by Dale Brown
“It’s not so much an assessment of the KVMs themselves,” the professor said, hesitating a bit. “More a concern about possible psychological effects their pilots could experience.”
“Go on,” Gryzlov said with deceptive mildness.
Aronov swallowed hard. “I’m worried that prolonged operation of these powerful machines—especially the mental and physical isolation involved when connected to their neural interfaces—might give pilots a dangerous sense of almost superhuman invulnerability. If so, the consequences—”
Gryzlov cut him off with a dismissive, offhand gesture. “War is not a place for weaklings, Aronov,” he said. “These men have already proven themselves in high-performance fighter aircraft, under maximum stress while pulling high-Gs. Compared to that, running around in those metal suits of yours will be like a stroll in the park.”
Nine
HEADQUARTERS, 22nd GUARDS SPETSNAZ BRIGADE, BATAYSK, NEAR ROSTOV-ON-DON, RUSSIA
A FEW DAYS LATER
Russia’s 22nd Guards Spetsnaz Brigade was based on the eastern outskirts of the little city of Bataysk, roughly ten kilometers south of the much larger city of Rostov-on-Don. The Taganrog Gulf, the northeastern tip of the Sea of Azov, lay about forty kilometers due west. The Spetsnaz compound contained troop barracks, vehicle parks, a parade ground, indoor close-combat training ranges, and a large, two-story headquarters building. Outside its wooded perimeter, the surrounding streets were lined with old, Soviet-era concrete apartment blocks, a few grocery stores and pharmacies, and a couple of light-manufacturing and aircraft-repair plants.
Late in the afternoon, a green UAZ-3163 Patriot SUV pulled up in front of the headquarters building and parked. Almost immediately, a trim, efficient-looking colonel with jet-black hair and ice-cold blue eyes got out from behind the wheel. For a brief moment, she stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the area with a disdainful expression. The black-and-gold patch on her right sleeve showed the medieval helmet and crossed sword and marshal’s baton of Russia’s general staff. A big, beefy man wearing a dark black civilian suit climbed out behind her. His broad, clean-shaven face was harder to read.
Every building in sight had dirty windows and peeling paint. Trash cans stacked beside them were full to overflowing. Gravel walkways were rutted and unraked. At first glance, the Spetsnaz compound looked almost completely deserted. Apparently, most of the brigade’s officers and men were away for the weekend or off duty for other reasons.
“It seems our information was correct,” Colonel Irina Zakharova said to her companion. She shook her head in disbelief. “If this is what passes for an elite unit, I would hate to see what a ragtag conscript force looks like. My aged grandmother and two of her arthritic friends could take this place over without breaking a sweat.”
Thoughtfully, the big man nodded. “Perhaps, Colonel. But I suggest we find out just how deep the rot goes before coming to any firm conclusions. After all, appearances can be deceiving.”
“True enough,” she agreed with a faint smile.
Together, they trotted up the steps, entered the headquarters building, and strode briskly toward the security desk blocking the front hall.
The senior sergeant on duty rose to his feet as soon as they came through the door. Andrei Isayev, a hard-bitten veteran of combat in Chechnya, Ukraine, and Poland, frowned slightly. He knew trouble when he saw it. And these two looked like trouble. Wiping the frown off his face, he threw a quick, precise salute to the woman colonel. “How may I help you, sir?” he asked politely.
“We want to see the officer of the day,” she snapped. “Immediately.”
Without delay, Isayev picked up a phone and relayed her demand to his immediate superior, Captain Dmitry Leonov. Moments later, the captain, who looked absurdly young for his rank, appeared—hurriedly buttoning his uniform jacket and then straightening his tie. From his rumpled look, he’d probably been caught napping after a heavy lunch in the mess.
Swallowing hard, he straightened to attention. “Welcome to the Twenty-Second Guards Spetsnaz Brigade, Colonel . . . ?”
Wordlessly, the two strangers exchanged disgusted looks and then showed the young officer their identification cards. He stared at them in surprise.
“My name is Zakharova,” the colonel told him coldly. “I am assigned to the Main Army Command.” She indicated the big man at her side. “This is Oleg Solomin. He works for the Ministry of Defense, in the Financial Inspectorate. Our orders are to conduct a snap inspection of your brigade’s personnel records, equipment inventory, and other relevant files.”
