by Alex Lukeman
They sat at a table against the wall in the rear, facing the windows. The lighting was bright enough to make it easy to read the menu and dim enough to be kind on looks. A candle flickered on each table. Flocked wallpaper, brass wall sconces and gold framed oil paintings of German countryside scenes adorned the walls, dispelling any thoughts that this was a typical street bistro. One look at the prices on the menu would shatter any illusions that were left.
"They got any hamburgers?" Lamont asked.
"Right there near the bottom on the second page," Ronnie said. He pointed at the listing.
"Twenty euros? That's a hell of a lot for a burger."
"Hey, it comes with ketchup. They'll probably give you onions and lettuce for a few euros more if you ask."
"Uncle Sam is paying for it," Nick said. "Might as well get cheese on it too."
"Try the beef stew," Selena said. "The Germans are good at that."
"They have beef stroganoff," Nick said. "I'm going to get that. And a glass of wine."
"Get a bottle," Selena said. "A good red?"
"Sounds about right."
The waiter came and took their order. Two minutes later he was back with water for Ronnie and a bottle of wine for the others. Nick sampled the wine and nodded. The waiter poured and left them.
It was early in the evening for dinner in Europe and the café was almost empty. An elderly couple sat by the windows, hunched over their food. Nearby, a trio of business men worked on a bottle of schnapps and talked in loud voices. Outside, the wind had picked up. Heavy rain beat on the windows The few pedestrians on the street hurried by with their heads down and their collars turned up.
"It's miserable out there," Selena said. "I'm glad we decided to stay in."
"I hope it clears up soon," Ronnie said. "I've had enough of Germany."
"The weather report wasn't good," Nick said. "We're stuck here for at least a day."
The street entrance was through a door into an enclosed foyer that kept unwelcome weather out of the café. The door opened and two large men crowded into the foyer. They opened the inner door and stood not far from the bar, looking at the room.
"Those two would be right at home in the NFL," Lamont said.
Three more men entered the café from the hotel. They wore dark coats and dark hats. They were big, like the two men who had come in from the street. One of them looked at the table where Nick and the others sat.
Nick's ear began to tingle.
"We've got trouble. The five who just came in."
"They don't seem real friendly," Ronnie said.
The tingle in his ear turned into a deep itch. Nick reached up and tugged on it.
"Aw, hell," Lamont said.
"Get ready," Nick said. "These guys aren't here for a beer."
He slipped his pistol out of the concealed holster and held it in his lap under a napkin. Adrenaline shot through his body, as though a pot of caffeine had been poured straight into his veins.
Guns came out from under the heavy coats.
"Move!" Nick shouted.
The elderly couple looked up. Nick fired at one of the two men by the bar and missed. A window in the foyer door shattered. He fired again and the man dropped his gun and fell to his knees. Nick and Lamont scrambled along the back wall firing at the other man by the bar. Behind them, Selena and Ronnie began firing at the three who had come in from the hotel.
Everything slowed down.
Nick felt his pulse pounding. Sounds were muffled. One of the old people began screaming, the sound drawn out like a record played too slowly. Bullets streaked across the room, smashing into the back bar and the espresso machine as the barman ducked behind the bar. Bottles and glassware shattered. A column of steam shot up from the punctured coffee machine. The businessmen dived for the floor.
The big man by the bar had a submachine gun. He opened up and Lamont went down hard, his pistol skittering across the floor. The man swiveled the gun and Nick felt a hammer blow on his left arm. He shot the man three times until he fell, sending the gun flying. Nick turned. One of the attackers by the hotel entrance was down. Selena and Ronnie were shooting at the two men still standing. Ronnie yelled and fell to the floor. Nick fired with Selena. Another man went down. Spent rounds ricocheted around the room, breaking windows facing the street.
The slide locked back on Nick's pistol. He reached for another magazine as Selena's pistol emptied. Her last round took down the final attacker. He collapsed and sprawled on the floor.
Sudden silence.
Time speeded up again. Nick's heart pounded in his chest. He couldn't move his left arm. Blood ran down his sleeve.
Lamont!
Lamont lay on his back a few feet away. Blood pooled around him, under him. Two bloody holes marred the front of his shirt. His eyes were wide open, his eyelids fluttering.
Nick looked at the wounds and felt fear for his friend.
"I'm here, buddy. Stay with me. Don't you quit on me."
"Nick..." Blood bubbled between Lamont's lips.
"Don't talk. Stay with me."
Sirens sounded outside, coming closer.
"Help's coming. Stay with me."
Lamont grasped Nick's arm.
"How bad?" His voice was weak, hesitant.
"You'll be all right. Keep talking to me."
"Ronnie and Selena..."
"They'll be okay. Look at me."
Lamont's eyelids fluttered.
"Lamont. Stay with me. Look at me."
Nick saw the first ambulance pull up in front of the café.
"Hey, I hear German hospitals serve really great food."
Lamont started to laugh. "Uh. Hurts."
