by Brent Towns
“Wait one, Ma’am.”
Kane called the others to gather around him. “Listen up. The package has left the building.”
“Ahh, Fuck!” Axe growled. “What now?”
“We can scrub the mission, or we insert and gather intel.”
“What intel?” asked Brick.
“Where they might have taken Cara.”
The ex-Seal nodded.
“Amigo,” Arenas said, “I have a feeling there is something else.”
“They know we’re coming.”
Suddenly the jump light changed to green, and the jumpmaster called out. “Hey, what the hell are you guys doing?”
Kane stared at his men, waiting for them to make a decision. Axe nodded. “Fuck it. Let’s go.”
“Yeah, do it,” Brick said.
“Carlos?”
“No.” They stared at him, and the Mexican smiled. “I’m just fucking with you. Let’s go.”
“All right,” Kane said. “Let’s do it.”
All four men shuffled down the ramp and fell into oblivion.
Homyel’ Belarus
“Bravo, all Reaper callsigns down and accounted for, over.”
“Copy, Reaper One, good luck.”
The team had made it without incident, touching down one after the other in close order. They discarded their parachutes and hid them behind a large air-conditioning tower.
“Bravo Four to Reaper One. Copy?”
“Copy, Bravo Four.”
“You’ll find the entrance to the building towards the northeast corner. That will lead you into the stairwell. I can see two guards on the other side of the door. I have control of the security feed, so no one knows you’re here.”
“Copy, Bravo Four.”
Kane led the way across the roof, his suppressed HK416 up at his shoulder, ready to fire. Originally, the plan had been to just use their sidearms. However, that had all changed when the call had come through that their visit was no longer going to be a surprise. It was good planning that had the plane stocked with weaponry for all occasions should the need arise.
The team stopped at the door, and Kane whispered into his comms, “Bravo Four? Reaper One. We’re at the door. Where are the tangos, exactly? Over.”
“Directly at your twelve o’clock, Reaper One.”
“Copy.”
He signaled Arenas to come forward and said, “We’re going to shoot through the door and then breach.”
The Mexican nodded and raised his 416. Kane followed suit and spoke softly into his mic. “Three, two, one, execute.”
Both carbines spit bullets through the door, burrowing into the flesh on the other side. Slick’s voice came over the comms, “Both tangos are down, Reaper One.”
“Copy. Breaching.”
Kane went through first and secured the landing while Arenas secured the head of the stairs. Brick and Axe carried on down to the next landing where the stairs doubled back and down.
The team leader checked both downed men then stood back up. “Bravo, entry secure.”
“Copy, Reaper One.”
“Reaper One, this is Bravo Four. I suggest you go down to nine and then traverse to the other stairwell. You’ve got tangos outside the door on eight.”
“Copy, Bravo Four. We’re moving.”
With Brick on point, they continued down to the next floor and halted outside the door. “Bravo Four, we’re at nine.”
“Copy. The hallway is clear on the other side of the door.”
Brick opened the door, and Axe stepped through the opening with his 416 at shoulder level. Suddenly, down below, a door slammed, and the echo reverberated up through the concrete canyon. They all halted, Arenas swinging around to cover the stairs. When no one appeared, they continued into the hallway.
The carpeted corridor muffled the sound of their boots. From within one of the rooms, the unmistakable sound of shooting and yips of someone watching a western on a television overrode the hum of the air-conditioning. Up ahead, a door opened, and a man appeared. Axe’s red dot sight settled on him, and his finger prepared to stroke the trigger, sending the man on a one-way trip to the promised land. However, the man turned right instead of left and was walking away from them.
Axe let out a sigh of relief which caught in his throat when the man stopped and turned back.
“Oh, shit!” the ex-recon marine blurted out and fired two shots. The man dropped in the middle of the hallway, and Axe said, “I hope he was a bad guy.”
“Everyone here is a bad guy, Axe,” Kane told him.
