“I was calling the only two people on earth who could possibly help me get my daughters back.”
Suddenly, there was the sound of footsteps from the hallway. Gale glanced up and saw the camera was blinking green again. The door to the interrogation room burst open and an incredibly tall man entered the room followed by agents wearing blue FBI field jackets.
The tall man flashed a badge indicating he was with the bureau. “What is going on here?”
Earl closed the orange files and put them under his arm. “I am the agent in charge of watching this man in custody and who might you be?”
“My name is Special Agent Jim Brower with the FBI’s Foreign Counterintelligence Division.”
“The FCI? What’s your business?”
Brower produced a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket and handed it to Earl.
“I’ve been ordered to escort this man to JBER and take him by flight to Washington, DC.”
Gale nearly jumped out of his chair. “No! I need to stay here.”
Brower ignored Gale. Earl, who was still squinting at the sheet of paper Brower had handed him, said, “This says that FBI director Connelly has ordered Robert Gaines to the FBI offices in DC. Who is Robert Gaines?”
Gale suddenly felt hopeful; his distress calls must have worked. Susan Carter or Prescott McGavran must have gotten his messages. “I’m Robert Gaines.”
Brower put his badge back into his jacket pocket and gave a look like he knew exactly who Gale was. He indicated for his agents to take Gale.
Gale said, “Wait a minute; have you spoken to Susan Carter or Prescott McGavran?”
Brower didn’t reply.
“You’re not really taking me to the FBI offices in DC, are you? You’re taking me to them.”
“I’ve been instructed by Director Connelly to take you to DC—”
“Then you need to take him as well,” Gale said, indicating Earl Marks. “McGavran and Susan Carter need to hear what this man has to say. He is crucial to all of this. He is the one who records the missing up here. He has evidence that my daughters are not the only ones who have been taken. Please, call whoever you need to call, but this man needs to come with us.”
“I have my orders to escort only you.”
“Special Agent Brower,” Earl said. “Mr. Gale is right. If I could just speak with you for a moment, I could clear a few things up.” Earl marched out of the room, and Brower reluctantly followed.
Five minutes later, Brower came back into the room followed by Earl, who held a large cardboard box in his arms. Brower said, “You got your wish, let’s go.”
They were escorted outside to a caravan of black SUVs and Gale was pressed between two burly agents in the back of one SUV while Earl and Brower sat in the bench seats in front of him.
They made it to JBER in ten minutes and parked in a hangar next to a busy runway. Gale was taken out of the SUV and was told to stay put.
A green military jeep pulled up to the hangar and two high-ranking officials climbed out of the back.
The bigger of the two marched up to the group. “Special Agent Brower? I’m General Bressant, this here is Colonel Wallinger,” he said as he pointed to the serious-looking man standing next to him.
Gale looked up when he heard Wallinger’s name and the two locked eyes.
“I can’t imagine what you boys are going through, today,” Bressant said. “But we’re here to help in any way we can. When I got the call from Chairman Bridgewater that an escort plane was coming in from Nevada and needed to take precious cargo to DC, I had no idea we’d be in for such a treat.”
“I would like to thank the air force for supplying the plane to the FBI, sir,” Brower said.
Bressant looked at Gale for a long moment. “Well, it looks like larger things are at play. Larger than I could begin to understand.” He jacked a thumb over his shoulder. “Plane’s this way, follow me.”
The agents marched Gale out of the hangar and hooked a right. The loud whine of a jet engine consumed the group and Gale nearly gasped when he looked out to see one of the sleekest-looking jets he’d ever laid eyes on.
“The Lockheed YF-8,” Bressant bellowed over the sound of the roaring engine. “Technically, it doesn’t exist, but it’ll get you from Anchorage to DC in under two hours.”
Chapter 46
FORTY THOUSAND FEET
SOMEWHERE OVER RUSSIA
SOKOLOV SCREAMED IN rage and threw his glass of vodka at Dmitry, hitting the man square in the face, making him drop his tablet and yelp in pain.
