Kitabı oku: «Citadel Of Fear»
America’s elite black ops team Stony Man Farm is dedicated to protecting the innocent. Acting on orders of the President, these soldiers and cyber techs are the nation’s best defense against violence and terror across the globe.
COASTAL CRISIS
Adding insult to injury, terrorists are discovered laundering money through Liberty City, an economic free zone in Grenada, sending Able Team undercover to follow the money trail. It doesn’t take long to discover the free city has provided a haven for building homemade ballistic missiles. Phoenix Force arrives just in time to provide backup, but the missiles have already been shipped to a rogue group with their sights disturbingly set on the California coast. Both teams must join forces to avert disaster, because failure could mean the death of the President and thousands of Americans.
McCARTER TOOK THE FLIGHT RECORDER AND SLID IT ACROSS THE TABLE TO PROPENKO
“Here, this is your first job. Take this and—”
Propenko’s scarred fist slammed down on the flight recorder. Bits of thick plastic armor flew in all directions. He scooped up the little black box’s innards and made a fist around them. Technology cracked and popped.
The Russian went to the sink, turned on the tap and flicked on the garbage disposal. He dropped the shattered remnants down the drain and the flight recorder of Drone 1 met its final mastication.
McCarter noted that the Russian’s leg seemed to be bothering him a lot less.
Everyone froze as the lights suddenly went out and the garbage disposal spun to a grinding, snapping halt. For a moment the only sound was the running tap. The lights of the neighbors on the surrounding hillsides and the lights of the city below didn’t flicker. Someone had cut the safe house’s power.
“Gear up,” McCarter ordered. “We’re about to get hit.”
Citadel of Fear
Don Pendleton
Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
Introduction
Title Page
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
EPILOGUE
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
Poland, Gulf of Gdansk
“I have movement,” Gary Manning reported.
David McCarter, leader of Phoenix Force, looked up into the scudding rain of the Baltic Sea in winter. “Able Team gets all the soft jobs…” he muttered. “What do you see, Gummer?”
Manning spoke from his sniper hide three hundred meters back. They were in Baltic marshlands and he held the only high ground, but it was barely ten meters above sea level. “Three trucks, as reported. I make them Russian civilian Zil half-tons. Canvas tops.”
T. J. Hawkins checked his weapon. He mostly approved of the Polish kit. The Beryl rifle was basically a Russian AK but sexier and built to NATO standards. The young soldier peered out into crepuscular dawn across the gulf and took in the lights of Kaliningrad across the border as they came on in the predawn. “You know, I still don’t quite get how that’s Russia.”
Calvin James checked his weapon a final time, as well. “It’s an oblast, Hawk.”
“A what?”
“An exclave federal subject of Russia.”
“You know I love it when you talk all smart ’n’ stuff,” Hawkins declared.
Calvin James waited for it.
Hawkins sighed. “Okay, what’s an exclave?”
James made the young warrior work. “What’s the difference between the Latin prefixes en and ex?”
“Ex! Like exoskeleton! Outside! Like sci-fi body armor, and bugs!”
James nodded grudgingly. “Someone give that Wal-Mart-shopping, cornbread-fed Son of the South a cigar.”
Hawkins beamed. “Yeah, but why is it Russia? I mean, shouldn’t it be part of Poland or one of the Balticstans?”
Rafael Encizo snorted. “Did he just say Balticstan?”
“That piece of property has gone back and forth more than a few times historically,” Calvin James explained. “But the last time it traded hands? The Soviets took it from the Nazis, in World War II, and they didn’t give it back. To anybody.”
Hawkins nodded sagely. “They have a habit of that.”
“That they do. It’s the Russian Federation’s only western seaport that doesn’t freeze over in winter. They aren’t going to give it back to anyone anytime soon.”
Hawkins looked to their leader. “So what are we doing here again?
McCarter watched the trucks approach down the one-lane road through the misty marsh forest. They were a dozen klicks outside the Polish city of Elbag. The land was flat, dank, forested with twisted trees right out of a horror movie and mostly undeveloped. The Kaliningrad oblast was indeed Russia’s westernmost outpost, and had a massive military presence. Not unsurprisingly, the oblast also had a massive Russian organized crime presence, and served as a launch point for Russian mafiya endeavors into Western Europe.
This stretch of coast was a well-known smugglers’ route. McCarter knew that big money was paid on both sides of the border to keep the salty, dark, cold and windswept stretch of wetlands clear of Polish state police and customs.
Phoenix Force had rather neatly stopped a terrorist attack a week ago in Prague. McCarter had been rather pleased with himself and his team. However, Stony Man Farm had picked up some very strange and seemingly related chatter within hours of the strike. Strange enough that Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, the Farm’s cybernetics genius, had used the dreaded word anomalous.
The Farm had tracked the weapons through the black market web and their path had led to the Gdansk smuggling route and Kaliningrad. All signs pointed to something going on tonight.
McCarter scowled into the misting rain. Phoenix Force had once again been reduced to sticking their necks out and seeing who tried to chop their heads off. It was the Englishman’s least favorite method of investigation.
“With any luck we’re tying up loose ends, Hawk,” McCarter replied.
“I got a feeling we’re just getting started.”
McCarter nodded wearily into the wind. “And you’re not alone in that, are you, old son?”
“He called me old son.”
“You know? One day you are going to go one right proper Charlie too far.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
James answered. “It means, young blood, that one day, you are going to be all full of piss and vinegar, and say ‘you love it when I talk all black and stuff’ to me, and our fearless leader shall sit back and laugh at what happens to you.”
Hawkins looked back and forth as every senior Phoenix Force member save Manning grinned at him in the gloom. “That’s not right. That’s wrong. I’d never say something like that.”
Phoenix Force, including Manning over the com link, spoke as a unit. “Yes, you would.”
“That’s just wrong—”
Manning interrupted him with, “One mile, within range of my rifle, waiting on green light.”
“Roger that, Gummer,” McCarter replied. “Wait on my signal unless you get sudden inspiration.”
“Copy that.”
