Off the Grid

by Monica McCarty

  They all had a love of challenge in common—officer and enlisted. These guys could handle anything he threw at them. They were the best. He ought to know. With blood, sweat, and a few tears of pain, he’d honed the operators of Team Nine into the finest unit in all of US Special Operations. They were the president’s “go to” force when mistakes and failure weren’t an option. Even though they were shell-shocked, suffering various levels of injury, hungry, exhausted, and mourning the deaths of their Teammates, Scott knew if anyone could get out of a goatfuck like this, it was Senior Chief Dean Baylor and Special Warfare Operators Michael Ruiz, John Donovan, Steve Spivak, and Travis Hart.

  The Special Warfare Operators of Team Nine knew how to do their jobs. And he knew how to do his, which was making decisions. He made life-and-death decisions all the time; it came with the job. But losing eight men didn’t, and Scott was still reeling. They all were. But right now he had to focus on keeping the rest of his men alive. That meant projecting confidence and acting as if this wasn’t pretty much worst-possible-scenario, one-wrong-move-and-we’re-dead territory.

  “We hold tight for the time being,” Scott said. They were safe enough in this apartment building. They’d had their pick of abandoned buildings in the old center of town, which was now essentially a ghost town located across the river from the current city center. Although from the looks of it, the new city center wasn’t going to be far behind the old. Vorkuta had definitely seen better days. The once thriving city had dwindled in the past decades from over two hundred thousand people to about seventy thousand.

  But in this remote corner of the world, even among seventy thousand, six strangers were going to stick out—especially non-Russian-looking and -speaking strangers. Well, except for one. Thank God, they had Spivak whose grandparents were Ukrainian and had passed on their language. His lineage also gave him a good cover story. He was a Ukrainian sent to Vorkuta to work as a diver on the Nord Stream gas pipeline.

  “We’ll send Spivak back out for more food and supplies,” Scott said. Then cutting off Donovan before he could renew an earlier joking request, he added, “And sushi is off the menu. Keep it simple and preferably cheap, Spivak.”

  They all carried cash on missions—both US dollars and a small amount of local currency. The latter was a precaution that he’d insisted upon but they’d never needed. But precaution was another way of saying “damned glad of it” when you did. It was going to save them from having to “borrow” everything.

  “Try to make it something I can pronounce, Dolph,” Donovan said, using Spivak’s call sign. The big blond-haired operator who served as the team’s breacher bore a resemblance to the actor Dolph Lundgren, who’d played Sylvester Stalone’s Russian foe in Rocky IV. “And I hope fresh clothes are on tonight’s menu. Jim Bob here smells like a freaking animal.”

  “Fuck you, Donovan,” Travis responded with his heavy Southern accent. The young sniper was from Mississippi and country through and through. Thus, the Jim Bob call sign. “You aren’t exactly smelling like a rose.”

  “See what you can do,” Scott said to Spivak, ignoring the giving-each-other-shit banter between the guys, as he normally did. With John Donovan around, it was constant. “We’re also going to need a phone at some point—and pick up a newspaper.”

  The other horrible consequence of their failed mission was war. For all they knew, WWIII was already under way.

  Spivak nodded. “I saw a couple places that sold phones when I was looking around earlier. But if it seems too iffy, I’ll figure out something else.”

  Meaning he’d pick one up another way that didn’t involve questions. Scott nodded. He didn’t need to tell Spivak to be careful. The situation was painfully clear to all of them.

  Well, mostly clear. The guys didn’t know exactly who had warned Scott and why he trusted her. They just knew that he’d received a text right before the first missile hit that had saved their lives, and they trusted him.

  But he knew they had questions. Questions that he didn’t want to answer. How did he tell his men—men to whom he was supposed to above reproach—that he’d been hiding something from them? That for the last six months he’d had a girlfriend who worked in the Pentagon. That it was serious. That for the first time he’d met someone who meant as much—more—to him than the job. That he had a ring in his pocket that proved it. That he should have said something to them and command months ago.

