by Baen Books
J.D. looked a little taken aback. Ivan glowered. Carlos got quiet, his face very still.
I studied Carlos a little. The fact was, even though we'd worked together for close to five years, I still knew next to nothing about Carlos' life before I'd met him. He was a devout Catholic, which sometimes seemed a little strange in this business, but he'd told me that he justified it by the fact that most everybody we killed really had it coming, and that his prayer life kept him steady. But there were little hints that didn't quite fit; little reactions—like this one—that suggested that he hadn't always been as . . . centered. The clouded look in his eyes suggested that this was not the first time he'd been faced with a situation like this. Considering that even in my admittedly cynical view of the U.S. military, American soldiers were not really treated as expendable pawns, I had to wonder.
But Carlos' mysterious past was not our primary concern at the moment. “Something is very, very wrong,” Ivan said, his existential moment apparently over with the onset of a new mission. “They would not make threats if they were not desperate. Anders was golden boy. If he has defected, is something more going on.” Even though he was an American citizen and had spent twelve years in the Army, Ivan still had a pronounced Russian accent. I'm sure that all the time we'd been spending in Eastern Russia had contributed to it; I sometimes caught myself speaking English with a bit of an accent and even dropping articles every once in a while.
“Are we seriously considering not taking the job?” J.D. asked, looking around at the rest of us. “I mean, sure, there's a risk operating in a new place on short notice, and I'm sure that Ivan's right and there is something more going on. But I'd say that between our employers' potential displeasure if we don't do it, and the chance to finally give that psychopathic prick what he's got coming, that's two pros to one con.”
I took a deep breath, took another fiery swing of vodka, sighed, and shook my head. “No, we're taking the job. Forsyth made it pretty clear that we're in the cold if we don't. Doesn't mean I've got to like it, but we need a flight west, pronto.”
“I'll get on it,” Carlos said, heading into our little comms room. He had been the only one not to weigh in on the problem. He was like that. He rarely said what was on his mind, and most of the time we had no idea what he thought of any of the stuff we did. He just did it, coolly and professionally, and rarely said a word about it.
#
Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh Republic
The Stepanakert International Airport wasn't the smallest “International” airport I'd ever seen, but it was up there on the list. The single paved runway was in decent shape, though any painted markings had worn off a long time ago. The terminal wasn't actually that much bigger than the control tower, which was also part of it. The flag of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, which was basically the Armenian flag with a white chevron at one end, fluttered from the flagpole on top of the control tower. The green hills of this part of the Caucasus Mountains loomed above the terminal in the distance.
Wrangling a flight into an active war zone, even if it had been technically active for most of thirty years, had been an interesting trick. We'd ended up hitching a ride with a cargo flight that may or may not have been legit, ostensibly running medical supplies into Stepanakert from Astrakhan. I was pretty sure that the pilot was, if not drunk, at least heavily fortified with vodka, and the An-24 he was flying had clearly seen better days. Fortunately, it was a Russian bird, so it could still fly with a bunch of parts missing and fluids leaking everywhere.
I stood up, still having to hunch over in the cramped cabin, and tried to work a few of the kinks out. It hadn't been a straight flight; we'd had to go an extra hundred miles to the west to make sure we stayed away from the front line between the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians and the Azeris. That front line had apparently been fluctuating more in the last couple of months than it had in the last five years, which was probably part of why Anders was hanging out in Azerbaijan.
The plane rolled and rattled to a stop on the crumbling apron, and we shouldered our relatively small packs and filed off once the crew chief, whom I was pretty sure was drunk, opened the door and let down the steps. Since we weren't sure what we were going to run into in the way of Customs officials, not to mention the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army, we hadn't brought a lot of gear. We were going to have to obtain most of our weapons and kit on the ground. Fortunately, Forsyth's briefing packet had included the locations of a couple of caches that should have most of the weapons, ammo, and gear we'd need. I supposed it was the least they could do, given how they'd been jerking us around so far. We hadn't even gotten any assistance on transportation.
I'd definitely be billing the office for the fat bribe we'd paid the Antonov pilot.
