Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 10

by Wings of Fire (v1. 1)

  Kazakov took a sip of tea as Zuwayy started blathering something in half Russian, half Arabic. A phone call an hour before dawn? Kazakov thought bitterly as he sampled one of the pastries. Outrageous. Being in the witness protection program was hell indeed.

  One of the world’s richest and certainly one of the world’s most dangerous men, thirty-nine-year-old Pavel Kazakov, the son of one of the Russian Federation’s most highly decorated and most respected army generals, was under house arrest in Iceland, charged with hundreds of counts of murder, conspiracy, fraud, extortion, grand larceny, drug trafficking, and a laundry list of other crimes against several nations from Kazakhstan to the United States. He had been captured by some as yet unidentified commandos, probably Americans, and sent to a Turkish prison. But since so many other countries had lodged charges against him, the World Court ordered that he stand trial in the International Crimes Against Humanity Tribunal in The Hague. With some good lawyers—backed up by generous bribes—Kazakov got some valuable concessions. Turkey usually does not allow extradition of its capital prisoners, but Kazakov agreed to waive his extradition rights in exchange for no death penalty, and he was transferred to a maximum-security facility in the Netherlands.

  Then Kazakov started to talk. Within days, Interpol had made dozens of major arrests around the world of suspected narco-traffickers, money launderers, con artists, and gem and art thieves. The authorities had confiscated millions of dollars of stolen weapons, valuables, property, stocks and bonds—even nuclear weapons—in a very short period of time. Pavel Kazakov, still considered the world’s most dangerous criminal mastermind, was quickly turning into the biggest and most important informant ever in the history of law enforcement. Some of the world’s most feared terrorists, notorious drug smugglers, and slipperiest criminals—men that had been on the run for years, some for decades—had been captured. As much as Pavel Kazakov had cost the world in loss of life and destruction of property, the value of the property alone that his information caused to be recovered or captured topped it by a factor of one hundred.

  But, of course, Pavel saw it differently. To him, it was a way to save his own skin, get out of prison—and eliminate the competition. Besides, what did the World Court care about ethnic fighting in Albania or Macedonia, or military men in Turkey, or polluted waters in Kazakhstan? They gladly traded information on drug dealers in Europe and North America for reducing, and then eventually eliminating, Kazakov’s prison sentence.

  Details of his plea bargain with the World Court were kept top secret. As far as anyone knew, Kazakov was in complete isolation in a prison in Rijssen, the Netherlands, awaiting trial. No one ever suspected that any court would even consider releasing him. and the World Court did not have a witness protection program. But in short order, one was created for him—and Pavel Kazakov was free.

  Yes, he was nearly broke—but “nearly broke” for him still meant more wealth than some Third World countries. It still offered him an opportunity to do what he did best— build his wealth back up again any way he could, whether it meant dealing drugs, weapons, humans, or oil. Plus, he could do it all from an untraceable apartment and telephone, with a new fully documented identity—all bought and paid for by the World Court in exchange for having the World Court eliminate his enemies for him.

  “It is you who is responsible for this!” Zuwayy shouted, finally switching back to full Russian. “My troops could have executed this entire operation without your damned missiles! Now the Americans are breathing down my neck! You must pay for the loss of my base and compensate me for the loss of my soldiers! You must—!”

  “Shut your scum-sucking mouth, Zuwayy,” Kazakov interrupted hotly. “I spent ten million dollars of my own money to put those missiles in place—but not in Samah! I ordered that the missiles be placed in Al-Jawf, not Samah! ”

  “I put missiles in Al-Jawf—and there they sit, useless, while my men roast in the damned Sahara Desert!” Zuwayy retorted. “You make me pay fifty million dollars for missiles pointed at nothing but wasteland! I say no! Egypt is our true enemy! We need to threaten much more than just the Salimah oil fields.”

  “You moved some of those missiles to Samah, against my orders,” Kazakov said.

