Kill Zone (Danger in Arms, Book 2)

by Cindy Dees

  Taylor’s muffled voice came from her left. “Let’s move. We’ve got one hour and fifteen minutes to be in place. We launch at 1:00 a.m.”

  They strapped on snowshoes and started the half-mile hike to the factory. A deceptively long walk in this kind of weather. She settled the grenade launcher more comfortably across her shoulder and strode after Taylor’s tall white back.

  They moved quickly until they reached the top of the ridge, where they separated. Taylor veered off to the right while Amanda tracked to her left. She moved into position parallel with the northernmost tower. She pulled out her night-vision goggles, put them on and crested the ridge on her belly. It took a couple minutes, but eventually she was able to pick out the moving shadow that was Taylor as he eased down the south ridge. He was very good, moving fluidly, without a noticeable rhythm.

  Taylor would circle around to the far side and then cut in close. Time for her to go. Amanda flipped over onto her back and eased headfirst down the hill. Moving on her back kept snow out of her hood. It also provided an unconventional silhouette for a human. She was careful not to rip her clothing on any sharp protrusions as she slid down the incline. The cold would kill an unprotected person in a matter of minutes out here.

  A stretch of open tundra lay between her and her target. The flat expanse was deceptive, riddled with small gullies and tufts of vegetation frozen under the thin layer of snow. This part of the world was a cold desert and didn’t get much more than a foot or two of snow each winter. Her progress was painfully slow, but the alternative was detection and death.

  Move. Stop. Count to three. Move. Move. Stop. Any repetitive movement could catch the eye of a guard. It took her almost an hour to reach a point she judged to be a hundred yards from the guard tower. She rolled over onto her stomach and engaged the telephoto function of her NVGs, searching for her target. There it was. A small metal grate at the base of the tower. The inlet vent for the furnace that heated the two-story concrete structure.

  She checked her watch. Ten minutes to spare. She distracted herself from the encroaching numbness by pondering which tropical island she was going to visit when this was over. She was going to lie on a beach until she was positively baked.

  Time to fire. Very slowly, she eased the grenade launcher in front of her and into firing position. She checked her watch one more time. Cold seeped all the way up to her elbow as she pulled back the cuff of her mitten to look at the luminescent face.

  She unzipped the slit in her right mitten. Three…Her gloved index finger poked through the slit and wrapped around the cold metal trigger of the grenade launcher. There was no wind at all. Firing conditions were perfect. Two…She took careful aim. One…And fired.

  A gentle whump sounded in her ear. The canister soared high into the sky in an arcing trajectory. It sailed clear of the first fence and landed in the snow five yards short of the guard tower.

  She’d missed! Did the guards hear her fire? Were they training their weapons on her right now? As long as she was perfectly still, they probably couldn’t see her. But she had to reload and try again. Soon. She lay frozen in indecision, her instinct to survive warring with her responsibility to take out this tower within the next few seconds.

  If Taylor succeeded and she failed, her guards would quickly know something was amiss when the ones in his tower failed to report in. Alarms would be triggered, and Taylor would be caught and killed before he could get away from the factory.

  Fighting down panic, she eased the backup canister out of her pocket. Checking to be sure she had the gold one, she opened the chamber of the grenade launcher and slid in the canister loaded with the first component of a binary nerve agent.

  She corrected her aim and fired again. The canister soared high, pausing for a moment at the top of its arc, then dived for the ground, picking up speed. It landed directly underneath the tower, rolling to a stop against the concrete wall and splitting open. Thank God.

  Amanda loaded the second agent into the weapon quickly and fired. She had the range now. The silver canister rolled to a stop beside the first one. The containers released their loads of colorless, odorless gasses simultaneously. The two chemicals, harmless by themselves, would mix in the furnace vents and emerge as an incapacitating gas that would render the guards unconscious in a single breath.

  Amanda lay motionless and counted to one hundred. Time enough for any remaining gas outside the furnace vents to dissipate so she wouldn’t be knocked out if she got downwind of the canisters. If the gas had worked, the guards were neutralized now.

