“Absolutely not!” shouted Grim. “He’s too close and while I can explain away a Black Hawk off course, I can’t account for missiles fired on Russian ground troops.”
“Forget the missiles,” said Fisher. “I’ll slip past that squad ahead. Briggs, what’s your ETA to the landing zone?”
The man’s voice came broken and breathless: “Uh, just a minute or two, I think.”
Fisher activated his sonar and wished he hadn’t.
His heart sank, and a string of expletives slipped from his lips. He was surrounded, all right, with six strung out above him, seven or more moving up from behind, a couple more on each flank, with his perimeter narrowing from thirty or so meters to twenty and decreasing by the minute. Not an ingenious way to capture someone, given the risk of cross fire, and there was an opportunity for Fisher to get them shooting at each other, but he’d rather just get on the move. Somehow.
“Sam, I’m looking at sonar now,” said Briggs. “You won’t make it.”
“Sure, I will.”
“Look, you’ve told me there’s nothing more important than the mission. Not you, not me, not anyone.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I get that. I respect it. But all we got out of this drop was a backpack. And we’re not going to lose you over a backpack.”
Fisher grinned weakly over the irony. “All right, Briggs, I see your point.”
“Good. I’m going after the three guys east of your position.”
Fisher could almost hear the smile on the man’s face.
Just then the drone returned to Fisher’s side and Charlie was barking in his ear: “Attach your last two frags, Sam. I’ll light ’em up!”
Fisher tugged out the grenades and got to work. Clip one, clip two. “Okay, rock ’n’ roll, Charlie.”
“Sam, break to the left,” said Grim. “The widest gap between the troops above you is there.”
“Right along where the trees thin out?” he asked.
“That’s it.”
Fisher clutched the rifle to his chest, broke from the trees, and sprinted off toward the next patch of cover: a small mound with a large shoulder of mottled rock rising to knee height behind it. He trudged up through the snow, getting about ten meters ahead, when the first salvo of rifle fire split wood like a dozen hatchets in the trees ahead. He craned his head back as a few more rounds thumped into his boot prints. Cutting a serpentine path while crouched down, he reached the rock, his pulse drumming in his ears.
“Get down, Sam!” cried Charlie.
The kid had control of the frags, and if he said to “get down,” then Fisher sure as shit wouldn’t argue. He threw himself behind the rock, and not a second too soon. An explosion tore across the hillside only a few meters back, the ground trembling and erupting, waves of flying dirt reaching as far as the rock. At the same time, shrapnel cut through that dirt storm to strike with metallic snicks against the stone.
The shrieks that split the night were bone-chilling but quickly cut off by the second grenade, which Charlie had deposited atop the troops even farther back, the burst more distant, the echoing cries sounding inhuman at first before they, too, were lost in the reverberating thunder.
The sound of Briggs’s P220 .45ACP pistol cracking in the distance sent Fisher springing from his cover behind the rock and scrambling back up toward the three men waiting for him in the trees ahead. While the canopy was thinning out, the remaining branches were thrashing about in the rotor wash as the Black Hawk banked hard just a dozen or so meters above them.
And then, much to Fisher’s shock, the chopper’s door gunner opened fire on the tree line with his M240H, a classic and supremely badass machine gun sometimes known as the “240 Hotel.” The weapon was capable of delivering up to 950 rounds per minute of 7.62x51mm ammo out to a range of nearly 1,800 meters. Splintering branches and hunks of bark flitted down and were churned up by the rotors as he targeted the three Spetsnaz troops pinning down Fisher.
Those troops answered the door gunner with rifle fire of their own.
“Charlie, what’re you doing?” cried Grim.
“You said no missiles,” he answered. “You didn’t say anything about machine guns!”
Fisher understood Grim’s fury; he also understood that not only were the troops distracted, but they had just given up their positions and sent Fisher into a flow state where there was no more thinking, only action and reaction. He bolted up to the first man, who swung his rifle down from the sky. Fisher already had his Five-seveN pointed at the man’s forehead.
