Red Sky

by Chris Goff

  “The compulsator recharges as they drive.”

  “But they haven’t been driving, Zhen. Not enough. Which means they’re going to have to find an alternate power source.”

  “I see where you’re going with this. A large drawdown on the grid would signal the Russians were charging the gun.” Lory grinned and gripped Zhen on the back of the neck. “Einstein and I will go back to the boardroom and see what we can find out. We’ll look for unexplained power draws, blackouts, any anomalies in usage for a hundred mile radius.”

  Jordan nodded. “In the meantime, I’ll go meet Adamski. If you find something, call me on my cell.”

  “Let’s do it,” Davis said, following Jordan toward the parking lot.

  “Maybe you should stay here this time?”

  “No way. You’re not getting rid of me that easy.” He smiled down at her. “Consider me ‘in bedded.’”

  Jordan laughed, and then put both her hands on his chest. “Seriously, it could get dicey if we catch up to these guys.”

  “More dicey than China?”

  “It’s different now. Here I have Polish Special Forces backing me up.”

  “I’m a trained warrior, Rae. Don’t bench me now.”

  She could feel his heart beating. Damn, he knew how to play her.

  “This is an unsanctioned mission, Nye. You could be risking your active reserve status.”

  “I know.”

  “Most importantly, you need to remember one thing.” Jordan held up a finger.

  “I know. If we get jammed up, I have to do what you say.”

  Chapter 42

  Kozachenko had cranked the engine and ground the truck into gear when the radio crackled.

  “Brigadier?”

  He recognized the voice of one of the new men, the one who had been monitoring local dispatch. His heart banged against his rib cage. “Is there a problem?”

  “A call just went out about the power outage. There are two police cars headed our way.”

  Kozachenko slammed his hand against the wheel. “Derr’mo.”

  Now he could hear the sirens in the distance. He needed to keep them away somehow. Turning off the truck, he jumped to the ground and gathered the men. “Which of you speak Polish?”

  The two trainmen raised their hands.

  “You two come with me. The rest of you stay here with Major Barkov and the truck.”

  Barkov saluted. “What are you going to do, Vasyl?”

  “I’m going to try to save the mission.” Kozachenko climbed into the back of the trainmen’s vehicle. “You must beat the police to the turn off. Move.” As the driver accelerated toward the main road, Kozachenko radioed Barkov. “Can you reattach the cameras?”

  “It’s possible, but there are no guarantees. The wires for video can be tricky.”

  “Make it happen,” Kozachenko said and then turned to the men. “What are your names?”

  “I’m Celek,” the driver said. “He’s Janko.”

  Kozachenko held up the radio mic. “I am going to keep the mic open so the men can hear what’s happening. We need to keep the police from going to the substation, or we’ll have no choice but to kill them. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” Celek said.

  Janko turned in his seat. “I have a question.”

  “What is it?”

  “What is wrong with just killing them now?”

  “Think about it. What do you think happens if the officers fail to report in?”

  “They send more officers,” Celek said.

  “That and they put out an alert. It would be like standing up and waving to the Polish Special Forces. You need to do your best to make them go away.”

  “Who are we supposed to be?” Janko asked.

  “Tell them you are military out on maneuvers. You heard the call and stopped to check. Tell them whatever you need to. Just make them go away.”

  Celek shifted into third gear and floored the SUV. Kozachenko watched from the back seat as they neared the highway intersection. If the policemen were able to turn in on the service road, the game was over.

  The SUV and first police car reached the intersection at the same time. Kozachenko dropped to the seat while Celek slammed on the brakes, maneuvering the vehicle sideways across the road and forcing the police car into the ditch. Jumping out, he took the offense.

  “You stupid imbecile,” he shouted. “What the hell are you doing? Trying to kill us?”

  Kozachenko peered over the back seat and watched the other police car skid to a stop. An officer jumped out, his weapon drawn. “Put your hands up. Who are you?”

  “We were sent out here to check on the substation,” Celek said. He ignored the officer, and Kozachenko hoped he didn’t get shot in the back. Celek quickly moved toward the car in the ditch and yanked open the driver’s-side door. “Are you okay?”

  The officer climbed out and supported himself by leaning against the car. “I’m fine.”

  “I told you to put your hands up!” the officer yelled from the road. He stood in a shooting stance, weapon leveled at Celek’s chest. “Why would they send soldiers?”

  Celek played along, halfheartedly raising his hands in surrender. “We were on maneuvers when the call came over the radio. We thought we could help. Why don’t you put your gun away so we can discuss this?”

  The policemen looked at each other, and then the one on the road gestured toward the substation with the barrel of his gun. “What did you find there?”

  Celek shrugged and shook his head. “Nothing. Everything was in order.”

  The officer maintained a one-handed grip on his gun and shined his flashlight down the road. The beam dissipated after a few feet, so he turned the light on Janko in the front seat of the SUV. Kozachenko ducked. The light remained on Janko for a few moments, and then the officer shined the light back on Celek’s face. “I don’t believe you. The electricity was out from here to Elblag, and dispatch informed us the cameras were down.”

