by Sean McFate
A few blocks later, she saw a mortared building, the front sloughing off like a rockslide. She passed a burned bus left in the street, the electric wires cut or blown off their supports. More shattered windows, more scorch marks, more metal hanging perilously off façades.
She pulled off the road near a makeshift memorial, dying flowers and a photo of a young man. The damage here was extensive. Three burned buses were flopped down on their bellies, their melted tires stolen. A block ahead, she saw a barricade, mostly tires held in place by barbed wire. The two men at the barricade were wearing skeleton ski masks.
She turned into a package store and bought a bottle of vodka in a brown plastic bag. It was the only open store on the block. She showed the photo of Locke as she paid. “Americain?” No. She left the man her card.
Outside, she turned back the way she had come and went down a side street, avoiding the barricade. There was a barricade on the next street as well. She saw the handle of a baseball bat sticking up from the pile—how strange, did they play baseball here?—and men in masks, mostly stocky, with bushy beards. They were wearing camouflage, as if they were in a forest, even though they were standing in front of a coffee shop. It seemed to be open. She wondered if the Cossacks paid for their coffee.
There was a small park, like the one Hargrove had charged across. There was a flagpole flying the colors of the Donetsk Republic and a statue of Stalin, which was surprising—she thought they had all been torn down decades ago. An armored troop carrier was sitting on the far edge, no doubt stolen by separatists from the Ukrainian army, and men were wandering around with guns. A young woman was sitting against Stalin’s pedestal, a sandwich in her hand, a handheld video camera beside her.
“Reporter?” Alie asked, handing her the brown paper bag.
“Doing my best,” she said. Alie had thought she was American, but she was European, Dutch or a Scandi probably, judging by the accent and glasses. “Who do you work for?”
“Independent,” Alie replied.
“The Independent?”
“No, I’m independent. I work for myself. I’ve had some stuff in the Guardian.” Three years ago.
“A liberal,” the woman said crookedly. She took a sip from the vodka bottle and grimaced, handing back the bag.
“I publish anywhere that will take me. What about you?”
“Vice.”
“The website?”
“YouTube channel. More traffic that way. We file dispatches under the heading Russian Roulette.”
Alie took a long pull and settled in beside her. “Anybody else around?”
“A couple Germans. One Brit. Locals, of course, they have a thriving press here. Professional and independent.” She smiled at the word. In this context an independent meant anyone with a cell phone and the ability to upload to the Internet.
“Any Americans?”
“You’re the first I’ve seen.”
Alie wasn’t surprised. The American news agencies never came this deep. They were barely even in Kiev.
She showed the girl the picture of Locke. “How about him?”
The kid shook her head no. “Is he in town?”
Alie took a drink. “Probably.” The bearded Cossacks were intimidating, but they weren’t even looking at her. It was tough to stay on alert. “If he is, he doesn’t want to be found. I figure if I make enough noise, show his picture around, he’ll have to find me.”
Silence me, in other words. It wasn’t much of a plan, and it had its risks, but it had worked before, in much worse places and with much worse men.
The young woman understood. Maybe. She didn’t ask any questions.
“It’s quiet,” Alie said, taking another drink.
“The fighting has moved on. The separatists have held this part of town for a week. The battle is out at the airport and the television tower.”
She had read about the Ukrainian army offensive at the airport. The one runway had been rendered useless by the first mortar attack last month. It was purely symbolism now. Not Locke’s type of gig.
“Television tower?” she said.
“I know,” the young woman said. “Crazy, right? But television still matters here.”
“Military or militias?”
“Official Ukrainian military,” she said. “We’re going this afternoon, if you want a lift.”
Alie drank and handed back the bottle. That didn’t sound like Locke’s spot, either. The U.S. wouldn’t send a merc for a television tower, would it? There must be something else. “What about local militia?”
“Which side?”
“Ukrainian.”
