“Targeted? By whom? How are we going to get all of these people out of here?”
“We’re not. My orders are to leave immediately. Russian Federation forces have blocked all exits from the city and our observation posts report armored vehicles headed in this direction. The major is convinced that the government knocked out the power,” the lieutenant said.
“Why would they do that?” she demanded.
The lieutenant folded the map and stood up from the table, issuing orders to the rest of the soldiers in the room. His radioman secured the radio and heaved the backpack onto his shoulders, handing him the receiver, which was attached to the radio by a thick elastic wire. The officer issued orders into the handset.
“What’s going on?” she said, grabbing the young radioman.
“Ma’am. We’re evacuating the hospital. The lieutenant is ordering the soldiers to hold the stairwells for two minutes. We’ll all depart through the east stairwell,” he said, pointing to the other side of the room.
“What about the patients?” she said, turning toward the room.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. We need to get out of here before Federation forces arrive,” he said.
“Why? Aren’t you Russian Federation military?” she said.
The lieutenant gave the handset back to the soldier and started walking toward the far stairwell exit while providing her with the answer to her last question.
“Not any more. Our unit was given orders to strip the armory and vacate the city two days ago. As you can see, we didn’t obey that order…we all have families here. They’ll shoot us on sight. They’ve already started to shoot civilians trying to drive north…before they hit the roadblocks.”
“No. This can’t be happening. I can’t just leave these people,” she said.
“The choice to stay is yours, but my men are leaving. We’ll escort anyone who can move during the next two minutes. After that…they’re on their own,” he said and continued walking.
Cherkasov looked around for members of the hospital staff. She could see roughly a dozen men and women in green hospital scrubs engaged in calming the patients. She spent the next minute repeating what the lieutenant had told her, careful not to let any of the patients eavesdrop. Some of the staff were as sick as the patients and opted to stay. About half of them started to edge their way toward the eastern stairwell, torn between duty and personal safety. Once the soldiers disappeared, chaos would descend upon the entire hospital, pitting each of them against their own personal hell. Rape, torture, murder, burning…all at the hands of the deranged populace that was sure to swarm the hospital within minutes.
Valeria Cherkasov stood next to the door with the two soldiers left to guard their retreat down the stairwell. One of the men held a two-way radio to his ear, obviously not willing to take the slightest chance that he might miss the final withdrawal order. The radio chirped and he acknowledged the transmission before locking eyes with her.
“It’s time,” he said.
She glanced into the room one more time and saw one of the older nurses trying to calm a young mother who kept screaming. Her listless child lay with her on the mattress. She froze until the nurse turned her head and nodded, mouthing “go.” Cherkasov found herself shuffling through the doorway and down the stairs. As she passed the metal door to the second floor, she heard gunshots inside. She paused on the landing and the sound of dampened gunshots continued. One of the soldiers prodded her with an elbow.
“Keep moving,” she heard.
“What’s happening in there?” she whispered.
“The right thing to do,” one of the soldiers said.
BLACK OPS
Late April 2007
Chapter 20
11:40 AM
Astana International Airport
Astana, Kazakhstan
Daniel Petrovich rode an escalator down toward the vast lobby area of Astana International Airport. The modern airport completely upended his expectations for Kazakhstan. He had expected a complete shithole and had instead emerged from his Austrian Airlines flight into a structure that could be used for the next Star Trek movie. The newly constructed, glass and steel encased engineering marvel stood in stark contrast to everything he had envisioned about the former Russian satellite country. He glanced up into an immense dome structure that formed the roof of the modernistic lobby. The front of the dome, directly in front of Daniel, held a flat steel girder-supported window that towered several stories high. His first glimpse of the turquoise dome from the window of his sparsely populated flight reminded him that he was indeed landing in a Muslim country.
As he reached the bottom of the escalator, Daniel spotted Andrei sitting on a nearby bench, reading a Russian newspaper. Andrei folded the paper and walked toward him, speaking in Russian. Daniel did the same, hoping his slightly rough Russian wouldn’t be a problem. He had sailed through customs as Dario Russo, using Russian only as a convenience for Kazakhstan customs officials. English or Italian would have been a challenge for them and would have attracted more officials to the customs kiosk. His passport had been stamped through Buenos Aires, which didn’t raise an eyebrow given his cover as an advanced liaison for a South American industrial company looking to partner with a Russian mining company. Kazakhstan welcomed the industry and the money it brought to their doorstep. Glancing around at the space station known as Astana International Airport, he figured they had plenty of money rolling their way.
Andrei was dressed in a warm gray wool jacket that fell below his waist, which gave Daniel some concern that he might be underdressed. His Iberia Airlines flight had been delayed leaving Argentina, which caused him to miss his connection in Spain. By the time he arrived in Vienna, he had no time to make a purchase at the Vienna airport, where he could find some appropriate winter clothing. He would be the last member of the team to arrive in Astana, and he didn’t want to put the operation further behind schedule.
“Good flight, Mr. Russo?”
“Very nice, thank you. Are we ready?”
“The rest of the group is with the SUV outside of Astana. We’re loaded up and ready. It’s going to be a little crowded. We have a guest,” he said.
