She didn’t respond, and for a moment he thought their connection had been broken. “Do you copy?”
When she spoke again, she sounded surprised, uncertain. “He’s gone, Harry.”
Chapter 19
5:19 A.M. Pacific Time
Los Angeles, California
Two minutes. The figure onscreen hadn’t moved. Carol’s gaze shifted from the laptop down to the phone in her hand.
“Think he’ll take the bait?” Han asked, rubbing his hands together. It was cold in the back of the panel van, but they couldn’t leave it running.
“Our boy’s a player,” she responded. “I had to work back through his chat and SMS history to figure out which of his four girlfriends was the one you see onscreen.”
Actually, all they could currently see of her was an ankle poking out from beneath the blankets, but that was beside the point.
“And?”
“None of the above.” Carol rolled her eyes. “He’s not just getting it on the side, he’s getting it on the side of the side.”
The former SEAL chuckled. “Had a guy like that in the Teams, a ‘geographic bachelor’, if you will. Never did figure out how he pulled it off.”
“Envious?”
“No, more worried whether his pillow talk would violate opsec. Never did, that I knew. What did you send him?”
“A ‘picture’ from girlfriend #3. They had a fight last week and haven’t made up yet. Which is why she wants to meet.”
When she looked over, Han’s face was serious once more. Pensive, even. As if he was remembering.
Carol looked down at her hands, unsure what to say. There were no words that could ease the hurt of those memories.
Movement onscreen and their target emerged from the tangle of blankets, the cellphone in his fist.
He ran a hand through his hair, a satisfied smile on his face as he apparently looked for his pants.
“You were right, he’s coming out,” Han observed. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a piece of dark cloth. “Put this on.”
“What is it?”
“It’s called a balaclava—they’re worn by skiers,” he replied, pulling one on over his own head. His eyes shone out from the black mask, a face suddenly stripped of its humanity.
Skiers were hardly the most notable end users, Carol thought, sweeping her blond hair up under the stretchy fabric. The world had yet to forget the image of the ski-masked Palestinian terrorist on the Munich balcony in 1973.
The former SEAL bent to one knee by the back door of the van, a riot baton clutched in his gloved right hand. “Give me the signal.”
Her fingers moved across the laptop’s trackpad, switching screens to the small webcam mounted on the mirror of the utility van. It was nothing fancy, a low-quality camera they’d picked up at Walmart. The image was grainy, but as she watched, the form of Pyotr Andropov entered the range of its lens, walking down the sidewalk toward his car.
Toward them. Perhaps it was the alcohol dulling his senses, but he seemed unperturbed by the darkness—never even noticed that the streetlight above his head had been smashed.
“Almost,” she whispered. “One…two…”
It seemed dark, darker somehow than when he had gone in. Of course it was, Pyotr thought, attempting to shake the fog from his brain. The sun had barely been setting when he entered the frat house. That was it.
He reached into the pocket of his jeans, fumbling for his car keys as he moved toward the royal blue Lamborghini Aventador parked at the curb. He’d had the car for just over six months—a birthday gift from his father.
Footsteps behind him, he started to turn. Something hard struck him in the small of the back, excruciating pain rippling through his body as a metal bar connected with his kidneys.
A hand wrapped itself around his throat, gloved fingers closing over his mouth before the scream forming on his lips could even be uttered.
His head slammed against the hood of his car, his mind still struggling to process the situation as the hand on his throat tightened, slowly choking off the oxygen supply to his brain.
Zip ties bit into the flesh of his wrists as his arms were pinioned behind him. He heard a woman speaking in the background as things began to grow dark, her voice hushed as if she was speaking into a phone. “We have the package. On our way now.”
And darkness closed around him…
7:03 A.M.
A convention center
Las Vegas, Nevada
The building had once been a popular convention center, but now it was nothing but empty space, the mammoth room feeling like a cavern. The first glow of the early morning sun trickled down from the skylights high above, giving an eerie aspect to the scene.
