* * *
“Over,” Romanenko said.
The others rose and removed their goggles, silent reflection replacing the oaths they’d uttered weeks before, when this was still a game.
“We’ll run it again in ten,” the sergeant said, lighting a cigarette and grabbing his cell phone from the locker. “No tanks,” he told Koval over his shoulder.
“Shouldn’t we be thinking of—?”
“No,” Romananko cut him off. “I am assured they will be taken care of. Did you reserve the rooms and truck?”
“I did,” Koval assured him. “I’d do more if you’d let me.”
“That’s enough,” Romanenko said sharply, adding, “The commander has other plans for you, and I can make any additional arrangements, thank you.” He made what passed for a grin. “I had a private life once.”
“Of course.”
The major relaxed slightly. “I’m sorry for snapping. There’s a lot to do. I’m going to the shed.”
Koval knew what that meant. “It has arrived,” he said.
Romanenko didn’t answer. That was an answer.
“You know what you’re doing, yes?” Koval asked. “I don’t mean operationally, I mean—this will start the clock. Are we ready?”
“We could wait another month to no purpose,” Romanenko said. “No one is ever truly ready for a mission like this. But with what has happened in New York we run the risk of being discovered abroad and at home. We must move.”
The computer engineer went to his laptop and made the adjustments while Romanenko left the Long Barracks to make a call. Koval glanced at the clock on his screen.
Romanenko was right. It was time to move.
For the first time, Koval was scared. But he knew his own next part in the operation, and he looked forward to the challenge … and, with luck, an event such as the nation—and the world—had never seen.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Op-Center Headquarters, Fort Belvoir North,
Springfield, Virginia
June 2, 7:46 PM
When he first joined Op-Center, Chase Williams was immediately impressed with one thing about Fort Belvoir: the food court at the Post Exchange. The presence of so many fast-food places and coffee shops wasn’t just a convenience but a safeguard: when there were just mess halls and menus that hadn’t changed since the 1940s—in some cases, the condiments may also have been that old—agents of foreign nations tended to watch off-base pizza parlors, Chinese restaurants, hamburger joints, taco huts, and similar places. For planned gatherings, federal agencies tended to have them catered, lavishly, on the government’s dime. But if any command HQ or federal agency placed a substantial order at a place like that, chances were good that personnel were involved in a significant crisis that required all hands on deck.
So dinner was ordered from Anthony’s Pizza No. 1, Taco Bell, and Charley’s Steakery. The deal was, when people had to stay, Williams had to pay, and he did so gladly. These were the people who made him look good.
The food arrived shortly before the antiterrorism bureau chief, Irene Young, held a press conference about the shooting in Lower Manhattan. The team ate while they watched.
Williams had already spoken with Brian Dawson and Matt Volner, neither of whom had been charged with any crime. On the contrary.
“They’re talking about us like those three American guys who helped foil a shooting attack on a Paris-bound train in 2015,” Dawson said. “Megyn Kelly asked us to come on her new show.”
“Which, sadly, you cannot do,” Williams had told him.
All Op-Center employees were bound by a document that prohibited them from discussing operational matters until their comments had been cleared by their superior—in this case, Williams or Anne. That would require questions being submitted in advance, which would reveal the nature of their highly secretive employment.
“I know, technically,” Dawson replied. “But, hey, it was worth running up the flagpole.”
Williams hadn’t been sure whether his operations director was more disappointed about not being on TV or not being around a woman who might boost his Carolina-trampled ego.
Volner was somewhat more taciturn, seeing as how he was the one who had killed Cherkassov. Williams knew from experience that it wasn’t the shooting itself but the instantaneous decision to do it that tended to affect service personnel and law enforcement the most.
Williams had also spoken with Young, who was still dealing with the deaths of her officers but was grateful to Op-Center for the actions of its men. She was still formulating her response but assured him that the men would not face charges, nor would their affiliation with Op-Center be mentioned.
Anne, Paul Bankole, Roger McCord, and James Wright were watching on the big screen as the press conference began at 8:00 PM. They were joined on video by Meagan Bruner, the on-call psychologist at the Navy’s Bethesda Medical Center.
In addition to Young at the podium of the One Police Plaza press room were the police commissioner and the mayor on her right, Dawson and Volner on her left. Flannery wasn’t present; he was under police guard at Bellevue, where he was being treated for cuts and sprains sustained in the fall.
After thanking the reporters, the petite, silver-haired bureau chief eulogized the two officers who had died in the line of duty and offered condolences and prayers to their grieving families. Then she introduced the “American heroes” to her left and explained how, after receiving an intelligence tip that the life of former ambassador Douglas Flannery was in jeopardy, it was decided to immediately place him in protective custody in a way that was designed not to attract too much attention.
“Covering her ass because the escort was too small,” Bankole suggested.
“Not necessarily,” said Wright. “It’s easier to peel off a single squad car than to mobilize and coordinate a convoy. Quick extraction was the right call, especially in a building like the one they were in.”
“Brian said the attack came from inside,” Williams said. “More personnel wouldn’t have helped.”
“And they had 40 Mike-Mike on site,” McCord remarked.
