by Sean McFate
Holy hell, I thought. But being an old soldier, so did I. Pulling a weapon would be suicide because I had nowhere to run. Better to get some shut-eye. Rest was the only preparation for an imminent fight, for those strong enough to sleep before battle.
I awoke to Tye shaking me.
“Wake up. It’s time,” he said. The rest of the team was donning parachutes and doing functions checks on weapons. I checked the time: 0146.
“Here, for you,” said Tye, pushing a parachute into my chest. I starred at it. Was this Lava’s weapon of choice? If he wanted me gone, a malfunctioning chute at thirty thousand feet would be a clean erase.
“Who packed it?” I said involuntarily.
“I did,” said Tye with his smirk. “Put it on.”
I yanked it from him and inspected it. I was a former HALO jumpmaster with 221 jumps and a static line jumpmaster with 144 jumps. However, there’s only so much you can tell about a packed chute. You only know if it works when it opens, or doesn’t.
“Hey, soldier,” said Lava, witnessing my doubt. “Take mine.” He took my chute and shoved his into my hands.
“No, it’s fine, Lava. I’m good to go with that chute.”
“No, take it. I insist,” he said with faux politeness as he strapped on my chute. I stared at my new parachute.
“No time, Locke. We’re over the DZ in four mikes. Chute up!” cried Tye, referring to the drop zone.
Everyone was ready to go, except me. Whatever was about to happen, I knew the aircraft’s tailgate would soon open and we would all tumble out, with or without a parachute. I quickly strapped it on and adjusted my combat load. My oxygen bottle pressure and flow were good, and I could breathe.
“Omega, this is Valhalla. Radio check, over,” said Lava over the command net. Apollo’s tactical command in northern Virginia was call sign “Omega” and Lava was “Valhalla.”
“Valhalla, this is Omega. Lima charlie. Warno: possible two bogies and hot DZ,” came a voice over my earpiece. Translation: We read you loud and clear, but there may be two enemy aircraft and ground enemy on the drop zone.
“Roger,” replied Lava, and turned to face us. “Sound off.”
“One OK,” said the first guy.
“Two OK,” said the second.
“Three OK.”
When it got to me, I said, “Twelve OK.”
“All OK,” said Lava. The interior lights switched from white to red, and my night vision adjusted instantly. Through my heads-up display, or HUD, I could see the identities of each team member in green, as well as their vitals, and what was behind me. Tye.
“Get ready!” said Lava. The aircraft’s tailgate lowered, and we felt the blast of freezing air rip through us. Below, the terrain was unmistakable.
Manhattan! I thought. What the hell were we doing thirty-five thousand feet over New York City? Probably imitating the flight path of a commercial airliner as cover for action.
A long minute passed as we stood ready. The jump light was still red. Should I jump or not? Lava and Tye could have given me a dud parachute deliberately. I had worked for Brad Winters too long and mysteriously showed up in the middle of Apollo’s civil war, and that was reason enough.
“Five, four, three,” counted the pilot through our ear pieces.
I can’t risk it, I thought. I can’t jump.
“Two.”
Do not budge! I grabbed a strap dangling from the ceiling and planted my feet.
“One.”
The light above the tailgate went from red to green.
“Go! Go! Go!” shouted Lava. The twelve-man team pushed forward as a unit. I held on to the strap, but Tye plowed into me, rugby style, and knocked me off my feet. We all rolled off the tailgate as a scrum, and dropped into the sky.
Chapter 15
Lin sat on her bar stool wearing a slinky black dress and tried to look interested in what he was saying. It was difficult. The big man on the stool next to her looked like a washed-up boxer who drank too much beer. Or, in his case, vodka.
“You know what Stalin once said during a speech?” said the man, in drunken Russian. He went by Dmitri, which was undoubtedly not his real name.
“No, what?” Lin replied in fluent Russian.
The man feigned seriousness, waving his fists as if he were Stalin. “‘I am prepared to give my blood for the cause of the working class, drop by drop.’”
She made herself chuckle. He continued.
