29
Foreigners throwing around wads of cash attracted several different types of attention in Russia. The most dangerous was the fawning, sell-my-brother-for-a-ruble attention; Karr realized that anyone being overly nice to his face was more than likely calling a mafiya connection to tip them off to a potential kidnapping candidate. The Russian gangs were considerably more difficult to deal with than the security police simply because they were unpredictable. Not even the NSA had the resources to track the myriad groups that operated throughout the country. A few were aligned with fairly well-known political or business figures, and a couple were essentially military units moonlighting in the open season for graft. But the vast majority of Russian gangsters were smalltime hoodlums with very small operations, many of which either were quasi-legal or would be entirely legal if the proper permits were obtained.
The corruption pained Karr, even as he took advantage of it to do his job. The price for the jet fuel and the two large drums to transport it was so low that the fuel was either watered down or stolen.
Fashona swore it wasn’t watered down, and since they pumped it themselves, they got reasonably close to the amount they had paid for. They rolled the barrels up the single wooden plank into the back of the ancient Zil they’d hired, and moved out of the airfield. Karr fingered his pistol as they passed the guards, but he could tell from the men’s faces they were too depressed to even bother stopping them to ask their business.
His mother had come from Russia as a young girl, the daughter of a refusenik. Though she loved America, she still talked fondly of Russia and often spoke of going back to visit now that the country was a democracy.
He wanted to tell her about the country, but security concerns absolutely forbade him to. It probably wouldn’t have done much good; she wouldn’t believe what he’d tell her. At best, she would blame the woes on the Communists.
Karr wouldn’t completely dismiss that. But it seemed to him that the problem had more to do with greed — a disease imported from the West. As Russia tried to catch up to America, it had lost something of its nobility.
Most people had a depth and warmth that hardship only enhanced. But others were deeply infected with greed and cynicism. It was if it were one of the mosquito-borne viruses plaguing the new oil fields.
Heading back toward Sitjla, the driver of the truck became somewhat talkative. In his early thirties, he owned the truck with his brother, who was riding in the back and carried a small pistol concealed — or at least intended to be concealed — on his calf.
“I can tell my children I helped the CIA,” said the driver, whose name was Varnya.
“If I was with the CIA, I wouldn’t have run out of petrol,” laughed Karr. “And I would have paid you twice as much.”
The man laughed, though he insisted he knew that the two men were both American and members of the Central Intelligence Agency. According to Varnya, the CIA ran Russia, but this was an improvement from the days when the KGB had. Varnya’s grandfather — it may have been his great-grandfather, as Karr couldn’t quite stay on top of the accented and slightly drunken Russian — had been a political prisoner in one of the camps. After twelve years, he had been released with the understanding that he would stay out of western Russia. A similar story could have been told by half of the local inhabitants, if not more.
Varnya began to speak of things that his grandfather had told him — bodies in the river, a forest of skulls. His anger started to build. He offered to share his vodka. Karr agreed, knowing that to refuse would be a serious insult. He blocked the mouth of the bottle with his tongue every time he tipped the bottle back. The sting of the liquor helped keep him awake on the long ride.
It was dark when they got back to the helicopter. Varnya and his brother volunteered to help roll the barrels toward it. Then, as Karr knew they would, the two men pulled out weapons and tried to rob them.
“What would your grandfather think?” said Karr, shaking his head.
Varnya’s chest inflated, alcohol-fueled anger rising within him. He looked at Karr as if he were the KGB man who’d locked his grandfather in exile and tormented the family for three generations. He raised his pistol to fire, pushing his arm toward the American.
Fashona’s first bullet caught him in the side of the head. He didn’t bother firing another. By the time Varnya dropped, Karr had shot the brother twice in the forehead with a Glock 26.
“Motherfuckers,” said Fashona. “I told you they’d wait to see if we really had the chopper.”
“Yeah,” said Karr. He slid the Glock 26 back into its hiding place up his sleeve. “Kinda pains me that they didn’t believe us. Nobody trusts anybody these days.”
30
The third site Dean and Lia checked was a civilian airport. Several new Fokkers sat amid a smattering of older Russian types in neat rows beyond the terminal building. When they found the Helix they saw it had been plumbed for crop dusting. Lia took several photos of it with a digital camera about the size of a cigarette lighter. Back in the truck, using her handheld computer she compared it to pictures of the Helix that had inspected the crash site. They didn’t seem to be a match, though the program she used on the handheld would only say the results were inconclusive.
By now it was early evening. A Western-style motel sat near the airport. They went there and took two rooms, then had dinner in what amounted to a cafeteria on the basement level. Lia had to go outside to get the phone to work. Dean sat at the table sipping a vodka, the first alcohol he’d had since getting the assignment. He rolled the liquor around his tongue, letting the sting loosen his sinuses.
The mission Hadash had sent him to do was over. The plane was obviously destroyed, and sooner or later the material they’d loaded into the Hind would be returned to the States for analysis to prove it.
That was all he was here for. Hadash had said something along the lines of “you’ll just be a tourist.”
