But how far? Who might have heard?
Tucker took a moment to double-check Kane for injuries. Finding none, he gave the shepherd a quick neck ruffle, then pointed in the direction the man had come.
“QUIET SCOUT.”
He had to know if reinforcements were on their way.
As Kane moved off, he pocketed the Makarov, stripped off the man’s camouflage suit, and stuffed it into his own pack. Though pressed for time, he spent a minute hand-shoveling snow over the corpse. The grave wouldn’t stand close scrutiny, but it might buy him precious seconds.
Finally, Tucker retrieved his rifle and moved deeper into the trees, where he found a tangle of fallen logs. If necessary, it would serve as a good sniper’s roost.
He checked Kane’s camera, but all seemed quiet out there. Satisfied for the moment, he radioed to his partner.
“RETURN.”
Thirty seconds later, Kane crouched next to him, panting.
“Good work, pal.”
Kane licked Tucker’s cheek.
Using the momentary lull, Tucker pulled on the camouflage suit.
“Now we wait.”
4:39 P.M.
After several long minutes, the snap of branches alerted Tucker. Someone was approaching from his eight o’clock position. As he listened, the plod of footsteps grew louder, distinctly different from the soldier’s cautious approach.
Not Spetsnaz.
A moment later, Dimitry appeared, lumbering through the forest.
Still, Tucker stayed hidden, waiting, suspicion ringing through him.
When Dimitry was ten feet away, seemingly alone, Tucker called out to him.
“Stop!”
Dimitry jumped, genuinely startled. He lifted both arms, showing empty hands. “Is that you, my friend?”
Tucker kept hidden. “You’re making a lot of noise.”
“Intentionally,” Dimitry replied with a half smile. “I didn’t feel like getting shot, da? I heard the gunfire.”
“We had a visitor,” Tucker admitted, relaxing somewhat. “Spetsnaz.”
“Is he—?”
“Dead. Dimitry, did you turn us in?”
“Nyet. But you are smart to ask. I swear I have told no one about you.”
“And Fedor?”
The old man shook his head. “He has his flaws, but he has never betrayed me or a customer. Besides, you must trust someone or you’ll never get out of here.”
Tucker both believed him and knew he was right. Even Kane wagged his tail, wanting to greet Dimitry. He finally stood up out of his blind.
Dimitry joined him, eyeing his winter suit. “New clothes, I see.”
“Someone no longer needed them.” Tucker pointed toward the air base. “Is Fedor ready to fly? Matters are getting a little tense out here.”
“I think so. When I called him, he had just finished making some adjustments to the plane’s propeller. Fine-tuning, he called it.”
Tucker smiled, remembering the crude hammering. “I saw.”
Together, they headed past the cabin and across the air base. Dimitry took him along a circuitous path that mostly kept them hidden, working their way toward the hangar.
“I am glad you are safe,” Dimitry said. “At the church, when I left you in that tunnel—”
“What exactly is that tunnel?” Tucker interrupted, remembering the fresh boards shoring it up.
“I found it by accident one morning. I felt a strange draft coming up from the floor and started prying up boards.”
“And you’ve been maintaining it?” he asked.
The suspicion must have been plain in his voice.
Dimitry smiled. “Myself and Fedor. I told you he was a smuggler.”
Tucker raised an eyebrow toward the town’s old bishop, suddenly remembering how deferential everyone in the bar had been toward Dimitry, more than could be explained by religious affection.
“Okay, perhaps Fedor has a partner,” Dimitry admitted. “It is hard to maintain my flock on faith alone. But, mind you, we don’t smuggle anything dangerous. Mostly medicine and food, especially during winter. Many children get sick, you understand.”
Tucker could not find any fault in such an enterprise. “It’s a good thing you’re doing.”
Dimitry spread his hands. “Out here, you do what you can for your neighbor. It is how we survive, how we make a community.” He pointed ahead. “There is Fedor’s hangar. I will check first. Make sure it is clear, da?”