  She felt worse than naked, lying in this exposed position. She could stay here and freeze to death, or she could take her chances with being shot. Some choice. She eased backward, watching for any signs of movement in the tower. Nothing.

  Amanda rose to a crouch and continued to move away slowly. Another hundred yards between herself and the compound. She couldn’t stand it any longer. She turned and ran for the ridge. She collapsed beyond the crest, panting. God, that had been stupid. If the guards had been awake or only partially incapacitated, they would have seen her for sure. What had possessed her? She’d certainly lost the feel for this type of work.

  The night air burned fiercely in her lungs. How could something so cold feel so hot? Time to go get Anton and the car and head into the plant itself. She pushed to her feet and continued toward the trees and warmth. Subov greeted her when she opened the car door and slid inside.

  She panted, “Where’s Taylor?”

  “He’s not back yet. Drink this. You must be chilled.”

  Now there was an understatement. Subov pressed a cup of hot coffee into her half-frozen fingers.

  “Did you succeed?” Subov asked tersely.

  Amanda nodded.

  He smiled. “I must admit, I didn’t think you were up to it. That was a difficult shot.”

  She smiled back. “It was two difficult shots. I missed with the first canister. I had to use the backup. It’s a good thing you insisted we take the spares.”

  Subov smiled grimly. “I wasn’t the Director of Plans for the KGB for nothing. No plan ever works in execution as smoothly as it does on paper.”

  She sipped the bitter coffee, tasting the bite of whiskey. She generally hated the malt liquor, but tonight, she needed its heat to warm her all the way to her belly. A dark shadow slid past her window, and the passenger door flew open.

  Subov jumped. “Taylor, you startled me. You are very quiet. Or maybe I am getting old.”

  Taylor slid gratefully into the front seat, swigging from the flask Subov passed to him.

  “Well?” the old man demanded.

  “No problem. How’d your shots go, Amanda?”

  “Fine.”

  “Good girl.”

  She retorted testily, “You don’t have to sound so surprised. Who taught you how to fire a grenade launcher, anyway?”

  Taylor grinned.

  They warmed themselves for a few minutes before Subov spoke. “Ready for phase two?”

  A thin, blond woman poked her head in the door. “Mr. Trumpman?”

  “Hmm?” Harry looked up from the pad of paper he’d been doodling on. The CIA was kind enough to provide pen and paper for his entertainment while he cooled his heels in their conference room. They would probably have some psychologist analyze his scribbles after he left.

  The blonde stepped in and closed the door. “I was asked to give you an update. We just intercepted a phone call in which two Russians were discussing a possible manhunt for Miss McClintock.”

  Trumpman lurched. “Where did it originate?”

  “Kyrgyzstan.”

  “Where the hell’s that?” he growled.

  “South of Kazakhstan, north of Tadzhikistan, east of Turkistan and west of nowhere.”

  What on earth were Amanda and Taylor doing there? He asked more calmly than he felt, “What are you guys going to do about it?”

  “A message has already gone out. All available field agents who can re
ach the Udarsky district in the next few hours have been sent there immediately. Their orders are to find your people and neutralize them.”

  He jumped to his feet, shouting, but the blonde backed out quickly and closed the door behind her. The lock clicked.

  The Mercedes purred to a stop at the main gate to the Udarsky facility. They waited a good minute for any response from the guard towers. Each structure contained controls to open the automatic gates. Nothing happened. The gas had worked.

  Taylor stepped out of the idling car in his Russian army general’s uniform, hefting a large bolt cutter. He hacked through the thick links of the fencing where the lock was attached. He slid the heavy gate open on its oiled track. He did the same to the second gate, then climbed back into the driver’s seat.

  Subov leaned forward as the car rolled forward once more. “Remember. Don’t open your mouth. You’ll give yourself away instantly.”

  Taylor grinned. “Ponyatno.” Literally translated, it meant “understood.” It was the equivalent of a crisp “Yes, sir!”