If anything, her expression grew even icier. “Your unit’s most recent readiness reports have been found to be highly unsatisfactory, Captain.” Her voice hardened. “And I must inform you that the ministry and the general staff are not at all pleased by this sorry state of affairs.”
Oh shit, Leonov thought. With his commanding officer on leave in St. Petersburg, he was the one in the hot seat here. And if there were a worse time for Moscow to start poking its nose into the brigade’s internal activities and readiness, he could not imagine when that might be.
Recently promoted from lieutenant, Leonov had been transferred to this Spetsnaz unit from a regular motorized rifle battalion only weeks before. But already he could tell that things were in a bad state. Too many key officer billets were either vacant or filled by greenhorns like him. Except for a couple of diehards like Sergeant Isayev, the same thing could be said about the brigade’s enlisted ranks. Everyone at Bataysk seemed to be just going through the motions, with little evidence of the rigorous standards of physical fitness, marksmanship, and discipline he’d been assured were the hallmarks of Russia’s vaunted Spetsnaz troops. He gulped.
“Don’t just stand there gawping at me like some useless peasant, Captain!” Zakharova said. Her voice cracked like a whip. “Are you prepared to cooperate with this inspection? Or not?”
Desperately, Leonov fell back on the military courtesies pounded into him as a fledgling officer cadet. He threw his shoulders back, stiffened to rigid attention, and clicked his heels together. “Of course, Colonel! I will do whatever is necessary to assist you.”
“Fortunately for us and, I suspect, for you, that will not be much,” Zakharova said, with thinly veiled amusement. “For now, all we require is access to your database. And an office to work in.”
Thoroughly cowed now, Leonov escorted them down the hall to the small room set aside for the officer of the day. With a muttered apology, he swept the old newspapers and tabloid magazines stacked next to his computer screen and keyboard into a trash can. From the disgusted sneer on her attractive face, Zakharova probably thought he should have been boning up on weapons and tactics manuals instead.
Sweating, he brought the computer screen to life and typed in his user ID and password.
“Good,” the colonel said flatly. She jerked her head toward the door. “Now you can go, Captain Leonov.” Her eyes flashed. “But don’t go far. Depending on what we find in your unit’s records, we may have more questions for you.”
Nervously, Leonov checked his watch. The two bigwigs from Moscow had been locked away inside his office for almost an hour. He wished he had some clearer idea of how much longer they would be there. He supposed it depended on how far back in time they were digging into the brigade’s files.
Like all organized armies around the world, Russia’s ground forces made a fetish of record keeping. You wanted a new rifle or pair of boots? Fill out the required form, Corporal. Going on leave to visit your family? File your request through the appropriate channels, Sergeant. Organizing a training exercise for your platoon? Complete the necessary requisitions for ammunition, firing-range time, and transportation, Lieutenant. The only difference now was that almost everything was stored in digital form rather than being kept on paper.
“You don’t look too happy about this situation, Captain,” Sergeant Isayev commented quietly from his post at the security desk.
Leonov forced down a bitt
er laugh. “What’s there to be happy about?” He stopped pacing and waved a hand toward his office. “We both know nothing good can come out of this surprise inspection.”
“If there’s a problem, Colonel Andreyev may have more to worry about than you,” the sergeant pointed out, referring to the absent commander of the 22nd Guards Spetsnaz Brigade.
Leonov snorted. In a just world that would be true. Whatever deficiencies this Colonel Zakharova and the accountant Solomin turned up ought to be laid squarely at the feet of Andreyev and his battalion commanders—not pinned on someone like him, a freshly minted and very junior captain. Unfortunately, justice was not usually a concept associated with Russia’s armed forces. If Moscow was really pissed off, the brigade commander was going to be hunting around for scapegoats . . . and blame, like raw sewage, always flowed downhill. And even if Andreyev went down instead, nobody on his staff could hope to escape being tarnished by the same aura of sloth, incompetence, and possible corruption.
“No matter how this plays out in the end, one thing’s sure: I’m royally fucked, Sergeant,” he said gloomily.