The vice reporter shrugged. “There’s the Donbas Battalion about twenty minutes away, if you have a car.”
Alie shook her head. “I want something here, in Kramatorsk.”
“Well, it’s mostly Donetsk.”
“What do you mean?”
“Most people are for the separatists. I’d say 75 percent.”
“Seriously?” Kiev was running 90 percent the other way, from what she could tell.
The young woman pointed across the street. “See the holes in that building? And the apartments with the front blown off? That was the Ukrainian military firing mortars toward these barricades.” Poor propaganda. Bad for winning hearts and minds. “I doubt the support lasts long, though. It’s going to get worse for these people before it gets better.”
The young woman was maybe twenty-two, younger than Hargrove, but she knew what she was talking about. The idea of an insurrection was easy to support, especially in a poor region, because there were always legitimate grievances, and nothing bad had happened yet, and the future was sunshine and lollipops. The reality of an insurrection was usually hell.
“If you want pro-Ukraine,” the kid said, pointing to her left, “take that road. Keep going until you see the flags. It’s about a kilometer.” She took a long drink of the vodka and wiped her mouth. “Or you could try that,” she said, pointing in the other direction.
Alie looked behind her. Smoke was rising from the west. “When did that happen?”
“About an hour ago.” The young woman smiled. She looked exhausted, filthy, but convinced this was her calling, because it was the greatest experience of her life. Alie envied her youth.
“Be careful,” the young woman said. “The separatists kidnapped a female reporter a few days ago. They let her go, untouched”—an emphasis on the word Alie understood too well—“but she was local, so it’s not necessarily a precedent.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve done this before.”
“In Ukraine?”
“In Africa.”
“I knew it,” the young woman said. “You’re Alie MacFarlane, right?”
Alie looked at her. Who was this girl?
“I saw you speak at a refugee conference in the Hague a few years back. You’re a legend. Sort of. To a few of us diehards anyway.” Okay kid, legend was nice. Quit qualifying it. “That refugee series, when you traveled with those women from Burundi to Bosaso. . . . It’s obscure, sure. You have to take a deep dive to find it. But that’s where the good stuff is, right? Down in the depths.”
It’s not down there to be cool, Alie thought. It’s down there because I couldn’t verify it. Because I didn’t organize my sources, some of whom might have killed me. Because I lost my subjects and lost the ending and didn’t bring it home with a bang.
“That series was brilliant,” the young woman continued. “I read it when I was a junior in upper school. It changed my life.”
That series was a failure, in every way.
“How is Magdelena?” The young woman sat up even straighter. “Is she here? In Ukraine?”
Alie felt the lump in her throat. She couldn’t say it. Magdelena is missing. It hurt for her to even think it: Magdelena is almost surely dead.
“I’m working on a bigger story,” Alie said, and she wished she hadn’t. Why did she need to impress this kid?
“About Ukraine?”
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“Nobody cares about Ukraine. This is about the USA.”
She knocked back another gulp of vodka, then handed the young woman the last of the bottle. She felt tired. “I’m going to check on that smoke,” she said.
It wasn’t even a decision. At this point in her life, what else could she do?
CHAPTER 38
The Wolf stood outside the smoking building, staring at the back end of the garbage truck, the only part not buried in the wall. There were policemen on the scene, but they seemed mostly intent on extricating the stolen city property and getting it back on duty.
It’s a tank, he thought, as he stared at the hard metal frame.
“It’s a miracle no one was killed,” an older man was saying.
It’s not a miracle, the Wolf thought. It was intentional.
Eight wounded, none dead. It would have been easier to wipe them out. One incendiary device, fired or planted. Boom. Nothing. No worries, no risk. Killing people was the simplest act in modern warfare, if you simply wanted them dead. That was why the world had spent the last hundred years figuring out how to make better munitions. No, this was specialized, like a laser-guided missile.
“They were pro-Russians,” the old man is saying. “They were wearing separatist uniforms.”
