by Sean Parnell
The thunderous double booms of the launch and impact were nearly simultaneous at that range. The doors blew open, clanging like church bells as they were ripped from their iron hinges, and as the smoke cleared Steele saw another set of plexiglass doors deeper inside. He reached back for his second rocket, loaded it, armed it, and fired again. The plexiglass exploded in spinning shards of shrapnel, ringing off the interior walls. A few seconds later, the two trembling FPS officers who’d taken cover behind their steel desk popped up and started firing wildly with their pistols.
Steele now stepped to the left and took a knee beside the walkway in the snow. From a canvas pouch latched to his left thigh, he drew two LX-700K Liberator drones—each the size of a fat hummingbird and with three-gram payloads of RDX high explosive—and whipped them into the air toward the shattered submarine chamber. The drones came to life and, buzzing like furious wasps, zipped away from their “master” and into the scorched hallway. They were already preprogrammed to target only enemy skulls, and they each found the sweet spot between the FPS officers’ brows and detonated on impact, blowing ragged holes deep into their brains.
Steele got up and headed straight in. At this point the prison’s alarm bells were banging like ship’s klaxons and all the emergency lights were blazing. He flipped his night-vision monocular up over his helmet.
He wasn’t going to need it anymore.
Chapter 30
Black Dolphin Prison, Russia
Steele knew it wasn’t going to be a cakewalk, but he didn’t care.
Outside the prison the temperature was a bone-cracking −9 degrees Celsius, and now inside the corridor it was like a high-altitude airplane fuselage that had suddenly blown a window and depressurized. The icy wind corkscrewed down the passageway, taking with it smoking shards of debris and logbook pages from the guards’ reception desk. And still he was sweating like a pig underneath all his combat gear.
The RPG launcher was a heavy weapon of steel tubing encased in a wooden cocoon. He unslung it and dumped it, along with the quiver and his last rocket, and he slinked rapidly forward in a tactical half crouch with the 416 at his shoulder. The prisoners in their cells on both sides started screaming and pounding on their doors in six different languages, and the heavily armed FPS guards turned the corner at the far end of the corridor and came at him.
At a range of fifty meters, Steele killed the first one as he came around the right-hand corner, “slicing the pie.” Only the barrel of the Russian’s Bizon subgun and an inch of his head appeared, and Steele took him with a single shot through the eyeball. He knew the next guard would come from the left, so he smeared his right shoulder against the wall, kept moving forward, and locked the red dot of his EOTech XPS2–0 sight at a spot on that corner, midheight. Just as the second Bizon barrel appeared, he slammed one into the subgun’s receiver from halfway down the corridor. His bullet ricocheted straight up into the Russian’s throat, he lurched forward onto his knees, and Steele double-tapped him in the head.
He knew they’d get cautious now, and having no idea how many of them might be gathering in stacks in that central circular roundabout up ahead, he decided on shrapnel. He pulled two of the golf ball–size V40 mini-grenades off his Load-Bearing Vest, gripped them both and their spoons in his left glove, twisted the pins out with his right-hand middle finger, and curve-balled them both down the corridor, skipping them off the linoleum floor.
There was a lime-green octagonal control station in the middle of the prison’s hub—wisely unoccupied at the moment. The grenades rolled up against its plaster wall and stopped. Men started yelling, boots began pounding, Steele flattened himself to the floor, and the minis detonated at the exact same second, slinging wicked shrapnel in all directions, amputating a bank of lights from the ceiling, and finishing off their performance with a chorus of screams.
Good time to move.
Steele took off straight down the corridor now, his gunfire-muffled eardrums assaulted left and right by the prisoners’ bellows. He pulled a CTS 7290 flashbang from his rig, yanked the pin, and hurled it as a follow-up to his shrapnel carnage, and he squinted hard as out ahead the tremendous explosion and yellow-white flash sent the already panicked Russians diving for any cover they could find.
