by Brad Thor
“Can I finish my breakfast first?” asked Kushner.
“Bring it with you,” replied the Pole, removing several bills from his wallet and placing them on the table. “I’ll carry the case.”
Picking up his plate and his coffee cup, Kushner followed Wójcik to the elevator and down to his room.
There, Wójcik produced a small digital camera and took pictures of the components from every conceivable angle.
When he was finished, Kushner shoveled the last bite of food into his mouth, repacked the equipment into his briefcase, and headed for the door.
“Wait a second,” said Wójcik. “Where are you going?”
“If your client is interested, you know how to reach me,” Kushner replied. “Thanks for breakfast.”
Leaving the room, the Belarusian was careful to make sure that he wasn’t being followed. He had been warned that Wójcik likely had a tail.
As he disappeared into the stairwell, a man stepped out of a doorway at the other end of the hall. Seeing that the Pole’s visitor had left, he removed his encrypted cell phone and composed a message. Oleg Tretyakov would want to know everything that had happened.
CHAPTER 60
* * *
ENTERING LITHUANIAN AIR SPACE
Harvath’s plan wasn’t simple. In fact, it was quite complicated. That meant there were a lot of ways in which it could go wrong.
According to Kuznetsov, Colonel Oleg Tretyakov was in Kaliningrad. Similar to the Vatican’s being its own state within Italy, Kaliningrad was an exclave—sovereign Russian territory, a minicountry cut off from Russia—right inside Europe.
Sandwiched in between NATO members Poland and Lithuania, Kaliningrad was tightly controlled and nearly impossible to get into. And, based on what Kuznetsov had revealed, it would be doubly difficult for Harvath.
Kuznetsov had recognized him back on Gotland because of the CCTV footage Johansson had recovered from Visby Hospital. That footage had been forwarded to Tretyakov and had likely been added to every Russian database.
The moment Harvath tried to access any Russian-controlled port of entry and his photograph or facial scan was run, he’d be taken into custody and the GRU alerted.
That meant the only way he could get into Kaliningrad was to sneak in.
He had thought about somehow smuggling the team in via trucks, but the Kaliningrad crossings resembled those at the U.S./Mexico border. There was a heavy dog presence at each one, and they had no problem holding people up for hours as they went vehicle by vehicle, looking for anything out of the ordinary.
The situation along the exclave’s rugged coastline wasn’t any better. As Kaliningrad was home to Russia’s Baltic fleet, the surface and subsurface patrols were extensive and around-the-clock.
With land and sea options out of the question, that left only one other possibility—air.
The plan was to conduct a High Altitude Low Opening, or HALO, parachute jump.
They would exit the aircraft over Lithuanian airspace and glide for several kilometers, popping their chutes and landing in a predetermined location in the Kaliningrad countryside.
From there, they would make their way into the city and search for Tretyakov. Everything up to that point was the easy part. Getting out of Kaliningrad was going to be something else entirely. Harvath had no idea how they were going to pull that off.
The last big exfiltration he had done had been via high-speed boats out of Libya. Their Navy was easy to avoid and had they been forced to, even easier to outrun. The Russians, though, were in a completely different league.
It was said that it could take even longer to get out of Kaliningrad than to get in. Waits for exiting the country could run as long as five or more hours. It was why citizens of Kaliningrad preferred taking the buses, which have their own lanes at the borders.
On top of the problem of how they were going to get out, Harvath also had to plan for what they’d do if a member of the team were injured or captured, or if the authorities became aware of their presence and there was a tightening at the borders and an exclavewide manhunt. The sheer impossibility of it all was almost overwhelming.
It reminded Harvath of the beginnings of the OSS and the incredibly dangerous assignments its teams were sent on behind enemy lines. But at least when they jumped into foreign countries, they had local partisans on the ground whom they could link up with and get help from.
That wouldn’t be the case in Kaliningrad. As soon as Harvath and his team touched the ground, they’d be on their own. They’d have to secure their own transportation, do their own reconnaissance, and avoid detection every step of the way.
With the OSS in mind, Harvath decided to reapproach his problem. How would they have handled it?
While they were tough as hell and, when forced, underwent some amazingly grueling treks, they had always looked for the simplest answer first. If an ounce of courage could prevent a pound of hardship, they had gone the courage route.
The easiest places at which to cross over were the designated border checkpoints. Because Jasinski was Polish military intelligence, and because they might be coming in hot, he wanted to exit Kaliningrad into Poland, where she not only spoke the language, but also commanded some authority.
With that in mind, he studied the five Poland/Kaliningrad crossings. Starting at the Baltic Sea, he went one by one, heading east.
For the most part, they were practically interchangeable. They all cut through flat, open rural farmland. Not exactly ideal terrain for a covert crossing. But the very last, easternmost checkpoint was different.
In the Warmian-Masurian Province was the county of Goldap. A third the size of Gotland, its population was only slightly larger than that of the town of Visby.
It was bordered by the Szeskie Hills on one side and the Romincka Forest on the other. And running parallel to its border crossing was a nice, long lake. A third of it was on the Russian side of the border and the other two-thirds were on the Polish side. The minute Harvath saw it, he knew that was how they were getting out of Kaliningrad.
