The Russian Bride

by Ed Kovacs

  “I’ve got it! I’ve got the bomb. Heading northwest, approaching the Two-fifteen freeway.”

  Yulana, who had just made herself some tea, scrambled to her laptop.

  “Yulana, we’re on!” said Kit, as he slipped on the shoulder holster holding the subgun.

  “One second,” she said, diving into her chair. The computer had gone into sleep mode, so she pressed ENTER to bring it back to life. As the others looked on anxiously, she had to wait several seconds for her software program to refresh. “One second,” she said again, with anticipation.

  When a new page finally popped onto the screen, her fingers flew over the keyboard. She hesitated, shot Kit a quick look, and then pressed ENTER. She exhaled. “It’s done. The American EMP weapon should be deactivated.”

  “Let’s pray you’re right,” said Kit. “Okay, we roll!”

  Angel began to muscle open the heavy sliding steel hangar door, and Kit and Yulana ran through the opening, toward the helicopter, as Buzz climbed behind the wheel of the diesel pickup.

  Kit switched off the transponder and started the chopper. Buzz backed the truck out. Angel closed the hangar door and then jumped into the truck cab with Buzz.

  The pickup drove off at the same time Kit lifted the copter into the Vegas night air. He stayed low, just high enough to clear the hangars, then flew westward as close to the deck as he could. Within seconds he was off the airport. Chances were, no one from the far-off tower would have spotted the lights-out takeoff, and chances were also good that on this busy night full of incoming air traffic, the controllers wouldn’t notice any image the airport’s BRITE radar might paint of the MD 530F, as long as he flew at minimum altitude.

  Jen remained in the hangar and adjusted her radio headset as her eyes excitedly flashed across four laptop screens.

  “We’re on, fellas,” she said into the headset boom mike as she rubbed her hands together in anticipation.

  * * *

  Bobby Chan and Ron Franklin stood in the office of Siegel Suites on West Tropicana going through the folders connected to all third-floor tenants. The company made color copies of driver’s licenses of all adults staying in each unit and also took Social Security card, credit card, and other documentation. But somehow, all of the paperwork didn’t keep the riffraff out.

  Chan stopped when he got to the folder of Lily Bain. He stared at her photo. “Hey, Franklin, here’s a Blondie.” Chan looked at the other documents in the folder. “Shacked up with some guy named Gregory. Remember the long blond hair we found?”

  “She looks kind’a hard,” said Franklin.

  “She is kind of hard,” said the desk clerk.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was working when she checked in. Pegged her for just another working girl. We get loads of them here. She had a fresh welt on the side of her head like somebody had hit her a good one.”

  Chan and Franklin looked at each other.

  “She have an accent?”

  “When you came in, you said you were looking for Russians, but I don’t know what that sounds like, except from the movies. She could have been a foreigner, I guess, but her ID was all American.”

  “What about Gregory?”

  “He stayed in the car. She brought the ID in, so I never seen him.”

  “You get a look at the car?”

  “Tinted windows and it was night. Didn’t see a thing. But my girlfriend, JoAnn, lives just down from them on the third floor. She’s long-term, comes for six months every year, but she’s about to go back to Michigan for the summer. JoAnn keeps an eye on everybody ’cause she’s scared of being robbed again. She might know something.”

  “Can you give your friend a call? We can meet her in the laundry room, ask a couple of questions.”

  * * *

  Popov had reached his intended altitude and released the bomb stolen by Kit Bennings from Sandia National Labs. He heard radio traffic from Las Vegas air traffic controllers demanding certain unidentified aircraft identify themselves. Idiots, he thought. In Russia, jets would have already been scrambled to shoot him down.

  He wouldn’t be able to see the small aboveground explosion, and the actual effects of the device were invisible, but the affected area on the ground would go instantly dark. So he circled at a safe distance, watching for a patch of black to emerge from the light. It was a metaphor for his life, as Viktor Popov was a man who created darkness.

  But this time, as he stared downward, it was the light that won out.

