Politika (1997)

by Clancy, Tom - Power Plays 01

  The personnel carriers went through the gates single file, Gregor in the lead, then Gilea’s four men in the next two, and the last members of his personal team in the final vehicle. Once inside, each of the four veered off, heading to their preplanned corners of the compound. When they were all in position, they turned and started heading toward the building in the center—the low, concrete building with the satellite uplink equipment mounted on the roof—firing as they went.

  There was no resistance. Gregor hadn’t expected much, but he’d expected more than the Americans managed. A couple of security guards were cut down early, caught out in the open with confusion on their faces and fear in their eyes, but beyond those two it appeared that all the remaining personnel were holed up in their prefab apartment buildings, keeping their heads down and hoping to just survive this onslaught.

  Unfortunately for them, Gregor’s orders were to the contrary.

  As they passed each building, Gregor’s team sent a grenade into the doorway, causing additional destruction and sealing the survivors within. His mission priority was the satellite uplink building. Once that was destroyed, he would be able to devote his full attention to the rest of the compound.

  The only building that slowed Gregor down at all was the one where the Americans kept their small supply of firearms. Two of his BTR-40s converged on that building and paused long enough to level it with grenades. Then, turning down the sensitivity on his night vision goggles, Gregor Sadov resumed his methodical advance toward the command and control section of the compound.

  Max Blackburn was on the phone with Alan Jacobs, the head of security at the compound, when the link went dead. Max and his team had been out following leads and were on their way back to the compound. Alan had called him the moment the power went out. No one really suspected there was anything devious or deliberate about the power outage, but standard protocol was to maintain an open line until the problem was identified and solved. Blackburn and his security detail were on their way back to the compound already—except for Vince Scull who had stayed behind to check on a few loose ends—but when the call came in he’d told his driver to speed up a bit.

  Max did not hang up when the phone went dead against his ear. Instead, he kept the line open and turned to Meg. They were in the back of a covered truck, the kind used to haul produce from small local farms into the nearby towns for sale, bouncing along on the local equivalent of a road.

  “Call in,” he said to her, giving her Jacob’s direct dial.

  “Trouble?” she asked, already punching in the number. Standard protocol was to not record any numbers in speed dial, and to always clear the last number in redial memory after completing a call.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe.”

  Meg pressed Send and then lifted the phone to her ear. “It’s ringing,” she said after a moment.

  Max leaned forward. “Step on it,” he said to the driver.

  Meg looked at him, a quizzical expression on her face. Blackburn hadn’t even waited for anyone to answer before reacting.

  “There’s trouble,” Max said. “You should have gotten a busy signal. The fact that you didn’t means that the primary phone lines are down.” Turning his head, he called back to Lee “Seal” Johnson, the team’s radio expert. “Use the TAC-Sat,” he said. “I want satellite communication established with the compound, and I want it now. Something’s happening there, and I need to know what it is.”

  “It’s no good, sir,” Johnson said after a moment. “The satellite’s responding, but the ground station isn’t.”

  Blackburn nodded, his lips pressed into a grim line. “How long until we get back there?”

  “Ten minutes, sir,” the driver said.

  Blackburn shook his head. He knew all too well just how long ten minutes could be in a firefight. “Make it five,” he said.

  “But, sir. The axles won’t take—”

  “I don’t give a damn about the axles,” he snapped, “or the ruts in the road. I care about the people who are being attacked back at that compound, and who are relying on us to protect them—which we can’t do from here. Get us back there in five minutes. That’s an order.”

  “Yes, sir,” the driver said. “Five minutes.”

  Blackburn nodded, then turned away and began issuing orders to his team. They had five minutes to get ready, five minutes to prepare for a battle against an unknown adversary, against unknown numbers and unknown firepower.

  Five minutes—an eternity for those back at the compound, but not nearly as long as Blackburn would have liked for his team.

  Gregor’s men had run into some trouble. Nothing they couldn’t handle, but it had slowed them down more than he liked.

  He had expected the guards to be unarmed, but as Gregor’s team approached the pillbox building in the heart of the compound, their armored vehicles illuminated by the fires burning around them, they ran into some small arms fire coming from gun ports in all four sides. From the sounds, the guards didn’t have anything bigger than .38-caliber, but that wasn’t what worried him. If the personnel in any of the apartment buildings also had weapons, Gregor and his men could be caught in a deadly crossfire before they accomplished their mission.

  This was the point where the battle plan went to hell. Up until now, everything had gone like clockwork—which was especially pleasing considering how little time they’d had to prepare. But now it was time to improvise.

  Reaching down, he grabbed the headlight knob and gave it a quick yank. At the same moment, he stomped on the switch on the floor, flipping the lights to bright.

  “Get ready, Nikki,” he said, pulling hard on the hand brake.

  Diving out of the still moving BTR-40, he rolled a couple of feet, being careful to stay in the zone of darkness created behind the bright headlights. Coming up to one knee, he sharpened the focus on his goggles, raised his rifle, rested his elbow on his left knee, and sighted carefully on the nearest gun port.

