Long Shot

by Sgt. Jack Coughlin

  She guided them just around the corner, beside a row of parked cars, and as they passed by, Kyle Swanson stepped out from between two vehicles and slugged Val Serov behind his right ear. Anneli had the rear door open before the stunned boy hit the ground and then she helped Kyle shove the wobbly corporal into the backseat. She drove while Swanson secured the soldier with duct tape and covered him with a blanket.

  “Good job, girl. Back to the safe house,” he said, climbing into the front seat as she turned onto the main highway, driving carefully and doing nothing to draw attention.

  15

  TALLINN, ESTONIA

  “WAKE UP, CORPORAL.” VALENTIN Serov heard the persistent voice of a woman pulling him from a comfortable reverie of sleep. A cool cloth bathed his face. “Come on, now. You are fine. Everything is fine.” The words were Russian, and he responded, coming smoothly out of a drug-induced stupor in which he had been suspended for the past six hours. He blinked, saw shadows and light, and gradually came to his senses. There she was.

  Serov saw scraps of returning memory, fragments of everything from the moment he had worked up the courage to go and say hello to the beautiful girl in the bar. He had soothed her then, just as she was helping him now, and then they had stepped outside, with his hopes so high and his attention so totally on her that he had not detected any danger whatsoever. He could hardly believe his luck. Then he remembered being stunned by a painful slam on the head, being roughly handled into an automobile, being bound and gagged, and a sharp needle pinching into his arm. Beyond that, only a deep sleep.

  “Wake up,” she repeated as his eyes came into focus. Anneli Kallasti smiled down at him, and he smiled weakly back until he realized that he was secured to a bed. He jerked his wrists and tried to move his legs, but was too tightly bound, and when he opened his mouth to shout, she covered it gently with her hand. Her touch silenced him before he could scream, and he remained quiet.

  The woman was even more beautiful than he had remembered from last night. Instead of the long red hair, she was now a dark brunette with gray eyes and pouting lips. She dabbed at his face with the wet cloth. “Hello, soldier. Welcome back. You’re safe here, and you will not be harmed. I apologize for the rough treatment last night. I think you really are kind of cute.”

  As if to prove it, she unbuckled one of his wrists. “You will still be unsteady, but my friends are going to take you to the bathroom and help you shower and give you some pills to help with that headache. Then we will talk. Now don’t try to fight, okay? No harm will come to you if you do not resist. I promise.”

  “Who are you?” His voice was a frog’s croak from the dry mouth. “Where am I?”

  Anneli gave a small laugh and leaned across to unbuckle the other wrist. In the process, she pressed her body lightly against him. The captive soldier almost sighed with pleasure. She pulled away and turned to a pair of men in the room, Kyle Swanson and a duty CIA field agent at the safe house. “He’s all yours.”

  Serov was still weak and did not resist as the men finished freeing his bonds and lifted him to his feet, then slowly shuffled him to a small but clean bathroom. His limbs were responding more by the minute, and he drank a glass of water, was able to urinate, was allowed a quick, warm shower and even brushed his teeth. The two escorts watched the entire time, but did not say a word, and soon he was back in the bed, lashed up but comfortable in a set of blue hospital scrubs. He saw his uniform hanging neatly on the back of a door.

  “You probably have many questions, Corporal Valentin Serov. Your identification was in your wallet,” the girl explained. “I won’t tell you much, because my friends and I kidnapped you last night to ask some questions, not the other way around. Do you understand that?”

  “I am a prisoner,” Serov said with a jerk of the wrist restraints. “Why? I don’t know anything.”

  She was in a chair beside the bed, helping him sip some water through a straw. Then she sat back and placed a writing tablet in her lap. “You are participating in that big Russian military exercise, are you not, Valentin? It must be very difficult for you out in the wild weather.”

  Serov knew that he should not answer, but she was so nice, and it was no great leap of knowledge for her to assume that he had been part of an exercise that had involved thousands of men and was being watched by the world media. “I stay indoors most of the time,” he responded with a grin. “I’m a clerk for the quartermaster. Others do the marching.”

