“Please. Don’t kill me. This is just a job. I have a family. Three kids. Don’t do this,” the guard sputtered, unable to raise his shattered arms.
Misha considered his words for a brief moment and fired the last two rounds at point blank range into the pavement next to his head. He had no doubt whatsoever that this man would have gutted him if the tables were turned, but there was no reason to execute him. He was unaware of the bioweapons program hidden in the basement of Building Six, and judging by his wounds, he posed no threat to the team. The man stared up at him, unable to respond. Misha kneeled next to the man and rolled him onto his side. He ripped his P25 radio out of its holder on the backside of his ballistic vest and yanked out the coil cord connected to the man’s shoulder microphone. He rolled the guard onto his stomach and turned to face the main entrance. Gosha stood in the open doorway, covering the parking lot with Misha’s suppressed PP2000. Sasha was running across the pavement, headed in his direction.
“I need the keys. We’re almost out of here,” Sasha said.
“Where were you?” Misha said.
“Gosha had it under control by the time I arrived. You were in good hands the whole time,” Sasha said, catching the keys thrown at him.
Misha jogged to the doorway, anxious to finish the job at Vektor. The suppressed weapons had created an unmistakable racket across the quiet campus, certain to attract any nearby roving patrol.
“Look who’s back from the dead,” Misha said, punching Gosha in the shoulder.
“Just in time to save your ass. What were you doing out there?” Gosha said.
“Rolling up the windows you left down.”
“I didn’t have the keys,” Gosha replied.
They were interrupted by Seva, who stood at the security counter holding a severed hand at arm’s length away from his body.
“Ladies, I don’t mean to interrupt, but I have a special delivery,” he said, slapping the hand on the counter.
Misha rushed to the counter and grabbed the hand, which felt like a slab of meat in his grip. He handed the P25 radio to Seva, who accepted it reluctantly.
“Press the transmit button to hot mic the system. It’ll give us a few minutes of confusion on their end. Just don’t give away any operational details while you’re transmitting.”
“No shit,” Seva said.
“Yuri, where are you?” Misha said, heading to the secure vault behind the counter.
“Thirty seconds from your location. Go ahead and activate the system. Get everyone else into the car. Welcome back, Gosha,” Yuri said.
“Glad to be back.”
***
Less than five hundred yards away, behind Building Six, a pair of security guards doused their flashlights and crouched.
“You hear that?” one of them said.
“Barely. Sounded like suppressed semiautomatic fire. Definitely something,” the guard to his right replied.
He agreed. The gunfight lasted fewer than three seconds, ending with two distinct snaps. He couldn’t get a directional bearing, since the sounds were so faint, but there was no doubt in his mind.
“I’m calling it in. Watch our six,” he said.
While his partner backed up against the building and turned to face the way they had just come, Mikhail Blok whispered into his shoulder mic.
“Raven’s Nest, this is Raven Three-One. I report shots fired in the vicinity of the Virology compound. I say again. Shots fired in the vicinity of the Virology compound.”
He waited for several seconds, scanning the darkness over his rifle.
“No reply,” he whispered.
“Check the radio,” his partner replied.
Blok knew the radio worked. He had tested it with base and the other teams standing in the QRS ready bay. He checked anyway and quickly discovered the problem.
“Motherfucker. Hot mic,” he said.
“This is screwed, man. We’re too exposed out here,” his partner said.
“Hold on a second. You know what I just realized?” he whispered.
“What?”
“The motion lights should have lit us up when we came around the back of the building,” he said.
“Fuck. We need to get out of here. Right now.”
Blok reactivated his LED flashlight and swept the beam along the perimeter fence thirty meters away.
“What the fuck are you doing? Turn the fucking light off,” the other guard hissed.
“I’m looking for a breach. That’s why the lights are out.”
Bathed in 900 lumens of light, the contrast in color between the chain link material and the plastic zip ties was noticeable to the trained eye. He quickly found the L-shaped pattern in the fence.
“Right there. See the outline of the cut?”
“Yeah. Now turn off the fucking light.”
“I need you to verify the breach while I activate the emergency broadcast on this radio,” Blok said.
“To hell with the radio. You cover me until I’m back,” he said.
“All right,” he said and slapped his partner on the back.
The slap catalyzed the guard, who sprinted across the open area and paused at the fence area in question. Blok felt a slight rumble vibrate from the building, which he first mistook for an explosion somewhere on the Vektor campus. The other guard stopped examining the fence and started to sprint back.
What Blok saw next would stay with him for the rest of his life. Yevgeny Gribov disappeared in a thick plume of blue flame that reached forty feet into the sky, instantly super heating the air around him. He could see three more plumes spread out along the back of Building Six in his peripheral vision, but his vision was fixed to the blue shaft of flame that had entombed Gribov less than twenty meters in front of him. Frozen in terror, Blok watched the outline of his body change shape, shrinking and twisting.
