Scorpion: A Covert Ops Novel (Second Edition)

by Ross Sidor

  “I haven’t spoken to Culler since Tajikistan, before Ayni.”

  Simple lies were always the easiest to make convincing, and the fact that Avery wasn’t trying to deny working for Culler wouldn’t be lost on Cramer.

  Cramer nodded thoughtfully and asked, “And the convoy?”

  Avery knew what Cramer was thinking. If Langley had taken out Mullah Arzad’s trucks, then that indicated Avery had been in contact with Culler after the Ayni op, which meant Avery could have reported seeing Cramer at the airfield. Cramer knew from the data on the USB drive that the Taliban’s processing facility wasn’t compromised. He was mostly worried about whether he was about to become the subject of an international manhunt.

  “I had SAD backup in Tajikistan. We tracked the convoy from Ayni and hit it near the border. We didn’t know about the weapons until after, when we searched the trucks, though we had our suspicions. The target was Arzad.”

  Cramer considered this. The answer satisfied him.

  “Don’t worry, Bob. Your secret’s still safe. No one back home has any clue that you’re a fucking traitor. Far as they’re concerned, you’re another star on the Memorial Wall, and you’ll be forgotten within a couple weeks.”

  “Traitor?” Cramer, outraged, as if he couldn’t believe someone would have the audacity to apply that label to him, kicked Avery again, this time low in the stomach. Avery doubled over on the floor, gasping for breath. “I devoted ten years of my life to fighting their dirty little war in Afghanistan, because I believed in it, and I thought they did, too. After New York and the Pentagon were hit, I thought they’d allow us to finally do what was necessary to protect the nation, but I suppose a few years are the extent of their resolve. They’re willing to negotiate with the Taliban and hand that place back over to the terrorists, fine. I’m just expediting the process and forcing them to confront their failure.”

  “Yeah, sure, and how much money are you earning in the process?”

  “Don’t give me that shit,” Cramer snapped. “You’re the goddamned sell-out, Avery. How many friends did you lose in Afghanistan? I’m a traitor? Who did I betray? These are the same fuckers who were willing to cut you off and leave you to die in Waziristan. You’d have died on that mountain, if I hadn’t broken the rules and intervened to bring your ungrateful ass out. But you’ll continue taking their money and doing what they tell you. You’re so goddamned pathetic.”

  “Fuck you and your excuses, Bob,” Avery said. “We’re just grunts. We get shit, and we do what we’re told. But you, you’re a goddamned Russian agent. You deal in drugs and weapons with terrorists in exchange for money. How many Americans are going to die because of you?”

  “How many Americans died because of inept presidents and senators? Over two thousand in Afghanistan alone. I’m not the traitor. Washington betrayed the trust of every single man and woman they sent to these hellholes. They’re as much to blame for the lives lost and families destroyed as the Taliban are.”

  “Maybe try telling that to Wilkes.” Avery flinched and braced himself for another kick, but it never came. “But you didn’t pull the trigger in Khorugh, did you? That was your friend over there.” Avery shifted his eyes onto the man with the spider tattoo. “Speaking of which, didn’t I fucking kill you already?”

  Nearly pushing Cramer out of the way, Ruslan Kheda lost all control. His eyes flared. He pounced forward and kicked the steel tip of his boot into Avery’s ribs, again and again, until Cramer finally placed a restraining hand on his shoulder. The Chechen relented, breathing heavily and balling his hands into tight fists in an effort to control his temper. He backed off, to prevent himself from killing Avery right then and there.

  “You’re nothing special, Bob,” Avery said between gasps for air. Each breath was cut short by the pain in the side of his chest.“Frame it however you like, but the reality is you sold out to the Russians and the Taliban for some fucking drug money, and that’s how everyone will remember you. The truth will come out at some point. It always does.”

  Cramer’s tone became softer. “You know, I’d offer you a cut if I thought you’d take it. You could get away from that little shithole shack of yours in Virginia. But that’s not your style, is it? You hate them as much as I do, but you’ll continue taking their shit jobs and their shit money. What the hell does that make you? I don’t understand it. Too goddamned stubborn and sticking to your own principals, whatever those are. You just don’t let shit go, do you?”

