by Brad Taylor
Brett placed his equipment in his crate and Jennifer looked at me, saying, “Tell ’em we’re ready for pickup.”
The company that owned the bunker managed the airstrip where we’d landed, and because of the exclusivity of the setup, they allowed access 24/7. We’d told them we were coming, and that we had sensitive items that needed to be secured immediately. After landing, we requested a vehicle to transport our items, but told them we were required to prepare them first.
I said, “Okay, remember, we’ve got about thirty minutes total. Creed says forty-five, but I don’t want to push it. We can’t get it done in that window, we withdraw. We can try again another day.”
I got a nod from the crew. I said, “Veep, make the call.” He dialed the phone, and I looked at Jennifer and Brett. “Time to become some precious cargo.”
Jennifer smiled and began climbing into her crate, saying, “Become precious cargo?”
She curled up at the bottom of the crate and I slid the lid in place, leaving a crack of about an inch. I leaned forward and whispered, “Get this done and you’ll get a prize tonight.”
“Yeah, yeah. Promises, promises. My job is easy. You’re the one with the potential to screw this up.”
I said, “True,” and slid the cover closed, fastening it on the far side with clamps. I looked at Knuckles, seeing he’d closed the other crate over Brett. I said, “Veep, make sure Creed is awake. That asshole has a habit of falling asleep on these things.”
Bartholomew Creedwater was our reach-back hacker—and the one who would walk us through what we needed to do once inside. He was an expert at his trade, which was the reason I’d personally requested him for this mission, but he did have a habit of mentally wandering off sometimes.
I heard Veep’s computer bleep, then Creed came through, sounding like a mechanical drone through the VPN. “Hey, that’s not fair. I’m on it.”
Veep smiled and I said, “I had no doubt.”
Knuckles looked out the window, saying, “Our ride’s here.”
I lowered the door to the aircraft, seeing an SUV and what looked like an airport baggage tractor towing a trailer.
Knuckles and I picked up Jennifer and carted her outside, placing her on the trailer. I went to talk to the guy in the SUV, showing him my badge access for clearance while Veep and Knuckles loaded Brett’s crate. In short order, we were driving toward the entrance to the bunker.
We were cleared through the outer security, a lone building surrounded by razor wire with about a half dozen guys inside, and then approached the entrance. It looked exactly like you’d think it would: a giant face of granite with two large doors in the front. Something Blofeld might have built.
We drove up a ramp, and the door to the left began sliding back, revealing a long, dimly lit tunnel, with another guard shack just inside. We exited the SUV and repeated the security procedures, only this time with both Knuckles and me having to go through a retinal scan, and then we were allowed to proceed.
We got on the back of the trailer and drove down the tunnel to a large freight elevator, then descended three floors, finding yet another security checkpoint. We passed that, now into the storage facility itself. We drove by multiple rooms that were originally built to house humans in the event of nuclear war, but were now turned into individual safes. We stopped at door 33-A, and the driver said, “Okay, sir, this is you.”
I said, “Thank you. We have to build a small containment facility inside to house the items, so it’ll be about an hour.”
He nodded, the Swiss discretion coming to the fore. “Sir, take the time you need. You know the button on the inside to press for my return, yes?”
“Yep. I’ll let you know when we’re done.”
We unlocked our door with our badges, and hauled in Jennifer, then Brett. The door closed, and we were inside the gates of Troy.
18
Amena said not a word to the police, pretending that she didn’t understand what they were asking, hoping they’d let her go like they had in the past.
She’d been manhandled quite roughly at the old village, the men treating her with just enough violence that she was sure it was an act to get her to never come back. It had given her hope that they’d only try to scare her, then release her. They’d marched her down the mountain in full view of the tourists, and she was convinced it was to prove that they were dedicated to preventing vermin like her from affecting the holidays of those who’d paid dearly to get to the Côte d’Azur.
On the way down, she’d seen the killer following at a distance, his dead eyes on her, hunting her like a shark swimming after a wounded seal.
They’d loaded her in a car, then driven to a Gendarmerie Nationale substation on Boulevard du Maréchal Leclerc. Across the Grande Corniche, and only about a mile from the mountain village, it wasn’t as far as she’d hoped they’d go. She’d wanted them to take her as far as Nice, but they’d at least left the killer behind.
She’d been taken to a small interrogation room, and had been questioned over and over again, the main interrogator becoming aggravated at her head shaking, but she wasn’t going to let them know she spoke both English and French. Eventually, they’d plugged in her phone, letting it charge. When it finally came to life, the interrogator began looking through it. She didn’t care. He could have the damn thing. In fact, she wanted him to take it. It had killed her entire family.
She took a sip of water from a bottle they’d provided, and tried to look innocent while the man scrolled through the phone. He’d held it up, asking another question, and she just shook her head, beginning to relax for the first time. She was safe. The killer was long gone. They would eventually release her, and she’d fade into the background.
