by Alex Lukeman
The Gulfstream was parked away from the main terminal in a private area protected by a high, chain link fence. They got the truck loaded and started for the harbor. A guard opened the gate in the fence as the Toyota approached and waved them through. There was no passport or customs check, and Nick sensed Hood's invisible hand at work. The way had been cleared for them.
They reached the harbor and drove out onto a long pier, where a red and white sea plane rocked easily in the harbor chop. They unloaded.
"Good luck," John said. The Toyota drove away.
A wooden walkway dropped from the pier to a floating platform by the plane, a Viking Air de Havilland 3. Nick was familiar with the model. They were popular in the bush country of Alaska. This one featured a turboprop engine and a large loading door. A tall man about Nick's height waited for them by the opening. He wore jeans, a sweater, and a fleece vest. He had the look of someone who'd been around the block more than once.
"I'm Jackson," he said. "I'm your copilot. Brad up there is in charge. There's weather coming in. Let's get loaded up and in the air."
"How bad?"
"Bad enough."
They got the cases onto the plane and buckled up as the engine kicked over and settled to a steady beat. The plane eased away from the pier, taxiing out to clear water. The pilot pulled back on the throttle and the engine gave out a throaty roar. The de Havilland skimmed along the water, bouncing over the chop, then lifted into a gray sky.
They reached cruising altitude and leveled off. Nick and the others got up and went to the cases. They changed into black tactical clothing. Each took an MP7, pistol, knife and plenty of ammo. They had C4 and detonators, enough to blow up anything that got in their way, along with fragmentation and stun grenades. Once dressed, they pulled the raft from its case.
Lamont inflated it with a bottle of compressed gas and attached the motor. It took up the back of the cabin. The hatch was barely big enough to let it go through when it was time to exit the plane.
Then they settled back for the ride.
"What's the flying time?" Ronnie asked.
"Around three and a half hours," Nick said. "Get some sleep."
The plane droned on through the darkening sky.
CHAPTER 52
Russia had many historical buildings. Her churches and towers, cathedrals and palaces, drew tourists from all over the world. Few tourists looking at the neo baroque, yellow brick structure on the Lubyanka Square in the Meschansky District of Moscow knew what it was. It had once been the headquarters of the All-Russia Insurance Company. Insurance had not been the business in that building for a long time.
The Lubyanka was a place the average citizen in Moscow avoided. In the time of Czar Nicholas it had housed his feared secret police, the Cheka. In Stalin's day it had been the headquarters of the KGB. With Glasnost and the breakup of the KGB, the Lubyanka had been taken over by the FSB, the Federal'naya sluzhba bezopasnosti, tasked with internal intelligence and security.
The name of the secret police had changed, but everything else was the same. The yellow walls and cold corridors of the Lubyanka still echoed with screams when the interrogators questioned someone accused of acting against the state.
Someone like Admiral Pyotr Petroff, formerly the commander of the Pacific Fleet.
Colonel Kerensky strode along a corridor in the basement of the building. Kerensky was in civilian clothes. His jacket stretched at the seams across his massive shoulders. A large man in the uniform of a Spetsnaz senior sergeant walked behind him. His name badge said Stravinsky, but he was no relative of the famous composer. For the sergeant, music was the rhythmic sound of the truncheon or whip, or the monotonous drip of blood on the hard floor of a cell.
The two men stopped in front of a metal door with a circular shield covering a peephole. The doors and walls of the cells in this section of the basement were painted a sickly green color, slathered on when Lenin and Stalin were still consolidating power. The corridor stank of disinfectant, old blood and the sour stench of fear. All the disinfectant in the world would never be able to erase that smell.
"Open it," Kerensky said.
Stravinsky used a massive key to open the door. The cell was about eight feet square, with a high ceiling beyond the reach of the occupant. A harsh white light shone down from above, night and day. The walls were scratched with graffiti and pathetic messages from previous occupants. There was no place to lie down except the floor, no window. A stinking bucket in the corner served as a toilet.
Petroff's cell was one of the better accommodations in the basement. There were rooms where a man or a woman could not stand up or stretch out, rooms where the prisoner was wedged tightly between two rough concrete walls in darkness, rooms where rats and cockroaches swarmed. By comparison, Petroff had a luxury suite.
The Admiral still wore his uniform, although it was bloodied and torn, the buttons ripped from his tunic. His medals and shoulder boards had been stripped away. His shoes had been taken. One of his feet was bloodied and mangled, the result of the judicious use of a hammer. He lay on his side on the floor, his face bruised and swollen, one eye shut tight.
He glanced up at Kerensky. When he saw Sergeant Stravinsky, he drew his knees to his chest and covered his face with both hands.
"Look at me," Kerensky said, "or I will tell the Sergeant to hurt you again."
Petroff took his hands away and peered at Kerensky with his one good eye.
"Good. Now listen to me, you traitorous piece of shit. This is your last chance. I want you to know what's going to happen if you don't answer my questions. Are you listening?"
"Yes."
There were still two things Kerensky had to extract from Petroff. He knew Petroff had dispatched a submarine with Status 6, but he didn't know where the sub was headed. And Orlov wanted to know if Petroff was behind the assassination of General Vysotsky.
