by Tom Clancy
Dubai, however, was unique in that before the war, more than eighty-five percent of its inhabitants were foreign born. Arabs, Indians, and Pakistanis were the largest groups, but people flocked to the country from all over the world, so they really weren’t sure who they’d find and what language they’d speak.
“Once we link up with the militia, we’ll see who’s running the show,” Brent went on. “Do we have any better estimates on the size and composition of this force?”
“Not very big. Battalion-sized force. Maybe a thousand if they’re lucky. Poorly equipped. Any armor they had was probably looted years ago. Looks pretty ragtag, probably just some remaining troops from the country’s old defense force and displaced persons. The emirates only had about sixty-five thousand to begin with. We’ve had some sketchy intel in the past, but this group has been largely ignored, written off as survivors in a radiological zone. There’s a lot of movement in and out of Kish Island right here,” she said, switching her image to a topo map of the area.
Kish was about 120 miles northwest of Dubai, across the Gulf. Before the war it had been touted as a consumer’s paradise because of its free-trade zone. Now it was a bombed-out junkyard.
“All right, we’ll keep an eye on that place, too. And those guys might be poorly armed, but they’ve got numbers. Time to make some new friends.”
“Good luck with that, Brent. You’ll need it. Because we’re going to pin a medal on your ass or boot it. Either way, when this is over, you and I will sit down and have a nice, long talk about the way you handled this.”
He took a deep breath. “Understood.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Good luck.”
Bang, he ended the call.
Well, there it was. Even if he brought in the Snow Maiden, Grey would still burn him for going over her head. So it didn’t matter anymore, really. He wasn’t supposed to be here for himself, right? He was here to complete the mission, which in turn was vital to the security and stability of his country. That’s the promise he’d made. That’s the promise he’d keep, career be damned.
But just to show her how good he was, he’d capture the Snow Maiden, drag her kicking and screaming all the way back to Fort Bragg, and dump her in Grey’s lap.
“Ghost Lead, this is Lakota. We’ve made contact.”
Well, that didn’t take long, he thought. “On my way.”
Nice thing about the suits. Both her location and a suggested route were already superimposed in his HUD.
He followed the glowing yellow line (or yellow brick road, as they liked to quip) to her location between the towers, where she, Park, and Heston were standing beside two militants who’d been wearing MOPP gear but had removed their heavy face masks.
Brent was surprised to find that both heavily bearded men spoke Pashto (which he understood) and had migrated down from southern Afghanistan. They said they were being paid a small wage by a man they referred to as Sheikh Juma, who had (unsurprisingly) established a camp on Kish Island from where he directed his operations. They’d called Juma, who’d said he was willing to meet with Brent. Juma said that since the Iranian holocaust, as he called it, they rarely received visitors from Russia, Europe, or the United States.
Lakota said it was a two-to-three-hour boat ride to K ish, and Brent was concerned that the Snow Maiden might arrive while they were gone. He asked the men to see if Juma could come over to see them, but Juma refused. This was, Brent knew, part of the “power game” of negotiations, and if Brent wanted anything out of Juma he needed to play along.
“All right,” Brent said. “Tell him we’re coming out to see him. Copeland? Daugherty? You guys are in charge of your teams. Lakota and I are going out to Kish Island. Schleck, Riggs? Keep eyes on.”
The snipers acknowledged.
“I want to be back before nightfall,” Brent told Lakota.
She nodded. “All we can do is try.”
They climbed into in the militia guys’ battered SUV and drove toward the coast.
* * *
Chopra could not believe the power that lay within the Snow Maiden’s arms. She threw him off as though he were weightless. He sailed off the bed, toward the back wall, as she dove for the pistol lying on the floor.
Hussein just sat there, frozen. He could have reached the gun before she did.
