by Vince Flynn
“This stuff’s completely impervious to cyberattacks,” Coleman said, picking up on the general’s thought. “The whole country is full of wire and physical switches that have been refurbished. It may not be fast and it may not be sexy, but the only way the Russians can take it out is to blow it up. And that assumes they can find it. Most of the schematics for this stuff were never digitized. It was all just rotting away in basements of old government buildings.”
“How are Estonia and Lithuania doing?” Rapp asked.
“As well as can be expected,” Strazds said. “The Estonian president was still skeptical and they were reluctant to fully commit. But now I’m told they’re doing everything they can to make up for lost time.”
The old man trying to get the power back on grabbed hold of a switch that belonged in a ’50s horror film. A quick yank got the lights going again but left him patting flames on his sleeve.
“If you want out of Latvia, now’s the time,” Strazds said. “I have a plane that can evacuate you to Sweden.”
Rapp looked over at Coleman’s hopeful expression and shook his head. “If I made Scott leave now, he’d never forgive me.”
CHAPTER 34
SALEKHARD
RUSSIA
DESPITE his wool coat and hat, Azarov could feel the cold beginning to penetrate him. The blood on the floor had been simple to sop up but there was no practical way to get rid of the body. It was still lying in the middle of the floor where it had fallen. The problem had become delaying decay as long as possible. While the apartment building already smelled of mold, cigarettes, and urine, it was nowhere near strong enough to mask the stench of a rotting corpse.
Azarov reached for the pack of cigarettes on the table but remembered he’d smoked the last one hours ago. It was 3 a.m. and there was nothing to keep him company but the wet breeze flowing through the open window and the dead man staring at his back. He shaded his phone with a hand, holding it low so it didn’t illuminate him when he checked the screen. Still nothing from Kennedy saying that she’d received the package he’d sent for Cara. The only communication he’d received in the last twenty-four hours was a brief text from Joe Maslick saying that cyberattacks had begun. But not on Ukraine. On the Baltics.
A direct confrontation with NATO was an action so extreme that even Azarov found himself stunned. In retrospect, though, he probably shouldn’t have been. The combination of Krupin’s weakness and Andrei Sokolov’s involvement should have made this move obvious. Perhaps even inevitable.
He leaned back in his chair, examining the silent outline of the house across the street. The interesting question was whether Krupin’s Baltic gambit would be remembered as madness or as one of the most brilliant strategic moves in history. The West had become lost—struggling to remember what it was and losing sight of what it aspired to be. Did it still have the cohesiveness and sense of purpose necessary to enter a fight of this magnitude?
The sound of a motor became audible over the wind and Azarov slid the chair back, ensuring that he would be invisible from the street.
When he saw that it was an ambulance with its emergency lights dark, his heart rate rose—something that rarely happened to him unless Krupin or Cara was involved. He remained motionless as it glided to a stop and four men in paramedic uniforms stepped out.
They went to the back and pulled out a gurney, moving with a noticeable lack of urgency. For a moment, Azarov thought that the man inside might have succumbed to his illness but dismissed the idea almost immediately. All four men seemed to have an inordinate interest in the empty neighborhood around them, constantly scanning the street and the silent houses that lined it. One, a wiry dark-haired man with a confident gait, turned his attention to Azarov’s second-floor window. The light flowing from the back of the ambulance illuminated his features enough to make them recognizable.
Nikita Pushkin’s eyes lingered, staring into what from his position would be impenetrable shadow. The fact that the window was open in this weather would register as unusual, though explanations abounded—the apartment might be abandoned, the latch could be broken, the resident might be unaccustomed to the stink of the old building.
In the end, youth and arrogance overpowered caution. Pushkin turned to follow his men toward the house, undoubtedly anxious to complete the task Krupin had charged him with.
• • •
Yuri Lebedev opened one eye, staring into the darkness as his wife snored softly next to him. For a moment, he thought the noise had been part of a dream, but then it came again. Someone was knocking.
He rolled on his side, suspecting he knew the person responsible and deciding to ignore it. He’d barely gotten the blanket back over him when it came again, this time insistent enough to have the potential to wake his wife.
Swearing under his breath, Lebedev rolled out of bed and snatched his robe from a hook on the wall. If it was his daughter’s on and off boyfriend, drunk and weepy with remorse again, there would be hell to pay.
The tumor in his brain was unquestionably killing him—he could feel its effects every moment of every day—but he wasn’t dead yet. Even with the weight loss, he still tipped the scales at a solid eighty-four kilos. Not that it was his intention to injure the boy—he wasn’t really a bad kid. But his daughter was driven and beautiful and near the top of her class at her school. Russia was hardly the land of opportunity, but there were places at the top for a girl like her. All she had to do was get away from this town and the people in it.
Lebedev padded across the living room, turning on an overhead light before yanking open the front door. Instead of a lovesick teen, though, he found three men in the uniforms of an ambulance crew.
“Who are you?”
The man in the center smiled but there seemed to be a vague cruelty to it—not what you’d expect of someone in his profession. In fact, none of them were. They looked more like the special forces men he’d known during his military days than the paunchy, bleary eyed locals who held jobs like this.
