by Sean McFate
“It’s set in stone, Brad,” Naveen said. “I’m truly sorry.”
“Honesty, Naveen,” Winters said. “That’s all I ask.”
He knew the value of letting Naveen think he let him down. He could use that guilt later. But the truth was, Naveen Grummond had given him exactly what he wanted.
There were wheels outside the government. Wheels with far more power and influence than Naveen could see from his narrow point of view. That was the world Winters was working in. And right now, all he wanted was to make sure that his biggest client, the U.S. government, stayed out of the way.
CHAPTER 13
“Thank you, my friends,” Karpenko said. “From my heart, from my wife and daughter, and from my son, I thank you.”
He held up his vodka. At the long table before him, set up in the barn with wooden benches for seats, thirty-five men lifted theirs. “God bless you,” Karkpenko said.
The men dug into the food. It was a simple meal of brown bread, lard, bacon, and the remnants of everything else, but each place had been set with a candle, a napkin, and a stack of euros.
A last supper, I thought as I tore off a hunk of bread. I had eaten many last suppers. Some were in brocaded dining rooms with formal servants, but most were even more rudimentary than this: tins of sardines or whatever plants had been scrounged, a small group of men eating silently in some remote nowhere place in the hours before dawn. The Romans were wrong: Those about to die don’t salute you. They care only about each other.
The plan was a good one. I had gone through it step by step, first with Karpenko and Sirko, then with Maltov. We had laid it out on this very table, using blocks of woods and stacks of euros as cars and buildings, a plank for the runway, hay for the trees. I knew the colonel didn’t like it, so I had walked him through it carefully, noting the pros and cons, the possible evacuation routes and worst-case plans. I let him waver, change a few minor details, but it was too late for new ideas, and I wasn’t backing down. The more serious conversation was with Maltov, who would lead the assault. It was a dangerous job, but Maltov didn’t hesitate.
“I am Ukrainian,” he said with a meaningful glance at Sirko. “This is my fight.”
He was right. Everywhere I went, it was a local fight—over freedom and self-government, sure, but also over bread, and beer, and who got to fish which river, and how a society’s energy would be spent. Even the evacuation of an oligarch’s family, necessitated by a disagreement between rivals, was tied up in nationalism.
So I let Maltov call in the men on the assault team, in small groups, and explain their role in the operation. It was clear immediately that they were loyal to him, even more so than Karpenko; he must have brought them into the oligarch’s service. Which was good. Maltov would be their leader tonight; when things went wrong, which they would, the men would have to trust in him. And the more times he explained the operation—the positions, the timing, the intent—the more he owned the plan. I didn’t want Maltov to think about what to do when the enemy showed up. I needed him to know. Because I wouldn’t be there with him on the front line. My place, as always, was with the principal.
I sliced off a lump of bacon, shoved it into a bit of bread, and stuffed it in my mouth. Maltov had risen to speak, but when Greenlees bent over to translate, I waved him away. I knew what was being said, even though I didn’t understand the words. This is the moment. This is what we live for. Or maybe what we’re paid for, I didn’t know Maltov that well. Karpenko is a good man, he would say. He is our patron. Our future president. But this isn’t for one man, it is for Mother Ukraine, or whatever they called this place.
There was some pounding on the table, a few shouts. It was either false bravado, or false ideals. Death should be respected, not shouted down.
I slipped out into the night and looked up at the sky, always there, almost empty. It was cold and clear, with a quarter moon. Too much light.
But this was what we lived for. This was what we did. And we had to go now.
I pulled out a cigar, an old habit I’d picked up in the army. I liked the ritual before an op: the snip of the tip, the careful burn, the slow char of the edges. It reminded me of General McChrystal, my first and best commanding officer, and Miles, my right-hand man, and every Special Operations Forces commander thereafter, until the day I left the organized world behind and stepped out into this unknown.
