“So the targets never shot back at you.” Boxers stated that as his point.
“In a perfect world, he can hit what he’s shooting at,” Jonathan said, summing it up. It also served as his decision that the kid could come. They needed the manpower.
When Becky sensed that it was her turn, she cleared her throat and gave a shy smile. “I took a gun safety course in Girl Scout camp,” she said. “But I’m willing to go if I can be of any help. At the very least, I can carry stuff while my partner, Rambo, shoots up the place with his three hundred win-thing.”
“There’s a sentence every warrior wants to hear,” Boxers said.
“Stop,” Jonathan said. “We’ll stipulate that everyone wants to or is willing to go. Now we need a plan.”
“First we need to know where the PCs are going to be held,” Boxers said.
“That’s a level-three concern,” Jonathan said. “First, we have to get in country with the appropriate tools.” He knew it was stupid, but he resisted talking about weapons and explosives in front of the others. As if they didn’t know what “appropriate tools” meant. “Next we have to figure out how to get into Canada and then onto the island. The actual extraction and evacuation don’t happen unless we can get past those two points. Irene, I don’t suppose you have any contacts in CBP, do you?” Customs and Border Protection.
“No one high enough on the food chain,” she said.
“It’d take too long to get false passports for everyone,” Jonathan thought aloud, “so driving is out.”
“What’s the hurry?” Becky asked. Then, to Yelena, “Sorry, but an extra few hours to get it right might be worth the delay.”
Jonathan shook his head. “No. We know where the PCs are headed now. We don’t know where they might be moved later. If they get whisked off again, we’ll be out of business. The clock is definitely ticking.”
“Not all roads are monitored,” Boxers said.
“Yeah, they are,” Jonathan corrected. “There might not be checkpoints, but there are ground sensors and drones in the air.” He smiled at Irene, who seemed surprised that he knew about the drones. “It’s not worth the risk to drive. Plus, that’s a twelve-hour commute from here.”
“We can always charter a jet,” Boxers said, “but there’s still the problem of customs.”
Jonathan never quite understood why it was so much harder to get in and out of Canada that it was to traverse the Mexican border, but he figured it had something to the relative strengths of the two nations’ respective lobbyists. Fact was, the border was carefully watched, and the penalties for illegal crossings were huge. At a minimum, it included impounding the vehicle that carried you, and in Jonathan’s case, given all the weaponry that his vehicle would be transporting, that would be especially problematic.
Given the time constraints, they needed a way to literally pass under the radar between the two nations, but that would mean treetop flying, and that attracted a lot of attention. Unless, of course, they could start and end in relatively unpopulated areas.
In a perfect world, they’d use a helicopter. Working the logic, then, they needed a helpful contact in New England, close enough to make the flight out and back on a single tank of gas.
Vermont, maybe.
That’s it!
When he looked to Boxers, the Big Guy was already grinning.
They said it together: “Striker.”
Len Shaw, a.k.a. Alexei Petrov, arrived in his office to find Dmitri Boykin already seated in Len’s chair, with his feet on the desk, paging through paperwork that he had no right seeing. “Excuse me,” Len said.
Dmitri looked bored and slightly amused. He started to speak in Russian.
“No,” Len said. “Not here. English. French if you must, but I do not allow Russian in my compound.”
Dmitri’s eyebrows raised halfway up his forehead. “You do not allow? Comrade Petrov, tell me you are not ashamed of your heritage.”
“Those days are gone, Dmitri. Comrade this and comrade that, you sound like an old movie. You must embrace change. And the first change is to get out of my chair.”
Dmitri didn’t move. He was a bully in the most basic definition of the word. Built like a fire hydrant, he had a face that had survived too many fights, and the personality of a man who longed for more. While he intimidated most of the men with whom he interacted, Len was not among them.
“Are you going to make me?” he asked.
It was a level of discourse to which Len would not stoop. If it came to that, so be it. The odds in the ensuing fight would be even at best—and in Dmitri’s favor, at worst—but there’d be a lot of blood on the walls, and no one would want that.
Dmitri held his posture for a few seconds—long enough to impress Len with his faux fearlessness—and then lowered his feet to the floor and stood. “You are getting bold in your old age, Alexei.”
Len waited until he had clear passage—avoiding the temptation of the schoolyard shoulder-knock and the unspoken challenge it brought—before walking behind his desk and sitting down. “The name is Len. Len Shaw. And I am a real estate developer. That is the life I lead, mission notwithstanding. The men who live here are construction workers. The public is not welcome because a construction site is a dangerous place. That is our cover, and our cover is working.”
“You seem to have taken deep ownership of a property I bought.”
“It’s a property that I bought,” Len snapped. “Check the land records.”
“What is it that the Americans like to say?” Dmitri asked. “Ah, yes. Follow the money.”
Len sighed. “Must we engage in this—what else is it that the Americans say? Ah, yes. Must we engage in this dick-knocking? We are on the same side, Dmitri. We have known each other too long for this. We are too close to our mission’s end. Nineteen eighty-eight was a long time ago.” He was referring, of course, to the fall of the Soviet Union.
“The Mishins are on their way,” Dmitri said, getting right to the point. “They should be here in the next few hours.”