“Then someone passed a note up to the podium, and do you know what it said?”
“No,” she said.
“‘Dear Comrade Stalin, why drag things out? Give it all now.’” He let out a huge snort-laugh, smacking the bar with a hairy hand.
“Oh, that’s funny!” she lied, as he ordered more shots of rail vodka.
The Baltimore dive bar’s dim lighting and few patrons made it an ideal place to meet an informant. Actually, she had never met Dmitri before, but he came highly recommended from one of her old FBI informants in Brooklyn. Dmitri helped manage Russian mob transactions at the Port of Baltimore and was networked into the bratva, even though he wasn’t a mobster himself. She also learned Dmitri was her Brooklyn informant’s cousin.
“How is your cousin doing?” she asked, sipping her shot as he downed his.
“Vasily? He’s a cocksucker, but you already knew that!” he said, laughing hard. “Vasily told me you were luscious, and he was right.” Dmitri placed his hand on her inner thigh and slid it upward. She swatted it away and crossed her legs. They had been at this for half an hour: her asking questions, and him laying his paws on her.
“Vasily said you knew of a ship that came from Europe to Newark about a week or two ago. He said it was registered in Liberia and had a Russian crew. True owner unknown,” she said nonchalantly, and then looked up at him with an inviting gaze. “Vasily said you could help me.”
“Did he, now?” Dimitri laughed and downed another vodka. “Ships like that show up every day in Newark.”
“Yes, but this one is special.”
“How so?” asked Dimitri, flagging the bartender for another round.
What Lin said next wasn’t strictly true. “Vasily told me it was hauling contraband. People, drugs, or . . .” She stopped midsentence and hoped he would finish it. She learned this technique in the FBI’s interrogation course. People abhor silence in friendly conversations and will fill it, sometimes with the truth. But all Dmitri did was belch.
“Vasily said you were a connected man. I’m disappointed,” she continued, with firmness in her voice. You know something. If I can’t trick it out of you, then I’ll shame it out. Or worse.
“Vasily is an asshole,” he said, laughing and gulping another vodka.
“So, you’re not a man in the know?” she said in a silkier tone. “Not a man worth knowing?”
He smiled, and gave her a refilled shot glass, which she downed. “I am a man worth knowing.”
“I thought so, and I look forward to knowing you. For a long time. Tell me what I want to know.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe what?”
“Maybe I know something, maybe I don’t.”
“Maybe you tell me?” she said, leaning forward with a coy smile.
He eyed her chest and then her face, gauging her smile. “Maybe I do know a little something about that ship.”
“Like what, Dmitri?” she coaxed, her index finger slowly tracing the rim of his empty shot glass. He watched her finger and swallowed.
“Something about a container ship that came into Newark, not long ago,” he said in a low voice.
“What made the container ship so special?”
“How about I tell you at my place? It’s close.”
“How about you tell me now?”
“Nothing is free,” he said.
“Tell me first. And then we go to your place.”
They stared at each other, a standoff of sorts. Finally, he looked away. “I have to take a piss,” he said, sli
ding off the bar stool. “Don’t go anywhere, little lady.”
She watched him lumber off to find the men’s room. He was heavy but moved like a man who could handle himself.
He knows something and I’m running out of time, she thought. Over the past two days, she had called in every favor, reached out to every contact, and broken almost every FBI rule to find out how the Russians killed the vice president—if they had—and what their next move would be. Drunk Dmitri was her last lead.
Frustrated, she checked the time. It was almost midnight. Crap, she thought. The bar shut down in minutes, and then she would have to go to his place to continue the conversation. Lin frowned at the thought. Better to get it over with now.
Her phone buzzed with yet another text message from Jason, still at FBI headquarters despite the late hour. “where r u?!” it read. There were dozens more like it. “boss asking 4 u”; “can’t cover you much longer”; “get in here!!!”; “call me!!!!!!” She ignored them all.
