Paladin of Shadows 4 - Unto the Breach

by John Ringo

  "It's the little Russian hooker," Schwenke said, springing back and flashing the light in her face. He gave a chortle. "How very...rich."

  "Katya Ivanova at your service," Katya said, taking up a cat stance and mentally triggering the combat hormones held in a pouch under her left arm. She could feel the world slowing down and, to her, her speech blurring. There was a distant explosion but her ears automatically muted it, her vision focusing down to concentrate on the target. "Or, rather, in the service of the Kildar. You may call me Cottontail."

  "The fucking Keldara," Schwenke said with a grin. "You switched you little bi..." He had automatically reached for his gun and as it came out in an expert draw it slid from nerveless fingers to the floor. "Wha..." He swayed and nearly dropped the flashlight as well but seemed to draw strength from some inner well. "What did you do to me you bitch?"

  "You have your cocktails, I have mine," Katya answered, sliding forward gracefully, hands held in a panther strike position, nails forward and hooked. "In this case, a little neurotoxin, made from cobra venom or so they told me. Courtesy of the United States government. I have the antidote. It's in my fangs. You're welcome to sample it."

  Schwenke sprang backward then carefully knelt and came up holding a smaller pistol from an ankle holster. But his hands shook so hard he was going to have a difficult time hitting even a target as relatively large as Katya. He clearly knew that.

  "Who is the cobra and who the mouse, now?" Katya asked, swaying from side to side as the man backed away. "Can you hit me little man? Or can I pump you full of my little cocktail, first?"

  She slid forward and sideways, striking at the gun hand. Kurt fired while backpedaling. Both missed.

  "Katya, Vanner," the communicator in her head crackled. "Quit fucking around with him. Shota is down. Adams is going nuts. Get the damned door open."

  * * *

  Shota hit the door like a human battering ram and the door splintered under the weight and speed of the big man.

  Which just meant he was that much closer to the bomb Kurt had left behind when it went off.

  Adams felt himself lifted off his feet and flung backward from the explosion. Being blown up was bad enough. Having Shota land on him was worse. The impact drove the air from his lungs and he was pretty sure he felt a couple of ribs crack. Fortunately, his helmet kept him from getting either a broken nose or a cracked skull.

  "Oof."

  Another weight hit the combined pile, a heavy step unless Adams was much mistaken. Oleg, true to his training, was continuing the assault. You worried about casualties when the firing was over.

  Adams managed to push Shota off and get a breath, wincing at the pain in his ribcage. To his amazement, the big man was moving as well. Slowly, but he was moving.

  "Shota," Adams said, rolling over on his side then propping himself up on one elbow. "Shota?"

  "I don't like doors anymore," Shota said, petulantly. "I don't like bombs."

  "You're alive?" Adams asked. He propped himself up some more and shook his head. The massive Keldara's armor was peppered with holes. The bomb had apparently been something like a claymore. There were even projectiles, small ball bearings, stuck in his faceshield. But, amazingly, he didn't seem to be wounded at all. The armor had caught all of it.

  "I'm alive," Shota responded. "But I wish I wasn't. That hurt."

  Adams couldn't bear it, he had to laugh. He was still chortling when Oleg called him.

  "Master Chief?" the team leader said from the door of the room. "There is no one here!"

  "Fuck me," Adams replied. He hadn't forgotten that there was a hostage in the room that had just got all blown up. But it was, after all, Katya. He'd take ten Katya's over Shota. If she got blown up it was no skin off of his nose. But missing? That was another thing. The girl knew things. "VANNER!"

  * * *

  What was driving him nuts was that Adams could hear them talking. Oh, it was muted, but he could hear Katya's tones, like ice. No, not like ice. She was playing with someone. It was the voice of a cat, one of the really malicious ones, that has caught a baby mouse.

  "Vanner! Tell her to get this damned thing open or I'm going to blow the son-of-a-bitch in!"

  They hadn't been looking long but there was no obvious switch to open the fireplace. Vanner had apparently caught a flash of it as Katya was dragged out. Pity he hadn't noticed the booby-trap in front of the door.

  "She's pretty locked in on killing this guy, Master Chief," Vanner replied. "We're in movement to your location. Be aware that the Chechens in town are up and moving. You're about to have about two hundred shooters on your ass in no more than five mikes. Security teams are in place and we've got wheels but we need to unass. Now."

  "KATYA! OPEN THIS GOD DAMNED DOOR!"

  * * *

  Another swing and a miss. Another shot ricocheting off the rock walls.

  "You're running out of time," Kurt said. He was to the stairs, now, sweating heavily but, if anything, the poison seemed to be wearing off.

  "You're the one backing away," Katya replied. But she knew it was true. They had to run away, the Kildar preferred the term "egress", before the entire Chechen force dropped on their heads. "And where are you going to be without your Russian guards?"

  "Gone," Kurt said, putting away his pistol and holding up empty hands. "Disappeared. A ghost."

  "One haunting me?" Katya asked, straightening out of her crouch cautiously.