Encizo flipped up the sight on his grenade launcher. “Three trucks, how do you want to play it?”
“Well, I suppose I could step down there, step out in front and ask for an inspection.”
The Cuban grunted in amusement. “You don’t speak Russian or Polish.”
“But I do know a lorryful of Russian swearwords, and the word stop. Then it would be up to you lot and we all play it by ear.”
James gave the Phoenix Force leader a bemused look. “Wow.”
“You’ve got a better plan, then?”
“No, not all.” James grinned. “I’m all in.”
Manning’s voice dropped low over the link. “Guys?”
The convoy had stopped at approximately three hundred meters.
Hawkins stared at the three idling trucks. “Now why do you think they did that?”
McCarter’s brows bunched. “Don’t say it…”
Encizo said it. “I got a bad feeling.”
“They know we’re here,” James confirmed.
Manning’s voice grew concerned across the link. “Does anyone else hear that?”
McCarter strained his senses over the sound of the idling trucks in the distance.
Hawkins’s head snapped up. “Aw, hell.”
McCarter heard it. It was low and sounded off in the fog, which told him that it was actually high. It sounded like a distant gardener’s Weed-Eater whirring from on high. Hawkins raised his weapon skyward. “It’s an RC helicopter”
“And it has a bloody infrared camera,” McCarter snarled. “And it bloody well has us! Fish?”
Encizo opened the action on the Pallad grenade launcher slaved beneath the barrel of his rifle. He took out the fragmentation grenade and slid in a fléchette round. “Hey, Hawk.”
“Yeah?”
“Go out in that clearing behind us. Do a little duck tolling. Maybe entice that eye in the sky to come down and take a closer look at you.”
“Oh, for…” Hawkins popped to his feet and ran at a crouch into the clearing.
Encizo shouldered his weapon. “Cal, a little light on the subject, if you please.”
Calvin James clicked an illumination-round rifle grenade over his muzzle. “Say when.”
The other members of Phoenix Force watched as Hawkins squelched across the wet glade one way and then came back the other. He suddenly crouched and ran to his left.
“Would you describe those as furtive movements?” James asked.
Manning spoke across the link. “I’d describe it as—”
“Now!” Encizo shouted and estimated the shot. “Nine o’clock!”
James snapped up his rifle and fired. The rifle bucked and the illumination round burst skyward. The low clouds, fog and predawn murk lit up and the small remote-controlled helicopter found itself starkly illuminated at five hundred feet. It appeared to be a fairly standard quad-copter with four rotors. It hovered in place for a moment like a deer in the headlights. James suspected the nonmilitary-grade night-vision camera’s lens had temporarily solarized.
The spy-copter was blind.
Like a cockroach when the kitchen lights came on, it suddenly tried to scuttle away. In this case by accelerating straight upward.
Encizo raised his weapon and fired. The 40 mm Pallad belched pale yellow smoke and sent fifty steel darts screaming skyward in an expanding swarm. The RC chopper tilted crazily as fléchettes speared into its plastic fuselage and tore apart its starboard rotors.
McCarter grunted in appreciation. “Nice shot, Fish.”
The little unmanned aircraft suddenly dipped with only its portside rotors to support it and spun violently toward the earth like a falling maple seed on meth.
“Hawk,” McCarter ordered, “be a good lad. Find that and mark it for retrieval. Everyone else hold position.”
“Be a good lad…” Hawkins muttered. Nevertheless the soldier slogged out of the slough and into the trees.
Encizo opened the smoking breech on his weapon and slid in a frag. “So what do you think they’re up to?”
McCarter kept his eyes and his muzzle pointed at the trucks in the mist. Above the tableau, the illumination grenade guttered as it descended on its parachutes. “They just lost their drone and are watching the end of the light show.”
“If I were them? I’d attack right now.”
The canvas covering of the lead truck suddenly popped off like a magic trick. The truck was armed with twin-mounted 23 mm automatic antiaircraft cannons.
Encizo shook his head. “Why don’t you just spit in the wind, Cal?”
Hawkins trotted through the trees clutching his prize. “What’s—”
“Down!” McCarter ordered.
“Jesus!” Hawkins threw himself down. “They brought artillery!”
“And aerial reconnaissance,” James reminded.
“Who are these guys!” Encizo snarled.
McCarter roared as the twin cannons hammered into life, sending high-explosive shells into the trees. Shrapnel from the high-explosive fragmentation rounds tore through the foliage over McCarter’s head. It was only a matter of moments before Phoenix Force got shredded. “Gummer!”
“Gimme a second! The cab is in the way!”
Encizo fired his 40 mm. The round detonated well off target as it hit a tree branch shrouded in fog. “Goddamn it…”
McCarter, James and Hawkins hugged mud. Encizo reloaded. The twin 23 mms thundered like giant jackhammers and continued to give the forest a haircut as they sought out human targets.
Manning did his math and found his shot. It was lost in the cacophony of cannon fire but from his little hillock his bullet drew a deadly line through the lead truck’s windshield, rear window and the cannon operator’s skull. The gunner rubbernecked and oozed out of his seat. The cannons went silent and oozed smoke. Armed men spilled out of the trucks. McCarter decided he’d had enough of this ambush. “Counter attack! By twos! Fish, on me!”
McCarter and Encizo jumped up and advanced through the trees straight at the enemy. They fired on rapid semi-auto and reaped the men deploying across the open road. McCarter dropped to one knee beside a tree as his weapon slammed open empty. “Reloading!”
“Reloading!” Encizo echoed.
“Coming through!” James bellowed.
“Coming through!” Hawkins shouted.
The two soldiers leapfrogged McCarter’s and Encizo’s positions, firing as they went. James put a burst though the window of one of the trucks as it tried to back up. The truck lurched as the driver fell against the wheel. James dropped to one knee. “Reloading!”
Encizo fired his weapon empty. “Reloading!”
