by Baen Books
I racked a round into the chamber, got up on a knee, and started to bring the rifle to bear on the wounded Russian, when a burst smacked more concrete chips into my face, the deformed bullets whining past as they skipped off the corner. I'd forgotten about the fourth guy.
Where the hell is Ivan? I thought, ducking back away from the storm of AK fire. As soon as it slackened, I surged out around the corner, leading the way with my rifle.
I damn near hit the Russian in the face with the muzzle. If I'd been a split second slower, he probably would have grabbed my rifle and I'd have been in a world of hurt, down on the ground fighting him for the weapon. But as soon as his ugly, lumpy, scarred-up face appeared in front of my front sight, I was squeezing the trigger.
I hadn't dropped the selector lever down to semi, either. A five-round burst turned his head into a canoe. Blood and brains splashed back in a muddy red spray, and then splattered on me as his momentum kept him falling into me. We went down in a tangle of limbs, guns, and gear, as the liquid contents of his skull spilled across my chest.
With a grunt of mostly effort—I was too far in the zone to worry about disgust or what kind of STDs a Russian mobster might be carrying around in his blood—I shoved the corpse off of me and scrambled to my feet, desperately bringing my rifle to bear, scanning for any more threats. That was when I saw Ivan.
He was slumped against the wall, only a few feet short of the corner, not moving. A red splash against the plaster behind him told me all I needed to know.
I stared at his body for a moment, a moment I probably couldn't afford. I should have run after that. I really didn't have a team left. I didn't have anything left. I was watching what was left of my life unravel in front of my eyes. But for some reason, I turned and headed back around to the street, trying for one last chance at Valentine; one last chance at not ending up on Underhill's hit list.
Moving in a crouch, rifle up and ready, I approached the front of the safe house and the street beyond.
There was no fire coming from the house. Whether that meant that J.D. had chickened out or was dead, I didn't know. All the fire seemed to be going up and down the street. A two-and-a-half ton truck was parked almost right in front of me, with half a dozen Russian shooters trading fire with Valentine and his buddies, who were just down the street to my right, crouched behind their UAZ, which wasn't providing very good cover, but it wasn't going to be much of a getaway vehicle after that, either. There were several Russian bodies strewn in the street, as if they'd tried charging the UAZ.
I didn't really think about it. The Russians had killed most of my team; target or not, Valentine hadn't. So I opened fire on the Russians.
They weren't expecting it; they were entirely fixated on Valentine's team. No one even appeared to be watching their six o'clock. They must have been pretty confident that the NKDA wasn't going to interfere, and that their buddies in the trees would have taken us out without too much trouble.
If there's one thing I'm not, it's “not too much trouble.”
I knew they were wearing body armor, so I didn't just spray. I clicked the selector down to “semi,” and started putting controlled pairs into bodies.
Most of my work in recent times may have been sabotage and assassination, striking without warning against targets that usually have no idea that there's a threat anywhere near, but I'm still a good combat shooter. It's one of those skills I've always taken pride in maintaining. I'm fast, and I'm accurate. So it didn't take long to track along the ragged line of men crouched in the vague cover of the truck, putting two rounds into each of them. The AKM's rattling roar wasn't much compared to the storm of noise that was already roaring across the street, and I started at the back, so they only realized they had been flanked when the second guy from the rear fell onto his buddy, blood and brains leaking from his perforated skull. That threw off my aim, and the shots meant for his buddy went into the side of the truck, but I corrected and hammered three shots into that guy's side before continuing on.
The last guy, who was crouched at the front wheel well, almost got me. He realized what was going on and spun, bringing his Suchka around to point it at my face. His finger was tightening on the trigger when I shot him in the eye. His head snapped back and hit the fender, leaving a red smear on the green paint as he slid down to the pavement.
Still not certain I'd gotten all of them, I sprinted toward the bodies to check the back of the truck. Sure enough, there was one last Russian back there, and he let off a blind burst at me as I dove to the street, scraping my knees and hands, my AKM clattering as it hit the asphalt. I rolled quickly to the wheel well to get my feet under me, shoving the rapidly cooling corpse of the last man I'd shot aside.