  “The missiles at Al-Jawf are useless, worthless!” Zuwayy repeated. “From Samah, those missiles can reach Cairo, Alexandria, Israel, even Italy. Moving some of the missiles that I purchased does not affect your plan against the Salimah oil fields.”

  “I’m not interested in attacking Israel, and I’m sure as hell not interested in attacking Italy with shitty first-generation rockets with chemical warheads!” Kazakov shouted. “Are you out of your mind? If we attack Israel, it will bring the Americans into the region with a vengeance. My oil terminals on the Adriatic Sea are directly downwind of any bases we would attack in Italy—besides, some of my best customers are in Italy! I did not pay you to put those missiles in Libya so you can threaten your neighbors or satisfy your thirst for global conquest.

  “I’m glad those missiles in Samah were destroyed, Zuwayy—perhaps now you’ll stop going off on your own and listen to what I tell you to do. I will pay you to replace those missiles and warheads—but only if you dismantle any other bases that you put missiles other than Al-Jawf, and only if you stop being a jackass and do as I tell you to do from now on.”

  “You may not talk to me this way,” Zuwayy said haughtily. “I am the king of Libya. I am the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the lord of the Muslims. I am—”

  “You are nothing but a back-stabbing opportunistic traitor who would sell his wife, mistresses, children, and even your own mother on the streets of Benghazi for money,” Kazakov interjected. “You can use that cockamamie I-am-royalty story to impress your people and baffle the rest of the world, but to me you’re nothing but a two-bit thug.

  “Now shut up and listen. Your primary objective is the Salimah oil fields in Egypt, not to obliterate Cairo or Tel Aviv. Your job is to keep on moving your troops to Sudan, keep their readiness high, and keep on putting pressure on the Egyptian forces opposing yours without starting a shooting conflict yourself. If they are stupid enough to attack, you can simply walk in and wipe them up. Until then, I will continue to push the Central African Petroleum Partners to accept Libya and Metyorgaz as a partner, help develop some of your oil resources, and break the embargo on oil exports from Libya to Europe.”

  “I do not understand,” Zuwayy said, hopelessly confused. “Why don’t we just go in, invade Egypt, and take the oil fields ourselves? No one will oppose us.”

  “You idiot, everyone will oppose us,” Kazakov said. “No one will intervene, but we will be drowning in oil because no one will buy what we are pumping, not even on the black market. Besides, if you invade, Central African Petroleum Partners will pull out, and neither you nor I have the money right now to build a thousand-kilometer-long pipeline across the Sahara Desert. We want the pipeline in place and operating before we take over.”

  “In the meantime, you sit safe and sound in hiding while American commandos destroy my military base,” Zuwayy cried. “What am I supposed to do—hold my breath until the poison gas dissipates?”

  Kazakov thought for a moment while he watched the former Russian army major Vasilyeva move as she straightened up his desk. She was like a tiger stepping soundlessly through the jungle hunting its prey, every movement graceful and with complete economy. She sensed him looking at her, turned her head to him, smiled, then turned her body so he could see her breasts, squeezing them together with her arms the way he liked to do.

  He suddenly realized he had spent too much time with this Libyan popinjay.

  “I don’t give a shit what you do,” Kazakov said. “Someone just invaded your country—it seems like the perfect time to do just about anything you wish to do. Use your armed forces, track those commandos down—you know they’re not going to walk out of the damned desert, so track their aircraft down—and then destroy whatever base they came from with everyth
ing you’ve got. You’ll be totally justified in whatever action you take—and you might even earn a bit of respect from your enemies. Now, stop bothering me—and you place those missiles where I tell you to place them, or the next biochem warhead you hear about will be falling on your head.” He slammed the phone down so hard, his teacup rattled in its saucer.

  Zuwayy was dangerous, even unstable, Kazakov thought. He was a warmonger, ready to lash out at anyone, for any reason or no reason at all. He hoped Zuwayy would keep it together long enough, until the delicate negotiations with the Central African Petroleum Partners were concluded. Libyan forces were just a subtle threat to Egypt, and vice versa—neither country had any semblance of a real fighting force. But if anyone tried to attack Libya, the rockets were in place and ready to completely wipe out any opposition and guarantee that no outside forces were going to interfere.