He switched his 416 to only his right hand, yanked his father’s 1911 from his left thigh holster with his left hand, broke past the corridor corners where the two fresh corpses were sprawled, and burst into the middle of the hub. He saw a writhing FPS guard moaning and crawling away to his right. Then, another suddenly popped from the entrance of the right-hand corridor, and Steele raked him with a short burst from the HK. He sensed, more than saw, another FPS guard charging at him from the left-hand wing, and he felt the punch of a round slam into the left side of his Ratnik armor, and he shot the man in the face, off-hand and twice, with the Colt pistol.
Then he waited, turning slowly in place with both weapons at the ready. No one else seemed to be showing up. He walked around the control octagon to the green metal door at the far wall, behind which he thought he’d find the warden—confirmed by the nameplate on the door. His ears were ringing from his own gunfire, and theirs, and the powerful bangs of the grenades, yet the loudest thing pinging around the inside of his brain was telling him to chill.
Don’t kill him. Make him talk.
Steele rapped on the door with his knuckles. There was no response from inside.
“Otkroye,” he said in Russian. Open it. “Or I’ll have to blow it open, and that will make me angry.”
After a moment, the lock buzzed and clicked, and Steele slapped the latch and went inside, both guns up and looking like a Robert Heinlein nightmare. Petrov was standing behind his desk, sweating and shaking like a rabbit in a wolf’s cavern. He was clutching a Makarov pistol in his right hand, but it looked so tiny and felt that way to him, and he wasn’t really pointing it at anyone.
Steele lifted one boot and mule-kicked the door closed behind him. It slammed and Petrov let out a small yelp and dropped the pistol on his desk.
“Sit,” Steele barked.
Petrov collapsed into his black leather chair as if he’d been Tasered.
Steele walked forward to the front of the desk. He back slung the 416 and switched the Colt to his right hand. The balaclava was still covering his face and only his blazing green eyes and tight lips were showing.
“Major Petrov,” he said, “I’m only here for one thing, and I’m not going to ask you twice.”
“How . . . How do you know my name?” the warden stuttered.
“It’s on your fucking nameplate.”
“Ohh,” Petrov squeaked.
“You had a prisoner here, an American prisoner. It was some years ago. His name was Hank Steele.”
“I . . . I do not know this name.”
Steele backhanded Petrov’s computer monitor onto the floor, leaned over his desk, and jammed the 1911’s barrel into his forehead. The major pissed himself in his chair.
“How long have you been here?” Steele asked.
“About . . . perhaps nine hours!” The major’s voice was getting very reedy.
“Not today, idiot. How many years?”
“I, for most of my professional career, perhaps twenty years. I began as one of the guards. . . . But, we have had many prisoners from many countries. . . .”
“I’ll bet you have, yubtvoyumat,” Steele growled, a reference to fornicating with the major’s mother. Then he reached down into the top of his body armor and pulled out a faded color photograph. It was a photo of Hank Steele, taken in Bolivia when he’d served there as an advisor with Special Forces. He was wearing no head gear in the photo and his facial features were crisp and clear. “This man.”
Petrov didn’t dare touch the picture. It seemed to him that it might mean something holy to this horrible creature standing before him and aiming an enormous pistol at his head. He only leaned forward a touch, stared at the image, and sat back again.
“Da
,” he whispered. “I remember this man.”
A wave of nausea mingled with joy washed up through Steele’s adrenaline-pumped body.
“Tell it,” he said. “All of it.”
“He . . . I think . . . It was perhaps fifteen years ago, when I was a team lieutenant here. He was in one of the lower-level cells for . . . I think a long time. . . .”
“How long?”
“Four or five years.”
Steele ground the Colt barrel into that fleshy spot between Petrov’s eyebrows again.
“What else? Tell me everything. And don’t leave anything out.”