That future was shattered when a gendarme had entered jabbering about a dead man in the garden of Eze. Her interrogator had hardened at the news, now convinced he wasn’t dealing with a simple pickpocket, but something much more sinister. He stood up, angry, and someone else knocked on the door. Another policeman entered, replacing the one with the news about the dead civilian. He said, “Sir, there’s a man outside who says this girl is his daughter.”
Her interrogator said, “What?”
“Yes, sir. Her father is here.”
“He’s in the building?”
“Yes.”
There was a pop from the front of the police station. Faint, but distinct.
The policeman and the interrogator paused, turning toward the door, and she knew what it was. The fear flooded through her, a terror unlike any she’d ever felt. She spoke for the first time, in broken French.
“It’s him. He’s here.”
She saw the gendarme’s eyes go wide at her words. He said, “You speak French? What did you say?”
She stood up, frantic, grabbing his sleeve and saying, “It’s him! We need to hide! We need to go!”
And then the shooting started just outside the door.
* * *
—
Tagir studied the front entrance to the gendarmerie station, seeing it wouldn’t be much of an issue to attack. A sleepy backwater, he could only spot one man in the window, and he wasn’t that attentive. The hard part would be getting over the chain-link fence that surrounded the place.
He’d watched the child get taken by the police, and followed at a polite distance, not wanting to highlight he even cared. They’d made a show of taking her through the town, parading her in front of all the shops in an effort to showcase their incredible skill at stopping petty crime, aggravating him because it effectively prevented an interdiction.
He never saw the phone, but he was sure she had it.
They’d reached the bottom of the town, and he’d watched her get dragged off to a police car, thrown in the back, and driven away. He had no way to follow them, as the keys to his car were in the pocket of a dead man in the garden. He co
uld hot-wire it, but he didn’t bother. It would take much too long before they disappeared.
He knew it was only a matter of time before the body was found, and the girl implicated in the investigation. It was getting messy.
Honestly, he didn’t care one way or the other. He wasn’t vested in the outcome, but he did have a mission. All he needed to prove was that he’d done his best. He called Dmitri Pavlov, relaying what had occurred. Dmitri had become irate.
“The police have the phone? Is that what you said?”
“No. That’s not what I said. I said the police have the girl, and I believe she has the phone. I can’t confirm either way.”
Tagir heard nothing but breathing. He said, “Dmitri, are you there? What do you want me to do?”
Dmitri said, “Take Gregor and get the phone back. Whatever you need to do.”
“Gregor’s dead.”
“What?”
“Gregor’s dead. I don’t have time to explain. He was stupid, and he paid for it.”
Tagir could almost see the consequences spinning in Dmitri’s head. The Kremlin’s loss of confidence in Dmitri’s ability, along with the loss of contracts for his company. And possibly the loss of his own life. The thought pleased Tagir.
Dmitri said, “Can you interdict now?”
“No. I have no idea where they took her.”
“Can’t you track the phone?”
“No. It’s turned off.”
He heard nothing again, then a stream of expletives, accusing him of idiocy and threatening him and his family. He interrupted the rant, speaking softly, “Dmitri . . . Dmitri . . . Dmitri . . .” Eventually, he got through. “Dmitri, do not claim what you cannot do. My family died in Grozny. I’m all that’s left. If you want to threaten me, then do so, but be sure of what you say, because I’m not someone to be trifled with.”
Dmitri remained quiet. Tagir said, “Do you want me to continue?”
Tagir heard nothing for a moment, then, “Yes, yes, but how?”
Tagir felt a vibration in his pocket. He pulled out the phone-tracking handset and said, “You are the luckiest man in the world. The phone is active.”
“Where?”
“Stand by. I’ll pull up the map.”
Tagir manipulated the device, bringing up a Google Maps image, and saw the location. He said, “It’s in a police station about a mile from here. What do you want me to do?”
He heard more breathing, Dmitri working through what the effects would be, more specifically the effects against him. Tagir raised his voice, saying, “Dmitri, I have the phone now, I might not in twenty minutes. What do you want?”
“Kill them. Kill them all. Anyone who could have seen that phone.”
Tagir said, “You sure?”
“Yes. Whoever has seen that phone must be eliminated. Do it.”
Tagir hung up and ran to the car Gregor had parked. The door was unlocked, but it still took him twenty minutes to hot-wire the ignition. He eventually achieved success, only having to stop once for a couple walking past.
Thirty minutes after the girl had been taken, he sat in his car outside the fence of the station, intently studying the setup. Getting the phone was one thing, but getting himself in trouble was a bridge too far.
He saw the station had little in the way of active security. At this time of night, there were probably only two or four men inside. He had no idea if any of them had seen the phone, but he had to assume they had. They would all have to die.
He backed out, drove up the road, and parked in a roundabout on the hill above the station, then stalked to the fence. He peered through, seeing the single man now had another with him. He walked up the driveway, getting to the gate. He waved his hand at a camera, waiting on a voice. He heard “Can I help you?”
“Yes. I think you have my daughter in there. She was taken from Eze.”
He heard a buzz, and the gate opened. He walked swiftly to the building, going to the man sitting behind a waist-high counter. The policeman said, “You know the girl we arrested from Eze?”