As they approached the far door to the stairwell, Swift came back over the comms. “The stairwell beyond the door is clear, Reaper One. Head down to the second floor where you’ll have to do the same again.”
“Copy, Bravo Four.”
They emerged from the ninth floor and started down the stairs. They’d passed six and were about to hit five when the comms crackled to life. “Reaper Team, hold. I say again, hold.”
They stopped and took up a defensive pose. Kane waited a few heartbeats before Swift’s voice came back online. “There are two armed tangos coming up the stairs towards you, and two moving towards your position from the sixth-floor. Looks like they know you’re there.”
“Copy that. How far away are the ones on six?”
“They’re about at the door.”
“Roger,” Kane replied and then, “Let’s go back up to six.”
They hurried up the stairs to the sixth-floor landing, and Kane said, “Sitrep, Bravo Four.”
“They’re a few meters away from the door now.”
“Copy.”
The team leader raised his 416 and put a full mag through the door and into the hallway beyond. “How about now?”
“Tangos down, Reaper One.”
Kane opened the bullet-riddled barrier, and Brick stepped through, checking the two downed men while Axe kept moving. Kane said, “Secure us an elevator.”
“Roger.”
By the time they reached the elevator, Axe had already summoned one, and it was on its way to their floor. When the doors slid open, they were faced with an empty space. “Everyone in.”
The four of them got into the car, and Axe said to Kane, “This is a fucked idea, Reaper.”
“They won’t be expecting us to use it,” he pointed out.
“Or they’ll shoot us as soon as the doors open.”
“There is that.”
“Reaper One? Bravo Four. I have a sitrep, over.”
“Send, Bravo Four.”
“You have two guards just outside the elevators, and another two near the main entrance. When you get off that thing, they will be at your twelve o’clock. Another is near the main desk.”
“Is that all?” Kane asked.
“Isn’t that enough? Listen, there’s also a clerk behind the counter. He looks to be strapped, too. However, you’ll need him alive. He’s probably the only guy who can give you any information.”
“Copy that, Bravo Four,” Kane acknowledged. “You guys get that?”
“Yeah,” said Axe. “Don’t kill the dude behind the desk.”
“Carlos and I will clear left and right. Brick, Axe, you clear the two at twelve. That leaves the two at the counter. One guard and the clerk. Once we’re secure, we get the son of a bitch into the car. We won’t waste time, but will question him after.”
The elevator passed one and then slowed to a halt on the ground floor. The bell went ding, and the doors slid open. Arenas and Kane moved through the doors at virtually the same time. The Mexican dropped the guard on the left with two shots, and Kane did the same to the surprised one on the right. The spent casings were still bouncing on the floor when Axe and Brick exited the elevator. Their suppressed 416s coughed twice, and the two guards at twelve o’clock fell to the hard floor.
Kane swept right towards the counter and saw the guard there begin to move. The AK-74 in the man’s hands came up, but before he could depress the trigger, a 5.56 round s
mashed into his chest.
Clattering to the floor, the guard’s weapon was quickly followed by his body. The man behind the counter brought up a handgun and began to take aim. Kane shouted, “Put the weapon down!”
Then the others joined in. “Put the weapon down! Put it down!”
The man hesitated. Then a muscle in his face twitched, and Kane knew he was about to fire. The team commander reacted instantly and moved his aim ever so slightly. The 416 coughed, and the slug punched into the would-be shooter’s shoulder. Grunting, the handgun fell from his useless fingers. Brick moved forward and cable-tied the struggling man’s wrists. “Is he OK, Brick?” Kane asked.
“He’ll live.”
“Right, get him up before the rest of them come down,” Kane snapped. “Bravo Four, how’s it look outside?”
“Apart from traffic, you’re good to go.”
“Copy, extracting package now. Let’s move out. Axe, Arenas, secure our ride across the street. Remember, you’re looking for a dark BMW.”
“Roger that.”
“Reaper One? Bravo, copy?”
“Copy, Bravo.”
