About one hundred meters from the lab, a slender woman wearing black from head-to-foot lay prone in a shallow drainage ditch bordering one of the old vineyards. Camouflage netting studded with leaves and twigs broke up her silhouette and concealed the pair of image-intensifer binoculars she focused on the building. Even in the silver moonlight, she was effectively invisible from more than a few meters away. Once the moon slid behind the horizon, the only way anyone else would ever spot her was by walking right through her camouflaged hide.
Suddenly the black-clad woman stiffened, alerted by soft, dry, rustling sounds coming from somewhere behind her. Moving with extreme caution to avoid making any noise herself, she swung around and propped up her binoculars on the edge of the ditch, intently surveying the shadow-filled vineyard for any signs of movement. She held her breath, waiting.
There. One of the shadows changed shape, gradually becoming a man crouching near a row of bare and gray vines that had been pruned back to lie dormant for the winter. Seconds later, another man flitted across the vineyard and joined the first. Then a third figure appeared. This one was a woman.
She focused the binoculars, first on one man’s face and then on the other. One of her eyebrows rose in utter disbelief. “Well, well, well…look who the cat dragged in,” Randi Russell murmured coolly to herself.
Sighing, she put down the binoculars and then slowly and carefully stood up, abandoning her concealed position. She kept her hands away from her sides, palms out. Startled by her sudden appearance, the three people crouching among the vines swiveled in her direction. The two men drew their pistols with lightning-speed.
“Please try not to kill me, Jon,” she said quietly. “It’s not like you have a surplus of friends as it is.”
Stunned, Smith eased off the trigger. “Randi?” he said in amazement. “What the hell are you doing here?’
The slender CIA officer came closer, emerging from the darkness. She crouched down beside them with a grimly amused expression on her smooth, good-looking face. “Since I was here first, it seems to me that should be my question…not yours.”
Almost against his will, Jon grinned back at her. She had a point. He shrugged. “Fair enough.”
He thought fast, trying to come up with a plausible story, one that Randi could choose to believe. She was the sister of his dead fiancée, and an old friend to whom he owed his life several times over, but she also worked for the CIA—which meant she was not privy to the closely held Covert-One secret. Until that changed, he was forced to find ever more inventive ways to dodge her awkward questions.
“Some people high up in the Pentagon have asked me to track down the origin of this mysterious disease,” Jon said at last. “The one that’s been killing our intelligence analysts and key leaders in the former Soviet republics. We’re sure now that the illness is man-made, a sort of genetically targeted assassination weapon.”
“But why you exactly?” Randi demanded.
“Because I was the one first approached by a Russian scientist, a colleague of mine, at a medical conference in Prague,” Smith told her. Quickly, he briefed her on Valentin Petrenko’s claims and the murderous attack used to silence him. “When I passed the word back to Washington, they sent me to Moscow to check out his story, figuring that I had the contacts and the expertise to nail down the facts.”
Randi nodded reluctantly. “That almost makes sense, Jon,” she admitted. She looked skeptically at Kirov, whom she had gotten to know years before while working as a field officer in Moscow. “I assume this is where Major General Kirov of the Russian Federal Security Service comes in?”
The big, silver-haired man shook his head with a smile. “It’s just plain Oleg Kirov these days, Ms. Russell. I’m retired.”
Randi snorted. “Yeah, I just bet you are.” She waved a hand at the submachine gun slung across his back. “Most pensioners don’t go wandering around the Italian countryside at night while armed to the teeth.”
“Oleg has been working with me,” Smith explained. “As a sort of private consultant.”
“So who is this?” Randi asked pointedly, nodding toward Fiona Devin. “Your secretary?”
Jon winced, seeing Fiona stiffen angrily. “Ms. Devin is a freelance journalist based in Moscow,” he said quickly. “She was already investigating the first disease outbreak when I arrived.”