  In any case, Kazakov was going to get enough of a foothold in the African oil market to force out the other companies and eventually take over. He didn’t have the power he had just a few short months ago—but it was just a matter of time. Once firmly in place in Africa, with the money pouring in, he could move back into the vast untapped oil resources in the Caspian Sea region again.

  He was so engrossed in his own heated thoughts that he did not notice Ivan a Vasilyeva standing beside his desk, staring at him. Her full red lips were parted as if she were panting heavily, and her eyes were wide and glassy. He smiled at her.

  “You speak to other men, even this king of Libya, as if he were a street sweeper who had just soiled your shoes,” Vasilyeva breathed. Her left hand drifted up to her breast, and her fingers teased a nipple underneath her sweater. “You are an extraordinary man. I am pleased that you have chosen me to be by your side.”

  He stood, walked over to her, reached behind her head with his left hand, and yanked her chin upward by pulling her hair. Her left hand did not move from her breast, so he fondled her right breast until her nipple sprang to fife. “I keep you here with me because of your contacts in the Russian government and army,” Kazakov said. He looked into her eyes as they grew wider, as if in fear, but her breathing was becoming heavier, more excited. “I also keep you here because you can kill faster and more efficiently and in more ways than I.”

  He pushed her aside roughly, then took his seat once again. “Stop this foolishness and straighten up, Major,” Kazakov ordered her. She stood before him, watching him with half-closed eyes, her expression contrite yet inviting at the same time. “I do not believe for one moment that you get orgasmic just by watching me yell at a strutting simpleton like Zuwayy. He is not one-tenth the soldier or leader you are—if he was, I would send you to Tripoli and have you assassinate him immediately. He is a bug to be squashed as soon as he fulfills his part, which is to force either a settlement or a war between the central African oil cartels and us. Your job is to watch my back and collect information, not to play with yourself in my office. If I need a whore, I’ll call one.”

  “I am here to do whatever you wish, Pavel—”

  “I am Comrade Kazakov to you, Major,” he corrected her. “And there should be no doubt in your mind that you are here to do whatever I wish, or else your fate would be the same as your last boss, General Zhurbenko—thirty years at hard labor in Siberia. But you are a highly trained soldier and a keen tactician, not a zblidavattsa. If I ever get another indication that you fancy yourself as anything else but my chief of security and my aide-de-camp, you will find yourself digging coal in Siberia beside Zhurbenko— or at the bottom of an Icelandic fjord ”

  “Yes, Comrade Kazakov,” Vasilyeva said. But her eyes blazed as she went on, “But now I wish to tell you something”

  “You do so at your own peril, Major.”

  “Very well,” she said. She took a bold step forward; Kazakov’s eyes warned her away, but he knew it would take more than a stare to make this woman back off. “You say you chose me, Comrade. But now I tell you this: I chose you as well ”

  “Zasrat mazgi? Oh, really?”

  “Yes, Comrade,” Vasilyeva said confidently, with only a , hint of a smile on her beautiful but army-hardened face. “I chose General Zhurbenko the same way: He was a man that could get me the things I wanted—power, prestige, money, land, and status. If I had to let the old bastard feel me up or be his min ’etka every now and then, it was all part of my plan to get what I wanted.

  “I feel the same way about you, Comrade—you are a man that can get me what I want. You have the power— you still have the power, even here, in exile in Iceland. I can dedicate myself to a man such as you.”

  “Frankly, Major, I was not too impressed with how well you protected your other mentor.”

