by Dale Brown
For a long, uncomfortable moment, Martindale sat quiet, glaring back at him out of the screen. Brad held his breath, wondering if he’d gone too far. He felt Nadia press her warm palm against his back, offering reassurance.
Then his father spoke up. “My son’s right, Kevin. This isn’t a fight you can win. For that matter, this isn’t really a fight you should want to win. Sam Kerr and the others have obtained priceless intelligence for us in the past . . . and risked their lives in the process. We owe them a chance now, however small it may seem.”
“Et tu, Patrick?” Martindale retorted.
With a whir of tiny exoskeleton motors, Patrick McLanahan held up an open hand. His face creased in a slight smile. “No dagger, see? Just the truth, as I see it.”
Martindale grimaced. “Very well, then.” His eyes were still cold. “Much as I dislike yielding to pure emotional blackmail, I’ll make an exception in this case. This one case,” he stressed. He turned back to Nadia and Brad. “All right. You can prep your rescue mission.”
“Thank you, sir,” Brad said. “I appreciate this.”
“Don’t thank me too quickly, Major McLanahan,” Martindale snapped. “You may have just bought yourself—and Nadia—a one-way ticket. If things go wrong out there, that’s it. I will not risk any more lives on some damned fool crusade. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Brad said evenly. “We’ll do our best.”
Martindale’s angry expression softened slightly. “Oh, I don’t doubt that.” He sighed. “But I’m afraid that even your best isn’t likely to be good enough. Not this time.”
Fifteen
Federal Security Service (FSB) Headquarters, the Lubyanka, Moscow
A Couple of Hours Later
Frowning deeply, Viktor Kazyanov leaned over his desk, studying the priority report he’d just been sent. He flipped from one page to the next, hoping to find some buried nugget of good news that he could pass on to Russia’s minister of defense. On paper, he and Leonov held equivalent cabinet ranks, but he was shrewd enough to see the way the wind was blowing. Where it counted, in military, space, and intelligence affairs, the other man was already effectively president in all but formal title—and that was probably only a matter of time and inclination.
He looked up, irritated, when one of his aides burst in without knocking. “What is it, Ivanov?”
“Minister, it’s Marshal—”
Leonov himself barreled in right on Ivanov’s heels. He jerked a thumb toward the exit. “Get out. And close that door behind you.” Flustered, Ivanov obeyed.
Kazyanov took a short, quick breath. “It’s good to see you, Mikhail Ivanovich—”
“Spare me the usual, meaningless pleasantries,” Leonov said bluntly. “My health is good. Your grandchildren are blossoming. And the weather outside is pleasant. All true?”
Quickly, Kazyanov nodded. “Yes.”
“Fine. Then let’s get to work.” Leonov took one of the seats in front of Kazyanov’s desk and nodded pointedly at the minister’s own chair. “Sit down, Viktor. Stop bouncing around like your shoes are on fire.” With a sigh, Kazyanov obeyed. “Well,” Leonov demanded. “What’s the situation?”
For a moment, Kazyanov wrestled with the temptation to shade the truth, to give it some patina of optimism—however thin. He pushed the idea aside. Like Gennadiy Gryzlov before him, Leonov was not a man it was safe to mislead. In many ways, the defense minister’s carefully controlled, cold-eyed anger was even more frightening than his predecessor’s wild, raging tantrums. Kazyanov indicated the report from his team in Krasnoyarsk. “In all honesty, the situation is not good.”
“Go on.”
“Wernicke and Roth, or whoever they really are, did not turn up for their scheduled flight forty-five minutes ago,” Kazyanov admitted reluctantly. “My people have just finished going through all the security camera footage from Yemelyanovo. There’s no sign of them.”
Leonov grunted. “They had a rental car, correct?”
“A black Mercedes sedan,” Kazyanov confirmed, paging through the report. “Hired by the Roth woman in her pose as this fictional Lieutenant Colonel Volkova.” He looked up. “The car has not yet been returned to the agency.”
Leonov nodded heavily. “Of course not.” His fingers drummed briefly on the other man’s desk. “And Koshkin’s komp’yutershchiks? Have they been able to break into Tekhwerk’s computer networks?”