  "You're not a professional are you, dear," Kurt said and grinned as if he really found it humorous. "I won't waste my time. Oh, perhaps we'll meet again. We live in the same world, after all. If so, I'll remember your cocktails, little girl."

  "And I'll remember yours," Katya said, smiling as she backed away. "Another day then. I don't suppose you'll leave me the flashlight?"

  "No, I need it," Kurt admitted. "But the switch for the door is on the upper right." He turned off the flashlight and she could hear him moving up the stairs, fast if a little unsteadily.

  And damn if the switch wasn't right where he'd said.

  * * *

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  "How'd it go?" Mike asked as Adams walked up.

  "No big problems," Adams said, casually. "Turns out J spirited Marina out before we hit. Katya took her place. No casualties. Very clean op. Got Katya back. Don't know where J is. Don't care."

  One group of Keldara had secured the vehicles the Russians had been using. Those had been used to transport them to the intersection, their previous owners being unavailable for complaint. After sweeping the area for fugitives from the firefight, and finding none, the combined teams were now spread around the intersection on security. A group was keeping an eye on the small remnant of prisoners, including Al-Kariya who was due for a long spell in a prison in a US allied country.

  "Yeah, I heard about Marina already being gone," Mike said, absentmindedly. He was watching some figures moving inside of one of the dome tents. "Just got a call from higher; they're fully in Russian territory. Marina will be in Moscow in an hour or so."

  "Great," Adams said. "So why are we still here? Shouldn't we be unassing with some nukes?"

  "Oh, yeah, those," Mike said, shrugging. "We've got something else to do, first."

  "Uh, huh," Adams said. "Mike, just so you know, old buddy, we sort of stirred up a hornet's nest. There are about five hundred Chechens on our ass. And I suspect they're calling their buddies. And the buddies are calling buddies. So, whatever you're doing, do it faster."

  "This is one thing that, no matter what, I'm not going to rush," Mike replied. "Got a question for you. Do you think this was too easy?"

  "Easy?" Adams asked. "Mike, did you remember the five hundred Chechens?"

  "In the plan," Mike said. "You delay them until we're done and then we drive down the road, hit a poorly manned position on the border and we're golden."

  "Sometimes it works out that way," Adams said with a shrug. "So we're just going to sit here?"

  "No, you'
re going to grab all the teams except Padrek's and Yosif's, keep them on security, and go back down the road," Mike said. "There you are going to do some good SEAL shit and slow the Chechens down."

  "SEAL shit."

  "Yeah. SEAL shit. You know. Blow shit up. Kill people. Shit like that."

  "And what are you going to be doing while I'm doing 'SEAL shit'?"

  "I'm going to be standing right here, worrying like hell."

  * * *

  "I hate destroying all these weapons."

  While Padrek's team pulled security, Yosif's was sweeping the battlefield, collecting the weapons and any documents they could find. The haul was pretty good and normally they would have carried them back to the Keldara, arms for the second line defenders of the valley.

  In this case, however, space and weight were going to be at a premium. They had vehicles, now, but didn't know for how long. So the weapons were being collected into piles and before they left they would be set on fire with thermite grenades. There might be a few left useable, but not many.

  The ammunition was being put in a different pile, a booby-trapped one. A kilo of C-4 would go off thirty minutes after the trigger was set or, if anything was moved, immediately. One of Padrek's team was preparing the trap while Yosif's men made the pile.

  "Grab those packs," Yosif replied, gesturing to four of the dead Islamics. The four had apparently been close in guards for the main terrorist, who was now wrapped up in rigger tape like a mummy. The guards had not survived the attack. "They've probably got ammo but check them for documents."

  Edvin Kulcyanov bent down and started tugging the bags off. They were heavy but...something told him the weight wasn't ammo.

  Yosif continued down the line of Toyota pickups, making sure everything was being swept. You never knew where something would turn up. And intel was intel.

  "Yosif," Dima Mahona said, pulling his body out of the back of one of the pickups. "Laptop."

  "Keep it," Yosif replied. "Vanner might be able to get something off of it."

  "Yosif!" Edvin called. "You had better take a look at this!"

  Yosif walked back to where the cluster of dead guards lay on the ground and looked at what Edvin held in his hands. It was a bundle of large sheets of paper printed in a language he didn't recognize. They were hard to see in the NVGs so he pulled up the monocular and turned on a blue lens flashlight. They still didn't make any sense to him but he could see now that there was a person's face on them. They looked something like money but they were far to large to be conventional bills.

  "What are those?" Yosif asked.

  "I don't know," Edvin said. "I hoped you might. There are a bunch of them."

  Edvin continued taking the bundles out and stacking them in the mud of the road. At the very bottom there was a cloth bag with a drawstring tie.

  Edvin untied it and spilled some of the contents into his hands, a few of the rocks falling into the mud.

  "Father of All," Yosif whispered. He wasn't sure what all of the gems were, but he recognized gems when he saw them. His mouth opened and closed but he couldn't think of anything to say.