“Well, that depends,” Isayev said slowly.
Surprised, the captain looked up. “Depends on what?”
“On whether those two really are who they say they are,” the sergeant replied.
Leonov stared at him. While he’d been moaning about his fate, Isayev had obviously been thinking very different thoughts. “Zakharova and Solomin? Who else would they be?”
“I don’t know, sir.” The sergeant lowered his voice even more. “But their arrival sure seems conveniently timed to avoid awkward questions. I mean, here we are on the weekend with all the senior officers away. And then, bang, two total strangers storm in flashing identity cards and demanding access to all our files?” He shrugged. “Doesn’t that seem sort of odd to you?”
“Well, that’s the whole point of a surprise inspection!” Leonov argued. “To catch people off their guard.”
“Maybe in books, sir,” Isayev said patiently. “But that’s not the way the game is usually played. See, higher-ups like Colonel Andreyev almost always have pals or connections on the staff who give them a little friendly warning—quietlike—about things like this before they happen. The system’s set up so that nobody gets embarrassed and everybody looks good.” He swung around in his chair to glance carefully down the hall. “All of which makes me wonder who these people really work for.”
Leonov felt cold. “You think they’re foreign spies?”
“Maybe.” The sergeant hesitated. “Or they could be some of our own spooks.” His mouth tightened. “Those rat bastards in the GRU or the FSB might be running a no-warning security exercise on us. If so, letting them poke around in our databases isn’t going to look too good.” He looked back at the captain. “Either way, sir, you’d better check up on these people.”
For what felt like an eternity, Leonov stood frozen. My God, he thought, fighting down a rising sense of dread. Isayev was right. His situation was bad enough if this were just a genuine probe into the brigade’s records. If, instead, it turned out that he’d given spies—whether foreign or domestic—unchallenged access to their computer systems, he was a dead man walking. Unless, that was, he could find out for sure in time to stop whatever they were doing.
“The colonel has a direct link to the Ministry of Defense in his office,” the sergeant reminded him.
“Yes! That’s right,” Leonov realized abruptly. He shook himself like a sleeper throwing off a nightmare. “Make sure those two don’t leave until I confirm their identities, Sergeant.”
Isayev nodded. The veteran Spetsnaz noncom’s eyes were expressionless. “No problem, Captain.”
With that, Leonov spun on his heel and hurried away down the hall.
Inside the captain’s office, the big man who called himself Oleg Solomin sat in front of the computer, rapidly scanning through files and then copying them onto a special, ultra-high-speed USB flash drive.
“How’s it going?” his companion asked. Zakharova leaned casually on one corner of the desk, keeping her eye on the door.
“Almost finished,” he grunted.
Her smartphone buzzed once. She fished it out of her uniform jacket. “Yes.”
“You’ve got trouble, Sam,” the lilting Welsh voice of David Jones, their backup man, told her. “Someone on that base just placed a secure call to Moscow, to the Ministry of Defense. I doubt that’s a coincidence.”
Samantha Kerr frowned. “Understood,” she said. “We’re pulling out now.” She looked across at Marcus Cartwright, her fellow Scion field operative. “We’re blown. Or in the process of being blown.”
“That’s unfortunate,” the big man replied calmly. “But not wholly unexpected.” With quick, economical movements, he detached the USB drive and slipped it into his own coat. Then he got up and moved toward the door, taking the lead.
The hard-faced Spetsnaz sergeant who’d first greeted them stood waiting in the hallway right outside. “Going somewhere, Mr. Solomin?” he asked Cartwright with a mocking smile. “So soon?”
The big man offered him a polite smile and nodded. “The colonel and I have finished our work, Sergeant Isayev. You should be glad to get us out of your hair.”
Smoothly, the Russian unholstered his sidearm, a 9mm Udav pistol. “If you are who you claim to be, you have my apologies.” His smile turned uglier. “But if you are what I suspect, your next of kin will have my condolences.”
Ashen-faced with fear, Cartwright sagged to his knees. He raised his hands. They were visibly trembling. “Please, this isn’t what you think.” Words spilled out of his slack mouth in an almost incoherent jumble. “Really, I swear. We are not—”
Phut. Phut.
