The Best Defense

by Todd A. Stone

  The food and wine had gotten to Roskotovitch. He was nodding in his chair when Alexi returned.

  “Coffee, my friend? It is the finest Colombian.”

  Roskotovitch accepted as he sputtered awake.

  “My interruption brought bad news. It is a sad day, my friend,” Alexi said. “It appears as though I will be forced to end a relationship with a good friend. There are fools in Moscow who do not appreciate the value of friendship. How my friend will survive, I do not know.”

  Roskotovitch read the big type between the lines. “Is there nothing this friend may do to alleviate your sadness?”

  And save his fat neck, Alexi thought. “If my friend knew of someone who would do a very sensitive job, someone who was not known to my friends and associates, that would be of some help.”

  “I know a Turk who performs such jobs,” Roskotovitch said.

  “And once the obstacle was removed—by this Turk—if this friend were to then use his own, his best, men to replace an unworthy and dishonest group of thieves employed by a pig named Ziven at a place named Infernesk, that would be more helpful.”

  “That would take great effort.”

  “Often great effort is necessary for happiness to return. And if that friend, once his honest and trustworthy men were in place, were to let another old friend assist him by taking worthless junk off his hands and disposing of it to their mutual benefit, that would be the most helpful of all.”

  “That might be dangerous.”

  “More dangerous to live without friends, if one can so live.”

  Roskotovitch drank his coffee. It tasted rich, but bitter.

  “Who,” he said, “can live without friends?”

  Bohannan’s Grill and Lounge

  Washington, DC

  Bohannan’s Grill and Lounge was unlikely to receive any stars from magazines rating Washington’s cuisine. In fact, food critics were quite unlikely to find it in the first place. Bohannan’s lay too far from the seats of power, too many minutes down the Beltway, off an easily missed exit, through three unsynchronized traffic lights, and tucked away from the traffic flow on the side of a run-down strip mall that faced a recycling plant.

  Bohannan’s food was so bad it made the location seem like a strong point.

  Nobody would go there if there was anyplace else to go, and in Washington there was every place else to go.

  Which was exactly why Marshall Wolfe and Jack Ambrose met at Bohannan’s.

  They waited for a server. There was plenty of time for Wolfe to lay out the situation at Infernesk. The surly waitress came and went.

  “That’s about it,” said Wolfe. “The place is a disaster chomping at the bit to happen. McRyen has to go. He’s at half-strength in enlisted personnel and short officers, has only a green second lieutenant who’s running the operations section. But shortages or not, there’s just no excuse for his negligence. It’s criminal.”

  “Are his NCOs supporting him?”

  “He’s got a decent Sergeant Major, but he can’t do it all. I know Denight from Ranger School. He was a senior instructor—a Green Beret, too. He was a one-man Army when we went into Afghanistan. Get him fired up, he works miracles. He has to respect you first, though. Nobody on that depot respects McRyen, and I don’t blame them.”

  “I can relieve McRyen and replace him in forty-eight hours, but Personnel Command has to sign off on my choice.”

  “PERSCOM. They’ll take a year to make up their minds. You don’t have that kind of time. Security is so bad at Infernesk, I’m surprised their nukes aren’t being sold over the Internet. The place is ripe for the taking.”

  “By who?”

  “Al-Qaeda could walk right in, turbans and all. The Mafiya could bring in trucks. Hell, the Girl Scouts could take the place as it is. I sent a man down to their arms room. They’ve got a base full of nukes in storage, but nothing bigger than a couple of M16s to defend themselves with. They need a full complement of M16s, M60 machine guns, Squad Automatic Weapons, grenades, demolitions, Light Anti-tank Weapons, barbed wire, flares, and a basic load of ammo.”

  “A force protection supply package takes one phone call. I’ll have that sent late today out of our pre-positioned stocks in Kazakhstan.”

  “Send ‘em a training supply package too—blanks, simulators, so on. They have them at the Kazak forward bases. We used them on Operation Centrazbat ‘97 and Centrazbat ‘02 when the 82nd trained with the Kazak Army. I remember that one: we flew nineteen hours inside C-17 Globemaster III’s straight from Fort Bragg to Kazakhstan, then jumped five hundred paratroopers into a hot drop zone and went directly into a live-fire combat exercise. Whew.”

