Watching from fifty-five hundred miles away, Rockman breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay, Lia,” he said. “You’re off the monitor. You weren’t seen.”
“Okay,” she replied. “We’re approaching the house.”
“The flier is on its way.”
On the pole overlooking the driveway entrance, the UAV broke off an inch-long section of its own head, leaving the piece attached by its two slender probes, then launched itself into the air. With a soft flutter of hard-beating wings, it arrowed through the night and came to rest on the outside sill of a second-floor window.
“I feel like a damned Peeping Tom,” Palatino muttered, shifting the remote device to walking mode and moving it higher until its camera could peer through the glass.
“Yeah, but it’s peeping in the line of duty,” Rockman told him. “Let’s have a look.”
The room beyond the glass was darkened, but the probe’s CCD visual pickups could resolve images in almost total darkness and could operate in the IR as well as visual wavelengths. At the same time, two slender wires, like antennas, extended from above the camera and rested against the glass, picking up faint vibrations.
The room might have been dark, but it was definitely occupied—rather enthusiastically so—by two people sharing a large bed.
“Oops,” Sarah Cassidy said, smirking. “I don’t think we want to go in that way.”
“Go to the next window,” Rockman told Palatino.
The next window was also a bedroom, but this one appeared to be empty. Rockman passed the word to Lia and Akulinin, who were already climbing up a pilaster to reach the second floor.
This part of the dacha had a roof extending out from the second story over a trellis-enclosed porch. The Deep Black insertion team had already made the assumption that the first-floor windows would be protected by some sort of security system but that the second floor might be clear. Targets who were lazy, cheap, or both sometimes left obvious holes in their security. Unfortunately, that was not the case here. Sensors inside the slender body of the flier had already detected the trickle of electrical current through a slender wire inside the closed window. If the window was opened or broken, the current would be interrupted and an alarm would sound. Rockman passed the news to the team.
“We’re on it,” Lia said.
Kotenko Dacha
Sochi, Russia
2358 hours, GMT + 3
“We’re on it,” Lia murmured. In one hand she held a small device similar to the unit she’d used to look for security systems at the warehouse door on the St. Petersburg waterfront. The LED readout indicated an electrical current, and as she moved it around the edge of the window, she found the point where the sensor wire on the glass connected, through a metal contact, with a wire inside the window’s frame.
That was the weak point, the point of attack.
The flier clung to the wall a foot away, watching, looking like an odd and science-fictional mingling of large insect with small robot, its wings now folded along the length of its body and hanging off behind like a stiff, gauze cloak.
“This is a guy who takes his security seriously,” Akulinin whispered, double-checking the electrical circuit.
“Any security system can be breached,” Lia replied. “Jeff? We need the drill right here.”
In response, the flier moved to the spot she was indicating with her finger. Again, a slender needle extended from beneath the robot’s head, touching the white-painted frame of the window. There was a faint whine as the drill bit chewed into the wood.
“Okay, Lia,” Rockman’s voice said a moment later. “We have a complete circuit.”
Akulinin tried lifting the window. It appeared to be locked. Extracting a jimmy tool from a thigh pouch, he inserted the flat blade between window and frame at the bottom, gently applying a steady downward pressure. There was a creak, but the window remained shut.
“Shit,” he said. “The damned thing’s locked.”
“Try the direct approach,” Lia suggested.
“Yeah.” He ran a gloved hand over the glass. “It might be damned noisy, though.”
The two listened for a moment. The sounds of laughter floated clearly across from the other side of the house, followed by a loud splash as someone hit the pool. “Laminated glass,” Lia said. “Should be more of a crunch than a crash. Go ahead. Give it a try.”
“You’re the boss.” He reversed the pry, wrapped the handle in a piece of cloth, and slammed the tool into the glass.
The window was plastic-coated and shatterproof, but the glass crazed and yielded under a second, harder blow. The two agents held their position for a moment, listening carefully for a full minute, waiting for some indication that they’d been heard.
