“We’ll be looking over our backs all the way to the border. Any word on Black Magic?” Farrington said.
“They’ll arrive at Alpha within three hours and shut down until you’re closer to the border. Remember, Black Magic will RTB thirty minutes prior to sunrise. That gives you a little under five hours.”
“We won’t be posing for pictures along—”
Farrington stopped in midsentence. He’d detected something moving fast in his peripheral vision, headed toward the rotary from the right. A car on this road wasn’t cause for worry but something had triggered an internal alarm. He peered through the thick row of trees lining the road that dumped into the rotary from Koltsovo, wondering for a brief moment if he hadn’t imagined it. At the same time he detected the red glow of the brake lights in front of him, he saw it again, but this time closer to the intersection. His mind interpreted the danger within in instant. A large SUV, driving without headlights, was headed into the rotary at high speed.
***
Senior Warrant Officer Grigory Limonov gripped the ceiling handle above the front passenger window as his driver accelerated the UAZ Hunter into the rotary. His detachment of eight men had been woken by a direct alarm activated within Building Six at the Virology compound. All of their beepers sounded at once, triggering a prearranged response that brought all eight men together at the main intersection of Koltsovo within ten minutes. On the way to the rendezvous, he placed two phone calls.
The first call went to Vektor’s security director, Alexei Ivkin, who explained the situation. Deadly biological samples had been stolen from Building Six in a sophisticated operation, leaving several guards murdered and the basement of the building destroyed. Guards at Vektor reported seeing a single SUV speeding out of the gate.
He placed the next call to the Federal Security Service’s Center for Special Operations. The alarm set off in Vektor had already set things in motion at headquarters, and he was immediately transferred to a surprisingly senior government official. By the time he arrived at the intersection to join the detachment, Vympel Spetzgruppa “Victor Two Three” (V23) had its orders from Moscow: capture or kill the terrorists responsible for the attack. Retrieval of the stolen biological samples had not been mentioned, but was implied within the constructs of the primary order.
Since it was obvious that the terrorists’ vehicle had already passed through Koltsovo, he separated the detachment into two groups, sending one north along the road leading to the town of Baryshevo. If the terrorists planned to seek shelter in Russia’s third largest city, they would have to pass through Baryshevo. As soon as his operatives sped north, he alerted local authorities in the town, with the hope that they might be able to stop the terrorists. At the worst, they could buy his team some time. By his calculation, the terrorists had a twelve-minute head start.
He’d put his own car on the road leading south, in case the terrorists decided to connect with Highway M52 and flee in that direction. This was the less likely scenario in his mind, but he had to cover both directions without splitting the team too thin. When he first saw a set of headlights appear on the east-west road, heading to the rotary, he had a strong suspicion they had stumbled onto their suspects. As his SUV cleared the line of trees obscuring a clear view of the approaching vehicle, he had a sudden moment of doubt. Guards at Vektor had reported an SUV. This was a sedan.
He grabbed the wheel to yank them out of the way, but spotted a second, nearly identical car emerge from the same direction. Two cars speeding along a back road after 11:00 PM on a Sunday? He turned the wheel into the crash, adjusting the center point of their impact from the sedan’s engine block to the front passenger door. He needed to kill or incapacitate everyone in at least one of the cars to give his men a chance to succeed, even if it cost him his own life.
***
Farrington dropped the satellite phone and issued a quick warning to the lead car, which he could already tell would be pointless.
“Grisha. Contact right!”
The brake lights disappeared momentarily, giving him the false hope that they might accelerate past the speeding SUV. The rotary had slowed Grisha’s vehicle to one third of its original travel speed by that point, making it an easy target. In the orange glow of the single street lamp jutting from the center of the rotary, he helplessly watched the SUV “T-bone” the sedan with horrific results.
The two vehicles plowed into the grassy center of the traffic circle as one mass of warped steel and shattered glass. Misha braked hard and turned left, exposing the car’s right side to the wreck, in a semi-controlled slide that ended at the edge of the rotary. Anticipating Misha’s maneuver, Farrington had braced his assault rifle against the bottom of the open passenger window, trying to line up the weapon’s sights for a shot.