“We were notified of a medical emergency,” the man said through his frozen smile.
“You have the wrong house.” Lebedev started to close the door.
“A young woman made the call. Her name was Tatyana.”
His brow knitted. “That’s my youngest daughter’s name.”
“Are you certain she’s all right?”
He didn’t know why she wouldn’t be. Tatyana was a healthy and reasonably sensible girl. On the other hand, she’d just turned thirteen. The age when women went insane.
“Come in,” Lebedev said, starting toward the room his two girls shared.
The men brought in their gurney and he heard the front door close right before the barrel of a gun was pressed against the back of his head.
His jaw tightened in anger as he raised his hands. What the hell was happening to his country?
“We don’t have anything of value. Certainly, nothing that would pay the rent on your fancy uniforms and fake ambulance.”
“Not true,” the man behind him said as his companions moved toward the back of the house. “I’ve been told that you’re the most valuable man in all of Russia.”
Lebedev heard struggling and a brief scream. The reason for that brevity became clear when his wife was dragged into the living room with a garrote around her neck. A few moments later, the second man appeared with Lebedev’s daughters, each with a similar wire subduing them.
He moved forward instinctively, but the man behind, grabbed him by the throat and increased the pressure of the gun barrel against his skull.
“What a beautiful family, you have, Yuri. You’re a lucky man. Except for the tumor eating your brain. They tell me you’re going to lose your mind and control of your body. That you’re going to die slowly and horribly. Why would you want to put them through that? It’s the act of a coward.”
“You’re the one who needs a gun to protect him from a dying man and three women. If you’re going to run your mouth, why don’
t you use it to tell me what you want?”
His wife’s eyes were starting to bulge and the wire was disappearing into the flesh around her neck. His daughters were both frozen in their nightgowns, tears flowing silently down their cheeks.
“I want you, Yuri. I want you to accept the generous offer of treatment for your disease.”
Lebedev nodded slowly and the pressure around his throat eased slightly. He’d turned it down because his doctor—one of his closest friends since grade school—had advised him to. People had been offered similar opportunities, but there were no details about the study itself or the outcomes of the subjects who had agreed to take part. The lack of information went beyond unusual, crossing the line into suspicious.
As it had been so many times before, his friend’s advice seemed to have been sound.
“My family won’t be harmed?”
“Of course not. I need them here to tell people you had a seizure that convinced you to join our study. Or something like that. I don’t really care about the details as long as it’s convincing. If it’s not, I’ll come back here and visit them again. Do you understand?”
CHAPTER 35
THE KREMLIN
MOSCOW
RUSSIA
THE pain behind Maxim Krupin’s eyes was considerable, but different in both quality and magnitude than he’d become accustomed to in recent months. It wasn’t the result of his tumor or an indication of an upcoming attack, but instead the result of the stimulants he’d injected.
The benefits of Dr. Fedkin’s potion had exceeded even his wildest hopes. The details of the corridor he was walking along had sharpened. The red of the carpet, green of the military uniforms, and gold of the ornate molding glowed with newfound intensity. Intoxicating, but also an undiluted glimpse into how much he’d weakened. Until now, the decline had been too slow to fully grasp.
His short-term memory had been restored, as had his unparalleled ability to sort and prioritize information. The sensation of being in control again—of bending the world to his will instead of being overwhelmed by it—was intoxicating.
The guards at the end of the hallway snapped to attention and opened doors leading to a cavernous room that had been converted into a military command center. When he entered, though, the expected machinations of modern war were nowhere to be found. The junior staff appeared to have been dismissed and his generals were arguing over a tabletop map of the Balkans.
Sokolov snapped to attention while the others fell silent and offered somewhat less enthusiastic acknowledgments of their president’s arrival.
“What is this?” Krupin said, waving a hand around the empty room. “My understanding is that the cyberattacks have begun and we’re fully operational.”
“That’s correct,” Sokolov said. “Unfortunately, the initial phase of the invasion hasn’t been as effective as we’d anticipated.”
Krupin turned to Oleg Gorsky, the young air force general who oversaw their cyber warfare unit. “Explain.”
“I can’t. We had excellent penetration into all the Baltic systems. We’re trying to evaluate—”
“They knew,” Sokolov interrupted. “Their security forces have been searching for our malware and then doing nothing to eradicate it. They lulled this fool into complacency while creating patches that they implemented minutes after our attack.”
“The disruption is still significant,” Gorsky was quick to add. “Electrical interruptions, the collapse of Internet traffic and the cellular netw—”
“Most of the electrical interruptions were only temporary,” Sokolov interrupted. “We’re estimating that the enemy controls power in more than three-quarters of our operating theater. There’s also evidence of a telephone landline system that we weren’t aware of. Emergency radio is operating as are a number of cable stations. They’re using those capabilities to organize a reaction that’s surprisingly far-reaching.”
“How so?” Krupin said.
“Residents are evacuating to rural areas in an extremely orderly fashion. It appears that our troops will arrive to find their major objectives abandoned.”
