State of the Union

by Brad Thor

  Though he stole occasional glances at the vessel itself, his eyes were predominantly focused on the assault helicopter’s tracking and display systems. From what he could tell as they made their pass, theGagarin was being watched over not only by the three nuclear icebreakers, but by no fewer than three Russian submarines as well. Getting out was going to prove a lot harder than getting in.

  As the helicopter banked and approached theGagarin ’s landing pad, they went over their plan one more time. Speed, surprise, and overwhelming force of action were the keys to a successful outcome, though every one of them had silent reservations as to whether this was really going to work.

  When the Mi-17–1V touched down on theGagarin ’s aft deck, Carlson quickly unbuckled the pilot and yanked him into the cargo area. He removed the man’s helmet and then knocked him out with a quick punch to the head. “You’ve got to be the worst pilot I’ve ever flown with,” said Carlson who then looked up at the rest of the team staring at him. “What? He gave us that shitty ride on purpose. Fuck him.”

  No one disagreed. Avigliano and Morrell quickly gagged the man, tied him up and stashed him in the back of the copter. A pistol was placed in the hand of the dead co-pilot and he was positioned in such a way that if anyone should happen to look in through one of the windows, it would appear as if he was diligently posting guard over a large plastic suitcase.

  When they were good to go, Morrell and his men rolled down their own black balaclavas, readied their Russian assault rifles, and opened one of the helicopter’s side doors. Carlson and Avigliano jumped out first and were joined by Alexandra. Next came DeWolfe, who shoved Harvath out onto the deck and kept his weapon on him as Morrell slid the door shut behind him.

  As two of theGagarin ’s crew members rushed up to attend to the helicopter, Alexandra barked at them to back off. She told them that the pilot and co-pilot had been instructed to guard their cargo with their lives and to shoot anyone but herself or General Stavropol who came too close. She asked where she could find the general and one of the men gave her instructions on how to find the control center. Then he and his shipmate immediately backed away.So far, so good.

  The control center was located just beneath the bridge near the bow of the ship. As the imposing party of would-be Spetsnaz troops, a beautiful blond woman, and their prisoner entered on the main deck level and purposely made their way forward, every soul they came across jumped to get out of their way.

  The whole team—Harvath, Ivanova, Morrell, Carlson, DeWolfe, and Avigliano—mentally recorded security measures, evacuation points, crew makeup, and force strength as they marched towards the bow. From what they could see, a good portion of the ship had been retrofitted, though some Soviet-era trappings were evident from time to time. From the state-of-the-art infirmary and movie theater to the restaurant, health club, and indoor swimming pool, theGagarin had been designed to remain on station and completely self-sufficient for very extended periods of time.

  Turning a corner, they arrived at the elevator for the control center, and Carlson and DeWolfe immediately disappeared down an adjacent stairwell into the bowels of the ship, while Morrell and Avigliano accompanied Alexandra and Harvath to their rendezvous with General Stavropol.

  The elevator doors opened onto an enormous, dimly lit room filled with technicians seated in high-backed, ergonomically designed chairs at wraparound workstations with everything within arm’s reach. The seats reminded Harvath of those in the Navy’s Mark V Special Operations Craft, which were designed to keep SEALs stable and comfortable during prolonged insertions, extractions, and patrols on even the roughest seas.

  As Alexandra pushed him out of the elevator, Morrell and Avigliano followed right behind. They stepped up onto a raised floor that was designed to accommodate the massive tangle of computer cables and wires running beneath. Though it was absolutely freezing outside, an air conditioning system was running at full strength to prevent the massive amount of equipment in the room from overheating.

  While Harvath had expected to see something that resembled NASA’s Mission Control in Houston, Texas, what he found was something completely different. Instead of tiered sections grouped in order of importance and facing a common set of screens at the front of the room, there were semi-circled networks of workstations grouped around what could only be referred to as viewing screens. They were concave pieces of Plexiglas that were not only full color, two-sided monitors, with different images playing on both sides, but were also completely transparent depending upon what angle you were looking at them from. Technicians manipulated data not by plugging away at traditional keyboards, but via keyless entry systems, the likes of which Harvath had never seen before. In fact the more he looked around the room, the more he realized the technology he was seeing would be more at home aboard theStarship Enterprise than a Soviet-era research vessel. The sophistication of it all was literally beyond his imagination, and Harvath had a pretty good imagination.

  The last thing he noticed was the utter lack of security. Whoever was in charge of this operation was feeling pretty confident.

  “Agent Ivanova,” said a man with a salt and pepper–colored crew cut who spun his chair around and stood up from one of the workstations. He was at least six-foot-three inches tall and a good two hundred seventy-five pounds. Looking past the malformed nose, which had obviously been broken on several occasions, and the pockmarked skin, Harvath took in the General’s dark, penetrating eyes and understood why the enormous man had been nicknamedRasputin . He had an extremely intimidating presence.

  “General Stavropol,” replied Alexandra politely. “Here I am, as promised.”

  “Excellent,” he smiled.

  “What about my reward?”

  “What about it?” he asked, the smile never leaving his face.

