by Tom Clancy
The dimly lit trail took him to the main entrance and motorway, where two taxi drivers had climbed into their cars and were keeping low, their worried gazes turned up toward the hills. Between the damp stone and his own excitement, Chopra wound up slipping and falling as he neared the first car. He cried out, felt a throbbing in his elbow, but pulled himself back up and spotted Westerdale coming from a second path and hustling toward him.
The Brit waved and called out to Chopra.
Another exchange of gunfire thundered across the hills, stealing Chopra’s breath.
He was dizzy by the time he fell into the backseat and the cabdriver sped away. He glanced over at Westerdale, who shook his head and said, “You’re in over your head.”
“I know. But this is the right thing to do,” Chopra said, hardening his tone.
“You’re an eccentric.”
Chopra shook his head. “I just want what’s right.”
“Then go to London. Wait for his call. Hopefully she spoke to him before they attacked.”
Chopra threw his head back against the seat, removed his glasses, and massaged his weary eyes. “You’re staying here.”
“I’m what?”
“You heard me. You’re staying. I want to know about Warda. I want to know if she’s safe.”
Westerdale released a string of epithets, then demanded a larger bonus, and Chopra agreed.
* * *
The Snow Maiden mused that it was difficult to have tricks up her sleeve while wearing a short-sleeved shirt; however, she’d grown used to being chased and took nothing for granted. Her tricks were born of experience and electronics, and there was nothing magical about them. They were tools of the trade, and she knew how to use them.
So when Haussler rudely smashed in the Snow Maiden’s door, said his hello, and thought he was about to hold her at gunpoint, the Snow Maiden simply raised her hands and rolled her wrist twice, and the transmitter in her custom-designed watch sent a signal to the detonator.
Three, two, one.
The resounding boom from the doorway sent Haussler ducking reflexively — and that’s all the Snow Maiden needed: one simple diversion via an explosive she’d planted within the first hour of her arrival. In fact, she had booby-trapped the entire place — but for some reason the electronic surveillance warning system she had set up in the walkway had failed to alert her of Haussler’s approach. The bastard had figured out a way to jam it. He was clever when it came to that.
Her sidearm, the one given to her by the taxicab driver who’d been bought by the Ganjin, was beneath the sofa pillow. She wrenched it out, was about to fire point-blank at Haussler, but he’d whirled to face a figure dressed in black who’d appeared in the shattered doorway.
The figure’s face was covered by a balaclava, one eye shielded by an electronic monocle, a high-tech rifle balanced in the combatant’s grip.
“Hold there!” she cried, and her distinctly feminine voice confirmed she was an English speaker, probably an American.
Haussler began to raise his arms — but abruptly dropped to his gut. He then rolled, about to fire at the woman in the doorway.
Seeing that, and strangely holding her own fire, the woman ducked back.
At the same time, the Snow Maiden fired two rounds that narrowly missed the woman. A heartbeat later the Snow Maiden was off the couch and lunging for the back door, on the other side of the small kitchen.
Haussler screamed after her, but more gunfire came from the living room as the woman must have turned back inside. The Snow Maiden snatched her sling bag from the counter, then tore open the door, rounds tearing into the frame beside her. She bounded outside, checked left and right, then sprinted into the forest behind the villa.
* * *
Brent arrived in the doorway, just behind Lakota, who reported that she’d seen a woman inside who could’ve been the Snow Maiden — but there’d been a man there, too. Dennison and her folks would already be searching for the man’s identity since Lakota’s Cross-Com had recorded images of the entire scene.
As the rest of his team chimed in, Brent rushed through the villa, falling in behind Lakota, who’d said that the woman had escaped out back, the man trailing her. They burst through the rear door, paused, and heard brush shifting in the forest.
“We’ve got two men who’ve just climbed into a taxi,” reported Schleck. “Old guys. Probably just tourists running scared. All right, I’ve got satellite. Two runners in the jungle now, heading down toward the beachfront road. Watch it, though, Captain. Those other operators are coming around to cut us off.”
“Good job, Schleck. Keep the play-by-play coming. I like your style.”
“Roger that, Captain!”
“All right, Ghosts, pull up those other guys in your HUD. See if you can flank them while Lakota and I punch straight on through toward the beach. We’re taking that main road around the resort.”
The responses came in, and not a second after the last one, a woman’s scream came from the bungalow ahead. Brent rushed up to the small quarters, which were heavily draped in vines and foliage. He kept tight to the wall and hand-signaled for Lakota to head around the other side.
The Cross-Com automatically zoomed in on two heat sources around the corner: a big man lay on the ground, and hovering over him was another person, both glowing in a mottled orange-red. Brent hustled forward, came through the big fronds, then lifted his palm in truce.
She had long, dark hair, and though the light was faint, Brent thought she might be Middle Eastern. Her dress did not indicate that, though; she appeared very Western in a T-shirt and cutoff jeans. The heavyset man lying on his back wore an expensive suit, his white shirt stained deeply with blood. He might have been a heavyweight boxer in his day and might now be a hotel security guard, Brent wasn’t sure. The young woman screamed again as he approached.