  Avery didn’t say a word. He grew tired of this. If they were going to kill him, he wanted them to get it over with already. The man standing over him now wasn’t the same man he’d known in Afghanistan. Something within Cramer had snapped or collapsed, and Avery didn’t want to listen to his rants any longer.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Cramer shook his head again. “You know, I do miss the old days, when you and I were fighting the war on the same side, but I suppose nothing ever stays the same. I wish I could say I can at least make it easy on you, but I’m going to turn you over to my friend here.” He indicated the big Chechen standing behind him. “And he sure as hell is not about to go easy on you. Ruslan, he’s all yours, but the bodies get dumped over the Caspian. I reckon that gives you about five hours, so make the most of it. I’ll see you around, Avery.”

  Cramer walked away and didn’t look back.

  The next thing Avery experienced was Ruslan Kheda’s boot against his chin, returning him to unconsciousness.

  ___

  When Avery came to several minutes later, his head was spinning and the wide aircraft doors were open, filling the hangar with warm sunlight and a cool, late afternoon breeze. Cramer was nowhere in sight, but Ruslan Kheda was present, along with several Russians standing about. Kheda glanced in Avery’s direction, noting that he was awake and stirring, and looked away. Avery followed Kheda’s line of sight to Aleksa, still on the floor.

  Kheda walked over to her, grabbed a handful of her hair, and hauled her onto her feet. He gave her a shove, directing her toward the open hangar doors. Handcuffs secured her hands behind her back, too, but Avery thought she looked to be in far better shape than he was at the moment.

  The An-22 Antonov sat on the apron in front of the hangar, with the cargo bay’s aft ramp lowered beneath the protruding twin-tail. Avery recognized the registration number from Ayni. A dozen meters away, there was an Ilyushin in GlobeEx livery and the trailer truck from the Sosny storage site. There were also men in Russian army uniforms near the Ilyushin, officers.

  Two Russians in civilian clothing grabbed onto Avery by each arm and effortlessly picked him up, giving no consideration to his injuries. His damaged rib released new waves of pain coursing through his side and chest. Combined with the dizziness and nausea, he could barely maintain his balance, let alone walk in a straight line.

  He must have stood around too long, because one Russian punched him hard in the gut and screamed something he didn’t understand in his face. Avery got the message and started walking, grimacing against the pain. After several staggering steps, between which he nearly fell over, he regained his sense balance and managed to stay upright and carry his weight outside the hangar.

  The sunlight forced him to avert his glare down at the tarmac, but the warmth felt good, comforting. The stench of burnt jet fuel and hydraulic fluid carried to his nose, and he heard the low hum of idle jet engines and the sound of grinding metal, and then a forklift rolled away from the Antonov, having just deposited its load, while the trailer truck backed into the Illyushin’s wide bay.

  Fifteen yards ahead, Avery watched Kheda’s men drag Aleksa up the Antonov’s ramp. At the top, she stopped and turned around, looking out for him. Then her escort shoved her inside, and they disappeared into the back of the mammoth jet.

  Avery weighed his options. Like someone being abducted and forced into the kidnapper’s car, the last thing he wanted was to board that plane. His instincts screamed at him to do something, anything, to resist going
aboard. In the air and outnumbered, he’d be absolutely powerless. Not that there was much he could do now. Sure, he could put up a limited fight, which would probably result with them beating the shit out of him some more and physically dragging him aboard. That is if they didn’t kill him outright. It’s not like the Belarusian police would give a shit if the Russians dropped him right here on the tarmac. Or he could make a run for it and get caught by the police or Litvin’s security.

  Hell, he’d rather be dead than spend the rest of his life in a Belarusian prison anyway. For now, boarding the plane at least briefly prolonged his life expectancy, so in the interests of survival, he went with that. Plus Aleksa was already onboard, and he didn’t want to abandon her. After dragging her into this, he thought she should at least not have to die alone.