Glancing down at him, I saw he had a couple of grenades on his kit, and I briefly considered it. But that would probably just blow me up, too, and I was in combat mode at that point. Depression and the inevitable destruction of my life were about as far from my mind as they could be.
I got into a crouch, then surged forward. There was only one thing in my mind at that point: Attack. The blind fire from the back of the truck had died away, and I wasn't going to give that sonofabitch a chance to try again.
I came around the corner and collided with The Bulldog, his bald head and lumpy nose unmistakable. He was frantically reloading, but I knocked the AK-107 out of his hands when I hit him. At least, that was what I tried to do. He let it go quick enough, and grabbed my rifle, trying to wrench it away. I held on for dear life as I fell on top of him, trying to get my knee under myself so I could get some leverage, buttstroke him, knee him in the ribs, anything.
He suddenly let go with one hand and snatched a knife off his chest rig. That made me let go with both hands and grab for his knife hand. I caught his wrist just as the tip of the blade touched my shirt beneath my chest rig. I held on, my knuckles turning white, practically doing a static pushup above that nasty piece of steel, trying to keep my weight off of it while I tried to twist his wrist.
He let go of the rifle entirely, and suddenly we were in a wrestling match for the knife, guns completely forgotten. Either I sagged a little, or he managed to push upward a little, because I felt the white-hot pain of the point going into the skin over my stomach. I surged backward and to one side, trying to get away from it. In the process, I got off the point, but lost my grip with one hand.
As fast as a striking snake, he was up off the ground, pressing his attack, my one hand no longer enough to hold off his two. He got on top of me, pressing down on the knife, which started to inch closer and closer to my chest.
I still only had one hand on his wrist. I drew the little backup Makarov on my hip with the other and shot him.
He grunted, a confused look in his piggy little eyes turning to shock as I pumped the other seven rounds of 9mm into his guts. The strength had gone out of him, and it was easy enough to roll him off of me, though I was bleeding from a couple of knife wounds now. The Makarov was smoking slightly, the slide locked back. The Russian looked up at me, that puzzled look still on his face for a moment, and then he wasn't seeing anything ever again.
A boot scuffed on the asphalt. I spun, instinctively pointing the empty Makarov, knowing it was too late. I was staring down the barrel of a G3 in Valentine's hands. That big revolver was in a leather holster on his hip.
Valentine was studying me. I don't know why he hadn't just shot me. Maybe it was because so far, we'd both been shooting at the Russians. Maybe he really didn't know what to make of me. I knew what he saw. A gaunt, prematurely gray-haired man, fit but with too many lines in his face from too much stress, too many cigarettes, and too much vodka, soaked in blood and brains and aiming an empty pistol.
“Who are you?” he asked. Strange, his eyes were different colors.
“Me?” I asked, glancing over at the safe house. The front windows were shattered, the wall pocked with bullet holes. “I'm nobody. Not anymore. Just one more expendable pawn who's been expended. Go ahead. Do it.
You'd be doing me a favor.”
“Listen,” he said, lowering the muzzle so it was pointed more at my chest than my face, “you don’t have to die today. I just wanted to ask you a few questions. This can work out so we both walk out of here, alive. We don’t have a lot of time, though.”
“Yeah, no shit,” I replied, dropping the useless Mak on the ground. “Every Russian brodyaga and Armenian henchman is going to be descending on this place in the next hour. You'd better go.”
He wasn't going to make it that easy. He frowned, the rifle muzzle twitching upward a fraction of an inch. “Yeah, no, I think you’re missing what I’m getting at here. You’re coming with me. Get the fuck up.”
I briefly considered just letting him shoot me. It would solve a lot of problems. With the safehouse as shot up as it was, the fact that J.D. wasn't blasting Valentine and his buddy to pieces told me all I needed to know. I stood up and looked him in the face. “You’re Valentine, right? The one they’re looking for?” For some damned reason, I felt like validating my targeting, and making sure I hadn't blown it completely for the sake of some random merc who wasn't even the target.