“Coming through!” McCarter and Encizo advanced, relying on their optics and shock and awe. The enemy expected to chop their prey to pieces with the cannon or at the very least pin them down and then flank them. They had not expected a counter-assault. The enemy fired wildly on full auto and appeared to be in full panic mode. Manning’s sniper rifle reached out unseen for men who had taken cover behind the trucks. The rear truck was reversing and some of Phoenix’s assailants were running for their lives to get to it and get in. “Fish!”
Encizo instinctively knew what McCarter wanted. He dropped to one knee. “Grenade!” His 40 mm fired and his grenade flashed and smoked and perforated the truck’s cab and its occupants. The rear truck ground to a halt.
The enemy found themselves pinned.
McCarter was getting the feeling these guys were gangsters rather than real soldiers. His boots hit pavement and the last bullet in his magazine pushed a man into the ditch by the side of the road.
“Reloading!”
Encizo fired off three more rounds and knelt again. “Reloading!”
James and Hawkins charged forward. “Coming through!”
McCarter slammed in a fresh magazine as the twin
30 mm antiaircraft cannons suddenly traversed. McCarter swung up his rifle one heartbeat too slow. He had just enough time to see the new gunner’s teeth flash in the gloom as he smiled and told McCarter goodbye. The cannon operator tumbled out of his seat as Manning’s long-range rifle said so long first.
James and Hawkins fired their rifles empty and knelt out in the open, counting on their comrades. “Reloading!”
McCarter and Encizo advanced, firing. “Coming through! Flank the road!”
McCarter and Encizo reached the bumper of the first truck and gave covering fire as Hawkins ran across the road.
Manning shouted over the com, “Watch out! Second truck!”
Rubber screamed as tires spun against the slick road surface.
“He’s ramming!”
McCarter leaped back. Encizo was a second too late. The middle truck rear-ended the lead and moved it six feet. Encizo was at the end of the chain and the bumper sent him flying. “Fish!” The truck tilted as its rear axle snapped. The Cuban did a spectacular reverse somersault across the pavement and collapsed prone by the side of the road. “Fish!”
James burst out of the trees. He grabbed Encizo by his straps and hauled him back. Tracers flew between the tree trunks in angry streaks. James jerked three times and fell. Gears ground as the middle truck went in reverse to position itself for a second ramming attack. “Cal! Fish!”
Calvin James’s voice was ragged over the line. “We can fight!”
“Covering fire!” McCarter vaulted up the steel bumper and onto the hood of the truck. He emptied his rifle on full-auto as he went over the top and leaped to the tilted truck bed. The second truck’s tires screamed and bit in. The truck lurched forward to ram. McCarter tossed his empty rifle and swung into the gunner’s seat. He kicked the traversing pedals and brought up the muzzles of the twin cannons.
The truck driver stared into the twin 23 mms and stood on his brakes; the truck started to hydroplane. McCarter snarled and squeezed the trigger. The bastard should have stayed on course. The cannons came to life and ripped the truck apart from stem to stern. The truck was instantly reduced to burning wreckage, but the wreckage had the good taste to swerve and slam into a tree by the side of the road. This conveniently left the third truck wide-open.
McCarter gave truck number three both barrels. The truck broke apart like a beer can. McCarter traversed and scoured the underbrush on both sides of the road. He eased his finger off the trigger. The misty road was eerily lit in orange by the burning trucks. The road was littered with bodies. For McCarter the loudest sound was the ticking of his red-hot cannon barrels and the misting rain sizzling off them. The Phoenix Force leader spoke quietly into the com. “Sound off.”
Phoenix Force came back in the affirmative. James and Encizo sounded worse for wear.
“Hold positions,” McCarter bellowed like a boss. He used a choice phrase in Russian he had picked up in his travels. “Surrender or die!”
Two men hesitantly rose from the wet, their hands raised. On the other side of the road a rifle clattered out onto the wet pavement. A large, bald man came out with a pronounced limp.
McCarter kept his hands on his cannons’ firing grips. He jerked his head at the road and the three men went to their knees. “Fish, you all right?”
“I got my wind, my ribs and my lungs knocked out of me. It’ll be a miracle if nothing isn’t broken.”
“Cal?”
“I got it about one-sixteenth as bad as Fish. I took three to the chest, but my armor held.”
“Hawk, Fish, sweep the area. Gummer, hold position and keep an eye on the road. Cal, on me with our friends.”
Phoenix moved.
Cal came forward and admired the cannons. “Well played, team leader. Well played.”
“Thanks. Check our pals, would you?”
James strode up upon the prisoners. The three kneeling men regarded the large black man with mixed fear and hostility. “Anyone speak English?” he asked. Three sullen glares was the only response. James clicked the Polish-issue bayonet onto his rifle. “You boys sure?”
The big, bald, wounded man spoke. “I speak.”
“Good, that’s real good.” James shot him a winning smile. “Russian, huh?” The man’s shoulders sagged. His leg was clearly paining him. James continued to smile and continued to keep the brutal-looking man kneeling in place. “What’s your name?”
The man seemed to search for strength.
“For the next forty-eight hours you’re mine. So, what would you like me to call you?”
The man closed his eyes. “Nikita.”
“Okay, Nick. Can I call you Nick? Good.” James took a big, deep breath of the misty, salty, dank Gdansk dawn. He sighed happily. “So, how are you enjoying Poland?”
Nick’s accent was very thick. “I hate fuckin’ place.”
“Rather be back in Kaliningrad, would you?”
Nick sighed fatalistically. “Never should have left Orsk.”
“Orsk?” James grinned. “I killed a whole bunch of guys in Orsk once.”
Nick didn’t bat an eye. “I believe.”
James looked at the other two. One was tall and skinny and one was tall and fat; they looked related. “Do those two speak English?”
Nick glanced at the men. They glared back. “No.”
“Who are they?”
“Hammerhead scum.”
Hammerhead was Russian slang for low-level mafiya enforcers and, to James’s eye, they fit the bill. As had their distinct nonmilitary behavior during the entire battle. James suspected if he stripped them, the two men would be covered in Russian prison tattoos. He regarded Nick shrewdly. He had an inkling Nick wouldn’t be. “If they’re hammerhead scum, I think that makes you podryadchik.”
