Warrior Class

by Dale Brown

  "This sounds like some kind of protection racket, Pavel," Zhurbenko said. "Why should we be a part of it? Why can't Russia pledge to invest in a pipeline? Have Gazprom, or LUKoil build the pipeline and we pay for the project with revenues from the oil purchases?"

  "If you could do it, you would have done it already," Kazakov argued. "Both those companies are wallowing in corruption and debt, mostly because of the bungling and interference from their biggest shareholder, the Russian government, and its

  inept bureaucracy. With my plan, neither Russia nor the republics lay out any money at all-I pay for the pipeline. It belongs to me. I pay a prenegotiated flowage fee to the republics, which is pure profit for them, in addition to the profits they make if they decide to buy and refine some of the crude in their own refineries. I will make them a good deal for the crude."

  "And so what does Russia get?" Yejsk asked. "What do we get?"

  Kazakov smiled broadly-he knew he had them now. Once they start thinking about themselves and their cut of the action, Pavel knew they were hooked. "Overtly, Russia gets a flowage fee from the oil that I transport across Russia and ship out of Novorossiysk," Kazakov replied. "Covertly, I will pay a percentage of the profits for protection of my pipeline. Russia maintains a presence in the Balkans again, plus you earn whatever you can squeeze out of the republics. I know Russia is very good at milking the republics it has sworn to protectMacedonia, Bulgaria, and Albania should be no different. I will offer the same ... incentives, shall we say, to Macedonia and Albania."

  "Plomo o plata ? " Zhurbenko asked. "If they accept they get rich, and if they refuse they get dead?"

  "It is a win-win situation for all of us," Kazakov said. "It is an offer no one can refuse."

  "An offer you can't refuse, all right," Linda Mae Valentrovna Maslyukov muttered to herself, as she finished her stretching exercises and then began a simple black-belt karate kata routine while standing on a narrow gravel turnout on the side of the road near the end of the runway.

  Linda Mae was an electronics expert from St. Petersburg, the daughter of a Russian father-a former Russian consul and trade negotiator based in New Orleans and Los Angeles-and an Irish-American mother from Monroe, Louisiana. Although she'd been born in New Orleans and had spent most of her life in the United States, when her father had been reassigned back to Moscow, she had eagerly gone along. Her long, flaming red

  hair and sparkling green eyes made quite an impression on the boys and professors at Ioffe-Physico-Technical Institute in St. Petersburg, but she didn't allow her popularity to interfere with getting first a bachelor's, then a master's degree in science in semiconductor heterostructures.

  Linda had renounced her American citizenship in 1995 after receiving her master's degree, which completely opened up her career paths in Russia. With

  a citizen's fluency in both English and Russian and advanced degrees in sophisticated electronics technology, she had her choice of jobs and salaries. She rejected a few more lucrative job offers in Moscow and professorships in St. Petersburg to go to Zhukovsky and work in a communications design laboratory. Because of her prior U.S. citizenship, she could hold no higher than a secret security clearance, but she still enjoyed a good lifestyle and a high level of prestige from her colleagues and fellow workers. She often spoke about moving to Moscow or St. Petersburg, but the talk always faded-mostly after meeting a new pilot or senior officer from one of the bomber squadrons at Zhukovsky.

  No one knew the real reason why she stayed at Zhukovsky, why she broke off torrid affairs with high-ranking officers, why- she was satisfied with a relatively low salary at Zhukovsky when she could command much higher wages in the city. The reason: Linda Mae was a paid spy for the United States of America. Whatever she might have made elsewhere was more than compensated for by numbered Cayman Islands bank accounts, where she hoped to retire the second it looked like her cover was going to blow.

