by Scott McEwen
The Chechen knelt and dipped a canteen into the water.
Gil was partially hidden behind a rhododendron, but not well enough to conceal him from a direct look. The rifle was beneath him, attached to the three-point sling, and at such close range, he didn’t dare move to draw the pistol.
Another Chechen emerged and knelt beside the first, dipping his canteen as well. Within a half minute, there was a regular canteen-filling convention taking place, with six Chechens kneeling shoulder to shoulder at the water’s edge. They were talking in regular voices, entirely unconcerned about their security. Two were smoking cigarettes. This was their territory, and they obviously felt safe. Whether or not they had any knowledge of the battle that had taken place a full click to the north was anybody’s guess.
The best clue was that they were all filling two canteens apiece, indicating they had possibly spent the earlier part of day operating in the high country, where water was scarce. It might have even meant they’d been traveling parallel to Gil during his descent, but from the ill-disciplined manner in which they carried on, he doubted it. There was no urgency about them; no sense of vigilance.
As they began standing up to put away their canteens, one of them glanced in Gil’s direction, looked away—then did a double take, shouting a warning to his compatriots, pointing with the canteen in his hand instead of grabbing for his AK-47.
Gil ripped a ready-grenade from his harness, the pin pulling automatically as he tore it loose and biffed it into the shallow water. The Chechens who saw the grenade dove for cover; those who didn’t were grabbing for their rifles when it exploded.
Two of them were blown apart as Gil rolled to his side, laying down a hail of fire from the AN-94. He killed two more, but the remaining two jumped up and fled through the gap in the rhododendron. He sprang to his feet and gave chase, not wanting to risk them warning Umarov’s camp. The Chechens crashed through the undergrowth a few meters ahead of him, just out of view as they followed a narrow deer trail, hoping to get away from Gil and whoever might be with him. They would have surely recognized his Spetsnaz camouflage, and the Spetsnaz were known to operate in wolf packs.
Gil fired at them through the undergrowth. One of them cried out, and Gil heard him go down. He leapt over the body in the trail a second later and bound unexpectedly into a glade; a small clearing in the forest. The other Chechen had vanished into thin air. Gil went immediately to ground and tuned his ears for the slightest hint of movement.
72
HAVANA,
Cuba
Mariana lay on the bed utterly petrified, naked from the waist to her ankles, her hands bound painfully behind her back.
“What did Peterson say?” the big guy asked. He had an old 1911 pistol stuck in the front of his pants.
The smaller guy tucked the cellular into his back pocket. “He wants us to kill them both.”
The guy with the gun looked at Mariana lying helpless on the bed, his eyes coming to rest on her pubic mound. “You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”
His partner glanced at Mariana and shook his head. “That’s not really my thing.”
“More for me, then.” The big man tossed him the pistol.
“You’d better make it fast.” His partner tucked the gun into the small of his back. “We’re on the clock, and that prick next door is bad news.”
“I won’t be long, bro.”
Mariana began to sob as the guy dropped his trousers and knee-walked across the bed, grabbing her knees in strong hands and forcing them apart, and then falling on her heavily as he maneuvered between them.
The other guy picked up the remote and turned on the TV to cover Mariana’s muffled cries. Then he went into the bathroom and stood peeing into the toilet. He finished and dropped the seat, pushing the button on top of the tank before stepping back into the room. After watching his partner on top of Mariana for a minute or so he decided, Why not? They were going to kill her anyhow. It wasn’t like she’d have to live very long with the trauma.
The door to the room burst inward, and he spun around just in time for Crosswhite to grab him behind the neck with both hands, holding him in a Muay Thai clinch and delivering him a vicious knee to the groin. The Cuban’s legs buckled beneath him, and Crosswhite snatched the gun from the back of his pants, kicking the door shut with his heel and thrusting the pistol before him as Mariana’s rapist was rolling off the bed.
“Freeze, motherfucker!”
The big guy stood beside the bed with his pants down around his ankles, his erection wilting rapidly.
Crosswhite stalked forward and buried the toe of his boot in the guy’s groin. The man let out a hideous squeal of pain and dropped to the floor, convulsing and vomiting onto the tile. Crosswhite kicked him in the face and stomped his skull with the heel of his boot. The little guy began get to up, and Crosswhite stalked back across the room to slug him in the side of the head with the pistol. Then he put the pistol under his shirt and grabbed the guy by the hair, giving his head a brutal twist and snapping the neck with a crunch.
He took a folding knife from his pocket and cut Mariana loose.
She leapt off the bed and shuffled into the bathroom with her pants still caught around her feet, slamming the door behind her and retching into the toilet. The shower came on a short time later.
Crosswhite was standing by the door when the big guy began to stir. He walked over and finished him off with a heavy heel to the back of the neck. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed and took out his cellular to call Ernesto the doorman.
Ernesto knocked a few minutes later, and Crosswhite let him into the room.
Ernesto saw the bodies. “Santo Cielo! Do you leave dead men everywhere you go, señor?”
“Looks that way,” Crosswhite answered glumly, sitting back down on the bed and taking out his cigarettes.
Ernesto looked around for Mariana. “Is the señorita okay?”
