by Ty Patterson
The spymaster nodded absently. He watched the glow for another minute and then went to the monitors. Nope. Nothing there. Boris was right. Those fireballs were too far to be captured by the security camera.
‘Send two teams,’ he ordered. ‘Check those out.’
‘Rugov, Ivan, Valery,’ the team leader yelled. ‘You three, take a vehicle and check that out on the left. Andre, Moroz, Antone, you check out the right. Take your weapons. Be prepared for anything. Stay on radio.’
The men grabbed their AK74s, put on their jackets and rushed out of the house. One bunch climbed into a Tahoe and sped towards one flaming ball while the other group drove to the other.
Yefremov went to the window and watched one vehicle come into view and race towards the flames.
‘Can you see the Tahoe?’ he asked Boris who was at the other window.
‘Da.’
‘You,’ The spymaster glowered at the engineers who had come out of their rooms. ‘Go back. There’s nothing to watch here.’
He reached into his pocket and drew out his sat phone when the programmers had shuffled away. He dialed a number and waited while it rang.
‘Ahmed? Da, it’s me. Yes, I know it’s late. Is everything okay there? No need to shout, Ahmed. There’s something strange here and I wanted to check. No one approaching you, no attack? Alright, alright. Go back to sleep.’
‘Nothing at the other center,’ he told Boris who was looking at him inquisitively.
In the distance, something dark moved in front of the flames. The vehicle, returning.
‘Rugov?’ Boris snapped on the radio. ‘What is it?
‘It’s a vehicle. Can’t make out which. It’s very hot. We couldn’t get close.’
‘Fool! Did you check around it?’
‘Da,’ Rugov answered in an injured tone. ‘We circled the debris. Nothing there. No one.’
‘Anything in the sky?’
‘Clouds. The moon. Nothing else.’ Boris stared at the radio in his hand as if wondering if his man was being insolent, when it crackled. ‘Da, Andre, what have you got?’
‘Burning vehicle, like Rugov said. I think it’s a Jeep but my men aren’t sure.’
‘How can two Jeeps fall from the sky?’ Yefremov exploded.
‘I don’t know.’
* * *
Zeb jammed his HK tight against Rugov’s side. Bear, Broker and Meghan had trained their weapons on the two other Russians.
They had lain on the ground, thirty feet away from the explosion, taking cover in slight depressions, knowing that the search party would have temporarily impaired vision by looking at the burning vehicles.
They had stayed still when the ride stopped and three men stepped out, on the opposite side of the Jeep’s remains.
He heard voices, shouts and then the vehicle started, circled the burn and started heading away.
‘Now!’ he whispered in his mic and burst up. He sprinted at the rear of the vehicle. Bear and Broker to his right, Meghan to his left, in the periphery of his vision.
None of the Russians looked back. Neither did they seem to check their rear mirrors, their eyes on the fiery husk.
He neared the rear of the vehicle. One burst of speed to reach the driver’s side door. He heard a startled exclamation and then he was yanking the door open, jamming his Glock against the driver’s head and was half-running, half getting dragged by the ride and then he was inside and saw that Bear was looming through the other door, had punched one of the men and the man in the middle was frozen, his mouth open in shock.
‘DRIVE!’ Zeb commanded. Looked back to see Broker and Meghan climb into the rear seats.
A radio crackled.
The driver looked nervously at Zeb who nodded. ‘You saw nothing but the burning vehicle. One wrong word and you’re dead.’
The Russian licked his lips and clicked on his comms to reply. ‘It’s a vehicle. Can’t make out which. It’s very hot. We couldn’t get close.’
Zeb nodded in approval, jabbed his gun harder to remind the driver who was in charge.
‘We’re good,’ Bwana, in their earpieces, calm, as if it was a ride in the park. Which, to him, it probably was. ‘We’re heading to the house.’
‘From the back,’ Zeb reminded him.
‘Yeah.’
* * *
Yefremov was still at the side window when Boris’s radio squawked and Andre’s voice came on.
‘We’ll check the back and come in through there.’
‘Da,’ the leader replied and went back to watching the glow from his side.
