by Sean McFate
“That’s not what the international community says.”
“International community. What does that mean? The West? What is the West, in the face of hundreds of years of history?”
“What about the will of the people?”
Gorelov scoffed. “The people want to be Russian. That is why they fight.”
“They want to be free.”
Gorelov waved the suggestion away. He drank vodka, then coffee, then dragged on his cigarette. One of his phones buzzed. He ignored it. “They want to be happy. They want to be free of this violence brought on by the meddling of the West.”
“The West didn’t create the crisis.”
“But you believe you can exploit it.”
“I know I can,” Winters said, switching to the first person.
Gorelov laughed, one of the least joyous sounds Winters had ever heard. It sounded like a cat choking on a brick of coal. “You think a businessman,” the Russian said with disgust, “can face down the greatest nation on earth.”
That’s our phrase buddy, Winters thought, and no kleptocratic petrostate is going to steal it. But he wasn’t offended. He was intrigued. It was going to be brass balls and bullshit, he could see that. No wonder France buckled like a Peugeot under a tractor-trailer when Putin dared them to intervene.
“It’s not a matter of facing down,” Winters said. “This isn’t intimidation. I plan to beat you at your own game.”
“And what game is that?”
“Military exploitation.”
Gorelov grunted, or maybe it was another laugh. “I am a bureaucrat, Mr. Winters.”
Good to know, Winters thought. “And I’m a military man, with a private army.”
The Russian glanced at Everly and frowned. This was new. Winters saw his advantage and moved in, cornering the Russian with his eyes.
“For years, you have counted on our passivity,” he said. “On our refusal to meet you with force. No please, don’t insult me by objecting, you know it’s true. You support our enemies—Iran, Syria, even Afghanistan—in order to grind us down, to make our Deep State interests weary of war. But I am different, Mr. Gorelov. I feast on war. Conflict is my business, and business is booming. But it can be better. My dream, unlike the men you bully, isn’t peace. It is war. The type that grinds you back, the way you have subdued Georgia and Chechnya, the way you will try to grind down Ukraine. In other words, I am what you fear most, without knowing it. I am a Putin of the West.”
Gorelov visibly recoiled, as Winters knew he would. “You are no Putin,” he grunted.
“No. I am not a monster.”
Gorelov pounded the table, making his vodka glass rock. He curled his hand around a cellphone, his weapon of choice. “You insult me, Mr. Winters.”
Winters smiled. He had hit the big man where it hurt. At this level, every Russian worked for the state, and that meant Vladimir Putin, because in Russia, Putin was the state. He had reined in the oligarchs with ex-KGB muscle and crushed all political opposition. If you opposed him you died, went to prison, or, if you were lucky, into exile. If you worked with him, he gave you whole cities or entire segments of Russia’s economy, bringing unfathomable wealth and power. It was institutionalized mafia—Nigeria with nukes and snow. It wasn’t much different, in all honesty, from how the country had been ruled for the last thousand years, except for brief interludes from 1917 to 1921, and most of the 1990s. At those points, the country was chaos.
Putin created his order, Winters had to admit, as he watched the Russian fume. Too bad he was such a shit.
“Don’t worry,” Winters said, when he’d stretched out the silence and Gorelov was sufficiently rattled, “I am not merely talking. I will show you how like Vladimirivich”—he used the honorific for Putin, a serious breach of etiquette for outsiders—“I truly am.”
“You’re going to attack Ukraine,” Gorelov snorted.
“Only the parts you want.”
“We’ll stop you.”
“At what cost?”
“It doesn’t matter the cost,” Gorelov said smugly, “because we control it all, and the Russian people are with us. The Russian people, the ones you call Ukrainians, will never accept you. They will curse your name.”
“Do you know who I am?” Winters said smoothly.
“I know everyone, Mr. Winters,” Gorelov said, leaning forward. He looked ready to bite. “And I have never heard of you.”
“And the Ukrainians won’t either, Mr. Gorelov. Even when my man is king of Kiev.”