Another splash sounded from the rear deck.
The security system wires attached to the inside of the pane were broken, but the needle drilled into the window frame by the robot was now shorting the contact, tricking the system into thinking the circuit was unbroken. Using the cloth to protect his already-gloved hands, Akulinin pushed in the now flexible sheet of fragmented glass, working it in and out until it popped free of the frame.
Replacing the jimmy, Akulinin drew his weapon and wiggled through the opening, headfirst. Lia followed.
“We’re in,” she said. She glanced around the room, verifying that it was, indeed, empty . . . though rhythmic creakings and moans were coming from the room next door. Her LI headset revealed the space clearly in monotone shades of green. “Tell us where we need to go.”
“Straight ahead,” was Rockman’s reply. “Through the bedroom door and to your left.”
Silently the two agents slipped forward through the darkness.
17
Kotenko Dacha
Sochi, Russia
0007 hours, GMT + 3
DOWN A DARKENED HALLWAY, then right to a flight of stairs. Lia descended while Akulinin covered her from above, then returned the favor, holding her SIG-Sauer P220 gripped tightly in both hands. The weapon had been threaded to receive a sound suppressor, and the ungainly length of the thing extended beyond the ball of her hands like a police officer’s baton.
“There’s a security camera in the hall in front of you to the left,” Rockman whispered in their ears. “Wait one . . .”
The broken-off piece of the dragonfly probe still attached to the cable on the pole at the front gate now gave the Art Room a physical connection with the dacha’s security network, with the parked van as a communications relay. Back at Fort Meade, they would be running through a number of camera views, calling up the correct one, and feeding it a twenty-second loop of an empty hallway.
“Okay, Lia,” Rockman said. “The hall is empty and the camera is happy. You’re clear to move.”
Stealthily the two agents turned the corner and walked down the hall. Lia noticed a half sphere of darkened glass mounted on the ceiling—the security cam—and resisted an unprofessional impulse to wave. A few feet farther on, light spilled from beneath a closed door.
Damn. . . .
“We’re at the door to the office,” Lia whispered. “Do you have a camera inside?”
“That’s negative, Lia,” Rockman replied. “It looks like there may be a hookup for another camera on the circuit diagram, but it’s switched off.”
Akulinin tried the doorknob, which turned easily, and gently edged the door open. Beside him, Lia slipped a length of fiber-optic cable through the opening, with the near end attached to her cell phone monitor. Twisting the cable gently between her fingers, she turned the end this way and that, checking out the room’s interior.
A man sat at a computer monitor, his back toward the door. The image resolution was too low to let her read over his shoulder, but he appeared to be about ten feet away, his fingers clattering over a keyboard.
There was no one else in the room within the reach of the fiber-optic viewer, though she did see another of the black hemispheres on the ceiling. Why was the security camera turned off?
Then the answer came to her. The man at the desk was almost certainly Grigor Kotenko, and as the head of one of the more powerful families within the Organizatsiya, he would be afraid not only of outside enemies breaking into his personal fortress but also of traitors among his own people. The camera’s position on the ceiling would have let his own security people see what was on his monitor; switching it off while he was working gave him an extra bit of peace of mind.
It also suggested that Kotenko was more afraid of betrayal from within his own organization than he was of outsiders, an interesting bit of intelligence.
The figure at the desk turned his head just far enough that Lia glimpsed the shaggy corner of his walrus mustache.
“I see Kotenko,” Lia whispered. “Back to the door. I can take him from here.”
“That’s a negative, Lia,” a new voice, Rubens’, replied. “Find another way.”
She bit off a silent expletive. She had the bastard in her sights . . . the thug who’d given the orders that had ended with Tommy’s death. It would be so easy to take him out. Two taps to the center of mass, a third in the back of the head . . .
“Lia, Ilya,” Rubens said. “If the op is to succeed, we need Kotenko alive.”