The man’s gaze averted in defeat a second before Fisher shot him.
While that troop tumbled, the next one came rushing up from the west at the sound of the shot.
Fisher rolled behind the nearest tree and waited. Just as the man jogged by, Fisher swung around and stabbed him in the neck, bringing the karambit down, into the man’s clavicle, then stirring his insides with the blade.
At the same time, he had his pistol in his left hand and fired over the shoulder of his victim, striking the final oncoming troop in the chest at a range of nearly fifty meters. Some of his old navy instructors would’ve been proud of those shots . . .
However, the man jolted back, stepped drunkenly toward the trees, but still managed to return fire like a relentless Russian cyborg. He was obviously wearing a vest and clearly a pretty good shot, the rounds drumming into the soldier Fisher now used as a shield.
A pistol cracked jarringly close to Fisher’s right ear, and the troop ahead fell with a spasmodic jerk to the snow. Fisher craned his head.
“We’re clear, Sam,” said Briggs, lowering his weapon.
“You took out all three of your guys?”
“Yeah.”
“And now one of mine?”
Briggs frowned. “We keeping score?”
Fisher was impressed. “Shit, maybe we should!” He burst off after the man, and together they raced across the top of the hill, then once more were sidestepping along the mountain, finding better purchase in the denser sections of forest where the snow had barely filtered through. What could be described as a bang and not a true explosion resounded from somewhere behind them, and Fisher paused beneath a tree that had fallen and lay at a forty-five-degree angle across two more.
He got back on the radio. “How many left, Grim?”
“Got four still on the move, with another two or three pretty far back but en route.”
“Charlie, can you at least buzz ’em with the drone?”
“Wish I could, Sam, but the drone is toast. Lost all rotors. In order to avoid it being confiscated and reverse engineered, I hit the self-destruct. For what it’s worth, I did manage to blow it up in one guy’s face.”
“All right, this is it. We’re hitting the LZ.”
They drifted down the mountainside and within a minute were nearing the clearing. It felt like the temperature had dropped twenty degrees, and Fisher’s teeth were literally and uncontrollably chattering. Briggs popped red smoke, indicating a hot LZ to the chopper pilot, but she had already assumed that, bringing the helo in low across the treetops to avoid both radar and small arms fire. The rotors turned the smoke into crimson corkscrews as the helicopter descended.
Next came the most breath-robbing part of the mission: the final sprint to the chopper. When he was in the SEALs, this was the time when most men bought it, when they were celebrating a successful op and all they had to do was hop on a helo—
Because there was always some sniper or small squad waiting in the wings to take terribly cheap shots at those trying to escape. And Fisher could feel those rounds on the back of his neck as he told Briggs to go off first, he’d cover.
Briggs put his strong legs to work, bridging the gap between them and the hovering bird in all of five seconds.
&nbs
p; The tree beside Fisher practically exploded with gunfire, showering him with bark as he hit the ground, rolled, then came up firing with the AK-12. He emptied the magazine at the trees in a simple wave of covering fire, spotting the silhouettes shifting between them, fluctuating like wraiths.
He tossed the rifle aside, drew his pistol, then fired once more, emptying the entire twenty-round magazine and holstering the weapon with one hand while drawing his secondary weapon, the P226, with the other.
“Sam, circle around the clearing and I’ll have the door gunner lay down suppressing fire for you,” said Charlie.
“Good call,” said Fisher.
He stole off away from the trees, racing at full tilt around the edge of the clearing—just as the door gunner went to town, the big gun thudding and spewing brass.
Instead of boarding the chopper, Briggs took up a position beside the door gunner, his goggles over his eyes, arms extended, pistol winking.
“Sam, they look dug in,” said Grim. “Make your break now!”