The Snow Maiden snatched up the pistol, then came around and back toward Chopra, her eyes fiery as she reared back and pistol-whipped him at the base of his neck. His glasses flew off, so he didn’t see the second blow coming, only felt the sudden pain in his cheek. Had that been a fist or a boot? He wasn’t sure. The blood came warm and salty into his mouth. He slid down the wall and slammed onto his rump.
Hussein screamed for her to stop, but the Snow Maiden shouted more loudly, “Just when I was thanking you for making it easy, you do this?”
“Don’t hit him anymore! Please!” the boy cried again.
“Are you serious?” she asked. “You don’t care about him. You didn’t care about your country, your father, your family. You don’t give a damn about anything but yourself. You’re a selfish little bastard, and maybe, after you give me what I want, I’ll cut off your head and put it on a stick outside the vault. What do you think of that?”
“I think you’re a crazy bitch.”
“Then you should’ve gotten my gun. You’re a little boy. A fool. That’s what you are. You’ve thrown away everything your family stood for so you could be a pig watching movies and playing games all day. If your parents could see you now, they would vomit.”
Chopra reached out, fumbled across the carpet, and found his glasses. He slipped them on, but they’d been bent and the nosepiece dug in sharply. He removed them, made an adjustment, then pushed back against the wall, trying to stand. His cheek was already swelling, and his neck throbbed and ached. He began to feel nauseated himself as he swallowed back more blood.
“You can take me to the vault,” he told the Snow Maiden. “But I won’t let you in. I won’t.”
“You will,” she said confidently. “Because I know how much you care about him. And I’ll torture him slowly, right in front of you, if you don’t do what I say.” She raised a brow. “I won’t remind you of this again. I’ll just do it.”
Chopra looked fire at her.
Hussein just stared.
“You’re not a sheikh,” she said, turning back to the boy. “You’ll never be.”
Chopra glanced at Hussein, the gears obviously turning in his youthful head.
There was no deal to strike with the Snow Maiden. The boy should understand that by now. They had but one goal: escape. Chopra wasn’t sure how else to convince the boy.
* * *
Brent wished he could have sent Lakota and Daugherty over to Kish Island to meet with Juma, but he knew how these warlord/militia leader types operated. First, Juma would not respect Lakota’s authority because she was a woman. Second, Juma would feel slighted because Brent had sent his underlings instead of coming himself. You had to show face to save face. What Juma lacked in numbers and technological superiority, he made up for in demands of dignity and respect. Brent was certain he would hear phrases like “We are a proud people” and “The invaders who come to rob our land will be executed.”
While riding aboard the small and agonizingly slow fishing boat, he contacted Grey and had her tap Ghost Recon’s intelligence sources to positively identify Juma. Grey said once they had an image of his face they could do so immediately.
They reached the east side of the island and were met at the dock by a security force of six men, all wearing MOPP gear. They climbed into two trucks and were driven out to the postwar remnants of the Dariush Grand Hotel, once a 125-million-dollar five-star affair with more than two hundred guest rooms. Cross-Com data indicated the place had been built to resemble Persepolis, a city of ancient Iranian civilization and the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire.
Now the hotel’s once-magnificent grand columns and towering archways that
reminded Brent more of ancient Rome than Persia lay in piles of rubble through which they threaded, finding what had once been an ornate marble stairway framed by rubble and leading down into the shadows.
Two of the security men fired up torches, which made Lakota glance strangely at Brent. He assumed they’d at least have flashlights powered by solar cells or other conventional batteries, but they clearly had limited resources.
In the eerie and flickering torchlight, Brent noted that the walls, once adorned by ornate murals of gardens and waterfalls, had been scorched black by terrible fires, and as they descended farther, Brent experienced the enormity of what had happened in this region. They had been far from ground zero, but there had been an unrelenting shower of conventional bombing prior to the nuclear exchange. Kish, though not a primary military target, had been flattened as an economic blow, because it had been one of the most popular tourist destinations and helped bolster the Iranian economy.
