Not a second too soon, either. Because INT—Ivan Number Two—was already on his way up. He was struggling because he was hampered by the ADM package—eighty bulky pounds of nuke. He’d balanced it above him and was pushing it up toward the trap door, waiting for INO to take the package from him.
Hey, I like to be helpful, and so I reached down and yanked the dark molded case out of his hands.
He started to say “Spasíba—” Thanks. But then he saw who he was thanking, and the word froze in his throat.
I gave him a big Rogue smile. “Pozháluysta—” Don’t mention it.
It was about then that I realized that things had been going all too smoothly for Dickie. As if in Slo-Motion, the Ivan’s right hand dropped toward his waist. It came back up—and there was a big fucking pistol in it.
Basic rule of thumb: do not use an atomic weapon as a ballistic shield. But it was all I had, so I put the package between the Ivan and me. And then, just like Ford, I had a better idea. I tossed the ADM at him. “Hey, baklan39—you take the fucking thing back!”
Now, here’s how things stood: the Ivan’s feet were on the ladder rung. One hand held his pistol. The other supported him. He dropped the handgun and brought his support hand up to catch the package. But of course he couldn’t balance it right. And so he stretched toward the ADM like a wide receiver going for a pass thrown too high. He managed to grab it, too, a real nice shag. But his feet must have come off the rungs as he’d stretched to catch the device, because he dropped like the proverbial stone down the hatch, clutching at the ADM all the way to the bottom. He hit with a loud cry, followed by the solid thunk of nuke crate on the cement.
No time to think—I just reacted. I rolled toward the hatchway, grabbed the ladder rails with both hands, kept my feet on the outside, and dropped into the void, the steel of the ladder rails burning through the lightweight leather of my Nomex assault gloves.
I hit the floor below badly. My right foot caught the ADM crate, I heard my ankle bones pop and then the fucking ankle caved. But it didn’t matter, there was too much else to worry about.
I rolled away from the ladder so Boomerang could follow me. As I rolled, I pulled my pistol out of its holster, got into low ready, and—scan/breathe—searched for threats. The chamber was much bigger than I’d expected it to be. And, geezus—I’d fallen into a god-damn armory. The walls were lined with ordnance, weapons, and other supplies. Stacks of ammo cases. Crates of firearms. Jerry cans of water and other liquids. Uniforms—U.S., German, and Soviet—hung on racks. But I didn’t have a lot of time to take inventory. The INT may have been flat on his back—the ADM had cold-cocked him, or worse, hopefully. But off to my port, another Ivan was either playing with himself or trying to extract a pistol from his trouser pocket.
When will they ever learn how to carry weapons? I sight-acquire-fired and winged him with a shot to the right arm (oops), which sent him spinning. I did better second time around: I caught him as he turned, with a perfect hammer—tap-tap—to his chest. Hey, great sight picture and nice center mass shooting, if I don’t say so myself. The bullets knocked him back against the far wall, where he collapsed against the steel-rack shelving units, a look of shock, pain, and surprise on his ugly Russkie face.
I was just admiring my handiwork when Ivan Number Four tackled me. This one was quick—he’d closed the distance between us in no time at all, and he’d come prepared to Do Nasty Business. He was carrying a short length of steel—it looked more like a crowbar than a tire iron—and he hit me hard enough with it to drive me back into the ladder, knocking me into Boomerang as he dropped.
We all went arms and legs akimbo into a heap. The Russkie slashed at the back of Boomerang’s head and caught him with a glancing blow, knocking my surfer-SEAL face first into the ladder. Boomerang went down, wrapping up my feet and legs as he did so. I whirled, which just made things worse, because Boomerang’s hand slammed my wrist up against a rung, and my USP bounced, then went skittering off across the concrete floor of the cache room. It was now officially Doom-on-Dickie Time.
Christ, this was turning to shit. I grabbed hold of the Ivan’s weapon and tried to wrest it away. Nada. Bupkis. The guy had hands of steel. I slipped my own hand free and grabbed him by the throat. Ivan’s eyes went buggy and he growled sweet nothings in my ear while trying to gnash and nibble at it. Abruptly, he wrenched away, swiveled, and slapped the short piece of steel at my face. Instinctively, I brought my arm up. It blocked the blow—but the goddamn shaft caught me on the outside of my elbow and I could feel the fucking shock waves all the way into my toenails. They may call it the funny bone. There is nothing fucking funny about it at all, my friends.
