by Peter Telep
Leaving her there, still groaning, he elbowed his way back toward the door and blew off the second lock. He turned around and walked crab-like to get in position. Then, resting on his rump, he lifted both legs in a powerful dropkick. As the door creaked open, he went sliding into the back of the car, riding the crest of falling sand.
At the bottom he rolled and stood, then tugged free an LED penlight from his tac-suit’s breast pocket and aimed it at the back of the car.
If you lacked a military background or hadn’t spent the bulk of your adult life shooting, evading, or destroying military weapons, you wouldn’t recognize it for what is was—
But Fisher did.
It weighed close to six tons and at nearly twelve feet long took up the space ordinarily reserved for both the locomotive diesel and its electrical generator. For Fisher, the giveaway was the Sa’ir KS-19 gun breech.
In layman’s terms he was staring at a stripped-down version of a 100mm antiaircraft gun. All the electronics and computer interfacing was gone—removed because the Iranians were fearful of an accident or premature detonation due to a crash, fire, or electrical short. The business end of the sawed-off barrel terminated into a larger cylinder roughly nine feet long and two feet in diameter, the whole contraption mounted to the AA gun’s original four-wheel base, now collapsed onto its side. The gun was part of the bomb, of course, and they were using it to trigger the nuclear reaction.
The Sa’ir, Fisher knew, could deliver a projectile with a muzzle velocity of about six hundred meters per second, much faster than the trigger speed used to detonate “Little Boy” over Hiroshima. If two pieces of subcritical material were not brought together fast enough, nuclear predetonation or “fizzle” could occur, with just a very small explosion, blowing the bulk of the material apart.
He couldn’t see the neutron generator yet. It was either on the other side or underneath, out of sight, but he felt certain it was there.
The triggerman himself, a fey-looking agent in his sixties whose eyes shone like sapphires in the penlight, was trapped under all six tons of the device, blood pouring from his mouth as he reached for the gun’s breech lanyard. It was clear the Iranian had already locked the breech on the 76.2mm discarding sabot projectile, allowing the three-inch projectile to be fired from a four-inch gun. All he had to do now was tug down on that black lanyard to manually trigger the bomb.
However, he couldn’t reach it, his fingertips barely brushing the nylon.
Fisher thought of shooting him, but with a hundred pounds of weaponized uranium within spitting distance, there were “safer” ways of neutralizing him. Fisher rushed to the bomb, swung the lanyard away, then crouched down.
“Praise be to Allah,” the man said in Farsi.
“You’re going to die here,” Fisher said, using the man’s native tongue. “Just tell me, who hired you?”
The man opened his mouth, but then his eyes grew vague and his head slumped.
Fisher checked his neck for a pulse and found none. He stood back and began taking a video of the bomb with his OPSAT. “Grim, you getting this?”
“Receiving now, Sam.”
“Is this thing stable?”
“They designed it to ensure that. If it survived a train wreck without going off . . .”
“All right. Have you heard from Briggs?”
“Nothing so far.”
“Damn, I’m going up for him. You notify the POTUS and coordinate with the prince. We’ll need a team in here to dismantle this thing.”
“We’re on it.”
Fisher sighed and bounded back up the pile of sand to where the Snow Maiden was still lying. As he began to lift her, Briggs appeared in the shattered door window above them, his face half obscured by the penlight he directed into the booth. “Sam?”
“I’m here. You okay? What the hell happened?”
“Those choppers launched Hellfires at the tracks. The engineer’s dead. I jumped off like a second before it all went to hell.” Briggs shifted his light. “Oh my God, is that—”
“Yeah,” said Fisher. “It’s her.”
“She tracked us?”
“No, they hired her.”
“Well, that’s some bad luck for her—and payback for us.”
“Yeah. Come around through the window. See if you can help me get her out of here.”
“On my way.”
As Fisher checked the Snow Maiden’s zipper cuffs to be sure they were still fastened, her eyes flickered open. “Kiss me,” she said.