“What do you mean, Robert Gaines has escaped! They made it on to the plane, did they not?!”
Dmitry wiped the vodka from his watering eyes and leaned against a plush leather captain’s chair within the private jet that was escorting them all to Vladivostok—Russia’s easternmost military base.
According to the in-flight map on the backs of the luxury seats, they were forty minutes from their destination. They had been in the air for nearly nine hours from the time they’d left Moscow, and Sokolov was getting angry, drunk, and impatient.
Sokolov grabbed Dmitry. “What the hell happened? I thought Teams One and Two secured Robert Gaines and Team One had boarded their flight with him!”
“They did!” Dmitry yelped. “Right after we got confirmation that they secured the target, there was a plane crash! The American press is reporting that there is only one survivor.”
“Is Robert Gaines the survivor?”
“I don’t know!”
Sokolov pushed Dmitry to the floor, then used his cane to beat the seat next to him in fury. The rest of Sokolov’s detail sat in the front cabin of the plane, all staring fearfully at their boss. This would certainly complicate things. It wouldn’t be long before the Americans would be able to identify the dead Vympel operators for who they really were. And only a matter of time before the information would reach President Putin.
“How can we determine if it was Robert Gaines who survived?”
Dmitry got slowly to his knees. “I can reach out to our assets within their FBI to try to get the name of the survivor.”
“Do it.” Sokolov breathed like a bull and waited for his rage to subside as he watched Dmitry poke away frantically at his tablet. After Sokolov caught his breath, he said, “And what about Team Three? Were they able to accomplish their mission?”
Dmitry nodded furiously. “Team Three successfully captured their target and eliminated KODIAK. They rendezvoused with Team Two and are currently en route to the sharashka.”
“How far out?”
“Roughly thirty hours.”
“Thirty hours!” Sokolov spat. “Alert them to take measures to speed that up! I want the second Gaines daughter at the sharashka by the time we arrive. Surely, even those idiots in the GRU have measures to expedite a subject!”
Dmitry nodded furiously again and kept tapping away on his tablet.
“How long until we are at the sharashka?” Sokolov asked.
“Another half hour to Vladivostok. Then we will switch jets and head to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy. Once there, it is an hour via the helicopter to the sharashka. Roughly four hours, General.”
“Contact Captain Yermakova. Alert her of my arrival time and that of the expedited Gaines girl. Tell her that her GRU team is to use whatever means necessary to get the daughter to the sharashka as quickly as possible.”
“Da, General!”
Sokolov slumped back into his seat. Robert Gaines had eluded him again. His plan to torture his daughters in front of him just like Gaines had done to him all those years ago with his dear Evgeny was now squandered.
Sokolov would just have to play with the cards he’d been dealt; he’d have to cash in on his consolation prize.
He still had the daughters.
He could still get his revenge.
A memory crept up in his mind. An event that he had almost forgot. He thought of that traitorous scientist who had almost blown the lid off Post 866 those many
years ago.
He remembered the pictures Evgeny had taken.
The pictures.
That’s what Sokolov would do.
He would take pictures of the daughters as they participated in his torture techniques. He would take pictures and then he would send them to Robert Gaines.
That would be his revenge.
How did those Americans say it?
A dish best served cold.
Chapter 47
POST 866
EXECUTIVE QUARTERS
CAPTAIN YERMAKOVA CLOSED her eyes and sighed deeply as the hot water and the scent of lavender relaxed her hectic mind. Mozart’s Fifth Symphony played in the background of the elaborately decorated bathroom in her executive living quarters deep within the sharashka.
When she had gotten permission to rebuild Post 866 and turn it into a place for science and sport, she had also decided that the place needed some sprucing up.
When the president had given the green light to reconstruct the sharashka, Yermakova had insisted on taking siloviki funds to create a lavish executive wing just in case any of the siloviki wanted to visit—or maybe even the president himself.