As we walked down the stairs, I couldn't help but notice that the airport looked, well . . . dead. There was a single short-range jet parked on the apron, and it looked like it had seen better days. I couldn't see anyone working, either; no ground crew, no baggage handlers, nothing. I glanced back at the Russian crew chief, who just grinned. Apparently, we were lucky to have been able to fly in here at all. The briefing packet had said something about lots of trouble about flights into and out of Nagorno-Karabakh, but I'd kind of skimmed over that part, and when we'd found a pilot willing to fly into Stepanakert, we'd jumped at it without asking too many questions.
There were also no cars waiting in the parking lot. Which meant we had a problem.
Chagrined, I turned back to the crew chief. “Is there some way to get ride into town?” I asked in Russian.
He grinned again, even wider. “Our friends will come for cargo soon,” he said. “You can ride with us, maybe buy car in town.”
From the looks of his grin, it was going to cost us even more rubles or dram. Fortunately, our employers have a tendency to throw money around like confetti, so we usually had a pretty sizable bribery budget. I just nodded, unable to keep some of the disgust off my face, wondering just who this Russki smuggler was going to tell about us before all was said and done. We'd have to sweep any vehicle we bought from these people very thoroughly, and take a good half a day to make sure they weren't following us before we found a safe house. It was somewhat contrary to the time-sensitive nature of the mission that Forsyth had gone to such lengths to stress, but fuck him, he wasn't the one out here with his ass in the breeze. Let these fuckers sell us out to Anders, and we were screwed before we'd even gotten started.
But if there was one thing I'd learned over most of a decade working in shitty, chaotic parts of the world with a lot of shady people, it was that you just smiled, nodded, looked for trouble, and stayed patient. So we settled in to wait for the Russians' contacts.
#
The safe house was a small, red-roofed cinderblock house with the whitewash peeling off the walls, surrounded by ancient oak trees and what looked like half a century of fallen leaves and weeds. The Office hadn't provided any prep for it, so we had to settle for renting the place from the Russians we'd hitched a ride into town with. If it wasn't bugged, I was sure that it would be under surveillance. We'd booby-trap the hell out of it the first chance we got. We had barely gotten inside when the phone rang.
I just looked at it for a moment. We'd been working our asses off to shake any surveillance that the Russians might have planted on us, dig up the weapons cache—which was now scattered across the floor, a combination of AKMs and AK-74s, AKS-74U Suchkas, Makarovs, Tokarevs, and an RPD, along with ammo, magazines, and chest rigs for same—get to the safe house, and unload our shit into it to start prepping. I was pretty sure that it was Forsyth on the phone, and I wasn't eager to spend time talking to him.
But the alternative could be worse. Our employers didn't like to get blown off. I answered the phone. “What?” I asked, by way of greeting.
Forsyth was about as pleasant. “Are you on the ground?”
“Yes,” I replied. “We're starting the planning and prep.” I left the and you're wasting my prep
time part out.
“Will you be ready to move on the farm tonight?” he asked.
Are you fucking kidding me? “We just got our base of operations set up, hopefully without the Russians or Armenians knowing about it,” I replied. “We haven't done any reconnaissance on the farm to make sure that he's there, or get a good idea of the layout and possible opposition. These things don't happen with a snap of your fingers, you know.”
“You have the imagery and the briefing packet,” he said. “There isn't time to fuck around.”
I bit off the acid retort that his words deserved. What kind of amateurs did he think he was dealing with? That was a bit of a rhetorical question; the Organization had never shown a great deal of regard for its subcontractors, even the ones who had been working for them for years.
“Rushing this sort of thing gets people killed, and gets missions botched,” I told him, trying not to sound too much like I was lecturing a twelve-year-old. “How can we even be sure that Anders is there? There aren't any photos in the briefing packet; we have to get eyes on to confirm or we're going to miss him and he'll be gone.”
“We have enough indicators to be eight-five to ninety percent certain that he's there,” Forsyth said impatiently. “If he moves, we will let you know. We don't have time to do this the traditional way. Get your weapons and gear prepped, and hit that farmhouse tonight.” He hung up.