Len had taken special care to shower, shave, and fully dress before responding to Dmitri’s summons at this ridiculous hour. He wore creased blue jeans and a crisply ironed white shirt. On his right hip he carried a Glock 23, a .40 with which he could hammer nails at twenty-five yards. He was not pleased to find out that he would be harboring high-profile hostages. As any senior leader of Al Qaeda could tell you—if you could raise them from the dead—few terrorists (and that’s exactly what the Americans would consider Dmitri to be) died of old age.
“I’ve made my opinion known on the risk of this,” Len said.
“Yes, you have.”
“It is madness to risk all of the progress we have made on something so personal. To involve the president’s family—”
“It is the bitch’s family, not his.”
“That’s not how the American people will see it. They will see an attack on the first family, and they will react with violence. Everything you’ve worked for will be jeopardized.”
“Everything I have worked for will be guaranteed,” Dmitri said. He’d settled himself into the cane-backed guest chair in front of Len’s desk. “I have told that fool Winters that if word ever leaks out, I will simply kill the hostages and move on. Just as I told him that I would take them in the first place if our operation became jeopardized.”
Len understood that actions had to have consequences, that once a promise was made, it had to be fulfilled. He didn’t argue with any of that. His difficulty with the current arrangement was the danger that came from mixing the missions. Saint Stephen’s was first and foremost a weapons repository. In that light alone, it was a huge target, in recognition of which they’d gone so far as to prohibit incoming and outgoing phone calls. No one was to know what transpired within the twelve-foot walls of the compound. Shipments arrived at night, mostly by boat. Only a select few among the cadre knew the nature of the materials stored in the chapel, and none of them knew more than was necessary fo
r them to do their jobs.
Now, in addition to those responsibilities, they would also become jailers. With the added duties came added risk. The Americans would move heaven and the stars to find the spawn of Yelena. To find them was to find everything. If their search brought them to Saint Stephen’s the whole mission would be finished.
“Are you aware that we have not heard anything from Vasily or Pyotr?” Len asked.
“I’m sure they’re fine,” Dmitri said.
“Why would you be sure of that?” As he spoke, Len opened the top left-hand drawer of his desk and withdrew a Cohiba Espléndidos cigar and a cutter. “I’ve been monitoring the US news outlets, and there has been no word of a reporter being killed.”
Dmitri pulled a silver cigarette case from the inside pocket of his suit coat. Dmitri always wore a suit. Always dark, always at least ten years out of date. As if in competition with Len, when the spring-loaded case opened, it revealed two complete rows of black Sobra-nies. “They no longer allow smoking in America,” he said. “It’s a law that makes for very long days.”
“But much healthier fat Americans,” Len said with a smile. He allowed the light moment to glow for a few seconds, and then returned the discussion to that which could kill them all. “They should have called in by now. One of them or both of them. The fact that we’ve heard from neither is of great concern. Nor have we heard that their targets were killed. I think they may have been compromised.”
Dmitri’s features darkened. “How compromised might they be?”
“Vasily and Pyotr know most of everything. They know this facility. They know what we keep here.”
“Did they know about the plan to take the Mishin boys?”
Hearing a midthirties man referred to as a “boy” was startling. To hear the use of the plural in “boys” was troubling. “Did you know that the grandson would be visiting?” Len asked.
“I try to know as much as I can,” Dmitri said.
“So you knew all along that the boy would be a part of this?” In Len’s world—in the world of sanity and proportion—there was a sanctity to childhood that should never be breached.
“I did not choose the timing of the bitch’s betrayal. She alone chose that.” For years, Dmitri had refused to speak the name of Yelena Poltanov.
Len’s mind reeled. This was the problem with zealots. They got so wrapped up in emotion and principle that they forgot about the practical ramifications of what they did. Americans would tolerate the taking of an adult as a hostage to a larger cause—they would profess dismay and make threatening gestures—Daniel Pearl, anyone?—but they would ultimately shrug it away and tolerate it. To take a child, though, was to invoke the wrath of the self-righteous.
“This is a mistake, Dmitri. We have the San Francisco operation ready to launch in just days. And after that, the Los Angeles operation and the Washington operation.” Each focused on largely unprotected mass-transit systems. “Per your orders, I moved the explosives shipment from tomorrow to the next day. These little changes incur huge risks. Ours is a balancing act.”
Dmitri had never been one to take bad news well. His features hardened. “We cannot project weakness,” he said. “If we do that, then we lose all of the influence we have at the White House. They have to know that we say what we mean, and we mean what we say.”
Len raised his hands, a gesture of surrender. With the argument lost, it became all about coping with the reality.
“If it helps,” Dmitri said, “the Mishins will be here for only a few hours. Forty-eight at the most.”
“Where do they go after that?”
“Do you really want to know?”
Len intentionally answered before he had much time to think about his words. “No,” he said. “As long as I don’t have to worry about them and about the fallout, I don’t want to know.” He heaved a deep breath and turned a page in his mind. “We are forty-five strong now. At any given moment, we will have fifteen men on guard detail, and fifteen on operational detail, doing whatever needs to be done. That leaves fifteen to be sleeping. I am confident that we can provide coverage for the Mishins when they arrive.”