“A journalist?” Randi said in disbelief. She shook her head. “Let me get this straight, Jon—you actually brought a reporter along on a covert mission? Don’t you think that’s carrying this whole Pentagon media-embedding program a bit too far?”
“I am not exactly here as journalist,” Fiona said coldly, speaking for the first time. The trace of her Irish accent was stronger now. “Not anymore.”
“Meaning what?” Randi demanded.
Smith filled her in on the various attempts made by Erich Brandt, acting for Konstantin Malkovic, to kill them. He ended by telling her about the orders issued by the Kremlin for their immediate arrest. “In the circumstances, Oleg and I thought she should stick with us,” he finished lamely, realizing how improbable that all sounded.
There was a moment’s silence.
At last Randi threw up her hands. She stared hard at Jon. “Am I really supposed to believe this cockamamie story of yours?”
“As wild as it sounds, it is the truth,” he said stoutly, glad that the darkness hid his red face. Well, at least part of the truth, he told his abraded conscience silently.
“So I guess the three of you just waltzed out of Moscow, right under the noses of half the militia and the FSB?” Randi asked sardonically.
“I have friends in shipping,” Kirov said calmly.
“Right,” the CIA officer said drily. She looked all three of them up and down, clearly noting all of their weapons and other equipment. “And these friends of yours…in shipping…just happened to be able to provide you with all this nifty hardware?”
Smith grinned at her. “Not quite. That was my part. Remember, I have friends in the Air Force.”
“Naturally.” Randi sighed, apparently accepting defeat, at least temporarily. “Okay, Jon. I give up. You three are just the pure, accidental heroes you claim to be.”
“Then perhaps it’s your turn to tell us what you’re doing out here in the dark, Ms. Russell,” Fiona Devin suggested coolly.
For a second, Randi bristled. Then, surprisingly, she smiled. “My what big teeth you have, Ms. Devin.” She shrugged. “It’s pretty simple, actually. You’re hunting for the source of this genetically aimed biological weapon. Well, I’m hunting the man who undoubtedly created it.”
“Wulf Renke,” Smith said quietly.
“That’s the guy,” Randi agreed flatly. She ran through the long and bloody trail that had led her all the way from Baghdad to Berlin, and then, finally, here to Orvieto. “I had to guess at the end,” she admitted. “The phone network we were tracing went dead before my technical experts could nail down any specific locations. But when I did some research on my own, this place popped out as the best fit for Renke in Umbria. There are other medical research facilities around, but the ECPR seemed a natural—plenty of money, plenty of scientists from all parts of Europe working together, and all the top-of-the-line equipment his black little heart could desire.”
“So you hopped a flight down here?”
“To Rome, and then up here by car,” the CIA officer confirmed. “I’ve been in position since early this afternoon.”
Smith heard a strained note in her voice, one that he had been noticing for a while. “You keep saying ‘I,’ Randi,” he commented. “Where’s the rest of your team?”
“There is no team,” she said grimly. “Just me. And nobody at Langley or anywhere else knows where I am right now. At least I hope not.”
Now it was Smith’s turn to be surprised. “You’re working without a net? Without any Agency support? Why?”
Randi grimaced. “Because Renke, or maybe this Malkovic bastard you mentioned, has a m
ole somewhere high up, someone who’s been feeding him everything I’ve learned.” Her mouth tightened to a thin, angry line. “Playing by the rules has cost the lives of three good people already. So now I’m not taking any more chances.”
Smith, Fiona, and Kirov nodded slowly, understanding both her reasoning and her fury. Betrayal by someone in your own ranks was the ultimate nightmare for every intelligence agent.
“We should join forces, Ms. Russell,” Kirov told her quietly. “It is unorthodox, I admit, but when we are faced by such dangerous enemies, working together is only common sense. And time is very short. We cannot waste any more of it arguing among ourselves.”
Jon and Fiona nodded in agreement.
Randi stared at them for a long, painful moment. Then she nodded slowly. “All right, you people have a deal.” Her mouth twisted into a wry smile. “After all, this isn’t exactly the first time Jon and I have stumbled across each other in the field.”