They continued on, winding their way through a labyrinth of bombed-out hallways intersected by fallen walls and doors blasted off their hinges. Once they had descended two more flights of stairs that had been sloppily repaired with bricks and thick mortar, they finally reached an open area that might have been a small ball-room or conference room, Brent wasn’t sure. Giant chandeliers hung like twinkling mother ships from the ceiling but remained dark. The room was in fact lit by dozens of candles.
Two unmasked men stood at the entrance, both clutching AK-47s. They allowed the group to pass. Several large writing tables laden with maps, charts, and all kinds of papers lay directly ahead, along with books, thousands of books rising in piles like the Manhattan skyline against a horizon of more massive bookshelves lining the back wall.
Seated behind the broadest desk, a hand-carved piece of furniture as gaudy as Brent had ever seen, was a large man who had to be Juma. He had his boots kicked up, his face half-hidden behind a thick, graying beard as his stubby finger ran down the margin of a report in his hand. A pair of bifocals had slipped down to the tip of his leathery nose. Brent found it a bit ironic that the warlord still managed his forces via hardcopy documents; that was about as old-school as it got. Ghost Recon had been paperless for as long as Brent could remember.
Juma glanced up from his report. “Ah, finally!”
He immediately rose and shuffled around the desk to greet them. He was a large man, at least three hundred pounds, dressed in nondescript military fatigues and a traditional Arab headdress that might’ve been called a turban or something else, Brent guessed, because he’d never spent much time this far south. Surprisingly enough, Juma proffered his hand and said, “You must be Captain Brent of the JSF.”
He spoke perfect English with a British accent and had either spent time in the U.K. or, perhaps, been educated there. Brent didn’t have to wait long for the answers. Abruptly, a data box opened in his HUD, and information on the man scrolled downward as Grey had promised. Juma’s face had been analyzed by the teams back home, who updated Brent with more than he’d ever need to know. Juma was a cousin of the Al Maktoum family, not directly in line to lead but a highly educated businessman once intimately involved with the country’s oil exports. That he had become the leader of a militia was not too surprising, given his graduate degree education and skills.
“I see they’re feeding you the gossip on me,” said Juma, indicating the little flashes of light he detected in Brent’s faceplate. “You can take off your helmets here.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry, but how would you like to be addressed?”
The man grinned. “Juma would be fine.”
Brent removed his helmet, which clicked and hissed as he raised it over his head. “All right. I’m Alex.”
“Alexander the Great,” said Juma with a grin.
“No, just a soldier here to help. And most people just call me Brent.” He turned. “This is my second in command, Sergeant Lakota.”
Lakota removed her helmet and shook out her hair. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”
He issued a polite if not perfunctory grin at Lakota but refocused his attention on Brent. “First we eat, drink, then talk.”
“Excellent,” said Brent.
Lakota looked at him, a bit weary. They didn’t have time for this, but refusing the invitation would be an insult.
As they followed Juma toward a door near the back, Brent nodded at Lakota, who was donning her Cross-Com headset and earpiece so they remained in contact with the team and the network. As they walked, she spoke softly: “I’m having a hard time connecting to Grey now. WAN uplink temporarily unavailable.”
“That’s weird. Keep trying,” said Brent.
“I don’t like this, sir.”
Brent gave her a sobering look. “I’ll check back at the towers, see if LAN’s operational.” He did so, and the team reported back in sans any comm problems.
“Brent, I’ve finished my reconnaissance of the entranceway to the vault, and I’ve picked out some ambush points, if you want to take a look,” said Voeckler.
“Busy now, but I will. Run them by the others. Meantime, stand by. I’ll be in touch.”
TWENTY-ONE
Town of Al Malaiha
About Seventy-five Kilometers from Dubai
The Snow Maiden yawned as the headlights reached out into the darkness, toward the squalid desert town rising in the distance. They were heading south on Highway 55, pushing through vast stretches of nothingness. She thought she saw an oil refinery off to their right, but the shadows and dust had collected into curtains of gloom.