  He could see the face of a frightened guard staring down over the barrel of what looked like a 9mm Beretta. A nice weapon, but pretty much useless under these conditions.

  Gregor took a deep breath, let some of it out, and then, holding the rest of it to calm the slight shake of his rifle, he gently squeezed off a single shot.

  Even with his goggles, he couldn’t see the bullet hit home. He was still riding the recoil of his shot when it struck, but a moment later he could see that the gun port was empty, and there were no more shots coming from this side.

  A moment later he saw Nikki fire off another round from the BTR-40’s mortar, dropping it squarely on the roof of the pillbox. The remaining gunfire fell silent, and the rest of Gregor’s team opened up with their own grenade launchers. Within minutes the little white building was little more than a burning ruin.

  Gregor turned to his team and gave the order to fan out. With their primary objective accomplished, their orders were to search for any survivors and to neutralize them.

  Using hand signals, he motioned the three members of his personal team to hang back slightly. This part of their job wasn’t war. It was simple murder, and he’d be happy to let Gilea’s men do most of it.

  Max Blackburn could see the flames as they drew near the compound. He was leaning forward in the back of the truck, trying to will the driver to go faster. Beside him, Megan had gone still and silent as the impact of what they were seeing hit home.

  “My God,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.

  Max didn’t say anything. He merely clenched his fists tighter.

  His team was ready. They had all seen the flames leaping into the night sky, and they all knew what those flames meant. All of them, even the driver, had their Kevlar on and their night vision goggles adjusted. They had their weapons prepared and their lines of fire planned out. They had received their orders and made all the plans they could. Now all they needed was a target and a chance for revenge.

  Fifty yards out, their headlights o
ff, Max ordered the driver to slow down and head around toward the back. This close to the compound, the road was finally smoothing out, and every part of him wanted to take that command back, wanted to tell the driver to drive even faster, but he knew he couldn’t. The personnel in that compound were counting on him—if any of them were still alive—and waltzing in there like an idiot and getting himself and his team killed wouldn’t do any of them any good.

  No, as much as he would have liked to ride in like the cavalry, Blackburn knew he had to play this one by the book.

  Slowing near the first corner, Blackburn motioned for four of his twelve-man team to jump off the truck. It would be up to them to get over the wall and take up positions with two men at each of the front corners. Four more would take up similar positions at the rear corner, and Blackburn, Megan, and the other three would come over the back wall, directly opposite the gate. The driver would stay with the truck.

  Please, God, Blackburn thought, watching as the driver went around the first corner. He’d intended to pray for survivors, for God to let at least some of the Americans survive this night. But that’s not what formed in his head. Please, God, let them be there. Help me to make them pay for what they’ve done.

  Beside him, Megan reached out and touched his hand, offering silent support, but he didn’t notice. He was too intent on the sounds of stray gunfire coming over the wall, and the visions of vengeance playing in his head.

  Gregor heard the gunfire taper off and he smiled. A few more minutes and he’d recall the team.

  “Good work tonight,” he said to Nikki. And he meant it, too. She had performed flawlessly, making all her shots clean and keeping her cool when things got hot. She was a good fighter, a good soldier, and he was pleased that she’d made it through this far.

  To his right, he heard a single AKMS snap off two shots and then fall silent.

  That was it, he thought. The last one. Reaching for the transmitter on his belt, he pressed the squawk button three times—short, long, short—giving the signal to join up at the motor pool, with the only undamaged building in the compound. Once his team joined up again, they would take the building, clean out any survivors, and then take whatever vehicles Gregor thought he could resell.

  That was the plan. Gregor’s first clue that the plan had gone wrong was when a hand fell on his arm and the blade of a knife pressed against his throat.

  Max was proud of his team. Like true professionals, they had turned off their emotions and were going about their jobs in complete silence and with utter proficiency. With tactics learned from the Army Rangers, the Special Forces, the Navy SEALs, and other SpecOps groups, they identified the enemy and took them out by ones and twos, all without firing a shot. What was even more surprising was that, ignoring the rage that had to be burning within them as brightly as the compound, they neutralized the attackers without firing a shot and, as far as Blackburn could tell, without killing a single one of the enemy. This was one band of terrorists that would live to see a trial.

  Seeing the last two enemies in front of them, Max raised his hand, signaling for extra caution, and then moved forward. Megan was on his left, and the two of them were flanked by two other members of his team.

  Under other circumstances, Blackburn might have played it more cautiously and let one of the others take the point. Then again, he might not have. He and Gordian had argued about this countless times, but the simple fact was that Max refused to consider that any member of his team, no matter how new or how young or how inexperienced, was less indispensable than he was himself. And he absolutely refused to send men in where he himself would not go.

  Slipping forward on silent feet, he waited for the man’s hand to come off the radio at his belt, and then he acted, reaching forward and seizing the man’s arm with his right hand and laying a knife along his throat with his left hand. He didn’t say anything. He was more than half hoping the man would react, would start to fight, would do anything to give him a reason to use that knife.

  Beside him, Megan wasn’t so nice. Stepping forward in tandem with him, her own short-bladed knife in her hand, she closed on the woman who was her target. Reversing her blade, she brought the hilt down hard on the base of the woman’s neck. The woman tumbled to the ground, unconscious, long, dark hair spilling out from beneath her helmet as she fell.