  Anneli made a tick on the pad, checking off the item. “Yes. That was on your ID card. Good for you. Have you been in the service long, Valentin?”

  For the first time, Serov noticed that the two men had stayed in the room, but were seated and in nonthreatening positions. He ignored them to focus on Anneli. “For more than two years now. I either had to join or be conscripted, so I enlisted. Since I had some good schooling and knew how to type from using my computer so much, I was assigned to the headquarters company.”

  “When did you transfer to the Narva area? Do you like it here?”

  He decided to try a trade. “I will tell you that only if you tell me your name.” He smiled.

  She gave a look she would show a naughty child. “Oh, you want to make a deal? Very well. My name is Darya and I am Estonian.”

  The soldier brightened. “Well, Darya, can you undo these restraints? I won’t try to escape. I promise.”

  “Not yet, Valentin. Maybe in a little while if you continue being helpful.”

  “I came in about six months ago, and it is just another routine job. I am no hero.”

  Kyle Swanson glanced over at his fellow CIA agent. The man nodded in acknowledgment. She had the young soldier singing like a bird and was playing the good cop/bad cop routine all by herself. Swanson scribbled some notes of questions he wanted Anneli to ask after she finished the warm-up pitches. A quartermaster’s clerk was a much better catch than some common infantryman or cannon-cocking artillery shooter. This guy actually could see beyond the brim of his helmet because he filed and shuffled papers, wrote reports, hung around bulletin boards, transmitted instructions and received orders. Without realizing it, a clerk becomes a sponge for information, and this one would not need torture or waterboarding. Kyle made a note and passed it over.

  Anneli read it and asked, “Valentin, you must be hungry. If I bring you some food and tea, can I trust you not to get violent when I undo the restraints?”

  Serov looked at the two men over by the wall. He couldn’t escape anyway, so why bother? He didn’t even really want to go. “Yes, Darya,” he said, ready to agree to almost anything that would keep her nearby. It was a much better morning than being in that soggy barracks near the castle. The corporal was in love, but with a woman who coldly hated him and everything he represented, and was willing to eviscerate him on the spot. Anneli set about killing Corporal Valentin Serov with kindness and finding out about the Black Train that took away the only man she ever loved.

  BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

  General Sir Frederick Ravensdale of Great Britain was what his American colleagues called a “warfighter.” The small and skinny lad who had started his boarding school education at Culford had matured into military heroism, and some thirty years later was the respected deputy supreme allied commander of NATO in Europe.

  When he finished Exeter College at Oxford, Ravensdale entered the military and earned the sand-colored beret of the elite commando unit known as the 22 Special Air Services. The freshly minted lieutenant was part of D Squadron’s raid on Pebble Island during the Falklands War with Argentina in 1982. He was later wounded by a bomb in Northern Ireland and served in Germany during the Cold War. The career continued its upward trajectory during duty at the Ministry of Defence, and Ravensdale was a colonel in command of an armored brigade by the time of Kosovo, and later ran the United Kingdom’s 3rd Mechanised Division in Iraq. He received the fourth star of a full general upon his appointment to SACEUR. Along with the rank, he was a Knight Commander of the Order of the
British Empire, and a Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Bath, a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order, and held numerous other accolades.

  With that perfect pedigree, the easygoing general was popular on the international diplomatic circuit comprising member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A respected military historian, he had authored two books on strategy and tactics. He was very tall and still lean and handsome as he neared retirement. His wife had died of ovarian cancer ten years earlier, and his three children were grown and gone. So far, they had blessed him with five grandchildren, all of whom lived back in England. The little tykes did not know their grandfather was a famous and important man, and he enjoyed that leveling experience.

  He thought about that during his long morning walk before reporting to his office. For him, retirement should be something to which he could look forward. He had a substantial income and would be paid handsomely on the lecture circuit, so there would be enough money, and his physicians pronounced him to be in excellent health. On the cool April morning, with the winds and rain from the past few days having died down, he was able to stride through the park and consider his options. They were few.