I heard a noise behind me, in the direction of the house. I turned and saw a woman’s face framed in a window. She was holding a baby, so she must have been Karpenko’s wife, but she was younger than I had expected, with dark hair like Alie’s and the same penetrating eyes, the kind that hinted at other choices, other lives she might have lived. She didn’t look scared. She didn’t look any way at all. She just stared at me, not moving, and then, slowly, she disappeared.
In Kiev, Alie stared at Hargrove’s ceiling, wondering how she had ended up here. Not that it was a bad place, this warm bed, and this warm body. It was better than an orphanage in Burundi. Better than a refugee camp in South Sudan or a backwoods cabin in south Alabama, where the screens don’t fit the windows and the mosquitos are murder. It was better than a house in the suburbs, two kids, a yoga class, and a husband who either disappeared for months at a time or resented her for making him stay home and mow the lawn.
She got up and poured herself a drink. At least she was alive. At least she was here, where her efforts might matter.
Walk out, Alie, she thought. Walk now. You still have time.
The Wolf looked down at the map. He had marked five primary locations: two airfields, an industrial park, a large construction site, and the soccer stadium. The stadium was covered by a Chechen missile team. The airfields: too obvious. The industrial park and construction site: a problem.
Where was the helicopter? Where would they hop? Would they risk a short flight to a waiting plane?
“Reinforce the fire team, here,” the Wolf said to Ivan, pointing to the airport. Ivan’s men were shaky, but then again, they only needed to pin Karpenko down until the Chechens arrived. “Double the watch on the other. And from now until morning, no one is off duty. Everyone must be prepared.”
“You think they will go tonight?”
“I would,” the Wolf said, and he couldn’t think of a better reason to be ready than that.
And Winters? What was he doing, safe in Washington, with his $6,000 suits and two-hundred-year-old townhouse? What was he thinking, now that his plan was on the line?
I stubbed out my cigar and looked up at the stars. Forget Winters, I thought. On a mission, the world was an oyster, closed in on itself. Winters was nothing. For the next four hours, this place, and these men, and these guns, were the only things that mattered.
CHAPTER 14
Grigory Maltov sat in the passenger seat of the lead Range Rover, impatient, waiting for the signal. It was after 0130. Enough talking. Enough planning. He hated the plan: too clever. But he had gone along. In fact, when Karpenko balked, and “Colonel” Sirko sat quietly, crapping his fancy pants, he was the one who had spoken up.
He hoped the American appreciated it.
“It’s a go,” Greenlees said into his earpiece.
“Finally,” Maltov muttered in Ukranian, as he signaled the driver.
And then they were moving through the darkness, speeding down Karpenko’s private road, a line of twelve Range Rovers and, near the middle, the family’s two black armored Mercedes. They hit the main road and turned north. They were in blackout drive, all lights disconnected except the headlamps, which were taped with foil so that only a narrow beam shone on the road ahead. The drivers wore night-vision goggles, and they didn’t slow for turns. The convoy would be gone before anyone knew they were there.
Eight minutes to the airbase, the American had estimated. Maltov planned to make it in five.
Let them come, he thought. Let them bring everything.
He was happy to be out of the dacha, after days of cowering behind the iron
gate. Happy to have been given the most dangerous job. Happy to have been allowed to choose his own men. He had brought most of these men up from the mud with him. They were his brothers, in a way the Communists could never understand. They would follow no one else, at least not as they would follow him. The American understood that much at least.
“Twenty-five mikes.” It was Locke, counting minutes.
“Copy.” Maltov glanced at his watch: 0148. Twenty-five minutes until the plane was scheduled to arrive. Forty until it could be back in the air.
“0148,” Greenlees said on the headset.
Maltov rechecked his kit. He wore a pistol in a chest holster, but he preferred his AK-47, with two magazines taped together at opposite ends for faster reloading. The Kalashnikov had greater firepower and made more noise.