The recession had hurt everyone in Vegas—but most of the major players had managed to weather the storm, even if the price of survival for some of them had been getting in bed with the Russian mafiya. For convention centers like this one, they hadn’t stood a chance.
Nasir could feel the hair on the back of his neck prickle as he surveyed the weapons laid out on the tables in the center of the room. His gaze flickered over the row of Kalashnikov rifles, their magazines stacked beside them. Seven magazines to a gun—each man of the assault team would be carrying over two hundred rounds into battle with him.
A frightening amount of firepower. To assault what?
He glanced over toward Tarik Abdul Muhammad as if hoping to find his answer there. As if he were trusted enough to be told.
The tall Pakistani was standing there in conversation with Andropov, beside a pair of rocket-propelled grenade launchers—maybe fifteen meters off. The Russian seemed to be doing most of the talking.
“…they’re not going to deploy with everything they have. Not at first. But it will be enough. You can intercept their reaction force…here. Hit them with RPGs and automatic weapons. Pin them down. Overwhelm the system.”
“I have set up an ambush before, Valentin,” Tarik interjected, lifting his eyes to meet Nasir’s. As if he had felt his gaze. Their stare only lasted a moment before Nasir looked away, but it left him trembling as if in the grip of a fever.
He fingered the dismantled cellphone in the pocket of his jeans. If he was found out…
There was no time to think of that. Not now. It would only paralyze him. Render him incapable of acting. He had to place the call.
Movement behind him, and he turned to find his older brother standing there, a smile on his unshaven face. “I can’t tell you what this means to me, Nasir, that you are here with us. With me.”
Jamal reached out, warmth in his dark eyes, drawing him close into his embrace. “You don’t know how it frightened me—that I might have lost my brother to this apostate land. But this…this is how it should be, brothers together at the end. In the cause of God.”
And he felt as if a knife was being stabbed into his own heart—the reality of the betrayal that must come.
“Insh’allah.”
10:22 A.M. Eastern Time
Graves Mill, Virginia
The CIA surgeon looked exhausted as he came out of the bedroom. He stripped off his surgical gloves and threw them in the trash, not even looking at Kranemeyer or Thomas.
With a heavy sigh, he turned on the kitchen faucet full blast, splashing cold water over his face before turning to face them.
“What’s your verdict?”
A shrug. “I’ve inserted an endotracheal tube—he’s breathing, though still with difficulty. He’s lucid, you can go talk to him if you want, but I don’t want you to tire him. Things are still very delicate.” He cast a pointed look at Thomas. “We’re very lucky that the second bullet smashed his collarbone instead of going into the lung along with the first. I don’t think I could have patched two holes.”
Kranemeyer rose, pushing back his chair. “I’ll go speak to him.”
“One moment, Director. How soon can we talk about moving him to a real hospital?”
“I don’t know,
” the DCS replied. “Why?”
“I can only leave the ET tube in for a few days, at the outside. Longer than that, there’s a high chance for infection. For pneumonia. Or both. Given his weakness, the wounds he apparently sustained in the assassination attempt, his body won’t be able to fight it off.”
Those dark eyes flashed. “I fully realize what’s at stake here.”
“No,” the surgeon shot back, his gaze unwavering. “I don’t think you do, so let me make it abundantly clear. If Director Lay contracts pneumonia, he will die. It’s no more complicated than that.”
The DCIA was a wreck, bloody bandages swathing his upper chest. “You look worse than the devil, David.”
Lay coughed, managing the faintest of smiles. “That…must be an improvement,” he whispered, motioning Kranemeyer closer to the bed. “Nichols?”
Kranemeyer hesitated, casting a glance toward the open door of the bedroom. “He has your daughter, David. Took her out of Langley at gunpoint the morning you were—well, the morning we all thought you died. The Bureau believes he was involved.”
The director closed his eyes, a look of pain crossing his features as he shook his head. “No…orders. My orders.”