In the eleven years since the completion of the new Post 866, only a dozen of the siloviki had ever visited, and even fewer had participated in what the sharashka had to offer. At first, many of the siloviki had been more than enamored enough to try their luck against a Black Dolphin prisoner, or even a captured soldier from the West.
In the beginning it was a big hit. Hunting another human being was all the talk among those in Putin’s inner circle, but once one of them (a coal minister) had been killed in a trial, the others had simply lost interest and focused on gambling from a safe distance.
Their loss, Yermakova thought as she breathed in the lavender scent and relaxed even more. Without the siloviki coming in and out of the sharashka, Yermakova got to take full advantage of the “executive wing.” Its decadence rivaled that of the Kremlin and she got to enjoy it all to herself. Truly, she would miss it when Putin welcomed her into his inner circle, but surely, once she was a member of the siloviki, she would become more than accustomed to extravagance.
That was, if she could survive the visit of General Viktor Sokolov.
It was Sokolov’s message nearly three hours before that had caused Yermakova to go into a tailspin of stress and anxiety from which she sought refuge in the hot water of her gold-winged bathtub.
Viktor Sokolov and his men had alerted her that they were nearly four hours away from the sharashka at the time, and that an SVR Vympel team was en route via a GRU submarine in the Bering Sea carrying an unknown subject for the general.
Sokolov’s message had been explicit: do whatever is necessary to get the Vympel teams and the captured subject to the sharashka as fast as possible.
It had sent Yermakova into a frenzy. How was she able to contact the submarine in the Bering? And who was this mysterious subject?
Yermakova had immediately begun to worry about KODIAK and had tried contacting them three times to no avail.
She knew all this had something to do with Subject 8831 and that picture Sokolov had obsessed over.
She hoped that KODIAK was safe, but her intuition said that something had gone terribly wrong. People simply disappeared around Viktor Sokolov. All the stories she’d heard of what happened in Post 866 when the old general ran the place: all the experiments, the human testing, the genetic modifications.
Luckily, she had been able to get ahold of the submarine carrying the mysterious subject and scramble a stealth helicopter to intercept as they surfaced in the Bering. The subject would be brought to the Gazprom oil rig off the peninsula to refuel and make the last hump back to the post.
If everything went according to plan, the mysterious subject and Sokolov’s Vympels would arrive exactly an hour after the old general landed at Post 866.
Yermakova intended to stay in the bathtub as long as she could before Sokolov arrived. She needed time to relax. She still had the urge to call the Kremlin and ask what in the hell was going on with Sokolov. But in the end she resisted. Sokolov had threatened the wrath of the president twice while they had spoken. Surely, President Putin was aware of General Sokolov’s arrival—she just hoped the old general would understand that this place wasn’t his anymore.
This was her post, not his.
She would just as much rather blow the place than let Viktor Sokolov take over. She fingered the key that hung around her neck, wondering if Subject 8831 was awake yet in Artur’s laboratory. She had ordered one of the guards to watch over Artur as he performed surgery on the bullet wound on Cassandra Gale’s arm. It’s not that she didn’t trust the scientist—he was as submissive as they come—but Cassandra Gale was undoubtedly a dangerous prisoner. One that needed extra monitoring.
Yermakova took a deep breath and let her head sink below the bathwater, willing her tense muscles to relax. She intended to stay like that for thirty seconds but was jolted out of her meditative state by a shrill alarm.
Water splashed out of the tub as Yermakova sat bolt upright and gasped for air. The lights in her bathroom had dimmed, replaced with red strobes from the facility’s alarm system.
She had barely enough time to register what was happening when two guards rushed into the room.
“What the hell is going on?!” Yermakova shouted, stepping out of the tub and throwing on a robe.
One of the guards handed her a tablet. “Breach in the emergency stairwell!”
