by Sean McFate
Everly sucked in his breath, a small sound, but from the London banker, it might as well have been a gasp. He had seen the look on Gorelov’s face, too, Winters realized. For the second time that morning, Gorelov had blinked.
He was bluffing about Karpenko being nothing. He had either been told Karpenko was dead, or he had created the lie himself and forgotten. There was no reason for either to be the case, unless the Ukrainian mattered, not just in Kiev, but in Moscow, too. Gorelov had been cocky as he gloated over Karpenko’s death, until he saw the look on Winters’s face, and knew that he was wrong.
Winters pounced. “Call your friends,” he said and gestured to the Russian’s phone bank. “Tell them that Karpenko is alive. Tell them he is coming.”
Gorelov grabbed two cell phones, as if on impulse.
“Call someone important,” Winters laughed. “By all means, call someone who matters. I hope they are early risers.”
Maltov opened up with Jacobsen’s M249 SAW machine gun as soon as the white phosphorus grenade strapped to the drone exploded. He was behind a barricade near the center of the warehouse, too far away to target with any hope of accuracy, but close enough that he could see, through the burning front wall, the Russians squirming in the starburst of the blast, like earthworms in bleach. He kept firing, pointing the gun toward anything that moved, as the fish truck barreled through the hole in the front wall of the warehouse, Yevgeny at the wheel. Poor Yevgeny, who had once played three consecutive games of eight ball without missing a shot. Who always received a card from his mother on Valentine’s Day, meaning he was a perverted bastard, sure, but also that his mother knew where he was, and what he was doing, but not that he was already dead, that even now, as Maltov fired, a Russian RPG was ripping into the truck, exploding the fuel drums and C-4, making the kamikaze drone look like mere fireworks.
The SAW machine gun clicked dry, out of ammo. Maltov let go and grabbed the AK-47 from his shoulder. He ran toward the Chechens and their Russians overlords. He didn’t think of death or country or burning to nothing, not even ash, in unholy flames. He simply got to work.
Gorelov slammed down a phone. “You don’t have the men,” he said brusquely.
He had been talking with military commanders. Winters heard the name Karpenko several times. Good.
“Stalin said there’s a certain quality in quantity,” Winters replied slowly, with affected ease. “I disagree. I believe in actual quality. That’s why my soldiers are the best.”
“Even the best soldier is nothing when the ammo runs out. How many could you possibly have?”
“Almost a hundred,” Winters lied.
“We have thousands,” Gorelov lied in return. “We have troops in every oblast in eastern Ukraine. We can be anywhere in minutes.”
“It will take an hour,” Winters said confidently, “once you factor in the time to mobilize.”
Gorelov shrugged. “An hour is nothing. You can’t change the world in an hour with a hundred men.”
“Maybe,” Winters said, “but in an hour, it will be too late for either of us to turn back.”
“You’re bluffing,” the Russian said dourly, but Winters could almost taste the fear.
Winters smiled. “Go on. Make calls. Waste time. I’m a conflict entrepreneur. I have spent years planning this operation. It is my life’s work. But if you wish to gamble on my incompetence, be my guest.”
The Wolf lifted his head. His men were burning around him, the white phosphorous eating through their flesh as they screamed. The truck was a crater, its fire burning hot, but he had been ready. He had blown it apart before it reached the trees, and there wasn’t much firepower behind it, only four men with Kalashnikovs, if his count was right. The rear guard, clearly untrained, fighting a hopeless delaying tactic out of adrenaline and pride. No Colonel Sirko, his old commander, no oligarch, and certainly no Western mercenaries.
The Wolf shook his head. He lowered his rifle, considering his next move. Ukrainians, he thought with contempt, as one of the rear guard fell. History’s fools.
CHAPTER 53
Wildman lunged into the back alley, wheeling three steel doors on a truck dolly in front of him as a makeshift shield. Behind him, Boon bent to a knee with the first M90 rocket launcher. The M90 could take out tanks, not to mention a machine gun crew on a roof only fifty meters away. Within seconds, Boon had pulled the trigger. The rocket’s backblast scorched the pavement behind him. The shot went high, over the heads of the gun crew.