They passed into a forest, the trees thick along both sides of the road. He had been in a firefight before, but not as often as his men assumed. He wasn’t an enforcer. He had been the head of the local pipefitter’s union at the ironworks in Kramatorsk when Karpenko had taken over the factory. He had fought Karpenko’s thugs so brutishly that the boss had finally hired him. The other pipefitters weren’t happy—until he brought the best along. Like Romanyuk, in the last car. And Poplavko. And Pavlo, his driver, who he had known as a boy. The rest of the pipefitters never understood. Unionism wasn’t a path to better pay; it was a chance to impress the men who could give you a better job.
Now he was one of those men.
The entrance came quickly, with its small museum sign. Eleven vehicles, including the two family Mercedes, turned into the complex; three continued to the gravel road in the forest. Maltov leveled his AK-47. When the parked Škoda appeared, he fired. The Range Rovers behind him did the same as they passed. It was unfortunate. He knew Ivan, who led Belenko’s men. He probably knew the two dead men in the car. They were Ukrainian comrades. They drank together, when their bosses had been friends. But their boss was on the wrong side now.
“We’re here,” he said, when they reached the gate. It was 0159.
“Sixteen minutes,” Greenlees replied.
Maltov had argued with the American over the details, but the main components were never in dispute: two Land Rovers stayed to block the entrance from the main road, two stopped to guard the parking lot gate, the rest would form a ring around the parking lot. Locke had insisted on the exact placement of every man, including the ambush team on the entry road and the fire team in the forest. It was too much. Maltov had nodded along, but he no intention of fussing to that degree. These were his men. They were going to be taking fire. He trusted them to find the place where they felt most comfortable.
He stepped out of the Land Rover and stood in the middle of the parking lot, directing traffic. “Spread out,” he yelled, at three vehicles bunched too closely together.
“Block that landing strip access,” he yelled, as the family’s two armored Mercedes pulled onto the tarmac and edged under the fuselage of the museum’s Tu-160, a massive Soviet bomber. Even with the quarter moon, the plane dwarfed the two black cars, making them invisible.
“Set the ambush line there.” He pointed with his rifle as armed men poured out of the Land Rovers and found shelter in the tree line. He looked around: he had men on three sides of the parking lot, and the enemy would have to cross between them to get to the landing strip. The American was smart. He had to give him that.
He lifted both arms. “Here is the kill zone,” he yelled. “Wait for my shot. No one fires until I do.”
“Nine minutes,” Greenlees said in his ear.
“In position,” Maltov replied, as his men locked the gate and deployed spike strips, covering them in dirt to blend into the ground.
“Is the area secure?” It was Locke.
Maltov looked toward the five Land Rovers parked in front of the runway. Two men were sweeping the grass and tree line with infrared scopes. No sign of trouble.
“Secure,” he said.
The headset was quiet. It was 0206. Then: “Light up the landing strip.”
Maltov picked up his radio. “Svititi,” he said.
Two SUVs broke the line and went speeding down the runway, dropping flares every hundred meters or so, making the mothballed war strip come alive.
“Seven minutes,” he yelled to his men. “Positions!”
The men disappeared into the shadows, as Maltov slipped into the trees. The base grew silent. No movement. No lights but the parallel lines of red flares. He adjusted his night-vision goggles, as the two SUVs from the runway slipped back into line.
“Six minutes,” he said over the radio.
But they didn’t have six minutes. They had less than two before he heard automatic gunfire from the main road, and Pavlo yelling “They’re here!” into his radio, followed by more fire as the enemy’s vehicles passed into the ambush zone on the entry road.
“Wait for them,” Maltov yelled, settling behind his Kalashnikov and aiming at the kill zone as a four-by-four careened into sight. It was shot to hell and running scared, the driver not even slowing down as he crashed through the gate. The spikes shredded his tires, the car fishtailed, and then the world burst open, gunfire pouring into the parking lot from three directions, even as a second four-by-four careened through the gate and smashed into the first.
Maltov could feel the AK-47 jerking in his hand. He could hear guns firing around him, a thousand bullets a minute, a deafening roar. It was unreal, as if the bullets exploding into the cars weren’t from his gun, as if he wasn’t the one tearing apart the men inside.