But I'd hit paydirt, apparently. He tensed up, his face going blank. “I am,” he said, “and right now, your survival depends on you answering one question. Where is Simon Anders?”
I felt an insane, hysterical laugh rising up, but managed to keep it to a chuckle. “Fucking hell, this is too much.”
He didn't like that, and went back to pointing the rifle at my face. At that point, I couldn't care less. “Last chance, asshole,” he said.
“You don’t get it, do you?” I snapped. “Anders isn’t here. He was never here. This whole thing? It was a fucking setup. He’s put out false trails everywhere. Looks like we both took the bait.”
The big black dude came to Valentine's side. “We need to go,” he told him. “This was an ambush. They knew we were coming.”
“I don't think so,” Valentine said, studying me. He jerked his head at me. “I think they knew this guy was coming.”
The big dude looked at me. He wasn't an American; his accent was wrong. “Who is he?” he asked.
“He's a fucking dead man if he doesn't start being useful,” Valentine said.
Go ahead, tough guy, I thought. Do it. Do me the favor.
But I knew at that point that, depressed as I was, lost as I was, my damned survival instinct wasn't going to let me just lie down and die. Valentine wasn't going to just let me walk away, yet, and there was no way I was going to get the drop on him right away. Maybe, just maybe, he could be my way out of this clusterfuck. For damned sure the Organization's secrecy rules no longer meant shit to me. I'd play along with Valentine long enough to get out of this damned kill zone, then I'd fade. I'd run, and find one of our fallback bolt-holes and disappear, just like Ivan and I had planned to do. It might take some doing, but I could be patient.
#
Ulan Bator, Mongolia
Eight Weeks Later . . .
My safe house, a small apartment in a nondescript brick apartment building in Ulan Bator, was dark as I came in from a supply run. I easily passed as a Russian, blending into the considerable Russian population of Ulan Bator. A bigger city is an easier place to disappear in than a small town or village out in the country, even if there was more risk of hostile eyes there.
This was one of the places that Ivan and I had set up as a fallback, a number of years before. I'd taken my time getting there after ditching Valentine, bouncing through a few other places and a few other identities to make sure I wasn't being tracked. We'd visited it every once in a while, though never for long, just enough to make sure the bills were paid and nobody was squatting there. I was living there as Dmitri Kuznetsov, a semi-retired professor. It wasn't much, as cover stories go, but it would do until I could come up with something better.
If I had so much time. As I closed the door and bolted it, a match flared in the living room. I froze.
As far as I knew, only my team had ever known about this place. How had they found me? I started to reach for the Tokarev concealed in the small of my back.
“I wouldn't do that, Frank,” the man in the living room said. The match briefly illuminated his features as he lit the cigar in his teeth, but I saw little except his glasses. “Turn on the light.”
I did. He had an old revolver pointed at me, a .357, I thought. I briefly wondered what the hell it was with revolvers lately? I reconsidered reaching for the Tok.
“Sit down,” he told me. I complied, studying him as I did.
He was old. His ears stuck out a little from snow-white hair and a face that was a mass of wrinkles. His eyes, though, were as keen as any young man's even as they watched me from behind a pair of round-lensed, wire-rimmed glasses. He was eighty if he was a day. There was an oxygen bottle sitting next to his chair, yet he was puffing on a cigar. The muzzle of that Smith never wavered.
“We need to talk, Frank,” he said.
“How did you know about this place?” I asked. “Nobody knows about this place.”
“I've been watching you for a long time,” he replied, puffing on his cigar. “I keep tabs on a lot of people. When one of them might be useful, I might have to act. I had to move quickly, in your case.”
I just felt tired all of a sudden. “Did they drag you out of retirement like Underhill?” I asked.
“Did who drag me out of retirement?” he asked.