He didn’t bother trying to use the ACOG scope, instead opting for the iron sights mounted at a forty-five degree angle along the weapon’s rails. He canted the weapon slightly and fired in full automatic mode at the SUV. Gosha’s weapon started firing three-round bursts at nearly the same moment.
The AK-107’s Balanced Automatics Recoil System performed as advertised, allowing him to keep the weapon well controlled at its cyclic rate of 900 rounds per minute. Within two seconds, Farrington had pumped thirty rounds of 5.45mm ammunition into the SUV, shredding the metal frame and obliterating any remaining glass. He opened the car door and crouched low, sprinting beneath the barrel of Gosha’s rifle, which continued to fire controlled bursts of steel at potential targets within the traffic circle.
Farrington reached the rear of the sedan and reloaded his rifle, inserting a fresh thirty-round magazine as he took up a position on the unexposed side of the vehicle, behind the trunk. Misha had already settled into a crouch behind the engine, firing his AK-107 over the hood in quick bursts to cover Gosha’s retreat through the back seat of the car.
Once all three of them were behind the sedan, Farrington made a quick assessment of the situation and issued orders. With only one working vehicle in the intersection, he had to take action to preserve their only method of escape. As the hollow sound of punctured metal started to fill his ears, he realized that they needed to quit using the sedan as cover.
“Gosha, cover us while we approach Grisha’s car,” Farmington said, sliding down the length of the sedan. “You ready?” he said to Misha.
“Now or never,” the operative replied.
“Cover fire!” he said over his shoulder, putting the sniper into action.
Bullets snapped overhead and beside them during the twenty-meter sprint across the open grass. Fortunately, the SUV’s survivors were at a disadvantage huddled behind their vehicle. Once Farrington and Misha had covered half of the distance, the mangled sedan effectively blocked the attackers’ line of sight, and the volume of gunfire slackened. Farrington lifted his rifle and aimed through the canted sights, searching for movement beyond the sedan.
“Target. Front of your sedan,” he heard in his earpiece.
He shifted the weapon left and aimed at a point beyond the driver’s side door, across the hood. A bloodied face appeared in his sights, aiming over the roof of the car in the direction of Gosha. Farrington fired two quick bursts that knocked the man off his feet and flipped his submachine gun onto the hood. Edging forward along the car, he reached the driver’s window, noticing that Seva’s head was leaned up against the doorframe. The rest of his body was obscured by a deflated, blood-sprayed airbag, which rendered a quick damage assessment impossible. The blood splatter, along with the gash on the side of Seva’s head, wasn’t an encouraging sign for what he might find under the airbag. Three distinct semiautomatic rifle reports caused him to duck instinctively.
“Shooter down. Headshot. That’s three confirmed, including the driver and the one you smoked in front of the sedan. I didn’t see anyone else get out of the SUV,” Gosha said.
“Got it. We’re pressing forward to investigate,” Farrington said.
The traffic circle gre
w eerily quiet, despite the constant hum of the wrecked sedan’s sputtering engine. He signaled for Misha to go around the other side of the vehicle, so they could approach the SUV from two sides. He risked a glance behind him and saw Gosha scanning the wreckage through the scope on his assault rifle. He edged forward, crouching at eye level with the car’s crumpled hood, his rifle aimed at the SUV’s half-intact windshield.
He rounded the front of the car, spotting three men splayed on the grass. The closest man lay on his back, his eyes wide open in a blank, glassy stare straight up at the overcast sky. Blood trickled from his mouth down the side of his jawline. Farrington had fired at least ten 5.45mm projectiles into his body, overwhelming the man’s body armor and killing him instantly. The other two bodies lay behind the SUV. One of them had clearly suffered a headshot, probably from Gosha’s rifle. A massive exit wound marred the side of his head exposed to Farrington. The other lay motionless, face down in the grass a few feet from the partially opened front passenger door.