Two paramedics came through the shattered foyer door. Police cars and another ambulance pulled up outside. One of the paramedics ran over to where Nick knelt by Lamont. The other went to where Ronnie lay on the floor.
"Okay, wir haben ihn."
"What?" Nick said.
"Okay, we have him."
Nick squeezed Lamont's hand. "You're going to be okay."
Lamont didn't hear him.
CHAPTER 47
Nick stood by the window in his hotel room looking out at the rain. His mood was blacker than the clouds outside. His left arm was in a soft cast and hung in a sling. He had no feeling in the fingers of his left hand. The bullet had nicked the bone and damaged the nerves. The prognosis was inconclusive. Feeling might come back or it might not. The arm was the least of his concerns.
It's my fault. I was careless. I thought with Gutenberg dead it was over. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Thoughts of guilt and blame made hammered drumbeats in his mind.
With Langley's help, Harker had kept them out of jail. DCI Hood had called in a favor with the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the German Intelligence Service. The BND had stepped in and taken over from the local police.
Lamont and Ronnie were in intensive care in the University Hospital. Ronnie had taken two 9 mm rounds through his guts. One of them had punctured his liver. The last time he'd been wounded he'd lost his spleen. This time was worse. It was touch and go whether he would survive.
Lamont wasn't much better off. One round had missed his heart by a centimeter and exited from his back, causing massive bleeding. The other bullet had gone through his left lung, the second time he'd been shot through a lung. If he survived, he would have matching wound scars on his chest.
A round had grazed Selena's side and glanced off a rib. They'd bandaged her up along with Nick and sent them back to the hotel. A man in a dark suit and tie from the BND stood outside their door. They weren't prisoners, exactly, but they were told not to leave their room. They were under a form of polite house arrest while the Germans figured out what to do with them. Their guns had been confiscated.
Selena came over and stood by Nick. She put her hand on his shoulder and looked out the window with him. The cityscape was a gray vista of steel and glass and wet concrete.
"What a fucking mess," h
e said.
"The police said they were local hoods. They think somebody hired them to come after us."
"It has to be the Russians. Probably Golovkin."
"Why him?"
"He's covering his ass. He doesn't know what Gutenberg may have told us. He was trying to make sure that anything we learned didn't go any further."
"Do you think he knows about Valentina?"
"I don't know. I guess we have to wait and watch what happens."
"If she gets that recording to Vysotsky, it could make a difference," Selena said.
"It could. Orlov isn't known for his forgiving nature. By convincing him NATO would stay out of the Baltics Golovkin put him in a situation where he can't win. Once he knows Golovkin screwed up, Orlov will make sure he disappears. It depends on whether or not Valentina got the recording to Vysotsky and if he follows through."
"She will," Selena said. "She's a very determined woman."
"I hope you're right."
Selena's voice was full of sadness. "What if they die?"
His voice was flat, hard. "Don't say that. They're both still alive. I'll worry about it if they do."
Nick's satellite phone signaled. He looked at the display.
"Harker," he said to Selena. He turned on the speaker and connected the call. "Yes, Director."
"How are you, Nick?"
"How do you think? I've been better."
Elizabeth let it go. "The German authorities have agreed to let you go. You and Selena are leaving as soon as the weather clears."
"What about Ronnie and Lamont?"
"As soon as they're stable and can be moved they'll be flown here. They're ready for them at Walter Reed."
"Any news from Moscow? Any sign Valentina got through?"
"Not yet."
"What's happening with the war?"
"Which one? The Balkan war is in winter stalemate with everyone bogged down. The weather has been bad. No one can do anything. NATO is trying to negotiate a truce between the Albanians and Macedonia but so far no one is listening. Unless Mitreski wants to take on more than he can handle he's going to have to pull back to his border. He doesn't have the resources or the heart to make a serious effort at conquering Albania and he can't win against NATO. He'll quit. That war is ending with a whimper instead of a bang."
"What about Latvia?"
"That's a different story," Elizabeth said. "The weather has made satellite surveillance difficult. We should be able to get a radar fix through the cloud cover but the Russians have come up with new stealth technology for their tanks. It makes them almost invisible to radar. Hard to track or get a missile lock."
"Where are they now?"
"One of their columns is east of Riga, right on the outskirts."
"And NATO? What are they doing?"
"Rice raised hell and got them off their asses. They're sending troops to Estonia and Lithuania. It's too late to save the Latvian capital. The plan is to go after the Russians on two fronts from the bordering countries. Air strikes will begin as soon as the weather clears if they don't back down. The logistics to support a serious ground operation haven't gotten there yet. NATO wasn't ready for this."
"That figures."
"So far there haven't been any skirmishes between the Russians and NATO but it's only a question of time. Once the air strikes begin things will heat up fast."
"Has Rice talked to Orlov yet?"
"Orlov is refusing all calls. He's stonewalling everyone. Rice is taking it personally. I've never seen him this angry. He's pissed."
"I'll bet he is," Nick said. "Maybe Orlov will change his mind when our missiles start taking out his tanks."