  * * *

  Jen Huffman relayed the GPS coordinates of the EMP device to Kit and Buzz simultaneously. “This is weird, but the signal is stationary. Wouldn’t the GPS unit be destroyed on impact?”

  “Apparently not. Give me the location,” said Kit.

  “Two blocks east of South Rainbow and just north of West Post Road, but, wait and I’ll tell you what’s in the immediate vicinity.… Looks like half a dozen different companies—Consolidated Janitorial, Good Times Catering, Mainichi Auction House. That might be it. Private storage vaults!”

  “That’s it,” said Kit. “Buzz, you copy?”

  “Copy.”

  “Hey, Yulana. Congratulations! The little boy didn’t go boom,” said Angel.

  “But I’m worried about his crude Russian cousin,” she said.

  * * *

  Alex Bobrik and his two assistants sat patiently waiting in the subterranean room below AT&T’s PIC. PIC was an unofficial nickname used by telecom workers when referring to the “central office,” a physical location where local communication lines are merged with interexchange, or long haul lines.

  The basement room where Alex and his team waited housed a main repeater station for AT&T’s southern fiber-optic trunk line. A massive three-foot-wide bundle of fiber-optic cables—there were thirty thousand individual fiber-optic cables in the bundle—ran vertically up from an opening in the cement floor and entered a gigantic relay switch. The bundle ran out of the other side of the switch and disappeared back into the cement floor as it continued its journey across the United States, all the way to Los Angeles.

  There was no more space left for data on this cable bundle, since the recent severing of AT&T’s northern fiber-optic trunk line in Wyoming had caused all available room to be given to customers with the biggest clout—the big banks and the U.S. government.

  The Russian technician with dark circles under her eyes adjusted some sort of electronic collar that had been placed around the cable bundle. The collar was connected via inch-thick black cables to some kind of portable device about the size of a microwave oven, and Alex’s laptops were connected to that device, which the Russians had nicknamed, the “toaster.”

  Alex checked his watch, but what they were really waiting for was a radical change in the reading of the voltmeter Alex held, a change that would signal the power was out at the AT&T facility, out due to rolling blackouts that would soon plague the entire city and hence would not draw any suspicion to the PIC itself.

  When the power went off, however briefly, Alex could make an “electronic splice” and begin stealing some of the most closely guarded secrets of a host of major banks, stock exchanges, brokerage houses, Fortune 500 companies, and the United States government, including secure communications from POTUS—President of the United States—and some of America’s intelligence agencies.

  And the best part was that the thefts would go unnoticed until long after the catastrophic damage was done.

  CHAPTER 37

  Dennis Kedrov checked the time on the dashboard clock as he rolled the yellow golf ball around in his hand. He knew something was wrong. He could see all of the lights still on for blocks ahead.

  Each of the trucks in Dennis’s convoy had very heavy, specially constructed boxes made of lead. Those boxes held all of the men’s electronics: watches, cell phones, two-way radios, flashlights, laser sights, and thermal optics. This was precautionary, since they were parked just outside of the estimated zone of effective da
mage. The trucks’ diesel engines would not be affected, he had been told, even if they were inside the zone.

  He shook his head and smiled. Bennings has outwitted Viktor Popov! Dennis knew it was true, and a part of him was thrilled by the revelation. Yes, his boss would simply now drop the Russian bomb, and if it worked, the plan would still go forward. But Popov had not planned well at all. The American should never have been approached. This should have been a Russian maskirovka operation exclusively from start to finish. What in the world had gotten into his boss? But then, Dennis knew the answer, and had already begun taking steps to protect his own interests. Clearly, former KGB General Viktor Popov was well past his prime.

  And when crime lords are past their prime, upheaval generally follows.

  * * *

  “Tak chto, dorogiye pridurki, my zakonchili igrat’?” So, dear assholes, are we finished playing? Popov scowled as he released the Russian bomb and sent it hurtling toward the airspace above Mainichi Auction House.

  He nosed the helo into a radical descent but kept a wide birth of the target area to escape the effects of the bomb.