Nick flinched.
Cal knew he’d hit pay dirt. Podryadchik was Russian for someone who was paid to do something for someone else. It was their word for contractor. Nick was former Russian military, probably special forces of one stripe or another, and was likely in private security, and now, it seemed, private wet work.
“What were you before you got saddled with these mafiya wing-nuts? Alfa-Tsenter? Moran group? RSB?”
James studied the man’s reactions and compared them to everything he had revealed in the past sixty seconds. James started reading him like a book. “Nah, you’re a good Russian boy. You love your homeland. And that’s where you do your best work. I bet you were Viking Group.”
Nick twitched again. James knew from past experience that Viking Group specialized in private security within Russia.
“You didn’t like this job from the get-go. You knew going into Poland was a mistake. But the money was real good, wasn’t it?”
“Screw you,” Nick responded. But he didn’t seem to have much heart in it.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Nick mumbled something in Russian that sounded very fatalistic.
“You know something, Nick. I like you.”
“I do not like you at all.”
“Of course you like me. You love me. But I’m a pillar of Nubian manhood, and that’s left a boy from Orsk a little confused.”
One corner of the Russian’s mouth quirked in amusement despite himself.
“Aw, you smiled!” The black Phoenix Force pro took out a pack of Marlboros. Nick blinked. James had given up smoking long ago, but a good deal of the planet hadn’t. In many of the world’s neighborhoods a pack of cigarettes was a perfectly acceptable small bribe or gift, and as an interrogator the offer of a smoke was often very useful in breaking the ice and bonding with a subject. It was Calvin James’s experience that most Russians smoked like chimneys.
As predicted, Nick gazed upon the pack longingly.
James shook the pack with an expert hand and put a cancer stick between Nick’s lips. He put the point of his bayonet between Nick’s collarbones and his finger on the trigger as he dug out a lighter. James lit the cigarette. Nick stopped short of sagging in relief. James lit one for himself to complete the bonding experience, and hated himself for enjoying the opportunity. The two soldiers spent a few moments smoking silently in the Polish dawn.
“Nick?”
Nick breathed out blue smoke. He savored the cigarette as if he suspected it was his last. “Yes?”
“You seem like an okay Ivan to me.”
“Thank you.”
“So I tell you what I’m going to do—despite the fact you tried to blow me apart with an antiaircraft gun.”
“This was nothing personal.”
“I know. Neither was killing most of your friends.”
“These men were not my friends.”
“I know. So you know what I’m going to do?”
“No. I do not know what you are going to do. I find you very unpredictable.”
“You’re a charmer. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to patch up that leg. I’m going to give you a shot of morphine and something to eat, and I’m going to let you live. The question is, do you want me to let you live here, handcuffed to that cannon after we drop a dime on Polish state security and anonymously tell them that there has been an armed Russian incursion across the Kaliningrad border. Or…”
“Or what?”
“Would you rather come with me?”
Nick looked as though he was getting a migraine.
“Maybe see Orsk again?” James cajoled. “Me? I’m going to Sweden. Want to go to Sweden with me?”
Nick turned pale, gray, bloodshot eyes on Calvin James. “I have never been on Swedish holiday with pillar of Nubian manhood.”
James turned to McCarter. “I like him! Can I keep him?”
McCarter got on the horn. “Dragonslayer, we need extraction. One guest.”
Right now the Stony Man chopper wore civilian clothes and currently bobbed upon the waves on pontoons just outside Poland’s three-mile international limit around the Gdansk Gulf.
“Copy that, we have room. Let me warm up the engines,” Jack Grimaldi returned from the chopper. “ETA ten minutes. You got an LZ for me?”
“It should be light by the time you get here. Right next to my signal is a glade. Hawk will be standing in it waving his arms. It’s mostly muck, but with the pontoons you should be able to land just fine.”
“Copy that. How did it go?”
“They were expecting us.” McCarter glanced at the twin barrels of the ZSU-23-2 cannons. He had grown rather fond of them. “And, Jack?”
“Yeah?”
“I think they were expecting you, as well.”
CHAPTER TWO
The Game Room
“Jesus, who are these guys?” Junior Pyle leaned back from his massive, multiscreened console. Rong leaned back from his own console as he watched the men disappear into the woods with their prisoner. “Got to be the same guys as last week. Got to be.”
“No doubt,” Kun agreed.
“Yeah, no doubt.” Pyle kept his hands on the joysticks of the second drone. Drone 2 flew at a height where its rotors could not be heard and, in what was left of the gloom, not seen. Neither the Russians nor their opponents knew about Drone 2.
Pyle zoomed the camera to maximum but despite its sophistication and power, at this height the resolution was not great and the men were moving under the trees. “Listen, it’s going to be light in minutes and they’ll be able to see Drone 2 with optics. I can’t get a good picture of these guys without going low enough to let them shoot at us.” He was keenly aware of the fact that he had lost Drone 1.
“We were supposed to kick these guys’ asses. Our asses got handed to us.” Rong chewed his lip unhappily. “The Magistrate is not going to be amused.”
The three men contemplated the Magistrate’s possible ire; two with fear and one in personal disappointment. All three men were in their twenties and from Silicon Valley, Seoul and Hong Kong. Each man had run the computer world high-tech gamut from software engineer to hacker to gamer and game designer. They were some of the best cybernetic experts in the business, sought after by top-end, high-tech companies worldwide.
They had been lured, and then very handsomely remunerated, into become experts in the rapidly advancing field of high-tech mercenaries. A private army specializing in unconventional warfare and crime, including cyber crime prevention, which they found boring, and cyber crime commitment, which was proactive, fun, far more profitable and had perks two of the trio had never even dreamed about.
These men were the advantage most criminals or opponents in low-intensity conflicts did not have and could not afford. Most modern militaries had men like them, but nowhere near as good, and had much less exciting toys. However, Junior Pyle was right and all three men knew it. They had gotten their asses handed to them.