  “I noticed your power the moment I first met you in the general’s car. I knew you were the one for me, the man with even more power than Zhurbenko, the one who could get me the things I want,” Vasilyeva said. “Besides, he gave me to you—it was clear he no longer needed me. It was easy to switch loyalties. If the general showed the same loyalty to me when your plan started to become exposed, I would have used my powers to protect him as well—but he decided to be a good soldier and take his punishment, protecting his wife instead of me. That will cost him his life.” She stepped closer to him again, and this time he saw something more sinister in her expression—not just confidence, but a warning as well. “I have given myself to you, Comrade. I am yours. Betray me, and I will bring you down like I brought down Zhurbenko. Remain loyal to me, and you can do with me as you want—anything you want—and I will do anything for you.”

  Pavel Kazakov had to suppress a thrill of dread that came over him again. The old feeling had come back—the feeling of impending danger. Every time he had listened, the feeling had saved him. Every time he ignored it, failed to break off his plans, run, and protect himself, he went down in disaster and defeat.

  But before he could respond, she reached out to him, took his hands, and placed them on her breasts. Her eyes were demanding, commanding, riveting—and irresistible. She had always been irresistible. This wasn’t loyalty, and certainly not love—this was plain old-fashioned ambition, desire, and a willingness to do anything, and allow anything to be done to her, to get what she wanted.

  Of course, he failed to listen to the danger signal. He was helpless to heed it now.

  “Well,” he said with a smile as she reached behind her neck to unzip her sweater, “if you put it that way, Major ..

  Zuwayy slammed the phone down hard. “Saghf tarak khord!” he cursed. “That bastard! How dare he order me around like a child!” But Kazakov was right about one thing: This was a good opportunity to lash out at someone and prove he wasn’t going to be pushed around. And he would be fully, completely justified in doing so.

  He dialed a special secure pager number, then sat and waited. Several minutes later, a call was put through to him: “Speak.”

  “This is Ulama al-Khan, Majesty,” Khalid al-Khan, the chief justice of the Egyptian Supreme Court and the leader of the main opposition party, responded. “God be with you.”

  “And to you, Ulama,” Zuwayy said. This guy had to be the biggest idiot in all of Egypt and probably all of northern Africa, Zuwayy scoffed to himself. Khan saw himself as an Islamic holy man, a true believer who fancied himself a spiritual master and leader. He was so zealous in his beliefs—and so enamored of himself—that he couldn’t see danger when it was right in front of his face. His ambition would quite possibly drive him into the Presidential Palace—but he had no concept of how to lead a government, except to send out his henchmen in the Egyptian Republican Guards and assassinate a political enemy. He truly believed that God would absolve him of all his sins, no matter how heinous his crimes.

  But most times stupidity and ambition made for a pliant coconspirator, and that’s what Zuwayy had in Khan. The Egyptian cleric thought it was in the best interest of all concerned for Egypt to join the Muslim Brotherhood—a loose confederation of Libya, Sudan, and Yemen, with m
ajor support in Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon, and with some wealthy supporters in such pro-Western states such as Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and

  even Kuwait. Jadallah Zuwayy, as ruler of the most powerful military in the alliance, was the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Their sworn mission: to replace all of the secular governments in the Middle East with religious- based governments firmly grounded in traditional Muslim beliefs. Egypt joining the Muslim Brotherhood would be the crown jewel in strengthening the organization and convincing other undecided nations to join—Egypt had the most powerful military force in the entire region, almost on a par with Israel quantitatively.

  Zuwayy found a ready and willing ideological slave in Khalid al-Khan. Obviously the cleric never read anything but propaganda sheets—for he truly believed that Zuwayy was descended from the Prophet Muhammad and was the savior and sword of Islam. Zuwayy nurtured that fiction every chance he could, and Khan was obviously enjoying and benefiting from the attention. It did not take long to lodge al-Khan firmly under Zuwayy’s thumb.

  “I have a request of you, Ulama,” Zuwayy said.

  “Ask anything of me, Majesty,” Khan replied devoutly.

  “A sneak attack by unidentified commandos was perpetrated against Libya tonight.”

  “I have heard of this, Majesty. Are you safe?”

  “Perfectly safe, Ulama.”

  “I swear this to you, Majesty, that the terrorists that did this deed will be hunted down like the dogs they are and punished!”