Lia closed her eyes, forcing the muscles of her hands and arms and jaw to relax, bringing herself back from the edge. God, she wanted to kill the man . . . but Rubens was right. She and Ilya had come here tonight to plant bugs that would give Desk Three an unparalleled window into the Tambov group’s operations. If Kotenko’s people came into the office later and found their boss dead, American intelligence would have to start all over again as some other crime family came to the fore, or as another leader within Tambov—Braslov, perhaps—took over.
In the long run, they could do a lot more damage to the Russian Mafiya—and not just the Tambov group—if Kotenko survived this night.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Ilya, you’re up. Remember, Russian only.”
“Da,” he murmured, and grasping his H&K P9S in both hands, he eased the door open with his shoulder and rolled through.
Lia followed, breaking left and cutting across the room as Akulinin moved right, lunging at Kotenko’s back. Attempting to sneak in quietly invited disaster—a squeak to a floorboard, a flicker of movement glimpsed from the corner of an eye . . . even a psychic awareness of someone else present in the room. Kotenko heard the movement and began to turn, one hand snapping toward the top drawer of his computer desk, but Akulinin was on him in three swift strides, reversing the pistol in his hand as he moved, grasping it at the meeting of muzzle and sound suppressor, and swinging the butt around from the side, aiming at the base of Kotenko’s skull.
But Kotenko raised his arm, blocking the swing, and for a terrible moment Akulinin and the Mafiya boss struggled in front of the computer desk. Then the office chair scooted out from beneath Kotenko and he fell, heavily. Akulinin’s arm came up, then slashed down, the pistol butt striking the man’s head with a sickening crack.
Lia held her position at the far side of the office, her SIG-Sauer pointed at the half-open door, covering Akulinin as he checked the pulse at Kotenko’s throat, then peeled back one eyelid, then the other.
“He’s out,” Akulinin said in Russian. If the camera was off, there might yet be microphones online. “Breathing’s okay.”
“Gordon!” Lia whispered. “Any response?”
“Negative,” Rockman replied in her ear. By now, the Art Room would have penetrated deep into the dacha’s security network, and would be alerted if an alarm sounded. It was just possible that an open microphone in Kotenko’s office had picked up the sounds of a struggle. If so, guards might be on the way already.
They would have to hurry.
Once he was sure that Kotenko was in no physical danger, Akulinin pulled plastic zip strips from his combat harness and bound the man’s wrists, knees, and ankles. A fistful of facial tissue went into his mouth, with a length of packing tape to secure it awkwardly beneath the brush of his mustache. Another strip of tape went over his eyes. If he regained consciousness in the next few minutes, they didn’t want him seeing what the two intruders were doing.
Lia, meanwhile, pulled out the small induction device that registered the surge in electrical current from any active microphones and swept the room, paying special attention to the camera fixture on the ceiling and to the desk and computer itself. While power was flowing to the computer and its peripherals, of course, it looked like there weren’t any active mikes.
Good. They should have a few minutes then.
“Harashaw,” she said, still speaking Russian just in case Kotenko was faking unconsciousness with an unusual flair for theater. “Room is clear.”
“There’s the safe,” Akulinin said, also in Russian. “Get the door.”
Lia walked to the door and closed it, then snapped off the light. With their LI gear, there was more than enough ambient light through the room’s one large window for them to work. Next, she went to Kotenko’s computer, sat down at the chair, and took a look at the monitor.
The screen saver had come up—a blatantly pornographic image of a bored-looking woman lasciviously entangled with two young men. When Lia moved the mouse, the image was replaced with a screen full of text and several small, inset diagrams.
It looked important. Her Russian was good enough that she could tell it was a technical report about something called Glubahkii Koladeets, or Deep Well, and which was abbreviated elsewhere as “GK-1,” a term that seemed to refer to a specific place or base. The overall project was called Operatsiya Holodnaya Vayeena . . . Operation Cold War.