With Kane at his knee, Tucker waited while Dimitry went ahead. He returned two minutes later and gestured for them to follow.
“All is good.”
Dimitry led them through the main hangar doors. Lit by a lone klieg light, a single-engine prop plane filled the small space. Tucker couldn’t make out the model, but like everything else at the air base, the craft seemed a hodgepodge of bits and pieces. But at least the propeller was in place.
He found Fedor kneeling beside a red toolbox on the floor.
Before they could reach him, Kane let out a low growl. The shepherd still stood by the door, staring out.
Tucker hurried to the shepherd’s side, careful not to show himself. He drew Kane back by his collar. Across the base, a pair of headlights passed through the main gate, turned, and headed in their direction. It was clearly a military vehicle.
He drew his pistol and crossed to Fedor. He raised the gun and aimed it at the man’s forehead. “We’ve got visitors. No matter what else happens, you’ll be the first one to go.”
Fedor’s eyes got huge, and he sputtered first in Russian, then English. “I tell no one! No one!” He stood up—slowly, his palms toward Tucker. “Come, come! Follow. I show where to hide.”
Tucker weighed his options as the grumble of a diesel engine grew louder. He remembered Dimitry’s earlier words: you must trust someone or you’ll never get out of here.
With no choice but to heed that wisdom, Tucker pocketed his weapon. “Show me.”
Fedor hurried toward the rear of the hangar, towing everyone with him.
The big man led them to a giant orange storage tank, streaked with rust, that sat on a set of deflated rubber tires. A hose lay curled next to it. Tucker recognized an old fuel bowser used to fill the tanks of planes.
Fedor pointed to a ladder on one side. “Up! Through hatch on top.”
Having already cast his dice, Tucker stepped to the ladder and crouched down. He turned to Kane and tapped his shoulder. “UP.”
Backing a step, then leaping, Kane mounted Tucker’s shoulder in a half-fireman carry. Together, they scaled the ladder and crawled across the bowser’s roof to the hatch.
Fedor headed toward the hangar door, leaving behind a warning. “Quiet. I come back.”
Hurrying, Tucker spun the hatch, tugged it open, and poked his head inside. The interior seemed dry.
At least, I won’t be standing hip-deep in gasoline.
He pointed down and Kane dove through the hatch, landing quietly. Tucker followed, not as deftly, having to struggle to pull the hatch closed, too. His boots hit the bottom of the empty tank with a clang. He cringed, going still, but the rumbling arrival of the military vehicle covered the noise.
In complete darkness, Tucker drew his gun, his nose and eyes already stinging from fuel residue. But he also smelled bananas, which made no sense. He shifted to a better vantage, but his foot hit something that sounded wooden.
What the hell . . . ?
He freed his tiny penlight and flicked it on. Panning the narrow beam, he discovered the back half of the bowser’s tank was stacked with crates and boxes, some marked in Cyrillic, others in various languages. He spotted one box bearing a large red cross. Medical supplies. On top of it rested a thick bunch of bananas.
Here was more of Dimitry and Fedor’s smuggling operation.
It seemed he was now part of the cargo.
From outside, he heard muffled Russian voices moving around the hangar—then they approached closer. He clicked off his pe
nlight and gripped the pistol with both hands. It sounded like an argument was under way. He recognized Fedor’s tone, which sounded heated, as if in the thick of a furious negotiation. Then the conversation moved away again and became indiscernible.
After another ten minutes, an engine started, rumbling loudly, wheels squelched on wet tarmac, and the sounds quickly receded. Seconds later, feet clomped up the ladder, and the hatch opened.
Tucker pointed his pistol up.
Fedor scolded, “No shoot, please. Safe now.”
Tucker called out, “Dimitry?”
“They are all gone, my friend!”
Fedor groaned. “Da, da. As I say, safe.”
Tucker climbed up, poked his head out, and looked around. Once confident the hangar was clear, he dropped back down, collected Kane, and climbed out.
