by James Phelan
Someone was running down the hallway towards him. He pulled a Glock and popped the figure twice in the middle of their bulk—they fell down and stayed down.
Sirko steadied himself against the wall and looked around through burning eyes. Above where he’d lain, the bullets from the helicopter’s machine gun had punched through the concrete blocks; they had even torn up and pockmarked the wall through to the neighbouring apartment.
He went back into ‘his’ studio apartment—its true owner’s body stuffed into the wardrobe earlier today—and looked out the new opening in the wall where he had perched for the assassination. The entire wall of the living room was now a ragged, open space, the void the size of a Volkswagen where a concrete wall and window had been just seconds ago. The contents of the open-plan studio apartment were now fine fragments of foam and feathers and material that filled the air like smoke.
As Sirko took a step towards the gaping hole, the glass and metal light fitting fell from the ceiling and smashed, its bare electrical cord sparking against the roof. The purpose-built briefcase that housed his sniper rifle was by his feet, shattered by the machine-gun rounds.
Sirko kicked some debris around, looking for his rifle: for this job he’d brought a VSS, Vintovka Snayperskaya Spetsialnaya, or ‘special sniper rifle,’ a suppressed weapon developed in the late eighties for Soviet Special Forces, with which he’d had so much success in Chechnya. It wasn’t his favourite rifle, but it was perfect for covert medium-range hits against armoured targets. It was now buried in this rubble somewhere, and he didn’t bother digging around to retrieve it. He turned and walked out into the hallway, moved towards the stairs. Thinking …
A US military helicopter with a Minigun blasting away at him … now, that was news. They came in hard, prepared for him, which meant they were there as protection for his targets. Or to draw him out. Sirko knew about Kylmä-Kalle, the tactic employed by the Finns against the Soviets when the Red Army invaded Finland early into WWII: they would set out a mannequin dressed as an officer sloppily covering himself, and when a Soviet sniper was unable to resist such a target and took a shot, showing his position, the Finns would take him out with a heavy-calibre Norsupyssy or Boys anti-tank rifle. A tiny nation had repelled a giant. He had been set up.
But how did they see him, covered behind curtains in an open window? The VSS had virtually no muzzle flash, and he couldn’t conceive that the suppressed shots had been heard onboard the chopper or car … But what was the chopper doing there, right at that time? This was supposed to be a soft target—all targets were, unless stated otherwise, that’s how Umbra always operated him. The targets had fled the car before it properly came into his kill zone, forcing him to detonate the car bomb early. He had been forced to switch to the rifle …
This hit was set up for failure, and given who’d first asked him to handle this job, it was not difficult to finger the blame.
Kolesnik. The golden boy. He’d always treated Sirko like dispensable shit, giving him the tough jobs while he himself … He knew all about Kolesnik’s life: painless, carefree. No living in Greece working a construction job in between to afford food; no anxiety waiting for the phone to ring for a real job; no burning hatred. That fucker has nightclubs, money to burn, an apartment in Prague. Sirko had cased it once, while Kolesnik was out of the country. Helped himself to the contents of the refrigerator. Laid in his bed. Tried on his jackets. Took a dump in his toilet, didn’t flush. Maybe one day he would go back there, wait for Kolesnik to come home bent out of his mind on ecstasy or whatever he did …
Yes, it was time.
Justice served cold, kind of like how that Godfather guy spoke about revenge. Yeah, he would finish this job, and then pay his respects to that ungrateful killer.
35
MOSCOW, RUSSIA
Babich was mobbed by grateful teachers and parents and students as he left the school. He turned to wave one last time as his publicist whispered to him. Still smiling, he nodded and climbed into his car. The door closed behind him and the driver drove off; the television screen showed breaking news, coming in from Spain.
A woman reported live from the scene, cars on fire on a highway behind her, cutting to amateur footage … A high-speed chase and terrorist attack has occurred in Spain, outside Seville read the ticker … the amateur video showed a US military helicopter picking up three figures; they were carrying a body.
Babich smiled—
Then he saw the familiar face: Lachlan Fox, unmistakably him, getting into the helicopter, still alive.
His phone rang. Kolesnik.
“What was that?” Babich asked.
“He failed,” Kolesnik’s voice replied, after a slight delay. “Petro—”
“This was meant to be surgical.”
“It was not me, it was—”
“Don’t blame others, this was your job,” Babich said. He was surprised that Kolesnik had also used Sirko; he had placed his own order as a back-up. He needed Fox removed more so than the others involved.
“I—I had to go wide on this.”
Babich smiled. Both these young men were sons to him. “I understand,” Babich said. “But nothing more like this, okay?”
“Yes,” Kolesnik said. “Should I do something about Petro?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, with this failure—”
“He’s very useful to me.”
“He’s a hack.”
“Yet you called him in to help you, as you have so often since you were little boys.”
“If he’s ever in my sights—”
Babich coughed, angry and disappointed, perhaps even mildly amused.
“I mean—”
“Don’t start something you can’t finish,” Babich said, watching New Moscow traffic out his window. “He’s been doing this since you were a schoolboy.”