  “I have brought you the American as you asked, and his nuclear device is in the helicopter. The pilots have been instructed not to let anyone but you or me near it.”

  “Very neat and tidy, but wouldn’t you agree that it is somewhat unusual to demand a reward after having betrayed your country?”

  “I have done no such thing,” she replied, maintaining her composure. “We have a deal and I expect you to honor your end of the bargain.”

  “That’s funny considering the fact that your father—”

  “Do not mistake me for my father,” interrupted Alexandra as her icy stare bore into Stavropol’s own. “Not only have I delivered the American and his weapon to you as promised, but I risked everything coming here.”

  “Really?” replied Stavropol. “What did you risk?”

  “My life. My career.Everything .”

  “Or so you would lead us to believe.”

  “If you don’t believe me, believe Helmut Draegar. He was one of the men who tried to kill me.”

  “He already has told us.”

  “And you still question my loyalty?” asked Alexandra.

  “That depends,” Stavropol responded. “What did Nesterov tell you?”

  “Nesterov?He didn’t tell me anything. I barely got the chance to talk to him before Draegar killed him. This is ridiculous. Where is Draegar? I want to talk with him myself. I will not have my loyalty questioned like this.”

  “He’s in America at the moment. Unfortunately, one of our operatives seems to have gotten cold feet, but it’s none of your concern. Draegar will see to it,” smiled Stavropol.

  That was all Harvath needed to hear. His plan had been to pinpoint Draegar’s whereabouts onboard the ship so they could take him out as well, but now with him gone, there was no reason to delay the rest of their mission.

  “Okay, time’s up,” said Harvath as he drew his H&K from the small of his back and pointed it at Stavropol’s forehead. “I want names, descriptions, everything on all of your sleepers. I want to know where they are, how you contact them and where their nuclear devices are being hidden.”

  “You’re very brave, Agent Harvath, but also very stupid,” replied Stavrop
ol. “Do you actually think my men are going to let you just take over?”

  Now it was Harvath’s turn to smile. “These aren’t your men,” he answered with a jerk of his head towards Morrell and Avigliano, who then removed their balaclavas and trained their weapons on him.

  Stavropol’s smile never faltered. “Those aren’t the men I’m talking about.” With a snap of his fingers, scores of soldiers wearing plain clothes, who had been mixed in with the technicians, stood and pointed their guns at Harvath and his party. They were overwhelmingly outgunned and knew they were beaten.

  Stavropol raised a walkie-talkie to his mouth and barked a series of orders before turning back to Harvath and saying, “We received the pictures your government sent of several man-portable nuclear devices placed around our country. I can only assume you were part of that effort?”

  Harvath didn’t respond.

  “I had heard that you were a highly skilled operative, but frankly I am disappointed.”

  “I wouldn’t get too bent out of shape over it. I still might prove you wrong.”

  “We’ll see about that,” said Stavropol as the elevator doors opened and two technicians wheeled out a dolly carrying Harvath’s supposed man-portable nuke. It had been dismantled and lay in pieces.

  “You Americans still underestimate us. Did you think our pilot wouldn’t find some way to get a message to us?”

  “Shit,” said Morrell.

  “But I heard everything he said,” countered Alexandra. “There was nothing that—”

  “It wasn’t what he said,” interrupted Stavropol. “It was what he didn’t. When he failed to give the proper approach codes, we knew something was wrong. For a moment, I briefly debated just shooting your helicopter right out of the sky, but now I’m glad that I didn’t.

  “As far as the device itself is concerned, the Americans seem to have forgotten that we already have all but one of them from their Dark Night program. It does take a certain amount of care to dismantle them, but it soon became obvious that care was not necessary with this one. It’s a fake. Until we were sure that this was not going to turn into some suicide mission and that your nuclear device had been placed in a fail-safe mode, there was little else we could do but play along.

  “I am going to assume then that the devices in the photos are also fakes, which means that only Frank Leighton and his device are still at large. Our teams will soon find him. In the meantime, I understand from our deck crew that there were two other men with you who came aboard with you and are still at large. I’m confident that they will be joining you shortly.”

  “None of this going to work,” said Harvath. “America isn’t going to just roll over for you.”

  The General smiled once again. “I never expected them to. In fact, had they not resisted I would have been most disappointed.”

  With that, Stavropol waved over a group of soldiers to take control of the prisoners and transport them below decks for safekeeping. As he did, Harvath saw beneath the general’s jacket the finely engraved butt of a Tokarev TT-30, a weapon chambered to fire the 7.62mm Soviet M30 round.

  Something told Harvath he was looking at the weapon that had helped put Gary Lawlor into the hospital, clinging to life itself.

  Chapter 47

  A s Carlson and DeWolfe were tossed into the narrow holding cell along with Harvath, Morrell, and Avigliano, the first thing they noticed was the absence of Alexandra.

  It was the question all of them were asking themselves, but which none of them really wanted to know the answer to. “She’s being held someplace else,” offered Harvath.