Gorelov blinked. He sat back in his chair, his hand cradling a cell phone. He hadn’t considered the power of anonymity as a choice, and now it was his turn to be thrown off balance, to think, as Winters had only minutes before: who is this man?
CHAPTER 50
I grabbed my SCAR and rolled into position. Miles was laying prone a few feet away, his Bushmaster ACR up and aimed, the safety unlocked. I dropped my weapon to my side and kicked out of my sleeping bag beside him.
“There’s someone at the gate,” Miles said. I looked at my watch: 0352. I’d lost only a few minutes of sleep.
“Ukrainian?”
Miles shook his head. “He looks homeless, but he’s speaking English. Yelling in English, actually.”
“Grab him.”
“We already have. There will be blood.”
“Good,” I said as I slipped on the earpiece of my headset. From the way Miles was looking at me, I knew he was worried about my breakdown with Alie. Poor form, and not just in front of the troops. As the old commercial said, never sweat. “Mission focus,” I assured him, as I strapped on my pistols.
“Warrior spirit,” Miles said, fist thumping his chest. Meaning: For the mission, for your brothers. Get your head on straight.
The prisoner looked terrible. Boon had zip-cuffed his hands in front of him, and he’d taken a few “shut the fuck up” punches to the face, but I doubted he’d looked much better when he arrived. He had a crusted bandage circling his head, half-covering one eye, and dried blood on his clothes. His hair was matted from blood and sweat. He didn’t look like a threat, unless he was rabid. But he was here, and that was dangerous.
“Who are you?” I said.
“CIA.”
“What does that mean?”
“Central Intelligence, Kiev, Operations Officer Chad Hargrove.” Like he was reading off a dog tag. Was this what they taught at the Farm these days?
“How did you get here, Hargrove?”
“Stole a car. From Jessup.”
“You parked on the road?” Miles exclaimed in disbelief.
The man nodded. He didn’t seem to understand the implication of the highly visible car. I punched him in the face, for his stupidity. He took it pretty well.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
“Looking for Alie.”
Miles glanced at me, but he didn’t need to worry. Mission focus. “Who is Alie?”
“Alie MacFarlane.” The man looked around. Wildman kneed him in the back of the leg. He buckled. No looking around, asshole. Eyes front.
“Who is Alie MacFarlane?” I said, my voice rising. This was a serious problem. This was becoming a compromised operation an hour short of the assault.
Nothing.
“Why the fuck are you here?” I yelled, resisting the urge to punch him again.
He looked up. “Are you Locke? The mercenary? She was looking for you.”
I drew my pistol. I never drew my pistol unless I planned to use it.
“Don’t,” Miles said, just as Alie’s “Shit” echoed through the warehouse. She was coming out of the shadows, Karpenko beside her. They were probably best friends by now.
“Alie,” Hargrove muttered with relief.
“What the hell happened?” she said, taking in the bandages.
“Jumped. By Russians . . .”
“What the hell?” I said, lowering my weapon. “Alie, what is going on?”
I watched as she walked towar
d us, everyone on edge. She knelt beside the prisoner. He looked up at her tenderly. Thankfully. He was missing a tooth, a recent loss judging by the amount of blood on his gums, but he was no Wildman. “Let him go,” she said.
I laughed, but nothing about this was funny.
“He’s a CIA officer, Locke.” She was speaking softly, as if that would make her sound more serious. “He’s a United States government employee.”
“Don’t care.”
“He’s been injured.”
“Don’t care.”
“He’s a kid.” She looked at me. I looked at the so-called CIA officer. She was right; he was young, maybe midtwenties. And he was scared.
“He’s not here on Company business,” she said, meaning the old company, the CIA. “He was just trying to find me. Make sure I was safe.”
“Why?”
“I ditched him.”
He was in love with her. I could see it in his face. “You used him.”
Alie frowned. The truth hurt. “Would it help if I said yes?”
No, it wouldn’t.
I turned back to the kid. “Is there anybody else?”
He took his time, probably contemplating his odds, or maybe his relationship with Alie. Not as easy as you thought, is it?