And as if he needed a sign that he had picked the right spot, when he saw the Romincka Forest running down the eastern side of the lake, it rang a bell with him.
Hermann Göring, the corpulent Nazi who oversaw the creation of the dreaded Gestapo and was a prime OSS target, had built a hunting lodge in the Romincka.
At one point the second-most-powerful man in Germany, Göring was sentenced to death by hanging at Nuremberg, but cheated the hangman by ingesting a cyanide capsule.
Of all the things Göring was infamous for, plundering the art of Jewish Holocaust victims, as well as art from museums across Europe, had ranked him at the top of the OSS’s Art Looting Investigation Unit’s “Red Flag List.” From France alone, it was reported that over twenty-five thousand railroad cars of stolen art and treasure had been shipped to Germany. His personal collection had been valued at more than $200 million.
Göring’s lodge in the Romincka, where he was believed to have showcased some of his stolen artwork, was known as the Reichsjägerhof Rominten. It served as his headquarters during Operation Barbarossa, when the Nazis attacked and invaded the Soviet Union.
Harvath would have liked to have been around to have seen Göring’s beloved lodge burned to the ground.
As it was, he’d have to take pleasure in sticking it to the Russians by using the lake for their escape.
On the western shore of the Polish side was a hotel and health spa. Because half his team would be needed to help coordinate their exfil, and because half were not HALO certified, Harvath decided that’s where they would be based. As guests of the hotel, they would have the perfect cover for exploring the lake and the areas around it.
With that settled, Harvath sat down with Haney and began to make an extensive list of everything the operation would require. He started with how much gear each team member could jump into Kaliningrad with, and then worked on honing it down to what was absolutely essential. It was
going to be a bitch pulling the equipment together from various American military outposts in the region, but if anyone could make it happen, it was Haney.
He was, of course, disappointed not to be going into Kaliningrad, even though he was HALO qualified. He had suffered a leg injury during their assignment in Libya, and the team couldn’t risk his reinjuring it on this jump.
Jasinski wasn’t qualified, so she’d be staying back with Haney as part of the exfil element. Because of the water component involved in their escape, Harvath wanted Barton, a SEAL, to stay back and make sure all of it went off without a hitch.
The trio had already been dropped at Olsztyn-Mazury Airport, near the village of Syzmany. Their portion of the gear would be flown in via a military transport plane. Once it arrived, they would hook the trailers up to the SUVs they had rented and drive to their hotel on Lake Goldap.
Inserting with Harvath into Kaliningrad would be Ashby, Staelin, and Palmer. Morrison and Gage had remained back in Brussels with Nicholas to guard the compound and keep an eye on Kuznetsov until a CIA security team arrived to fly him to Landstuhl Medical Center for treatment.
Harvath would have preferred to be going into Kaliningrad with more operators, but the bigger their footprint, the greater their visibility. Four would have to do.
As the Gulfstream jet made its final approach into Šiauliai International Airport in Lithuania, Harvath went through everything again. He wanted every possible angle nailed down before they launched. And they needed to launch as soon as possible.
Not only was President Porter anxious for them to get to Tretyakov, but there was also the concern that Swedish intelligence could cover up what had happened on Gotland for only so long. At some point, Kuznetsov was going to miss a communications window and the GRU was going to get suspicious.
Did that mean Tretyakov would move or go into hiding? Harvath didn’t know, but he also didn’t want to find out. The sooner they got into Kaliningrad, the sooner they could get to him, and the sooner they could get out.
This operation had Harvath concerned on a variety of different levels, not the least of which was the speed at which it was moving. And when you were moving at such high speed, the slightest mistake could turn into the deadliest of events.
CHAPTER 61
* * *
ŠIAULIAI, LITHUANIA
Šiauliai International Airport had once been one of the largest military air bases in the Soviet Union. Now, it was home to NATO’s Baltic Air Policing mission. It provided for the rapid scrambling of fighter jets and other aircraft to help protect the airspace over Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
As Harvath dropped the airstairs of the Gulfstream, he saw a familiar face waiting for him out on the tarmac.
“Sveiki atvyke˛!” shouted Carl Pedersen over the sound of the engines winding down. “Welcome to Lithuania.”
The Norwegian was dressed in a turtleneck and a pair of well-pressed trousers. He didn’t look at all like a man who had raced to find a plane and landed only an hour earlier.
Harvath descended the airstairs and shook his hand. “It’s good to see you, Carl. Thank you for doing this.”
“Where would America be without Norway?” he replied with a smile. Then, motioning to the man next to him, he said, “May I introduce Filip Landsbergis of the VSD, Lithuania’s State Security Department.”
“It is a pleasure to meet you.”
Landsbergis was a tall man in his early forties with blond hair and green eyes. He wore a Barbour coat over a gray suit and a simple navy tie. His handshake was firm.
“We appreciate your hosting us,” said Harvath.