“I don’t remember more!” Petrov was trying to disappear into his chair and Steele could now hear shouts outside in the corridors. They were mustering for an assault. He didn’t have much time. Petrov kept on stammering. “They brought him down here from Lubyanka and the KGB and then the FSB were very interested in him and sometimes visited to . . . you know . . .”
“Interrogate him?”
“Well . . . to speak and . . .”
“Torture him?”
“I . . . I was only a guard!”
“What happened to him, Petrov? And if you fucking lie to me I’m going to blow your slimy, worthless, ass-kissing, cowardly brains all over your goddamn vodka trolley.”
“He escaped! I am not lying to you!”
“He escaped.”
“Yes!”
“From here.”
“Yes!”
“How?”
“He dug a tunnel. He dug a tunnel from under the shithole in his cell and into the sewer and out under the third wire. They said it took him a year, but no one knew how he did it.”
“He dug a tunnel.” Just the idea of his father somehow managing that made Steele’s chest swell. “What happened to him after that? Did you catch him, Petrov?”
“No . . . we tried . . . they tried. But he was gone.”
“Liar.”
“No . . . it is true.”
“Did you catch him and kill him, Petrov?”
“No! I swear!” At this point the major slumped and began to hyperventilate, and Steele thought he might have a massive heart attack right there on the spot. That wouldn’t do. He still needed him for one more task. He pulled the pistol away from his forehead and lowered the barrel.
“All right, Major, I believe you,” he said. “Get up.”
Petrov gripped his chair arms. “But why? I’ve told you everything I know!”
“We’re going for a walk.”
Three minutes later, they emerged together from Petrov’s office. The major, still wearing his piss-stained uniform, was hatless, pale, and could barely stay on his feet. But Steele was there behind him to help him and encourage his progress.
His right hand was resting on the major’s shoulder, with the Colt 1911 pistol barrel denting his right temple. In the major’s mouth was a V40 mini-grenade, its dark green ball jammed behind his teeth, with the spoon on the outside. Steele’s left arm was thrust under the major’s left armpit, with his index finger hooked in the ring pin. The major was keening and snorting through his nose, and snot was dripping over his mustache.
Six guards were waiting for them in a semicircular ring, Bizons up and pistol holsters open and ready for the draw.
“Drop the guns and leave them,” Steele said in Russian. “Or you’ll be eating the major’s brains.”
They lowered their weapons to the linoleum floor, and all of them took three steps back. He knew that any one of them still might decide to go for a medal of courage, yank a pistol, and shoot him, but everyone also knew if that happened, Steele’s finger was going to pull that pin, and there’d be lots of explaining to do.
He marched Petrov down the south corridor, with the prisoners still yelling and banging their doors, and then they walked out into the horrid wind and snow and headed for the bread truck. Steele opened the driver’s door with his gun hand, and with his left finger still in Petrov’s grenade ring, he maneuvered his 416 around and into the compartment, then slipped into the seat. He turned the engine over and looked at his hostage.
“I’m not taking you with me, Major,” he said. “You’d just be a pain in the ass.” He slipped his finger from the ring. “But be careful. Don’t swallow that thing.”
The major’s eyes rolled back in his head and he toppled straight back in the snow, out cold.
Steele gunned the engine and took off. He had gotten what he’d come for, the first piece of the puzzle, a confirmation that what President Cole had told him was true. And, for all of those suffering prisoners in Russia’s ongoing gulag, he’d also taken a pound of flesh.
He felt pretty good about all of it.
But he’d forgotten one thing in all the excitement. The RPG and the single rocket he’d left in the prison’s first corridor were gone. They’d been snatched up by one of the youngest guards while Steele was still in Petrov’s office. That guard had been a Russian paratrooper, was an expert shot with a rocket-propelled grenade, and had slinked from the prison to ambush the bastard who’d killed his comrades in the corridor.
He was kneeling on a snowy knoll outside Black Dolphin’s third wire, where the access road made its last turn before heading north toward the Ural river, when Steele roared by in the bread van.