Volner was introduced as a Special Forces operative on leave; Dawson was described as a friend of the ambassador’s who had flown in that day to talk about a consultancy with York. Other questions about their backgrounds were deflected. Little was said about Cherkassov, other than that he was a Russian-born assassin whose affiliation was “unknown,” and that the NYPD and the FBI hoped to learn more when his unidentified companion came out of surgery.
“They’re trying to keep Moscow out of this,” McCord said, though everyone knew the backdoor conversations that were certainly taking place between the State Department and the Kremlin. Killers running loose in New York, murdering foreign nationals and NYPD officers, was a serious matter.
Williams killed the video as everyone finished eating and picked up tablets or—in the case of McCord—a yellow legal pad whose pages could be shredded, with no electronic footprint.
“Roger, did you come up with anything else on the video?” Williams asked.
“I sent frame grabs of the terrain, sans soldiers, to a friend at the U.S. Geological Survey,” he said. “Those graphics are based on a 2008 survey conducted by the International Monetary Fund, which did a land evaluation as part of a proposed economic-assistance program. While they were there, the Kursk Oblast Duma—the legislative body of the Russian province—asked them to look at Sudzha and several other towns as locations for cooperative ventures. The computer graphics match that survey, which was publicly available.”
“What do we have of the Russian base?” Williams asked.
“You mean the data that cost two agents their lives?” McCord said. He put satellite images on the screen. They refreshed every few seconds and showed a sprawling complex of fences, buildings, four guard towers, an airfield, and row after row of tanks and armored personnel carriers.
“What the hell?” Wright said, lean
ing forward as one image flashed.
“Those BTR-82 armored vehicles by the fence?” McCord said, pausing the image. “They aren’t on drills. They’re the sentries.”
The team took a moment to study the eight-by-eight low-lying vehicles. They looked like squared-off cammy-colored beetles with a humped shell.
“I saw one of those in action when I was at MARSOC,” McCord said, referring to his tenure as commander of the Intelligence Battalion at the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command. “That turret is equipped with a pair of 14.5-mm. KPTV machine guns, and one 7.62-mm. PKT. The guns aren’t fixed, so the vehicle isn’t accurate on the go. But when they sit down in defense mode, forget it. There are also six 81-mm. smoke grenade launchers that will literally create a fog of war.”
“I didn’t see those on the video,” Williams said.
“Hence the request for help from the ambassador,” Bankole said gravely. “The Ukrainians probably have no idea what’s out there.”
Williams broke the ensuing, pensive silence.
“We were talking earlier about Putin’s response if he saw the virtual-reality prototype,” Williams said. “Maybe these killings are his response? A warning.”
“To whom, Kiev or Washington?” McCord said ominously. “He has to know we’ve got eyes on Sudzha and he doesn’t want us sharing.”
“Wouldn’t sending his thugs after our former ambassador have the opposite effect?” Anne asked.
“Any thoughts, Meagan?” Williams asked, switching her image from his computer to the big screen.
“Mr. Putin is a compulsive risk-taker, short and sweet,” she said. “There was a DOD profile early in 2001, during his first presidency, that said we can count on him to act out the dangers his father and his brother faced but he hadn’t. At the very least, he does what he needs to do and cares very little for the consequences to the nation.”
“Or to himself?” Anne asked.
“That’s where the braggadocio and the swagger come in,” Meagan said. “He acts invincible, and every time he gets away with something he feels more invincible.”
“Until he ends up in a bunker with a gun barrel in his mouth,” McCord said.
“But Hitler wasn’t a Russian despot,” Meagan pointed out. “Look at Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev. They imprisoned or murdered millions to expand the circle of safety around them. Putin began that process two years ago, and he doesn’t care that it’s gone public.”
She was referring to the killing of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in 2015. He and his girlfriend had left a Red Square restaurant to go to her apartment. As they crossed a bridge, a white car drove by and put four shots into the fifty-five-year-old Nemtsov.
The team considered the information.
“Paul, this is your bailiwick,” Williams said.
The international crisis manager exhaled. “Let’s assume the virtual-reality program has two purposes,” Bankole said. “First, to train for an assault. Why else render it in VR instead of in an easier, less elaborate computer graphic?”
“The DOD has both,” McCord noted. “One is for boots-in-the-mud drilling; the other is simply instructional.”
“Right,” Bankole said. “So, second, the VR alpha was leaked to provoke Putin into fortifying the frontier—one, two, or three bases, or all of the above. Why?”
“To see how he would deploy or, if the gnats are bothering him, to get him to strike first,” Williams said.
“Exactly.” Bankole looked at the screen. “Meagan? Which does he do?”
“Obviously, he wants to attack,” she said. “That’s in his DNA. If he had the wherewithal, he’d want to roll right through Eastern Europe, put the Soviet Union back on its feet. He’s never made a secret of that.”
“But he can’t do that,” McCord said. “And I don’t think it’s just because of NATO.”
“No,” Wright agreed. “He’s like the guy who puts an arm over a girl’s shoulder and works his way to where he wants to go in stages.”
Anne shot him a disapproving look. He shrugged back.