  Celek shielded his eyes from the light, squinting at the officer. “The electricity is on now, isn’t it? And the cameras all seemed to be working. Call the power company in Ostroda and ask for yourself.”

  The officer looked at his colleague, who nodded. “Go ahead and do it, Vann.”

  “Don’t move until I get back.” Officer Vann holstered his weapon and headed back to his car. A tactical error, thought Kozachenko. If he and his men wanted to, they could easily kill these men now.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Celek asked the policeman beside him. He sat against the car fender and twisted to look at the man’s name badge. “You look a little green, Officer Soskin.”

  “I bumped my head. It’s nothing.”

  Celek was doing a great job of feigning concern. “That’s not good. You may need medical attention.”

  “I told you, I’m fine.”

  Officer Vann climbed back out of his patrol car and walked toward them. “The power company says everything is working again. They claim it must have been a malfunction or something.”

  Officer Soskin jerked his head toward Celek. “Did you check with dispatch? Did they say anything about soldiers reporting to the scene?”

  Kozachenko tensed, ready to spring into action if necessary. Janko reached for the door handle.

  “The man I spoke to said he didn’t talk to anyone. But he admitted there were three dispatchers fielding calls. It’s possible one of the others handled the communication.”

  “What did I tell you?” Celek said, pushing himself off the fender. Janko settled back in his seat. Kozachenko remained on guard. “Now I think you need to get your man to a doctor.”

  “Are you hurt, Soskin?” Vann looked concerned.

  “I’m fine.” Soskin glared at Celek, who had climbed up on the road and now stood beside Vann.

  Celek leaned in. “He admitted smacking his head in the crash. Haven’t you ever heard of Talk-and-Die Syndrome?”

  Vann frowned. “No.”
<
br />   “It’s terrible. Sometimes when someone hits their head, they claim they are fine, and then within hours, they’re dead.” Celek tapped his skull. “Traumatic bleeding inside the brain. Even a minor head injury can be serious.”

  “I’m telling you, I am perfectly okay.” As if to prove it, Soskin pushed himself to his feet and started forward, stumbling over a rock in the ditch.

  Kozachenko buried his laugh.

  Celek pounced on the opportunity. “See?” he said to Vann, flicking a finger toward Soskin. “The sooner he sees a doctor the better. I’ve seen too many head injuries in my day. I say take him, now.”

  “I’m telling you, it isn’t necessary,” Soskin insisted.

  “I don’t know, Soskin. You may have hit your head harder than you think,” Vann said.

  “Where is the nearest hospital?” Celek said. “My buddy and I can follow you there with his car.”

  “No, just leave it,” Vann said. “I’ll have someone come out in the morning.”

  “You’re sure?” Celek asked.

  “Positive,” Vann said, depositing Soskin into the passenger seat of his car. After shutting the door, he reached out his hand. “Thanks for your help, Private.”

  It was clear the officer expected a name.

  “Sergeant,” Celek corrected, removing his glove and reaching to shake. “Good luck, Officer Vann. I hope your colleague is all right.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem. We’re here to serve.”

  Chapter 43

  Two railcars waited for them on the tracks in Czerwona Karczma, just north of Ostroda. Jordan had been expecting a handcart with a hand pump, the ones usually seen in old movies. She was pleasantly surprised to find they would be driving what appeared to be modified truck cabs on train wheels.

  “What about other trains on the track?”

  “The Polish State Railways has agreed to an engineering possession for the next two hours. It means they will close the track in both directions, indicating a maintenance issue. Once the time is up, trains will be allowed to pass.”

  They were on the clock in more ways than one. “Let’s get on with it, then.”

  Adamski gestured to the lead vehicle. “You’re with me, Agent. You and I will take the first spur we can find,” he said. “You, go with him.” He pointed Davis toward a soldier sitting in the second railcar.

  “What about the rest of the team?” Jordan asked.

  “They will continue the helicopter search. From here to Małdyty, the train passes through forest, and there are a number of abandoned spurs. North from there to Elblag is all farmland. The team should be able to easily spot any sidelined train cars from the air. If and when we find something, we’ll reconnoiter.” Adamski produced an earbud and a transmitter and held them out to Jordan. “We need to get you linked in on the comm.”

  The devices he produced were top of the line—a small earbud that fit out of sight and a transmitter that hooked at the waist.

  “Anything special about these?” Jordan asked, slipping the device into her ear.

  “These are set on VOX, voice operated exchange, so the teams can hear each other at all times.” He handed her the transmitter. “We are the white team, the duo behind us is the green team, and the crew in the chopper is the black team. If you need to talk privately, say the word koala and switch to channel three.”

  “Koala?”

  “My wife’s favorite animal.”

  She hadn’t known he was married.

  “Keep the chatter to a minimum. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  Adamski activated the comms. “Let’s take roll call.”

  Each member of the team sounded off in alphabetical order, each one using a code name starting with the first letter of their last name. Davis sounded off as Deadline.

  Adamski signaled it was her turn next.

  “Jumper.” It was the first thing that came to mind, the closest thing she could think of to floater, which in spy talk meant a person used one time, occasionally, or even unknowingly for an intelligence operation.