“Who did this?” Kranemeyer demanded, easing himself into a chair by the bed. Stress brought on the pain from his leg, and it was throbbing now—a memory of a limb that no longer existed. “Who is targeting you, David?”
Fear. It took him a moment to place the emotion on Lay’s face, but it was fear—and Kranemeyer found that more frightening than anything else. The DCIA had been running ops since the Cold War. If he was afraid…
He reached out a feeble hand, seizing Kranemeyer’s wrist. “Ask Rhoda to come in.”
Reluctantly, Kranemeyer moved toward the door, calling out for Stevens. The Jamaican woman appeared almost at once, slipping past him to stand beside the bed.
Rhoda Stevens. Kranemeyer could still remember standing there beside her casket, embracing her sister. Their grief that day. Had she known then—that it was all a charade?
“The key,” Lay motioned. “Give him the key.”
He could feel her eyes on him, eyes full of skepticism. Distrust. “Are you sure, David?”
A nod. Without another word, Rhoda turned to leave the room, beckoning for Kranemeyer to follow her across the narrow hall of the mobile home.
“It’s been a long time, Barney,” she observed, pushing open the door to her bedroom.
“Not my fault, Rhoda.” He stood in the doorway, watching as she opened one of the drawers of her dresser, sorting through folded running shorts. “I attended your funeral.”
“My sister told me.” She seemed amused by the thought, and he found that it nettled him.
“Why?”
“Circumstances…at the time it was best for me to simply disappear. Just like it is for David now. It’s something I learned a long time ago—people’s search for you ends at the grave. But you’re not going to let him do that, are you?”
“He’s the DCIA,” Kranemeyer responded. “This goes with the territory. Do you have something for me?”
She straightened, laying a small key on the top of the dresser. “This.”
The metal face of the key was stamped Alibek-376A5. As he reached out to take it, her eyes flashed a warning. “This is only the beginning.”
8:28 A.M. Pacific Time
Andropov estate
Beverly Hills, California
Korsakov was quite sure the pool table in the billiard room of Andropov’s mansion had never been put to such unorthodox use.
Pool balls cleared away, Yuri had a rude wooden frame laid out on the table and was affixing plastic explosives around the outside edge to form a breaching charge.
“It’s good to have you back with us, tovarisch,” Korsakov said as he entered the room, Viktor at his side. It was only half a lie. He might have difficulty getting along with his second-in-command, but having him at the other end of the country was a headache he was glad to have over and done with. “How soon will your charges be ready?”
“Thirty minutes,” was the reply. “What’s the plan?”
Korsakov motioned for Viktor to hand him the laptop, and he opened it up on the pool table in front of Yuri.
“You and Kalnins will enter the building behind the target structure and make your way to the roof to provide overwatch and cut off any escape. I will accompany the entry team into the house, using your breaching charge on the front door.”
The ex-Spetsnaz sergeant gave him a grudging nod. “It should work, but I was there in West Virginia. Let’s not underestimate this man again. We’ll go in under the cover of darkness, I assume?”
“No,” Korsakov replied. So often the answer to the complex problem was to do the unthinkable. Take your opponent off-guard. “We strike at noon.”
8:35 A.M.
The abandoned mansion
From Han’s account, it seemed that the kidnapping had gone as well as possible, Harry thought. Those ops were always dicey—the target turned out to be accompanied, there were witnesses—any one of a hundred things.
Pyotr sat in the chair opposite him, bound hand and foot to the legs of the chair. Hooded.
Claustrophobia. Most people were susceptible to it, particularly when it was brought on by sensory deprivation. In training at Camp Peary, Harry had seen trainees panic within moments of the hood going on.
He had nearly done so himself, the first time. The fear was so overwhelming. It was one of the most effective methods of torture on an untrained subject—and, like all good methods, never required physical violence. The human mind would supply all the violence necessary.
And two hours without sight had worked its effect on Pyotr, as the stench proved. He had soiled himself, urine soaking the leg of his pants.
