Hunter Killer

by Brad Taylor

  He simply said, “Understood, sir. But think about what I said. The best path is to continue forward. The political target is the endgame. We don’t get him, then the rest is irrelevant.”

  Dmitri tapped a pen on his desk for a moment, and Nikita saw he was confounded that his threat had been dismissed. He said, “Okay, okay. I see the logic. But she’s in a hospital now, and, if she lives, will be moved to her home. A hardened target. I want someone tracking her status.”

  Nikita said, “I’ll have Luca and Simon on it, but that’s it. I’m stretched too thin.”

  “Do it.”

  Nikita nodded to the camera, paused a beat, then said, “What about the man from Charleston? We have to hit him again. I need him off of my back.”

  Dmitri leaned back and said, “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Sir, he’s here and he’s skilled. We need to get him out of Brazil.”

  “Do you not understand what happened in Charleston? What the damage is? Everyone there had a Saint Kitts passport. All of the men entered the United States under that flag, and with five dead, it’s going to raise the level of inquiry. You are operating on a Saint Kitts passport.”

  “Sir, I really think that the risk is worth the reward. I have no handle on the men down here, and they’ve proven deadly. They’re still on the loose. I have no idea what information they’ve gained from Maksim’s capture.”

  “It’s not going to happen. I’ve already prepared our Saint Kitts foreign ministry contact for the questions out of Charleston. I told him if he wants our investment fund to continue, he needs to play ball. He’s agreed, and can deflect on the dead, but I’m certainly not sending another team with Saint Kitts passports back into South Carolina, and Russian passports are out of the question.”

  “Sir, that man is still here. Still hunting.”

  “All that means is that you have your work cut out for you. You need to look both ways now. Unlike you did in the Donbass.”

  Nikita heard the words and wanted to jump through the screen, strangling the fat toad where he sat. Instead he said, “Understood, sir. I’ll get it done.”

  Chapter 55

  Nikita stabbed the keyboard with his finger, disconnecting the VPN. He considered throwing the damn thing against the wall, shattering the laptop in a satisfying explosion of plastic, if for no other reason than Dmitri’s face had been on the screen.

  He did not.

  Nikita stood up, pacing the room, Dmitri’s last insult biting deep. Much deeper than Dmitri knew. It was why he was relegated to working for that bloated maggot in the first place.

  In his own way, Nikita was a patriot, and always had been. He had little time for men who served in the military and then transferred to Wagner, ostensibly for the motherland but in reality for the money. Dmitri was one such man, growing rich off the blood of others. Nikita was not. He was forced into the arrangement because of the wounds he’d sustained in Ukraine.

  A Spetsnaz special forces expert in the Russian GRU, in February 2014 he’d deployed to Crimea as one of the fabled “little green men” who had engineered a “spontaneous” uprising, seizing the parliament building as “Crimean” citizens. The action was relatively bloodless and incredibly successful. After that, he was detailed to train pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region of Ukraine, building a fighting force that might topple the pro-Western government of Ukraine.

  He’d taken to the mission with a starry-eyed naivete, proud to be serving Mother Russia training rabid, wild-eyed Russian patriots in the Donbass. Eventually his little band of mercenaries became a powerhouse, and men flocked to his banner. One of them, a man he’d personally recruited, showed more skill than the others. They’d become close friends, right up until the man had put a barrel to Nikita’s head in the dead of night, trying to assassinate him.

  With reflexes honed by a decade of training, Nikita had reacted instantly, managing to save his life, but the man had squeezed the trigger, blasting a bullet through his head that took his left eye and part of his orbit.

  His next memory had been waking up in a hospital, having no recollection of winning the fight against the assassin. He expected a hero’s welcome. After all, he’d defeated a trained killer after being shot in the head. Instead of sympathy, he’d been greeted with ridicule for recruiting an insider threat. The force he led was disbanded as untrustworthy, and he was cast aside as a failure. A cautionary tale of hubris for the other Spetsnaz men. This, after all he had done for his country.

  Discharged from the army on medical grounds, he’d returned home a pariah. Nobody gave him his due as a combat veteran, spilling his blood for the Russian state. He was shunned by even his military comrades—his stench of failure treated like a communicable disease that they could contract.

  Never a loving husband, his wife left him after he began taking out his frustration on her. She would have stayed even with the beatings, if he hadn’t been viewed as a loser in the GRU hierarchy. He began drinking vodka like it was a health elixir, downing a bottle a night to chase the demons away, until one night he found himself toying with an old Makarov pistol, placing it against his head over and over, but failing to have the courage to pull the trigger. And then Wagner had called, wanting his skill.

  The initial contact had been dismissive, saying they weren’t really interested, but his name had come up on a security screen. They’d toyed with him until he was frothing at the mouth to serve again. Deep inside, he wanted validation. Wanted to prove he wasn’t what everyone said. He’d begged to join, and for his eagerness, they’d let him.