“I want everyone well-armed,” Dmitri said. “Rifles and pistols for every on-duty guard, pistols for everyone, all the time.”
“It is difficult showering with a pistol,” Len joked, but it landed dead on arrival. When he saw the deep concern in Dmitri’s face, he changed his approach. “Do you have information that I should know about?” he asked. “Information that I should share with my people?”
Dmirti took a long pull on his black cigarette, and then waved the smoke away after he’d exhaled. “You ask for trust, Len, yet you do not offer it in return. We have turned the corner in our struggle to hurt America, and those in power will soon wake up to the threat. It is the moment we have been waiting for, and the moment we have been training for. If we give our men the tools of strength, they will show strength. I want them to feel very, very strong.”
Len found himself nodding as he listened. He’d seen it before: Good soldiers became great soldiers when they were entrusted with live ammunition. When all was said and done, potential became reality when the choice was to live or to kill.
But in all of Len’s experience, these truisms only worked when the enemy was clearly identifiable, and the mission was clear. In this case, neither factor applied, and that worried him.
“I will make them feel as strong as I know how,” Len said. As for the rest, the clock would tick as it ticked, and he would learn what history wanted him to know.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Striker—real name Carl Oppenheimer—had spent a career as a pilot for the 160th Special Operations Air Regiment—the Night Stalkers—flying Special Forces operators into and out of some of the hottest LZs on the planet. He’d been shot down once that Jonathan knew of, and ultimately was forced to retire with a bum leg, thanks to a lucky 7.62 round that came through the floor of his Blackhawk while he was flaring to land in a place that he couldn’t even tell Jonathan about. The bullet took out three toes and just a tiny trace of his sanity.
In the intervening years, he’d either spent a lot of money or made a lot of money—Jonathan couldn’t figure out which, but it had to be one or the other—buying discarded hulks of helicopters and restoring them to their former glory. According to the buzz mill within the Community, he made good coin renting out his equipment to people who needed to fly fast and hard and didn’t want to leave a paper trail.
“You know this changes everything, right?” Boxers asked in a low whisper. He and Jonathan were huddled at Jonathan’s desk while the others talked among themselves around the fireplace.
Jonathan looked up from the satellite photos he’d been studying. “What are we talking about?”
“Our business,” Big Guy replied. “OpSec used to be king. We flew under the radar, no one knew who we were, and no one knew what we did. Now we’re just lifting the kimono and showing all the goods to anyone who wants to see.”
Over all the years that they’d worked together, Jonathan and Boxers had engaged in maybe a dozen serious conversations, and this was clearly one of them.
“Given the cast of characters, I think we have a fair amount of cover.”
“I’d have agreed if Wolverine had decided to come along.” He looked directly at Irene, who was hovering close. “It bugs me that you want to stay behind.”
Irene crossed her arms and shifted her weight to one foot. The comment made her uncomfortable. “If I could be there, I would,” she said. “I think our history proves that. And if this were going down in Des Moines or Bangor, I might well be all over it. But this is foreign soil, and I’m the director of the FBI. What you’re planning—what we’re planning—is an illegal act. If it goes bad and I’m there, it becomes an act of war. I swore my oath to the Constitution, not to you guys. I’m sorry.”
“Forgive me, Wolverine,” Boxers pressed, “but it feels like cowardice to me. Feels like a setu
p.”
Jonathan jumped in, even as he felt a swell of anger. “No,” he said. “Wolverine is too good a friend.”
“No one is a friend in official Washington.”
“Except those who have proven themselves,” Jonathan said. He shot an apologetic glance to Irene and she received it in kind. No one was more cynical than he, but there was no denying the number of times that Jonathan had saved Irene’s ass, just as she had saved his. She’d earned not only his respect, but the benefit of his doubt. “Does it make you more comfortable to think of the damage we could do if we were ever called to testify?” It was of a magnitude that would topple this government and others.
“What about the reporters?”
“We’ve had this discussion.”
“But I didn’t get the answer I wanted,” Boxers said. “On the one hand, they’re reporter scum, and on the other, they’ve never engaged an enemy before.”
“You know I can hear you, right?” David called from the sofa in front of the fire.
“Then quit listening!” Boxers yelled. When Boxers yelled, he caused seismic activity.
“Way to go, Big Guy,” Jonathan said with a smile. “Pretty much guarantees that everyone listens to everything.”
Becky stood from the spot next to David. “What do you want from us?” she asked. “We’ve promised to do everything you’ve asked, with the clear understanding that if we don’t, you two will hunt us down and kill us, even if it takes the rest of your lives.”
David reached for her arm, but she pulled away.
“I’m tired of being treated as if I did something wrong. I’m going on this mission because I care, and because I have nothing else to do. I can’t go home, and without home, I have nowhere else.”
Jonathan looked to Boxers. He’d made this bed, after all.
“You weren’t supposed to hear what I was talking about,” he said.
“Well, that genie’s out of the bottle, isn’t it?” Becky said. Shouted, actually, and she had a hell of a shout. “This is our lives, too, you know.”
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