  "I think we just found the payroll for whatever we captured," Edvin said.

  "Yes," Yosif replied, then keyed his throat mike. "Kildar? I think you need to see this."

  * * *

  "Bearer bonds," Mike said, squatting down and picking up one of the bundles. "Ten thousand euro bearer bonds. Deutsch issue. Each of these sheets of paper is worth ten thousand euros." He riffled one of the bundles. "Half a million euros, right here. I'd been told that the price for what we captured was sixty million euros. I hadn't expected the money to be on delivery."

  "There are four bags, Kildar," Edvin said. He'd gotten up to check one of the others. "There are more of those...bonds in here. And some euros as well."

  "Break it up among the Keldara," Mike said. "Give the gems to Vanner. If the money weighs us down too much, we'll dump the cash and burn it."

  "Burn it?" Yosif asked. "But Kildar...there is very much money here."

  "Do you fight for money, Yosif?" Mike asked, straightening up with a grimace. The weather was being hell on his knees. "I don't. Oh, I like it. Just about anyone does. And it has certainly helped the Keldara, yes? But the reason we're here, the reason that I am here, is in that tent over there. And I would not have come if it weren't for that shit. Not for a billion euros. We're getting paid for this op, paid well. This is just more weight to carry. If we have to run, on foot, then we'll have the entire Chechen force on our ass. We may end up in a battle with ten, twenty, forty times our number. Now, which would you rather have if that happens, another two hundred rounds or a half a million euros?"

  "Two hundred rounds," Yosif admitted. He didn't even have to think about it.

  "Just so. But I can actually think of something very important to do with it. Distribute it among the teams when they get back. Make up bundles of appropriate size. But tell them to put it somewhere they can dump it. Because if it comes down to ammo or money, we're going for ammo. And hurry. As soon as Dr. Arensky is done, we are out of here."

  * * *

  "Now that we have containment," Dr. Arensky said, his voice muffled by the gas mask, "we pour the material into the beaker. Normally, it is best to pour the acid into a material. But in this case, it risks explosive exgassing. That would not be good."

  "I understand," Padrek replied, calmly. "Whatever this is, it is very bad, no?"

  "Very bad," Dr. Arensky admitted. "If any gets on us, I have asked your boss, Mr. Jenkins, to just shoot us through the tent and then pour all the acid on the result."

  "That's bad," Padrek admitted. The Keldara team leader was the best of the Keldara when it came to mechanisms and, as the Kildar put it, "fiddly stuff." Which he supposed was why he was in this tent, breathing through a gas mask, covered in a rubber suit and helping this Russian destroy this white powder. Mostly he was holding the flashlight. Occasionally he poured some of the acid, what the Russian called "high molar sulfuric", into one of the beakers or test-tubes.

  The Russian had poured some of the acid into a flask, several of which the Keldara had carried on the mission, carefully packed in wooden boxes. Then he had wrapped a plastic bag around one of the test tubes in the strange metal containers. The bag had been taped to the flask top with the test tube contained in the whole arrangement. Only then did he remove the screw-stopper, working from the outside of the bag, and carefully pour the white powder into the flask. As it fell the stuff melted, releasing gases that puffed up the bag like a balloon. But well before it was ready to burst all the powder except a very small dusting was gone.

  "Now it's done?" Padrek asked.

  "No," the Russian said. "That dusting could kill the world, young man. Now it gets tricky."

  The Russian carefully raised the flask and, with Padrek holding the plastic out of the way, poured some of the liquid into the test tube. This time the effect was almost impossible to notice. Last, he swirled the liquid around, poured it back into the flask, back again, getting every trace of the white powder.

  "Now we are done," the Russian said. "How many flasks do we have?"

  "Seven," Padrek said, pointing to the pile of wooden boxes in the corner of the tent.

  "Good, then we don't have to disassemble this and risk contamination," the Russian said.

  "Dr. Arensky?" the Kildar called from outside the tent. Well outside from the sound of it.

  "Yes?"

  "How's it coming?"

  "We have successfully neutralized one of the samples. There are four."

  "Oh. Thought you should know. We've got most of the Chechen army bearing down on us. They're really pissed about something or another. Just an FYI."

  "Then I shall endeavor to hurry," the Russian said. "Mr. Padrek, if you could get me another flask, please?"

  "Just Padrek," Padrek corrected. "Padrek Ferani. But Mr. Ferani doesn't work either so... Just Padrek."

  "Then if you could please give
me a flask, Padrek," Dr. Arensky said. "And you may call me Victor since we're such good friends."

  * * *

  SEAL shit. SEAL shit. SEEEAL shit.

  Adams was blanked. All he could do was look down the road towards the town. He'd pulled the teams down about a klick from the intersection, dispersed them on both sides of the road and at that point his mind had just gone fucking blank.

  "Do some SEAL shit," he muttered. Oh, fuck, he was starting to think like a fucking officer, or worse a trainer, but it just might work.

  "Oleg!"

  "Master Chief!" the team leader called from the side of the road.