“Next!” Boon yelled, and I tossed him the other M90. Machine gun fire rained around him, slamming into Wildman’s steel shield with thudding force, but Boon sighted calmly, adjusted for the weapon’s arc of fire, and squeezed the trigger. Fwoosh. The rocket hit just below the machine gun nest, collapsing the wall.
Wildman screamed and tossed aside the shield in favor of his British SA-80. Sirko jumped through the door beside him, letting rip with his bullpup ASh-12 as the enemy struggled to right themselves and return fire. Next came Karpenko, then Alie and Hargrove, pulling Miles behind them on an improvised litter. The Chechens were scrambling, pulling the machine gun from the pile of bricks and bodies and readying it for firing. Ten seconds, I thought. I kicked Hargrove like a mule to get his ass in gear, practically knocking him across the open area and through the hole we’d cut in the fence directly beyond the door.
Within seconds, we were in the forest, with Boon and Wildman laying down cover behind us. I sprinted past Karpenko ten meters into the twilight and underbrush, then dropped to a knee in the leaves, signaling the group to pass me, then cut to the left.
I knelt, breathed deep, and scoped the Chechens through the trees, their guns up now and firing, but raggedly. I squeezed the trigger and laid down heavy covering fire. Seconds later, Sirko sprinted passed me and cut left. Boon and Wildman cut the other way, heading right into the forest. They were the diversion. If they couldn’t draw the enemy off, they’d circle back to cover us.
“Pick up the pace,” I whisper-yelled, moving past Hargrove and Alie as they struggled through the underbrush.
“The blood . . .” Alie huffed.
Jimmy Miles was delirious and bleeding through his bandages; Hargrove’s incompetent jostling of the litter was killing him; but it was the best I could do for him. My gun was worth more than Alie and Hargrove put together.
“Fuck the blood,” I said. “We have to move.”
I heard Maltov’s machine gun fall silent in the distance, out of ammo. I heard his AK-47. It was met by a vicious barrage. The Chechens had survived Maltov’s best shot, which had always been a long shot at best, and they were hammering him.
“Move fast,” I said. “Light and noise discipline.” No shots, unless lives were on the line. We needed to move silently and rely on stealth, not firepower.
“Don’t stop,” I said, turning to Alie and Hargrove before double-timing ahead to take point. “No matter what.”
“Thanks,” Alie said, but I didn’t know what she was talking about.
There was a gully a hundred meters to the east. I’d scouted it as a possible evac route the first morning, and I was heading for it now. It was first light, bright enough to silhouette us against the horizon. If we could make the dry creek bed, we’d have some cover to run or, more likely, find an ambush spot for a last stand.
I dropped into the gully and paused, the rest of the group filing in behind me, Miles grunting as the litter slipped down the short incline into the rocky ravine. In the distance, Boon and Wildman were firing, drawing the enemy away from us. Beyond the warehouse, Maltov and his men were still in a firefight, but for how long? We had passed five of the seven buildings in the complex, dark squares behind a fence, blocking our access to the road, but even here, I could see the warehouse fire lighting the sky.
The road.
I moved quickly to Hargrove. “Do you have your keys?”
“What?” He was huffing. It had been a long day.
“Do you have your car keys?�
�
“What?” He grimaced. Behind him, Jimmy grunted. I didn’t dare look.
“Can we take your car?” Alie snapped.
“I think so,” Hargrove said. “I think . . . Yes. I have the keys. I left it at the front gate.”
I moved past Karpenko to Sirko, who was crouched behind a fallen tree, listening for hostiles. I heard an Israeli Tavor, Boon’s gun. Then Wildman’s SA-80. Then half a dozen AK-47s. They were a few hundred meters away.
“Around the incinerator,” I said to Sirko, pointing toward the small building on the far edge of the factory complex, “then left toward the road.” The fence was done at the far end of the complex. If we could get past the incinerator, we would have cover all the way to the road. I just hoped Hargrove’s abandoned car was unguarded and in one piece.