Lin sighed and put the phone away in her purse, nestling it beside her Glock 19M. She hated her desk job, and it wasn’t why she joined the Bureau. Jason was the only one who took her seriously, and that was only because he had a crush on her. But tonight wasn’t proving any better. She didn’t relish the idea of more cheap vodka, Dmitri’s terrible jokes, and his hands ambushing places they ought not go. Especially on his couch. Yet her only hope of walking into the Hoover Building again, without being fired, was showing up with a tangible lead. And Dmitri was her last chance.
She was getting desperate.
“It’s for a good cause,” Lin reassured herself, kicking off her stilettos and slipping on flats from her purse. Then she bent over so that her long black hair touched the floor, and then wrangled it into a ponytail. She hated it when hair got in the way.
“Want anything, miss?” asked the bartender. “Last call.”
“No. I’ll be back in a jiffy,” she said, walking toward the men’s room, clutching her purse. The bathrooms were down narrow stairs, in the basement, which smelled of bleach. She tried not to touch the walls. The basement corridor was even dimmer than the bar—the management wouldn’t splurge for a few light bulbs. The only sounds were the steady thump of eighties rock music above and the flushing of toilets. An old pay phone was at the end of the hallway, its handset torn off long ago. Vintage rock concert posters behind Plexiglas were drilled into the walls.
Lin cracked the door to the men’s room and peered inside. It was small and disgusting. Two urinals, two stalls, sinks. Another man was rinsing his hands and wiped them on his jeans. She closed the door and stood in front of the lady’s room, as if she were waiting in line to enter. The guy with wet pants exited and brushed past her, taking no notice.
Dmitri is alone, she thought. I’ll surprise him. She opened the men’s room door again and slipped in, bolting it behind her. Dmitri was in a stall. Perfect, she thought, putting her purse down on a sink and straightening out her short cocktail dress, adjusting its spaghetti straps in the mirror. The toilet flushed. Moments later he emerged, and Lin stood before him. Her sleek body and long legs startled him as he took her in. She smiled, and he smiled back.
“I agree,” he said, undoing his belt buckle and then his fly. “Let’s fuck right here. Why waste time?”
“Yes. Why waste time?” She delivered a perfect side kick to his solar plexus, sending the 240-pound man through the bathroom stall and onto the toilet seat. Dmitri sputtered on the grimy floor, gasping for air. His face was red and eyes bulged out; her strike paralyzed his diaphragm, starving his body of oxygen. Lin waited for him to recover, arms crossed.
“Tell me what I want to know!” yelled Lin. “What’s the name of that ship?”
“You bitch!” he growled, lunging for her.
Using an aikido move, she sidestepped out of his path, grabbed his wrist and nape of the neck, and aimed him for a sink. His head connected with enameled steel, producing a sickening thud, and Dmitri ricocheted onto the floor, dazed.
“What’s the name of the ship?”
Dmitri lay motionless, as if dead.
Crap, Lin thought. Not again.
Then he began writhing around on the floor, holding his concussed head and gasping for air again.
“When was it in Newark?” she continued. “Who in the mob handled it? Tell me what I want to know!” She grabbed his wrist and twisted it backward and up, causing him to scream.
“Enough! Enough!” he pleaded, holding up the other hand in surrender.
“Then tell me what I need to know,” commanded Lin. In her experience, informants always broke under pressure. They were the weakest animals in the criminal jungle, and that was what made them squeal. The trick was knowing how to apply pressure, and Lin preferred joint locks. Unfortunately for her, the FBI disagreed.
“A sh-sh-ship called Lena,” he said, stuttering from the concussion, and rubbing his head. “A container ship. It did two trips from Novorossiysk to Newark.”
“Wait, what? Novorossiysk?” said Lin in disbelief and struggling to roll the name off her tongue. It sounded like novo-roh-SEEEESK. “You mean Antwerp, right? Antwerp.”
“Antwerp?!” Now Dmitri looked surprised. “No! I thought you were talking about the Lena out of Novorossiysk.”
“Where the crap is that?”
Dmitri looked like a kid who had accidentally told burglars where the family safe was. The bratva would kill him if they found out.