  Ambrose nodded. “Who do you think did the staff planning and coordination? But it proved we could deploy forces anywhere in the world on short notice.”

  Wolfe said, “Just a few hundred more air miles to Infernesk.”

  “The Russians might have just a wee bit of a problem with us violating their airspace and landing US troops on their soil.”

  “A good senior staff officer would find a way to pre-negotiate airspace permissions.”

  Ambrose laughed. “If you can’t break the rules, then bend them? I’ll put someone to work on it, though I don’t think we’ll need it. There’s a Russian Special Security Regiment tasked with protecting Infernesk in the event of a security emergency.”

  “Spetsnaz types. Tough guys. Wonder how they’d stack up against a US Ranger Battalion?”

  “You and Macintyre. You’ll fight anybody, anywhere, any time. When you run out of people to fight, you probably fight each other.”

  “We’re together so damn little, we save the fighting for later. Usually.”

  Two unappetizing messes resembling their lunch orders arrived.

  Ambrose picked brown lettuce leaves out of his salad.

  Wolfe took a huge bite of his sandwich. He chewed, made a face, chewed some more, and swallowed.

  “Beats stale borsht,” he said, “but not by much. So who’s going to Infernesk?”

  “I can’t pull anyone off PERSCOM’s command list without them throwing a fit and stalling the action. So I’m going in-house and to their XO list. I’ll send Grimes.”

  “Jimmy Grimes? Not much of a step up from McRyen. That politicking son of a bitch is going to absolutely love this.”

  “I’m going to back him up with someone good.”

  Wolfe paused. “Val doesn’t need to go. Not there.”

  “Major Macintyre absolutely needs to go. She’s been researching the depot and doing the planning since this project started. She knows that place cold.” Ambrose leaned forward. “You cannot run her life for her, Marshall. You cannot keep her safe—it’s not your job and she’s not the kind of woman who will let you. Besides, you’ll both be in-country together, and despite chasing runaway nukes, if a senior covert operations colonel and a smart Scottish major can’t find a way to sneak off to a private rendezvous now and then, neither of you is worth a tinker’s damn.”

  “Might even see each other more than we do now, especially if my team is based out of Infernesk.”

  “No dice, Colonel.”

  “That’s where all the nukes are now. That’s where I need to be.”

  “All but one shipment. The nukes may be inside, but there are still uranium shipments, plutonium triggers, and scientists and senior technicians outside. They’ll be even higher on the Al-Qaeda’s wish list and they’ll try harder to get them. Your job is to prevent it when the Russians can’t or won’t. You coordinate with Grimes at Infernesk, but he and Macintyre are running that show. You and your people operate well outside that depot. Is that clear?

  “I don’t like it.”

  “You don’t have to. You do have to obey orders.”

  “I always play by the rules, general.”

  “I’ll gag on that after I gag on this food.”

  ~*~

  The waitress tossed their bill onto the table and stalked off.

 
“We could have done this at your office,” Wolfe said. “Pentagon cafeteria food is a helluva lot better.”

  “Too many prying eyes and eavesdropping ears. Nobody on staff knows you’re here. We’ll get you out on the next plane to keep it that way.”

  “Next plane might not be until tomorrow morning, general.”

  Ambrose grinned. “So nobody in my office knows you’re here—minus one.”

  Chapter Four

  Laboratory Facility

  Special Security Warfare School

  Ditchnesk Training Area, Russia

  Dimonokov looked on as two of his physicians autopsied the dead Special Security trooper. A doctor cut away a section of trousers, exposing the thigh muscle of the casualty.

  “This merits your attention.” The doctor pointed to the bullet wound.

  Curious, Dimonokov bent down to look. What should have been a relatively minor entry wound had grown into a grossly abscessed hole, wide and deep enough to thrust a fist in. Sustained at ultra-high performance levels by his biochemical mixture, the body’s defenses completely collapsed when traumatized.