I heard Boon’s Tavor, closer now, but not Wildman’s SA-80. I heard gunfire from the direction of Maltov’s men. Somewhere, something exploded. Something large collapsed. My ears were ringing, but I felt attuned. I tried not to think of Miles bleeding out. He had half an hour; that was what I had told myself when we left. I couldn’t doubt now.
“Now,” I said, signaling Sirko to lead. He bolted up and crouch-ran toward the incinerator, trailed by Karpenko, Alie, Hargrove, and Miles on his litter. As I’d hoped, the old colonel was a skilled operator in the right conditions, so I waited six beats. I expected the enemy to come quickly, if they came, and I might be able to catch a few before they knew I was there.
No one came, so I moved out. The others were halfway to the incinerator, fifty meters to go at the most. There was an open area in our direct path, so Sirko skirted the widest part and hit a narrower clearing at speed, his ASh-12 bullpup rifle level before him. I saw Alie pass into the open area and, suddenly, I knew she would be gunned down—almost anticipated it, already feeling the shock—but she was through before I could react, with Hargrove beside her and Miles’s litter dragging at their heels and me a few paces behind, my SCAR rifle ready. Not much farther now, I thought, as Sirko passed into the partial concealment of high weeds.
And then the guns opened up, pop, pop, pop, and the dirt danced. Something struck me, and I fell headlong, my shoulder slamming into Miles, and then my face into the ground.
Reflexively, I pulled my Beretta pistols and rolled. I wasn’t hit. It wasn’t a bullet that knocked me down. It was Hargrove, spinning backward, knocking me onto Miles. I saw Alie falling, pulled down by the force of my weight on the litter. The SCAR was gone, lost in the tall weeds, but I had my pistols, one for each hand, siting for targets, when I heard someone bark: “Kapitan Sirko.”
“Leytenant Balashov,” Sirko hissed, jerking his bullpup upward as a shadow stepped out from behind the incinerator and shot him in the face.
I sighted the man’s head with the Beretta in my right hand. Five meters. High percentage shot. I started to squeeze the trigger, but Karpenko stepped into my line of fire. His back was to me, his arms partially raised in supplication. Fuck. I twisted around, trying to I get an angle with the Beretta in my left hand, but a Chechen appeared to my right, his AK-47 trained on my head, his finger on the trigger.
Silence. The world was silence, except for gunfire in the distance, meaningless to us now. There was no motion, there was nothing at all, until Sirko’s killer spoke in Russian, first to the corpse, then to Karpenko.
“I knew that man,” he said in rough English, for my benefit, and I knew then he was my counterpart, the mercenary leader who had engineered this ambush.
“Do you who I am?” Karpenko said in English. The Russian merc’s Steyr AUG laser sight was dancing on his heart.
Nothing. No reply.
“I am Nikolay Karpenko,” he said calmly, again in English. That was smart, to use a secondary language. It forced the Russian to focus on his words. “I believe there is a half million euro bounty . . .”
“One million,” the Russian interrupted.
“I will pay you two . . .” Karpenko stopped. “No. I will pay you five million euros for safe passage to Vienna.”
The Russian didn’t say anything.
“To Krakow then. No . . . Lviv.”
“Vilnius,” the Russian said. Lithuania. Due north. He must have friends there.
“Fine . . .”
“I ihk?” the Russian said. And them?
Karpenko hesitated, and in his silence, I heard death.
I lunged hard, clearing my lines of fire, and squeezed. I felt the recoil of both pistols and heard two shots. The left, aimed at the Russian, went wide, but that was my weak hand. The right connected and spun the Chechen sideways, causing him to spray his fire above our heads as Boon leapt from the trees, a savage ghost, and plunged his knife into the man’s sternum, burying it in his heart.
I ducked and turned hard, trying to find the next shot, trying to locate the Russian merc, but nothing was moving. No shadows. No sounds. Even the shooting in the distance had stopped.
Then I saw him, dead on the ground, with one blue hole in his chest. I followed the direction of entry and saw Karpenko, standing motionless, holding a six-shot Glock.
He turned and looked at me. He wasn’t stunned or shaken by what had happened, at least as far as I could tell. He dropped his gun hand to his side, his arm steady. His hair was barely mussed.