Ten seconds later, the blue plume was replaced by a puffy white explosion that launched the incinerated guard’s body twenty feet in an arc through the air. As the ash particles floated down around Blok like delicate snowflakes, Gribov’s scorched, sizzling remains crashed to the ground less than three meters away, causing him to recoil in terror. His eyes met the hollow, black sockets of Gribov’s skull for a brief second, causing him to flee. He hugged the building wall the entire way, not wanting to suffer the same fate as his friend.
***
Farrington caught sight of the blue plumes from the parking lot, unwilling to leave until he confirmed that the system described by Reznikov had worked. The propane-fueled shafts of fire illuminated the parking lot, bathing them in an eerie cerulean blue glow.
“Holy mother,” he muttered, hopping into the front passenger seat.
Sasha had started backing the vehicle as soon as Farrington’s feet cleared the pavement, throwing him forward into the glove box.
“Sorry. We need to get out of here. Hang on,” Sasha said, turning the SUV sharply in reverse.
The maneuver would have tossed him out of the open door if he hadn’t heeded the warning. Instead, he found himself braced against the doorframe, anticipating Sasha’s next move. At this point, they needed to move forward as fast as the vehicle would take them. Farrington centered his body on the car seat just in time to avoid whiplash as the SUV lurched forward toward the main gate.
“Guards at the gate!” Sasha yelled.
Everyone reacted at once, extending the barrels of their weapons through the open windows. Farrington reached between his legs and retrieved his PP2000 submachine gun, getting it out of the window in time to join the rest of his team in the slaughter. At a range of fifty meters, Gosha started firing short bursts from the rear passenger side window with his AK-107U assault rifle, scoring immediate hits on the guards. Farrington fired a sustained volley of armor-piercing 9mm projectiles, adding to the carnage as they closed the distance. By the time they pulled to a stop at the motion-activated gate, the three heavily armed security contractors had stopped moving, their bodies contorted in positions
of agony along the checkpoint.
“I don’t see anyone in pursuit!” Seva yelled from the rear cargo compartment.
“Roger. Head to the first switch-out point.”
Sasha lowered the night vision goggles strapped to his head and drove for several seconds before making a sharp left turn onto an unmarked jeep trail fifty meters along the access road. The trail’s entrance had been marked earlier that evening with two infrared glow sticks visible only to night vision. They would travel along the dirt path for two kilometers, emptying onto an improvised road south of Vektor, where they would find their first cache of vehicles and equipment. The detour took them away from Koltsovo in an unexpected direction that would hopefully provide enough of a head start to arrive at their second cache undetected.
There were no high fives or “hooyahs” in the black SUV, just the sound of weapons magazines being changed and the quiet resignation that the hardest part of the mission still lay ahead of them.
PART FOUR
BLACK AND BLUE
Chapter 51
12:07 PM
White House Situation Room
Washington, D.C.
Thomas Manning held his breath, waiting for visual confirmation that the bioweapons laboratory had been destroyed. The National Reconnaissance Office had positioned two satellites in geostationary orbit over the area to provide detailed pictures of Vektor. They stared at two muted gray images of the facility on the bank of massive flat-screen monitors. One remained motionless, providing an overview of the Vektor campus, centered on the Virology compound. The second view shifted and magnified at the request of the CIA operations center. Right now, it remained focused on Blackjack’s vehicle in the parking lot. The massacred security team nearby was plainly visible to everyone.
“What are they waiting for?” Jacob Remy asked.
The first screen flashed to white momentarily before the infrared image settled back to what they had been watching seconds ago. The new image showed eight white-hot plumes surrounding the Virology compound.
“That,” Manning said and turned in his chair to face everyone. “Mr. President, Russia’s bioweapons program is officially offline.”
“Fantastic work, everyone,” the president said. “I hope this closes the book on a nasty chapter in modern human history. Biological weapons have no place in the world, and neither do the people who work to create them.”
“This should close that book for a long time, Mr. President,” the CIA director said. “With Vektor gone, the Iranians will experience a significant setback in their plans to enhance Iran’s biological weapons capability. This was the right call given the attack we suffered last month.”
“What are we looking at in terms of a local or regional response?” Remy asked.
Manning pressed a button on the touchscreen computer monitor imbedded in the table, opening the communication channel with CIA operations. He placed his headset on and adjusted the microphone.
“Karl, great work. That comes right from the top. Pass that along to the team when you get a chance. Has NSA picked up any unusual chatter yet?”
“Nothing yet, but I’m worried about one of the reports passed by the team a few minutes ago. One of our operatives intercepted a call meant for the security guards at Building Six, alerting them to a possible terrorist threat. That’s why we had a flurry of security activity during their last few minutes at Vektor. The head of security, Alexei Ivkin, apparently received an unconfirmed intelligence report regarding the threat. This can’t be a coincidence. Someone figured out what we’re doing,” Berg said.
“But they were too late.”
“Too late to save Vektor, but this doesn’t bode well for Blackjack. Whoever called this in isn’t connected to the Russian Federal Security Service. Trust me on that. I’m guessing high-level SVR. If they know, you can rest guaranteed that Putin knows. This could get ugly. We need to get Black Magic to the holding area.”