I punched him again, right in his Aryan nose. “Is anybody else coming?”
He shook his head no. I could tell he had settled on the truth.
“Does anybody else know you are here?”
“I’m an American,” he said. “I’m on your side.”
It doesn’t work like that, asshole. “Does anyone else know you are here?”
He hesitated, then sadly: “No.”
I put the gun to his head. “How did you know we were here?”
This was the big one, but Hargrove wasn’t answering. He was a coward who hoped his silence made him a hero. I turned to Alie and put the gun to her head. “How the fuck did you know we were here?”
“I told him.”
I turned. It was Greenlees, of course it was Greenlees, looking more pathetic than usual, looking exactly, in fact, like the man he was: a relic. If this was a le Carré novel, he’d be the hero, but that was what had gotten him in trouble. Too much faith in the power of the past.
“I called for an evac,” Greenlees said. “That first morning. After I was punched.” He glanced at Karpenko, as if to apologize. To Karpenko. Not to us.
“You gave up our position over a punch?”
He shook his head. It wasn’t the punch, I could see that, but Greenlees knew that didn’t matter, because right now I didn’t give a fuck.
“I know that kid,” Greenlees said. “He’s a newbie, still on a leash and answering phones for the Deputy Chief of Station. He must have intercepted my radio call—”
“I never told anyone,” the kid said frantically. He was starting to get it now. “Except Alie, I swear. I never told Baker.”
Who is Baker? I wanted to scream. Who the fuck is Baker?
Miles must have sensed my frustration. “You don’t want to shoot him,” he said calmly.
The hell I didn’t. Hargrove was young, a hell of a lot younger than Alie. Maybe he was just a kid in over his head, in love with an older woman, the possibility of an adventure, an ideal. But he was a kid who knew my name.
“Gag him.” I looked around. “Attach him to that pipe,” I said, pointing to the far end of the warehouse. “If he gives you any problems, kill him. We’ll leave the body.” Let the CIA sort it with the Russians.
“Tom,” Alie started. Since when did she think she could use my first name?
“Don’t worry, Alie, you can cut him out when we’re gone. If you can find a strong enough blade.”
I could see Greenlees slump. He’d mined harbors in Central America; he knew the game. The kid was resigned. Alie was going to fight, I could see that in her face, even before she grabbed me.
“Tom,” she said quietly, really looking me in the eye for the first time, or at least for the first time since that night in Burundi when we’d fallen in love.
And that was when my world exploded.
My ears pressurized. Then I felt the shock wave, like a physical assault. Time stopped, and I saw the windows above me blowing inward, glass shards and debris hanging in the air. I sensed, but didn’t hear, the crack of the explosion, and then time caught up with the RPG, and the glass shattered against the far wall.
Instinctively, I pushed Alie down and rolled flat, groping for my weapon. My vision was blurry, my breathing hard in my ears.
Two more RPGs slammed through the front wall, the concrete exploding toward me, and I buried my head in the floor as the shock waves passed above me.
Another rocket came through the breach, hissing across the factory and blowing out a chunk of the back wall, leaving a thick smoke trail hanging in the middle of the room.
My senses came back.
“Cover!” I heard Miles shout, as Boon vaulted from the catwalk.
Two grenades hurtled through the smoke into the center of the warehouse. I heard a clink clink, as they bounced off the concrete floor a few meters away. I pushed Alie behind our makeshift barricade and leapt on top of her. Successive blasts shook the building, and automatic gunfire raked the room, shredding the computer workstation and exploding a box of smoke grenades.
It had only been seconds since the windows blew out, but I’d already lost Miles in the smoke. I’d lost most of the team. Half the front wall was gone, sections of the ceiling were collapsing, but the building was holding together. This was a commando raid: fast and vicious. Survive the first minute, I thought, as the first man leapt through the blasted wall. Must. Survive.
“Tangos East wall!” I shouted into my headset, as a second man leapt a pile of shattered concrete, moving like a pro.