Knowing he couldn’t wait any longer, lest one of the troops hurl a grenade at the helo, Fisher sprang into the clearing, and while it would take just a handful of seconds to reach the bird, the moment swept by in a noiseless vacuum of slow motion.
He glanced to his left and saw the troops’ muzzle flashes within the trees. They resembled a string of broken holiday lights poking holes in the shadows.
He turned right, spotted Briggs waving him over, his mouth working, the words swept away by the powerful rotors.
The chopper’s running lights strobed in an almost hypnotic rhythm as the snow and dirt beneath it fanned away into miniature tornadoes. Fisher stomped through the wash, fully conscious that this was it, the final sprint. He hoped he hadn’t pissed off the gods of war, lest a bullet make contact with the back of his head.
He reached the chopper’s open bay door and did a flying leap inside, then turned back and thrust out his arm, hauling Briggs inside—just as the helo lifted off.
They banked hard and away, the pilot sweeping over by staying tight to the trees, avoiding any more chances of potshots and flying nape of the earth to keep them hidden.
The gunner handed them headsets with attached microphones, and Fisher got on the intercom. “Thanks for the lift,” he told the pilot.
She glanced back and smiled. “I’m sorry, sir, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Me, neither,” said Fisher.
Briggs climbed into one of the jump seats and buckled himself in. Fisher joined him and said, “Nice work.”
Briggs patted the backpack lying across his lap. “Just wish we got more.”
Fisher closed his eyes and threw his head back on the seat. “We had to follow up here. So we did.”
“Hey, well, there was something small. I forgot to mention that one of her textbooks still had the receipt inside. Had the address to her apartment in Zurich. Might be worth a shot.”
“We could’ve found her place without that.”
“Probably, but either way we should check it out.”
“Let’s run it by Grim and Charlie.”
“Roger that. And oh, yeah, I wanted to show you something.” Briggs tugged up his sleeve to expose his wrist altimeter. He thumbed a few buttons to bring up his data file, then showed the glowing screen to Fisher—
MAX SPEED: 227 MPH.
Fisher’s eyes bugged out.
Briggs smiled crookedly. “I guess Grim’s data was a little off. When she told me I was doing 210, I was already up to 221. That’s a world record no one will ever know about.”
10
THEY rendezvoused at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, which had a U.S. complement of nearly five thousand airmen. There, Fisher and Briggs returned to Paladin to debrief while the crew took care of refueling operations.
After dragging themselves up the rear cargo ramp and passing through the hatch, they entered the command center to the concerned looks of Grim and Charlie.
“Whoa, you guys got in deep,” said Charlie, gawking at the bloodstains covering their tac-suits.
Briggs sighed. “If it were easy, they would’ve hired someone else.”
“Grim, any word back from Kestrel?” asked Fisher, crossing directly to the SMI table.
“Not yet. Should I activate one of his trackers?”
“Call him again. We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Give him a few hours to answer. If he doesn’t respond, then yeah, we’ll go after him.”
Briggs placed the backpack on the edge of the SMI. “This is all we got.”
“We’ll have Ollie and the rest go through that stuff,” said Grim. She regarded Fisher. “You told me the daughter has an apartment in Zurich?”
“Yeah, I want to check it out,” he said.
“I already have,” said Grim, bringing up surveillance camera video from the surrounding apartment buildings and college. “This street here is Via Trevano. The college is right here in Lugano.” She tapped a screen and brought up traffic footage showing an impressive four-story glass office building nestled in a valley. The snowcapped Lugano Prealps loomed on the horizon. The image switched to a luxury apartment building, then to a closer shot of the sidewalk outside the main entrance.
“See there, that’s Nadia getting into that Bentley Flying Spur,” said Grim.
“Nice set of wheels,” remarked Charlie.
Grim went on: “She’s wearing the backpack you guys found. She’s on her way to the airport to visit her father.”
“Any new intel on where she is now?”
“Nothing. We have more cam footage of her arriving in Moscow, but not much after that.”