Shot twice by Samantha Kerr at point-blank range with a tiny, Russian-made PSS pistol, the sergeant stumbled backward. He slid down the wall, smearing bright red blood across dingy white paint. His mouth opened for one last desperate cry. And then Marcus Cartwright lunged upward, crushing his trachea with one powerful hammerblow.
Working swiftly, the two Scion agents dragged the corpse back into Leonov’s office and dumped it behind his desk.
“Well, that’s annoying,” Sam said quietly, reloading her little pistol—originally developed by the Soviets for use in covert assassinations by KGB agents and Spetsnaz operatives. Though its slow-moving 7.62mm subsonic rounds were almost useless beyond twenty-five meters, the weapon was almost perfectly silent. “I hate it when the opposition wakes up just a bit too soon.”
In the brigade commander’s much larger and better-furnished office not far down the hall, Captain Leonov was on the phone. Grimly, he listened to the dry, disinterested voice of the personnel clerk he’d finally been able to reach. Finding someone at the Ministry of Defense who was willing and able to answer his questions had taken much longer than he’d hoped.
“Colonel Zakharova? Irina Zakharova?” the clerk said. “Yes, there is such an officer attached to the general staff. But she is on medical leave, or so my records indicate. Apparently, she had suffered a mild heart attack last month. Why do you ask?”
Leonov clutched the phone tighter. He had been tricked. “Because she—”
Behind him, the door into the office swung silently open. Sam Kerr leaned around the doorframe with her pistol in hand and a look of intense concentration on her face. Coolly, she squeezed the trigger twice.
Hit by both shots, Dmitry Leonov crumpled across the desk. The phone dropped out of his hand.
Cartwright scooped it up. “This is Senior Sergeant Isayev.”
“Isayev? What’s going on there? Where is your captain?” the clerk in Moscow asked, obviously puzzled. “And what is this business about Colonel Zakharova?”
“Apparently, we have an impostor on the base,” Cartwright explained. “Captain Leonov is taking a squad to deal with the situation immediately. But he wishes me to thank you for your extremely valuable assistance.” Then, without waiting for a repl
y, he hung up.
The big man looked at Sam. “That’s torn it. I’d estimate we have about thirty minutes before all hell breaks loose here. Probably less.”
She nodded. “I’m on it.” Taking out her smartphone, she tapped in a one-word text message—DAMOCLES, the request for an emergency extraction. Message sent, her phone reported.
Ten
HEADQUARTERS, SOUTHERN MILITARY DISTRICT, ROSTOV-ON-DON, RUSSIA
A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER
The Southern Military District had its headquarters in a five-story neoclassical building in downtown Rostov. If it weren’t for the iron rail fence and small white guard post blocking access to a door bearing the double-headed eagle emblem of Russia’s armed forces, passersby would ordinarily have thought it was just another luxury apartment building, art gallery, store, or bank.
No one could have made that mistake now.
Armed soldiers in camouflaged battle dress and body armor patrolled the neighboring streets. Police cars barricaded every major intersection. Staff officers streamed into the building in twos and threes, summoned back to duty by emergency phone calls to suburban homes and country dachas. One by one, lights flicked on behind tall, curtained windows on every floor.
Short and stocky, still built like the tank commander he had once been, Colonel General Vladislav Nikitin stormed into the crowded operations center in a foul temper. It was irritating enough that this sudden emergency had ruined a delightful romp with his newest mistress, a beautiful blond soap-opera actress. Arriving to find his staff scurrying around in what appeared at first glance to be total confusion was worse. Everywhere he turned, phones were ringing off the hook. Cigarettes smoldered in overflowing ashtrays. And throughout the room, groups of officers clustered around maps, gesturing wildly while they argued about which units should be deployed where.
Scowling, Nikitin shoved past them, ignoring their startled looks and frantic salutes. He found his chief of staff, Major General Maxim Borovkov, hunched over a map of his own. This one showed the entire region around Rostov, stretching from Ukraine and the Sea of Azov in the west, to Georgia and Azerbaijan in the south, and the Caspian Sea and Kazakhstan to the east. Even Borovkov, tall, wiry, and ordinarily as cool as ice, looked ruffled.