“Three down behind the SUV. One in the driver’s seat. We leave in thirty seconds,” he said, realizing this meant making a few tough decisions regarding the men in the wrecked sedan.
Farrington started to turn when he heard a static crackle, followed by a Russian voice. His attention was drawn to a handheld radio, which lay a few feet away from the facedown Russian. The man suddenly lunged along the ground, reaching for the black handset. Several steel-jacketed bullets from Farrington’s AK-107 punctured the soft armor portions of the downed operative’s ballistic vest, penetrating deep into his torso and preventing any further movement. Farrington sprang forward and smashed the radio under his boot. The Spetsnaz operative spit a mouthful of blood onto the grass and coughed before expiring.
He turned the man onto his back and examined his gear, concluding that he must be part of the Vympel detachment assigned to guard Vektor. Type IIIA ballistic vests, thigh holsters, throat microphones, hand grenades, dozens of spare magazines for his OTs-14 bullpup-configured submachine gun. All of it professionally rigged in a manner demonstrating years of operational experience. The fact that they had intentionally crashed into their lead vehicle sealed his assessment that they were Vympel. He just wondered if they had managed to get a warning out to the rest of the detachment or the local law enforcement network.
The sound of a muffled scream brought Farrington sprinting back to the passenger side of the sedan. He found Sasha stretched out on the ground, battered and bloodied, his left arm bent at the elbow in an unnatural angle. His right leg bled profusely through his dark brown cargo pants. He met Gosha’s eyes and raised an eyebrow.
“Not good. Compound fracture. Lower right leg. Arm is fucked. Misha’s getting one of the first aid kits. We’ll have to stabilize this shit before we move.”
Farrington looked into the driver’s seat, coming to terms with the possibility that he’d lost everyone in the car. As far as he was concerned, Sasha was done. They’d bring him as far as they could, but only a perfect exfiltration scenario from this point forward could assure his survival. Based on what they’d just experienced, the night was guaranteed to be anything but perfect. Sasha’s twisted limbs would prevent him from any serious attempt to flee over ground, and unless the Russians let them drive across the border, he was a dead man.
He opened the door, expecting to catch Seva with both hands. Instead, Seva’s limp body hung in the seat, suspended by the shoulder strap of his seatbelt. From this angle, the underside of the airbag looked clean, giving him hope that Seva had been spared. He reached across the airbag to disconnect Seva’s seatbelt, catching a brief, horrible glimpse of what used to be Grisha. The SUV had struck Grisha’s door with enough force to instantly drive the metal door three feet into the sedan, pulverizing the operative in a tangle of broken steel and limbs. There would be no need for a second look.
Lowering Seva carefully onto the grass, he noted a complete lack of external injuries beyond the shallow gash on the left side of his head. He felt for a pulse and checked respiration. Seva’s vitals were strong.
“Let’s get these two into the car. Ten seconds. I want all rucksacks and ammunition. We’ll have to change frequencies en route to the next checkpoint. We don’t have time to look for Grisha’s communications gear. Misha, torch the car when everything is clear,” he said.
“What about Grisha?”
“His body isn’t going anywhere, and we can’t leave him behind to be identified,” he said.
Chapter 53
12:24 PM
CIA Headquarters
McLean, Virginia
Karl Berg stood up from his station and looked around the operations center.
“What just happened? I lost communications with Blackjack,” he said, trying to raise Farrington on the net again.
“Blackjack. Come in, Blackjack.”
He waited several seconds and tried again with no response.
“Fuck! Are the comms going through?” he yelled.
“Diagnostics look fine, Mr. Berg. It’s a simple satellite connection,” said one of the techs from the front of the room.
“There’s nothing simple about any of the connections in here,” Berg snapped.
He was worried. Farrington had cut out in midsentence, and he thought he had heard gunfire. An ambush wasn’t out of the question with the Vympel detachment activated.