“I can’t wait to meet him,” Daniel said.
“He’s a little green for this kind of work, but he comes highly recommended from our sponsor.”
“Any way we can ditch him?”
“I doubt it. He’s not that bad,” Andrei said, and Daniel paused before the sliding glass door.
“What’s the temperature like?” Daniel said.
“Cold, and the wind makes it worse. This place is flatter than Siberia. Nothing to block the wind. I have an extra jacket for you in the car. Yuri figured you’d need some wardrobe help.”
“Yuri is such a mother to me. I can’t wait to see him again,” Daniel said, before he stepped through the door into a dusty wind.
Chapter 21
5:59 AM
CIA Headquarters
Langley Virginia
Karl Berg saw Audra Bauer enter the National Clandestine Service Operations Center and check in with the watch officer in the processing area near the entrance. He waited for her at a semi-private computer work station on the opposite side of the room. A dozen additional workstations lined the wall, each situated so that the computer screens faced away from the center of the sizable room. She nodded at him and made her way around the outside of the NSOC. He watched as she passed several floor to ceiling, private cubicles on her left. The room was divided in half by a floor to ceiling, soundproof glass wall, with a translucent glass door in the center.
On the other side of the glass sat a large conference table with black leather chairs, and several workstations organized on the side walls. Three immense flat-screen monitors sat flush against the far wall, surrounding a large wall-mounted projection screen. Nicknamed the “Fish Bowl,” larger scale, compartmentalized CIA operations were monitored from this room. When in use, the “Fish Bowl” went “dark,” and th
ick shades would descend the entire length of the glass wall to keep prying eyes off the CIA’s most secretive operations.
Berg occupied the only cubicle toward the rear of the room, which wasn’t surprising at six in the morning. He could tell that a few of the private cubicles were in use, and judging from his own personal experience using these cubicles, the occupants had probably been sequestered inside for more than twenty-four hours. These cubicles were usually worked in shifts. Luckily, there was an eleven hour time difference between Langley and eastern Kazakhstan, which meant most of the action in Kazakhstan would take place during working hours for Berg. The team would likely arrive at the site within the next four to five hours and be back on the road a few hours after that. If all went well, he could be home in time for dinner.
He ensured that the operations screen on one of the monitors in his cubicle contained all of the active links he had programmed and that the other displayed all of the intelligence feeds he would monitor. The feeds were set to alert him according to the parameters he specified and were further linked to a pager designed to work only in the operations center. He could freely roam the room to grab coffee or use the bathroom.
“Everything good?” she said, standing behind him.
“Yes. They got a late start out of Astana, but they’re on the road. They should be out of the area by sunrise. Everything is patched in and ready to go. Our guy is with the team, and SATCOM is clear. I have a direct line to the UAV control room in Kyrgyzstan. Two lines, actually, and a priority line to the Air Force Command Center responsible for the UAV. Thank you. I just hope we don’t need it. It’s a one-way mission, and I can only imagine that Air Force Special Operations Command wasn’t very happy with the setup,” he said.
“They weren’t, but it helps to be the deputy director of the National Clandestine Service.”
“Apparently it does. They assured me that the UAV could be airborne within thirty minutes of my phone call,” he said.
“Impressive.”
“Unfortunately, it’s a minimum three-hour flight to get the UAV in position to help our team. This won’t be a quick response close air support mission,” he said.
“Like you said, hopefully we won’t need it,” Bauer said.
“I’ll be in here until they’re back on the main highway headed to Astana. I’ve enabled priority search strings on all of our live intercept feeds and I’ll be looking for anything that might indicate a problem for them. We’re focused on Russian side communications and any satellite transmissions leaving the area in the vicinity of Kurchatov.”
“Sounds like you have all the bases covered. Keep me in the loop. I’ll have a lot of explaining to do if we are forced to sacrifice one of the Air Force’s Predator drones.”
“That’s why you get paid the big bucks, Deputy Director Bauer.”
“Thanks.”
“There’s something else I’m keeping an eye on,” Berg said.
“Related to this?”
“I’m not sure, but I have a hunch it’s connected. My analysts came up with a string of Reznikov search parameters, which we inputted into the data analysis system a few days ago. This system looks at everything and puts up flags—”
“I’m aware of how it works, Karl. I haven’t been out of the trenches that long,” she said, shaking her head jokingly.
“My sincerest apologies for suggesting that you might be more of a bureaucrat than a CIA agent,” he said.
“Touché. So what’s up?”
“Reznikov grew up in an industrial city south of Murmansk called Monchegorsk. He was sent to live there after his father and mother died when he was eight. The circumstances surrounding his parents’ death was suspicious according to one of my Russian sources. Anyway, something really strange is going on in Monchegorsk. ELINT is catching all kinds of military and civilian chatter about quarantines and roadblocks. Communications to Monchegorsk are down, and I’m trying to confirm what’s going on, but we don’t have any HUMINT assets on the ground there. Assets in Murmansk and St. Petersburg are on the road as we speak. I expect to confirm the presence of roadblocks within the next few hours. The link to Reznikov is too strong to ignore at this point.”