“No, it isn’t,” Smith said quietly.
“Perhaps you’re fated to be together,” Fiona Devin suggested, with just a hint of mischief in her voice.
Randi snorted softly. “Oh, sure. Jon and I are a regular dynamic duo—the Mutt and Jeff of the espionage business.”
Smith wisely decided to keep his mouth shut. This was one of those wonderful moments when anything he said was bound to land him in hot water. Or maybe even boiling water, he thought warily, eyeing the tight-lipped expression on Randi’s face.
But then she shook herself back to the present. “You’d better come and see what we’re up against. Because, believe me, whatever you heroes have in mind is not going to be easy.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
General Staff Command Bunker, Outside Moscow
A large display map of Russia and its neighbors occupied one concrete wall of the elaborate command center buried far below the surface of the earth. Symbols scattered across the map showed the current position and readiness of the major military units slated for ZHUKOV. The room itself was filled with rows of consoles, each equipped with the latest secure communications to allow staff officers to maintain constant contact with the troop commanders in the field.
Russian President Viktor Dudarev stood at the back of the room watching as the array of generals, colonels, and majors moved unhurriedly through the intricate work of bringing his long-held plans ever closer to reality. One of the last yellow symbols—depicting the two divisions assembled secretly in the snow-bound Caucasus Mountains—turned green.
“Colonel-General Sevalkin reports that his command is in position,” Major Piotr Kirichenko, his military aide, murmured. “All ZHUKOV ground forces are now deployed to their final pre-war bivouacs. The senior commanders will begin briefing their regimental and battalion leaders in twelve hours.”
Dudarev nodded in satisfaction. The decision to hold back those operational briefings until practically the last possible moment had been his, one intended to prevent leaks that could jeopardize ZHUKOV’s success. He glanced at Kirichenko. “Are there any signs of a reaction among our targets?”
The younger man shook his head. “No, sir. Intelligence confirms that the Ukrainian and other armies are still in their peacetime quarters, with absolutely no sign of any higher alert status.”
“What about the Americans or NATO?”
Kirichenko frowned slightly. “We are picking up fragmentary signs that American aircraft squadrons at bases in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom may have been ordered to higher readiness, but there is no indication of any significant movement of those planes toward our frontiers.”
Dudarev turned to the stocky, gray-haired man standing behind him. He raised an eyebrow. “Well, Alexei?”
“So far the Americans have been denied any permission to move aircraft eastward,” Ivanov confirmed. “The European governments have their heads well down in the sand. Each is waiting to see what, if anything, Castilla can prove about our intentions.”
“And he will find it very difficult to prove anything from an intensive care ward,” the Russian president said with a cold smile. “In the meantime, let us hope that the Europeans continue to choose wisely over the next twenty-four hours. By the time they wake up to the new balance of power on this continent, it will be far too late.”
Near Orvieto
“See the problem, Jon?” Randi murmured. They were lying next to each other in her camouflaged hiding place overlooking the brightly lit ECPR building she had picked out as Wulf Renke’s lab facility.
Smith slowly lowered the powerful binoculars she had lent him. He handed them back to her with a tight, worried nod. “Yeah, I do. The damned place is practically a fortress.”
“A fortress is right,” Randi agreed, ticking off on her fingers the defenses she had observed. “We’re talking about lights, remotely controlled security cameras, motion sensors, bullet-proof windows, a solid steel main door, bank-vault quality locks—plus maybe a dozen highly alert armed guards inside.”
He nodded again, grimly this time. “1 think it’s time we held a council of war.”
Jon and Randi slid cautiously out of the shallow drainage ditch and faded back into the vineyard. Kirov and Fiona had set up some of their gear in a spot where a small fold in the ground offered concealment from the cameras and lights mounted on the lab building. They had their heads close together, studying the dozens of digital surveillance photos the CIA officer had shot during her long afternoon and evening vigil.