But here is a truth of Warriordom. Pain makes the Warrior stronger, not weaker. It is the anvil on which all true Warriors are forged, whether it is the muscle burn, sleep deprivation, and cold of Hell Week, the Marine Corps crucible, Ranger training, Delta Force selection—or the kind of life-and-death struggle in which I was now engaged. The ordinary person gets hurt—and he retreats to deal with his pain. The Warrior takes in all that pain, all that hurt, all that agony, and metamorphoses it, transmogrifies it, channels it, into pure, unadulterated, kinetic strength, electric energy, and pure will to win.
I took hold of the bar with both my hands and twisted, working it out of the Russkie’s grasp. He would have none of it. Instead, he brought the damn thing up, its chisel-edge under my chin, and tried to impale me by lifting me off the floor.
This, friends, is when those 150 reps of 450 pounds on the outdoor weight pile at Rogue Manor, hung out or hung over, rain, or snow, or sleet, pay off. My War Face looked his Russkie pusskie straight in the eyes—and he was the one who blinkski’d.
Oh, yes. Now he was mine. The growl in my throat told him it was time to die. I put my hands outside his, so we both had hold of the bar. And then I brought it absolutely horizontal. Then inexorably, unstoppably, I forced it down and away, moving the two-foot length of steel farther from my chin—and closer to his midsection.
I kept his eyes locked with mine while I pushed the steel lower, then turned it once more, so that the sharp, chisel-edged pry-blade was pointed in his direction. And then I drew the fucking thing back, back, back, and, with all my strength, drove it HOOYAH into his thorax.
It struck with this amazing, reverberating, thwock. The blow staggered him back—but it staggered me, too, as if I’d hit a fucking brick wall with my fist. I’ve heard of abs like steel, but this was ridiculous. And then, of course—my old shipmate Doc Tremblay is quick to say entiymah feeshmok, which is Cairo slang for “you’ve got fartbeans for brains”—I realized that the sonofabitch was wearing a bulletproof vest, which had a fucking ceramic strike plate positioned over his chest and thoracic regions, and all I’d done was knock the fucking wind out of him.
Time to exchange bars. I dropped his pry bar and went for my K-Bar. While I used my body to hold him in place, I reached down, grasped the pommel, and extracted the big knife from the sheath on my leg. I took it in what’s known in the killing trade as the modified saber grip—blade horizontal to the ground, thumb atop the hilt. Held the blade tip up and, my left arm and shoulder pinning Ivan to the wall, thrust the big, nasty blade up, up, up, working it behind his vest, then twisting the blade edge to vertical so I’d cut through his diaphragm, and reach beyond, toward his heart and lung area. He struggled against me, but I was using my whole body mass, my arm, and my shoulder—not to mention all of that accumulated PAIN—to hold him down while my right arm did its work and the knife eviscerated him.
He gave me a horrible look as the blade severed his portal vein, cut through his abdominal aorta, nicked his pulmonary artery, and then finally slit his heart and lungs open. He tried to gurgle what was probably a curse in Russian, spat blood at me—it simply drooled down his chin—and then the life went out of him.
I wrenched the blade out, wiped it on his corpse, and as I sheathed it I sank to my knees—wasted. My fucking ankle throbbed. My
elbow felt like shit. I may be a grizzled old War Wolf, but right then this Canis lupus wasn’t huffing and puffing hard enough to wheeze down a single piggy’s house—even if the fucking thing had been folded out of origami. Here is some Roguish sooth: war is for the young.
But I didn’t have any time to ponder the philosophical truths of battle right then.
Why not? Because the goddamn Ivan I’d shot was alive and well, and on his feet, and he’d retrieved his pistol from his pocket, and he was advancing on me, shooting as he came, the gun clutched in his left hand, his useless right arm dangling absurdly at a nasty angle.
It was a little gun—a Marakov—but the sound of those 9-by-18, or .380 ACP, or whatever-the-fuck-they-may-have-been rounds in the enclosed space was deafening, even more so because the sound was augmented by the nasty sprays of concrete about a foot to my left and getting closer.