  Scott had been well are of the rules of Team Nine when he’d joined. No family, no wives, no girlfriends. No one to wonder where he was or when he’d be back. No one to cause problems if he didn’t come back.

  He should have come forward when it had gotten serious, even if it meant having to leave Nine. But he’d allowed himself to be talked out of it by Natalie, who was just as worried about losing her own job as he was about losing the Team he’d helped build.

  Breaking the rules wasn’t like him. Even for an officer, he had a reputation for being by the book. Rules. Honor. Integrity. Standards. Discipline. It might be old-fashioned, but those things mattered to him.

  None of which explained Natalie Andersson. Although nothing about Natalie had ever made any sense. She’d confused and confounded him from first moment he’d seen her in that bar in DC. Maybe that was part of her appeal. He couldn’t figure her out. On the outside, she projected this sophisticated, confident career woman, but beneath the surface, he detected a sweet vulnerability that roused in him protective instincts that he’d never experienced before. She was like two sides of a coin that didn’t match.

  But one thing he did know. Without her warning, he wouldn’t be sitting here on the doorstop of Siberia in this run-down, abandoned apartment building that looked more like a cellblock. He’d be dead.

  All six of them owed her their lives. They’d been betrayed, and Natalie’s message suggested that it had come from someone on the inside. The text that he’d seen by chance was burned into his memory, though it had chilled him to the bones when he’d first read it.

  Leak. Russians know you are coming. No one is supposed to survive. Go dark and don’t try to contact me. Both our lives might be at stake. And then the last three words that she’d never said before: I love you. A declaration that under normal circumstances would have made him the happiest man in the world; instead it made him the most terrified.

  This wasn’t a joke; she was deadly serious. That and the fact that she knew about the mission, which only a handful of people were supposed to know about, convinced him to call back the platoon—or half the platoon. Lieutenant White’s squad was already inside one of the buildings, and the comms were out. There’d been no way to warn them.

  The rock that had been crushing his chest since that moment got a little heavier.

  Against his orders, the senior chief and Brian Murphy, their newest Teammate, had tried. Murphy had been killed, and the senior chief had barely escaped the explosion. Scott didn’t know how Baylor had made it across almost seventy miles of hell with his injuries. But the senior chief was like that. You couldn’t knock him down. He’d keep popping back up and coming at you.

  And Scott knew that as soon as the shock wore off and they were out of this, Baylor was going to have questions for him, and he wasn’t going to be content with “we’ll talk about it later.”

  Feeling the senior chief’s questioning gaze on him now, Scott pulled out his coated paper map—another precaution when going to places with likely spotty communications that he was damned glad of right now—and started to consider options. There weren’t a lot of them. They had to get out of the area as quickly as possible, which basically meant a plane, train, or automobile. Of the three, a train seemed the least risky.

  “What are you thinking, Ace?” Ruiz asked, using Scott’s call sign.

  The guys said Scott always had an ace up his sleeve. Well, he sure as hell hoped they were right. They were going to need a full deck of them.r />
  With Spivak gone, the four remaining men gathered round his position on metal bed frame and mattress, which had both been left behind for a reason. “I’m thinking a freight train to Moscow.” He moved his finger diagonally in a southwest direction. “From there we can connect with lines that go to Europe in the west or the Trans-Siberian line in the east.”

  “The Trans-Siberian Express?” Donnovan repeated. “You gotta be shitting me? That’s on my bucket list, LC.”

  “Glad to accommodate, Dynomite,” Scott replied dryly. “Although you might not like the facilities. This is freight or baggage class only.”

  Without papers they’d have to stay out of sight.

  “It’s a week to Beijing,” the senior chief pointed out. “Not counting the two days to Moscow.”

  “Sounds about right,” Scott agreed. “Or you can stay on until the end of the line in Russia and cross the Bering Sea to Alaska.”

  “Isn’t that just a little over fifty miles, LC?” Travis asked. “I can practically swim that.”