  She had just downloaded the latest tap from a passive listening device she'd installed in the Metyor Aerospace hangar several weeks before. Metyor had never had very much activity until recently, right around the time that the father of Metyor

  11IG's largest shareholder, Pavel Kazakov, had been brutally killed in Kosovo. Suddenly, Metyor Aerospace was buzzing with activity. Before it got too hairy over there, she had managed to plant listening devices inside the main hangar and in the administrative offices. No matter how old, young, married, busy, or noninterested they were, her red hair, green eyes, luscious Louisiana breasts, and sassy attitude attracted men like

  nothing else, and she practically had free access to Metyor. But no matter how hard she tried, it was impossible to get inside the secure hangar or get close to the facility director, Pyotr Fursenko. The old fart had to be gay-she'd tried all of her feminine charms on him, to no avail.

  Linda had not seen it depart, but she knew the Metyor- 179 was gone the day after the raid on Kukes, Albania. There was no doubt in her mind that it had done the raid. She'd pieced together snippets of other conversations and could draw a fairly detailed timeline of the entire mission, all the way back to when live weapons were uploaded, what kind they used, where they got them, the strike routing-even details on what they would do if they encountered an AWACS radar plane, which obviously they had. The listening devices were very, very effective.

  Unfortunately, in order to prevent detection, they were extremely low-power devices, which meant she had to get very close to the facility in order to download the stored recordings; they also had to be very-low-frequency transmissions in order to penetrate the radio-resistant steel hangar, so each packet of data, although compressed, took a long time to download. She had to bring the downloading device somewhere where it would be within the two hundred meters'range of the pickup/transmitters. She needed at least one minute to download five minutes' worth of conversations, so the recorder had to be within range for at least thirty minutes.

  Linda could never get permission to live at base housing, and at the current time she didn't have a boyfriend who lived there, so she had to disguise these download sessions by taking up jogging. The main road around the airfield at Zhukovsky led from the main base area around the long northeast-southwest runway and all the way to the housing area on the south side of the base. Every day, after working late in her office or in the design labs, Linda would go to the base gymnasium, stretch or lift weights for an hour or so to let the traffic die down, then change into a jogging suit, put on her Austrianmade portable tape recorder, and jog the main road all the way to the housing area, rest or visit friends who lived there, and then jog back. As long as she was within two hundred meters

  of the Metyor hangar, the transmitter would feed digital packets of data into the CompactFlash memory card inside the tape recorder. She made sure she stopped many times along the way-although she was fit enough to run a

  marathon if she wanted to, she would stop every kilometer or so to check her pulse, make like she had to get her breath back, watch airplanes land, or just do some karate kata or stretch. The entrance to the Metyor Aerospace facility sometimes had a friendly guard on duty, so she stopped there often to chat, flirt, or do whatever was necessary to hang out long enough to collect data.

  She could also listen to the data as it was downloadingdangerous, but it helped to remind her of the importance of what she was doing, why she was risking her life to get this information to the United States. Ever since things started buzzing inside Metyor, she started listening to the downloads-and it scared the hell out of her. This development was even scarier. They were actually going to use the Metyor-179 to ...

  She heard the rustle of tires on gravel coming up behind her. She had the headphones on, so she pretended not to notice. She switched the data downloader off, switched the Russian rock music back on, tried some jumping jacks, unzipped her jogging suit jacket about halfway down her chest, then took the headphones off.

  "Prasteetye, gaspazha, " a man said behind her. She pretended to be startled an
d turned around. It was a base security police vehicle, with two officers. They didn't have their flashing lights on, so maybe this wasn't an enforcement stop, just a friendly ...

  At that instant, the officer behind the wheel turned on the flashing red and blue lights. Oh, shit, what was this about? "Da ? " Linda asked in her most seductive, disarming voice,

  adding just a hint of her Louisiana accent to try to put them off guard. "What's going on, fellas?"

  "Miss Maslyukov, we would like to ask you some questions," the officer outside the vehicle said. "Would you mind coming with us, please?"

  "May I ask what this is about, officer?"

  "We will explain everything at base security headquarters, Miss Maslyukov," the officer said. It was then that Linda noticed it-a strange antenna bolted to the hood of the trunk. A scanner, probably to detect eavesdroppers. That was new to the base. It must've come from outside the base, because if the base commander wanted any sort of electronic gear, he came to Linda's shop to get it.