A shard of something sharp nicked my face half an inch below my right eye and I felt blood on my cheek. Oh, fuck me. I backpedaled away from the gunfire like a fucking hermit crab, grabbed the corpse of the bulletproof Ivan, and hefted it around my body and held it in front of me. The Russkie kept coming—he squeezed off two, three, four more shots. But he was panic-shooting with his weak hand and the rounds went wide again. I tripped over something. It was my own fucking USP. I bent, grabbed it while trying not to lose hold of my Russkie-corpse shield. Got it! I struggled to my feet, holding the dead Russkie in front of me just as the Ivan finally found the range.
I heard the thwock-thwock-thwock as the bullets hit the corpse’s ceramic vest plate. All I could think was, Geezus, keep shooting at the fucking vest—don’t fucking try to hit me in the fucking legs, because you’d fucking be fucking successful, and I’d be fuckee-fuckeed. And then, I’d come up on him. And guess what? Since he’d panic-fired, which means he had no fire discipline, he’d run out of fucking ammo. I tossed the Russkie corpse in his direction, and when he ducked away, I was on him. Twisted the pistol out of his hand—broke a couple of his fingers, but so the fuck what, he’d been fucking shooting at me. I was in a blood frenzy now, sharklike and very dangerous. I slapped the Ivan across the mouth with his own weapon, knocking teeth onto the concrete. He struggled, tried to get away, but I had him in a death roll and I wasn’t about to let him get away again. I brought the pistol up, reversed it, and hit him as hard as I could in the face with the butt. The blow broke his nose. I smashed him again and again and again with the flat of the pistol grip, driving bone fragments up into his brain.
His eyes rolled back in his head. Maybe he was dead. But maybe not. I don’t like to make the same mistake twice, so I reached down, pulled the USP, and put two bullets in his forehead just to make sure he wouldn’t come at me a third time. I don’t like to repeat mistakes, I prefer to learn from ’em.
Exhausted, I pulled myself up onto my feet, and staggered over to the ladder to check on Boomerang, who was unconscious and caught up in the rungs. I lowered him to the deck and rolled him onto his back. He had some dings on his arms and legs, a cut on his cheek, and one hellaciously nasty mouse over his left eye, as well as a humongous shiner that would cause him immediate pain, temporary suffering, and lots of ribbing from his shipmates. But his breathing was even and he didn’t have any broken bones. Since I wasn’t carrying any ammonia ampoules, I slapped him gently until he came to.
I watched his eyes focus, fog over, cross, uncross, then struggle until they focused again. He checked himself over, stem to stern, then felt at the blossoming, tender lump over his eye with his fingertips, grimaced, and said, “Oh, shit.” Then he looked around, and saw the bodies. “Geezus, Boss Dude—WTF?”
His look of concern brought a smile to my face. “Just like always, asshole—you fucking slept through the whole floor show and missed all the tits and ass.” I grinned as I helped him to his feet. “C’mon—we have work to do.”
8
2214. YEAH, WE’D OVERCOME THE BAD GUYS, BUT THERE was still an old SEAL technical term that covered our situation. It was: FUBAR—Fucked Up Beyond All Repair. We now had ten corpses on our hands, as well as what might be called a huge cache-flow problem. Oh, we’d be able to pack out the two ADMs I’d discovered down in the cellar. But what about all those uniforms, and weapons, and other ordnance? Not to mention the two Mercedes sedans in which the Russkies had been traveling.
Dump the corpses in the pump house and leave ’em? No way. They’d been sent by somebody—and whoever it was would come looking for ’em. Destroy the evidence? It would be possible to dump all the corpses in the cache, and then use John Suter’s C-4 to blow the place—and everything in it—up. But that wouldn’t help our situation vis-à-vis the Kraut cops, e.g., Brendel and Rackel, who’d return to the scene of the questioning, do the anal-retentive forensic number, remember precisely who had been seen in the area (moi), and mir erlegen—hunt me down like the Schurke40 I am. Nor would the unsuspecting farmer whose cow pies currently decorated my BDUs and clotted my beard appreciate my blowing up several acres of his prime pasture land. Besides, I wanted to find out who these Ivan assholes were, who they were working for, and what they’d planned to do with the pair of pocket nukes.
Moreover, as you will remember, Chairman Crocker had asked me not to make as much as a ripple during the current exercise. Okay, okay, so he hadn’t asked—he’d ordered. But you get the idea.