Or a baby-sitter. They needed one.
Not really. Lia was a bit much, and Tommy Karr had rubbed him the wrong way, a little too easygoing for his own good, Dean thought — but they were competent in their own way, comfortable with technology in a way Dean would never be.
Not that he was a Luddite, for christsakes. What the hell was a stinking Luddite anyway? Some sort of nineteenth-century English revolutionary worried about losing his job to a machine. Which Dean definitely wasn’t.
Dean watched as two young men came into the room with overloaded trays of food. They were loud, obviously drunk; he couldn’t understand what they were saying, but it was obvious they were pretty full of themselves. Both wore track pants and Nike basketball shoes; their shirts were opened several buttons down and they had rows of gold chains around their necks.
“Credit card thieves,” Lia said, sliding in across from him. “They broker numbers.”
“How do you know?”
“You figure things out after a while. Karr’ll meet us in the hotel. Let’s go get some sleep.”
Upstairs, he had started to go to the room across the hall when she opened her door. She grabbed the sleeve of his sweater.
“Where are you going?”
“Get some z’s.”
“We stay together. Don’t look at me like that — one of us sleeps, the other stands guard. We sweep the room first.” She took her handheld out and slid a small silver bar into an expansion slot at the top. “Talk,” she told him.
“About what?”
“Your sex life. Just talk.”
Dean began reciting the alphabet. Lia held her computer in two hands and swept up and down the walls, looking a little like a supplicant worshipping the god of hideous wallpaper. Dean followed as she worked her way around to the bathroom.
“No bugs,” she said finally. She started the shower. “Which doesn’t mean we can’t be bugged.”
“How?”
“Walls are thin and there’s plenty of glass. Picking up the vibrations off them is child’s play.”
“Don’t say anything and we won’t have a problem.”
“How about sneezing?” The bathroom smelled like week-old mold and was getting to his nose.
“I wouldn’t worry about it. I’ll keep watch,” Lia added. “But first I want to take a shower.”
She pulled off the heavy black sweater and undershirt she’d been wearing, leaving only a thick gray sports bra between Dean and her breasts. They weren’t large but stood out well against her flat belly. “Excuse me, can I have a little privacy?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” said Dean, squeezing out the door and into the other room. He picked up the A-2, deciding it would be more useful than the pistol if they were attacked. There were two locks on the door — a fairly useless chain and a better dead bolt — though anyone who really wanted to get in would have the door down in about five seconds. Dean pushed the room’s chair against it but couldn’t find a way to wedge it home. Finally he moved the chair against the wall so that it would keep the door from opening more than halfway.
“What are you doing?” Lia asked, emerging from the shower.
She was completely dressed — somewhat to Dean’s disappointment, he realized.
“Making it harder for anyone to get in.”
“Yeah, that’ll slow ’em down.” Shaking her head, she reached back into the bathroom and took a towel to wrap her wet hair in. Then, palming a pistol so small it looked like a preschooler’s toy, she went out into the hallway. Ninety seconds later, she was back.
Dean watched silently as she took her handheld and hit a quick set of keys. A blurry window opened up on the screen, then split in half. Dean realized it was a video feed from two cameras in the hall.
“They’re the size of nickels,” she said. “I mounted them under that hideous light fixture. It’ll do until morning.” She put the small computer down on the bureau top, then finished toweling her damp hair. “You gonna take a shower?” she asked.
“Nah,” said Dean.
“Suit yourself.” She pulled over the chair so she could sit, positioning it near the bureau and holding the A-2 in her lap.
“What was the gun?” Dean asked.
“Which?”
“The little gun.”
Lia reached to her sweater and pulled a small pistol out like a magician making a bouquet of flowers magically appear. “It’s a Kahr,” she said, holding it out in her palm. “Custom-made. Here.”
The silver steel gun looked like a K9 with its stock and clip sawed off. The trigger and guard were a little too small for Dean’s fingers.
“Nine-millimeter?” he asked.
“Nine-millimeter.”
“This small it must be hard to aim.”
“If I have to use it, I’m not going to miss,” she said, taking the gun back. “I’m going to be right on top of whoever I’m shooting.”
“So you get the high-tech weapon and I get the rusty old six-gun.”
“First of all, that’s a.44 Magnum,” said Lia. “Second of all, you’re the one who’s always putting down high-tech gear.”
She returned the weapon to its hide, a pocket in the sleeve of her sweater where it could nestle undetected.
“Better get some sleep,” she told him. “Karr’ll be here in a few hours, and he always wants to party.”
31
Malachi Reese slid his headset off, put both hands at the center of his scalp, and began to scratch. His fingers cut a symmetrical pattern across the top of his head, ending finally behind his ears.
He’d read somewhere that this increased the blood circulation to the brain. It was probably complete pseudoscientific bull, but Malachi liked the tingle it left. He bent his head back, then down, zoning for a moment on the tiny red light of his MP3 player. Then he pulled the headphones back and looked at the status screen.