"We'd better hope it doesn't come to that. Our best bet now is Vysotsky." Elizabeth paused.
"Come home, Nick."
CHAPTER 48
Colonel Dimitri Brusilov sat with his crew inside the armored capsule of his tank and studied the terrain in front of him. Condensation from the heat of their bodies ran down the cold steel walls. Resistance along the way had been intermittent and easily overcome and now his tanks were on the outskirts of Riga. Two rows of three-story apartment buildings and a small park lay directly in his path. A rusted swing set and a child's merry-go-round in faded colors of blue and yellow and red sat in the center of the park. Beyond the park a tall church spire painted white thrust upward into a gray-black afternoon sky.
Latvian artillery was targeting his tanks from somewhere a few kilometers away. Rounds were landing close by, too close for comfort. Dimitri had no confirmed target. The Afghanit system that was supposed to intercept the shells and pin down the location of the battery for a counter strike was acting up. The electronic gremlins that had plagued the tank in the past were back. Dimitri swore at the thinking that threw untested weapons systems into combat before they were ready. Testing systems on the factory proving grounds was one thing. Having those systems prove reliable under combat conditions was something entirely different.
Part of the system worked just fine. Alarms on Dimitri's console let him know an artillery shell was coming straight for them.
"Incoming," he said into his microphone. "Hold on."
Now we'll see just how good this armor is, he thought.
The Afghanit system on the T-14 was designed to intercept incoming missiles and artillery rounds with guided missiles targeted by radar and fired by the computer. But the electronic problems interfered. The computer failed to intercept the round. The shell exploded a few yards away from the tank and blew off the tread on the left side. The tank skewed to the left and stopped. Inside, the crew was shaken up but unharmed.
The computer on the Armata was programmed to determine the nature of external threats and take countermeasures against them. It had the capability to correct what it interpreted as errors on the part of the crew. The artillery round had further damaged the erratic electronic system. The computer analyzed the situation, determined that the crew was not responding to threats and decided to fire a missile.
On Sergei's weapons board half the lights were out. He looked at what was still functioning. A cold fear swept over him.
"Commander. The Sprinter tactical missile is being loaded."
"Shut it down! Now!"
Sergei's voice was full of fear. "I can't. The board is not working."
The turret still functioned. The long barrel of the cannon swiveled and rose to its maximum elevation. Dimitri listened to gears meshing as the autoloader chose the missile and fed it into the cannon. The magazine and mechanism were outside the armored crew compartment, behind layers of hardened steel and ceramic plates, inaccessible. With the board out of commission, Dimitri was helpless to stop the sequence. He watched the screen on his console that showed him the outside world.
The missile left the cannon, trailing white smoke behind it, picking up speed as it rose into the air. It carried a one kiloton nuclear warhead that would destroy everything within a half mile radius. No one would survive. The blast wave would continue outward destroying structures as it went. Ground shock would cause major damage to critical infrastructure over a much wider area, as if a large earthquake had struck the region.
Maybe it will fail, Dimitri thought.
He hadn't prayed since he was a boy but he found himself praying now.
Please, let it fail.
His prayers were not answered. The missile turned and twisted high in the air as the damaged computer sought for a target. It reached its maximum height and turned back toward the ground. Dimitri had time to see the outer world vanish in a burst of white light before the blast wave picked up his tank and hurled it through the air like a toy.
In Washington and in Moscow, in every Western capital and in every intelligence agency in the world with the capability to oversee the battlefield in Latvia, the reaction was the same when their instruments registered the explosion.
Shock, followed by fear and anger. For the first time since World War II a nuclear weapon had been used in combat.
The genie was out of the bottle.
CHAPTER 49
Vysotsky stared at Valentina in disbelief.
"Kepler was Johannes Gutenberg?"
"Yes. He will trouble us no more."
Alexei Vysotsky set the recording from the hospital down on his desk and looked at Valentina.
"The Americans were there? For the same reason?"
The way he said it made Valentina think that somehow she was supposed to be at fault for the American presence. She looked at the man across the desk, dressed today in his general's uniform. Vysotsky had shaped her into a weapon of the state. He had controlled her life, deciding what she should know and what she should do. He had never displayed anything that felt like genuine affection for her.
She wanted to make him see her as more than someone to manipulate.
"Yes, they were there, including my sister."
"What?" His face registered shock.
"It surprises you that I know about her? It shouldn't. After all, you are the one who trained me. You should have told me long ago."
Vysotsky looked down at his desk for a moment and shuffled a few papers. When he looked up his face was emotionless.
"It was the correct thing to do," he said. "What good would it have done for you to know you had a sister in America, someone you could never hope to meet? I was trying to spare you from unnecessary emotional stress."
"You were trying to spare yourself from the complications of dealing with my thoughts about having any family except the state. The only reason you kept that information from me was to serve your own purposes."
"Your sister is an American spy."
"My sister is my sister first and an American second," Valentina said. "My mother was a spy. I'm a spy. Why shouldn't she be one as well? What did you think, that I would run off to her with state secrets and tell her all about them?"