  Subov grunted and tugged on his old uniform, decked out to the nines with ribbons and medals. Enough to intimidate anyone in this backwater, Taylor expected. Hell, the man himself was plenty intimidating.

  Taylor helped Amanda out of the car. She had to be freezing in that skirt. But it was in keeping with her cover as Subov’s personal assistant. The trio passed by the main doors leading to the chemical plant and made their way to a smaller set of doors beyond. Subov’s blueprints indicated this was the entrance to the diamond-production lab.

  Taylor opened the door and held it while Subov and Amanda stepped through into a small vestibule. They passed through a second doorway into a large lobby. Lockers lined both walls. A single door stood at the far end of the room, and beside it, a mesh cage. A guard inside it stared at them in slack-jawed surprise.

  Subov strode forward aggressively. “I am Anton Subov. The general and I have just arrived in town to have a look at this place. We want to inspect the laboratories right away.”

  As luck would have it, the guard was an old-timer. The way he spilled coffee all over himself as he leaped to his feet made it clear he recognized the former number-two man in the KGB. His jaw sagged open even farther.

  Subov strode over to the cage. “Are you dumb, man? Can you not speak?”

  “I…I am honored to meet you,” the guard stammered. He stood up off his stool behind the counter, coming to a rough approximation of attention.

  “My pleasure.” Subov held out his hand. The man opened the small window to grasp it. Subov whipped out a silenced pistol and put three slugs into the guard’s chest. The man dropped to the floor, out of sight behind the high counter.

  “Durak,” Subov mumbled. “Fool.” He tucked the pistol back under his coat while Taylor blinked at Subov’s casual violence. Taylor reached across the counter inside the cage and felt under its edge. He found a button and pressed it. So far the blueprints were holding up perfectly. The door beside the cage slid open. He pulled the little window shut.

  “Come on. Let’s go.”

  They walked through the opening and down the stairs. The door slid shut behind them.

  Amanda murmured, “Well, we’re in.”

  Taylor murmured back sotto voce, “Yeah. Now’s let’s make a firecracker of this joint.”

  They walked calmly down the corridors, opening each door they came to. The night-shift technicians inside the rooms looked up in surprise at the interruption, but said nothing when they glimpsed Taylor’s and Subov’s uniforms and rank insignia.

  Thankfully, no solicitous supervisors appeared to be on duty at this late hour, and the three of them moved around the facility unhindered. Taylor couldn’t believe it was this easy. They turned out of the main hallway into a narrow corridor leading to a maintenance area for the huge steam generators. He murmured under the low ramble of sound, “Are you getting the shots?”

  Amanda nodded fractionally. “Yes. I just hope this thing works.”

  Subov snorted. “It’s Japanese, not Russian. It will work.”

  Taylor grinned. Amanda’s briefcase concealed a camera and wide-angle lens. She’d recorded on film each of the rooms they’d glanced into. Quickly, they moved through a rabbit warren of storage rooms and maintenance bays, leaving bricks of plastic explosives in each. The devices were equipped with remote-activated detonators. When they were clear of the facility, they would call in a bomb threat and empty the place, then they’d blow it up.

  Anton had been violently opposed to giving the employees any warning, but it was the only way Amanda and Taylor would agree to help him. There had been far too much blood spilled, innocent and otherwise, over the Udarsky diamonds. They placated Anton by offering him the chance to push the button that would make the whole plant go up in smoke.

  They’d marked on the plans several key structures that must be destroyed to bring down the whole building. Most of them were in obscure places where the structural supports were located. One by one, they booby-trapped the critical locations.

  It took them almost an hour to plant the explosives. Amanda watched Taylor climb down nimbly off one of the main steam generators. “That’s the last one,” she announced.

  Subov muttered, “Davai poshli.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  Taylor translated with a grin, “Let’s be gone.”

  “Amen,” she agreed fervently.

  They began to retrace their steps toward the lone exit from the facility. They’d made it back to the long main corridor when a loud Klaxon sounded. Somebody’d discovered something. The unconscious guards in the towers, or maybe the downed guard in the security cage. Not that it really mattered. The three of them looked at each other grimly and started to run. People began to pour out into the hallway. Subov waved his arms and shouted, “Syrr, Syrr!” Fire! Fire!