"Nothing you have experienced up to now has prepared you for the pain you will feel. And at the end, when it seems nothing could be worse, we will feed you feet first into a machine that will turn you into ground meat. Slowly. It takes minutes. We will keep you conscious with drugs. Do you understand?"
"You are an animal, a devil," Petroff said.
"Sergeant Stravinsky."
"Yes, Colonel?"
"Step on his toes."
Stravinsky slammed his heavy boot down onto Petroff's smashed toes. The scream echoed in the small room, joining the ghosts of all the screams that had come before.
Kerensky waited until the screams subsided into sobs.
"What is the destination of the submarine? Tell me this and the end will be quick. A bullet to the back of the head. Trust me, it is better than the alternative."
"My family..." Petroff said.
"As yet, your family has not been harmed. Tell me where the sub is going and I promise, they will not be arrested."
"You promise?"
"On my honor as an officer," Kerensky said.
Petroff looked at the two men and thought of Natasha and Nina, his wife and daughter. Slowly, he pushed himself to a sitting position.
"All right," he said. "I'll tell you."
Twenty minutes later, the sound of a single shot echoed down the corridor.
Kerensky and Sergeant Stravinsky left Petroff's cell. As they walked down the corridor, Stravinsky said, "That was a nice touch, Colonel, the family. Are you really going to spare them?"
"They have already been arrested. They'll be sent to one of the work camps up north."
Stravinsky nodded.
An hour later, Colonel Kerensky was escorted into President Orlov's office in the Kremlin Senate building. He snapped to attention in front of the president's desk and saluted.
"At ease, Colonel," Orlov said.
Kerensky dropped into parade rest.
Orlov was dressed in a fashionable blue suit, a white shirt, and handmade black shoes from Italy. His tie was red. It was the power executive look, the look world leaders had cultiv
ated for years. He studied Kerensky for a few seconds, his ice blue eyes boring into the man standing rigidly in front of him.
"I take it you were successful in interrogating the traitor, Petroff."
It was a statement. Orlov knew Kerensky wouldn't dare come to him without having obtained a confession.
"Yes, Mister President."
"Well?"
"Regarding General Vysotsky, the traitor Petroff ordered the ambush. He believed the general was about to discover his plot."
"And the submarine?"
"The submarine is headed for the American coast. The weapon will be planted on the ocean floor at a critical undersea juncture where earthquake fracture zones meet off the coast of California."
"Go on."
"The water at that area is deep. The weapon is expected to produce a yield of up to one hundred megatons. The depth of water overhead will act to further increase the power of the explosion."
"Like a shaped charge," Orlov said.
"Yes, Mister President. The water will drive the explosion down into the sea floor. It will trigger a massive earthquake."
"Will it cause a tsunami as well?"
"There is some argument about that, sir. It may or may not produce a tsunami. It has something to do with the way an underwater explosion works. What is certain is that the force applied to that particular point on the ocean floor will trigger a massive earthquake."
"How big?"
"Estimates are in the range of high eights on the Richter scale, possibly even into nines. The damage to American infrastructure will be significant. There will be a corresponding loss of life."
Kerensky waited for Orlov to respond. You didn't speak to the man sitting behind Khrushchev's desk unless he asked you to.
"Did Petroff tell you why he did this?"
"He was part of a group of men who want to drive the Rodina into war with the Americans. He was getting ready to join them when he was arrested."
"They expect to survive a nuclear war?"
"Yes, Mister President.
"You have obtained all relevant information from him? The names of his co-conspirators? Their location?"
"Yes, sir."
"Eliminate him."
"It has already been done, Mister President."
"Very good, Colonel. You are dismissed."
"Sir."
Kerensky clicked his heels together and saluted, executed a precise turn, and left the room. Orlov leaned back in his comfortable leather chair and thought about his options.
An opportunity or a disaster, he thought. At first the Americans will think the earthquake was a natural occurrence, but it won't take long to discover the truth. Should I strike after the earthquake? If I do, I have the initial advantage. If I don't, the Americans will think I initiated a strike and retaliate.
Orlov rose and walked over to a window. It looked out across a cobbled courtyard, past ornamental bushes to the grim brick wall of the Kremlin beyond.
Damn you, Petroff.
CHAPTER 53
A steady curtain of rain streaked the windows of the plane. Below was the blackness of Nahuel Huapi Lake. Jackson came back into the cabin and stopped by Nick.
"We're close. When we set down on the water, I'll handle the hatch. We can't stay here long, so you need to get out as quick as you can."
"It won't take long."
"We're about to set down. Better buckle up, it's going to be a little rough. When you're ready, we'll come pick you up."
"Thanks."
Jackson went back to the cabin and took his seat.
Nick felt the plane slowing as they lost altitude. The note of the engine changed. The floats touched the water. The plane bounced and came down hard, then lifted and came down again. Nick felt the jolt along his spine. The aircraft plowed along the tops of the choppy water until the pilot throttled back to an idle.