Harry glanced over at Vasiliev, a masked, silent figure there by the door. The two of them had been back from Nevada a scant twenty minutes.
Time enough. He stood, dragging his chair loudly over the marble tile of the bathroom. The young man flinched as if he had been struck, beginning to whimper again.
“What do you want? I can pay you—my dad has money, lots of money. You can be rich men, all of you, but you have to let me go!”
Harry pulled the ski mask down over his face till only his eyes, his lips, were visible. They couldn’t risk him being able to identify any of them.
“What do you think, tovarisch?” Vasiliev asked, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“I think,” Harry responded, ripping the hood off Pyotr’s head without warning, “that there is nothing we have to do. Do you understand me?”
The boy sat there, blinking like an owl caught in the daylight—eyes wide and trembling with fear. Harry circled around to his front, Pyotr’s wallet open in his hands. “Money? Do you think we’re after your father’s money?”
Hope flickered in those eyes. “Everyone wants money.”
“They do?” With a sudden gesture, Harry pulled a handful of hundred-dollar bills from the wallet, holding them up before the boy’s eyes. A Bic lighter appeared in his right hand, flame spurting from the tip. “Are you sure?”
He could see the hope turn to uncertainty, then fear—the flame reflected in their captive’s eyes. Another inch and the flame leaped from the lighter to the paper, igniting first one bill, and then the next. And the next.
Harry held on until the heat licked at his fingers, then threw the flaming mass onto the marble floor between Pyotr’s bare feet, eliciting a scream.
He stepped in close until his lips nearly touched the boy’s ear, his voice no higher than a whisper. “Do you think I care about your money?”
A vigorous shake of the head. The arrogant confidence of the college frat boy was long gone, tears sliding down his cheeks.
“Then you’d better start thinking of what you might have that I could want,” Harry observed, pulling the hood back over the boy’s head as he thrashed against the chair.
> “Think fast. You’re on the clock.”
9:01 A.M.
Las Vegas, Nevada
“No, no, you listen to me, Sergei.” Andropov swore under his breath, glancing over at his bodyguard. “I don’t care what you were planning—I’m paying you and this is now what I expect you to do. I want you to find out where he’s gone.”
A pause as he listened to Korsakov on the other end of the phone. “No, he’s not with one of his girlfriends. How? Because he drives them everywhere in his car. And we’ve found it—and the girl that he was sleeping with last time anyone saw him. This is important to me, Sergei. I have a business deal going down in the next few days and I don’t want him running around loose.”
He listened for another long moment, his face growing more pained by the moment. “You still have the tracker beacon, da? Then here’s what you will do. Find Pyotr. If you can’t find him by nightfall, finish the contract.”
The oligarch shut his phone with a vicious gesture, a curse exploding from his lips. A cold wind swept over the Vegas parking lot, tugging at the edge of his coat. “Do you have a son, Maxim?” he asked, turning to the head of his security detail. The man was former MVD, Russia’s infamous Ministry of Internal Affairs, and had won the right to wear the much-coveted maroon beret during his time in the service. Short, heavily-built, and in his late forties, he worked through punishing exercise routines on a daily basis, hammering his body into shape.
He never stopped scanning the surrounding cars for threats, but his lip curled up in what passed for a smile. “Not that I know of.”
Andropov actually laughed, clapping his security chief on the shoulder. “Come, let us go. I have a—how do the Americans say it? A prodigal son to find…”
12:39 P.M. Eastern Time
Outside Alexandria, Virginia
There was a paper trail associated with renting a storage container, but it was relatively minimal compared with other means of storage. Nothing Lay wouldn’t have been able to fake, particularly if he’d had the help of Rhoda Stevens.
Kranemeyer stared through the heavily tinted windows of his Suburban toward the Alibek E-Z-Store storage facility across the street, taking in the single dome security camera near the gate.
Day of Reckoning (Shadow Warriors) Page 35