The Russians were highly trained, experienced fighters. They had made one mistake, however. They were all at the windows. No eyes were on their monitors. Which was the distraction Zeb had counted on.
Chapter Ninety-Eight
‘Get close to the front,’ Zeb ordered the Russian, whose name, he had learned was Rugov.
‘You won’t escape alive,’ the man replied defiantly.
Zeb looked at the man in the middle. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Ivan,’ the man replied.
‘Can you drive?’
‘Da.’
‘I’m going to shoot Rugov and throw his body out. Be prepared to take the wheel.’
‘DON’T,’ Rugov shouted. ‘I won’t say anything.’
‘You’d better not.’
‘Approaching from the back,’ Bwana said.
‘On my word,’ Zeb told him.
‘Yeah.’
Rugov brought their ride to the front and stopped fifteen feet from the door. By then, Zeb had climbed into the back and had joined his friends. All of them pointing their HKs at the Russians.
‘Open the door,’ Zeb told Rugov and his companions. ‘One false move, one wrong word and you know what will happen to you. At this distance, we won’t miss. Got it?’ he jabbed his barrel against the driver’s neck.
‘Da.’
The three Russians climbed out and to Zeb appeared to walk normally to the front door.
Rugov pounded his fist on it.
‘That could be a message,’ Meghan warned.
‘Too late to do anything,’ Zeb replied. ‘Be prepared.’
A slat opened. A face peered out. It slid shut and the door swung open.
‘GO!’ Zeb yelled.
Rugov shouted something at the same time. By then, Zeb had slammed into him, sent him falling to the floor.
One round in the driver’s neck. Another burst into Ivan and the third Russian. The door sprang open under the weight of the operatives. Surprised shouts and exclamations from inside.
Zeb inside the door. Bear to his right. Broker and Meghan using them as cover.
Point and shoot. That was the mantra.
One large room. One central desk. Three men in sight. All of them reaching for their weapons.
Trigger pull. Zeb’s HK chattered. One man went down. Another dived to the ground desperately and then jerked and fell back when someone’s rounds punched his back. The other heavies manage to get their guns out but they too went down when Zeb and Bear fired simultaneously.
‘STAY INSIDE!’ Meghan yelled when a door opened and a frightened man looked out. She fired high and the man ducked back.
She darted to the open door and snuck a look. ‘Engineers. Their room,’ she called out. ‘DON’T COME OUT. NOT IF YOU WANT TO LIVE,’ she ordered them and slammed the door shut.
‘Spread out,’ Zeb ordered and moved quickly. Crouching low, hugging the wall, helmet on face, eyes scanning, HK steady.
Movement from below the table!
He threw himself sideways and let loose with his weapon. The roar of HKs increased when Meghan joined him and reduced the man beneath the desk to a quivering mess.
Shouts and a sudden burst of firing from the back.
‘Relax. It’s us.’ Bwana, pleased with himself. ‘Two heavies down.’
Zeb reached a door. Flung it open and ducked out of the way as bullets filled the air.
‘Flashbang!’ he snapped.
Meghan and Broker flung theirs through the open door. They crouched and at the detonation, punched inside, firing at shadows, knowing their friends would have orange markers, visible through their goggles.
‘How many down? Zeb asked, checking the room out. It was the kitchen-diner. Crockery smashed, pots on the floor, two bodies twitching.
‘Eleven on our side.’ Meghan replied.
‘Three here, the dudes in our vehicle,’ Bwana said. ‘They tried to be smart. It doesn’t pay to be smart with Bwana.’ He came through the smoke, Beth, Roger and Chloe lining up beside him.
‘These all on this floor?’ Zeb asked.
‘Yeah. We came through the back which was kind of a store room that opened here. What’s at the front?’
‘Just one large room. Control station’s there.’
Meghan cocked her head at her sister at those words and at Zeb’s nod, they went to the monitors, Chloe accompanying them.
‘Check out the engineers again,’ Zeb told them.
‘Gotcha,’ Beth acknowledged.