“Any HUMINT on the pilots bailing out of the plane?”
Grim sighed even more deeply. “Still working on that, too, plus I’ve got a cleanup crew that’ll hike back into the mountains to pick up your jump gear. I just sent them the GPS locations.”
“Good. Now, here’s what I’m thinking,” Fisher began. “Kasperov decides to bolt. He sends off the daughter’s plane to confuse and divert us. She was planning on flying back, which is why she just left her backpack on board, figuring she’d study during the flight back.”
“That makes sense,” said Grim.
“Charlie, we get anything else on Kasperov’s friends, family, the old teacher, military buddies?”
“No red flags, Sam. Plus the FSB has operatives scoping out all those people, too.”
Fisher turned to back to Grim. “You said the plane was headed to Tbilisi. Any connection there?”
“Just that he’s flown through before. Attended a few conferences over the years. Again, nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Well, we do have this backpack,” said Briggs.
Fisher stood there, looking at them all. He opened his mouth, hesitated, then blurted out, “Let’s go to Zurich. Get inside the daughter’s apartment. Maybe there’s something there.”
“I doubt it, Sam. Have a look.”
Grim fast-forwarded through more security camera footage and slowed down on two sedans pulling up outside Nadia’s building. Four men got out and hurried inside the building. Grim switched to the hallway cameras. The men rushed forward, reached a door, and a fifth man, either the landlord or a maintenance guy, opened the door for them. They burst into the apartment like wolves.
“We can assume the SVR’s already ransacked the place,” Grim said. “Footage doesn’t show them taking anything outside, but I can’t tell if they removed smaller items and just put them in their pockets.”
Fisher stepped away from the table, rubbing his stubble in thought. “The POTUS said it herself: Kasperov is quite a character. And he’s a genius, so he’s anticipated the search. He won’t go to any of the obvious places. It’ll be someplace much more obscure,
but it won’t be a place unfamiliar because he still needs to maintain security, and that’s tougher in an unfamiliar environment. He wouldn’t leave himself that vulnerable.”
“All that does is rule out all the places associated with him, his background, his family and friends,” said Grim. “And it leaves the rest of the world wide open.”
“Let’s take a look at his daughter’s place. What’d they do, leave an agent or two behind for surveillance?”
“We’ve picked up two watching the apartment,” said Grim.
“And Kasperov’s place in Moscow?”
“They tore it apart, Sam,” said Charlie. “I mean literally moved everything out of it, furniture, everything. It’s all gone to a warehouse in Moscow, along with everything from his headquarters. Security there is ridiculously tight.”
Grim shrugged. “I think we’d have better luck getting to Kestrel, see if he can tap us into Voron’s search—”
“But then we’re always a step behind them,” Fisher said. “We need to be out front on this—”
“Sam, this time I think Grim’s right,” said Briggs. “I don’t think we’ll find much there.”
“All it takes is one thing, something Kasperov overlooked that’ll give him away.” Fisher faced Grim. “How many scumbags have we taken out because they made one tiny mistake? It’s all about the details—the ones they’ve overlooked.”
“You trying to suck up so I’ll go along?” she asked.
“Flight time from here to Zurich?”
She consulted the SMI. “Little over three hours.”
“It’s worth a shot, come on,” he said.
“It’s your call, Sam,” she reminded him. “Why don’t you just order us there?”
His tone softened. “Because we’re a team.”
Charlie tugged nervously on the strings of his hoodie. “So maybe we lose half a day in Zurich. If we pick up something, it’ll be worth it.”
“And maybe by then the SMI will have something for us,” said Grim. “We’re checking out the flights of all of Kasperov’s friends and business associates, having the computer run through every piece of terminal data, the cam footage, scanning faces for Kasperov, his girlfriend, and Nadia. We’re talking about thousands of hours of footage across thousands of airports. Plus we’re looking at as many private airstrips as we can, but the enormity of this is just mind-boggling.”