“I’ve sacrificed too much,” he said slowly. “For my children. For my country. For their country, because they are Ukrainian, too. I’m not going to fucking Vilnius.”
He stopped. He glanced at Miles. Suddenly, I could see the strain, not just of this moment, but of everything.
“You’ve sacrificed too much,” he said, turning toward me, and I didn’t care if it was manipulation or sincerity, I knew he was right.
“Charlie Mike,” I said, nodding. Continue mission.
I turned to Boon, who was crouching over the dead Chechen, wiping his knife clean. “Out of ammo?”
He nodded.
“Where’s Wildman?”
“In the wind.”
They must have gotten separated in the firefight. At least Wildman wasn’t KIA. Maybe.
I looked at the Russian merc. He was old, that was the first thing I noticed. Older than me. Jimmy Miles’s age. And this was a young man’s world. I thought about throwing his body in the incinerator, out of respect. I knew he didn’t have anyone who would miss him. After a certain point, very few of us did.
I looked at Jimmy. He was thrashing, delirious and in pain, probably spiking a fever. His leg was covered with blood down to his boot.
“We’ve got to go,” I said. “Now. We’ve got to make the car.”
“Hargrove’s down,” Alie said. I looked. He’d been clipped in the shoulder, nothing more.
“Leave him. I got it,” I said, grabbing Miles’s litter and moving out. Ten steps, and Miles and I were into the shadows behind the incinerator, putting distance between ourselves and whoever might be following. Ten more steps, and I was gasping. Hang in there, Jimmy. Twenty more to the road. But the car wasn’t there. The car wasn’t fucking there.
“The car isn’t here,” Alie said. She had her arm under Hargrove’s shoulders, and she was carrying him, dragging him out of the dark, when only his will was broken, not his legs.
We moved to the tree line, and I laid Miles down. I pulled out my sat phone and dialed Apollo’s twenty-four-hour tactical operations center. They picked up without a ring. They always picked up without a ring.
“Man down,” I said. “Mission abort. Need immediate medevac.”
“Authenticate.”
I didn’t have a password. “This is Locke. Thomas Locke. My team is down, mission fail. I have a man bleeding out. I need a dust-off.”
“I have no Locke on record.”
You fucker. You know me. “I need an extraction. Now!”
“Authenticate.”
I tried a few passwords from old missions, but I knew they wouldn’t work. This was a kite. No calls. No records. They hung up. I dialed Winters. He had
given me his private number.
He’d said I would know when to call.
CHAPTER 54
Brad Winters reached into his pocket and put his cell phone on the table without taking his eyes from Gorelov. He knew who was calling. Only two people in the world had this number. It would be gone by tomorrow. “That’s my guy,” he said. “That’s the man who is right now setting this whole thing in motion. So tell me, have you figured it out yet?”
Gorelov’s jowls quivered, as much from rage as confusion. Pressure, Winters thought, is our ally. The Russian took a slug of vodka. He hadn’t touched the coffee since Karpenko’s name had come up, but he’d smoked through half a pack of filterless Marlboros.
“Suddenly, ten thousand men doesn’t seem like so many, does it?” Winters said. “Not to cover a thousand miles.”
He was toying with him, daring the Russian to figure it out, and it was crushing him. An unsolvable puzzle wasn’t pressure. When the answer was in your grasp, but you couldn’t put the pieces together: that was when you broke down.
“Here’s a hint. Tell them you already have Russian troops in disguise on location,” Winters said with a smirk, as Gorelov snapped rapid Russian into his cell phone. By now, he had no doubt reached high up into the Kremlin and the FSB.
“Why would you tell me this?” Gorelov said. He was agitated, and not hiding it. “Do you think we won’t reinforce our position?”
“I know you will. You might even bring more Spetsnaz, since they were recently spotted only twenty kilometers away.”
Gorelov barked in Russian, relaying the latest information.
“Of course,” Winters said casually, “there are Spetsnaz all over Eastern Ukraine, so that might not help much.”
Gorelov slammed down the phone and poured more vodka. “We won’t fall for a trap,” he said, knocking back an unhealthy slug, “especially not one based on threats.”