  They all laughed. “At its narrowest point,” Scott said. “But unfortunately where the train lets off”—he pointed to Vladivostok—“you’ll have to find a ship to take you.”

  “My vote is for London,” Donovan said.

  “I think what the LC is suggesting,” Baylor said, eyeing Scott, “is that we all head out from Moscow in different directions.”

  There was a long silence, until Scott confirmed what Baylor had said with a nod. If they really were going to go dark, it was safer to separate. “We scatter and lie low until I can figure out what happened out there.”

  “What did happen out there, LC?” Miggy asked.

  Scott answered truthfully, “I don’t know, but someone tipped off the Russians, and none of us was supposed to make it out of there alive.”

  “Someone sent you a warning,” the senior chief said. It wasn’t a question.

  Scott nodded. “But that’s all I can say right now.”

  Baylor held his gaze for a moment. Clearly, the senior chief didn’t like Scott’s response, but just as clearly, the senior chief realized he didn’t need to like it. Scott didn’t have to tell him anything. Eventually, Baylor nodded, but Scott knew that rank and the chain of command wouldn’t keep the other man silent for long. Baylor was a pain in his ass, but the senior chief was one of the best operatives he’d ever worked with. Scott respected the hell out of him even if he and the platoon’s most senior enlisted SEAL didn’t always see eye to eye.

  Once Scott found out what the hell had happened out there and made sure Natalie was all right, he would come clean about the girlfriend at the Pentagon, who had warned them.

  Spivak returned a short while later after securing a phone, some clothing that wasn’t going to win them any fashion awards, and, most important to all of them right now, a couple pizzas. Most of the toppings were unrecognizable, but they were so hungry no one even asked what they were.

  “No salad or Parmesan cheese?” Donovan said. “Shit, Dolph, next time I’m coming with you.”

  Before Scott could grab a slice, Spivak handed him a newspaper. “You aren’t going to believe this.”

  Because Scott couldn’t read Russian, all he could recognize were the picture of Russian president Dmitri Ivanov, a map of the eastern side of the Ural Mountains where they’d been reconnoitering the gulag, and a satellite image of a massive explosion.

  But that was enough.

  He swore. “It’s out, then. I can only imagine what Ivanov is saying. A team of Navy SEALs sent in to ‘invade’ a sovereign nation? He must be calling for blood.”

  And war. After an American fighter plane accidentally strayed into Russian airspace and was shot down, Ivanov vowed the next incursion—accident or not—would be considered an act of war to which Russia would retaliate.

  “That’s just it,” Spivak said. “He isn’t. There isn’t a damned thing in here about us. They’re claiming the explosion was just a missile test.”

  The room was dead silent; Scott wasn’t the only one taking a few seconds to process what this meant.

  “Then we aren’t going to war?” Travis asked.

  “Not for this,” Spivak said. “And there isn’t anything in the world news either.”

  Which meant that the US hadn’t gone public about their missing SEAL platoon.

  Retiarius had been effectively ghosted, with neither side wanting to fess up that the platoon had been there.

  It made horrible sense. Despite his belligerent threats and big words, Ivanov must have known that he would be seriously outmatched in a war with the US. By not acknowledging their presence, he could save face and avoid a war that no one wanted—not to mention savor the personal satisfaction of wiping out an entire platoon of Navy SEALs without the US being able to retaliate.

  Although Scott knew there were plenty hawks in President Clara Cartwright’s administration—such as General Thomas Murray, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the father of the pilot shot down, who wouldn’t mind putting Ivanov in his place—the US would stay quiet for the same reason: to avoid a war in a situation that was already teetering too close to the edge and to cover up their illegal operation.

  Which made any survivors inconvenient to say the least—to both sides.

  Scott stayed up most of the night planning their exfil and searching for any news from Washington. He didn’t need much sleep, and even with the lack of rest the past few days, he only slept a few hours.