“I was told that the cyberattacks were veiled as ransomware,” Krupin said, struggling to understand what he was being told, even with his stimulant-enhanced mind. “Millions of people are abandoning their homes over hacking that you just said wasn’t even particularly effective?”
“There’s more,” Gorsky said. “It’s not just the cities that are emptying. It’s the military bases. Soldiers are abandoning their uniforms and disappearing into the countryside with their equipment and crews. Perhaps worse, virtually every warplane in the Baltics is in the air and on course to bases across the Polish border.”
“Have we moved into Baltic territory without my orders?”
“No, sir,” his ground force commander said. “We’ve made no threatening moves that could telegraph our intentions.”
“What’s the status of NATO?”
“The forces withdrawing from the exercises in Poland are turning around and supply lines are being reestablished,” Sokolov said. “Again unexpected, but too little too late.”
“We’re also seeing an increase in naval activity,” Admiral Vladimir Zhabin said. “Two American carrier groups are moving in the direction of the Baltic while another two are on their way to the Barents Sea. We’ve also logged an unusual amount of submarine activity near our territorial waters and an additional British destroyer entering the Black Sea. Concentrations of European warships in the Mediterranean are—”
“Another meaningless display of hardware,” Sokolov said disparagingly. “We aren’t fighting a naval battle.”
His words ignited another argument between the commanders that Krupin only half listened to. Instead, he struggled to analyze the facts he’d just been provided. Had he been betrayed? Had one of the few officers who knew of the Baltic gambit leaked his intentions to the Americans? Far more dangerous, was it possible that the Americans suspected that he was ill? Had Irene Kennedy discovered a clue he had carelessly left behind?
“Enough!” Krupin said finally, silencing the men. “What does all this mean for our tactical situation?”
Gorsky spoke immediately, clearly trying to wrest control from Sokolov. “It leaves our plans in tatters, Mr. President. We’re facing a protracted guerrilla war against formidable opponents operating in their own territory. Further, it’s likely that the Balkan air forces will mount nightly raids and then retreat back across the Polish border. Their bases and runways will be out of our reach unless we’re willing to push into Poland, a move that would catastrophically overextend our resources.”
Admiral Zhabin was the next to speak, seeming to have derived some courage from his more forthright colleague. “If the Americans decide to take the Baltic Sea, they’d be in position to supply a significant insurgency. We can resist to the last man, but the outcome is preordained. Their naval budget is significantly higher than our entire annual spending on defense.”
“We could use ground-based weapons systems to target their ships—” Sokolov started, but Gorsky dared to cut him off.
“Our supply of those kinds of weapons in the Baltics will be extremely limited at the outset and launching missiles from Russian territory would invite direct retaliation. At that point, all pretense would be lost. Russia would be at war with the West.”
“They wouldn’t dare!” Sokolov shouted. “We have tactical nuclear weapons that could wipe out every major city in Europe over the course of a few minutes.”
“Are we now talking about a nuclear war?” Gorsky said, matching the volume of Sokolov’s voice. “Over the annexation of three countries that pose no immediate threat to us? Have you gone insane?”
“You’re relieved,” Krupin said.
The impact was somewhat less than expected. Gorsky simply gave a jerky nod of acknowledgment instead of respect and then walked out. His gait suggested more relief than humiliation.
“Recommendations?” Krupin said, t
urning his attention to the map built into the table in front of him.
“Abort and reassess,” the leader of his ground forces said. “We can blame the cyberattack on independent hackers and our forces have done nothing provocative. In fact, we can protest the unannounced extension of NATO’s Poland exercises and the sudden increase in American naval activity. More examples of unprovoked aggression against the motherland.”
Krupin considered the man’s words for a moment and then just shook his head. “Get out. All of you.”
His remaining commanders filed through the door and he waited for it to close before he spoke again.
“What are the Americans playing at, Andrei?”
Sokolov folded his arms across his chest and looked around the empty room. “The governments of the Baltic states were more clever than we gave them credit for. What we saw as corruption and waste in their military spending now appears to have been the diversion of funds into creating an asymmetric capability.”
“Did it work?”
“Given another set of circumstances, perhaps. But the immediate threat to you isn’t from the Americans or the Europeans. It’s from the men who just left this room and their allies. It’s from Prime Minister Utkin, who is out of the country but still very much in contact with his supporters inside our borders. It’s from Roman Pasternak, whose followers are demonstrating for his release from prison.”
“I agree that we need to keep my internal enemies off-balance, but does an endless insurgency fought across three separate countries accomplish that?”
“These insurgents would be nothing more than terrorists killing our troops in cowardly ambushes. We’d crush them and use the Russian media to show them for what they are.”
Krupin looked into the eyes of his most loyal disciple and saw the nationalistic fervor burning in them. He was in many ways unique. A man of great personal strength but not great personal ambition. A man who lived only to serve the glory of Russia and to see its power extend throughout the world. These traits made him extraordinarily useful, but also twisted his perceptions. He believed that with a sufficient show of military resolve, the world would suddenly awaken to the reality of Russia’s inherent superiority. Krupin, on the other hand, had no such delusions.