  Resignedly, Avery staggered up the steep incline of the ramp and into the cargo bay. The cavernous space was sufficiently large to accommodate as many as four army tanks or something as big as a Mi-24 gunship. All gray and white, with halogen lights shining brightly overhead, the cargo bay had a sterile, clinical look. A hooked crane hung from a rail system that ran the length of the ceiling, and the air felt cold and metallic.

  Aleksa sat on the floor, her back against the fuselage’s aluminum skin. Getting his first close look at her, he saw that she suffered a bruised eye, plus the scrape on her forehead where she’d hit the street, but she was able to keep her head up and otherwise didn’t look like she’d been hurt too badly.

  Avery stumbled over to her. He squeezed his abs and legs tight, to keep the strain off his damaged ribs, while he carefully lowered his weight to the floor next to her. His head dropped forward, and he shut his eyes, ready to pass out again. He heard voices speaking Russian in the background and the steady whine of turboprop engines, sounding distant and muffled. He thought he heard Aleksa say something, but lifting his head and responding required energy he no longer possessed.

  He felt so tired. Within seconds, he already felt himself drifting away. He needed just a few minutes to shut down and re-charge, get his head together.

  But Aleksa wasn’t going to give him the opportunity. She prodded him with her shoulder and said, “Look.”

  Avery painfully opened his eye.

  Directly across from them, five steel, heavy-duty cylindrical containers, light blue in color, lay stacked on their sides, each row becoming smaller from the base up, creating a pyramid. There were two such pyramids. Each container was about five feet long, with maybe a two foot diameter, with the end caps bolted on. Chains and cargo netting stretched taught secured them in place to prevent them from rolling. Avery couldn’t make out the black Belarusian labels and Cyrillic writing on the end-caps, but the international radioactive materials trefoil symbol was immediately recognizable.

  “It’s not safe to be this near,” Aleksa said.

  The Russians didn’t seem concerned about exposure. Avery thought the cylinders would be sufficiently insulated to contain the radiation. Inside each container would be another container in which the HEU pellets were kept, with o-rings on the end creating a tight seal. Inside, a layer of fiberboard and plywood separated the two containers. But it didn’t matter. They weren’t going to live long enough to have to worry about the effects of radiation poisoning.

  Ruslan Kheda and two more mafiya men boarded the aircraft. Kheda gave some orders to them, pointing toward Avery and Aleksa. Then he hit a button on the control module, raising the ramp and locking it in place. The trio walked across the cargo bay and through the open hatchway into the passenger compartment in the forward fuselage behind the cockpit.

  Before the hatchway slammed shut, sealing Avery and Aleksa inside the cargo hold, Avery caught a glimpse of another Russian already in the crew compartment. He figured there were at least seven onboard, including the pilots. They were all big guys, too, and he figured everyone was armed.

  After several minutes, the massive engines and propellers picked up, and the aircraft kicked into motion. Slowly and smoothly, the pilot taxied the Antonov onto the runway. Once the pilot put the throttle into full power and the Antonov picked up speed, accelerating down the long stretch of runway, the deafening roar blotted out all other sound in the cargo hold, blasting Avery’s and Aleksa’s ears. Contrary to what Hollywood depicted, it was near impossible to hold a conversation in a transport’s cargo hold.

  Bombarded by the unending thunder barrage of the engines, Aleksa winced, and Avery, with the trauma his head had already sustained, found the volume especially distressing. He wanted to tear his ears off. But that was the point. Being held in the cargo hold was meant to further wear them down and disorientate them. Plus, here, Ruslan Kheda didn’t have to worry about making a mess.

  The cargo bay’s floor abruptly and steeply angled upward as the Antonov’s four turboprop engines lifted the jet off the ground and carried it on a steep ascent into the sky. Aleksa fell over against Avery, her hair in his face and her shoulder digging into his ribs. He winced, and she gave him an apologetic look, which he shrugged off.