  Interesting, he thought. The degeneration occurs much faster under natural conditions than in the laboratory. External bacteria invade the defenseless tissue, which itself becomes a super-fueled culture for unchecked expansion. He motioned towards the corpse’s head. A high-speed bone saw whirred. He caught a whiff of burning bone fragments, then the putrid, unmistakable smell of cerebrospinal fluid. The doctor removed a section of the skull. Even without a microscope the lesions and encephalitic swelling—evidence of the brain infection known as toxoplasmosis—were visible in the gray tissue.

  He nodded to the doctor. The visual evidence confirmed the laboratory tests. His biochemicals produced supermen, master warriors of one mind and one will. But they were short-lived, and they either conquered or died. The evidence showed there was no in between.

  Fitting, he thought, quite fitting. His own head throbbed for a moment. “Ensure the samples are fully frozen.”

  “The container is prepared.” The doctor pointed to a white, self-refrigerating cooler. “We will learn much from this.”

  “Indeed,” he replied flatly. He turned toward a countertop where samples had been placed for microscopic inspection. They would learn much. He peered through the microscope, scrutinizing the magnified tissue sample. The misshapen forms of tumorous cells were clearly visible, but Dimonokov needed to know more. He lifted his head and turned toward the electron microscope, only to feel a sharp tug at the inside of his left forearm. Two bags of fluid—one red, the other a pale green—hung from a rollaway IV stand. The liquids slowly dripped down through clear plastic tubes and into Dimonokov’s arm.

  “Careful,” cautioned the doctor, coming alongside him. “The IV will be pulled loose. Allow me to adjust it.” The doctor reached for the IV tube taped to Dimonokov’s arm, but Dimonokov’s mind was elsewhere, and he turned away. The tube jerked, the needle twisted inside his vein, and Dimonokov ground his teeth in pain.

  “Clumsy idiot!” Dimonokov snarled. He snatched an empty beaker from the workbench and threw it on the floor. The doctor shrank back from the shattering glass.

  “I am so sorry.”

  Dimonokov stormed off toward the electron microscope, leaving the doctor to sweep up the debris and to note that his colonel was growing more unpredictable and more violent with each passing day.

  The Pentagon

  Office of the Army Representative

  Joint Threat Reduction Action Committee

  A stunned Jimmy Grimes came out of Ambrose’s office and sat down heavily.

  A just as stunned Val Macintyre went to get a cup of coffee and have a good cry.

  Jack Ambrose left to attend a meeting. He had barely cleared the door before Grimes was on the phone to his Congressional staff aide buddies.

  “Yeah, I’m calling in every marker I got out on this one. The Russian thing is career suicide. No way I’m going. You gotta get your boss to get me out of this. I mean, I voted for the Senator even though he’s not in my district—not in my state even…I know it’s micromanaging Department of Defense business and that Congress doesn’t like that, but they do it so often that one more isn’t going to hurt…So you think he’ll do it? Great. I’m gonna make some other calls for backup, but sure, anything you want after this. Thanks a million. No, I don’t care who they send, as long as it’s not me. They can send Macintyre, for all I care.”

  Dacha Dimonokov

  Southern Ural Mountains

  Russia

  The shadows were lengthening as Alexi Dimonokov arrived outside his family’s ancestral home. He’d come alone for this dinner meeting he’d arranged with Viktor—not that he expected to see him. The Turk should have done his work by now. Roskotovitch would soon give his order to send away Ziven’s men, then go take command of Special Security Regiment 23 and place it in charge of Infernesk’s security.

  Leaving the hen house open to a fox named Alexi.

  As he opened the car door he glanced nervously over his shoulder. The great dacha seemed to loom judgmentally, like a judge on his courtroom perch, in front of him as he hurried up the walkway.

  He’d come early to walk the grounds. Dacha Dimonokov sat on a broad, flat ridge half way up a mountain slope, hidden from the village below by tall firs and an odd wrinkle in the terrain. The twenty-two rooms, servants’ quarters, stables-turned-garage, and several hundred rugged, wooded mountain acres had been passed down the family line until they came to the two surviving brothers. An elderly caretaker ensured the buildings and grounds were maintained. When one or both brothers visited, a woman from the village would come for a day to cook, clean, and change the linens.