Tagir said, “Yes. She is my daughter.”
The desk sergeant said a word to the other policeman, and he scurried away, trotting down a long hallway. The desk sergeant said, “Can I see some identification, please?”
Tagir reached into his back pocket as if he were retrieving a wallet. Instead, he pulled out a folding knife and pressed a button. The blade snicked into life, and the policeman’s eyes shot open wide. He scrambled for a pistol on his belt, trying to scoot his chair back. Tagir snagged the man’s sleeve, pulling him forward onto the desk, and stabbed him in the neck. The policeman gargled, falling out of the chair with his hands clamped on his carotid artery, the blood flowing between his fingers like a faucet had been opened.
Tagir jumped over the counter and snatched the pistol from the policeman’s holster, ignoring the obscene noises he was making. He racked a round into the chamber, put the barrel against the policeman’s head, and pulled the trigger, shattering the man’s skull. The body ceased moving.
Tagir turned toward the hallway, walking down it with the pistol in a two-handed grip, scanning back and forth. A door to his right abruptly opened, a policeman sticking his head out at the noise. Tagir shot him just above his nose, the round flinging the body against a wall. A door opened farther down, a policeman behind it peering out. Tagir crouched, lined up his sights, and fired a double tap, seeing a blossom of red erupt on the man’s chest. The body dropped to the ground, the door bumping into a lifeless head, and Tagir charged forward, kicking it open.
He saw the girl at the back of the room, then another policeman drawing a pistol. Surprised, Tagir jumped over the body in the doorway, put the front sight on the other man, and jerked the trigger twice. One round smashed through a window and the other hit the man in the bicep. The bullet caused the policeman to drop his weapon, but not his will to fight. He threw himself at Tagir, slapping both hands on Tagir’s pistol in an attempt to control the barrel.
Tagir swept the man’s feet out from under him, bringing him to the ground. Bringing him into Tagir’s element. They wrestled for the pistol, and the girl leapt over them, snatching the cell phone off a bench, ripping out the cord plugged into a wall.
She disappeared through the door, and Tagir shouted in frustration. He released one hand from the pistol, punched the gaping wound in the policeman’s arm, and heard the policeman scream. The wounded arm went limp, and the policeman desperately tried to continue fighting with only one good hand. Tagir rolled on top of the man and slowly forced the pistol toward his head, as if they were in an arm wrestling match. The barrel reached the policeman’s face. He said, “No, no, no . . .”
Tagir pulled the trigger, exploding the room in noise and brain matter. He rolled off the man and raced to the front, searching for the girl. He ran into the lobby and saw a final policeman, this one with his weapon out and prepared.
Tagir saw the muzzle flash and hit the floor, rolling behind a desk.
The man fired repeatedly, spraying rounds in an uncontrolled spasmodic release of fear. Outside of two that punctured the steel next to Tagir’s head, the rest of the shots went wide. Tagir heard the weapon lock open on an empty magazine and rose up, firing twice, then dropped again behind cover. He heard a thump, and hesitated, listening for movement.
The room was quiet, the smell of cordite heavy in the air. He slowly peered around the desk, his weapon out, and saw the legs of the final policeman, a pool of blood spreading out. He leapt up and raced through the front door, scanning left and right, seeing nothing but an empty parking lot.
The girl was gone. Again.
19
I put my ear against the door, hearing the tractor disappearing down the hallway, then nodded at Knuckles. He began opening the crates as I dragged a rack of empty shelves away from the wall of our safe room.
>
Jennifer crawled out first, then Brett. Jennifer started laying out her climbing kit, and Brett turned to his crate, pulling out a device that looked like an old World War II hand radio, about the size of a loaf of bread. He tossed it to me, and Knuckles pushed the crates to the corner, everyone working in a practiced rhythm. He put one on top of the other, and I lightly jumped up, turning on the device.
A small screen in the back of the handset lit up, and I placed it against the ceiling. The device was a portable X-ray machine, allowing me to penetrate the concrete, looking for a seam.
The bunker was originally built for one reason only: to guarantee the survival of the people within it. As such, it had no inside security. It wasn’t built as a fighting platform. Its entire purpose was survival. If the worst happened—if the nuclear holocaust appeared—and you made it within its confines, you were a friend, which left glaring vulnerabilities within it that the new owners had basically plastered over.
Using the blueprints, we’d found ventilation shafts threaded throughout the bunker designed to bring fresh air to the denizens who might be living inside it for months. Every dormitory room had a shaft that led to it, and those dormitories had now been turned into individual safes. It was a weakness we were going to exploit.
The new owners—rightly so—thought a three-foot-square ventilation shaft inside each safe room wouldn’t project the image of security they wanted, and so they’d plastered them over, painting the surface to look just like the cement and rock next to it. But I knew the shaft was there. I just had to find it.
While I looked for the seam, Jennifer and Knuckles spread a sheet on the floor to catch the evidence of what we were about to do. I started in the corner, running the radar scope back out, and hit the leading edge of the shaft. From there, it was a simple matter to outline the edges of the hole. I marked them, then said, “Give me the quickie saw.”
