“Yes, dear.”
“You don’t have to sound so damn cheerful about it.”
“Yes, dear,” Beale replied, not one bit less chipper.
SOAR lived to go where no one else could and this was definitely one of those circumstances. But John tried not to think about it as they lifted to a half-dozen meters and turned northeast toward the heart of the country.
He definitely tried not to think of the buildup of security the nearer they’d fly to Kiev.
And absolutely not about Connie’s stated fears that there’d never be enough time before death found them.
Chapter 70
Colonel Gibson and Captain Grant were scouting the area. Now the two Delta operators were lying low in a natural gully in the middle of a field about two miles away from the helicopter and a quarter mile from the target. They’d pulled back far enough that they dared whisper over the radio. The Black Hawk had been parked behind a copse of trees for almost an hour, and time was running very short. They really needed to be headed back to Poland somewhere in the next ninety minutes, and that wasn’t seeming very likely.
Connie listened to what the D-boys had to say and didn’t like it one bit. She wished she hadn’t thought of this scenario in the first place.
She flipped Gerta out of the circuit, just in case the woman understood more English than she appeared to.
“An unguarded house and garage. Colonel, what if she isn’t telling the truth? And this isn’t the place? What if all that’s in there is an old Ukrainian couple?”
The major turned in her pilot’s seat and faced Connie. “What do you think?”
Well, that would teach her. Ask a question and have it shot right back at you. Connie thought about it and turned briefly to study the woman crouched in the back of the helicopter, her hands tucked under her arms trying to keep warm.
Finally Connie knew. Unless Gerta was dealing from a cold deck with more skill than Major Henderson, the cards were clean. She had no one to miss her; that was a sadness that Connie recognized in Gerta’s eyes. Add to that her wish to defect, the slope of her shoulders at the idea that she wouldn’t be believed, her adamant insistence that this was the place, and the timbre of her voice.
“She’s telling the truth.”
“Then where is it, parked next to a goddamn rusting Lada sedan?” Colonel Gibson did not sound happy. “They tried hiding the first two in the open. I’d bet they’d do the opposite with the third one if they were smart. Heavy security.”
Connie considered. Closed her eyes and tried to picture it logically. How did you lock something down that you didn’t want anyone to discover but not run the risk of a large number of people knowing about it. You didn’t do it with more people. They wouldn’t use a base’s worth of forces. This was a closely guarded secret. Even Aleksander had not known about it.
When she and John had wanted privacy, and what they’d thought to be secrecy, all they’d had to do was close the submarine’s hatch. No one went there at night, not without a key.
Could it be so simple?
She flipped Gerta back into the circuit and chatted with her a bit more.
“You press the buzzer on the front door. They check your face. Then they let you in. The face is the key that provides the security. If you look wrong, you get the grumpy housewife or the front end of an Uzi. If you have the right face, you get in. Very few to know, very few to track.”
“Well, they aren’t going to like my face.” Colonel Gibson and his companion had left the chopper with their faces heavily blacked for night work.
There was a long silence.
“Sir?” Connie asked.
“Yeah, I know.” Gibson sounded pretty unhappy. “We’re headed back to get you.”
Emily cut in, “Stay where you are. My people move quietly. They’ll come to you. Sergeant Davis, you make it clear to your pal there that if she cooperates, she gets a free ride to the promised land. And if she screws with me, I’m gonna drop her in the Baltic Sea in a long line of pieces no bigger than my goddamn thumb. And she’ll live through at least the first hundred. Are we clear?”
“Clear, sir.” She translated the message as literally as she could.
Gerta nodded easily.
“My commander…” Connie stared Gerta straight in the eyes. “She’s not kidding.”
Gerta’s nod was a little tighter this time, her eyes a little wider.
“Go! John, you’ve got her back. Let us know when you need the cavalry.”
***
It took them a precious half hour to cover the distance to the D-boys following a stream along the stubbled cornfield, then crawling through the winter wheat. And fifteen more before they were in position around the house. Half their time was gone.
This couldn’t be it. Small, gray, perhaps once painted white long ago. No guards. No dog. No visible cameras.
At Connie’s nod, Gerta stood, straightened her jacket, and strode purposefully to the front door.
She punched the buzzer as the D-boys lay to either side of the stoop, one having circled half a mile around to get there. The two of them in full camo gear looked like nothing so much as a pile of windblown leaves lying along the foundation.
A harsh light flashed on, making Gerta blink hard, standing on the stoop. But she didn’t raise a hand to shield her eyes, simply squeezed them shut for a long moment. Some other rule of the security. If you followed reflex and raised your arm, you’d probably broken the first of a dozen security steps.
The D-boys to either side were barely lit by the backwash of the bright light. Unmoving. Eyes nearly slitted closed.
From her perch at the corner of the house toward the garage, Connie could just hear the speaker demanding Gerta’s identity. John stood close enough behind her that she could feel his rapid breathing against the back of her neck. They both held SCAR rifles with the stock folded in for CQC. She really hoped it wouldn’t come to close-quarters combat. Gerta would be the first dead, and she’d probably be next.