Yermakova grabbed the tablet and stared down at the screen showing a live feed of the emergency staircase heading toward the surface. It showed one of her black-clad guards shoving Artur up the stairs at knifepoint. Perplexed, Yermakova zoomed in on the pair. She saw how the guard’s armor looked too big for the small figure wearing it, how the visored helmet had trouble staying on—
Cassandra Gale!
“Initiate a complete lockdown of the facility and gas the stairwell!”
Yermakova stripped her robe in front of the men and dressed as they initiated the lockdown. “I want two dozen men to secure that landing. Another dozen with me above ground!”
Grabbing a gas mask from a cabinet, she followed the guards out of her suite and ran toward the elevator.
Chapter 48
POST 866
EMERGENCY STAIRWELL
THE GUARD’S BULKY helmet wobbled over Cassie’s head and threatened to fall off entirely. She breathed heavily, her warm breath fogging the visor, but she held the knife at Artur’s back and kept forcing him farther up the staircase.
Ten minutes before, after killing the guard and holding Artur at knifepoint, she’d changed into the dead man’s black, hefty uniform and forced Artur to change into clean, blood-free lab clothes. Artur, in a panic, had pleaded with her not to attempt an escape, but Cassie was hearing none of it. He might have been a brilliant scientist, but he was also a brainwashed fool. She’d left the guard in the laboratory in a pool of blood and, holding the knife, had Artur lock the room behind them, threatening him that if he made any attempt to thwart her escape she’d carve out his left kidney.
“You are making a big mistake,” Artur had whispered as they left the lab, walking down a narrow hallway toward an elevator. “There are security measures in place so nobody can reach the top of the facility.”
“Bullshit!” Cassie said, as they made it to an elevator door.
“No, you don’t understand. There is only one lift that can take you to the top and it is heavily guarded.”
“If there is a lift, then there also must be an emergency staircase,” she said, pressing the blade a bit farther into the small of his back. “Correct?”
“Da, but it won’t work.”
“I don’t really have a choice.”
The elevator dinged and they got inside. Artur pushed the button for the main level and the elevator began to rise.
When the doors opened, Artur walked out into a large circular room with a high ce
iling. The gigantic room was busy with people: uniformed men, women, and black-clad guards. Artur marched across the room with Cassie in tow, making sure to give the scientist enough distance ahead of her so as to not arouse suspicion. They walked to the opposite side of the circular room, through a door, and down a deserted hallway. The place was like a maze and all the signs on the doors were in Russian. Cassie made a mental map of their route in her head. Finally, Artur stopped in front of a red door with an electronic keypad.
“This is it.”
“Scan us in.”
“They will know as soon as I do. I’ll be flagged. There are cameras in the stairwell, sensors!”
“Then we will go quickly.”
Artur fumbled for his keycard and placed it in front of the sensor and it blinked green and Cassie shoved him through the door and forced him to run up the spiraling staircase.
“This will never work!” Artur kept gasping. “Please, just turn back!”
“Shut up!” Cassie growled. It had been a rash decision and she knew it, but she had seen an opening and taken it. It wouldn’t be long before the dead guard’s body was discovered in the lab. Her only goal was to get out of the facility and to ground level. From there she would take her chances in the woods. The guard’s gas mask that hung from her baggy pants thudded against her leg with each stair climbed. The drones outside would shoot the canisters of knockout gas down at her, but the mask would protect her.
The stairs continued to spiral and her legs began to burn. The grated steps clanged with each hurried footfall as she counted twenty revolutions.
Thirty.
Looking up, she could see a ceiling not ten rotations above, a circular hatch showing in the dim light.
We’re gonna make it!
“Move!” she shouted, just as a blaring alarm sounded. What light was in the stairwell instantly shut off, replaced by red strobes. The wailing of the alarm grew louder.
“HURRY!”
They climbed two more revolutions before she heard a hiss and the smell of the familiar knockout gas being deployed into the stairwell.
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