Black Ops Bundle: Volume One

by Allan Leverone

  “The tumor is growing and I’m dying and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.” Shane shrugged. He sat propped against the cheap motel headboard as Tracie stared at him, horror written on her delicate features.

  “Can’t they treat it somehow? What about surgery? Chemotherapy?”

  “The tumor’s too advanced. There’s no way to remove it or kill it without also wiping out most of my grey matter. And I don’t have that much to spare,” he said, trying to make her smile.

  It didn’t work. Her eyes began to fill with tears and he said quickly, “Most of the time the pain’s not that bad. I go for days on end without feeling any different than I ever did. Then, out of nowhere, it’ll strike.”

  “Like now.”

  “Like now,” he agreed.

  “How much worse is this headache going to get?”

  “There’s no way to tell. Over time, obviously, the headaches are going to get worse and worse, but each individual one is a crap shoot. I’m hoping this time that it won’t get too much worse than it is right now. I can still function, more or less, except for those brief time-outs when I have to puke my guts out.” He was trying to keep things light, still embarrassed.

  Tracie looked away and shook her head.

  He said, “I’m really sorry about this. I was hoping nothing would happen until our little road trip was all over.”

  “My God, Shane, you don’t have to apologize. I should apologize to you for dragging you into this mess. It’s not bad enough you’re suffering from a terminal illness, I have to pull you away from your family and your job and haul you into the middle of an international incident.”

  Shane smiled weakly. “Are you kidding me? I haven’t had this much excitement in…hell, probably ever. When your plane crashed, I was driving to work, I already told you that. What I didn’t tell you was that I had come from an appointment with the oncologists that afternoon. They told me there was nothing more they could do, that they would help make me comfortable when the time came, but that I needed to get my affairs in order. That’s exactly how they said it, too: ‘Get your affairs in order,’ like we were in some bad Hollywood movie or something.

  “So, needless to say, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself that night. But then, when your plane crashed and I worked my way through the woods and saw you trapped inside that B-52, somehow still alive but about to be burned to a crisp, it served as the wake-up call I think I needed. It shook me out of my self-pity, reminded me other people have problems, too, and that I could still actually make a difference to someone. It made me realize that I might be dying, but I’m still here for now. I’m not dead yet.” He looked up and Tracie had moved next to him, tears running silently down her face.

  He took her hand and she squeezed it ferociously. “Besides,” he said, “we’re all dying. Some go quicker than others, but nobody gets out alive.”

  Tracie looked away, her eyes bleak. “What about medication? I’ll go to the drugstore and try to get you something for the pain.”

  He shook his head. “It won’t matter. Just talk to me. That’ll give me something else to think about besides the pain.”

  “Of course.” Her voice sounded gravelly and she cleared her throat. “What would you like to talk about?”

  “With Andrews dead, what happens now? I’ve only known you for a couple of days, but that’s long enough for me to know you’re not just going to shrug your shoulders and give up and accept that the KGB is going to assassinate the president of the United States. Have you decided who at the CIA you’re going to give Gorbachev’s letter to? I think you should go right to the top, to Aaron Stallings.”

  “I’m not giving it to anyone,” Tracie answered, her lips set in a grim line. “Nothing’s changed. I still don’t know who I can trust. If they could get to Winston Andrews, they could get to anyone, even Director Stallings.”

  “So, what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to catch the assassin.”

  Shane leaned back on the pillow and closed his eyes as the waves of pain rolled through his head. He pictured the tumor as an invading army, the attacking troops dressed all in black, his body repelling them time after time, fighting hard but eventually weakening in the face of the tumor-army’s endless supply of reinforcements. “How do you propose to do that without any backup? It seems impossible.”

  She shrugged. “Why? Between the letter and the information our KGB friends supplied in New Haven, I have everything I need: I know where the hitter is going to set up, I know the method he’s going to use to take out the president, and I know he’s going to strike at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. This will be no more difficult than a dozen other missions I’ve completed—all successfully, I might add.”

  “But isn’t the CIA prohibited from working inside the boundaries of the United States? Aren’t you only supposed to operate in foreign countries?”

  “That’s true,” Tracie admitted. “But this situation is one in a million; it seems highly unlikely anyone in Congress could have envisioned this scenario. I’ll take my chances and worry about the fallout later.”

  Shane nodded. He saw Tracie watching him closely and tried not to wince from the pain. “I figured you were going to say something like that. But I still can’t imagine taking down a professional hit man without a team to work with, especially with no time to develop a plan.”

  “Even with the support of a team,” she said, “there are no guarantees. Things always go wrong, that’s a given. It’s just that this time there won’t be anyone to pull my butt out of the fire if I get in trouble.”

  “Yes there will.”

  “You?”

  Shane nodded gingerly.

  “Absolutely not. That’s out of the question. You’re not going to be there.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  “There’s nothing you can do for me.”

  “Bullshit. I can at least drive a car. I’m going.”

  Tracie shook her head, her lips compressed into a thin slash across her pretty face. She had placed her fists on her hips and her eyes looked like chips of flint. Her red hair hung in fiery ringlets, cascading over her shoulders. Shane thought she might just be the sexiest thing he had ever seen.