“Is there any way we can find them with satellite?” he said, knowing that this wouldn’t be easy.
Satellite tracking didn’t work like the movies, where savvy ground-station operators could follow a car for hundreds of miles using a joystick to pan the camera. Current technology allowed for imagery and camera control, but on a more limited scale, subject to satellite positioning and object-tracking algorithms that take into account moving object estimation, target behavior modeling and target match processing. Much of the process was automated due to the complex mathematics involved, and restricted the satellite’s imaging capacity to a small fixed area around the target. They had decided from the outset not to restrict their satellite capability by tracking the team’s vehicles.
“I can coordinate a search along the road leading from their last checkpoint. It’ll take a few minutes,” said a dark-haired woman a few computer stations away.
“No. I don’t want to lose the bigger picture. We already have one satellite moving to a better position over the border-crossing area, and we need to keep an eye on the military base outside of Novosibirsk,” he said, sitting back down.
He tried the team again, but received no response, switching over to Sanderson’s communication net.
“Base, I lost communications with Blackjack during the middle of a satellite phone conversation. Can you make contact?” Berg said.
“This is base. Stand by.”
Ten seconds later, Sanderson came back on the line. “The call won’t go through. What happened?”
“I don’t know. Blackjack was in the middle of a sentence and that was it. I thought I heard gunfire. NSA confirmed Vympel signalled intelligence less than a minute after Vektor burned,” Berg said.
“The self-destruct system must have triggered their activation. I can’t imagine they could have caught up with our team,” Sanderson said.
“I don’t know. Maybe satellite communications are down. If we don’t hear from them within the next few minutes, I’ll redirect all satellite assets to find them. Until then, there’s not much we can do, aside from keeping our fingers crossed. It would be a real fucking shame to lose them at this point,” Berg said.
“You should have a little more faith in my people, Sanderson chided. “They haven’t let you down yet.”
“I just want to get them back. I owe them that much,” Berg said.
“We’ll get them back.”
A few seconds later, Farrington’s voice returned to Berg’s headset.
“Berg. Are you still there?”
“I’m still here. What happened?”
“Part of the su
spected Vympel detachment rammed the lead car, killing Grisha and severely injuring Sasha. Seva is still unconscious, but his vitals are strong. We’re back on the road in one vehicle, headed to the reservoir,” Farrington said.
“I’m sorry about Grisha. Are you able to continue with the exfiltration plan?”
“Affirmative. We’re on our way to the second checkpoint.”
“That’s good to hear. We’re going to get you out of there. Contact base to report your status,” Berg said.
“Understood. Blackjack out.”
Berg turned to Audra Bauer, who shook her head slowly.
“Grisha’s dead, and Sasha is severely injured. Seva is unconscious, but appears to be fine,” he said.
“Shit,” she muttered. “We’ll have to pass this on to Manning.”
“Nothing for them to get worried about. The exfiltration plan remains the same.”
He knew that the mission couldn’t suffer any more unexpected setbacks without jeopardizing the helicopter exfiltration option. The president had been skittish about using helicopters from the very beginning. His most recent restrictions to Black Magic’s ROE underscored the delicate situation. It wouldn’t take much at this point for the president to send Black Magic back to Kyrgyzstan without Blackjack. He’d need to put his own secret play into action soon. It might be Farrington’s only hope.
Chapter 54
11:55 PM
Three Kilometers west of Leninskoye
Novosibirsk Reservoir, Russian Federation
Farrington leaned inside the car and released the emergency brake, starting their car on a slow descent down the neglected public boat ramp to the dark waters of the reservoir. Gosha helped him expedite the process by joining him behind the vehicle’s open trunk and pushing. By the time the car reached the water, it had gained enough momentum to continue all the way into the gently lapping waves of the manmade lake. The car floated into the lake for several seconds, hissing as the cold water filled the remaining air pockets in the chassis. Once the black water started to pour into the open windows, the car gave up and plunged to the bottom, temporarily erasing any trace that they had come this way.
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