Kun smiled. The Korean was dressed immaculately in a retro, light blue suit. A 007 aficionado would have recognized it as Sean Connery’s gray, tropical-weight suit from the film Dr. No, and Kun had styled his hair to match right down to a tousled spit curl. Hardly anything Kun owned besides his high-tech equipment was not custom made and straight out of a James Bond movie. He found himself amused. “These guys are real, genuine, badasses.”
“Speaking of badasses…” Rong looked and dressed like a skateboarder. His hair was at that hedgehog look of an Asian male who had a missed a lot of haircuts but not yet grown it long enough so that it would fall over into a shag. It was a look he assiduously cultivated and had currently dyed orange. “They took Propenko, alive.”
Junior Pyle dressed as though he thought he was still in college or wanted to be the lead singer of an Emo band or both with the tattoos, piercings and black hair, black T-shirts and black jeans to match.
Pyle and Rong were certifiable, card-carrying computer geeks and Kun was a certifiable sociopath. But the three young men were all at the pinnacle of their fields and their power and, having dropped out of their civilian fields, had become urban legends. Pyle was very unhappy. “Does this mean the Russian mafia is going to kill us?”
“No.” Rong sighed. “But Propenko probably will. He looked straight into my camera before he went across the border and told me not to mess this up.”
Propenko had no idea who the three cyber warriors were or even where they were, but Propenko was a trained investigator and a very violent man. The team had chosen him for this mission and they had not picked him out of a hat.
Rong’s and Pyle’s grommets tightened at the idea of a displeased Magistrate and the big Russian filled with thoughts of revenge.
Kun contemplated the Walther PPK in his shoulder holster happily. He still hadn’t gotten around to shooting anybody with it yet. As with the best of sociopaths, Kun genuinely wasn’t afraid of anything or anybody, but he did have certain goals and objectives that he wished to achieve. He was a realist in these matters, and being on the wrong side of Propenko qualified as a genuine obstacle and not one to be taken lightly. “Money makes Propenko come. Money makes him go away.”
“Unless he goes surly Russian on us,” Pyle countered.
“Well…” Kun smiled again. Pyle was blissfully unaware of the fact that Kun disliked him intensely and intended to skin him alive. “They have our drone.”
Rong regained his good humor. “So how do you want to play it?”
All three men were genuine geniuses. All three men knew that Kun was the one who could think outside the box. Both in cyber warfare and in the outside world, which neither Rong nor Pyle functioned all that well in.
Kun contemplated. He liked Rong. Rong, like Pyle, was equally unaware that, because Kun liked him, he intended to kidnap Rong, shackle Rong, encase Rong in latex and do unspeakable things to him. Kun was already secretly interviewing replacements for both his partners in cyber space.
Kun returned to the matters at hand. They had several options. “The copter is programmed to return to its launch point if it loses contact. We have to assume these assholes know this. We will need to move. However, I do not believe they have the tech to open her up and read her programming on them at the moment. They will need to go to a safe house first.”
Pyle’s equipment peeped and a window popped up on one of his screens. Data started rapidly scrolling south. “Polish state security channels are lighting up. I think these guys actually made the call themselves.”
“Interesting,” Kun mused. “They were ambushed outside Kaliningrad—and they do not know how—and it is they who have called the state police. They will want to get out of Poland without flying across it, and they certainly will not want to fly east. I think they’ll head straight north. It’s a short shot across international waters into Sweden. They’ll have something cozy set up there.”
Rong grinned. “Sweet.”
Kun considered the equipment he had personally installed in Drone 1. “Let’s play a game.”
Pyle actually raised his hand as if he were in school. “What about the Magistrate? Who’s gonna tell him?”
“The Magistrate has been watching our feed the entire time and listening to our conversation.”
Rong and Pyle collectively dropped their jaws.
“I will speak with him later and give him a full debriefing.” Unlike his compatriots, Kun was not afraid of the Magistrate. Kun loved the Magistrate as his personal god.
Kun rose and walked to the end of the Game Room. He opened the door and looked down the steps at a pair of security men smoking and watching the sunrise. Kun lit himself an unfiltered Turkish cigarette and watched the sun rise for a moment, as well. From the outside, the Game Room appeared to be a standard container vessel. The Game Room currently sat mounted on the trailer of a Russian Kamaz tractor-truck. “Hey, guys?”
The two Russian gangsters turned.
Kun nodded at the sun rising over Kaliningrad. “Let’s get back into Russia.”
* * *
Kalmar, Sweden
“NIKITA PROPENKO.” Aaron Kurtzman made an impressed noise over the link. “You landed yourself a real, genuine, Russian badass.”
McCarter sat in the master bedroom of the safe house with a laptop and satellite rig. “Right. Viking Group.” McCarter allowed himself a little smugness. “We know.”
“Right. But do you know what he did before he went private?”
“Spetsnaz?” McCarter proposed. “He’s a tough son of a bitch, I’ll give him that. The only thing he wasn’t immune to was Cal’s charms.”
“Who is?” The Stony Man cybernetics genius’s voice held a chuckle. “But your boy Propenko was Saturn Detachment.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.” McCarter frowned. “Saturn Detachment sounds a bit dark, then, doesn’t it?”
“Dark is one word for it. Saturn Detachment was the Moscow Department of the Federal Penitentiary Service—FSIN. Saturn is FSIN’s special-purpose unit.”
“The Russians have a penal special-purpose unit?” McCarter asked.
“Saturn Detachment was formed in 1992 as part of the Moscow Department of Punishment Execution, the UIN, under the Ministry of the Interior.”
“Department of Punishment Execution?” Most days McCarter woke up thinking nothing could surprise him anymore. Leading Phoenix Force and having conversations with Aaron Kurtzman consistently proved him wrong. “You know? The Soviets did have a certain Orwellian sense of style about them. I’ll give them that.”
“Well, when the Soviet Union fell, like a lot of Soviet organizations, the UIN changed their name and shuffled ministries. They’re still known by everyone as Saturn, but they were officially renamed the Federal Penitentiary Service and operate under the auspices of the Russian Ministry of Justice.”