He thought of the two when they were young boys. Sirko was a three-year-old orphan he had supported before he and his wife had their own child, taking him from the monastery for the summer months. The boy became the older brother young Kolesnik never had, a real achiever in comparison. They saw each other a few times a year at holidays, continually measuring and comparing themselves in every capacity. They were always cordial, had always treated him like family.
“I need him, like I need you,” Babich said. “You both have your place.”
Silence on the phone; Babich could almost hear the young man thinking.
“If he can’t get this job done—”
“He has never failed me,” Babich said. “He will finish what he started. And maybe, just maybe you will finally learn to trust in another fully. After all, he’s family.”
36
MORÓN AIR BASE, SPAIN
The Black Hawk thundered onto the tarmac where it was met by a ground crew and a US Air Force medical team waiting by a base ambulance.
Fox and Gammaldi helped remove Goldsmith’s body from the chopper. The blood on Fox’s hands was sticky like honey, thick in some places and drying and caking in others. There was splatter on his T-shirt, and Gammaldi had specks of blood and collateral gore all over his face. Geiger sat on the open back of the ambulance while a graze was patched up and a cut along his cheek temporarily sutured, his eyes vacant, revisiting and absorbing what had just happened. The ambulance took him away for further treatment.
Fox approached the Black Hawk Crew Chief, who had started to clean out his aircraft, and asked: “How’d you pick out the shooter?”
The Chief pointed to a kit on the rear of the undercarriage where it started to rise towards the tail. The add-on resembled a short metal broomstick with a series of smaller antennae spiking out of it—seven small microphones, arranged like the spine of a sea urchin.
“Boomerang shooter detection system. It’s anti-sniper tech: can pinpoint a shot before you even see muzzle flash … Tuned up good, it’s the best way I know to get a quick target acquisition
, like about too late for y’all down there.”
Fox nodded. He’d seen a similar system fitted to Humvees in Afghanistan.
“Thanks for getting us out,” Fox said, shaking the man’s hand. Gammaldi showed the same gratitude to the pilots.
“I’m sorry about your man,” the Crew Chief said. “We never like putting a guy on a cooling board. We’ll see he gets Stateside ASAP.”
“Thanks, Chief,” Fox said. “Where’s our—”
“Hangar’s over yonder,” he said, pointing to a half-open metal hangar with the tail of a Gulfstream visible inside and a couple of State Department Chevy Suburbans parked out front, guarded by an entire platoon of Air Force Security Force airmen, distinctive in their dark blue berets. A row of smaller hangars lined a second runway, stretching out at least half a kilometre. Further out were massive hangars: Fox could see a B2 Stealth Bomber inside one, a couple of tanker craft in another, and a few C17s parked in a neat row. The smaller hangars were originally built for fighter-jet aircraft, but now they were full of Gulfstreams and the like: transport planes, maybe for VIP military brass—more likely for rendition transport crisscrossing the globe posing as legitimate flights at legitimate civilian airports. A squadron of F16s was parked on an open lot.
“Thanks,” Fox said, making to move off with Gammaldi.
The base protection force company commander pulled over in a Humvee with a guy in a suit.
“Get in,” the Air Force Captain said. “I’ll take you to my office and get you cleaned up. I’ve got someone waiting to talk to you.”
37
FBI, QUANTICO, VIRGINIA
Duhamel and Brick didn’t look comfortable sitting in an office.
Hutchinson had spelled out their main brief—picking up a High Value Target for prosecution, one Roman Babich.
He was a hard target, with a personal protection detail that would stop at nothing to protect their guy. Ivan and Luigi were on hand as it involved a Russian national likely to be on Italian soil at the time of the arrest. And after that, whatever was required—Hutchinson knew that since 9/11 guys like Duhamel and Brick had been an integral part of protecting the country from both domestic and international terrorist threats—they were front-line agents, the ones who got things done, and would continue to, either within HRT or his own team.
“You’re coming up on your time here,” Hutchinson said. “At best, you’ll be going back into Operations sooner rather than later. Or what, you think you’re going to hang around here and be trainers? Takin’ fat SOBs like myself through their annual sidearm proficiency tests? Sounds great.”
Brick looked to Duhamel, his mind ticking over.
“What does your unit do, exactly?”
Hutchinson smiled. He wasn’t going to fuck these guys around. “CT and CI,” he replied. Counter Terrorism and Counter Intelligence.
“So it’s a part of ITOS One or Two?”
He smiled again. Hutchinson had been around long enough to know how to recruit; his area of the Bureau was chronically short-staffed of mid-senior level agents. Too many of them headed into other areas of crime fighting where they had more gratification of regular outcomes, or left the FBI altogether. He had enough to worry about without recruitment, but his post and the personnel short-fall situation allowed him to borrow staff from within. Where better than HRT?
“Look, guys, you won’t find my unit on any organisational chart,” Hutchinson said. “We were formed out of an Executive Order. We look for what slips through the cracks. We operate independently of any other agency, while having full access to any information and assets that may aid us. This is the Dream Team, and I’m offering you a walk-in role, no strings.”