  The crowd surged for the stairs, taking up the cry. With a fertilizer factory overhead, chock-full of volatile, dangerous chemicals, the threat of fire was highly effective in causing an all-out stampede.

  A lone armed guard stood at the top of the broad stairway, pistol in hand. He bellowed at the mob to stop, to no avail. He pointed the gun at the ceiling and fired once. The crowd jumped collectively, and the front ranks of technicians cringed, pushing back. But those in the rear continued to rush forward, fleeing the supposed fire. Milling, shoving confusion was the result. The crowd’s fear escalated into panic.

  The first people shoved the guard. He spread his arms, barring the doorway. Amanda couldn’t see exactly what happened to the guy, but he went down under the stampeding crowd. She grabbed Taylor’s sleeve and hung on for dear life as the wild jumble of bodies pushed and jostled around her. She lost sight of Subov.

  The first people were streaming through the lobby when the sirens started wailing outside. She winced. Reinforcements. Not good. Taylor used his size and strength to plow through the crowd, pulling her in his wake. She helped him shed the army greatcoat and uniform jacket on his way up the stairs.

  They’d made it about halfway up the long stairway when uniformed soldiers began to pour into the lobby ahead. A volley of shots was fired into the pandemonium, and the crowd panicked afresh. With a roar, they surged forward, pushing the soldiers outside before them.

  Amanda stumbled and screamed, “Taylor!” The crowd would trample her if she went down.

  Taylor paused and turned, dragging her upright by main force. “Keep moving. Stay on your feet at all costs,” he urged.

  The first wave of people burst through the lobby and outside like water shot from a cannon. Guards tried ineffectually to corral the mass of humanity. Amanda and Taylor stuck together, caught in the lobby, searching frantically for Subov. He had the detonator. Without it, they would not be able to destroy the plant.

  The flow of the crowd drew them closer to the exit. Finally, a determined phalanx of army guards managed to block the exterior exit from the diamond lab, drawing the rush o
f people down to a single line. Each face that passed by the soldiers was being carefully examined.

  Amanda exchanged a glance with Taylor. They were dead meat. They were swept along toward the armed men, helpless to escape the crush of sweating bodies pressing them relentlessly forward. They squeezed each other’s hand tightly, saying a silent farewell as their demise loomed a few yards ahead.

  They were perhaps a dozen feet from the exit when a commotion erupted in the doorway. Someone was jerked roughly out of the departing line, and shouted words were exchanged. Amanda heard the meaty thud of a fist connecting on flesh. Someone groaned. Other fists connected.

  A struggle broke out as she and Taylor drew abreast of the cluster of soldiers. Amanda caught a brief glimpse of a battered and bloody face going down beneath the guards. Frantic blue eyes met hers. Amanda froze. My God. It was Subov. He gestured once with his head toward the parking lot. The line stopped for a moment as the bystanders gawked at the sight of the brutalized man.

  A soldier barked, “Move along!”

  Amanda was pushed hard by the woman behind her. She lurched forward. And they were clear. The guards hadn’t stopped them. She pulled on Taylor’s sleeve and stopped to look over her shoulder at their companion. “That was Anton. We’ve got to help him!” she cried.

  “There’s nothing we can do. We can’t take on two dozen armed soldiers.”

  “But…” She looked back over her shoulder. She glimpsed Subov being hauled to his feet. He wobbled, but remained upright. His eyes searched the crowd, finding her. His right hand stole into the pocket of his coat. Amanda’s gaze met his in stunned comprehension.

  “Run, Taylor! Run!” she screamed.

  Amanda sprinted as fast as her legs would carry her away from the building. Taylor set out after her and raced along beside her. They made it to the far side of the parking lot before the first explosion rocked them, knocking them off their feet. Taylor rolled and covered her as a second blast wave tore past them, searing hot, exploding car windows all around them.