  * * *

  Jerry Kotsky checked the wall clock in the security duty office of Mainichi Auction House. He checked the wall clock because his watch, along with certain other items, right now rested in a lead box disguised to look like his lunch cooler.

  Any second, he thought. The night-shift lieutenant sat at the duty officer’s desk filling out paperwork. The female officer at the CCTV monitor station had a bank of sixteen monitors in front of her, but she was cycling through other camera views, doing a good job of keeping an eye on things.

  Then suddenly the room went dark. Pitch black. All of the monitors shut down, every last LED light was gone. Jerry literally could not see the fingers just inches from his eyes.

  “What the hell?!” exclaimed Jerry.

  “What’s going on, what happened?! Where are the emergency lights?” asked the lieutenant. “The backup generators?”

  “I can’t see a thing,” said Jerry as he bent down in the utter, complete blackness and found his cooler, then flipped open the lid.

  “Damn!” yelled the lieutenant.

  “What now?” asked the female officer.

  “My cell phone is red hot. I was going to use it as a flashlight,” said the lieutenant.

  “Mine too, call nine-one-one.”

  “Yeah, no kidding, if I can find the phone. Use your radio to call and have everybody check in. Jerry, grab a flashlight.”

  “My flashlight isn’t working,” said Jerry.

  “The battery is hot on my radio,” said the female officer. “Radio check, radio check.”

  There was no answer.

  “Press the squelch button.”

  “I tried, but it’s not working,” she said.

  “What the hell is happening? Jerry, you’re a smoker, where’s your lighter?” barked the lieutenant.

  “One second.”

  Jerry found the HK45 Tactical pistol in his cooler with a suppressor attached and a thermal sight. He felt for the button, and the thermal sight lit up.

  “There’s no dial tone for the phone. Damn! The lighter, Jerry!” said the lieutenant impatiently.

  “Here, let me light you up.” Jerry stood and fired two rounds into the lieutenant’s head, and was fascinated by how the blood splatter looked through the thermal sight, which showed temperature variations of surface objects.

  The screams of the female officer suggested that even with the suppressor attached, she must have seen some muzzle flash, so Jerry found her in the sight as she stumbled toward a wall, and he shot her three times.

  He turned on a flashlight that he’d also removed from his cooler and put one more round into her head. He then crossed to his special cooler and equipped himself with the rest of the gear from within: two-way radio, two cell phones, extra flashlights, ammo magazines, and night-vision goggles. He put the goggles on, turned off the flashlight, and voilà! He could see but no one could see him. He opened the door and moved into the total blackness of the hallway, looking for targets.

  * * *

  “What the heck is going on? Did you guys knock out the power?” yelled the Mainichi front gate guard. He had come out of the guard shack and called out to a worker in a white hard hat who looked like he was from the power company, although it was hard to see in the dark, with the only light coming from the moon and stars.

  Smiling as big as ever, Dennis Kedrov walked up to the guard on the other side of the massive steel gate.

  “The phone is out, the radio won’t work, and my cell phone exploded,” said the guard in disbelief.

  “Some kind of super blackout,” said Dennis, looking closely at the gate. “Don’t think your electric gate is going to open anytime soon, either.”

  “How will I get home?”

  Dennis then casually shot the guard three times in the chest. “Don’t think you’re going home, except to see Jesus.”

  Dennis signaled with a flashlight to the men who had just driven the lowboy trailer up to Mainichi, and the D10 bulldozer roared to life. The tracked dozer drove off the trailer, pivoted, and quickly bore down on Mainichi’s front gate. With it’s scoop lifted to use as a battering ram, the bulldozer, whose engine produced 700 horsepower, easily knocked down the gate and drove on toward the building itself.

  Dennis’s men swarmed in, flanking the bulldozer, as other men drove down the dark street in both directions and blocked it with their big bucket trucks.

  A guard stepped out of Mainichi’s front door and stood still, shocked by the sight of the dozer closing in. He reached for his weapon but was cut down before he could remove it from his holster.