Hutchinson knew they understood what he meant. Since the post-9/11 restructure, the Bureau’s two International Terrorism Operations Sections contained members of the CIA, as well as other federal agencies, civilian and military, in a spirit of inter-agency cooperation. Among other things, the President’s Executive Order of 30 July 2008 called for better-organised intelligence agency action regarding foreign threats against the United States and its interests—this gave Hutchinson’s team direct Presidential mandated power, meaning he could call on support from all appropriate US agencies.
“This is an opportunity to continue to do what you do best, for as long as you like,” Hutchinson said. “You’ll retain your current pay levels, and while you’ll likely spend more time with your safeties on, there will be overseas trips.”
“We travel a bit as it is,” said Duhamel.
“Yes, you just got back from Iraq, and you were in ’Stan last year,” Hutchinson said. That earned him a look—his clearance was as good as it got. “And I know about the good work you did in Florida a few months back. Brick, how’s the neck?”
“I’ve had worse injuries shaving,” the big man said, scratching the star-shaped pink scar on the side of his neck, courtesy of a pistol round. “Just so we’re clear, you’re running the Bureau’s covert action and sensitive intelligence operations?”
“Look,” Hutchinson said, sipping his coffee. “That’s pretty much it. You’ll be on my team. You’ll be in the loop on everything. You’ll still get to do all the HRT training you want, as well as the cross-training programs you’ve been doing with DELTA and overseas military outfits—SAS and the like—although I’d rather you steered clear of SEAL door-kickers, for obvious reasons.”
That got a laugh from both men, having heard versions of horror stories of simple operations gone wrong when overzealous Navy SEAL boys were attached.
“Come on, guys, I’m not here to piss in your pockets and I’m not here with my hat in my hand saying that you’re my only hope. You say no right now, there are six other guys I’m going to talk to.” Hutchinson drained his cup, well knowing that these boys were not just the most suitable but also his best chance: the three teams of HRT operated on sixty-day cycles, and Duhamel and Brick were currently on Training. The team on Operations were on a ready state of alert to respond, and the other was on Support, assisting the Ops team in maintaining readiness. For all his clout, he’d have to wait for the next cycle to pluck good operators from another team—time he didn’t have. “I know your team cycles onto duty in a couple of weeks; we’ll have to give them time to shift others into your place. Reality is, I need some guys to run today, right now. If you say yes to this,” Hutchinson said, “you’ll be in the air momentarily.”
“Will the arrest go down in Italy or Russia?”
“Not certain yet. Could be either, could be a few trips over the next few weeks. First up, though, it’s India. High threat protective duty on a reporter we’ve got there.”
Hutchinson saw that this got their attention. HRT was a good gig, especially once you got into its rhythm and it got into your blood. But these guys trained for days that likely never came, and here he was, saying they could really put their skills to use, on a world scene … It was a proposition with cherries on top.
“Intel good, prepped?”
“It will be.”
“Short lead time?”
“I wouldn’t give the go-ahead if you weren’t ready,” he said. “Anyway, you guys are the kings of rapid response.”
He paused.
“You’ve been training for this,” Hutchinson said, standing up and sliding his jacket back on. “You’ve played with the best, you’ve become the best, now it’s time to take on the best.”
38
MORÓN AIR BASE, SPAIN
The hangar was guarded by a heavily armed squad of US Air Force Security Forces. Lachlan Fox, freshly showered, dressed in borrowed military-issue camouflage pants and a white T-shirt, entered the hangar and saw Omar Hasif sitting at a trestle table opposite a mid-forties State Department man and the local FBI legal attaché. Hasif’s family was nowhere to be seen.
Every now and then aircraft would take off or land, the military air base as busy as any mid-sized commercial airport.
There was some serious heavy lifting going on at this major staging point between the United States and the Middle East; being inside the sheet metal hangar was like being in an echo chamber.
“Omar,” Fox said. The Libyan got up from the table and the two men embraced briefly.
“I just heard you were attacked,” Hasif said, his open face showing craggy lines that were hastened by years of working and living in the elements.
“Yeah, we’re okay,” Fox said, taking a seat at the table next to Hasif. “How about your family—how’s your son?”
“The children are with a base teacher, they are happy—and my boy will be fine, thank you.” His expression darkened and he looked down at his hands. “My sister—she’s sedated. Lachlan, I want you to bring these men to justice. Whoever they are. Anything I can do…”
Fox looked at the State and Fed guys opposite. They nodded, eager to participate, the FBI Legat particularly angsty. Nothing galvanised an honest lawman like seeing kids hurt.
“I will, Omar, know that,” Fox said. He took his Moleskine notebook from his backpack—both were looking a little worse for wear—and opened it at his research notes. He looked at the papers on the table, a stack of completed immigration forms for the family members. “I’m headed to India now. Can you show me where this place is—the main building camp for the water project?”
Hasif took his briefcase from next to his chair and placed it on the table between them. Fox popped it open. A Dell laptop, manila folders, a couple of maps. Hasif had signed a non-disclosure agreement with Umbra Corp about details like this, but that was all out the window now.