“I’ll let General Gordon know,” Manning said and removed the headphones.
“Is everything all right, Thomas?” the president asked.
“Everything is fine, Mr. President. NSA has not picked up any unusual communications chatter, but it’s early. The team is en route to their first checkpoint, where they’ll hide the SUV used at Vektor and switch to two cars for the next leg of their journey. It looks like they’ve made a clean break from the facility,” he said, pointing up at the screen.
Both images had zoomed out far enough to encompass the entire Vektor campus and the immediate area surrounding it. Blackjack had just veered off the main road leading to Koltsovo, heading south through the trees, which partially hid the vehicle from the satellite’s cameras. In front of the Virology compound, two vehicles pulled up next to the dead security guards and their abandoned jeep. The road leading to the main gate remained empty.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll make a clean break from Russia,” the president said.
“It’s always possible that they could make it to the border undetected,” Manning replied, “but I’m not counting on it. General Gordon, we need to move Black Magic to Holding Area Alpha. If they continue to move undetected, they could be at the border sooner than we expected.”
He watched General Gordon’s reaction closely. Earlier this morning, Jacob Remy had pulled Gordon out of the Situation Room for a private conversation with the president. Manning knew this because he had excused himself to use the restroom and watched the combatant commander of U.S. Special Operations Command disappear into the president’s private office on the other side of the watch floor. This meant one thing to Manning. The president and his chief of staff wanted to privately clarify the rules of engagement for Gordon’s helicopters…or modify them.
“I’ll notify SOCOM immediately,” the general said.
He sensed a slight hesitation in Gordon’s response, which might have gone unnoticed under different circumstances. Manning’s request flowed through an additional filter in Gordon’s mind, which had caused a nearly imperceptible delay. He anticipated a problem if the Russians mobilized significant assets to locate Farrington’s team.
Chapter 52
11:23 PM
5 kilometers south of Koltsovo
Russian Federation
Richard Farrington scanned the road ahead for any signs of trouble. They would travel along this two-lane road through the Sovetskiy City District, at the far southern edge of Novosibirsk. The road connected with Highway M52, which was the most logical escape route out of Novosibirsk, leading south and feeding into several roads that pointed toward the nearby border with Kazakhstan. It would also be the first road that the Russians would scour to find them. Instead, they would cross the highway and continue west a few kilometers to the edge of the Novosibirsk Reservoir, where they would turn north and cross the Ob River at the dam responsible for the reservoir. Their second checkpoint lay several kilometers from the dam, along the northern shores of the reservoir. If they managed to cross the river undetected, they stood a solid chance of surviving the night.
The six operatives had separated into two nondescript, high-performance sedans at the first checkpoint. They traded their limited-range submachine guns for an assortment of compact, modern assault rifles equipped with the latest optics. Rucksacks filled with essential gear, along with weapons and ammunition, had been staged in each car. Each member of the team fulfilled a specific role and their gear had been distributed accordingly.
Farrington’s AK-107U was jammed against the door, resting under his right arm, where he could put it into action quickly if necessary. At this point, they were mainly concerned with a local police response, which he hoped they had successfully evaded by heading away from Koltsovo. Crossing the Sovetskiy City District would pose a risk, but most of the district consisted of businesses and housing complexes that supported the two universities situated within a few kilometers of each other. He didn’t expect any trouble they couldn’t handle.
A lone street lamp app
eared in the distance, ahead of the lead car, as his sedan followed a tight curve and emerged from a stretch of treelined road. Grisha reported from the car thirty meters ahead.
“Approaching the first roundabout. Looks clear.”
“I see it. Take it slow,” Farrington said.
Once they cleared the rotary, they had six more kilometers until they reached another rotary on the outskirts of the city district. They would have to be careful after the second rotary. The roads twisted and turned throughout the city district, dead-ending in large apartment building complexes or university parking lots. Driving would be tedious and confusing, requiring several turns to navigate the poorly designed university area before finding the road that would take them across the highway.
His satellite phone activated, bathing the front seat in an orange glow. He retrieved the phone from the center console.
“Blackjack actual,” he answered.
“This is Berg. Sanderson wanted me to pass NSA intercepts directly. They caught a high-level transmission emanating from the Koltsovo area. Encryption conventions and codes phrases correlated to known Vympel protocols.”
“How long ago?” Farrington asked.
“One minute after Vektor burned. They must have a response team in the area. Watch your back,” Berg said.
It made sense. Vympel Spetsnaz units formed the backbone of the Federal Security Service’s counter-sabotage capability, tasked to protect key strategic installations across the Russian Federation. Major transportation centers, crucial industrial hubs and nuclear facilities fell under Vympel’s protective umbrella. Experts themselves in the art of sabotage and deep-penetration operations, Vympel operatives were among the most highly trained and lethal instruments in the Russian Federation’s current inventory.
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