  “She’s a big girl and can handle herself. Right now we’ve got other things to worry about,” said Morrell, focusing the team’s attention on the matter at hand. Though he doubted the makeshift brig was wired for sound, there was no sense in taking any chances. Stavropol and his team were proving to be very accomplished adversaries, and so he lowered his voice as he turned to Carlson and asked, “Did they get the detonator?”

  “The charges were already placed, but they got everything else that was left in my bag,” responded the demolitions expert, “including the detonator.”

  “Fuck,” responded Morrell who then turned to DeWolfe. “How about you? Were you able to sabotage the air defense system?”

  DeWolfe crossed his fingers and held them up for Morrell to see.

  “That’s it then,” said Harvath. “Now we wait.”

  “Screw that,” whispered Carlson as he began scanning the room. It looked like it had been some kind of refrigeration unit at one point. “We’re going to find a way out of here.”

  “We’ve already looked. That door is it,” replied Avigliano.

  “So, what? We just give up?”

  “No,” said Morrell. “We continue to try and find a way out of here.”

  Carlson looked at his watch. “Well, whatever we do, we’ve got six minutes to get it together. I targeted their main power supply, as well as their auxiliary. I had no idea we’d end up in a room that depended on a mechanical ventilation system for its air.”

  “Okay,” said Morrell, taking control of the situation, “so we’ve got six minutes and counting. We can do this. Everybody put your thinking caps on and I don’t want to hear a single word unless it has to do with how we can get ourselves out of here.”

  The room was completely silent as the men went over it again inch by inch. The ventilation system itself was too small for any of them to squeeze through so they spent their time probing for loose ceiling panels or a way to trigger the locking mechanism from their side of the door. Their efforts, though, were all in vain.

  Carlson’s eyes were glued to his watch as the final seconds of electricity ticked away before the main power shut down. The backup system momentarily came to life, and then it too went down. DeWolfe tried to comfort his colleagues by explaining that from what he had been able to gather, the air defense system, like the fire alarm system, had a battery backup and so his part of the operation would still be successful. The response to his revelation was lackluster at best, as the men took pains to conserve their oxygen.

  The first thing they noticed was the suffocating heat. The amount of warmth that could be generated by five men in such a small, enclosed space was amazing. Condensation amassed upon the ceiling and either slowly dripped on top of them or trickled down the walls in thin rivulets.

  As they began breathing in short gasps, DeWolfe wondered if maybe their captors had no idea that they were running out of oxygen. He pounded on the steel door until he lost the feeling in both of hands and then he kicked at it until he was so dizzy from hypoxia that he had to sit back down.

  As time wore on, Harvath developed a pounding headache accompanied by severe dizziness, but what frightened him the most was the sense of euphoria beginning to overtake him. He heard a voice somewhere within the recesses of his mind warn him that after euphoria came the fourth and final stage of hypoxia wherein victims lost consciousness and quickly succumbed to death. He tried to fight his fatigue and rally against another voice that was quickly gathering strength in his mind. It told him that there was nothing he could do and that he should relax and let it happen. He had nothing to fear.

  Harvath knew the message was a lie; that he should not listen to it. He closed his mind against the darkness and tried to focus on his breathing. He needed to slow his heart rate and respiration. The ship’s crew was probably already working on restoring power and they would have breathable air again soon.Breathable air. He kept repeating the words to himself until the darkness of hypoxia finally overtook him.

  Chapter 48

  T here were strange, unintelligible words followed by a burst of heat in his lungs. Then silence. Soon, another burst followed, accompanied by more words and a heaviness on his chest. A bright light drifted on the edges of his field of vision.

  The hot burst came again, but there was also another sensation, something soft, something moist. It reminded Harvath of water and he suddenl
y remembered that he was thirsty. He went to lick his lips but the moistness quickly receded.

  He drew another breath and realized what was happening.He was breathing . As Harvath greedily gasped for air, consciousness slowly returned. He heard voices, women’s voices. The words that had been so unintelligible only moments before now found their place in his mind—Russian. The light he had seen was a flashlight held by one of the women as her compatriot attended to the other men in the room. Slowly, he sat up as he continued to suck in great gasps of air.

  “Are you okay?” said a voice in English as a beam of light shone in his face. Harvath recognized the voice as Alexandra’s.

  “I think so,” replied Harvath as he tried to stand up. “How did you find us?”

  “I didn’t,” replied Alexandra, handing him a bottle of water she had found in one of the adjacent storage rooms. “Raisa did. She knows the ship inside and out.”

  “Is she one of the scientists?”

  “Yes. She was also Nesterov’s mistress, but they kept it an absolute secret.”

  “Is she…” panted Harvath, who paused to take another long draught of water.

  “The second scientist my father mentioned?” said Alexandra, finishing the thought for him. “No question. She told me about periodic communications she had with him.”

  Harvath lowered the bottle and as he wiped his mouth along his sleeve, glanced around the room and took in the rest of the team in their various states of recovery. “What about Stavropol?”

  “Everyone is going crazy upstairs over the half-empty demolitions bag Carlson was found with. All of the lower decks near where they found him are being searched for bombs he may have planted. We have to get out of here.”

  “What about in the control room?”

  “Something has gotten into the system,” offered Raisa. “They can’t figure it out. They think it might be a worm.”