“Price higher now,” Fedor announced.
Dimitry explained, “They were looking for you, but mostly they learned about our operations here. Not unusual. Every village in Siberia has such a black-market system. So people talk. The soldiers came mostly to collect what could be most kindly described as a tax.”
He understood. The roving soldiers weren’t above a little extortion.
“Cost me best case of vodka,” Fedor said, placing a fist over his heart, deeply wounded.
“We told them that we were about to leave on a postal run,” Dimitry explained. “After collecting the tax, there should be no problem getting through. Even soldiers know the mail must flow. Or their vodka here might dry up.”
Tucker understood. “ ‘Neither snow, nor rain, nor dark of night . . .’ ”
Fedor looked quizzically at him. “Is that poem? You write it?”
“Never mind. How much more do I owe you?”
Fedor gave it much thought. “Two thousand rubles. You pay, da?”
“I’ll pay.”
Fedor clapped his hands together. “Happy! Time to go. Put dog in plane. Then you push plane out, I steer. Hurry, hurry!”
Tucker rushed to comply.
Not exactly first-class service, but he wasn’t complaining.
12
March 11, 11:15 A.M.
Novosibirsk, Siberia
“And how confident are you of Dimitry and Fedor?” Ruth Harper asked.
Tucker stood at a pay phone next to an open-air fish market. The pungent smell of sturgeon, perch, and smelt hung heavily in the cold air. He had spent the previous ten minutes bringing Harper up to speed. He was surprised how happy he was to hear that southern lilt to her voice.
If not Tennessee, then maybe—
“Do you trust those Russians?” she pressed.
“I wouldn’t be making this call if either of them had ratted me out. Plus, I’ve been strolling the snowy streets of Novosibirsk for the past two hours. I’m clean. And it’s still another twelve hundred miles to Perm. If I pick up a tail, I’ll have plenty of time to shake it loose.”
“Still, you’re cutting the rendezvous close.”
“Bukolov will keep. If they—whoever they are—had any idea where he was, they wouldn’t be after me. Which reminds me, any further word about the source of that leak?”
“No luck, yet. But from the story you just told me—one involving GRU and Spetsnaz—we know the enemy has powerful connections in either the Russian government or military. I’m looking hard at the Ministry of Defense, or maybe someone at a cabinet level of the government.”
“Maybe you’d better be looking at both.”
“A scary proposition. Do you want help out there?”
Tucker considered it for a long moment. “For now, no. We’ve got enough players in the field. Makes it confusing enough.”
Plus he liked working alone—well, not quite alone.
He gave Kane, seated at his knee, a reassuring pat.
“If I change my mind, Harper, I’ll let you know.”
“Do that. As it happens, I’ve got nobody to give you right now.”
“Busy on the home front?”
“Always. World’s a dangerous place. At least Sigma can offer you some logistical support. Do you have a wish list for me?”
Tucker did. After reciting the provisions he needed, he signed off. He would find all he asked for once he reached the city of Perm, secured and cached in a safe house.
But first he had to get there.
Harper had arranged clean papers and seemed confident that Russian immigration and customs did not have him on any watch list, making it safe for him to fly. Furthermore, Sigma’s intelligence team had arranged another level of countermeasures, booking false tickets, hotel rooms, and car rentals. He was everywhere and nowhere.
Still, whether it was his inherent wariness of all things governmental or simply a tactical change of mind, Tucker called a local car rental agency after hanging up with Harper and booked an SUV for a one-way trip to Omskaya, some four hundred miles to the west. He had no reason to distrust Sigma, but there was no mistaking the reality of his current situation. He and Kane were out here alone, without any hope of reinforcements.
Harper had tasked him with getting Abram Bukolov safely out of Russia and to the United States. How exactly he accomplished that was his decision.
And he preferred it that way.
With Kane on a leash, he walked the mile to the rental car office and picked up the vehicle, a Range Rover of questionable age, but the engine purred and the heater worked.