She scanned down the screen quickly, trying to pick up the important bits. Work at GK-1, she saw, had been delayed by the high concentrations of metan something. Metan was “methane,” but what was the following word? It looked like it might transliterate as “clathates,” but she couldn’t pin down the meaning.
Well, they might be able to make something of it back at the Puzzle Palace.
It would have been possible, of course, to flash the entire contents of Kotenko’s hard drive to Fort Meade, or to simply burn a CD of any likely-looking documents. However, there were almost certain to be security measures in place that would, at the very least, alert Kotenko to the fact that files had been copied, if not passwords and fire walls designed to prevent exactly that. They didn’t have the time to track down the man’s computer security system or bypass it, and they couldn’t risk alerting Kotenko that his hard drive had been raided. She did take a moment to photograph the screen with her cell phone camera, being careful to dial the speed down to a thirtieth of a second in order to avoid having large, black scan lines show up across the screen. Then she reached behind the computer tower and yanked out the plug.
The monitor winked out immediately, taking the page of data with it. Kotenko would wake to find the computer off and assume the intruders had pulled the plug just in case it had an open mike.
Next, she pulled a small, plastic case from her equipment pouch. Inside were several hundred minute bugs, each roughly spherical, perhaps a millimeter across, and flat enough to slip through the spaces between the keys on a computer keyboard. She sprinkled them across Kotenko’s keyboard, careful not to allow them to bounce. A few remained stubbornly visible, but she clattered her fingers across the keys, repeatedly hitting several until all of the stragglers vanished down through the cracks.
Next, she looked around along the walls of the room until she found an outlet. When she found one out in the open, she knelt in front of it, swiftly unscrewing the front plate, then pulling the outlet itself free at the end of a length of wires.
She used a small tester to check which wire was which, then took a microrelay and clipped it to the wires, as far back as she could reach. Finally, she stuffed the wires back into place, replaced the outlet and cover, and screwed the plate back on. The whole operation took less than two minutes.
Returning to the keyboard, she softly s
aid, “Gordon, ready to test.”
“Copy, Lia. We have signal.”
“Starting with the letters, then . . . ah . . . beh . . . veh . . . geh . . .”
One by one she struck each Cyrillic letter on the keyboard. The tiny sensors worked together to pick up the distinctive sound of each key as it was struck and transmit it to the relay in the wall.
The microphones themselves were sound powered and activated, while the relay drew on the electrical current in the house. The relay, using the electrical wiring of the entire house as an enormous antenna, was powerful enough to transmit each sound to the waiting van; before Llewellyn left the area, he would plant a larger satellite relay on the side of the mountain, where it would continue to receive transmissions from Kotenko’s keyboard and send them on through the satellite uplink to Fort Meade.
There the Tordella Center supercomputers would identify each separate key from the distinct and unique sound it made when struck and reassemble a complete readout of what Kotenko was typing at his workstation fifty-five hundred miles away. The system would let them pick up passwords and activation codes, which in turn would allow them to study and bypass his security systems and, soon, to be able to record his entire hard drive, read all of his mail, and track down every one of his electronic correspondents without ever again coming close to the Black Sea dacha.
With the keyboard bugs online and double-checked, Lia turned her attention to bugging the rest of the office. Another tiny microphone went inside the telephone handset on the desk, while a microcam—hidden inside the barrel of a working ballpoint pen with the lens disguised as a clear plastic clicker—went on the highest bookshelf, positioned so that it gave the Art Room a view of both the computer and the door. Another pen, this one masking a backup relay unit, went into the sofa behind the cushions.
Akulinin, meanwhile, was working at the safe. A flat case with an LED readout was placed just above the combination dial, and as he slowly turned the dial right or left, lights winked on to indicate the fall of tumblers inside. Within a couple of minutes, there was an audible thump and he operated the handle to pull the heavy door open.
Stephen Coonts' Deep Black: Arctic Gold Page 26