A shudder ran up her spine. Odd. Connie considered her own feelings. For the first time, having death as an inevitable end didn’t seem so okay.
Gerta responded by holding up her ID.
Connie thought about the future, and an easy image of John rose to her mind.
Another spate of Russian from the speaker took Connie a moment to translate. “Why are you here at two in the morning?”
That was the question they’d discussed how to answer but hadn’t come up with a good response. Or any response at all, really.
Gerta was up to it. “Open the damned door before I kick your collective Ukrainian behinds and I’ll tell you.”
“So give me the goddamn pass code, already.”
Connie could imagine John and herself years from— She brushed the thought away. Now was so not the time.
“Marilyn Monroe,” Gerta offered in her thick Russian. “37-23-36.”
Measurements. Crap. What was it with men and Marilyn Monroe? Half the passwords Connie had ever cracked were some variation on that.
Another grunt, and then the sharp buzz of a heavy magnetic lock on a steel door sounded from the worn wood. Another proof of the right place.
Gerta pushed it open and stepped in, and the D-boys slid in beside her so smoothly it was hard to see them. Not even the slight pop of silenced gunfire or the soft gurgle of a slit throat. The guards must be somewhere else in the building, opening the door by remote.
Connie started counting to five as instructed.
At three, John moved around her, gun at the ready.
Connie cursed for at least a half second before she followed him.
Gibson had chocked the door open, as per plan.
A flight of metal stairs ran down straight ahead. Gerta was just stepping off the bottom step, waving to someone Connie couldn’t see. The two D-boys were low and close behind her.
Gibson, crouched in the dark at the base of the stairs, shot his silent dart gun at a target Connie cou
ldn’t see from the head of the stairs.
Three seconds later, there was the soft thud of a falling body.
Instead of going down, Connie moved through a door to the left of the stairs and entered the main house, looking for the sleepy housewife cover-story, fully aware that she might be walking into the sights of a Kalashnikov rifle.
She rolled right and low as she crossed the threshold, John perched left and high to cover her.
But there weren’t any housewives. Or rooms. It was an open hangar almost exactly the size of the Mi-24 Hind gunship parked in it. The back of the house clearly opened outward on heavy tracks.
Definitely the right place.
She and John circled it quickly, but the room, which took up all of the ground floor other than the entryway, was unoccupied. A quick check showed the Hind chopper was empty but ready for immediate flight.
She slipped a remote-controlled C4 mine from her thigh pouch and read the code.
“3, 2, 3.” Was that Monroe again? She flashed her fingers to John.
He pulled a remote detonator out of a thigh pocket, dialed the radio frequency in, and slipped it back into the pocket.
Connie peeled the back off the mine and stuck it on the underside of a fuel tank.
The rest of the bay was empty. They circled back to the stairs and Connie followed John down into the silence.
At the base of the stairs they looked and listened. They could see Grant and Gerta. She crouched behind the D-boy, a large stainless tank shielding them from most possible attacks.
Michael Gibson was nowhere to be seen.
“Damn!”
She barely heard John’s whispered oath. He slipped into the room and opened up her view.
Suddenly she was glad to be behind the broad shield of his back.
The bomb was the least of their worries. A vast underground laboratory stretched off into the distance.
Two brief cries and a soft thud sounded in the distance.
“Clear!” Michael called on the headset.
Connie pulled out her phone and shot five photos in an arc across the room and hit Send.
A minute later, as they were moving forward, her phone buzzed.
“What is it?” she answered.
“Heavy water, I think.” Dr. Williams didn’t sound so chipper. “They’re gearing up to build more bombs.”
***
John groaned. This was a whole other world of hurt.
The bomb itself was sitting on an elevator that would lift it right up into the hangar. Wheeled carriage already in place. He could deal with that.
But every time he turned his back, Connie wandered off to some other part of the lab and he had to scramble after her. They were halfway through the room when he spotted Gerta moving toward them, something in her hands.
He raised his gun, zeroed on her forehead, and clicked off the safety.
The woman froze.
He dipped the barrel toward her hands, then zeroed it back on her face.
Ever so slowly, not moving a muscle she didn’t have to, she opened both hands. A set of keys.
Connie shifted into his range of view but didn’t get in the range of fire.
Some of the heavy slog of Russian shifted back and forth between them.
She signaled for John to lower his gun. They’d be better off with her dead. He hated carrying around someone he didn’t trust. But she’d gotten them through the door. He did as Connie said.
The Ukrainian handed the keys to Connie and led her back the way she’d come. The keys unlocked a small safe, more of a cabinet. He could have just kicked the damn thing in. Inside were laptops and some backup external drives and USBs.
Connie swept them all into a bag. Then she slung them over the woman’s head and shoulder, pinning her arms awkwardly. Connie pulled out her Ka-Bar and used the tip of the knife to slice the zip-ties around the woman’s wrists.
John didn’t like it one bit.
The Ukrainian massaged her wrists and started talking again.
“Only the three guards,” Connie translated. “Tomorrow is New Year’s. Everyone else has gone home.”
Gibson slid up beside him. “We can’t leave this.”