  By dawn he’d taken over watch from Miggy and was sitting by the window overlooking the footbridge to town, eating a piece of leftover pizza and surfing the web again for anything new. He would kill for a cup of coffee right now. Coffee and this time of day reminded him of Nat. Those lazy mornings when they could sit on her tiny balcony in the early hours while the city was quiet, as they drank coffee and talked . . . he’d never guessed that something so small and seemingly simple could make him so happy. That was how he knew he wanted to grow old with her. God, he missed her. He needed to hear her voice. He needed to make sure she was all right.

  Knowing that Russia censored media and the Internet, he was careful about search terms, but none of the big European news agencies or Al Jazeera was reporting anything. He decided to take a chance and try a few US newspapers. He doubted the Russian surveillance was that broad, but he’d be getting rid of the phone soon anyway.

  New York Times, nada. Washington Post, same. DC Chronicle . . . His stomach dropped and all the blood slid from his face.

  No . . . Oh, God, no!

  He wanted to turn away and pretend he’d never seen it. If he didn’t see it, it couldn’t be true.

  But there was the headline in cold black and white: “DC Staffer Killed in Fiery Car Crash That Shuts Down Freeway for Hours.” The story didn’t add much, except the name and what the woman did: “Natalie Andersson, executive assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense, was killed in a car crash last night when her car careened into the cement underpass of the Southeast Freeway on 4th Street SE in the Capitol Hill neighborhood where she lived. Excessive speed is believed to have caused her car to explode. Ms. Andersson was killed instantly.”

  Scott put down the phone, unable to breath. His chest was on fire. His eyes burned. The ring that he’d had in his pocket for the past month, because he hadn’t found the “right” time to give it to her, felt like an unbearable weight dragging him under. After losing eight men, he thought he was numb, but the pain eviscerated with excruciating savagery.

  Oh, God, Natalie, baby. I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. Her words rang in his head. “Both our lives . . .”

  He had no doubt she’d been killed because of him. Because she’d warned him.

  And he’d never even told her he loved her. He didn’t even know why.

  That wasn’t true. He hadn’t told her because he wasn�
��t sure she felt the same. And now . . . now it was too late to tell her that he did.

  For the first time in his life, Scott wanted to put his face in his hands and bawl like a baby. But he wasn’t going to do that. He was going to get his men the hell out of here and find whoever was responsible for this. There wasn’t a place they could hide where he wouldn’t hunt them down.

  And then he’d make them pay.

  One

  McLEAN, VIRGINIA

  AUGUST 17

  He’d been honey-trapped.

  Scott sat at his recently acknowledged sister’s dining room table, feeling as if he had the word “sucker” tattooed across his forehead. No one was saying it, but he knew that was what they were all thinking.

  Kate, the aforementioned sister, was looking at him worriedly; her ex-husband and his ex-chief, Colt Wesson, wouldn’t meet his eye (although Colt was probably grappling with his own demons right now); the recently arrived Senior Chief Dean Baylor was looking pissed off (which admittedly wasn’t unusual); and the always-ready-with-a-wisecrack John Donovan had fallen into a rare contemplative silence. Brittany Blake, after being kidnapped and nearly killed, was resting in one of Kate’s guest rooms, or she’d likely be thinking it as well.

  How could they not? It was true. Scott had just had it confirmed from Natalie’s compatriot’s—or should he say comrade’s—mouth right before he’d been killed. His girlfriend, Natalie Andersson, aka Natalya Petrova, had been a Russian spy who’d passed on the information that had gotten eight of Scott’s men killed. For almost three months, he’d been mourning her and thinking of her as their savior, and she’d been the one responsible for their mission being compromised all along.

  It didn’t matter that she’d warned him and been killed. She’d been lying to him. Using him. Fucking him for information.

  Shit, that hurt. Betrayal curdled in his gut like acid, eating away at him mercilessly.

  He’d had no clue. She’d deceived him and betrayed him in the worst possible way, and he’d been ready to put a ring on her finger. A ring that would have taken him away from the Team that had been his life. If Scott had that damned ring with him right now, he’d throw it as far as he could into the Potomac, which ran outside Kate’s swanky town house.