  "Kharasho, " Linda acknowledged. She stepped toward the officer outside the car. Once out of the glare of the headlights, she looked inside the vehicle. No dog. The other officer was still in the driver's seat, still seat-belted in, the radio microphone in his hand casually watching her approach, a cigarette in his left hand. Obviously, he expected this to be a very routine pickup.

  She knew, whatever happened, she must not get inside that car.

  The second officer had a large metal flashlight in his left hand, his right hand behind his back, unsnapping a pair of handcuffs from his utility belt pouch. As she approached the officer outside the car, she noticed he was doing exactly what she expected him to be doing-staring at her chest, the flashlight beam focused right on her cleavage. "Please put your hands behind your back, miss," the officer ordered, in a not-tooforceful, almost anticipatory voice.

  11 Like this?" Linda put her hands behind her back without turning around, which served to push out her breasts even farther. The second officer's attention was fully riveted on her tits.

  She didn't know where the strength came from. Maybe it was from worrying about this very moment for so long. Maybe it was some sort of heroic, defiant gesture. Maybe she had just watched too many episodes of Charlie's Angels. Whatever it was, wherever it came from, it was happening whether she thought it was safe or sane or whatever. Prison, interrogation center, Hell, or the Cayman Islands. One way or the other, she was on her way.

  Just as the second officer took a step toward her, still paying attention to nothing else but her white billowy breasts, Linda executed a perfect snap kick, just like her black-belt-

  qualifying kata move. It missed by a mile, nailing the officer in the shins. But the officer seemed frozen, as if he couldn't believe what she had done, which gave her the opportunity to line up an even better kick. Her second attack was right on target, her right foot burying itself deeply into the

  officer's groin. He made a loud, long grunt and bent over nearly double. She quickly stepped beside him and jammed her left foot into the side of his left knee. The joint buckled, and he went down on his left side--exposing the side arm on the right, its safety strap unfastened. She snatched it out of the holster. He reached out, grabbing for her, but she twisted out of reach.

  "Astanavleevat'sya! Stop! " The first officer, much younger than the second, seemed confused about what to do-get out of the car, call for help, or pull out his weapon-so he tried everything at once. He seemed to be moving in slow motion, while at the same time Linda's head was spinning as if everything was happening in triple speed.

  The pistol she had taken from the second officer was much heavier than she thought-and it fired much easier than she thought, too, two rounds going off at the slightest finger pressure. The first round went through the passenger's side window into the car, spraying the first officer with glass and shattering the instrument panel. The second went somewhere off into space over the car. "Get out of the car!" Linda yelled. "Get out!9,

  "Freeze! Don't move!" the officer shouted. His hand squeezed the microphone transmit button. "Emergency! Officer down! I need assis-"

  Linda only wanted to put a bullet through the car radio-at least that's what she told herself But when she stopped squeezing the trigger, the driver's side window was shattered and the officer's head was blasted apart like a hammered coconut, with strings of blood-soaked hair surrounding a gory hole.

  It took all of her physical and emotional strength to go around to that car door, reach across the pool of brains, blood, and bones on the dead officer's lap to unfasten his seat belt, and drag the corpse out onto the ground. Somewhere in the background noise of the blood roaring in her ears, she could hear the second officer shouting, probably into a portable radio, but she

  didn't care. She jumped into the police car, shifted it into drive, and sped away. The first left turn took her to the road to the back gate of the base. She saw emergency lights and, not realizing they belonged to her car, she sped up. The guard shack to the back gate was coming up fast. She saw the automatic assault rifle in a holder next to her and for an instant thought about grabbing it and trying to shoot her way off the base, but she sped by the guardhouse before she could act on the idea. Linda heard several sharp raps on the outside of the car-bullets fired from the security officers on duty at the guardhouse-but it kept running.