I frowned. I was confused now. “The Organization?”
“Like that bunch of schemers and lickspittles could drag me anywhere. Pshaw!” he snorted. “Most of them think I'm dead.”
Now I was really confused. “So why are you here, and why have you been watching me?”
He stared at me. “Frank, how much do you really know about the Organization you've been working for for the last decade?”
“Not that much,” I admitted. “Some black agency buried so deep that it's existence never gets mentioned outside of shows like From Sea to Shining Sea. Conspiracy crap.”
He grunted again, taking another puff from the cigar, then reaching down to hold the oxygen mask to his face and take a deep breath. “Fair enough assessment, these days,” he replied. “Wasn't always like that, though.”
“You were with the Organization in the old days?” I asked.
“With the Organization?” he harrumphed. “Boy, I was one of those started the damn Organization. And it served a purpose back then. I'd been killing Communists on four continents before you were even born. That was what the Organization existed for. To stop the dominoes from falling. Ultimately, to win the damn war and bring the Soviets to their knees.” He took another puff off the cigar, then another breath off the oxygen bottle.
“Now it's all power games. Influence operations, PsyOps, using secret police tactics in the U.S. The whole shooting match has gotten corrupt. These damn kids don't give a shit about their country, they only care about their power and influence, their damned games. Most of us oldsters who are still alive have just gone deep, waiting out our time until we go, wishing it was different.”
“But not you.” I was starting to see where this was going. I wasn't sure I liked it, either.
“Damn straight,” he said. “I might be retired, but I still hear everything, and I've got contacts everywhere. The pattern's still faint, but it's there, if you've got eyes to see and the experience to put two and two together. Things are coming to a head. Bad times are a'coming. It's getting to be time for us old guys to step in and set things right. The new generation's screwed it all up.” He eyed me keenly. He might look like somebody's kindly old grandpa, but when you looked into his eyes, you saw that this was one hard old man. If what he'd said was true, this kindly old grandpa had probably killed more people than cancer. “That's where you come in. I need people. You've already got yourself in one hell of a position. Underhill's no joke. I should know. I trained the sonofabitch.”
“This is where you make me an offer I can't refuse
,” I said, weary down to my bones.
“Smart boy,” he said. He stood up, that Smith still pointed at my heart, his cigar clamped in his teeth. The oxygen bottle was on a cart, but he didn't seem to need a cane. “You've got a choice. You can be like that Valentine kid, looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life. Or I can use my resources to help you stay under the radar. Underhill will never find you. The only price is that occasionally you've got to do some work for me. So, what's it going to be?”
I squinted up at him. “No, old man, what it really comes down to is I work for you, or you put a bullet in me and disappear. If you're really the shadow player you say you are, you're not going to chance me getting rolled up and telling them about this conversation.”
He smiled. “See, I said you were a smart kid.” His eyes went cold. “So what's it going to be?”
I sighed. “Hell, that's no damn choice at all,” I said. I wasn't ready to be murdered by Commie-Killing Grandpa in a shitty apartment in Ulan Bator. “If I wanted to get killed by my erstwhile employers, I'd have stayed in Stepanakert and waited for Underhill. I'll be here when you need me.”
Rock, Meet Hard Place (Part 2)
by Mike Kupari
VALENTINE
Disputed Zone
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic
Quiet, unsettling quiet, descended on Shahinyan Street as the firefight abruptly ceased. The last of the Russians was dead, but more would be coming. Even in a war-torn hellhole, a firefight between groups of foreigners in broad daylight warranted investigation. The locals would show up sooner or later, and Antoine and I weren’t equipped to fight off a platoon of pissed-off Armenians by ourselves.
We didn’t have a lot of time. We’d been able to track the Americans back to their hidey-hole, a house in a ruined neighborhood on the outskirts of town, but those damned Russian mercenaries had shown up again. I had guessed that the Russian mercs were working with the Americans, and that they were all working for the Montalban Exchange, but then the Russians started shooting at the Americans and that theory went right out the window.