Patti had procured four Renault medium-sized cargo trucks with a telecom service’s yellow logo splashed across the sides. These trucks were not uncommon and wouldn’t draw much attention to themselves.
The other three trucks were driven by members of her team, only one of whom, a Captain Chen Yi, actually spoke a little Russian. Her Chinese was poor, and they’d tested their English on each other with only marginal success. Patti had sworn that every man had been handpicked by herself and Fedorovich and that all could be trusted. The Snow Maiden had grinned to herself over that joke.
Her cell phone rang: It was Patti. She answered curtly.
The woman replied, “I have someone who wants to talk to you. Hold on.”
After a moment, a man’s voice, somewhat filtered by static, came through. “Viktoria, is that you?”
She almost drove off the road. “Pavel?”
“Viktoria, it’s me.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“They’re taking me to meet you, so you don’t have to say anything right now. I know what you did. I know why you did it. And nothing matters anymore. I just want to see you.”
A hollow aching woke in her chest. She was actually speaking to him, to Colonel Pavel Doletskaya, formerly of the GRU, a man she had hurt more than any other in this world, she thought. “I’m so sorry. About everything.”
About more than she could ever tell him — about leading him on, staging her death with Izotov’s help, dropping off the grid, and turning their relationship into a lie. He was the only one who had touched her after her husband’s death. Pavel wasn’t an expendable tool. He meant something, and the Ganjin knew that. He was supposed to be a bonus payment for her.
Or a source of blackmail. She would have to be ready for that, prepared to watch him die.
“Don’t worry, Viktoria. I have always been here. It’s not too late for us. If you will have me…”
She began to choke up.
“Viktoria? Are you still there?”
She summoned the strength and coldness back into her voice as she imagined Patti slashing his throat and the blood pooling at his knees. “I can’t talk right now. But as you say, we’ll meet. Take care, Pavel.”
Chopra was seated beside her, with Hussein next to him across the long bench. “Is everything okay?” asked the old man.
“Shut up.”
The boy asked, “Are you sad?”
“Not a word from either of you.”
“What about that?” Hussein added, pointing toward the windshield.
Hearing Pavel’s voice had taken her years and kilometers away, back to her work with him, back to their affair, to the moments lying in bed with him, moments so tender and so clear that she’d failed to see the roadblock looming ahead.
She radioed to Chen Yi, who in turn called back to the other drivers. Then she alerted Patti. “You didn’t tell me about a roadblock.”
“They must have observation posts. You’ve been tagged. We didn’t count on this.”
“Some old SUVs, maybe twenty armed soldiers.”
“We can’t afford any more delays,” said Patti. “The Euros are on their way. Haussler is moving toward his trap. You’ve got your own troops. Deal with it.”
The Snow Maiden cursed, then called to Chen Yi and told him to be ready. She mashed the accelerator pedal, and the truck lurched forward.
“They’re going to shoot us!” cried Hussein.
The kid’s appreciation of the obvious was not lost on her. As they barreled toward the roadblock, the soldiers lifted their rifles and took up defensive positions alongside the cars. She braced herself.
And not three heartbeats later, the hailstorm of fire began, incoming rounds pinging along the truck, sparks dancing over the hood and side panels as she throttled up even more and both Chopra and the boy hollered for her to pull over.
And then, resigning to the situation, she spun the wheel, pulling off the road, as the other three trucks roared by, now taking the brunt of all those rounds. Her truck bounced violently over ruts and through small dunes.
Not a second after the last truck blew by, she cut the wheel again, bringing them into the draft of the last vehicle and keeping tight on that driver’s wheels. They had a temporary shield, but they still had to pass those combatants.
The lead truck blasted through the SUVs blocking the road, knocking one onto its side, the other sideways. Steel and glass groaned and shattered while tires screeched across the pavement.