“There will be a helo on the outskirts of Homyel’, ready to fly you and your package out of Belarus. I’ll send you the coordinates. We’ll meet you at the safehouse in Warsaw, where we can question him.”
“Copy, Ma’am. See you there.”
Kane and Brick hurried outside into the bright sunshine on the sidewalk and started across the road with their prisoner. The others had found their ride, and Kane winced when he saw Axe in the driver’s seat. “Put him in the trunk,” he said as he pressed the release mechanism.
The latch gave with a click, and as Brick went to lift the lid, it glided gracefully up of its own accord. He marveled at it before shoving the unwilling man inside. Kane asked, “He won’t bleed out before we get to the RV, will he?”
“Nope, I put some clotting powder on the wound before we brought him out.”
The trunk closed softly and locked, and they opened their doors and climbed in. “Get us out of here, Axe. Preferably in one piece.”
“Are you saying you don’t like my driving, Reaper?”
“That’s an affirmative.”
“I’m hurt,” the ex-recon marine said, flooring the accelerator.
Chapter 9
Pripyat Ukraine
Two Days Later
The SUV bumped over a decayed street which was slowly being reclaimed by nature. The deteriorated asphalt was a maze of grasses and saplings growing from the wide cracks. In every direction, scarred buildings that had fallen into disrepair were a stark reminder of the catastrophic events of over thirty years ago when the Chernobyl Nuclear Facility had gone into meltdown. It had taken until the day following the disaster for authorities to evacuate Pripyat, and by then most of its citizens had been irradiated to some extent. Although no ongoing illnesses had been recorded after the explosion and subsequent meltdown, there was a spike in thyroid cancer which some attributed to the Chernobyl facility.
Once a buzzing metropolis of almost fifty thousand residents, the only people Pripyat saw these days were tourists come to satisfy some macabre pleasure at seeing and photographing the rotting corpse, silent and eerie, left to nature to take its course.
They drove past the old amusement park where the large wheel stood decomposing, stationery and rider-less over the intervening years. Beside Cara, Kazan noticed her looking out the window. “It is a special place, Pripyat.”
“It’s a reminder of the horrors and devastation the human race has wreaked upon the planet,” Cara said bluntly. “Also, it shows you what can happen if you fuck up.”
“True,” Kazan allowed. “And if you’re worried about radiation, we are relatively safe.”
“I wasn’t worried. I figure that if you’re willing to risk your ass coming here, then it must be safe.”
He smiled at her. Up ahead, the lead SUV pulled into what used to be the carpark of a large hotel. Cara noticed other vehicles within the grounds, and a quick mental count came out at twenty. “I must be popular to warrant this kind of turn out.”
“As much as I would like to agree with you, sadly I must say that this auction has another, much larger attraction.”
The SUVs came to a halt, and they climbed out. There was a slight chill in the morning air, and Cara shivered involuntarily. She looked over at Kazan and asked, “What kind of attraction?”
He shrugged. “Something that many here would pay most dearly for.”
“Such as?”
“Nineteen ninety-three, Bosnia. A little incident between a Russian bomber and an American F-16. They clipped wings and crashed in a region that was in the grip of some very savage fighting. By the time peacekeepers made it to the crash site, a lot of things had been stripped from both planes. Including something of high importance on the Russian bomber. So important that the Russian high command was willing to risk losing a Spetsnaz team to retrieve it. Dropped in almost straight away, they worked their way to the crash site and secured it. But before they could do anything, they were attacked by soldiers. Out of twelve Spetsnaz men, only one survived. And that man was Ivan.”
“Ivan?”
“Yes.”
“What was so important that nineteen lives were just thrown …” Cara’s voice trailed away into silence. Her eyes darted to Kazan in a questioning glance, but her expression told him she already knew the answer. He nodded.
“What, the plane was carrying a nuclear weapon?”
Another nod.
“And you found it.”
“Oh, this just keeps gets better,” Axe muttered. “We get eyes on Cara, and then this just falls into our laps from a great fucking height.”
