Like now, with the tension in the room.
“And the side mirror of the limo,” Fedoseev added with a strained grin. “You destroyed both windshield and mirror. Very costly. And worst of all, you could have killed Pytor, my driver.”
Tucker refused to back down, knowing it would be a sign of weakness. “At that distance and angle, the rifle I used didn’t have enough foot-pounds to penetrate the limo’s ballistic glass. Maybe if I was standing on the hood of the car, Pytor might have had something to worry about.”
Stymied, Fedoseev frowned. “Still, very expensive things to fix on limousine, yes?”
“You can take it out of my bonus,” Tucker replied.
“Bonus! What bonus?”
“The one you’re going to give me for saving your life.”
Standing behind Fedoseev, Yuri said, “We would have handled the—”
Fedoseev held up his hand, silencing his subordinate. Yuri’s face flushed. Behind him, the pair of bodyguards at the door shifted their feet, glancing down.
Tucker knew what Yuri and his security team were thinking. Would haves were worthless when it comes to personal protection. The fact was, this outsider—this American and his dog—had saved their boss. Still, Yuri had intervened on Tucker’s behalf with the police, smoothing over the complications that could have risen over killing the first shooter. Russian bodyguards taking down a would-be assassin was a simple matter; a former U.S. Army Ranger, not so much.
Ninety minutes after apprehending the second man, who was now in police custody, Tucker met Fedoseev and his entourage back at the Meridian Hotel, where the Russian had rented the top floor of VIP suites. The decor and furnishings were comfortable, but overly ornate. Shabby Soviet chic. Outside, snow still fell, obscuring what would have been a stunning view of Peter the Great Bay and mainland Russia.
“I do you better than bonus,” Fedoseev offered. “You become part of my team. Permanent part. I am generous. Your dog will eat steak every night. He would like that, yes?”
“Ask him yourself.”
Fedoseev’s gaze flicked toward Kane, then he smiled and wagged his finger at Tucker. “Very funny.” He tried a different angle. “You know, these two suka may have had a helper. If he is still around—”
Suka was one of Fedoseev’s favorite slang terms. Roughly and politely, a suka meant scumbag.
Tucker interrupted. “If you’re right, I’m sure Yuri will find anyone else involved in this attempted assassination.”
Especially with one of the attackers already in custody.
Up here, torture was as common a tool as a knife and fork.
Fedoseev sighed. “Then your answer is?”
“I appreciate the offer,” he said, “but my contract’s up in two days. Past that, I’ve got somewhere to be.”
It was a lie, but no one called him on it.
The truth was he had nowhere to be, and right now he liked it that way. Plus Yuri and his team were all ex-military and that background infused everything they did and said. He’d had his fill of them. Tucker had done his time in the military, and the parting had been less than amicable.
Of course, he’d loved his early days in the army and had been contemplating going career.
Until Anaconda.
He reached for the abandoned glass of vodka as the unwanted memory of the past swept over him. He hated how the cubes rattled against the crystal as he lifted the tumbler. PTSD. He considered it merely a piece of psychic shrapnel lodged near his heart.
He sipped at the liquor, letting the memory wash through him.
Not that he had any choice.
Tucker again felt the pop of his ears as the rescue helicopter lifted off, felt the rush of hot air.
He closed his eyes, remembering that day, drawn back to that firefight. He had been assisting soldiers from the Tenth Mountain Division secure a series of bunkers in Hell’s Halfpipe. He had been flanked by two partners that day: Kane and Kane’s littermate, Abel. If Kane had been Tucker’s right arm, Abel was his left. He’d trained them both.
Then a distress call had reached his team in the mountains. A Chinook helo carrying a team of Navy SEALs had been downed by RPG fire on a peak called Takur Ghar. Tucker and his squad were dispatched east and had begun the arduous climb to Takur Ghar when they were ambushed in a ravine. A pair of IEDs exploded, killing most of Tucker’s squad and wounding the rest, including Abel, whose left front leg had been blown off at the elbow.