  Too easy, Blackburn thought. He wanted blood. He wanted to pull the knife hard across the neck of the man he’d captured. But he couldn’t. He was a soldier, first and foremost, and though he worked for a company rather than a country, still he had a code to uphold.

  Besides, someday this pain and rage would fade, and on that day he wanted to be able to live with himself.

  He maintained control of the man he had captured until his men had secured him. Then he sheathed his blade and said, “Get them the hell out of here.”

  Spinning away from them, he started the process of searching for survivors. It had been a long night already, and he knew that it was only going to get longer.

  FORTY-THREE

  SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA FEBRUARY 10, 2000

  “YURI VOSTOV,” GORDIAN SAID TO HIS DESKTOP videophone. His voice was dull, inflectionless, almost mechanical. It somehow reminded Nimec of the way robotic voices had sounded in science fiction movies that were made in the 1950s. He’d never heard Gordian speak in that sort of tone before, and it disquieted him perhaps more than anything that had happened over the past twenty-four hours. What was going on inside the man?

  Gordian sat there in his office and continued looking at Max Blackburn’s image in the small LCD monitor. Across the desk from him, Nimec sipped his third coffee of the morning. None of the men had gotten any sleep, and it showed in the dark crescents under all their eyes.

  “According to everything Pete’s got on him, Vostov’s a black marketeer. A drug dealer. A cheap John Gotti knockoff,” Gordian said. “Are we really expected to believe he’d be behind a plot of this complexity?”

  Blackburn’s voice came through the speaker. “What Korut Zelva would like us to swallow isn’t important. He probably decided that by flushing Vostov he could throw us off the trail awhile.”

  “Whose trail? And long enough for what?” Nimec said. “I don’t care if this guy’s some kind of dimwit, he has to know we’re going to look into his information.” Especially after what was done to our people at the ground station, he almost added, stopping himself at the last moment.

  “That’s just it, Pete,” Blackburn said. “I tend to believe there’s a very large grain of truth in the things he’s told us about Vostov. I mean, it makes perfect sense that he’s the next link up in the chain from Nick Roma’s outfit.”

  Gordian shook his head. “That still doesn’t address Pete’s essential point. How far does knowing about Vostov really get us? I don’t care how deeply the Russian mafia are involved, they wouldn’t have brought Zelva and the woman ...” He glanced down at the notes in front of him, searching for her name. “... Gilea Nastik into this. Those two are professional terrorists. Freelancers.”

  “With a grudge against the United States that goes back to the days after the Gulf War,” Nimec said. “From what Ibrahim’s told Max, they blame our government for having reneged on a promise to support the Kurdish rebellion against Saddam Hussein. And God help us, there may be truth in that.”

  “Their grievance doesn’t concern me, not after they’ve butchered thousands of innocents,” Gordian said. “And it has nothing to do with the fact that Vostov could have used his own people and kept it simple.”

  “Roger—”

  “It doesn’t sit right,” Gordian interrupted. “It doesn’t goddamned sit right.”

  Nimec saw Roger’s hand clench and unclench in the air, and again wondered what the deaths of the Steiners, and all the others, were doing to him inside.

  “Gord, listen, it seems to me we’re all saying the same thing here,” Nimec said. “If we’re agreed Vostov’s in it, then our next step is to go after hi
m. Squeeze him hard. See what he’ll give up.”

  “I don’t think we can assume he’d give up anything.” Gordian looked at Nimec, then turned back to the screen, a set expression on his face. “Don’t you see? According to the reasoning I’ve heard from both of you, this Korut gave us Vostov as a diversion. But why bother if he thought Vostov would crack and send us in the right direction?”

  Nimec pursed his lips, thinking.

  “Maybe he underestimated the sort of pressure we’d be willing to apply,” Blackburn said in a low, meaningful voice.

  “Somebody left a dead body for us to find in a Milan hotel room, and another corpse on a beach in Andalucia. The first man was hanging from a noose. The second man’s throat had been slashed almost to his spine. And both were members of the bombing team. Whoever killed them is obviously convinced we intend to get to the bottom of this affair.”

  “Roger,” Blackburn said, “I’m only saying ...”

  Gordian went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “They slaughtered Art and Elaine Steiner in cold blood—two of the kindest, most decent human beings I’ve ever met, married forty years, both looking toward retirement. They killed dozens of our technicians, administrators, and construction workers, people who’d never lifted a weapon in their lives. People who were just out there doing their jobs, making an honest wage, and perhaps doing a little good for this world in the process. They killed my friends and my employees and tried burning my ground station to the ground, Max. They know we’re in it up to our necks. They know, and they’ve been trying to scare us off, and yesterday they took it as far as they could. But they made a mistake. Because I swear to God, I’m going to bring those bastards down for what they’ve done.”

  He closed his eyes then, and sat there in silence, his lips trembling, hands balled into fists. Nimec looked at him a moment and then shifted his eyes to the wall, feeling somehow like a trespasser.