“I agree. Do you think he’s responsible? Why would he poison the city he knew as a child?”
“Maybe it wasn’t a good childhood. I have no idea, and we don’t even know if Reznikov is still alive. Muslim extremists have a tendency to clean up after themselves. I’d be surprised if he was still alive, but I’m not taking any chances.”
“Good work as usual, Karl. I’ll be in the building until this is over. Let’s hope we can wrap this up cleanly,” she said.
“I’m not counting on it,” he said.
Chapter 22
6:40 PM
Highway A345
South of the Karkaralinsk National Forest
Daniel stared out of the front passenger window of their Toyota Land Cruiser at the rolling hills covered with pine trees. They had travelled over two hundred miles south of Astana along the same highway and had seen very little change in topography, though the grass and bushes had started to green slightly over the past hour. Checking the map, he noted that they were passing through the edges of a national forest, which explained the dense pines. Several miles in the distance he saw a few small mountains, similarly covered with deep green trees.
To his left was a different scene altogether. The highway here served as an informal border between roughly carved, pine strewn hills and a vast steppe that extended hundreds of miles to the Russian border. Low, flattened hills kept him from staring at the empty land to the east, which had served as Russia’s primary nuclear testing ground for over four decades. They would be driving into the heart of this wasteland, which they had been assured by “Dusty” to be utterly unremarkable.
Dusty had unexpectedly joined their team in Astana and had spent most of the ride silently sulking in the third row, wedged uncomfortably between the team’s gear. Assigned to the embassy in Astana as the Economic Development Attaché, he met them upon their arrival in Astana. Karl Berg had insisted that they would need someone familiar with the terrain and local operations, and also presumably to keep them in check. So far he hadn’t proved annoying, and according to Farrington, he had proved to be invaluable dealing with Brown River.
The equipment handover didn’t go smoothly when the contractors tried to pass off badly damaged, previously confiscated rifles to the team. Farrington took one look inside the oversized duffle bag and zipped it back up, telling them that the weapons were not acceptable. He didn’t need to inspect them any further to know that they hadn’t been fired or maintained in a long time. One of the folding stocks had been bent, and he saw no optics devices. He did spot one badly twisted front sighting post. A heated argument ensued, and phone calls were exchanged. He never heard what Dusty said, but their tune instantly changed, though the contempt was still palpable in their mannerisms.
They left Brown River’s compound with five AKS-74 assault rifles, all equipped with the latest optics. One of them had a 4X ACOG (Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight) scope that was handed to Daniel as soon as he arrived with Andrei at the oversized garage that had been provided by Dusty for their preparations. The ACOG scope gave the rifle a long distance sighting advantage over the red dot sights attached to the rest of the rifles. He was the best suited in the group to make use of the sight.
The weapons were stowed in the back, easily accessible by the three men in the wide back seat, but hidden from view in case they were stopped. Each member of the team, except for Dusty, carried a Russian semiautomatic pistol hidden somewhere. They didn’t expect any immediate problems, but didn’t want to take any chances. Reznikov had stirred up a hornet’s nest of Russian activity, and they had all been assured by Berg and Dusty that the Russians didn’t fuck around.
In addition to the weapons, they had various forms of digital recording equipment, night vision gear, biological testing kits and a satellite c
ommunications rig. The satellite rig would transmit everything they found from the site, as soon as they had finished their sweep of the structures. Dusty carried their satellite phone, which would be their emergency contact to Langley in case of trouble. They had been assured the support of an armed UAV drone, but were told that it would not be a quick response asset. The drone was located in Kyrgyzstan, with a three-hour flight time to their area. Dusty reinforced the fact that committing the drone to this flight would necessitate a life or death situation, since the drone would have to fly well past its recovery range to reach them. Daniel wasn’t exactly sure how they could make use of it, but it made him feel a little better to know that it was an option.
“How much further to the turnoff?” Farrington asked.
“About fifty miles. We’ll still have roughly an hour of light when we make the turn. We should be able to make it halfway from the turn to the site before it’s pitch black. The last half will take us at least another hour. The roads are pretty shitty out there in the daytime. At night, fucking brutal. I uploaded satellite maps into our GPS. We should have no trouble navigating to the site. Just slow going,” Dusty said.
Great, another three hours or so of driving, Daniel thought, watching the deep red sun dip closer to the horizon.
Chapter 23
11:38 PM
Foothills of Kurchatov
Republic of Kazakhstan
The site proved to be nearly impossible to find in the dark, and the road conditions turned out to be far worse than Dusty had anticipated. These unexpected factors added two more hours to the trip. Finally, the Land Cruiser slowed in front of a horizontal yellow and black striped pole that served as a makeshift barrier. No sign hung from the pole, but Daniel could see that crudely attached links of thick chain held the pole in place, locked to the side posts with padlocks that shined in the SUV’s headlights. He wasn’t sure why anyone would have bothered with the gate, since you could drive a dump truck around either side of it. Beyond the hastily constructed obstruction, they could see the scarce outline of several buildings roughly a hundred meters away, superimposed against the faint orange glow of Kurchatov’s city lights. He decided to take a closer look at the gate.
Black Flagged Redux Page 16