“Decision time,” he told the Art Room, studying the computer’s proposed trajectory from Platform 2. “You have sixty seconds left in this launch window, and the next is three hours away.”
“We need listening devices on Site B,” said Telach finally. “That’s it.”
Malachi turned to the screens on the left, paging up a computer-rendered diagram of Site B, the facility in north-central Russia that the NSA ground ops had been turned away from. This was obviously a military base, not the best application for the Vessel-launched listening devices — they were small and looked like rocks but could be detected by a trained counterintelligence officer.
“We really should line up the RS-93,” he repeated.
“I know you want to fly the plane,” Telach told him. “But this isn’t worth the delay — or the expense. Do what you can.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Malachi uploaded the mission information into the flight computer, selected the proper configuration — all listening devices — and began the launch countdown as his MP3 whipped into a section of tunes from a Bob Dylan tribute. The Vessel whipped out from the satellite station in a sharp downward angle, and he had to sit on the retros to angle it into the proper path.
“Platforms, we’re going to need a diagnostic on Two,” he told the maintenance group when he was finally confident that he had the Vessel on course. “Hey, Baldie, I had a bad angle on the launch, dude, and it’s all your fault.”
Malachi sipped his strawberry-milk drink while the maintenance tech debriefed him. The bad launch meant he was going to have trouble getting the Vessel into a recovery zone following deployment; he’d have to red-button it.
“Gotta go,” he told Baldie as the computer flashed its five-second countdown to Hydra.
“Hey,” said Rockman over the NSA line.
“Hang tight, Rock.” Malachi hit his commands. He had good telemetry from the Vessel — the wings had deployed — but the track on SpyNet disagreed with his own data. The difference was only two meters — but at this altitude and speed, two meters would translate into several miles at the target. He tried two refreshes but couldn’t get them to agree. There was no time to run a diagnostic to find out which was right.
“Yo, Mom, listen, I have a disagreement on my course position,” he told Telach. “What I’m going to do is split the drop. I think I can hit both projected sites.”
He said that before doing the calculations.
“What kind of coverage are we going to have?” asked Telach.
Duh.
“A quarter of what we planned,” said Malachi. “Half the devices over half the area. I’ll jack the power if you want, but you’ll kill the endurance.”
“Acceptable,” said Rockman.
Malachi pounded the keyboard and got the two drop points worked out. The extra maneuvers left him with a self-destruct point only twenty miles from the second drop, which called for a verbal override not only from him but also from Telach.
“Go for it,” she said.
* * *
To interpret the voice intercepts provided by the miniature bugs, Desk Three used specialists from the NSA’s translation section, who were fed the intercepts in real time over a dedicated network. The translators used a version of Speaker ID — a neural network computer program based on the Berger — Liaw Neural Network Speaker Independent Speech Recognition System developed at the University of Southern California for the agency and the Defense Department. Speaker ID could separate recorded conversations into dialogue transcripts almost instantaneously; the exact speed depended on conditions and what the program’s mentors sometimes referred to as interference from the human linguists working with the gear. An uncorrected transcript appeared on one of Rockman’s screens in near real time; a more polished draft could be called up on a sixty-second delay. The runner preferred to rely on the translation supervisor, who could summarize developments quickly. The supervisor was with the translators in another part of Crypto City, though he could take a station in the Art Room for important missions.
“Macho talk,” said the translation supervisor, Janet Granay. “A lot of c
onversations. General stuff. We’ll start harvesting in a few seconds.” The corrected transcripts were entered into a computer program that searched for key words such as cities or military commands. The program would then flag the conversation streams, highlighting them for the supervisor. While the program was definitely useful, in prac- tice Granay could probably keep up with what was for her a limited number of conversation streams without its help.
“We’re looking at a Marine base then?” asked Rockman. “That’s my main question, if I can confirm my background.”
“We’re still working on it. We have only six conversations here. A lot of snoring. It’s nighttime over there.”
“I can wait,” said Rockman. Site B was a bit of an interesting mystery. The most recent satellite photo showed equipment ordinarily associated with Marine units, even though this was deep in Siberia, not a place known to house the extremely small Russian amphibious forces. A vehicle analysis put the force strength just short of a battalion — which would make it the largest concentration of Marines outside of naval bases in the Far East.
Telach theorized that they were looking at an Army unit that had inherited Marine gear, but NSA’s researchers could find no evidence of that. Large military units were routinely tracked across the globe, so the appearance of a fairly significant size force here was interesting in and of itself. So far no reference to it had been found in the mountains of daily intercepts out of the Kremlin and defense ministry.
Lia’s data didn’t provide much illumination. Her images of the men, transmitted over the phone hookup, showed that they were probably wearing Marine uniforms.
Rockman studied the eavesdropping data; one of the flies was close enough to pick up what seemed to be a conversation at the main gate. It consisted largely of a debate over how much vodka could be drunk without pausing to take a breath.
“So let’s say the helicopter belonged to them,” suggested Telach, sitting at the console next to him. “What’s it mean? Units operating independently of Moscow.”
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