  Should he hurry this thing along and keep pushing for Kyle Swanson to ignite the maelstrom? Or should the general try and slow things down, or even prevent the conflict, which would mean his own secret would be revealed? Was the best he could hope for an honorable death on the battlefield, or was that only a distant possibility for a desk-bound general? Would he risk ignominious arrest and a trial for treason, during which he would lose everything? Either way, General Sir Frederick Ravensdale, GCB, GBE, DSO, faced ruin.

  VILNIUS, LITHUANIA

  Major Juozas Valteris stared west into the darkness from his perch atop a tracked infantry fighting vehicle of the Iron Wolf Mechanized Battalion, part of the Lithuanian Rapid Reaction Force. The 40mm cannon and coaxial machine gun were loaded and ready. Antitank guided missiles bristled from the hull and could go hot in an instant, if necessary. The orders from the joint staff had been clear that this was no training exercise.

  The major had served in Afghanistan under NATO command, but this time he was on his homeland, and he had made sure that everyone in the seven-hundred-man battalion understood that basic fact. They were the tripwire against a possible Russian land attack out of Moscow-controlled Kaliningrad, a leftover enclave sandwiched between Lithuania on its east and Poland on its west. Everybody else in NATO was looking the other way, toward Russia itself, but Valteris and his men knew the threat they faced lay in the other direction, to the west. All that was needed was a spark and the Baltic States would be hurled into still another war.

  By treaty, Russian military trains could transit Lithuania into Kaliningrad, and for the past months, the rail traffic had increased. The country was also the headquarters for the Russian Baltic Fleet and had been heavily militarized during the Soviet era, when several hundred thousand troops were stationed there. The major didn’t know the makeup of forces today, but that surprise exercise that the Russians were running to the north along Estonia and Latvia had spooked the Lithuanian high command enough to get the RBF up and moving.

  This was no Ukraine, Major Valteris preached to his troops. They were not going to allow the Russian military to get as much as a toehold in Lithuania, no matter which direction they tried. There would be no victory for Moscow here. The men all knew the small force could not stop a full and determined attack. What they could do, and would do, was hold until their friends in NATO could come swarming in to clean up the mess. A spearhead of several thousand German, Dutch and Norwegian troops was the next line of defense. NATO jets were on call.

  There was no movement on the far side of the border, no sounds of war machines clanking about, no maneuvering battalions of Russian soldiers, no thudding, telltale signatures of approaching helicopters, no booming guns from the artillery tubes at Rooster Cap Nowak, the forward Russian base only a few miles across Lake Vištytis. The silence did not translate into peace. He lowered his binos for a moment to check his personal weapon, a German-made assault rifle. His boys of the Iron Wolf hunkered down and prepared for whatever Tuesday might bring.

  TALLINN, ESTONIA

  A somber Kyle Swanson and Anneli Kallasti were in the home of Colonel Thomas Markey of NATO and his wife, Jan Hollings of the CIA, all of them trying to read the intelligence tea leaves that might foretell the future. Each had a slightly different agenda, but a common purpose. The entire Russian border region was so tense that only a spark was needed to push things over the brink.

  Jan Hollings was furious that Swanson had used Anneli without permission to snatch a Russian soldier. Anneli was mad that Corporal Valery Serov knew nothing about the disappearance of Brokk Mihailovich. The colonel was disturbed that defector Ivan Strakov was refusing to divulge any cyber-war information, and Kyle was troubled by his conclusion that Ivan might be telling the truth about a potential invasion. Together, they understood that the decisions they might make would reach far beyond the walls of the Markey living room in a neat Tallinn neighbornood.

  “What did you do with the boy?” Colonel Markey asked.