Crosswhite shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Do you want me to call the doctor?”
“Maybe, but I don’t know yet.” He struck a match. “I don’t think she needs that kind of a doctor.”
Ernesto realized for the first time that one of the dead men’s pants was down around his ankles, and his face turned ashen. “Was she . . . was she violated?”
Crosswhite tossed the match onto the floor and breathed smoke from his nostrils. “Yeah.”
Ernesto stepped over and spit on the rapist’s corpse. “Coño!”
“Do you know somebody we can pay to get rid of these bodies, Ernie?”
“Yes, but I think it will be very expensive.”
“Expensive I can handle,” Crosswhite said. “Cops I can’t.”
“I’ll have Lupita bring her laundry cart. The cart is small, so it will take two trips, and she will want the money right away.”
“That’s fine. What happens after the laundry carts?”
“I can call my cousin. He has a fish truck. He can give the bodies to the men he buys the fish from, and they can dump the bodies in the ocean.”
“You’re sure they’ll help?”
Ernesto shrugged. “If you will pay, they will help. Money is the law here, señor.”
“Okay, Ernie. Better go find Lupita. We’re burnin’ daylight.”
Lupita was a small woman of forty. Her black hair was flecked with gray at the temples and pulled back into a ponytail. She crossed herself when she saw the bodies and then looked at the bathroom, where Mariana was still crying. “Qué pasó con ella?”
Ernesto gestured at the half-naked body. “Fue violada.”
Lupita crossed herself again, muttering, “Santa Magdalena.”
Crosswhite took $2,000 from the leather pouch and offered it to her.
She tucked the money away inside her shirt without counting to see how much he’d given her
.
Crosswhite pulled up the guy’s pants, and Ernesto helped him put the body into the cart. Then Ernesto and Lupita rolled the cart away down the hall, returning for the second body fifteen minutes later.
“We’re going to need some more money,” Ernesto said awkwardly. “A woman in the laundry room saw us hiding the body.”
“How much?”
“Five hundred should do nicely, señor.”
Crosswhite gave it to him. “Call me when you know how much your cousin and the fishermen are gonna want.”
“Very well. I’ll call you in half an hour.”
Ernesto and Lupita were about to take the second body away when Crosswhite had an alarming thought. He grabbed Ernesto by the throat and shoved him up against the wall. “Why the fuck didn’t you warn me these guys were in the fucking building? You fuckin’ me in the ass without a reach-around, Ernie?”
“No, señor. I swear it! I’m not working today. After last night, I didn’t think to tell any—” Ernesto began to tremble, and then a look of shame fell over him. “You’ve made me . . . you’ve made me urinate in my pants, señor.”
Crosswhite let him go and stepped back, seeing that the man had indeed pissed himself. “Sorry about that,” he said. But he continued to eye Ernesto with suspicion. “If you’re not workin’ today, how’d you get here so fast?”
“I live upstairs, señor. I’m the head doorman.”
Lupita stood by the door, ready to escape, eyeing Crosswhite with disapproval.
“Okay, look,” Crosswhite said in Spanish. “I apologize. I had a bad night, and it’s been a very bad morning. I know money doesn’t fix everything, but I’ll make sure you’re both well taken care of when this is over.”
Lupita glanced at Ernesto and then said with a glint in her eye, “Money fixes many things, señor.”
Crosswhite nodded, putting his hand on Ernesto’s shoulder. “If it makes you feel any better, amigo, I shit myself during my first firefight. That’s a lot worse.”
Ernesto smiled halfheartedly, still very embarrassed. “You’re the most frightening man I’ve ever met, señor. There’s no need to doubt my loyalty.”
“Listen, don’t get the wrong idea now.” Crosswhite held up a finger. “If some bastard puts a gun in your face, you tell him whatever he wants to know—understand? I don’t want you dying for me. But I don’t want you fuckin’ me, either. See the difference?”
Ernesto nodded. “I failed to protect you and the señorita, but it won’t happen again, señor. You have my word.”
73
THE WHITE HOUSE
The president looked up from behind his desk in the Oval Office. “Is he going to live or not?” He was asking about Pope.
“The hospital gives him a ninety percent chance.” Brooks took a seat in front of the desk. “They just brought him out of surgery. He’s in what they’re calling guarded condition.”
“We sure can’t afford to lose him now,” the president said, stroking his lower lip. “Walton must’ve been out of his damn mind. What the hell made him chance something like that?”
Brooks shrugged. “I think your guess is as good as any, sir.”
The president shook his head, putting the mystery from his mind. “Has Couture heard anything more about Major Dragunov’s condition?”
“Yes, sir. Dragunov’s going to be fine. His abdominal wall was pretty badly torn up, and they had to remove a small portion of his large intestine, but he is expected to make a full recovery. Secretary Sapp is in contact with the Russian ambassador, and Moscow has been advised. To quote Sapp, ‘They are intensely curious as to how their man got out of Russia.’ At the moment, Dragunov’s in a Tbilisi hospital under close guard, which is another embarrassment for Putin—having a top Spetsnaz operative end up under Georgian care.”