“That does sound a little less Kafkaesque, but I intend to work this guy, Bear. Short version, what is Saturn?”
“They’re nickname in Russia is Jail Spetsnaz.”
“Jail Special Forces?” McCarter found himself surprised again. “Now there is something you don’t hear every day.”
“You are aware of the reputation of Russian prisons?” Kurtzman queried.
McCarter had fought the Russian mafiya many times. From everything he knew or had gleaned, Russian federal penitentiaries were a nasty place to be.
David McCarter thought he had an inkling but asked, anyway. “So just what does Jail Spetsnaz do, exactly?”
“Their official tasks are preventing crimes in detention facilities, antiriot actions in detention facilities, hostage rescue in detention facilities, counter terrorism actions in detention facilities, high-value prisoner transfers, personal security for Ministry of Justice and court officials, and—here is where it gets interesting—search and arrest of escaped criminals. Think of them as the most violent, messed-up version US Federal Marshals imaginable.
“By the way, your boy Propenko? For a number of years he did undercover operations in several Russian federal detention facilities. I leave it to you to decide what kind of balls a man has to have to go undercover in a federal prison.”
McCarter knew one man. His name was Mack Bolan. And no story Bolan told about the experience had been pretty. “Right. So Propenko is a real, genuine, Russian badass, then.”
“He’s airborne-trained, specifically to parachute into a prison in a riot situation, and the Russian police equivalent of a designated marksman. After the third time he was shot he took some time off and acted as UIN academy hand-to-hand-combat instructor. Turns out he was a Russian sambo champion. He was going to go to the Olympics in Sochi but he got shot again.”
“The man has a résumé.”
“You have no idea. He also earned the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Justice’s maximum achievement certification in penal psychological warfare.” Kurtzman paused at that. “You be the judge of what that means…”
“It means I’m glad I shot him and even gladder that he fell in love with Cal.”
“Yeah, that was for the best…” Kurtzman agreed.
“Right, going to go make our Captain Penal Power an offer he can’t refuse, then.”
“David, this man has operated undercover in Russian supermax prisons. I want you to consider the fact that he may have deliberately decided to let himself be captured so that he could find out who you and Phoenix Force are, kill the entire team except you, torture you for everything you know and then extract back into the Russian Federation and report to whoever is running him.”
“The thought had occurred, but thanks. I’ll be right back.”
McCarter walked down the narrow, wood-paneled stairs. For giant Viking people, Swedes had strangely narrow homes. Nonetheless the house just about fell off the hillside and had a panoramic view of the black Baltic nighttime sea, which was pretty spectacular with the full moon reflecting off it.
James and Propenko sat in the kitchenette playing speed chess. Propenko seemed to be halfway through a bottle of Swedish black market brännvin, wood-cellulose “burned wine.” McCarter raised an eyebrow at the Chicago native. “Is the prisoner drinking wood alcohol?”
“Yeah, for the past hour, mixed with morphine I gave him.” James sighed heavily at the chessboard. “I only won my first game five minutes ago. I think the drugs are kicking in.”
“Ha!” Propenko finished his move and slammed the timer. His injured leg was bound and stretched out on a chair; his right hand was handcuffed to the sink. The Russian’s words were definitely starting to slur. “American pussies…”
James raised one hand to the side of his face and mouthed, “We may need another bottle.”
McCarter nodded. “How you doing, Nick?”
Propenko scowled at James. “Nubian has admirable qualities.”
The black Phoenix Force medic nodded demurely, made a move and tapped his timer.
The Russian lifted a grudging chin at McCarter. “I have always admired English.”
“Good to know.”
Propenko scowled down the stairs behind him. “Fish chained me to sink. I do not like Cubans.”
McCarter smiled. “My apologies.”
Propenko grunted. “Gummer is sniper. I have not met rifleman I have not liked.”
Manning called down the skylight from his perch on the roof. “Thanks!”
“And Hawk?” McCarter asked.
“He is too good-looking to be soldier.” Propenko made an extremely bold move with his knight and nearly broke the chess timer as he slammed it down. “Maybe he is not hawk. Maybe he is fruit rabbit.”
Hawkins’s head snapped up from the dining-room table. As the most tech savvy member of Phoenix Force he was doing a preliminary disassembly on the enemy drone. “Hey!”
James raised a diplomatic finger. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
McCarter smiled at Propenko, but he wasn’t fooled. Not for a minute. “Listen, old son, I like you.”
“I am liking you, too, English.”
“So let me tell you how I see it… I think you have a liver the size of a fifty-year-old speed bag with the cracks and scars to match. I think you’re going to be dead in five years, but right now I think you’re still a nasty piece of work, and in your line of work you are at the prime of your powers.
“You’re a right bloody charmer, and not a quarter as sodding drunk as you’re pretending to be. I think you might have it in mind to snap that handcuff after me and my friend there are slightly more relaxed and do something terrible. Then you do the rest of us up a treat and start rooting around for intel. And, I think you’ve done it before.”
The palest, coldest, soberest Russian eyes McCarter had ever seen regarded him unblinkingly. “So?”
“So convince me to keep you around.”
“And if I do not?”
McCarter drew his pistol. Phoenix Force had been forced to toss their weapons into the Baltic when they’d entered into Swedish airspace. Sweden was a neutral country with their own cottage arms industry and, unlike many European nations, was not awash in surplus or black market weapons. The CIA had managed to get them some very archaic armaments that had “disappeared” from a Swedish reserve armory. McCarter pointed something that looked strangely like a German Luger at Propenko’s right leg. “Then I shoot you in the other leg and I still keep you around.”
Propenko sipped wood alcohol.
McCarter pushed. “So?”
The only thing colder and clearer than the Russian’s eyes was his smile. His voice was suddenly cold and clear, as well. “So convince me to let you keep me around with one wounded leg rather than two.”
McCarter gave a grudging noise of admiration. “Who do you work for?”
“That information is confidential.”
“Do you still work for them?”