  Dennis spoke into his two-way radio over the roar of the dozer’s engine. “Camel, this is Tiger, copy.”

  “Tiger, scratch two inside.”

  “Camel, scratch two outside. So three more inside.”

  “Hit the first waypoint; I’m clear,” said Jerry.

  The bulldozer operator had a GPS unit taped to the windshield. Jerry had long ago provided GPS waypoints—very specific saved coordinates—so the D10 made for the first waypoint and drove right through the reinforced wall of Mainichi Auction House.

  “Scratch two more inside,” came the radio traffic from Jerry in the building.

  “Roger. One remaining inside,” said Dennis.

  * * *

  “The Sandia bomb landed in the vacant lot just behind Mainichi. I’m still reading the GPS signal,” said Jen into her headset as she monitored developments from her post inside the hangar at McCarran Airport. “Could the bomb have survived impact?”

  Kit and Yulana both wore headsets in the MD 530F, as they cautiously approached the target area. “That’s possible, Jen. Intact, unexploded bombs that have been dropped from airplanes during past wars are uncovered fairly frequently. Buzz, are you copying this traffic?”

  “Affirmative,” said Buzz

  “Before you and Angel leave the area, try to get the remnants of the device,” said Kit.

  “We’ll try,” said Buzz into a handheld radio, as he slowed the pickup truck on West Post Road. “We’re coming up on a roadblock.”

  Angel swept the area ahead of them using the scope on an M4 rifle. “I’m counting three armed men next to the truck.”

  Kit used forward-looking infrared optics to scan the Mainichi compound as he hovered the helicopter. “Jen, call Metro PD and tell them a bulldozer is knocking down the walls to the building right now,” said Kit. “Buzz, take out that roadblock; I’ll get the roadblock at the other end of the street.”

  “Look!” said Yulana. “There’s another helicopter.”

  “We got a bird touching down inside the fence at Mainichi. I’ll bet it’s Popov, here to take the loot,” said Kit as he nosed the copter in for a landing between one of the truck blockades and the Mainichi building.

  CHAPTER 38

  Buzz crouched, hiding in the truck bed, as Angel drov
e the battered old truck with salsa music blaring from the radio right up to the bucket truck blocking the road. Popov’s men shined lights into his eyes and yelled, “Go back!”

  Angel smiled and waved and blabbered on in rapid-fire Puerto Rican Spanish. He stopped the truck and slowly got out, making sure to keep his hands visible to them but without drawing attention to that fact.

  “I must to go clean!” said Angel with a thick accent. “I good clean for my boss!”

  The Russians didn’t have orders to kill people, just not to let them pass. The burly leader stepped forward, hiding a gun under his jacket. “Come back in one hour. Big problem here right now.”

  “One hour?” asked Angel, looking to the faces of the three men he clocked at the blockade. “Okay, I go back.” As Angel turned from them, the Russians relaxed.

  But Angel had a gun under his jacket, too, and he simultaneously pulled it and spun, and in less than two seconds, literally, he had shot all three men in the head.

  Buzz popped up from the truck bed with an M4 to cover Angel, but he’d gotten them all.

  “Good shooting, as usual, mijo. Grab the keys from the truck and let’s go!”

  Angel pulled the keys from the ignition of the bucket truck and then climbed into the pickup, as Buzz slowly rolled past and onward toward Mainichi Auction House.

  A hundred yards away, Buzz stopped the truck, and he and Angel moved forward on opposite sides of the street. They immediately came under fire from thugs guarding the front gate area.

  * * *

  Just as Popov got out of the R66, Dennis realized his men were engaging targets on the street, so he ran to his boss.

  “Viktor, it seems there’s another player at the roulette table tonight. Please take cover.”

  Popov looked over with a scowl. “Bennings.”

  “I would think so.”

  “Where are the diamonds?”

  “Give me sixty seconds.” Dennis sprinted in through the huge, gaping hole in the building’s wall and disappeared into the dark cavern.