“It’s okay. I’m not here to hurt you.”
Gunfire raked along the ground, drawing up on the woman. Brent threw himself forward and hit the ground, shielding her from the salvo. He rolled up and returned fire into the woods as Lakota came around and added her triplet of fire to the fray. Brent’s Cross-Com picked out three targets, outlines of each flashing in red, yet all three broke off suddenly, as though they knew they were being watched.
Just then Riggs and Copeland ran forward, out of breath. Brent shouted for Riggs to stay with the girl, while Copeland dropped to the big man’s side, sloughed off his medical pack, and checked for a pulse. None.
“He’s already gone.” Copeland frowned at the woman. “I’m sorry.”
She bit her lip and began to cry.
“Do you speak English?” Brent asked her, realizing that should’ve been his first question.
“Yes.”
“What’s your name.”
“Warda.”
“All right, Warda, get back inside. Don’t come out again.”
“Are you working for Manoj?”
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
“Come on,” said Riggs, helping Warda to her feet. “You need to go.”
“Get her in there, then get back to me,” said Brent, tipping his head for Lakota to join him. “Wait a minute. Riggs? You stay with her.” The woman knew something, and Brent decided he would question her later.
Riggs nodded. “On it, Captain.”
Lakota cocked a brow. “Can you keep up with me?”
Brent snorted.
Suddenly, she was gone, bulleting down the road.
He cursed and charged after.
Fifty yards later, sweat was already pouring off his face. Lakota could run, he’d give her that, and she showed no signs of slowing. They darted by the main building, its light casting a faint glow over a jagged fence of palms, and then they followed the narrow road as it curved down again toward the beach. Brent was losing his breath. Lakota seemed comfortable, hardly panting. As she tried to kill him with her pace, he divided his attention between the road and his HUD, che
cking on the two figures and their escape.
“Captain, Lakota, hold up there. Take cover!” Schleck finished his warning a second before the tree line erupted with gunfire.
Targets flashed red in Brent’s HUD, reticles zooming in on the red outlines.
Brent was down, and he and Lakota were thinking the same thing as rounds tore through the bushes on either side of them, splintering limbs and echoing loudly off the hills.
They reached into their web gear and withdrew one of their new L12-7 heat-seeking grenades shaped like small missiles.
“’Nades away!” he cried.
They lobbed their grenades, and within a second of leaving their hands small fins popped out, tiny engines ignited, and the devices’ explosive payloads were about to be delivered on time, on target, strike three, you’re out!
The grenades shot off toward the tree line with a whoosh, whoosh, boom-boom!
The gunfire dropped off to nothing.
“You got ’em,” cried Schleck.
Lakota tugged down her balaclava and flashed him a smile. They high-fived and got back on their feet.
This time Brent took lead, but he felt her there, right on his back, and he wondered if she thought he was too slow. He’d show her the “old man” could still run and bounded off down the long, dark stretch, with the sounds of the breakers echoing in the distance.
* * *
Stones and scrub pockmarked the rugged dunes above the beach, and the Snow Maiden turned off the main road and ducked behind a row of larger, waist-high rocks, her tennis shoes quickly filling with sand. She wove through rows of tropical plants and coconut trees better known by the locals as coco de mer, found a ditch behind one particularly thick patch of hibiscus or something akin, and hunkered down there, unmoving, to catch her breath.
She swallowed. Damn. Haussler had come this close to capturing her. First France and now this. What was wrong with her? Was she, as Patti had suggested, getting too careless? Too tired? Too sick of it all?
Now Haussler would have all the GRU’s toys at his disposal: infrared tracking, portable radar, nanobot trackers, you name it. He may have already dusted her with the ’bots. She could not rest for much longer.
Well, at least she’d tagged Chopra. All she had to do now was escape from the German. But who was the woman? Could she be an American member of the Green Brigade? And if the Brigade was involved, why had they attacked Haussler? Then again, maybe the Russians had not told them about Haussler, so the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing… perhaps the Euros and Americans had new teams after her now?
She checked her own radar and saw that Haussler had turned south up the main road running parallel with the beach. No, he had not dusted her. Not yet.
Her GPS map showed the Lazare Picault hotel lying to the north. From there she’d hail a taxi. There would be no flying off the island. Haussler already had the airport under his lock and key. As much as she dreaded needing the help, the Snow Maiden would need to call Patti to arrange for an exit by sea.
But one last task. From her sling bag she withdrew a battery-operated device that resembled a cell phone. She switched it on and plugged in her height and weight, and the device began to produce a heat source that would be detected by an IR sensor and draw attention. From a distance, the source could be mistaken for a person, although the closer you got, the more readily identifiable the unit became. She left the decoy in the bush and trotted off, nearly running straight into a tall man dressed in a plain green uniform. He had a rifle pointed at her chest.
The man spoke in Russian, obviously his native tongue. “He runs that way, I run this way. I get lucky. He doesn’t.”
“Oh, really?” she asked, the Russian rolling off her tongue and feeling like an old friend.