  The plane reached altitude and leveled out. At thirty-plus thousand feet, the temperature dropped rapidly in the cargo hold. Aleksa kept close against Avery. Her warmth and presence gave him comfort.

  Unable to converse verbally, she looked up at him, as if expecting him to have a solution or some way out of here. He returned her gaze through his one good eye, but he had nothing with which to reassure her, and he saw the resignation in her eyes.

  It was contrary to the Ranger mentality and training ingrained into his psyche, but Avery thought himself defeated, at least physically. Only the unyielding scream of the engines kept him awake. He expected Kheda’s crew to return any minute to finish the job and knew he should be looking around to find for some way to even the odds, but he couldn’t bring his mind up to the task.

  But Aleksa was on the same page. She slipped her cuffed hands up from under her legs. The chain between the cuffs was very short, to create a narrow gap and prevent someone from doing just that, but she possessed the flexibility and determination to force her hands beneath her feet and get them in front of her.

  She stood up and searched up and down the length of the cargo bay. But there was nothing around, not even tools, which could be used as weapons or to break free of the handcuffs. The Russians had done a thorough job of clearing the cargo hold of any loose items in preparation of converting the compartment into a suitable prison.

  Abandoning the search, she finally sat back down near Avery.

  His head leaned against the fuselage, with his eyes closed. He was breathing, and she checked his pulse and heartbeat. Both were steady. She stayed near close to him, watched over him as he slept.

  Close to three hours later, the hatchway in the bulkhead separating the forward passenger compartment from the cargo hold opened. Aleksa didn’t hear anything, but when she turned her head and suddenly saw Ruslan Kheda, with a Russian right behind him, she jumped, panicked.

  The Russian closed the hatch, sealing them in with the prisoners.

  Aleksa’s pulse quickened. She felt like a mouse cornered by a snake and never took her eyes off the approaching men, even as she reached over with both hands and began shoving Avery. When he didn’t move, she put more force into it and screamed his name.

  With Kheda and the Russian only ten feet away, Avery finally stirred and opened his eye. It took him several seconds to orientate himself and recall where he was. But the instant he glanced up at Kheda’s scowling, hate-filled face, everything came back to him, and Aleksa felt him tense upright defensively beside her.

  The floor declined several degrees as the Antonov decreased altitude and leveled out after a couple minutes.

  Kheda stepped over Avery’s legs and continued toward the control module. The Russian stopped on the opposite side of Avery and Aleksa, placing the two prisoners between him and Kheda. The Russian stood seven feet away, adopting a wide stance, poised to move quickly, if necessary. He had a pistol holst
ered at his side. It was apparent that he was present simply to observe and ensure the outcome.

  The aft ramp lowered on its support pylons, revealing a patch of deep, endless blue sky and turning the cargo hold into an air tunnel, buffeting everyone inside. Ruslan Kheda gazed out into space for a long moment. He seemed unaffected by the powerful torrent of air bombarding him full force. Finally, he turned around and returned his attention to the task at hand.

  As the mafiya killer approached, Avery was surprised at how calm he felt. His mind became suddenly sober and focused, looking for options and plotting a course of action. He just wished his body was up for it. He tried getting onto his feet, but the pain in his side had worsened exponentially after the prolonged time spent in one position, sleeping. He tried to push through the pain, but it immobilized him and set him right back down on his ass.

  Aleksa jumped onto her feet and came around in front of Avery, immediately acquiring Kheda’s attention. She charged him and crashed her fists down against his forehead, but he barely flinched. He calmly grabbed a handful of Aleksa’s hair, yanked her head back, and struck her in the left temple. When she went limp, he threw her to the deck and kicked her once between the shoulders. Then he exchanged looks with the amused Russian and shook his head.

  By now, Avery had worked his way onto his feet.

  The Russian, closer than Kheda, saw this, reacting first, and came at him.

  Avery had three inches on the Russian, and he smashed his forehead against his opponent’s face. The Russian grabbed onto Avery as he stumbled back, taking him down with him. Avery landed on top of the Russian, whose skull smacked against the deck.