Unlikely, the Wolf thought. This was a professional team. The combination of brutality and precision. The spectacle of the garbage truck and the staged “clumsiness” of the shooting. They missed from point-blank range! No, they didn’t. This was a message.
Or a distraction.
“Why here?” the old man was lamenting to no one in particular, or maybe to the Wolf, who wouldn’t even turn toward him. “Why in my building?”
Good question, old man, the Wolf thought.
He walked around the side of the building. Witnesses had seen six men run this way. They had been wearing gas masks, the old-fashioned Soviet kind with the greenish-brown face cover and the alien-like breathing hose. Masks that could be sourced locally, and were ghoulish enough to distract from any other details.
Maybe they were separatists. Maybe. But he didn’t know anyone else at his level working the area.
He thought of the Ukrainian. Maltov. He had tracked the man to Kramatorsk, where his henchmen had dropped him off for the night. Somehow, he had slipped out during the night. The safe house turned out to be his mother’s apartment. Nice lady. Excellent blinis. Far too trusting for this day and age.
Karpenko was here, and so was his hired team. There were too many coincidences to think otherwise. But why? What was their objective in this nothing town?
The Wolf walked the side street, checking the surroundings. He walked to the front of the building. A gas facility was five hundred meters away, its pipework visible behind the surrounding walls and two low houses. The guards were wearing militia uniforms, but the Wolf knew them immediately for Russian Spetsnaz. He had worked with them for decades, all the way back to Afghanistan. They had stormed the Crimean parliament, in a similar disguise. They were the tip of the spear. The pressure point . . .
“Americain?” he heard someone say.
“No, no.” It was the same old man, muttering, still in his pajama bottoms, the Wolf noticed, at four in the afternoon.
“Americain?” the foreign woman said, turning to him and holding out her phone for him to see.
CHAPTER 39
“Shit,” I said, as I watched the surveillance feed of the crowd outside the club.
“What?” Miles said, appearing at my shoulder.
In America, there would have been a crowd of news crews and gawkers. Here, two months into the street fighting, there was already a weary acceptance. If the insurrection lasted another year, this kind of tragedy would be so commonplace, even this sparse crowd wouldn’t bother.
I pointed to Alie.
“An American.” Miles said, leaning in. “What’s she doing? Charro, can we get a closer look?”
The camera zoomed in, but I didn’t need to see what was on her cell phone. I knew it had something to do with me. Why else would she be in Kramatorsk?
“She’s looking for me,” I said.
Miles looked up, confused. I could tell he was trying to put this together.
“You know this woman,” Karpenko said. It didn’t sound like a question. For a boss, he had a way of slipping into the edges of conversations. Dangerous.
“From an old job,” I muttered, glancing at Miles, wondering if he remembered her from Burundi. It had been ten years, after all. “I ran into her in Kiev four days ago. She knows what I do.”
“How does she know you’re here?”
Exactly what I was wondering. “I don’t know,” I admitted, “but I think we need to find out.”
Miles was shaking his head no. I tried to turn away, but he pulled me aside. “Is that who I think it is?” he hissed. “The white girl from Burundi?”
“Half white,” I said.
“The one you risked everything for at Gatumba?” I knew by everything, he really meant everything: the mission, the country, thousands of lives, his respect. He hadn’t forgotten.
“She’s a reporter,” I said. “We can’t leave her on the street.”
“She’s an emotional attachment,” he snapped. “You have to let her go. We’ve already risked too much.”
He was right. The operation at the club looked like a success, at least in terms of spooking the local thugs back into their holes. But if it brought too much attention, if it spiraled into other loose ends I needed to tie up . . .
“Mission focus,” Miles said, his arm on my shoulder, his head close so no one else could hear. “I don’t care about your past. That’s over. You know that.”
It should have been over. I promise, Miles, I thought it was.
“She’s smart, Miles. She’s making noise. She knows I can’t have my picture shown around.”