  He reached for her right wrist and pulled her down onto the bed, her lithe form molding onto his like they had been meant to be together. Maybe they had.

  She whispered, “What about your headache?”

  He said, “What headache?” as the tumor armies continued their assault, wave after wave of pain rolling through his skull.

  But right now, none of that mattered. He didn’t care about the tumor. Didn’t care about the pain. Didn’t even care that a KGB assassin was out there somewhere right now, waiting to pull the trigger on the president of the United States. He needed Tracie and, what was more, he knew she needed him. Tomorrow she would undertake what might be a suicide mission, her protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. But tonight there was nothing to do but pass the time and wait. It was nine p.m.

  He began caressing her, his hands moving of their own accord, breaking down her half-hearted resistance, until soon everything melted away and nothing existed but their dance.

  ***

  June 1, 1987

  8:20 p.m.

  Washington, D.C.

  Tracie lay still, listening to Shane breathe, the sound slow and steady. Peaceful. He had fallen asleep quickly, not surprising given what she now knew about his health. She savored the nearness of his body, warm and comforting under the blankets, wanting nothing more than to join him in sleep.

  But there were things to do first. She sighed softly and slipped out of bed. Dressed quietly. Then she walked out the door, locking it behind her.

  40

  June 1, 1987

  11:50 p.m.

  Columbia Road, Northeast of Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

  Nikolai Primakov eased his plain white panel van into an empty parking space. The spot was perfec
t—a block and a half away from his destination. Close enough to be within walking distance, but far enough away for the vehicle to go unnoticed.

  Tomorrow would be a long day, a history-making day. Nikolai pulled a pack of Lucky Strikes out of the breast pocket of his shirt and tapped out a cigarette. He lit it and took a deep drag. Lucky Strikes were the closest thing he could find in this country to the Soviet-made Belomorkanals—unfiltered, strong and cheap—which he smoked occasionally when he was home.

  Outside, the dim light from a quarter-moon cloaked the buildings of the city in a gauzy sheen. Millions of stars twinkled overhead. Nikolai examined the horizon and nodded. The weather would be perfect. Clear skies, virtually no wind. The temperature was chilly right now, but the day would warm nicely. Besides, cold didn’t bother Nikolai. He had been born and raised in the bitter chill of Yakutsk, where winter temperatures plummeted to depths the soft citizens of this decadent country couldn’t even comprehend, much less weather.

  But Nikolai had withstood the temperatures just fine. And he had been comfortable with weapons from a very young age, excelling as a marksman. He had trained as a sniper in the Red Army, serving with distinction in Afghanistan before being recruited by the KGB for more delicate, and much more important, work.

  Nikolai was one of the finest assassins in the Soviet arsenal. Over the course of the last decade-plus, Nikolai Primakov had eliminated somewhere in the neighborhood of forty people; he had lost track of the exact number years ago. All of the targets had been enemies of the Soviet state, although surprisingly few had been politicians. Some were, of course, but many more were business leaders, or dissidents, or people who to Nikolai’s eye were nothing special, simple people living simple lives who had somehow found themselves on the KGB’s radar, marked for removal from this earth.

  Their offenses were irrelevant to Nikolai, as were their job titles. When he was given an assignment he carried it out, coldly and efficiently, and then moved on to the next. It was a job, no different than farming or factory work. He had a talent for assassination, so he was an assassin. End of story.

  Tomorrow’s job, of course, was a rare exception. Eliminating the president of the United States was an assignment even Nikolai Primakov had to admit was special, even though it was a mission no one could ever know he had performed.

  He checked his watch. Nearly midnight. It was time to go.

  Nikolai took a last deep drag on his cigarette and opened the door, flicking the butt onto the pavement where it dropped into a thin film of condensation. It hissed and died away. He slipped into a windbreaker with the Capitol Floor Refinishing logo sewn onto the breast and stepped out of the van.

  Capitol Floor Refinishing was a cover created specifically by the KGB for this mission. The temperature was cool, but not so cold Nikolai actually needed his jacket. However, creating the illusion of legitimacy was critical to mission success, so he shrugged it on over a uniform shirt with the identical logo sewn over the breast pocket, opened the van door and slid to the ground.

  He stepped to the rear of the vehicle, then glanced around for any signs of law enforcement presence. All clear. He opened the rear doors, revealing only one item secured in the back of the van—a wheeled cart with the Capitol Floor Refinishing logo prominently displayed on its canvas sides.

  To the casual observer, the cart would appear identical to those used by janitorial services everywhere. The top portion was filled with tools and equipment necessary for the business of floor refinishing. There was an electric hand buffer, brushes and cloths of all different sizes and shapes, and a healthy assortment of hand tools and small power tools, none of which Nikolai would be using.