Lin looked sympathetic. “Don’t worry, Dmitri. Just tell me about the ship and no one has to know my source. I won’t even tell the FBI.” A promise she would try to keep. Try.
“Novorossiysk is a Black Sea port, and where Lena originated.”
“When?”
“Ten days ago. Six months ago.”
“And what did the Lena deliver?”
Dmitri shook his head and looked down. “I don’t know.”
“You’re lying. Don’t piss me off!” she said, and Dmitri looked up at her in terror.
“A container in August,” he blurted out, “and another last week. They were unregistered and no one knows what was inside.”
“Who handled them?”
Dmitri paused. He wasn’t prepared for this level of confession.
“Who offloaded the containers, Dmitri? You either tell me now or I tell the bratva you’re hitting on an FBI woman. What’s the punishment for that, I wonder? Probably involves a razor blade.”
Dmitri cringed and closed his legs.
“Dmitri, last chance. Who smuggled in those containers in Newark?”
“The Shulaya,” he said, head down.
Lin looked astonished. “The Shulaya? Impossible. We busted them a year ago. They’re gone.”
“Apparently not all of them,” he said, sitting up and holding his head. “Word is they secretly offloaded each container and moved them to a distribution warehouse in Secaucus. From there, no one knows what happened. Presumably the containers were unpacked and loaded onto trucks, but no one knows for sure. Not even the Shulaya.”
“What does that mean, not even the Shulaya knows?”
“That’s all I know, I swear! It’s supersecret mafia shit. Only the bosses know, not people like me. We get paid to mind our business and ask nothing.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit,” she said, grabbing his wrist and twisting backward, causing him to yelp. “I’m an FBI agent and I know when you’re lying. What else have you heard?”
Someone was knocking on the bathroom door. Lin ignored it.
“Only rumors,” Dmitri said in a whimper, his free hand clutching his skull in pain. The door knocking turned into pounding.
“Go away!” Lin shouted at the locked door.
“Is that a chick in there?” shouted a man on the other side. “Open up!”
“Hold it or use the women’s room!” she yelled, then turned back to Dmitri. “What else have you heard?”
“Are you speaking Russian in there?!” asked the man outside
the door. “Look you stupid Slavic whore, turn tricks in your home. Or, better for you, the dumpster. I gotta pee!” Lin’s fists clenched at whore, and Dmitri reflexively put his hands over his head.
“What did you call me?” asked Lin in a calm voice.
“Whore,” said the man, with satisfaction. “Stupid. Russian. Whore.”
Lin walked to the door, unbolted it, palm-heeled the guy’s nose, and bolted the door again while the man gripped his throat in pain. Dmitri winced as he heard the man’s body thump to the ground through the door, followed by screams of pain.
“You bwoke my nose! You bwoke my nose!” the man yelled in a nasally voice, but the bar’s loud music upstairs drowned out his cries. Or no one cared.
Lin turned back to Dmitri. “I know the Russian mafia occasionally works for the Kremlin here. Don’t lie to me. Why did the ship come from the Black Sea? What was it carrying?”
“Just ru-ru-rumors,” stuttered Dmitri, still staring at the bathroom door. “Russian intelligence has been running a major operation in the capital region for months. Double agents, hackers, a tech team—”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
Her hand formed a palm heel.
“I don’t know!! I swear I don’t know!”
Lin relaxed, and Dmitri sat back up, rubbing his nose unconsciously. “Also, I heard a heavy team arrived in town last week.”
“What kind of team?” she asked.
“A black-on-black hit team. Spetsnaz, I think.”
Russian special forces. Lin paused.
This is my big lead, she thought, masking her elation from Dmitri. It was possible they came in on the container, along with a whole lot of Spetsnaz firepower. More urgent, they represented a clear and present danger. If she could verify their presence, it could reorient the FBI toward the true threat: Russia. But obtaining proof would be difficult; she would have to survive.
“I don’t suppose you know where I could find them?” she asked casually, pulling out a lipstick from her purse and applying it in the bathroom mirror. She mashed her lips together so it spread evenly, and then looked down at the big man, still sitting in a fetal position at her feet.