“Ten hours,” he said. “And we’re done. We’re out of here.”
But it wasn’t done. And I wasn’t out.
“Actioning her isn’t personal,” I said.
“It isn’t professional,” Miles countered with bite. “We’re warriors, Locke. We’re here for a mission. We don’t do damsels in distress.”
She wasn’t a damsel, I wanted to say. And she wasn’t in distress.
“I determine the mission parameters,” I said, turning to the computer monitor to let him know this discussion was over. Miles was my NCO, my second, but I was still the unit commander.
Miles didn’t like it, but he took it. Like a professional. I almost turned to say something to him, to say I appreciated his support and his trust, not in a dickish way, but sincerely, because it really did mean everything to me.
But I didn’t. I let it go. I leaned in toward the monitor, watching my old love show her cell phone to a stream of Ukrainian men. Are you thinking about opsec, Locke? I asked myself. Is this about maintaining secrecy?
Or is it about Alie?
The Wolf stepped into the shadows, where he could keep an eye on the attractive American without being seen. You never knew, after all, who was watching. He took out his cell phone. One of his Chechens answered.
“He is here. Yes. Karpenko. Kramatorsk. It’s a town. No. With a gas facility.” The Wolf looked at his watch, a Soviet military model he had been wearing since Afghanistan. It was 1923. “Yes. Fine. The whole million. For as many as you can bring, but only if you can get them here by midnight.”
The Wolf hung up. He would give the Chechens the entire FSB million-dollar bounty on Karpenko’s head, assuming the oligarch was actually in Kramatorsk. Karpenko didn’t concern him, as long as it got the Chechen hunter-killers here.
He wanted the American special forces team, the one that had outmanuevered him in Poltava. He wanted the reward for them, and for proof of an American invasion, and knew it could set him up for life.
And revenge? Well . . . there was nothing wrong with that, either. Once a mercenary reached the age of the Wolf, every
thing felt like revenge for something.
CHAPTER 40
Now this is a room, Brad Winters thought, as he eased into a large leather chair next to a massive fireplace mantel, probably Renaissance Venetian. Across from him was a huge carved desk from the 1700s with the ancient crest of England carved into its front. An old-fashioned brown globe in a ponderous metal stand sat nearby. The walls were dark red silk damask, with old paintings hung by wire from the ornate crown molding. The ceiling was coffered, with gold leaf detailing; palatial Persian carpets overlapped to cover the floor. The leather club couch was so deep you could knife a wayward assistant (or willing secretary) without disturbing the adjacent office.
The building, like the Special Forces Club, was a row house, but not the American kind, a hundred years old and built for the upper middle class. In the London neighborhood of Belgravia, the stone buildings were three hundred years old and built by those in the process of conquering the world. Nothing in the New World could compare. This, after all, was the real thing: the seat of Empire. It was what the inhabitants of Washington, DC, aspire to, and what New York hedge fund managers had never understood. To them, the world was now. How can I make unfathomable money, and spend unfathomable money, before I die? In America, three months was a window.
For these men, three decades was a first step. They were connected to power, and wielded power, in ways Winters could only imagine. Their bank was not listed in any phone directory; it’s true holdings not recorded in any database. Most of its clients’ wealth was older than the desk. If you worked here, you thought in generations and centuries, not quarterly reports.
He had stepped out of the gutter, Winters felt, when he started to think that way, too. But he had no illusions. He was little more than a curiosity here, an ambitious nouveaux man on the rise. Still . . . he was here.
“Mr. Winters,” a man said, extending his hand as he entered the room.
“Mr. Cavendish,” Winters said. The great irony, he supposed, was that Eastern European oligarchs, who made American hedge fund managers seem like long-term thinkers, were now these bankers’ richest clients, because they were now the richest men in England. It was through Karpenko, in fact, that Winters had entered their circle, albeit on the fringe. That was how he knew Ukraine mattered: because these men cared.