  “Avatar,” Adamski said. “Ready, Jumper?”

  Jordan nodded and climbed up into the cab, wishing she had a cooler name.

  Both sides of the old Unimog were open, and the breeze felt nice. It was a warm day, clear for a change, with no chance of rain until late afternoon. The trees grew tall on both sides of them, forming a deciduous tunnel over the tracks. They were moving fast enough that it was difficult to scan the woods. Not that it mattered. She was convinced the Russians had already headed north.

  “Okay, we’re approaching our first spur,” Adamski said. “You need to jump off and manually throw the switch.”

  Jordan looked down. The ground rushed past at approximately thirty-five miles an hour. “Seriously?”

  “I’ll slow down.”

  Jordan listened closely while he explained the process. She would manually throw a lever and wait for the tracks to change. Once the Unimog cleared the switch, she would throw the lever back.

  “That allows green team to continue on to the next spur,” Adamski explained. “They check that one, we check the one after that, and so on. The best anyone could tell me, there are eight or nine sidelines between here and Małdyty. Spurs four and six are heavily used. We’re on the clock, so we’ll skip them. Are you ready for the first switch?”

  “Let’s do it.”

  Adamski braked the vehicle. Jordan waited until they were moving at the speed of a moving walkway before stepping off. Then, running ahead, she flipped the switch. The track rotated, and Adamski and the cart diverted. Once he cleared the switch, she reversed the lever. The track had barely locked into place when the green team cruised past. They repeated the process six times. Each diversion required driving the Unimog forward and then reversing to the main track and proceeding on. Adamski and Jordan were coming up on number seven.

  “This is the last one,” Adamski said.

  She’d been listening to the chatter on VOX, not understanding the language, but by the sense of urgency, she realize that the GROM crew in the helicopter, the black team, had found nothing so far.

  “It looks like we’re at the end.”

  “Right,” Jordan said.

  Adamski checked his watch. “Our two hours are up. Green team, vacate the track.”

  “Copy that.”

  Jordan jumped out, flipped the switch, and flipped it back. The trees weren’t as dense here. Tipping her head back, she looked up at the sky. That’s when she spotted the vultures. They were circling about a mile down the tracks.

  “I think we might have found it,” she said, pointing out the birds.

  “Don’t get too excited. This is the country. It could just be a dead deer.” She heard the words, but took note of his carriage. He seemed more attentive, leaning into the wheel with a sense of anticipation.

  The smell reached them before they rounded the corner. An odor of burned and rotting flesh permeated the air, making it hard to breathe. The refrigerator car gaped open. On the ground in front of it were two large mounds of remains from PR Flight 91. Inside, the two false walls lay haphazardly on top of more piles scraped to the side to make way for two vehicles.

  Jordan could see the tire tracks of the trucks marked by pieces of flesh and bone mixed with tattered clothing on the ramps they used for unloading. They had driven over and through the remains of somebody’s mother or father or wife or child. Jordan felt her anger swell. What type of men could be so callous, so irreverent? Were they men who believed in a cause? Were they men influenced by greed? Or were they men who blindly followed orders? It didn’t matter. She intended to make them all pay.

  While Adamski called in the other teams, Jordan took her transmitter off VOX and checked in with Lory and Zhen.

  “Let me put you on speaker,” Lory said.

  “Any luck finding a spike in energy usage?”

  “According to the power company, the only oddity was a power o
utage early this morning that knocked out electricity from Pasłęk to Elblag and towns to the northeast. According to the person I spoke with, the power was out for eighteen minutes thirty-seven seconds, and then it just came back on. They sent two officers out to check on things, but they radioed in that everything was fine. The video was working. There were no cut fences.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Sometime before dawn.”

  It had to be their guys, thought Jordan. She wrote down the number for the power company and took directions to the substation, though a part of her knew both would be dead ends and they shouldn’t waste time. The Russians were moving and would be long gone from the area by now. “Where are the two officers stationed?”

  “Pasłęk.”

  North.

  A quick call to the police station confirmed what they’d already pieced together. Then Jordan walked back over to where Captain Adamski stood staring at the piles of remains. His eyes were wet, and she wondered if it was because of the weight of their find or the stench exacerbated by the heat of the day.

  He recovered quickly when the green team arrived. Shortly after that, the black team swooped in with the chopper.

  Davis walked over and gave her shoulders a squeeze. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine.” She leaned against him for a moment before pulling away. “Captain . . . I can call you that again, right?”

  “We only use code names when we have teams separated in the field.”

  She told him about the power outage in Pasłęk. “The Russians headed north from here, stopping long enough to charge up the power source for the gun. My best guess is they kept moving in the same direction. Once the sun came up, they would have needed a place to hide. Any ideas?”

  “The best place to disappear would be Elblag Upland Landscape Park. It’s a protected area—trees, reservoirs, and 134.6 square kilometers of land. We can’t cover that much ground in the time we have left. Unless we get lucky, we’ll never find them in there.”

  Chapter 44

  Hearing the chopper in the distance, Kozachenko knew time was running out. GROM had been searching all day. He and his men had played a cat-and-mouse game, but now their enemies were getting closer, and time was running short.