Propenko gave a very Russian shrug. “I believe the contract terminated when you smashed mission.”
“But you were paid?”
“I was. Half in front. Mission did not succeed. Back half will not be—” he belched “—be forthcoming.”
McCarter allowed himself a smile.
Propenko eyed the bottle of brännvin ruefully. “Swedish fire-piss, I must be getting old.”
“And you won’t help me in my mission against your previous employers?”
“Do I work for you? Do I have contract?” Propenko swirled the wood alcohol in his teacup and pursed his lips judiciously. “Have I been paid?”
Hawkins made a noise. “The balls on this guy…”
Propenko slowly turned his head to regard Hawkins. “Would you like to see them, Fruit Rabbit?”
“If he calls me Fruit Rabbit one more time…”
“Dah. And?”
McCarter brought the conversation back on line. “So your job was to kill us?”
“Sustain your attempted ambush, destroy you and collect information.”
“Collect information?”
“You would be interrogated.”
“By you?”
“By me. But I would start with Fruit Rabbit.”
Hawkins shot to his feet. “That’s it!”
Propenko kept his eyes on McCarter. “All evidence collected since Great Patriotic War says that with English? It is being more effective to make him watch torture of one of his men, then torture English himself.”
“Lovely. Right, then. Listen, I’m in a bit of a hurry. How much?”
“How much what?” Propenko asked.
“To put you on the payroll.”
“The payroll?”
“My payroll. You contract is terminated with these people after I smashed your mission and captured you. You’re currently unemployed, Nick. You want a job or do you want to go back to Orsk?”
Propenko’s pale eyes narrowed. “You wish to employ me against former employers? This is not strictly honorable.”
“They’re terrorists. Work against them or for them.”
“I am not aware of this.”
“I’m betting on that, Nick.”
“I am willing to entertain these ideas, but I must warn you. People I worked for apparently had ability to mint own money,” Propenko replied.
“Fine. Then double.”
Propenko blinked. “You do not know yet how much I am paid.”
“Make up a number—but, be a good lad and do try not to go stark ravers about it.”
“You do not work for British Intelligence,” Propenko declared.
McCarter sipped liquor.
“You do not work for American Intelligence.”
McCarter neither confirmed nor denied.
“Who are you?”
McCarter spit in his palm and held out his hand. “Your boss.”
Propenko slammed his hand into McCarter’s. The Russian had a grip like a clam but he stopped just short of the bone-breaker. “Unless you move, you must expect attack before dawn. I am surprised it has not happened already.”
“How much?”
“We talk money later. Now? I will be needing to lose handcuffs and get gun.”
“One condition.”
“And, so?”
McCarter nodded toward Hawkins. “His name is Hawk.” He tossed the Swedish M-40 pistol onto the table. “Uncuff him.”
CHAPTER THREE
The War Room
Aaron Kurtzman observed as T. J. Hawkins operated on the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle thousands of miles away in Scandinavia. Kurtzman would have preferred to have done the surgery himself, but security protocols dictated the little UAV helicopter traveled no farther until they could make sure they weren’t bringing a Trojan horse into the Farm’s precincts.
Kurtzman secretly wished Hermann “Gadgets” Swartz was in the operating theater, but Hawkins wasn’t bad. The UAV was a standard quad-motor helicopter with four equidistant rotors on stalks sticking out of the main body. This one had a very powerful and sophisticated camera that was night-vision capable. Hawkins had separated the motors and the camera; they were amazing pieces of technology.
“Here we go…”
Gummer leaned in carefully. He was the team’s explosives expert and this was the point where everyone wondered if the UAV would blow sky-high. Hawkins carefully separated the two halves of the fuselage as if it were the shell of a crab.
Kurtzman leaned forward in his wheelchair and peered at the feed from Sweden on his screen.
The guts of the UAV were extremely interesting.
Much like a crab shell, nothing was attached to the top. All the good stuff was attached to the bottom half.
Hawkins looked into the camera. “Bear, I don’t know what half this stuff is.”
Gary Manning sat back, nodding to himself. “I don’t see a booby trap. If there are any explosives in there, they are tiny and made to wipe the equipment instead of kill anyone who might be tampering.”
“Wait a minute, before you two touch anything else.” Kurtzman took control of the camera on his end and began panning and scanning the UAV’s internal organs.
The power supply system was easy to spot and very impressive. It was a flat stack and Kurtzman suspected this UAV would have double the range and endurance of a standard commercial model of comparable size. He had to admit he had never seen a CPU like the one he beheld mounted in a UAV like this. Most similar models were equipped with a simple GPS that allowed them to return to their launch point if they lost contact with their human operator. The sophistication of this drone’s CPU implied to the Stony Man cybernetics whiz that the drone was capable of making a number of decisions autonomously and could operate in independent search, patrol or mapping functions.
Kurtzman was also willing to bet that this machine was capable of being operated by, or cooperating with, other autonomous drones operating as autonomous units. In effect, this baby was capable of engaging in independent small- and large-unit actions without the benefit of a human operator in control.
It was an incredibly sophisticated piece of machinery.
Kurtzman leaned back in his chair. It was a very strange thing to be shot down out of the sky during an engagement with Russian mafiya thugs. Of course the mafiya thugs had showed up with antiaircraft artillery. It all led to the inescapable conclusion that there was a much larger game afoot.
Hawkins pointed his screwdriver at a small, yellow, rectangular casing that almost seemed off in a corner by itself. It didn’t appear to be connected to the UAV’s power supply, CPU, engine or guidance units. “What do you figure the little yellow box is?”
“I figure that little yellow box is the little black box.”
“A flight recorder?” Manning offered. “On a little rig like this?”
“You’re right,” Kurtzman agreed. “You don’t usually see that on a UAV this size. But it’s not attached to anything and it hasn’t blown up. A drone is the same as any other vehicle. You don’t want the flight recorder attached to anything else in the system. You want it to independently record what happens in case the vehicle gets lost, shot down, captured or, most important, hacked and hijacked.”
“So it’s on right now?” Hawkins asked.