John could only nod in agreement.
Connie kept snapping pictures on a quick tour of the room and sending them to Dr. Williams via the satellite uplink.
Back on the phone. “Anything here going to be upset if we blow it up?”
Good question. John was all for blowing it up anyway. It wasn’t their soil, and it wouldn’t be their mess to clean up.
Connie nodded and turned off the phone, jamming it back in the pouch.
“Just the bomb.”
“We’d need a lot of something that goes bang.” Gibson had been looking around. “But there’s nothing in this room.”
John didn’t even have to look at Connie to know they shared the same thought. He started to reach for his headset, but she was already speaking into her microphone.
“Major. Soft and quiet, come around the back, and park close.”
She pointed up and John moved out.
By the time he climbed the stairs and found the door controls for the back of the building, the Major was settling the Black Hawk outside. The top of the door swung out and down, extending the hangar floor another twenty feet. Slick.
The Vengeance jinked. First time in over a year of flying with her that he’d seen Major Emily Beale flinch.
He looked over his shoulder, then did his best to hide his smile. The fully armed Hind helicopter sat immediately behind him. At under a hundred feet from nose to nose, that was enough to chill anyone.
He’d have to tell Connie. This was too good. The Major had nerves of something other than steel.
The smile was wiped from his lips and his thoughts when he turned. Connie and the bomb were riding the lift up through the hangar floor. Creepiest damn sight he’d ever seen. Even watching the two they’d pulled out of the DC-3s was only odd. Now it was just a woman and the nastiest-looking bomb he’d ever seen.
“This one’s bigger,” Connie called out. “We’re going to have to lose a lot of weight.”
John scared up a couple of handcarts. It only took a few minutes to set up a man line, shifting Major Henderson’s extra missiles onto the cart.
When Gerta arrived, she didn’t even need to be asked. She moved right into the line and began moving weapons.
John made sure his gun was loose in his holster, saw Gibson shift the sling on his sniper rifle.
The woman must have noticed, but she did well at hiding her nerves as she moved to help with the next Hellfire. With the missiles weighing in at a hundred pounds apiece, he didn’t need the help, but she was pitching in. That was good.
Connie had her card from Dr. Williams back out—how to disarm “the bomb” in five easy steps or some such. She pulled a cover in the nose of the bomb and was studying the inside.
They had the cargo bay cleared and were starting on their own weaponry. The Major was letting go of two Hellfires and half of the 2.75s. Ten of those totaled another hundred and thirty pounds.
He felt Connie freeze, even though his back was mostly turned to her. In seconds everyone stopped moving and turned to look at her without actually turning.
She remained frozen, one arm elbow deep in the bomb’s guts.
John slid up to her and looked down at the blinking green light on the bomb.
“What?” He hadn’t intended to whisper.
“I don’t know.” She was definitely whispering back. He didn’t like that at all.
She pulled out the phone very slowly and tossed it to Colonel Gibson, who caught it midair.
“Speed dial 1. Blinking green light on the flight circuit board after I jostled the blue wire on the protective cap over the detonator.”
John didn’t move. He wanted to run, but no way he’d leave a teammate alone here. And no chance he was going anywhere without Connie.
“Model?” Gibson relay
ed the question back to her.
“How the fuck should I know?” Her hiss was beyond anger. “It’s big, it’s nasty, and it’s lying here just dying to kill us.”
John rested his hand on her shoulder. “Remember, we’ve been through worse. It’s just a sling-load of freezing water falling from the sky.”
She started nodding. Slowly at first. Then stronger.
“John, grab the nose cone.”
***
Connie trotted to the Hawk and fetched the electric screw gun and set to work. Screws. Better than rivets. But did they have to use so many? She couldn’t get to the detonator circuitry without removing the flight controller board. But she didn’t dare move the controller board again.
So, she’d pull the whole nose cone and come up the damn thing’s backside.
She began undoing the screws as fast as she could, the green light still blinking its unknown threat at her. One flashlight, two, then three aimed at her hands. She glanced up to see. Everyone stood in a circle around her, as far from her as they dared but not watching anything else.
If she screwed up, the bomb would fire, sweeping outward in a titanic wave. She and John would have one or two final milliseconds together while the trigger fired. After that it would all be over in the next microsecond or so. They, the circle of watchers, the two choppers, the house, and the lab would be gone by then. Another second and the initial fireball would be expanding in a supersonic shock wave. The mushroom cloud might take two whole minutes before it reached the stratosphere. Explosions were fast things.
No pressure. Shit!
She couldn’t get to the screws on the underside without craning the whole bomb off the cart. No time for that and she didn’t dare move it.
“Okay, John.” She set aside the screw gun and slipped her hands beside his. She was pretty impressed at how steady her voice sounded. “We’re going to lever the nose cone off, break it downward. But the instant it lets go, don’t let it drop. Whatever you do, don’t let it drop.”
She braced herself to help cushion it from a fall.
Gibson called out, “Williams says don’t do that. Not until he knows the model. Does it have—”
“Tell him to shut the hell up.”
Wait Until Dark (The Night Stalkers) Page 27