Jackson came back from the cockpit, squeezed by the raft, and pulled the hatch open. Rain blew into the cabin. Nick and Lamont lowered the raft through the hatch. Holding onto a length of para cord, they pulled it close to the plane, where it bobbed up and down on the choppy surface of the lake. Lamont got into the raft, followed by Ronnie. Nick was last out, bringing the trailing rope with him.
The rain beat down. Jackson leaned out of the hatch.
"Good hunting," he called.
He waved and pulled the hatch shut. The plane turned into the wind, blowing spray back at them from the prop. They watched it skim along the water, picking up speed.
One of the floats struck something unseen and broke away with a loud tearing sound. The wing dug into the water and the plane flipped over. It floated upside down for a few seconds, then sank out of sight.
"Jesus," Lamont said.
He got the electric motor running and steered for the spot where the plane had disappeared. As they drew near, they saw a huge, sunken log floating under the surface.
"They hit that log," Ronnie said. "No way they'd see it in the dark."
The only trace of the plane was a stream of bubbles rising from somewhere below. The lake was deep. They waited, but there was no sign of Jackson or the pilot.
"Damn it," Lamont said.
"Poor bastards," Ronnie said.
"Yeah," Nick said. "All right, let's get on with it."
He pulled a night vision monocular down over his right eye. The others did the same. Lamont turned the raft and headed for the shore.
They were a half-mile out. The rain drummed on Nick's helmet, soaking through his clothes. The dark was so thick it felt as though he could tear a piece of it off with his hand. Through the night vision gear the surface of the lake was an alien waterscape of green. The wind shifted, bringing a sudden scent of wood smoke from somewhere ahead.
The approach to the house was along a wide channel between two wooded islands on the left and land on the right. The beach was five hundred feet down from the house, a shallow crescent of grayish sand bounded on either end by thick forest. Nick wanted to land on the left end, out of sight from the building, where the beach came up against the forest.
The rain was coming down hard, a steady roar pounding on the surface of the water. Off to the left, a dark shape slipped by, the first of the two islands. Minutes later they passed the second island.
"Steer straight," Nick said. "That should take us to the end of the beach."
"There it is," Ronnie said.
With his unaided left eye Nick could make out the lighter strip of the beach against the darkness of the land and trees behind it. He scanned the beach with the night vision gear.
He spoke softly. "I don't see a guard. Go right to the beach."
Lamont brought them to the shore and shut down the electric outboard. They pulled the raft up onto the sand and dragged it under the trees, away from the water.
They moved along the line of trees until they reached a wide, open area that extended from the front of the house down to the beach. Lights shone through large windows in the front of the building.
They crouched inside the tree line, under branches thick and heavy with rain.
"This is too easy," Ronnie said. "No guards?"
Lamont muffled a sneeze.
"Maybe they think they're safe here. Hell, this is the ass end of nowhere."
They continued along the tree line until they were close to the left wing of the house. The distance from the trees to the building was only a few feet. Dark windows faced toward where they crouched under the dripping branches. No lights showed inside. The windows were solid, large panes of glass, not the kind you could slide open.
"Too much noise if we go through that," Nick whispered. "We'll try the back. There has to be a door."
They stayed in the trees until they reached the back of the house. Here, the trees had been cleared back for a hundred feet. A dirt road led off into the woods toward a dark building.
The back of the house had more windows and a door with a small, peaked roof over it. Nick heard the low hum of a ge
nerator somewhere off to the left.
A man in a black rain slicker stood under the eve over the door, out of the rain. He had a rifle slung over his shoulder, the muzzle pointing down. As they watched, he took a cigarette pack from under his slicker, extracted a cigarette, and lit up.
Nick pointed at himself, then at the guard. He set the selector on his MP7 to single shot, took aim, and fired. The suppressor kept the sound of the shot down to a loud cough, almost lost in the drumming rain. The bullet struck the guard in the throat, sending the cigarette flying in a spray of blood. Nick fired again.
The man doubled over and fell forward into the dirt. They broke from the trees and ran across the clearing. Nick stepped over the body and opened the door, Lamont and Ronnie right behind him.
They were in a large laundry room. A modern washer and dryer stood next to a utility sink. One wall of the room was given over to a broom closet and shelves stacked with cleaning supplies. A thin strip of light showed at the bottom of a closed door on the far side of the room. A faint sound of classical music came from somewhere in the house.
They took off the night vision gear and waited for normal sight to return. Nobody spoke. There was no need to. Nick looked at the others and raised his eyebrows. He set the fire selector on his MP7 back to a three round burst.
Ready?
They nodded. Nick eased the door open.
CHAPTER 54
The door opened onto a long hall leading to the main room of the villa, the source of the light coming under the door. At the far end of the hall was an empty couch with a floor lamp next to it, a low table, and one of the windows in the front of the house. A door down the hall was open, throwing a rectangle of light onto the wall opposite. The music was louder, a light classical piece. Nick heard voices and laughter, people talking in a mixture of English and German.
They started down the hall. Closed doors on both sides led to other rooms. If this had been Iraq or Afghanistan, Nick would have cleared each room as they passed. But they were exposed here. At any moment someone in the big room at the end of the hall might see them. He decided to ignore the closed doors and move straight to the front. He signaled Lamont.