The fusillade lasted a minute. Maybe two. He paused, watching for signs of life. He could hear the echo of shots being fired, down by the main road, off to his right, but with no other targets in sight, he fired the rest of his clip into the decimated four-by-fours.
He didn’t hear the diesel engine until he stopped to reload. He snapped in the fresh magazine and listened, wondering what was coming, until, Shit!? How? he thought, as an armored personnel carrier flattened the spike strip at fifty miles an hour and tore into the parking lot. It was a BTR-80, a tank on wheels with a heavy machine gun turret, firing as it came, splintering trees.
Maltov dove facedown in the dirt. By the time he looked up, a squad of soldiers wearing night-vision goggles were behind the BTR, firing in tight formation.
“They’re not Ukrainian,” someone shouted.
Maltov unloaded his magazine, half in a panic, the gun muzzle flashing green in his night-vision goggles. More SUVs were pouring in at high speed, swerving around the troop carrier and heading toward the landing strip. Maltov fired wildly, the whole tree line firing with him. An SUV took fire, flipped, and exploded. The SUV immediately behind crashed into it, sending bodies through the windshield.
“Don’t let them through,” Maltov shouted as he ducked again to reload, but nobody heard him over the gunfire. Another SUV was hit; it fishtailed and smashed into the concrete museum building. The car door opened, blood exploded, and a body fell to the ground.
The BTR lurched forward with a plume of diesel, its turret swinging in Maltov’s direction. “Down!” he shouted.
“Kill that thing!” someone yelled. He heard the fush of an RPG and saw it zoom over the BTR and explode a tree on the other side.
“Reload!”
The vehicle stopped. The turret turned in the direction of the RPG as two men with AK-47s popped out of hatches on the top. Yuri and Danka, his RPG team, evaporated in a cloud of blood and dirt, the BTR advancing now, firing as it came.
We’re being overrun, Maltov thought.
“Fall back,” he shouted, wishing he’d gone over the evac plan with his men, as the American had insisted, but it was too late. Most of his men were already running or dead, and to hell with the landing strip, he’d done what he could. He turned to run, but a barrage of well-aimed bullets were slashing toward him. He dropped to the ground, but the man beside him wasn’t as fast. Maltov heard the grunt, a thump, and the clat
tering of the AK-47. It was Poplavko, shot through the chest.
He couldn’t look away. He heard the zing of the bullets overhead and the shouting. Chechen. He didn’t know the language but he understood the rhythms. Belenko had hired Chechens. Maltov hated Chechens. Every Ukrainian did. But he couldn’t see them. All he could see was his old friend, three feet away, lying dead in the leaves.
He started firing, his Kalashnikov propped on a fallen branch, his finger holding down the trigger. He fired through his magazines, two hundred rounds, until they clicked empty. He could feel the heat off the barrel, his hands going numb, but it only made him more determined. He wouldn’t run. He would stand his ground. He didn’t notice the screaming in his ear until he reached for Poplavko’s last magazine.
“The bird is here. The bird is here. Detonate the C-4. Do you copy? Do you copy?”
He heard a plane, maybe, but then something exploded, a grenade, not close, but it knocked him on his ass.
“Detonate the C-4!” the voice was shouting in his earpiece, but he was paralyzed, on his back, there was nothing he could do.
Maltov tore off his night-vision goggles and stared at a sky cut by branches and leaves. He couldn’t believe it. The stars were gone. They were overrun. Belenko had come with more than twenty men, a lot more, and an armored troop carrier, and there was no way he could keep them busy, or keep them in this parking lot, any longer.
CHAPTER 15
The Wolf stepped out of his SUV as the machine gun cut into Karpenko’s men. He was surprised his old colonel had chosen this airstrip and staged an ambush rather than a classic security perimeter. Pretty cunning for a washed-out relic, and a perfect place for him to die. Here among the old Soviet bombers, in a provincial firefight between amateurs, the kind of men who dove for the nearest cover instead of the best, and emptied their magazines as quickly as possible rather than aim. The Wolf almost felt sorry for them.