And so, I dutifully got on the horn—the cellular, to be precise—and called the number Colonel John had given me.
The phone rang three times. “Suter.”
“It’s your traveling companion from Italy.”
“Gotcha.” Oh, was he quick on the uptake. “What’s up, my hairy friend?”
“You know what you’ve been tasked to do—I’m in possession of a couple and I’d like to hand ’em over ASAP.”
“Roger that.” There was a momentary pause, as if he knew another boondocker would be dropping. “Anything else?”
“Funny you should ask. I’ve got some extra material on hand as well. About two six-by’s full, maybe more.”
“Okay. Can do.” Nothing seemed to faze this guy. “Location?”
I put my red-lensed flashlight on the map General Crocker had given me and read off two sets of coordinates. There was a pause while Suter checked my position.
“I’ve got a three-hour ETA. Does that work for you?”
“If it has to.”
John Suter’s voice was clear and cool. “It has to. We’re talkin’ complicated logistics here, friend, and since I won’t be landing any Pave Lows where you are, I gotta come in to Rhine Main, proceed by land—and I gotta move mucho quietly.”
I couldn’t argue any of that, and told him so.
“Anything else?” he asked.
What was he, prescient? “Well, if you happen to have about a dozen body bags, it might be helpful.”
The “Oh, fuck me very much” indicated that I’d finally fazed him. He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, and I could hear muffled orders being given. Then his voice came back strong. “See you at Zero Dark Hundred, O Hairy One. Keep your head down and try not to eliminate anybody else. We have a shortage of body bags down here ever since the end of the Cold War.”
“Roger-roger, Suter-san.”
I slapped the cellular shut. We’d already moved the Ivans’ two Mercedes off the road and under cover. The ADMs were under Gator’s watchful eye. And BH, Nod, Half Pint, and Boomerang were checking over the Ivans and their effects to gather what intel nuggets they could.
Without a whole lot of results, I might add. The four in the cache carried no IDs at all—although each had about a thousand dollars’ worth of German marks and another thou in American dollars, all of it in brand-new Gucci wallets. The Ivans also wore expensive clothing—good quality Hugo Boss suits. They’d taken their jackets off, but they sported dress shirts and ties. The labels told me everything came from the same department store in Düsseldorf, even the dressy, low-cut, urban cowboy shoes with tassels y
ou don’t see in cow pastures very often.
Their cigarettes were Americanski; two of the Ivans carried solid gold Duponts, which go for five grand each in Paris. Four of them were wearing gold Rolex watches. Two others had Piagets, and three others were wearing brand-new steel Tag-Heuer chronometers. We’re talking huge amounts of disposable income here, friends—but little else. Oh, they’d shown up with burglar’s kits—pry bars, saws, drills, lock picks, graphite dust, and other tools of the break-and-enter trade. But they weren’t carrying anything that identified ’em. No hotel room keys; no receipts; no papers; no nothing.
As for weapons, we had two Marakov semiauto pistols, one Walther PPK in .380 ACP, and one SigSauer in nine mil. The rear guard had been carrying suppressed MP5s. The only thing that seemed out of place was that everybody’d been wearing German-made tactical body armor over their shirts and ties, but under the Boss double-breasteds. It was the latest German military equipment, too: Class III-A stuff with ceramic plates front and rear, as well as high-cut armholes and lots of Velcro. Weird, huh? I certainly thought so.
The two Ivans who’d been driving had German driver’s licenses—recently issued, from the look of ’em—and more of the brand-new Gucci wallets that contained both dollars and deutsche marks, but very little else.
Now, my friends, this obvious conspicuous consumption, coupled with the lack of personal ephemera, made me suspicious. I mean, ask yourself, how clean is your wallet? How much junk is buried therein—even in a relatively new wallet? Not to mention the sort of wallet grunge that comes with constant use. Indeed, one of the most important things you can do when operating under deep cover is to make your wallet appear to fit your character. These dudes’ wallets didn’t fit shit. It was as if they’d simply bought ’em by the dozen, filled ’em with cash, and that was that.
My educated guess was that I was looking at a bunch of Russkie Mafiyosi corpses. As you may know, I’ve dealt with the Russian Mafiya before on their home turf,41 so I know what to look for. And these assholes showed all the signs of being what the Moscow cops call bandity.
Option Delta Page 14