“And a big risk for the Georgians,” the president added. “Imagine if somebody gets in there and kills Dragunov before the Russians can pick him up.”
“I’m sure that’s why there’s the close guard, sir.”
“Speaking of which,” the president went on, “how the hell did Walton get past the Secret Service?”
Brooks smiled a dry smile. “That’s an entirely different can of worms.”
The president was not amused. “Spill it.”
“One of Walton’s specialties was phony identification: passports, driver’s licenses. He made himself a doctor’s ID tag and used it to get past Pope’s guards. Hospital security says the ID is perfect. Even they can’t tell it’s a phony.”
“So the Service agents are in the clear? They followed procedure?”
“Yes and no,” Brooks said. “Yes, they’re clear. No, they didn’t follow procedure.”
The president cocked an eyebrow. “How the hell does that work?”
“Well, procedure dictated they check the doctor’s name against a list of docs cleared to be in Pope’s room. Whatever Walton’s made-up name was, it wasn’t on the list, so they couldn’t have checked it. That’s enough to establish they didn’t follow procedure.”
“Then how are they in the clear?”
“Because Pope shot Walton in the head after the agents had already put him down and disarmed him. He had a pistol concealed beneath his blanket. We’re still trying to figure out how he got it into the room.”
The president stared for a moment. “So the agents are covering for him, or what?”
“Sort of. They were debriefed separately—before they had time to corroborate a story—and they both describe the event the exact same way.”
“They obviously had time enough to agree on throwing Pope under the bus,” the president muttered.
“The initial debriefing was off the record,” Brooks said. “Both agents refused to talk on tape until after they were allowed to tell the unfettered version of what took place.”
The president sat back. “Sounds like they’re offering to keep their mouths shut in exchange for keeping their jobs.”
“They haven’t been so impertinent as to verbalize it quite that way, but that’s what they’re hoping for, yes.”
“Fine. I’ll play ball, but no more high-profile security details for those two jamokes. They can babysit some moron in the witness protection program. Or better yet, they should be chasing counterfeit twenties around the Midwest—somewhere far away from DC.”
“I’ll pass the word, sir.”
“Do that. Now, what about Chief Shannon?”
“Couture says they’ve projected his movement, and it looks like he’s headed for a camp presently under the control of a Dagestani militant named Ali Abu Mukhammad. Mukhammad is rumored to be next in line to take over the Caucasus Emirate if Dokka Umarov is ever killed.”
“How many people in this camp?”
“Over two hundred, sir.”
The president sucked his teeth. “That’s another way of saying Shannon doesn’t have a chance.” Then he smirked and shook his head. “Which is, of course, exactly why he does have a chance.” He sat scratching his head. “Give the general my regards and let him know that I won’t be coming over to the Pentagon to watch.”
“You don’t care for the stress, sir?”
“Oh, the stress isn’t a problem,” the president said. “Stress comes with the job, but this is likely to be Shannon’s swan song, and I know how hard it is for the good general to maintain his composure with me in the room.”
Brooks pursed his lips. “Then we won’t be lending Shannon any support at all?”
“He’s still in Russia, Glen. I already took a huge risk to bring him out, and he took a pass. There’s nothing more I can do. And with Bob Pope lying in the recovery room?” The president shook his head. “I’m afraid Gil Shannon may well have overplayed his hand this time.”
74
THE CAUCASUS MOUNTAINS
Gil heard the safety lever eject from a grenade to his right. He saw the orb flying toward him on an almost level trajectory, and his brain calculated a solution with computerlike speed. The fuse on a Russian grenade was only 3.8 seconds, and after the first 1.8 seconds, it would detonate on impact. So when he reached up, it wasn’t to catch it—but to fling it past him. The grenade detonated on the other side of a tree, and he sprang into a crouch, firing a 40 mm grenade into the trunk of a tree on the far side of a rotting log forty feet to his right. The grenade exploded, and the Chechen hiding behind the log was killed by the blast.
Gil knifed him behind the ear to make sure and ran to get back on course for Mukhammad’s camp. He was moving fast along a well-worn foot trail when he ran headlong into a patrol of four men running north to investigate the explosions. He shot three of them down, firing from the hip as he charged into the column and taking out the last man with a butt stroke to the face. He kept going, reloading the AN-94 on the run.
There was shouting up ahead. Smoke from a cooking fire drifted through the trees among a number of well-camouflaged lean-tos, where men grabbed for their weapons. This was an Umarov outpost—an outpost not designated on the Russian map—and without a doubt, the garrison would be in radio contact with Mukhammad’s main force.
Once again, Gil had lost the element of surprise in his pursuit of Kovalenko.
He lobbed a grenade over the rhododendron as he moved to skirt the encampment. It detonated near the cooking fire, blowing away three men and sowing confusion as everyone in the camp realized the perimeter had been breached. He wanted no part of these people in daylight and needed to break off contact before they realized he was only one man. Taking cover behind a tree, Gil hurled another grenade toward a cluster of men receiving hurried instructions from an officer. They didn’t see him, but they spotted the grenade in the air and scattered for cover as it detonated harmlessly on the roof of a lean-to with a radio antenna sticking out of it.