I stared at the phone in a mix of disbelief and fury, then tossed it on top of my pack in disgust. As tempting as it might have been to throw it against the wall, I wasn't pissed off enough to do something that stupid.
The other three were watching me, though Ivan kept loading AK mags, his fingers pushing the rounds in with a mechanical regularity, as if he was a machine. J.D. was frowning. Carlos was as impassive as ever, though there was a hint of concern in his eyes.
“Forsyth is insisting we go tonight,” I told them. “He says that they are certain that Anders is there, and that we should have enough from the briefing packet to launch. He tells me that if he moves, they'll let us know.”
“What?” J.D. snarled. “They've got surveillance on this asshole, and they're just now telling us?”
“That's presuming that they actually have surveillance on him,” I pointed out, “and they're not going off of some electronic chicken entrails and trying to bullshit us. Either way, Forsyth doesn't seem to be too inclined to brook any delay. As much as I don't like it, we're going to have to move fast, because I don't want my head in the Organization's crosshairs.” I took a deep breath, then checked my watch. “Offhand, that gives us about four hours to get a general CONOP set up and try to do at least a drive-by recon. We can't do anything in-depth, but hell, it won't be the first time we've had to do things on short notice.”
J.D. was fuming. Ivan just turned back to loading mags. Carlos shook his head as he finished going over his RPD. It was going to be a long one.
#
Ivan, J.D., and I slipped through the trees, moving toward the target house. Carlos had split off earlier to set up a combination of overwatch and base of fire on the house. Being the smallest guy on the team, naturally he had just sort of ended up with the RPD.
The rest of us were going to execute the actual hit. We were all dressed similarly, in camouflage that looked like some sort of Flecktarn knockoff, canvas AK chest rigs, and carrying the two AKMs and one AK-74 that had been hidden in the cache. We'd unanimously left the Suchkas behind; they may look cool, but if you're hoping to hit anything past a hundred yards, good luck. Even the Spetsnaz didn't like those things.
The house was dark, though we'd seen the flicker of a flashlight through the trees some time earlier. We had briefly considered simply driving up to the door, piling out, and kicking it in, but with Anders involved, that idea hadn't lasted more than a minute. Anders would have some kind of security out, and booby traps were definitely a possibility as well. So we'd stay nice and quiet and sneaky, up until it was time to go loud.
We kept a fairly tight formation, mainly because there hadn't been any night vision in the cache. I had no idea how old it was, but I suspected it was mid-Cold War old.
There was enough illum that we could just see the whitewashed walls of the house through the trees ahead. It was a long, low, one-story farmhouse, not dissimilar to our safe house in Ul'ken Karatal. There were a few outbuildings under the trees near it, including what had looked like a garage to the north on the overheads.
I was keeping my eyes peeled for sentries as we approached. It was a cool night, but my hands were sweating on the AKM's Bakelite grip and forearm. My heart rate was a little elevated, and I was trying to look into every shadow at once. That happens when you're on a half-baked, rushed op with three other dudes in unfamiliar territory, trying to hunt down one of the nastiest killers you've ever seen.
I took a knee next to a towering oak only a few paces from the house. So far, I'd seen no movement, no lights, no nothing. The place looked deserted. Given how much I trusted the intel from our employers, it might well be deserted. But I also knew that if there was a chance that Forsyth was right, and Anders was there, getting overconfident and sloppy would mean we wouldn't see the dawn.
Ivan and J.D. had joined me at the tree, spreading out around it to cover our six as well. I brought the compact little ICOM radio up to my lips and keyed it, my voice barely above a whisper. “Any movement?” I asked.
“No movement that I can see,” was Carlos' reply. “There are two vehicles parked out front. There's another one sitting at the Y down south, too. I can't see if there's anyone in it, but it looks wrong. It's out of place.”
I clicked the mic twice to acknowledge. I didn't want to talk too much that close to the target house. If anything, a suspicious vehicle nearby served as a positive indicator that this might be the right house, after all. I just hoped that we hadn't been spotted by anyone sitting in the vehicle with a belt-fed.