Within seconds, Taliban fighters emerged from concealed positions and swarmed the survivors. Tucker, along with a handful of soldiers, was able to reach a defensible position and hold out long enough for an evac helicopter to land. Once Kane and his teammates were loaded, he was about to jump off and return for Abel, but before he could do so, a crewman dragged him back aboard and held him down—where he could only watch.
As the helo lifted off and banked over the ravine, a pair of Taliban fighters chased down Abel who was limping toward the rising helo, his pained eyes fixed on Tucker, his severed leg trailing blood.
Tucker scrambled for the door, only to be pulled back yet again.
Then the Taliban fighters reached Abel. He squeezed those last memories away, but not the haunting voice forever in the back of his mind: You could’ve tried harder; you could have reached him.
If he had, he knew he would have been killed, too, but at least Abel wouldn’t have been alone. Alone and wondering why Tucker had abandoned him . . .
Back in his own skin, he opened his eyes and downed the rest of the vodka in a single gulp, letting the burn erase the worst of that old pain.
“Mr. Wayne . . .” Bogdan Fedoseev leaned forward, his forehead creased with concern. “Are you ill? You’ve gone dead pale, my friend.”
Tucker cleared his throat, shook his head. Without looking, he knew Kane was staring at him. He reached out and gave the shepherd’s neck a reassuring squeeze.
“I’m fine. What were we talking—?”
Fedoseev leaned back. “You and your dog joining us.”
Tucker focused his eyes on Fedoseev and on the present. “No, as I said, I’m sorry. I’ve got somewhere to be.”
Though it was a lie, he was ready to move on, needed to move on.
But the question remained: What would he do?
Fedoseev sighed loudly. “Very well! But if you change your mind, you tell me. Tonight, you stay in one of the suites. I send up two steaks. One for you. One for your dog.”
Tucker nodded, stood, and shook Fedoseev’s hand.
For now, that was enough of a plan.
11:56 P.M.
The chirp of his satellite phone instantly woke Tucker in his room.
He scrambled for it, while checking the clock.
Almost midnight.
What now? With nothing on Fedoseev’s schedule for that evening, Tucker and Kane had been given the night off. Had something happened? Yuri had already informed him earlier that the Vladikavkaz Separatist taken into custody had broken and talked, spilling everything.
So Tucker had expected a quiet night.
He checked the incoming number as he picked up the phone: a blocked number. That was seldom good.
Kane sat at the edge of the bed, watching Tucker.
He lifted the phone and pressed the talk button. “Hello?”
A series of squeaks and buzzes suggested the call was being filtered through a series of digital coders.
Finally, the caller spoke. “Captain Wayne, I’m glad I could reach you.”
Tucker relaxed—but not completely. Suspicion rang through him as he recognized the voice. It was Painter Crowe, the director of Sigma Force, and the man who’d tried to recruit Tucker not so long ago after a prior mission. The full extent of Sigma’s involvement in the U.S. intelligence and defense community was still a mystery to him, but one thing he did know: Sigma worked under the aegis of the ultrasecretive DARPA—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Tucker cleared the rasp of sleep
from his voice. “I assume you know what time it is here, Director?”
“I do. My apologies. It’s important.”
“Isn’t it always? What’s going on?”
“I believe your contract with Bogdan Fedoseev is almost up. In two more days, if I’m not mistaken.”
Tucker should have been surprised that the caller had this information, but this was Painter Crowe, who had resources that bordered on the frightening.
“Director, I’m guessing this isn’t a casual call, so why don’t you get to your point?”
“I need a favor. And you’ve got forty-two days still left on your Russian visa.”
“And something tells me you want those days.”
“Only a few. We’ve got a friend I’d like you to meet.”
“I’ve got enough friends. Why is this one so special?”
There was a pause, one that took too long. He understood. While the call was encrypted, Tucker’s room could have been bugged—probably was bugged, knowing the Russians. Any further details would require additional precautions.