‘Ahmed said eighteen,’ Bear scratched his jaw. ‘There should still be four. And where’s Yefremov? Any of the heavies look like him?’
‘Nope,’ Zeb replied. The house was silent, the sound of someone moaning. No other voices. No shouts. ‘Where are the stairs?’
‘Here,’ Beth called from the central room. ‘We’ve secured the engineers. They’re unarmed. We cuffed them in any case, a precaution and have directed them out of the house. They’ll be safer outside. Stairs are behind that,’ she pointed to a door flush in the wall, to the right and behind where the monitors were.
She was standing to one side, Meghan and Chloe on the other, all of them pointing their weapons at the door. ‘I sneaked a peek. Steps going up. Lights.’
‘Larry? Zack?’ Zeb called out.
‘Yeah,’ Burt replied. ‘We’re about fifty feet away, behind the house.’
‘Can you control the dogs from there?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Let them loose.’
Chapter Ninety-Nine
Sidor Yefremov had realized what was happening the moment Rugov had shouted from the front.
Those vehicles, it flashed through his mind, those are a sideshow.
He lunged through the door to the stairs. ‘KEEP THEM AT BAY,’ he yelled at Boris and slammed it behind him. He didn’t see the Russian fall in the first hail of bullets. Nor did he see the destruction wreaked by the operatives.
He was punching the code, scanning his thumb and eyes at the door that was next to the stairs, and then he was stumbling down, breathing in relief as the panic door shut above him.
He hurried to his desk, breathing heavily. Dread coiling in him as he watched the screens, saw how easily the intruders were taking out his men.
His men were hand-picked. They had combat experience in Afghanistan and Iraq in the Russian army before they had turned private contractors and Yefremov had recruited them.
But these arrivals took them out quickly and cleanly. Less than a minute had passed since the front door had been breached and already his men on the ground floor were down. The remaining had fled to the higher floors.
That’s good, Yefremov thought. They have the higher ground. They can attack whoever is coming up and as long as they’re there, these Americans will not be safe.
Americans. Carter and his team. Who else would it be? The audacious distraction was his hallmark. Yefremov cursed himself for not connecting the burning vehicles to the man.
He turned the volume up but couldn’t hear any conversation. Earpieces and throat mics, he figured. He noted the way they held their weapons with practiced ease, how one covered the other. None of them bunched together. Not like my men who stood at the windows, an easy target for them, he swore savagely.
But what were they waiting for? Why didn’t they go up the stairs?
Wait! What was that through the kitchen?
He sat up straight, frowning as shapes materialized through the clearing smoke. Dogs? Carter brought dogs?
But these behaved differently from the animals he knew. These were very disciplined. No barking. No checking out the house, no sniffing. And their eyes. There was something strange about them. And as they raced up the stairs, Yefremov knew what was different about them.
They were robots!
He slammed his fist on the desk in anger. Wiped the sweat on his forehead and brought out his sat phone. He hadn’t lost. Nope. No one could touch him in the panic room and he had an ace up his sleeve.
‘Vasily,’ he said when a voice came on. It was alert, even though the late hour. ‘You and your men are in Boulder City? Great. Leave now for the power plant. We are under attack. No, I am sure they will be here for some time. You can attack them from behind. But you’ve got to leave immediately.’
Carter wouldn’t escape the rear-guard action.
Chapter One Hundred
Zeb, Bear and Bwana at the base of the stairs. Watching as twenty-four robots raced up the stairs. Burt and Pilgrim calling out what their cameras saw.
‘A landing on the second floor. Three rooms. First one’s empty. Second one isn’t. Two shooters-’
A burst of firing reached them. Shouts in Russian.
‘Third room?’
‘Wait up…yeah. Empty. All rooms are empty, bathrooms too. Should we attack?’ Burt asked.
‘Nope,’ Zeb was off, climbing lightly, Bear and Bwana at the rear. He dove on the landing, slithered on the floor and fired wildly in the room, deliberately aiming high and wide. Warning shots, not kill shots.
‘DROP YOUR GUNS!’ he yelled.