“What?”
“You heard me. You’ll send me away. Who knows when I’ll ever feel a kiss again.”
“Sorry, honey, you’re not my type.”
“Oh, yes I am. And you owe me.”
“For what?”
“For like you said, not killing you back in Peru.”
Fisher rolled his eyes. “You really are a crazy bitch, aren’t you?”
She wriggled her brows. “Come here.”
He leaned toward her. She did smell magnificent. She was beautiful in a terribly sinister way. His lips did lock onto hers—
But then she grabbed his bottom lip with her teeth and bit down hard, just as Briggs caught them together.
Fisher cursed and pulled up, his lip beginning to bleed as he gaped at his teammate.
“Everything okay, boss?”
Fisher hesitated. His gaze averted to the Snow Maiden, who lay there, smiling daggers.
37
FISHER, Briggs, and the Snow Maiden were evacuated from the crash site by a squad of Shammari’s troops. They remained inside a Humvee parked about a quarter kilometer south of the train, waiting out the sandstorm. A medic came by and treated Briggs for some lacerations on his arm and neck. The prince himself drove up and climbed into the passenger’s seat of the Humvee, then sat with them a moment.
“My security here at the processing station is very effective,” he said. “But we still have a lot of work to do at the port.”
Fisher wasn’t one to gloat or pretend he had all the answers. He just shrugged. “Too many leaks, too many bribes. And sometimes you can’t watch everything.”
“But we do our best,” he said.
“Yeah. So it looks like nothing will be flying for a while.” Fisher rapped a knuckle on the window. “Any chance of us getting a ride to Dubai?”
“My men will take you. But she stays with us.”
“You’d better call your uncle on that. We have orders to take her back.”
Grim had already worked with President Caldwell to ensure that the Snow Maiden did not leave their custody and would be extradited to the United States. The plan was to turn her over to CIA officers operating from the Naval Support Activity Bahrain, Fifth Fleet, in Juffair, Bahrain. The Saudis, of course, weren’t happy about that, but Caldwell had already negotiated those terms.
Shammari made the call, and his expression changed less than fifteen seconds into the discussion. “All right, then, I’ll say my good-byes. Safe journey back. And thank you.”
The prince shielded his face from the wind and returned to his own Humvee. Five minutes later, a new driver and another troop entered their Humvee with orders to take them to Dubai. They rumbled off.
Fisher glanced over at the Snow Maiden, whose eyes were closed, head bowed. This was not resignation, Fisher feared. More like plotting. He never let his guard down. Not around her.
For just a moment, Fisher caught site of Hammad’s helicopter as the driver headed northwest across the rutted desert to pick up Highway 615. Fisher had promised the poor pilot that he wouldn’t die, but now those little girls had lost their father. These moments, when ordinary citizens rose to the occasion and wound up sacrificing themselves for the greater good, were the ones that weighed most heavily on him. Fisher suspected he’d be taking many more helicopter rides in his nightmares, with the reluctant Hammad at the stick. Being sorry was never enough.
* * *
MORE than nine hours later, after a refueling st
op and a chance to grab something to eat, they arrived at the airport and were dropped off beside Paladin One’s loading ramp.
“Hey, Fisher!” cried Kobin as he strode toward them. “I finally got some intel on that Russian agent you’ve been looking for. My guy says . . .” He broke off as Fisher and Briggs approached with the Snow Maiden cuffed between them. “Aw, fuck, I’m a day late and a dollar short.”
“Get your crap out of the cell,” Fisher said. “She needs to borrow it for a little while.”
Kobin’s brows rose as the Snow Maiden faced him. “We can share the cell. I promise to be good.”
Briggs burst out laughing. “Dude, she’ll tear you apart like a pit bull.”
“You wouldn’t hurt me, sweetheart, would you?”
The Snow Maiden glanced at Kobin as though he were her next meal. “Let’s find out.”