“Technically, this is a simple NATO rotation,” the Lithuanian said, smiling. His English was excellent. “Planes take off, planes land. Who’s to say what happens when they’re in the air?”
Harvath smiled back. “Understood.”
He pointed to a waiting van. “When your team is ready, we have an area set up where they can refresh themselves and wait for the rest of your equipment to arrive. In the meantime, I have reserved a secure meeting room where we can discuss some of the additional items you have requested. My car is this way.”
Pedersen joined him and they followed Landsbergis to his vehicle. The drive across the air base only took a couple of minutes.
They arrived at a long two-story Soviet-era building. Even with the landscaping improvements that had been made outside, nothing could detract from how ugly the structure was.
The VSD operative parked his car near the front and led his guests through two glass doors into the lobby. Their meeting room was halfway down a fluorescently lit corridor to the right.
Landsbergis punched a code into a worn keypad, the lock released, and he held the door open so Harvath and Pedersen could enter first.
He flipped on all the lights and walked over to a small minibar. “I can offer you coffee, mineral water, or Coca-Cola. Anyone interested?”
“Do you have anything stronger?” asked Pedersen.
“Not here, I’m afraid. I could make a call, if you’d like.”
“No, don’t go to the trouble. Coffee is fine. Thank you.”
“And for you?” the Lithuanian asked.
“Coffee for me too, please,” Harvath replied, stepping over to the windows. They offered an impressive view over the entire air base. “Didn’t the Soviets base many of their long-range bombers here during the Cold War?”
“They did indeed. This was one of only six airfields that could accommodate the Myasishchev M-4.”
“The Bison,” said Harvath, using the NATO designator for the aircraft. “Capable of reaching the United States, but not getting back to the Soviet Union. For a long time, though, the Russians sure had everyone fooled.”
“The bomber gap,” Pedersen stated, nodding. “The West was worried that the Soviets were building hundreds upon hundreds of these amazing jet-powered strategic bombers. In the end, it was all just a hoax.”
“An appropriate metaphor for the Soviet Union itself,” declared Landsbergis as he finished pouring three mugs of coffee and carried them over to the conference table.
Harvath agreed. Stepping away from the windows, he joined the two men and took a seat.
The VSD operator’s laptop was already connected to a projector in the center of the table. Powering it up, he waited for his presentation to load.
“As Carl said, I represent the Lithuanian State Security Department. Even though I am a few years younger, he and I have been friends and colleagues for some time. The Norwegian Intelligence Service has done many favors for the VSD, and I hope you have found that we have always generously reciprocated.”
Pedersen nodded.
“American intelligence has also been helpful to Lithuania,” he continued, “and we are very grateful for both relationships. In that spirit, we’d like to help you in any way we can.
“We are extremely concerned about the prospect of a Russian invasion. Currently, Lithuania is undergoing a savage Kremlin-backed disinformation campaign, meant to sow discord and weaken our country. Our fear that this may be a prelude to war has been discussed between America’s UN Ambassador and ours. It is the express opinion of the United States that we should not change our military posture for fear of tipping off or provoking Moscow. We understand this position.
“That being the case, we do not wish to sit idly by and wait to see what happens. America is our friend and ally. We also believe we should be involved in any fight that helps to protect and preserve Lithuania.
“Obviously, we cannot do this in any overt official capacity. If the Russians discovered that we had assisted, that could serve as a severe provocation and goad them into war.
“Anything we do will have to be covert and off-book, but rest assured that I understand fear is a two-way street. As we fear the Russians’ learning about our involvement with you, you fear the Russians’ learning about your involvement with us—and subsequently your mission into Kaliningrad.
“
While I’d like to believe that the Lithuanian State Security Department hasn’t been penetrated by Moscow, history and common sense would suggest otherwise. No one in the VSD but me will know the details of your plans. And even then, for operational security, I will not know everything.”
The Lithuanian took a pause as Harvath looked at Pedersen.
“Without him,” said the Norwegian, “I don’t think you have a chance. With him, fifty-fifty. Maybe even sixty-forty.”
“Actually,” clarified Landsbergis, “based on what Carl has explained to me that you need, I think we can help improve your odds even more.”
“Show me what you have in mind,” replied Harvath as he sat back in his chair, raised his mug, and took a sip.
The VSD operative directed his attention to the front of the room and activated the first slide in his presentation.
CHAPTER 62
* * *
“One minute!” the jumpmaster at the ramp of the brand-new C-130J Super Hercules yelled to Harvath.
The aircraft was part of the Eighty-sixth Airlift Wing at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Under authorization from United States European Command, the heavy-duty transport plane had been loaded with a very expensive and very specific shopping list of gear and flown to an air base in Lithuania.
There, four Americans had been standing on the tarmac waiting to meet it. When the aircraft came to a stop, they quickly climbed aboard and kicked the tires of every piece of gear that had been shipped to them.
The American team leader bought dinner for everyone and then spent a good two hours with the crew going over weather conditions, wind speeds aloft, altitude calculations, and other equations. He was one of the most thorough “customers” they had ever given a ride to.
“Thirty seconds!” the jumpmaster yelled.