“Not yet,” Kazyanov admitted. “Arkady says his tech geeks are being extremely cautious. Apparently, the security software guarding those networks is effective. Remarkably effective.”
“It would be,” Leonov said dryly. He frowned. “What about your teams surveilling the company’s Moscow office? Are they, too, being careful?”
“Very careful,” Kazyanov assured him hurriedly. His face clouded over. “But it’s an extraordinarily difficult task, Mikhail Ivanovich. The Evolution Tower complex is enormous. Thousands of people work there. And there are multiple exits, including several directly to the Vystavochnaya metro station and the Bagration Bridge.” He shrugged. “If I could deploy my surveillance teams inside the building itself—?”
“They would probably be spotted in minutes,” Leonov pointed out. Gloomily, Kazyanov nodded.
“Not that it matters much,” Leonov said grimly. “All of this clever tiptoeing around . . . at Krasnoyarsk, on the internet, and here in Moscow . . . it’s all been a complete waste of time and effort.”
“You think the American agents know their cover is blown?” Kazyanov asked.
Leonov nodded. “Why else would they miss their flight back to Moscow?” He shook his head. “No, Viktor. Somehow, in some way, they’ve been tipped off. Maybe Arkady’s tech geeks tripped some computer alarm. Or maybe they spotted some of your people watching the airport and got cold feet.” He shrugged. “How we fucked up isn’t really important. Not now.”
“But these Scion agents can’t possibly escape,” Kazyanov said, desperately hoping he was right. “Where can they go from Krasnoyarsk?”
Leonov snorted. “Krasnoyarsk isn’t a black hole, Viktor. There are roads and railroads and rivers into and out of the city. So the Americans certainly will escape, if we don’t pull our fingers out of our asses and get to work hunting them down.” He checked his watch. “Assuming the worst, that they learned we were onto them as soon as Koskhin’s people tried probing their computers, they’ve already been on the run for at least three or four hours.”
“Mater’ Bozh’ya,” Kazyanov muttered. “Mother of God.” He pulled up a map of the region on his computer. “They could easily be a couple of hundred kilometers away by now. Or more.”
“Exactly.” Leonov nodded. “Which is why we need to cast our nets as widely as possible.”
Studying the map, Kazyanov whistled softly. “That’s going to take an enormous amount of manpower.”
“No question about that,” Leonov agreed. “We’ll need to mobilize every police officer in the region, units from the National Guard, and more troops from the regular armed forces.” He stood up. “Your FSB teams will coordinate the search inside Krasnoyarsk itself, in case the Americans have gone to ground at a safe house inside the city.”
Kazyanov nodded quickly. “Yes, Marshal.”
“Start distributing the photographs of Wernicke and Roth, in both of their identified personas,” Leonov ordered. “Along with a description of their rental car.” He showed his teeth in a tight, humorless grin. “If, as I suspect, Scion is already reeling in its espionage networks, capturing them alive is probably our best remaining hope of learning how many of our precious secrets the Americans already know.”
Again, Kazyanov nodded obsequiously. “We’ll find them,” he vowed.
Leonov’s answering laugh was harsh. “You shouldn’t give so many hostages to fortune, Viktor,” he said icily. “Whoever these Scion spies really are, they’re the first team. So they aren’t going to be easy to run to ground.”
Just Outside Les
osibirsk, Along the Yenisei River, Russia
An Hour Later
Looking ahead along the beams of his van’s headlights, David Jones saw the pair of white-and-blue police patrol cars parked sideways across each shoulder of the narrow two-lane highway. Two officers in yellow reflective vests stood in the center of this hurriedly improvised checkpoint, waving flashlights as they signaled him to stop.
A thin screen of birch trees lined both sides of the road, their narrow trunks glowing a pale, ghostly white in the light of the slowly rising full moon. Not a bad spot to set up a roadblock, he thought coolly. Short of trying a wild bootlegger’s reverse and peeling back out the way he’d just come, he didn’t have any option but to obey.