“I may not like the analogy,” Williams said disapprovingly, “but Jim’s right. He’ll challenge NATO in slow, irregular stages, like a poker player who thinks he knows the outcome and savors the slow build. Roger, if he goes in, he’s at war with Ukraine … again. He’s already stretched thin. Question: What happens if he goes in and loses?”
“I think that’s what has me most concerned, given what Meagan just said,” McCord replied. “Vladimir Putin does not lose. If he goes down, he’ll take everyone with him.”
“Chase, you asked me what we should do?” Bankole said.
Williams nodded once.
“As The Diamond Sutra teaches, you control cause and effect by removing the precipitating condition,” he said. “We don’t know where this is going, but we know how it must not end up.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Santa Barbara, California
June 2, 5:16 PM
Chingis Altankhuyag had arrived in the Santa Ynez Mountains overlooking Santa Barbara just after dawn. Following six years of intense study—which included summer breaks, which were anything but—the computer-science student had been determined to take his first real vacation.
With his girlfriend, Pride Mahelona-Dembélé, a climatology major from San Francisco, the twenty-five-year-old had loaded her Prius and driven south. They had wanted to see the dawn as the Native Americans of the region would have seen it, from amid the splendor of the mystical painted caves they had left behind.
After a long, leisurely drive in the darkness, they left U.S. 101 and headed up Foothill Road through Mission Canyon. There had been a mist on the crags when they passed three thousand feet elevation, and the couple got out and sat on a ledge, lost in the fine, cool clouds. Occasionally, they would hear a whooshing sound pass closer overhead; too large for a bird of prey, they thought, but they got a blanket from the car and covered their heads just the same. Later, as the sun burned through, they saw that their companions were early-morning hang gliders hoping to catch the morning thermals and ride out over the Pacific.
The colors of nature were still muted that early, and the bright blues and reds of the great wings were oddly jarring; Pride resented the unnatural intrusion, although Chingis pointed out that their Prius, though environmentally sound, was no less an outsider.
“You are truly an attorney’s son,” Pride said. “You find loopholes in everything.”
“My mother is a botanist,” he replied sweetly. “I also see beauty in everything.”
Chingis distracted her with a kaleidoscope of monarch butterflies that had settled on a field just above them. She took out her cell phone and sent video to her mother, and then they ate breakfast and hiked and explored until late in the afternoon. A private loving nap under the blanket that had sheltered them earlier in the day ended as the sun was beginning to sink over the ocean, a burning wick atop a pale red-orange candle that sank toward the horizon.
They were about to head to the town for dinner when the young man’s cell phone played an atonal theme created by his favorite composer, Béla Bartók.
“My mom,” he said with a crooked smile as he stepped outside the car for better reception.
“Baina uu, Mother,” he answered.
“Chingis, help us!” she screamed in Mongolian.
The boy had been leaning against the hood. “Mom?” he said as he frowned and stood upright.
“H-here … talk … to—”
Another voice cut his mother off. “I have a question for you,” a man said in a careful Mongolian accent—not native, Chingis knew at once. “You created a virtual-reality program. Tell me who it was for or you can listen to your father scream as your mother’s bedclothes are torn away.”
The words failed to register at first. Chingis stood there in dumb silence. A shredding sound and his parents’ screams snapped him back to the moment.
“Mother!” he cried.
Pride left the
car and came around to him. Chingis moved away. His father had continued to scream as his mother sobbed.
“Mother!” Chingis shouted again.
The caller returned. “She is unmolested,” the cool voice assured him. “For the moment. Your father is handcuffed beside her. He wriggles quite energetically for a man of his age.”
“Who are you?” Chingis demanded.
“Answer my question, boy, or your mother will be shamed.”
Chingis looked out at the ocean and the crisp blue and purpling sky, his mind still trying to reconcile the calm he saw with the violence he heard. Pride’s touch on his arm caused him to start. He took a step away.
The young man had expected his work to be seen, had been encouraged to use that program when he looked for a job. But he had not been warned about a possibility like this.
“It was commissioned by a former assistant professor at Stanford, a graduate student named Havrylo Koval.”
“Ukrainian?”
“Y-yes.”
“Where is he?”
“In Kiev,” Chingis replied stupidly.
“Where in Kiev?”
“He has an office at Bionic Hill,” the young man said.
“How was it paid for? By whom?”
“Wire transfer … it was … something called TSL,” Chingis sputtered. “I don’t know anything else!”
“I am going to check on this,” the caller said. “If you have lied to me, or withheld information, I will be back.”
“I haven’t—I swear it!”
The man turned slightly from the phone. “If any of you say anything to anyone about my visit, Chingis will die in California. Do you all understand?”
Chingis heard his parents respond in the affirmative, then said in a trembling voice that he understood as well.
There was a faint thump and then indistinct sounds.
“Mother? Father?” Chingis said into the phone.
“I am here,” his mother said.
“Is he gone?”
“Yes,” the woman replied.
Chingis heard clicking—the handcuffs being undone, he presumed—and then both of his parents sobbing. He turned to Pride, who was standing several feet away, her beautiful face glowing red in the sinking sun. She wore a look of deep concern … and compassion.
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