He couldn’t say such subterfuge didn’t intrigue him.
He also suspected this lapse in the conversation was a test.
Tucker proved his understanding of the need for privacy by asking another question. “Where?”
“Half a mile from your hotel—a pay phone on the northeast corner of the Grey Horse Apartments.”
“I’ll find it. Give me twenty minutes.”
He was there in eighteen, stamping his feet against the cold. Using a prepaid calling card, Tucker dialed Sigma’s cover trunk line, then waited through another series of encoder tones before Crowe’s voice came on the line.
The director got straight to the point. “I need you to escort a man out of the country.”
The simple sentence was fraught with layers of information. The fact that Crowe didn’t think their friend was capable of accomplishing this feat on his own already told Tucker two things.
One: The man was of high value to Sigma.
Two: Normal travel options were problematic.
In other words, someone didn’t want the man leaving the country.
Tucker knew better than to ask why this target needed to leave Russia. Crowe was a firm believer in the need-to-know policy. But Tucker had another question that he wanted answered.
“Why me?”
“You’re already in-country, have an established cover, and your skill set matches the job.”
“And you have no other assets available.”
“That, too—but it’s a secondary consideration.”
“Just so we’re clear, Director. This is a favor. Nothing more. If you’re trying to court me to join—”
“Not at all. Get our friend out of the country, and you’re done. You’ll make twice your usual retainer. For this mission, I’m assigning you an operations handler. Her name is Ruth Harper.”
“Not you?” This surprised him, and he didn’t like surprises. “Director, you know I don’t play well with others, especially those I’ve never met face-to-face.”
“Harper is good, Tucker. Really knows her stuff. Give her a chance. So will you do it?”
Tucker sighed. While he had little trust in government agencies, Crowe had so far proven himself to be a stand-up guy.
“Give me the details.”
3
March 7, 8:07 A.M.
Siberia, Russia
The door to Tucker’s private berth on the train slid back, and a head bearing a blue cap peeked through.
“Papers, please,” the train porter ordered, tempering his KGB-like request with a friendly smile. The sliver-thin young man could be no more than twenty, his coal-black hair peeking from under his crisp hat. He kept the buttons of his uniform well polished, clearly very proud of his job.
Tucker handed over his passport.
The porter studied it, nodded, and handed it back. The man’s eyes settled nervously on Kane. The shepherd sat upright in the seat opposite Tucker, panting, tongue hanging.
“And your animal?” the porter asked.
“Service animal.”
Tucker handed over Kane’s packet, courtesy of Painter Crowe. The papers certified his furry companion was a working dog, adept at sensing Tucker’s frequent and debilitating epileptic seizures. It was a ruse, of course, but traveling with a seventy-pound military war dog tended to raise unwanted questions.
The porter reviewed the papers and nodded. “Da, I see. My second cousin suffers same sickness.” His gaze returned to Kane, but with more affection and sympathy now. “May I pet him?”
Tucker shrugged. “Sure. He doesn’t bite.”
Not unless I tell him to.
Tentatively, the porter reached out and scratched Kane under the chin. “Good doggy.”
Kane regarded him impassively, tolerating the familiarity.
Tucker resisted the urge to smile.
Satisfied, the porter grinned and returned the documents to Tucker.
“I like him very much,” the young man said.
“I do, too.”
“If there’s anything you need, you ask, da?”
Tucker nodded as the porter exited and slid the door closed.
He settled back, staring at the Russian scenery passing by the window, which mostly consisted of snowy trees and Soviet-bloc-era buildings as the train headed out of Vladivostok. The port city marked one end of this route of the Trans-Siberian Railway; the other was Moscow.
Not that he and Kane were traveling that far.