* * *
THEY were still prepping for takeoff, and Fisher was cleaning the sand out of his ears, when President Caldwell contacted them with an intel update. Fisher rushed from the infirmary and stood in the control room with the rest of the team.
“I’ve just gotten off the phone with President Treskayev, and he wanted to express his thanks,” Caldwell began.
“We’ll send him the bill,” said Fisher.
Caldwell nearly grinned. “He claims they’ve arrested nearly a hundred individuals who they say aided or abetted the oligarchs. Those who they believe masterminded the plot are still out of the country. He confirmed that Kargin did commit suicide, as Kasperov reported. In an interesting sidebar, Kargin also left some bank files open on his computer that suggest he and the others may have been helping to finance the Blacklist Engineers. I can’t get anything more definitive because they refuse to turn over the files.”
“So where are these businessmen now?” asked Grim.
“Still in hiding, presumably in those foreign capitals with banking systems that help harbor their assets. Right now, Treskayev has his hands full cleaning out the corruption in his inner circle. He’s already fired a few career Kremlin underlings who were on the oligarchs’ payroll and have been complicit in attempting to discredit him. Unfortunately, the oligarchs themselves have enough money to rent years of delaying tactics from their newly adopted countries. They’re safe until their money runs out or the national governments declare them persona non grata.”
Fisher snickered. “We’ve still got more work to do.”
“Madame President, what about the bomb?” Grim asked.
“We flew in the NSA Bahrain, Fifth Fleet, EOD team to dismantle the bomb and take possession of the uranium, which we only need long enough to sample a fingerprint of the material. Treskayev’s sending the old heavy cruiser Admiral Ushakov to pick up the material in Bahrain. Meanwhile, back here, the FBI has already taken into custody several individuals involved in the thorium attack. These are Iranian nationals who claim they worked with a Russian sleeper cell in the United States who infiltrated security at the storage site to smuggle the C-4 into the thorium shipments.”
“There’s still one more loose end,” said Fisher. “And that’s the virus. Kasperov still has it, and if we piss him off, he could play that card against us.”
“I know,” said Caldwell. “And I’ve already spoken to him privately about this. The Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive wants the software turned over to them. They plan to study it.”
“Has he agreed?” asked Fisher.
“Not yet. I suspect the negotiations will be long on this one. Anyway, I want to thank you all. We’re in your debt—and don’t think for a minute that we ever forget that. The work you do is vital to national security, and I’m honored that you’ve all accepted this important and extremely difficult job. I mean that. And I’ll be in touch.”
The screen went blank, and Fisher faced the team. “I’d like to say something, too.”
Grim looked at him expectantly.
Briggs was waiting.
Charlie’s mouth began to open.
Fisher began to squirm. “Ah, forget it.” He hurried back toward their living quarters.
* * *
THIRTY minutes later they were at cruising altitude and finally heading back to Virginia.
Kasperov and Fisher were standing near the infirmary door, gazing out across the control room, where Grim and Briggs stood at the SMI. Nearby, Charlie sat at his station, showing Ollie and two other analysts diagrams of his early work on the SMI.
“Your team and its mission remind me of a trip I once took,” Kasperov began. “I visited your CIA headquarters, and I remember the wall of stars, all those heroes with no public recognition.”
“We don’t do it for that. Or the money.”
“Then why?”
“Because we can. Because somebody has to . . . and it’s the right thing to do.”
“It’s that simple?”
Fisher grinned. “If it were any more complicated, they’d have to find a smarter man than me.”
“You underestimate yourself, Mr. Fisher.”
“No, I’ve just . . . changed.”
“I guess it’s a brave new world for both of us.”
Fisher beamed. “There was a rumor that one of your bodyguards smuggled some vodka on board my plane.”
“Rumor? Nonsense. Let’s have a drink!”
Before leaving the control room, Fisher glanced back at his team, at the new Fourth Echelon.
Yes, he was Sam Fisher. Splinter Cell.
But now he was something even more.
• • •
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