Kane and Axe slid away from the rooftop edge, taking the listening device with them. The team had infiltrated Pripyat the previous evening after Ivan had given up the auction site. Having obtained permission from the Ukrainian government, they were able to set up a safehouse for Bravo to operate from with two elements of the Ukrainian military liaising. One of them, a general called Dmytro Borisov, was with Thurston at the safehouse. The second, a captain called Klara Ivanov, had infiltrated Pripyat with Team Reaper.
Kane pressed his transmit button, “Bravo, did you get that last?”
“Copy, Reaper One. Wait, out.”
Kane sat up, looking around at the others. All had concerned expressions on their faces. He said, “You’re all experienced enough to know what they’re going to say next.”
Brick nodded. “They’re going to order us to secure the nuke at all costs. I can’t believe that shit Ivan knew about the nuke and never said anything.”
“That’s right,” Kane conceded. “Any suggestions?”
“We need eyes on the inside,” Arenas said. “Maybe we can twofold the mission by extracting Cara and securing the weapon.”
“You’ve seen the armed men going in and out. What’s our latest count?”
“Twenty, maybe,” Axe said.
“We’re not exactly dressed to be infiltrating anywhere,” Kane pointed out.
Ivanov asked, “What about the cars? These people have come a long way to be here. They must have clothes in them, surely.”
“Only one way to find out. Axe, go and see what you can come up with.”
Axe laid down his M110A1 and hurried across the rooftop. Just then, Kane’s comms crackled to life. “Reaper One? Bravo, over.”
“Copy, Bravo.”
“You need to secure the nuclear weapon. This must be priority number one. If that gets out into the world, then who knows where it will end up. Do you understand? Cara is secondary.”
“Yes, Ma’am, we’re working on it right now.”
“I’m sorry, Reaper.”
“Yes, Ma’am. Reaper One out.”
Axe returned ten minutes later with the total sum of one suit and one opal green dress and a pair of silver sling-backs. Arenas looked at the dress and said, “That will look beautiful on you, m
y friend, although it might clash with your eyes.”
“Fuck you.”
Kane stared at Ivanov. “You willing to do this?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Thank you. How big is that suit?”
“I think it was worn by a frigging midget,” Axe growled as he held it out.
Kane passed it over to Arenas. “Looks like you’re it, my friend.”
The Mexican gave a wry smile. “If any of you tell my wife that I accompanied a beautiful senorita on a date, I’ll have your cojones.”
“Go downstairs and get ready. Get the earwigs from the pack and give one to Klara.”
After they disappeared, Brick said to Kane, “This here is a good overwatch position, but if they get into trouble, we need to be closer.”
“I agree,” Kane allowed. “Bravo Four, copy?”
“I’m right here, good buddy,” Swift came back using his best truck driver impersonation.
The team leader saw Axe and Brick shake their heads. Brick snorted and said, “That is just shit, man.”
“I don’t know I thought it was pretty good. You know, almost Convoyesque.”
“Oh, no man. You’re not even close.”
“Slick, do you have a secondary way into this place for us?” Kane asked, interrupting the banter.
“There should be a back door. There’s always a back door … and yes, sir, it’s right there.”
“Where?”
“Around the back.”
“Damn it, Slick.”
“If you hook around the east side, you can’t miss it, Reaper. From the schematics that I have, it should take you through the kitchen. There is an old service elevator in there so you might be able to make use of it. The auction is being held in a large hall within an old conference center. It has a second-floor balcony running around it, which should make a good OP for you.”
“Copy that.”
“Axe, keep an eye on things. Brick and I’ll be back in a moment.”
They found Arenas and Ivanov adjusting themselves. Kane was taken aback at how good the Ukrainian Captain looked. Her black hair was down, and the dress hugged her lithe form like a silicone glove, accentuating all her curves. “What do you think? The shoes are a bit big, but I still think that they suit the outfit better than my boots.”