For reasons Crowe hadn’t explained, Tucker’s target wouldn’t be ready for extraction for a week. So after completing his final two days with Bogdan Fedoseev, Tucker had boarded the famous Trans-Siberian Railway and settled in for the five-day journey to the city of Perm. Once there, he was to meet a contact who would take him to his target, a man named Abram Bukolov.
Tucker still had no idea why the man needed to leave Russia in such a clandestine manner—especially such a high-profile figure. Tucker had recognized his name as soon as Crowe had mentioned it on the phone. Tucker’s previous employer, Bogdan Fedoseev, had had business dealings with this man in the past.
Abram Bukolov was the owner of Horizon Industries and arguably the country’s pharmacological tycoon. A frequent face on magazine covers and television shows, Bukolov was to prescription drugs what Steve Jobs had been to personal computing. In the years following the breakup of the Soviet Union, the pharmaceutical industry in Russia disintegrated into disarray and corruption, from the quality of the drugs themselves to the distribution networks. Thousands were thought to have died from tainted drugs or faulty doses. Through sheer force of will and inherited wealth, Abram Bukolov slowly and steadily bent the system to his benevolent will, becoming the keeper of Russia’s pharmacy.
And now he wanted out, all but abandoning a multibillion-dollar empire he had spent his entire adult life building.
Why?
And what could possibly drive such a man to run so scared?
According to the encrypted dossier sent by Painter Crowe, the only clue lay in Bukolov’s mysterious warning: The Arzamas-16 generals are after me . . .
The man refused to explain more until he was safely out of Russia.
Tucker had studied the rest of the files for this mission over and over again. Bukolov was a well-known eccentric, a personality trait that shone in every interview of him. He was clearly a driven visionary with a zealous passion to match, but had he finally snapped?
And what about these Arzamas-16 generals?
From the research notes included in the dossier, there was once a city named Arzamas-16. During the rule of Joseph Stalin, it was home to the Soviet Union’s first nuclear weapons design center. The U.S. intelligence community simply referred to it as the Russian Los Alamos.
But it was only the first of the many naukograds, or “closed science cities,” that popped up across the Soviet Union, secured by ironclad perimeters. In such places, top-secret p
rojects under the aegis of the best Soviet scientists were conducted. Rumors abounded during the Cold War of biological weapons, mind control drugs, and stealth technology.
But Arzamas-16 no longer existed.
In its place, the region had become home to a couple of nuclear weapons test facilities—but what did anything like that have to do with Abram Bukolov?
And who could these nefarious generals be?
It made no sense.
He glanced over at Kane, who wagged his tail, ready for whatever was to come. Tucker settled back, deciding that was probably the best course of action from here.
Just be ready for anything.
4
March 7, 10:42 A.M.
Moscow, Russia
The large man stepped around his desk and settled into his chair with a creak of leather. He had the call up on his speakerphone. He had no fear of anyone listening. No one dared, especially not here.
“Where is the target now?” he asked. Word had reached his offices that an operative—an American mercenary with a dog—had been assigned to help Dr. Bukolov leave Russian soil.
That must not happen.
“Heading west,” the caller answered in Swedish-accented Russian. “Aboard the Trans-Siberian. We know he is booked through to Perm, but whether that’s his final destination, we don’t know yet.”
“What makes you think it would be otherwise?”
“This one clearly has some training. My instincts tell me he wouldn’t book a ticket straight to his ultimate destination. He’s too clever for that.”
“What name is he traveling under?”
“We’re working on that, too,” the Swede answered, growing testy.
“And where are you now?”
“Driving to Khabarovsk. We tried to board the train at Vladivostok but—”
“He gave you the shake, da?”
“Yes.”
“Let me understand this. A man and a large dog lost you and your team. Did he see you?”
“No. Of that we’re certain. He is simply careful and well trained. What else have you learned about him?”
“Nothing much. I’m making inquiries, trying to track his finances, but it appears he is using a credit card that has been backstopped—sanitized. It suggests he’s either more than he seems to be or has powerful help. Or both. What came of the hotel search in Vladivostok?”
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