Tucker took it and left Novosibirsk at midday, heading west down the highway to Omskaya. Three hours later, he pulled off the highway and drove six miles north to his true destination, Kuybyshev.
It never hurt to employ his own countermeasures.
Following the pictograph signs, he pulled into the local airport. Using a map and a smattering of Russian, he booked a flight to Perm.
Sixteen hours after he left Novosibirsk, his flight touched down at Perm’s Bolshoye Savino Airport. He waited in cargo claim for Kane to emerge from the belly of the plane, then another hour for immigration to clear them both.
Minutes later, he and Kane were in another rental vehicle—this one a Volvo—and headed into the city proper.
From the car, he called Sigma for an update.
“Still no blips on immigration or customs,” Harper informed him. “If they’re still actively hunting you, they’re not doing it that way.”
Or they’re giving me enough time to get to Bukolov before snapping shut the trap.
“Is this safe house I’m heading to manned?” he asked, intending to collect the provisions he had requested without delay.
“It won’t be. It’s an apartment. Call the number I gave you, let it ring three times, then again twice, then wait ten minutes. The door will be unlocked. Five minutes inside, no more.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Simplicity works, Tucker, and this is a lot simpler than meeting someone on a park bench with a flower in your lapel and your shoelace untied.”
Tucker realized this made sense. In fact, one of the acronyms soldiers lived by was KISS—Keep It Simple, Stupid.
“Fair enough,” Tucker said, but he gave voice to another troubling matter. “It’s South Carolina, isn’t it?”
“Pardon?”
“Your accent.”
She sighed heavily, giving him his answer.
Wrong.
“Tucker, the details for your meeting tonight will also be in the safe house.”
“And my contact?”
“His name and description are included in the dossier you’ll find there. He’s hard to miss.”
“I’ll call you after it’s done.”
“Keep out of trouble,” she said.
“Are you talking about both of us, or just Kane?”
“Kane would be much harder to replace.”
Tucker glanced to his partner. “Can’t argue with that,” he said and signed off.
Now came the hard part—grabbing Abram Bukolov without getting caught.
13
&
nbsp; March 12, 8:55 A.M.
Perm, Russia
His visit to the safe house was thankfully anticlimactic. He left with four new passports—two for him and two for Bukolov—along with a roll of cash, a pair of credit cards, a second satellite phone, and the location of his meeting with Sigma’s contact, the one who was supposed to lead Tucker to Bukolov.
This mysterious contact was also high on his list of suspects as the source of the intelligence leak that almost got him killed. The man’s dossier rested on the seat next to him. He planned on studying it in great detail.
Next, Tucker took advantage of a list of local suppliers left at the safe house. He traveled to a bakery whose basement doubled as an armory. The baker asked no questions but simply waited for Tucker to make his weapon selections from a floor-to-ceiling pegboard. He then wrote down the price on a piece of paper, which he handed to Tucker with a gravelly, “No negotiate.”
The next supplier, the owner of a car lot, was equally taciturn and effective. Through Harper, Tucker had preordered a black Marussia F2 SUV. Of Russian manufacture, it had a front end that only a mother could love, but it was a brute of a vehicle, often modified for use by first responders or as a mobile command center.
After paying, Tucker told the owner where to leave the vehicle—and when.
With six hours still to spare before he was supposed to meet with his contact, Tucker proceeded to the neighborhood in question: the Leninsky District on the northern side of the Kama River. Once there, he parked the Volvo and began walking. In between scouting locations and routes, he was able to relax and take in the sights.
Straddling the banks of the Kama and within the shadow of the snow-topped Ural Mountains, Perm was home to a million people. While the city had its share of Soviet-gray architecture, the older Leninsky District continued to maintain its original European charm. It was a cozy neighborhood of tree-lined streets and secluded garden courtyards, spattered with small cafés, butchers, and bakeries. To top it off, the sun shone in a cloudless blue sky, a rare sight of late.
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