Playing it safe, Jones braked smoothly and rolled to a complete stop only a few feet away from the waiting police officers. Raising his voice slightly, so that only his concealed passengers could hear him, he said, “We’re at a checkpoint. Stay cool. I’ve got this.”
He unrolled his window as the officers approached, splitting up to cover both sides of the UAZ van. The policeman coming around the passenger side kept his hand on the butt of his holstered 9mm pistol. The other had an open notebook and a pencil. He was already jotting down the vehicle’s license number and appearance.
“Hey there,” Jones called out, in flawless Russian. “What’s up?”
“Nothing much. Just a routine matter,” the officer with the notebook said calmingly. He held out a hand. “May I see your license?”
Routine, my ass, Jones thought cynically, fishing out his driver’s license. This cop wasn’t a very good liar.
He kept quiet while the policeman recorded his information. Talking too much was the fastest way to trip yourself up when dealing with the Russian authorities.
With a nod of thanks, the officer handed his license back. “So, where are you headed?”
Jones shrugged. “Lesosibirsk. I’ve got a bunch of deliveries to make.”
The Russian policeman frowned. “A little late, isn’t it? Most places will be closed by now.”
“Yeah,” Jones agreed, smiling ruefully. “I got fucked by heavy traffic coming into Krasnoyarsk. I’ll have to lay over tonight and drop the packages off tomorrow morning.”
“Are you staying in a hotel? Or a guesthouse?”
Jones laughed sourly. “Does this piece-of-shit van look like my boss would spring for a hotel room?” He sighed. “Nah, I’ll probably just park off the road somewhere in town and try to catch some sleep on the seat here.” He donned a worried look. “I mean, if that’s not going to be a problem for you guys?”
The policeman shook his head. “Not as long as you don’t block traffic.” He flipped to a new page of his notebook. “Now, just for our records, where exactly are you making those deliveries tomorrow?”
Thankful for the internet and Sam’s insistence that he build a halfway decent cover story, Jones handed over a clipboard with several local businesses listed—a restaurant, a couple of retail shops, and one of the big wood-processing plants that were the town’s economic mainstay. But it was still disturbing to see the police officer writing them down in his notebook. On the other hand, Russia’s bureaucrats, like those of every country, thrived on compiling useless statistics . . . so with luck, those names would end up moldering away in some dusty file folder in the local government archives.
With a disinterested nod, the officer gave the clipboard back.
“Is that it?” Jones asked.
“Just one more thing,” the policeman said, with obviously feigned nonchalance. He pulled a sheaf of glossy color printer pages out of the back of his notebook and handed them over. “Have you seen either of those two people recently? In Krasnoyarsk? Or on the way here?”
Jones stared down at the color photographs of both Sam Kerr and Marcus Cartwright for a moment, fighting to keep his first startled reaction from showing. Jesus, he thought, the Russians had a whole bloody fashion portfolio on the two Scion agents. No wonder Tekhwerk’s cover was blown to smithereens. But then he shook his head as he gave them back. “No, I haven’t.” He donned a small leer. “And I’d definitely have noticed a sexy-looking woman like that blonde. Is she some kind of high-class hooker?”
“No, a suspected drug smuggler,” the policeman said tersely. He stuck the photos back in his notebook. “How about a black Mercedes four-door sedan? Registration plate K 387OC 124?”
“Back in Krasnoyarsk? Maybe, but I wouldn’t swear to it,” Jones said slowly, as if thinking deeply. “But heading this way?” He shrugged. “It seems like all I’ve seen for the last hundred kilometers are logging trucks.”
The officer nodded. The timber industry was this isolated region’s lifeblood. He scribbled a mobile phone number on a torn sheet from his pad. “If you do see either of those people . . . or their Mercedes . . . call that number immediately. Got it?” He smiled. “There’s a big fat reward involved.”
With a grateful smile, Jones tucked the phone number in his shirt pocket. “Will do.”
“All right, then,” the officer said, stepping back and waving him on. “You can go. Drive safe now.”
Nodding cheerfully, Jones put his van in gear and drove on through the checkpoint. But his smile vanished as soon as he drove around a bend. Discovering that the Russians were already searching for Sam and Marcus this far north of Krasnoyarsk—nearly two hundred miles—was seriously alarming. Any search spread that widely had to involve hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of police and internal security troops. Which meant the men in Moscow wanted them very badly indeed.