“He wants us to take you alive.”
“You’re Spetsnaz?” she asked.
“The best.”
“But you work for Haussler? A German? Then you’re just a dog.”
He took a step forward. “Put your gun in the dirt.”
“I like my gun right here, in my hand.”
“Then I’m going to shoot you.”
“I thought you were taking me alive.”
“I’m going to shoot you in the leg. You have nice legs. Too bad.”
He was in the middle of his grin when she shot him in the head so quickly that even she gasped.
His head snapped back, and he thudded to the ground. She seized his rifle, then swore through a chill. It was worse than she’d thought. Haussler had a team of Spetsnaz at his beck and call.
She took a deep breath.
And ran.
SEVEN
Banyan Tree Seychelles Resort
Mahé Island
Republic of the Seychelles
“It’s coming from right there,” said Lakota, pointing toward a narrow patch of shrubbery cutting across the back side of the dunes like a jagged scar.
They’d been drawing up slowly on the heat source in an attempt to ambush the operator lying in wait. The Cross-Com was still unable to ID friend or foe and superimpose a targeting reticle over the person.
As they drew closer, the signature got weird.
“Fire?” Brent guessed as they shifted farther up into the dunes, then crouched even lower as they neared the source, now glowing brilliantly in their HUDs.
“No, it’s not fire,” said Lakota. “No scent. No smoke. I think I know what we have here…” She moved ahead, leaned over, and picked up the device in her gloved hands.
Brent hurried up beside her. “Wow, decoy.”
“Just to slow us down.”
“Schleck?” Brent called. “Launch the drone.”
“Roger that.”
From his vantage point high in the hills, Schleck would activate and send airborne one of Ghost Recon’s latest UAV6a Cypher drones, no larger than the size of a Frisbee and equipped with a comprehensive array of high-tech sensors, including chemical and radiation detection. Brent had been holding off on using the device because he never had much luck with them. They’d crash or get whacked by the enemy before he collected any usable data. His colleagues used them with great efficiency, but the gods of technology never smiled down on him. And worse, after each mission he’d have to answer for the cost. It didn’t matter whether he was the operator or one of his people. He had no luck, but that excuse wasn’t good enough for his superiors.
But what the hell; he’d take another gamble now…
“Drone away,” announced Schleck.
As Brent and Lakota set out once more, following footprints that still held the slightest trace of a heat source, Schleck said the drone was closing on the enemy operators. There were, according to his count, six men remaining. Although the drone’s little motor was relatively silent, Brent knew that if Schleck took the bird in too close, one or more of the bad guys would go duck hunting. He warned Schleck about that.
“Roger that, Captain. Got news on the primary target and pursuer. They’ve split up. One’s heading north, the other south. Not sure who’s who, though… Would you like me to follow one?”
“Not yet. Stay with the others and report back.”
“You got it.”
“There’s a hotel to the north,” said Lakota, reading something in her monocle, assumedly her GPS.
“North it is.”
They followed the dunes, the heavy sand beginning to slow them. In the distance, lights from the next hotel glimmered, and it wasn’t two minutes later when Brent heard a faint rush of air and knew what was happening.
“Get down!”
He grabbed Lakota by the back of her shirt collar and drove her onto her back, into the sand. The explosion tore into the dunes behind them.
“Captain, I’m sorry, I lost them for a minute. But now you got two guys on your six, one hundred meters out,” said Schleck. “Cross-Com says that grenade was a Russian 99Z. These guys are packing the hot stuff.”
Brent’s head was still spinning f
rom the drop and subsequent burst. Yet he and Lakota rolled over onto their bellies and propped up onto their elbows. Targeting reticles began to float across his HUD.
The enemy operators advanced, drawing up on the next dune. For a moment, Brent got a bead on one, his reticle flashing crimson. He squeezed off a salvo, but the guy dropped quickly back behind the rocks.
“They’re trying to slow us down and keep us busy while they get the Snow Maiden,” said Lakota.
Brent answered through a groan, “I know.”
The second guy was shifting left in an attempt to flank, but Lakota was on him, tracking for a second until she fired three shots, and Brent watched the target fall.
“One more,” she said, her voice coming in a near-purr, feline and deadly.
If he hadn’t switched his gaze back to the rocks he would’ve missed sight of the first guy, hurling his next grenade.
Moments like this sometimes came at him in an almost underwater slowness.
But sometimes they came in a hypersensitive way, as though the world were suddenly being fast-forwarded, the contrast jacked up to ten, every sense tingling — which was how he viewed the battle zone now.
He shouted to Lakota and they bolted around the rocks to the next ditch, where, at the foot of a palm, they dropped again, like baseball players diving for home plate.
A rumbling concussion shook the ground. Within the next heartbeat, shattered stone began raining over them in a moment that seemed torn from the Book of Revelation. The 99Z wasn’t quite as sophisticated as Ghost Recon’s grenades, but the device did have a nasty byproduct — if it didn’t kill you, it dusted you with nanobot trackers so the next grenade could better lock on.