  Swanson took a sip of brandy and coffee, then returned the glass down precisely on the wet circle on the napkin. “We got him back in uniform, put him to sleep with drugs again, drove back to Narva and dumped him in a park, stinking of vodka. He was gone less than twenty-four hours, was last seen leaving a bar with a woman, and was found drunk on his ass the next day. Even if he talks, nobody would believe his wild tale of being kidnapped and returning unharmed. Instead of going through the interrogation grinder, the corporal will likely tell a big lie, then accept some punishment for being too drunk to return to his unit on time. He will keep his mouth shut.”

  “I wanted him dead,” Anneli said in a flat voice. “He gave us nothing about the Black Train, or Brokk. Kyle would not let me shoot him.”

  “You had no authority to do anything,” snapped Calico. “I should turn you over to the police. I try to help you and you go off without warning and do this kidnapping with Swanson.”

  Anneli did not flinch from the sharp comments. “You will not do that, Jan. As you Americans say, we have a bigger tuna fish to fry.”

  Swanson did not want the two women fighting. “The corporal gave us some good information, Calico. Not a lot of detail, because he was of such low rank, but he was able to confirm that huge amounts of ammunition, supplies, men and matériel have been flowing into the Narva area for months, and hidden in secret. He saw Armata tanks, which confirms what Ivan told us. I wanted a second opinion, and I got it. Don’t particularly like it, but that’s what we have.”

  Colonel Markey, in civilian clothes, stood beside the small fire. “The Armatas were already confirmed, Kyle. They came out to play in that Russian military exercise all along the northern border, and it’s apparently over now. Just a drill. They seem to be returning to their original positions already.”

  “So that’s a third source. What we didn’t know was the Russians have apparently stockpiled enough supplies to support a quick thrust across the border at Narva in another Ukranian-style land grab.”

  Markey said there had been a blast of cyber-war activity during the Russian exercise, but that NATO had been tipped off when a surveillance plane was temporarily electronically blinded, and had been expecting the bigger hack attempt. “I want to wring Ivan Strakov dry of everything he knows, Kyle. Any land war is going to be supported by their hackers jamming our comm systems. Without computers, we will be in big trouble.”

  “Do you believe what Strakov says, Tom?” Calico asked her husband.

  “No. I know the guy. He’s gaming us. That is what he does. I think that he has fed us just enough to keep us interested.”

  Swanson added, “I feel the same way, Colonel. But I can no longer ignore the bastard. I’m ready to get back in the room with him tomorrow and get him to talk some more. Maybe he is shucking us, but I’ll do my best.�
��

  “What about me?” asked Anneli.

  “You go directly back to the safe house apartment and stay there,” instructed Calico. “From what my sources have picked up on the Narva grapevine, Anneli, the police are already looking for you in connection with the murders of two Russian nationals in Narva. You and an unknown male accomplice—that would be you, Swanson—are both on thin ice.”

  The blond spy then turned her full attention on Kyle. “And the folks at Langley are tired of you cowboying around on your own, Swanson. You have one more chance, and if you screw it up, the CIA will dump you and screw Excalibur Enterprises for years to come. Got it?”

  “Hummph,” grunted Swanson. He heard her words, which was not the same as agreeing to obey.

  16

  SWANSON AND ANNELI LEFT together and hailed a cab. They were being pushed along by a tide of momentum, had become the focal point of an international incident, and the unexpected murder investigation changed the entire equation. Now they even had to be wary of ordinary cops on the street. Best to get the hell out of town, and Kyle waved down a Pink Taxi minivan that swung neatly to a stop beside them. Yellow cabs ruled New York, black was the London taxi color, and pink ruled in Tallinn’s swarm of taxis.

  “Calico said I must go to the safe house,” Anneli commented, looking at Kyle with a wry smile. Her eyes had been downcast during the lecture by Calico, but were showing a fresh sparkle. She was getting used to Swanson doing the unexpected.

  “The goal is to keep you safe. I know a better place than that little apartment. Tell the driver to take us to the Old City Marina.” He slid the side door open and she climbed into the backseat and gave the directions. The taxi driver gave a grunt of understanding, figuring that he would demand five euros for the short trip of about two kilometers. It was a high price, but taxis set their own rates in super free-market Estonia, and these passengers had not bargained in advance.