After another couple of minutes watching and listening, I started to get up. If there was a lot of security in there, they were inside, waiting for somebody to kick the door in. Or they were asleep. Either way, we couldn't wait any longer. It was go time.
The AKM up in the low ready, J.D. and Ivan flanking me a step behind, I flowed toward the back door. I kept the muzzle generally pointed toward the far corner of the building, except when I had to cross a window. There were two before we reached the door, and I quickly pied them off, covering every angle inside with my muzzle as I walked past, before snapping back forwards when J.D. moved up to take over for me. The maneuver was mostly pointless, since the interior was pitch black. But old habits can be a hell of a thing to break, and that's one that's saved my life a few times.
Getting to the door, my focus narrowed. I pointed the AKM just above the door handle, even as I reached forward to test the latch.
It was unlocked. I carefully turned the handle, and tried to ease the door open. I wanted to stay soft for as long as possible.
The door creaked loudly, as if the hinges hadn't been greased in years. There went staying soft. I flung the door open and stepped through the threshold, stepping aside as fast as possible to clear the way for Ivan, even as I triggered the flashlight taped to the rifle's forearm, scanning for threats.
The back hallway was empty. Flashlights played over bare plastered walls and a stone floor. There was no sound except for our own movement and harsh breathing.
Now that we were inside, we didn't dare stop moving. Hallways are deathtraps, and I had no intention of staying in that one for more than a few seconds. I swept forward, gun up and watching the three doorways ahead.
There were curtains over the one to the front and the left. So I went right, pausing just long enough to get a bump from either J.D. or Ivan behind me before charging into the next room.
It was a kitchen, dominated by a large hearth with iron racks for cooking bolted across the deep fireplace. There were hooks set into the wall above the hearth, and there were shelves made of old wood and
brick along the far wall.
There were also two Russian 152mm howitzer shells sitting upright in the fireplace in a tangle of wires and det cord, with a cell phone sitting on top.
“Avalanche!” I bellowed. It wasn't original, but it was the standard code word in the U.S. mil that we'd all trained with for, “There's an IED, get the fuck out!” I suited actions to words by promptly diving through the window in a shower of glass and broken window frame.
Well, it was sort of a dive. It wasn't nearly as graceful as the word makes it sound. I kind of went through the glass shoulder-first, cut myself, lost my balance, and fell out of the window. I hit heavily and off balance, knocking some of the wind out of myself, only made worse when Ivan's big ass landed on me, followed by J.D.. J.D. wasn't as heavy as Ivan, but it still hurt.
Both of them rolled off, and I levered myself to my feet, painfully, but probably a lot faster than I would have under different circumstances. I wanted away from that bomb disguised as a farmhouse, right fucking now. Wheezing, favoring my side, which twinged painfully when I tried to take a deep breath, I started jogging away from the house, with Ivan and J.D. on my heels. I wasn't moving that slowly, but between the pain of my rapid exit and the desperation of having a whole lot of high explosive right behind me, it felt like I was swimming through tar, even as we plunged into the trees.
Just because we were running for our lives, though, didn't mean I'd dropped all semblance of situational awareness. I'd survived too long in too many dangerous places. So I saw the figures moving up through the woods even as we ran toward them, and instinctively slowed, bringing my rifle up. Then the house blew up behind us and knocked me on my face.
Fortunately most of the blast went up, throwing cement, stone, wood, and sheet metal high in the air. We were still close enough to catch a good bit of the shockwave, though, and more fragments were flying through the air and smacking into the tree trunks. It was momentarily raining debris, bark, and shredded leaves, and my ears were ringing as I picked myself up off the ground, feeling like I'd just been hit by a truck. I'd still had my AKM's sling around my neck, so I hadn't lost it, though I still had to grope for the controls as I got up, pointing it vaguely toward the team that had been coming at us. I didn't know who they were, but the odds were good that they weren't on our side. The only person on our side who wasn't within arm's length of me at the moment was Carlos, who wasn't exactly in a position to intervene, being some two hundred yards away on the wrong side of the farm.