  He’d returned to the Donbass, but not the same man who’d left. He developed a reputation for ruthlessness, taking out his shame on the enemy, his actions becoming legendary in the Wagner fold. He had a skill few men possessed, and he used it to great effect in the name of the nation he served, but his previous trials had severed something. His rage became legendary, and his actions on the battlefield earned a mythical status of brutality. He no longer had any trust in the Ukrainian men he served alongside, and thus no longer discriminated between combatant and noncombatant. Everyone was a potential combatant; some just hid it better than others.

  He had no use for the stories and wasn’t trying to create a legend. All he wanted was to prove his worth. To outrun the rumors and innuendo that had dogged his life.

  Dmitri bringing up the loss of his eye on the VPN, accusing him of being weak or a failure, broke something inside of Nikita. He was sick of kowtowing to them for the acknowledgment of his value. Had he been more self-aware, he would have said he’d finally realized his own worth was held inside of him, and not gleaned from what others thought.

  He would accomplish this mission not for Wagner, but for himself. And the mission was more than Operation Harvest. The man from Charleston had just put him back in that hospital bed, waking up and finding everyone thought he was to blame. That could not stand. Regardless of what Dmitri wanted, that man and his entire team would pay.

  Nikita heard a bottle drop outside, breaking him out of his revenge fantasy. He put his good eye to the peephole of his door and saw a drunk staggering down the sidewalk, the parking lot littered with trash.

  He went to the bathroom, turned on the sink, and splashed water on his face, looking in the cracked mirror and thinking. With his current manpower, he couldn’t dedicate anyone to find the men from Grolier Recovery Services at the moment. That would have to wait. But he did need to get them to return to Charleston, somehow. Dmitri was no help, which left his other contact.

  He left the bathroom and sat on the bed, flicking a bit of dirt off the ratty cover. He booted up his laptop and clicked on the WhatsApp icon. He dialed a number, wondering if he could convince the contact to get involved.

  Clyde Marion’s icon appeared, and he saw,

  -Hey. How’s it going down there?

  He typed,

  -Not good. I need more pressure.

  He waited, then saw,

  -Pressure how
? I’m doing everything I can to manipulate the vote. I can’t affect the election directly. That’s not what you pay me to do.

  -Pressure from Kurt Hale. What’s the status with his investigation?

  Nikita waited on the answer. After a minute, he typed,

  -What’s the status?

  -Look, there is no status. My friend did his investigation, and it went nowhere. There was nothing to find. He’s quit looking, and he’s a little pissed that I put him on it. He burned some blue chips trying to find a guy in the CIA and now looks like a fool. Sorry.

  The answer amazed Nikita. There was enough smoke around Kurt Hale’s death to glean an investigative journalist award if someone were willing to look. Of that he was sure, because he lived in the same world. He typed,

  -You need to get him interested again. Feed him something else.

  -What? I have nothing else.

  -I have information that will interest him.

  -I can’t do that. How can I? I’ll look like a Russian spy, giving him niblets that nobody else has. Eventually, he’s going to ask how I know this supposedly classified information as a computer geek. You’re putting me in an awkward position.

  Nikita thought for a moment, then typed,

  -Is there another way? Can you get this out without him?

  -What do you mean?

  -If I feed you information, can you get it out into the mainstream?

  -Like to the press?

  -Yes.

  -No. I don’t have any press contacts. I don’t want any contact with the press. My whole operating mechanism is precisely staying away from the press.

  Nikita thought about his own past psychological operations with the GRU, when he’d generated a rumor that had eventually made the news as fact. The Russians were experts at seeding stories for propaganda purposes, and he could use those skills here. In the old days, it took weeks, but with the internet, it could take only hours.

  He typed,

  -Can you access conspiracy blogs in the United States? Is that possible?

  -Yes. There are plenty. Why?

  Nikita knew that an organization like Grolier Recovery Services would have Google alerts for any mention of them. If he could feed a blog with specifics of the actions in Charleston, they’d panic, collapsing back to the United States and hunkering down to weather the storm, spending their free time manufacturing cover stories to protect themselves instead of interfering with Operation Harvest.

  He began typing, giving him everything he knew about the deaths in Charleston, and tying it all to Grolier Recovery Services. When he was done, he typed,

  -Will that work?

  Clyde Marion typed back,

  -Is this shit for real?

  -Maybe. Maybe not. Just get it into the system.

  -Okay. But it can’t be tied back to me. I never had this conversation. All I do is social media.

  Nikita scoffed at the answer and typed,

  -Along with our investment fund to get Saint Kitts passports. Dmitri told me about your involvement in that. Don’t play innocent. Just do it.

  He waited on a response and didn’t receive one. He typed,

  -Did you get that last message?

  -Yes. I got it. And I got it. I’ll seed the crazies, but I can’t promise success. This isn’t what I do.

  Nikita grinned and typed,

  -It’s close enough. You manipulate elections for a living. Now you’re manipulating an organization. It’s the same damn thing.

  He shut off the VPN and his mind, like it always did, returned to the mission, thinking about the hit tomorrow against the Mines and Energy minister.