He fired the rocket, it blew off the back of the van, and the vehicle flipped three times and rolled into a ravine.
Chapter 31
Sol-Iletsk, Russia
Something was dripping onto Eric Steele’s head. It felt like freezing droplets of water. They were soaking his scalp, running off his forehead, and coursing down the sides of his nose and over his lips. But they weren’t enough for him to drink and quench his roaring thirst.
And something else was dripping onto his chest. He knew that was blood from his smashed nose and a wicked rifle butt slash in his left temple. Those were the blows that had knocked him out. The ice water had woken him up.
He raised his head and squinted into the painful glare of some sort of light, but everything beyond that was utter darkness. Above him he saw a black concrete ceiling with slim runnels of silver ice, from which the frozen droplets fell in a maddening rhythm and pinged off a slimy cement floor. Looking down he saw his own bare feet, his ankles bound to the legs of a steel chair with multiple turns of green duct tape. He was sitting in that chair, wearing nothing but his black long underwear. His body armor, load-bearing gear, balaclava, boots, and gloves were gone. His arms were cranked behind the back of the chair, his wrists bound so tightly with the same green tape that his hands were swollen and completely numb.
His bullet-bruised ribs trembled and ached with every ragged breath, and he knew he was slowly freezing to death.
Welcome to Russia.
He didn’t know exactly where he was, but he knew it wasn’t Black Dolphin. They had dragged him out of the burning bread van and tossed him in the back of a KamAZ light truck, with no less than four sets of knees grinding down on his spine. Then they’d driven about four kilometers—a guess in his soporific state—stopped, tossed him out into knee-high snow, and dragged him through the drifts to a horseshoe-shaped construct that looked like some sort of barracks, most likely where the prison guards resided. But they hadn’t taken him inside and instead had hauled him through the swirling white coils of the midnight blizzard, past the barracks, to another squat building on a small hill in the back. It was empty, like some sort of hand-to-hand training area—maybe where they learned to crack skulls.
Then they’d gone to work on him. Buckets of freezing water. Cigarette lighters under his earlobes. Boot stomps on his toes. Bitch slaps, face punches, whipping side kicks to his thighs and knees. There were six of them, and they were justifiably pissed after what he’d just done to their comrades. Considering all that, he thought the treatment was relatively civilized. They didn’t ask him a single question, just took turns. Then the rifle butt, which had sent him to dreamland.
“Bolshoyespasibah,” he said.
Thank you very much, he’d groaned and passed out.
Now he had no idea how much time had gone by. It could have been an hour, or six, but it felt like it was still nighttime.
He tried to see past what looked like a blazing Klieg light mounted on a tripod, but it was like staring into the sun. There were no other lights in the square space of cavernous blackness, but he could hear the soft thumping of a generator from somewhere outside and figured that’s how the light was powered. He heard low mutters, boot scrapes, and thought he saw the orange arcs of lit cigarettes, like fireflies on a summer night. But whatever was coming next, the guards beyond the Klieg were taking no action yet. It was like they were waiting for something.
Count your blessings, Steele thought. If you’re lucky, your heart’ll give out before they get to the serious stuff.
Then the serious stuff appeared in the form of Major Petrov.
Steele couldn’t see the iron entrance door there beyond the floodlight as it opened, but he heard its rusty iron hinges screeching, and a slice of icy wind slashed his shivering form. There were some murmurs in Russian, boot heels clicking, and something like caster wheels rolling across the concrete floor.
A figure appeared. It was hunched over and maneuvering something past the Klieg and into its half-circular glow of light on the floor beyond Steele’s feet, which were turning a shade of bruised purplish blue. The figure was uniformed and small, almost like a dwarf, and he was wearing a greatcoat and pushing a rusty slime-green hospital crash cart. But the top tray wasn’t laid out with sophisticated, sterilized medical instruments. It was piled with tools, like from an auto mechanic’s garage.