I glanced at Alie, crouched beside me. Behind her sat Hargrove, his eyes wide in terror. A few feet away I saw a body on the ground. It was Greenlees. It looked like he’d taken one in the head.
Get off the X, I thought. Escape the ambush zone.
“Suppressing fire,” I yelled. “Everyone out.”
Alie nodded, but I wasn’t talking to her, I was talking to the team. They were already at it, laying down a wall of lead and tossing grenades, adding to the chaos. I swiveled. A figure rose on my right—Boon, I think—and headed toward the back. A third man appeared through the hole in the front wall. I leveled my SCAR, acquired the target in my sight picture, exhaled, and squeezed the trigger twice. Target down.
I took my time, finding the space in the fury of my team’s massive counterbarrage. Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. I melted behind a pile of metal scrap and slowed my breathing, steadying my nerves. Buddha calm. My SCAR was a precision weapon, unlike their AK-47s, and it shot 7.62 mm body-armor-piercing rounds. So I waited for a silhouette, and dropped it with a double shot, center of mass. Two more came through the crumbling wall, and I took them down, buying time for my team. The goal was to withstand the first wave of an assault, but this first wave was withering.
“Fall back,” I barked, this time at Alie, but she wasn’t there, only Greenlees, still dead.
I turned back to the attack, as the familiar smell of gunpowder filled the factory. The Škoda was on fire. My barrel was hot from too many rounds, making precision shooting difficult, so I flipped to automatic and fired three-round bursts. There were plenty of targets now, but most were behind cover. I tossed a grenade toward the breach point and ducked behind the barricade to reload, wishing I’d taken the time to build it right, as Charro had suggested.
Two more explosions rocked the building and put me on my ass. The first was an RPG. The second was the Škoda’s gas tank. I looked up. Half the roof was blown out. The corner of the warehouse had collapsed. I could see the sky through the smoke, with only one blinking star, maybe a planet out there on the edge. I followed the cracks along the metal ceiling. It was safe. For now. I turned to fire again, as two figures rose from our side of the ba
rricade and started to run. I spotted the Ukrainians on the left. Sirko was laying down impressive lead, holding his field of fire, but Karpenko was still crouched beside him. He should have fallen back.
Too bad. Too late now.
I shot another magazine on semiauto as two hostiles jumped the barricade. Someone—Charro—was in hand-to-hand combat. I ran without thinking, leapt into the void, and plunged my knife into the enemy’s back, slamming him to the ground. Charro was under him, struggling, but my knife was an eight-inch blade; it didn’t penetrate all the way through the chest cavity.
I pulled out the knife and rolled off into firing position, as Charro rolled the dead man onto his back. We locked eyes, he nodded, and then, as he popped into a firing position, a bullet ripped into his throat, and right out the back through Mother Mary’s tattooed hands.
“Watch out,” someone yelled.
A gunburst, close enough to shatter my hearing, and a man fell dead on top of me. I could hear the bullets whistling over me from both directions, and I knew I was in no-man’s-land, so kept my head down. I could see hostiles—Russians? Spetsnaz?—struggling to hold their positions. Get up. Get up now, I thought. Move to the evac route. And then, just as I was about to run, a figure leapt up and sprinted through the fire. It was the pilot, racing for the helicopter. What was he doing? Where did he think he was going, up through the hole in the ceiling?
Time slowed, as the pilot loped across the last five meters, leapt over a pile of debris, and exploded. It was as if the door handle had been rigged, but it was an RPG, screaming in from beyond the breach, hitting the helicopter and hurling body parts and aluminum through the back wall a moment before the concussion caught up with the carnage and knocked everyone down.
“Pop smoke!” I heard Miles shout over the headset, as three smoke grenades plunked onto the factory floor, filling the warehouse with colored smoke. I crouch-ran for the back door, following someone—Reynolds—to the evac route. We passed Boon, hunkered behind a broken smelter, and laid down suppressing fire while Reynolds kicked the exit door at a full run, almost taking it off its hinges, and burst out into the open space beyond.