  At the end of the access road, she took a left turn, which took her toward the nearest city, Itslav. She finally found the switch for the emergency lights and shut them off.

  Now that she was on the move, things actually began to get clearer for her, because Linda rehearsed her escape procedures several times a year, and she knew exactly what to do. The one thing the American Central Intelligence Agency did well for its agents was plan an escape system.

  There were four contact points around Zhukovsky Air Base. On a signal from Linda sent via a secret satellite signal beacon in the recorder, or after some trigger event-and a murder at Zhukovsky certainly qualified as a trigger event-a person would begin to visit the contact points on a regular basis. Linda had no idea who it was, when he or she would show, or what he or she would do-it was up to her to identify the person and make contact. If it were her contact person, she would be taken to a secret location, identified, and then inserted into a preestablished exfiltration network set up inside Russia for exactly this purpose. All Linda had to do was to activate the satellite signal beacon in the recorder and ...

  ... But when she reached down to her side, she realized she didn't have the recorder. The second guard must've torn it off her when they struggled.

  After swearing hotly in English, Creole, and Russian for several moments, Linda collected her thoughts and calmed herself. The signal beacon wasn't important. Certainly all the excitement at the base would activate the escape network. All she had to do was make her way to one of the contact points,

  properly meet up with the contact, and then do exactly what she was told to do until she was safe.

  Her first task was to ditch the police car. She selected a utility company

  parking lot, about ten miles away from the base, hiding it between two large trucks that looked as if they hadn't been moved in a while. She kept the handgun, after counting and finding three rounds still in the magazine-the assault rifle was much heavier than she thought, so she left it in the carthen walked all the way back out of the lot and onto the highway. Linda was tempted to try hitchhiking east on the highway toward the nearest contact point, but her handlers advised against that. Too many escapees got caught that way. The south side of the highway had numerous businesses and lighted parking lots along it, but the north side was mostly open fields of winter wheat turned mushy from melting snows, with a small river farther north beyond the trees. She crossed the highway at a dark place, as far as possible from streetlights, walked away from the highway to the tree line about a kilometer from the highway, then began to parallel it, heading eastbound. Linda passed a few businesses and parking lots bet
ween her and the highway, but none of the lights or fences extended to the tree line, so it was a fairly straight shot. Her handler was very explicit-stay away from roads, rivers, railroads, transmission lines, any sort of travel path.

  Several hours later, she arrived at an intersection where a bridge took traffic north across the river, and where there was a tavern that she sometimes visited, still open and still inviting. Linda even thought she saw cars belonging to friends of hers, good friends that had known her for years. She was tired, aching, hungry, freezing cold, cut, bruised, and bleeding from crossing fences and snagged by branches and sticker bushes. She could stay hidden in the parking lot, wait for her friends to show, ask for help, maybe get a ride to someplace close to the contact point ...

  No, no, no, she admonished herself. Again, her handlers were very specific-stay away from everyone, no matter how close or trusted they were. Reluctantly, almost whimpering in pain and fear and weakness, she trudged through the ankledeep, half-frozen mud behind the tavern, keeping to the shad-

  ows. She followed a dirt path toward the river and found another path that led under the bridge abutment. Under the bridge, she found some homeless persons huddled under blankets with tiny fires in buckets, drinking vodka and eating discarded food from the tavern, and again she considered asking for something, anything, to help ease the cold and hunger. She could either use the gun to buy food or threaten to kill someone if they didn't help her. But she kept away, staying away from the hoboes and staying away from the narrow access road along the river's edge without their detecting her presence. Leaving even that tiny bit of civilization was the hardest thing she ever had to do.

  But as she disappeared back into the shadows once again, she heard sirens behind her. Two police cars had pulled up to the tavern, lights flashing. If she had stopped, even for five minutes, she would've been trapped. If she had talked to the hoboes, and they were later questioned by police, they would surely have betrayed her. How about that? she thought-maybe her handlers really knew what they were talking about!