  Twice a year, the two brothers dined together at the family home. For Alexi and Viktor’s dinners, the kitchen, dining room, and drawing room were dusted and lit. Otherwise the great house sat dark and vacant.

  In the dwindling evening light he considered the buildings at length, finally judging them to be in acceptable condition. Inside he went from room to room, pacing off the approximate square footage, evaluating the condition of the walls and floors, looking for telltale cracks in the plaster. He climbed the stairs, inspected the last room, and was engrossed in making his calculations when a noise from behind made him jump.

  Alexi felt suddenly uneasy. He returned to the entryway to find the front door to the Dimonokov manor house ajar.

  Then the lights failed.

  He felt the darkness was chasing him, and he desperately wanted to be where it was safe and warm and have his Mafiya lieutenants to protect him.

  Perhaps the Turk had been delayed.

  “Viktor! Viktor!”

  His footsteps echoed off the hardwood floors as he searched the house. The formal dining room was empty and cold. Alexi broke out in a nervous sweat. He flipped a light switch, but nothing happened. His fear grew as he clicked it back and forth again and again, all with the same result. Alexi stepped to the phone but it, too, was dead.

  He pawed through the kitchen until he found a flashlight, and although time was clearly running out for its batteries, he clutched the feeble lamp as if it meant his life. By the time he finished searching the main level and the upstairs rooms his shirt was soaked through. Only the cellar was left, and the sound of his own breathing seemed to roar in his ears as he turned the knob on the basement door. A deep black yawned before him. With the faltering flashlight showing him no more than the step just ahead, Alexi stepped down.

  The cellar’s cold and damp chilled his own sweat and made him shiver, and his nose filled with the musty odor of places underground. From beneath the closed door to the furnace and boiler room, Alexi saw a faint glow.

  Salt stung his eyes as he made his way to the door and turned the knob. It swung open. The utilities room was huge, nearly the size of a small apartment. The long tanks of two hot water boilers were visible, as were the three furnaces. Only one was in use, Alexi knew; the othe
rs were obsolete. It was less expensive to leave them in place than haul them out. Dull light came from a source he couldn’t see from the doorway. On a far wall the fuse box was visible. Beneath it lay a crumpled form. Alexi stared uncomprehendingly until it registered that it was a body.

  With his free hand, Alexi shakily pulled his handgun from inside his jacket. The weapon seemed not just puny in his fat hands, but somehow ridiculously small in the face of the fear in front of him. The pistol trembled as he extended it.

  Alexi stepped inside.

  As if it came from some unseen fiend from hell, a hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. In terror Alexi shrieked and jerked the trigger. The first bullet buried itself in the far stone wall, then the weapon jammed. As the icy grip crushed his wrist, Alexi dropped the pistol and swiveled, shining the flashlight onto whomever, or whatever, was holding him.

  His brother’s eyes stared him down, two burning coals set in a mask of pure cruelty.

  “Viktor! Thank God!”

  The elder Dimonokov backhanded his brother so hard he crashed into the wall. Bleeding and blubbering, Alexi fell to the floor.

  Viktor grabbed him by the collar and hauled him to his feet. “What is the meaning of this toy?” he demanded, pointing to Alexi’s gun.

  “I—I…it was to protect myself.”

  Viktor dragged him to the corpse.

  “Who is he?”

  Alexi looked down, sickened by the sight. “I do not know,” he lied. The Turk’s face was frozen in twisted horror. A black stain of dried blood ran up the corpse’s barrel chest to the gash where his throat had been slit.

  “He was an amateur, a presumptuous amateur. He wired the electrical and heating systems to burn the manor to the ground, presumably to make a murder appear to be an accident. Whoever sent him is not only a swine, he is a stupid swine to employ such a fool!”

  Viktor felt his head begin to pound. The rage he had for those he despised rose quickly. “I have spent a lifetime in ambush and counterambush. Viktor Dimonokov does not walk into a trap and die so easily.”