  Fox hauled himself into the passenger compartment, holding the MP5 across with his right hand and lunging with his left for the gunner’s throat. He caught the guy’s throat, pushed off the dash with his feet, felt the windpipe crush under his own ninety-kilogram frame, and the submachine gun went off. The full-auto nine-millimetre rounds sheared both the driver’s arms off above the wrist, the interior of the vehicle erupting in a mist of blood and gore.

  Fox sunk into the front seats between the men, back to the windscreen, his left elbow jabbed hard against the gunner’s temple knocking him out, while his right hand grabbed the steering wheel and he pulled his legs down into the cabin and planted his foot on top of the driver’s, squeezing on the brakes. Wind whipped in through where the windscreen had been. After five long seconds, the Audi was stationary on the hard shoulder. Both assassins had passed out, the driver convulsing and losing blood fast. The bonnet of the car was pocked with bullet holes, the radiator hissed and steamed. The Golf had stopped, ten metres ahead; both Gammaldi and Kate were gazing apprehensively over the back seat. Fox looked around, checked the guys’ pockets, nothing. He climbed through to the back seats, picked up Zoe’s pistol, exited through the rear passenger’s side door, walked back to the Golf and climbed into the empty passenger seat.

  He was covered with blood, his chest ached from where he’d dragged himself across the remnants of broken windscreen and his heart was still racing. He knew that in a few minutes he’d come down, be in a flat funk as his adrenaline wore out. He looked up from the pistol in his bloodied hands.

  Zoe stared at him, wide-eyed.

  “Drive,” he said to her, his throat dry. “Just drive.”

  PART TWO

  41

  HIGH OVER EUROPE

  Babich looked out his side window. The sky was overcast. They were flying forwards in time, heading east as fast as the aircraft would take them. If their flight was identified he didn’t like his chances in the air; the US could reach you anywhere. The Russians, too, in this part of the world. He had no doubt that any number of nations would shoot him out of the sky, given the order from either the US or Russia. Not Kazakhstan, though. Money in the right hands, again, paid dividends. Two Kazakhstani jet fighters, MiG-29s, provided an escort through their airspace. Once over China, they’d appear on radar like any civilian Aeroflot flight en route to Shanghai. Lavrov had planned the mission well.

  “Your man in Paris,” Babich turned to Lavrov. “He’s clean?”

  “Yes, I recruited him personally,” Lavrov said. “He is a deep undercover agent, never been used.”

  “Do we own him?”

  “No. Russia does.”

  “He’s for the country?”

  Lavrov nodded.

  “He’s doing this for Russia…” Babich broke into a grin. “That’s priceless.”

  “He thinks that this is the assignment he’s been waiting for his whole life.” Lavrov smiled. “He will do a fine job.”

  Babich watched the MiGs out the window. He’d soon command many of them. And bombers. Attack helicopters. Naval vessels. Tanks. Ballistic missiles. That kind of power, even the idea of it, even the deterrence factor, was unbelievable in scope. For too long his country had sat idle. For too long they had watched the world prosper in a system he knew how to work. Russia deserved better.

  “I am a cynical old man,” Babich said after a while. “If I trust anyone, it is most often those who value money, because I know I can pay them the most. This man of yours—a patriot? That could get complicated…”

  “He can’t be bought,” Lavrov said firmly. “But he works for me and he respects that.”

  “Everyone has a price.”

  Lavrov crossed his arms.

  “That Lachlan Fox, he could never be bought.”

  “True…” Babich said, remembering a discussion he’d had with Fox six months ago. He’d put everything on the table and it had indeed seemed that the reporter could not be bought. “But he was a unique case, and I’d read him wrong.”

  “Wrong?”

  “I’ve had time to reflect,” Babich said. He held up his hand and shook his finger, “I figured his price.”

  Lavrov smiled, nodded.

  “Well, this man, my agent, cannot be pressured into doing your bidding or anyone else’s—he thinks he’s doing this for Russia, his Rodina, and it’s best we leave it at that,” he continued. “Do not get me wrong, we are paying him well, but that’s to disappear at the end of this.”

  The more Lavrov spoke, the uneasier Babich felt. Less certain. He had no time for that.

  “He has already killed for us,” Lavrov said. “He will see it through. He’s working with some of our best special operatives.”

  “Keep a tight leash on him,” Babich gazed at the MiG jet out the window, thin vapour trails coming from its wing tips. “But I want insurance, in case he backs out.”

  “There’s no way he’d—”

  “Just in case.”

  Lavrov knew not to argue.

  “He must have someone he values,” Babich said. “Wife. Family. Whoever. Pick them up. Hold them until it is done.”

  Lavrov nodded. Babich put a hand on his shoulder, looked his trusted man in the eye.

  Babich said, “We go tonight, and
it will be great. We go with what we have, from your man, or we can’t go at all. It will be tight, but it is what it is.”

  “It is a great thing we are doing.” Lavrov looked at his young men, government men like him, who were backing a new leader in Babich. “It all changes tonight, doesn’t it, old friend?”

  “Call in to Shanghai and Moscow,” Babich said. “Make sure everyone is where we need them to be.”

  Babich poured them both a measure of vodka. They raised their glasses.

  “Tomorrow, a new dawn for everyone. Tomorrow, we arrive.”

  42

  PARIS

  “Here we are,” Zoe said, parking the beaten-up Golf outside a large, austere building.

  A squad of armed paramilitary police out the front looked at the smashed-up car with interest. Zoe went over and showed her ID, and they turned their attention elsewhere, scanning for threats. Zoe was giving orders to one and he relayed the info into his radio. She went back to the car.

  “Lachlan, will you come with me?” she asked. “Alister and Kate, there is a café on the corner of Rue de Saint-Simon, just there, see? A DCRI colleague of mine will meet you there soon.”

  “But how—”

  Zoe cut Gammaldi off, “He will know you.”

  Gammaldi and Kate shared a look, but knew it was useless arguing. Fox looked as though he’d been run over with a lawnmower—he’d torn off his sleeves to bandage his forearm and the front of his shirt was ripped from where he’d crawled into the Audi.