  Chapter 56

  Alek watched another small tour group enter the cathedral, blocking his view of the front door to the Petrobras headquarters building. He waited for them to enter, feeling anxious that he was going to miss the target leaving the office while they screened his view. And would thus lose his chance at one Galbino Alves, Mines and Energy minister for the country of Brazil.

  He smiled at the tour guide as he approached, wanting to tell him to get his small band of tourists out of the fucking way, and waited. They passed by him, and he returned to his smartphone, slaved by Bluetooth to a miniature digital spotting scope just outside the door.

  He had a clear view of the door across the street, watching people coming and going from the Petrobras building, but the chosen observation post was strange to say the least. The Petrobras headquarters was located in a high-rise on Republica do Chile Avenue, in the heart of downtown Rio and just across the street from the church Alek had chosen as his observation post.

  Called the Metropolitan Cathedral of Rio de Janeiro, it was unlike any church he’d ever seen. Built as a giant pyramid, full of stained glass, the outside looked more like an Aztec temple than the Gothic designs of every other Catholic church in the city. The inside was just as strange, with an enormous seating area that could house upward of twenty thousand people, all circling around a central stage with the roof rising hundreds of feet into the air, the sides of the pyramid allowing a gloomy light to enter through massive stained-glass panels.

  The tour guide stopped just behind, telling the history of the chapel, and he held his phone low, not wanting anyone to see why he was using it. He rotated his body away from them, and saw a group exit the office building. Four short men and a single tall one. He leaned closer, the spotting scope not having the best resolution. He saw that the four men were Asian, and the taller one was of Hispanic descent.

  The target.

  He glanced at the tour group, saw them move deeper into the chapel, and pulled out a handheld radio. He keyed the mic and said, “Target’s on the move. Are you set?”

  “Yes. I have control of the fruit juice stand, but I’m not sure this is going to work. What if he doesn’t come to me?”

  “He’ll come. He’ll give them the total experience. Just stand by. I’m moving to the train station.”

  Alek had taken command of the mission the minute he’d arrived in Rio and had spent the previous day conducting reconnaissance along the route from the Petrobras headquarters to the top of Mount Corcovado, the sight of the gigantic Christ the Redeemer statue known the world over. He’d searched for an interdiction or ambush location that would allow him to terminate the target in a way that looked natural—or at least would not point to the Russians—and had failed.

  He’d considered ramming the vehicle en route, pushing the man to his death from the cliffs on Mount Corcovado—even derailing the train that took tourists up to the top—but none of the courses of action were viable. The minister was traveling with four potential Chinese investors, which complicated the mission exponentially. Ramming the car would not guarantee a death, and there was no way he could follow up without killing all four of the Chinese as well. Pushing him to his death was the cleanest, as Mount Corcovado had sheer cliffs that could be utilized, but when he’d conducted the recce, he’d found the monument packed to the gills with people, a multitude of tourists crawling all over the place, each snapping away with cell phones and cameras. There was no way he could shove the man to his death in front of them.

  He’d circled the monument twice, then taken the granite stairs back down to the elevator that led to the train, and had stopped at a juice stand. He’d ordered a mango smoothie and had sat at a chipped plastic table overlooking the view to the coast, thinking through the problem. He noticed that just about everyone who came down from the top, after taking their selfies and YouTube videos, had stopped to admire the view from the small piazza, with most buying a juice drink. And he’d had an idea.

  He’d gone back to the counter, waited until it was clear of customers, and had bribed the worker there, telling him he wanted to play a prank on a friend of his. He’d flashed a wad of American dollars and the man had readily agreed.

  He’d returned to the hotel and asked if Pushka had been given poison in his bag of tricks. Pushka had stated he had nothing that could be wiped on a person,
but he had a fast-acting neurotoxin based on the venom of a cone snail. The plus was the poison was very hard to detect and made the death look like a natural heart attack. The downside was it had to be ingested—which wasn’t really a downside given Alek’s plan.

  Alek told him his course of action, and Pushka said, “But you don’t know he’s going to get a juice drink. He could just take them back down the mountain.”

  “True, but if we’re going to get him today, that’s the only feasible plan. If we miss here, we know he’s taking them to the Petrobras refinery in Manaus. We’ll just have to follow.”

  “We have one other problem: he’s with the Chinese investors. How will I know which one to put the poison in?”

  “He’ll order for them. They’ll all be served first. The last will be his.”

  Pushka didn’t seem happy with the looseness of the plan, but he’d agreed. First thing in the morning, he’d traveled to the Christ Redeemer monument, and Alek had begun his surveillance of the Petrobras headquarters.

  He watched the men waiting on the sidewalk, then saw a black SUV pull to the curb. He left the church, recovered his digital scope in front, and jogged to his car, wanting to beat them to the train that led to the monument.

  He raced through the Rio traffic, passed the train station, and turned down a narrow alley. He crossed a bridge over a thin creek and entered a square tucked off the main avenue, seeing a fountain and a small courtyard surrounded by abandoned mansions from the golden age of the rubber barons. He parked, locked the car, and jogged out of the courtyard.