“I suspect its transponder is pinging away.”
As a demolitions man, Manning knew something about electronics. He eyed the little yellow box. “So the bad guys know where we are? Even here?”
“Depends on the range. That is a pretty small unit and you have flown it across the Baltic. It’s not like you left it where it fell in Gdansk. Then again? Just about everything inside that rig appears to be about ten times more powerful than any standard, comparable commercial model UAV. Heck, a lot of its electronics are more sophisticated than similar-size stuff the United States military issues to our troops, including Special Forces. This fellow is not standard issue anywhere. It’s made to look like a commercial rig, but it was made custom from top to bottom, to customer specifications, and that customer had money to burn.”
“So the bad guys know where we are?” Hawkins asked again.
Kurtzman made a judgment call. “Normally, I would say no, unless of course the bad guys have their own satellite talking to it.”
McCarter leaned in to the conversation. “You think these guys have their own satellite?”
“I would bet they have one. Or, given the level of sophistication, they can access someone else’s satellite and the owners don’t know about it.”
Hawkins tried one more time. “So the bad guys know where we are?”
“Oh, I’d bank on it,” Kurtzman confirmed. “Speaking of which, did you get the guns?”
Hawkins had taken the elite trajectory from United States Army to United States Army Ranger to Delta Force before he had taken a meeting with Mack Bolan and company. All of his life, guns were artillery pieces. Firearms were weapons. He had given up trying to explain this to Kurtzman. Hawkins often had to remind himself that despite the man’s utter brilliance, Kurtzman was, and always would be, a civilian. “The guns arrived, Bear. Swedish steel is good steel.” Hawkins made a face. “Too bad they’re fifty years old…”
“Short notice?” Kurtzman vaguely milled his hands. “Sweden?”
“They’re charmingly retro,” quipped Calvin James from where he sat in an armchair assiduously cleaning and oiling his weapon. “I’ve met some old-timers at the SEAL meets who’ve told stories about being issued Swedish Ks.” He made a face that matched Hawkins’s. “In Nam—”
“Retro is right,” Hawkins grunted.
The Swedish K submachine guns had no optics, laser designators, suppressors or tactical lights. They looked as though they belonged in a Bond film; nothing later than early Roger Moore, and Sir Roger probably would have scowled at them. They only operated on rock and roll and didn’t even have a safety. Though that part Hawkins perversely kind of liked. He also kind of liked the fact that the models the CIA had procured were so old they had the original adapter for Finnish 50-round magazines. Hawkins got back to the matter at hand. He turned to McCarter. “So, boss. Do I do anything about the black box or not?”
McCarter leaned over the table and peered at the little yellow question of the day. “Bear, what do you think?”
“My guess is they have been able to track you, and they had all day to cross the Baltic or organize something in your neighborhood. If you want to move, they’ll be able to track you. Maybe you want to do that and set a trap? Or you could remove it, put it on a train to nowhere and send the bad guys on a wild-goose chase, then maybe we can take a stab at tracking them.”
It wasn’t a bad plan and McCarter had considered it. However, in his opinion, Phoenix Force had already frittered away a day crossing the Baltic and hanging out in Sweden. He had to admit the food and rest had been welcome and that as an asset Nikita Propenko got more interesting by the minute. “Or I could destroy the black box right now, let our opponents know we found it and force the bloody sons of bitches to act before they lose us.”
“There is that,” Kurtzman conceded.
McCarter decided. “Hawk, gut it.”
Hawkins unbolted the little yellow box from the UAV fuselage. He held it up and almost dropped it as it made a single, plaintive, electronic peep. “Bear?”
Kurtzman sighed. The cat was out of the bag. “If I had to guess, someone, somewhere, is now aware that the flight recorder has been removed from the UAV body.”
“Then the jig is up and an attack is imminent.” McCarter took the flight recorder and slid it across the table to Propenko. “Here, this is your first job. Take this and—”
The bottom of Propenko’s scarred fist slammed down on the flight recorder like a hammer. Bits of thick, weather-sealed plastic armor flew in all directions.
McCarter nodded. “And do something like that.”
Propenko scooped up the little black box’s innards and made a fist around them. Little bits of technology cracked and popped. The Russian rose, went to the sink, turned on the tap and flicked on the garbage disposal. Propenko dropped the shattered remnants down the drain and the flight recorder of Drone 1 met its final mastication. McCarter noted that not only had the Russian’s English gotten better but his leg seemed to be bothering him a lot less.
Everyone froze as the lights suddenly went out and the garbage disposal spun to a grinding, snapping halt. For a moment the only sound was the tap water trickling. The lights of the neighbors on the surrounding hillsides and the lights of Kalmar below didn’t flicker a single watt. Someone had cut the safe house’s power. Propenko turned the tap off.
“Gear up,” McCarter ordered. “We’re about to get hit.”
Phoenix Force’s armament might have been archaic but they still had their mission night-vision gear, armor and com equipment.
Jack Grimaldi’s voice shouted across the link. “Two choppers just flew by! Low and fast and inbound on your position. They have door gunners and they are not Swedish Coastal Patrol!”
Encizo spoke from his lookout point in the loft. “I see them. Coming in hot.”
McCarter spoke into the com. “Jack, get airborne.”
Grimaldi was on the beach. He had flown Phoenix
Force in illegally below Swedish air control radar and was three klicks south. He was about to rise and announce himself to Swedish airspace. “ETA five!”
McCarter nodded to himself. Phoenix Force was going to have to take the shot. He highly suspected the enemy ground teams were already on top of them. “Well, lads, they didn’t sick the local bobbies on us, so it looks like they’re spoiling for a fight. Let’s knock one down! Backyard! Everyone except you, Fish. I think they’ll sweep the main level.”
“What if they sweep the loft?”
“Then you’re screwed, mate!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah…”
“All right. Backyard! Behind the chimney! Brick and mortar are our best friends! Watch your leads. They’ll be flying over the house and nap of the earth up the mountainside. We might get a good shot. Go for the second bird!”
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