  Hidden under the top portion of the cart were the things he really needed, the tools necessary for the business of ending lives. There were four sandbags, each roughly the size of a cement block. There was a Soviet-made Dragunov SVD sniper rifle, disassembled and secured inside a hard plastic traveling case, along with three cartridges filled with 7N1 steel-jacketed sniper rounds, though Nikolai was confident he would require just one shot. There was a PSO-1 optical sniper sight with Bullet Drop Compensation turret and quick-release mounting bracket. There were shooting glasses, binoculars, a small pillow, candy bars and water. There was a Makarov PB silenced semiautomatic pistol with three eight-round magazines, an NR-40 combat knife, and a change of clothes in which Nikolai intended to effect his escape upon completion of the mission.

  Unlike the floor refinishing equipment, these were items with which he was intimately familiar, items he had used—or identical to items he had used—on dozens of successful missions. They were hidden under the diversionary floor tools beneath a canvas separator which would be unfolded and used for camouflage once Nikolai was in place on the roof. The cart would stand up to casual inspection, which was sufficient for Nikolai’s requirements. He would not permit a more thorough inspection by anyone, under any circumstances.

  Nikolai wrapped his arms around the cart, straining under its weight, and lowered it to the sidewalk. He stumbled to his knees and the cart landed hard, clattering but remaining upright. He breathed a sigh of relief. Scattering the tools of his trade on the sidewalk just a few hundred feet from where the president of the United States was scheduled to make an appearance tomorrow morning would not be conducive to a successful mission or, in all probability, continued personal freedom.

  A casual look around confirmed for Nikolai that there were still no police in the area. He locked up the van and began pushing his cart along the sidewalk. He crossed Columbia in front of an empty Plexiglas-enclosed bus stop and continued halfway down the block, eventually arriving in front of the Minuteman Insurance building just before midnight. His timing was perfect. Three men stood in front of the entrance, dressed in the identical charcoal-colored slacks of Cote Cleaning, the company contracted to provide janitorial service for the building. They wore button-down shirts similar to his, except with Cote’s logo sewn onto the pocket instead of Capitol Floor Refinishing’s.

  He dragged the cart up the stairs one at a time. The cart was big and bulky and Nikolai had begun to sweat lightly despite the cool temperatures. As he approached the top of the stairs, the last janitor was being ushered through the front door by a uniformed security guard. The guard closed and locked the door. He was large and blocky, with greying brown hair trimmed in a military-style buzz cut. He wore a white uniform shirt and dark blue pressed trousers, a handgun displayed prominently in the leather holster at his hip.

  Nikolai knocked and the guard reluctantly opened the door, squinting as he gave Nikolai the once-over. “Who’re you?” he asked with an aggrieved air, as if Nikolai’s sudden appearance represented some kind of personal affront. He was standing half-in and half-out of the doorway, blocking access with his bulk.

  “Nick Kristoff,” Nikolai answered with an easy smile. “I am here for floor refinishing project.” There was no way to hide his thick Russian accent, so Nikolai didn’t even bother trying. His English was passable, but would never be anything more. He had neither the time nor the inclination to master the language, especially since he figured one day soon the Americans would be learning to speak Russian. It was inevitable.

  “Floor refinishing, huh?” the guard said skeptically. He frowned. “Nothing like that on my board for tonight.” He held up a clipboard for Nikolai’s inspection as though it might mean something to him. Idiot.

  “Capitol Floor Refinishing,” Nikolai said, pointing to the logo on the side of his cart. “We were contracted to service floors in entire building. You would like to see work order?”

  “Yeah, I would like to see work order,” the guard answered in a tone which was just mocking enough to be clear to Nikolai, but not so obvious the guy couldn’t make a plausible denial if he were called on it.

  Nikolai didn’t care about mocking tones, obvious or otherwise. He unzipped his windbreaker, making a show of shivering. “Cold,” he observed, and the guard said nothing. He pulled a folded doc
ument out of his breast pocket, making sure the Capitol Floor Refinishing logo on his shirt flashed at the guard. Positive reinforcement. He handed the paperwork to the guard and re-zipped, then stood rubbing his hands together while the man peered at the “work order.”

  The forgery would stand up to the guard’s—or anyone’s—inspection. It had been created by top forgers inside the KGB, men who did nothing all day but reproduce important items for the Soviet Union. Currency, licenses, permits, work orders—you name it, the KGB forgers could reproduce it. The work order looked real, right down to the signature of Minuteman Mutual’s office manager. There was absolutely no chance this drone would identify the work order as being forged.

  What there was a chance of—and the one way this mission could fall apart before it even got started—was the guard smelling a rat and deciding to phone the manager at home to question the legitimacy of the project. Given the time of night, and the relative stations in life of the guard and the office manager, Nikolai didn’t think there was much of chance of that happening.

  If it did, Nikolai would be forced to take out the guard, something he absolutely could not afford to do here on the front steps of the Minuteman Mutual building, not fifty feet from Columbia Road. He had already decided that if the guard made any mention of double-checking with his superiors, Nikolai would slip his NR-40 combat knife—identical to the one currently hidden inside his cart, right down to the curved blade and lethal, razor-sharp cutting edge—out of its sheath strapped above his ankle and force his way inside the building. He would then bring the man to the interior stairwell, where he would kill him and hide the body.