The Russians, cowering against the wall, fired at him in response. A short-lived fight, since Zeb returned fire and his friends joined and the two men fell to the floor in seconds.
‘Next floor,’ Zeb ordered and the dogs reacted in a second. They flashed past him and ran up the steps.
‘Cameras,’ Bear nodded at the ceiling. Zeb looked up and saw a white CCTV camera on the ceiling, its dark lens watching him.
‘Meg?’ he spoke in his mic.
‘Yeah?’
‘Have you hacked into the security system?’
‘Working on it.’
‘There are cameras everywhere. Yefremov’s got to be somewhere, watching us.’
‘I know.’
Was Ahmed’s intel wrong? Zeb wondered. Was the Russian spymaster here at all?
He shook his head and focused on the mission at hand when Pilgrim broke into his thoughts.
‘Same three-room formation. One to the right of the landing, one straight ahead and one to the left. One gunman in the room to the right. He isn’t Yefremov. He’s removing –’
A loud explosion filled the house. Windows rattled.
‘Grenade,’ Burt said, his voice shaken. ‘He’s taken out four dogs. He’s removing one more.’
‘On it,’ Zeb rushed the stairs, timing his steps, knowing that the Russian could hear his approach.
He launched in the air when he reached the landing, almost hugging the carpet, a burst of rounds ripping the air above him. He threw himself into the room in front of him, his HK stretched out, its barrel poking into the door to the right, trigger firmly pulled back, a long burst that swept into the room, wild shots, but it was vital to keep the hostile from detonating his grenade.
Zeb fell just as two sharp cracks sounded. Bwana, who was prone on the floor, his head peering around the door jamb.
‘He’s down,’ Pilgrim said, something like awe in his voice.
‘Where’s Yefremov?’ Zeb asked when they had inspected the men on the upper floors, none of them alive.
‘You’ve got to watch this,’ Beth said, laconic. ‘Come down.’
Chapter One Hundred One
Zeb stilled when he joined Meghan and Beth and peered at their screens over their shoulders. He removed his helmet and goggles and slicked back his sweat sodden hair.
Y
efremov, on a screen. The Russian was relaxed, leaning back in a leather chair. A glass of what looked like whiskey in his hand. The man raised it in a silent toast.
‘Carter,’ his voice loud and clear through the speakers at the base of the monitors. ‘Welcome to Nevada Evergreen.’ His smile widened but his eyes remained dark, watchful. ‘Not that we generate any power.’
Where is he? Zeb scribbled on a sheet of paper.
Somewhere beneath the house, Meghan wrote back
Can he listen to us?
We assume so. We haven’t fully checked out the system.
‘I’m in the panic room.,’ Yefremov spoke, ‘in case you’re wondering where I’m hiding. I can see and hear everything that you do.’
‘Impressive work,’ the Russian said, taking another sip of his alcohol. ‘My men were some of the best Russian fighters.’
‘They weren’t that good, were they?’ Bwana rumbled.
‘No, but even you would have been distracted if we played that trick on you. Great idea, by the way.’
Why is he so calm? Is this house wired to blow?
Get dogs to sniff for explosives, he wrote for Bwana’s benefit who nodded and went out of the house.
‘Why don’t you join us?’ Zeb asked.
‘No thanks,’ Yefremov replied. ‘I have several inches of titanium door, reinforced walls, fresh air circulation…I can stay here for weeks. I’ve no intention of getting shot by you.’
‘We won’t shoot you. We didn’t kill Ahmed. He’s alive.’
The spymaster froze. His mouth worked soundlessly.
‘Yeah, those calls you made to him?’ Zeb continued. ‘He has babysitters. They were listening, watching, and would have cut him off if he said anything wrong.’
‘You think you’re so smart,’ Yefremov snarled. ‘It’s not-’
‘It is,’ Zeb insisted. ‘We know everything. Your plan. The G20 Summit. The attack tomorrow in DC. Yes,’ he said when the spymaster’s hand trembled and his alcohol sloshed to the desk. ‘We know that too. Your engineers are captured. We’ll shut down their program soon. Come out. Surrender. You’ll get a fair trial.’