With a cold shiver, the Welshman had the sudden, eerie impression that the moonlit forest around him was stirring, coming magically to life in the silvery half-light. It was as if the witches of Russian myth were summoning the trees themselves out of their age-old slumber to join in the hunt for them.
“Oh, stop scaring yourself, Davey,” he muttered crossly. “You’re not in one of your old grannie’s ghost stories.” Scowling, he hunched over the steering wheel, forcing his attention back onto the narrow highway unrolling in his high beams. This was no time to indulge in wild fantasies. Not when he still had several more hours of hard driving left to reach the cabin Sam had picked out as a possible safe house . . . with the last bit certain to be the hardest of all, feeling his way along a maze of rutted dirt logging trails in the pitch dark.
But out there in the darkness beyond the van’s wavering headlights, at the very edge of his vision, he couldn’t help sensing a lurking malevolence—as though the whole countryside and every man’s hand were now turned against them.
Sixteen
Canadian NORAD Region Forward Operating Location Yellowknife, Northwest Territories
Later That Night
Until last year, Major Ian Schofield had led the Iron Wolf Squadron’s commando teams, training them in the dark arts of ambush, long-range reconnaissance, and sabotage carried out deep inside enemy territory. Now the lean, wiry Canadian did much the same thing for Scion itself.
He’d been leading his most recent group of Scion recruits, all of them already veterans from half a dozen of the free world’s best special forces units, through an intensive wilderness survival course when the emergency call from Battle Mountain came in. Ferried by helicopter to this remote city only a few hundred kilometers south of the Arctic Circle, he’d barely had time to wash up and change before hustling back to the edge of the flight line.
NORAD’s Forward Operating Location Yellowknife was a secure military hangar complex sited immediately adjacent to the civilian airport. One of four similar small facilities built across Canada’s far northern frontier, it was intended to strengthen the sparsely populated region’s air defenses. Currently, two Canadian CF-18 Hornet fighters were on standby here, forward-deployed to deter long-range Russian reconnaissance flights over the polar region.
“That aircraft you’re waiting for is on final approach, Major,” the Royal Canadian Air Force warrant officer assigned as his es
cort said helpfully. “It’s coming in low over the Great Slave Lake.”
Obediently, Schofield swung his binoculars to the southeast. Even this late, past ten at night, there was still plenty of light. Sharp-edged shadows slanted past him across the tarmac. The sun, a fiery orange ball, was at his back—hanging just above the northwest horizon. This close to the Arctic Circle, late summer days were long and the nights were very short.
He squinted, fiddling with the focus, while he zoomed in on a black batwing-configured aircraft descending rapidly toward Yellowknife’s Runway 28. Four large engines were buried in the wing’s upper surface, and he caught just a quick flash of gold-tinged sunlight reflecting off a cockpit canopy.
“I don’t recognize the type,” the Canadian airman beside him commented.
Schofield’s teeth gleamed white in a face weathered by years spent outdoors in all climates and seasons. “You wouldn’t,” he said cheerfully. “It’s quite literally the only one of its kind.”
“And if you told me more—”
“I’d have to kill you,” Schofield said, sounding even more cheerful. “Though of course with the greatest regret.”
As the approaching aircraft crossed the lake’s rocky shoreline and flew low over Yellowknife’s city streets and houses, the muffled roar of its engines diminished sharply. Several control surfaces whined open on the wing’s trailing edge, providing more lift as its airspeed decreased. A nose gear and twin wing-mounted bogies swung smoothly down and locked in position.
By the time it was around a mile from the runway, the plane seemed to be almost gliding noiselessly—skimming along barely above bare granite outcroppings and scattered stands of pine and spruce. It came in very low over the white striped lines that marked the threshold . . . and touched down with just a puff of light gray smoke from its landing gear. Immediately, those big engines powered back up, howling shrilly as the pilot sharply reversed thrust and braked. Amazingly, it rolled to a complete stop in less than a thousand feet.