Kirov glanced up when Smith and Randi returned. “We’ve definitely come to the right place,” he said somberly. “See for yourself.”
While Jon watched, the Russian clicked through several color images taken with a telephoto lens. The first showed two black sedans arriving at the lab building. The next set showed a large group of men climbing out of the cars and moving toward the lab. Kirov zoomed in on two of those men.
Smith whistled softly, staring at the familiar faces of Erich Brandt and Konstantin Malkovic. The sight of the ex–Stasi officer’s cold gray eyes raised the hairs on the back of his neck. Jon’s jaw tightened. While he and Fiona Devin were being tortured, Jon had promised to kill that arrogant bastard. That was a promise he meant to keep. He looked away, fighting to regain a measure of control over his anger. This was a time for coolly rational thought, not avenging blood lust. “Are Brandt and Malkovic still inside?” he asked.
“They are,” Fiona said. She sounded surprisingly calm. “Ms. Russell’s admirably complete set of pictures shows no one else entering or leaving.”
“That’s one piece of good news anyway.” Smith squatted down on his haunches. The others grouped themselves around him. “The bad news is that our first plan—to run a quick sneak-and-peek into that compound, looking for evidence—isn’t going to fly. Their security is too tight. We’d be spotted the second we started toward the perimeter fence.”
Kirov shrugged. “Since we know where Renke’s lab is, I suggest we strike now, without worrying about stealth. Our enemies have done us the favor of putting themselves in one place,” he said coldly. “We should take advantage of their error.”
“I’d like to kick in the door,” Smith agreed. He grinned tightly. “But only if we had a full company of infantry, with a couple of M1A1 Abrams tanks for fire support. And even then we’d be sticking our hands into a meat-grinder.”
“The building is that closely guarded?” the Russian asked.
Jon nodded. “It is.”
“There are F-16s based at Aviano,” Randi said coolly. “They could be here in an hour. Maybe less.”
“You want to call in an air strike?” Smith asked.
“Why not?” The CIA officer’s eyes were hard. “One laser-guided bomb would solve a great many problems.”
Jon understood her feelings. The vicious genetic weapon set in motion by the men inside that lab, Renke, Brandt, and Malkovic, was already responsible for dozens of cruelly painful deaths around the world. It was incredibly tempting to contemplate watch
ing a single massive explosion engulf them in flame. But there were too many arguments against an air strike, both practical and political.
Sighing, he shook his head in regret. “The president would never approve an F-16 strike, Randi, and that’s how high up the decision would have to go. Most of the Center’s work is legitimate scientific research, and there’s too much chance of collateral damage. Can you imagine how the EU would react if we dropped bombs on friendly territory, especially without permission or even consultation?” He frowned. “Our alliances are already too fragile as it is.”
“Destroying that lab would also destroy the evidence we need—the evidence that the Russians have been involved in creating and using this new weapon,” Fiona pointed out quietly. “So would killing these men, or at least all of them. We may need their testimony to make our accusations against the Kremlin stick.”
Kirov nodded heavily. “Ms. Devin is right. Whatever we do, we must try to take at least one of these men, Renke or Malkovic especially, alive.”
“Spiffy,” Randi said, shaking her head. “This gets better and better.” She turned back to Smith. “Okay, Jon, you claim that you’re tied in with the Pentagon. Why don’t you whistle up a commando unit? Like the Delta Force or the SEALs?” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder toward the ECPR compound. “Kicking in doors is what they train for, isn’t it?”
“Believe me, I’d like nothing better,” Jon told her softly. “But there aren’t any Delta Force or SEAL teams in striking range. They’re either in the States refitting and training, or tied up in combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.” One side of his mouth curved up in an ironic grin. “I’m afraid you’re looking at the only special-ops team available…and it’s the four of us.”
“What about the Italians?” Fiona broke in. She nodded at the darkened landscape around them. “This is their country. Don’t they have special police or Army units capable of raiding that lab?”