Conviction (2009)

  The complex resembled a geometric cloverleaf. At its center was what looked like four concentric circles; Fisher leaned closer and read the faded label: RAMP TO LEVELS 2, 3, 4. Situated in each quadrant around the ramp were the clover’s leaves, each one called a “zone”; each of these was divided into four “areas.” Running between each zone was a corridor like the one in which they stood, and inside each zone smaller halls divided the four areas. Squares within squares, Fisher thought. The Soviet military had always been fond of geometry.

  Gillespie stepped closer and read the Cyrillic labels beside each zone: MEDICAL, ELECTRONICS, WEAPONS, BALLISTICS. “It’s a test facility. I assume ballistics means missiles and rockets.”

  Fisher nodded his agreement.

  “This place is massive,” Noboru said. “Take a look at the scale.”

  At the bottom of the map was a gradated line in alternating gray and black. Each unit indicated fifteen hundred meters, or five thousand feet. Using his index finger and thumb as calipers, Fisher measured the complex from end to end. “Twelve hundred meters,” he announced.

  “That can’t be,” Hansen said. “That’d make it a square mile.”

  Valentina replied, “Four levels. Four square miles.”

  Fisher did the mental math. “The east side of this place runs under Lake Frolikha.” He tapped the placard. “Ballistics and electronics. If you were experimenting, you’d want access to water for cooling and fire suppression.” He turned to the group. “We’ll clear it as it’s laid out, by zone and level, starting here and moving down. He assigned Hansen to the medical zone, Valentina to electronics, Gillespie to weapons, and Noboru to ballistics. I’ll loiter at the ramp area and play free safety. Questions?”

  There was none.

  “Lights off. Night vision on. Let’s go.”

  AT the ramp they found a freestanding elevator shaft that presumably led to the hut they’d found in the meadow. Fisher took his post beside the ramp railing while the others split up and disappeared down the corridors leading to each zone. Fisher listened to their progress over his headset: “At the entrance to the weapons zone . . . flexicam negative . . . entering zone. . . .” One by one, over the next few minutes, they each reported clear or no activity. Hansen was the last to report in. “Sam, meet me in level one medical zone.”

  “On my way.”

  In the greenish white glow of his night vision, Fisher found his way to the correct corridor. Two hundred yards away he saw a figure crouched beside a door. Hansen raised his hand and Fisher walked to him.

  “Some weird stuff inside,” Hansen said.

  “Describe weird.”

  “See for yourself. It’s clear.”

  Fisher stepped through the door and found himself in yet another corridor, this one narrower. Fisher poked his head through the door of the first area. It was a laboratory: long black workbenches, sinks, rolling stools, and gray metal shelf units along the walls. Fisher clicked on his flashlight. In the narrow beam he could see that the shelves were full of glass jars of varying sizes. Some were empty, some filled with amber or yellow liquid, and some containing formless, organic-looking blobs.

  Fisher moved on to the next area. It was a hospital ward. Dozens of steel-framed beds were bolted to the walls, each equipped with shackles at the head and foot. Rolling IV stands stood clustered in the far corner like stick-figure mannequins. The floor was covered with litter, towels, and skeins of gauze bandages. A bank of X-ray light boxes lined one wall like a row of dark windows.

  Fisher moved on to the last two areas and found more of the same: laboratories and hospital wings. He returned to the main door and crouched down beside Hansen, who asked, “Human experimentation, you think?”

  Fisher nodded. “There were a dozen or so gulags within a hundred miles of here. There’d always been rumors of prisoners disappearing and either never coming back or coming back . . . different.”

  “Christ Almighty.”

  “Did you get to the end?” Fisher asked, pointing down the corridor.

  “Yeah. It’s a ramp to the outside. It’s been plugged with enough cement to make a Wal-Mart parking lot.”

  Fisher spoke into his headset: “Status report.”

  The rest of the team checked in with an all-clear. They regrouped at the ramp a few minutes later. Gillespie said, “Found an indoor target range—fun lockers, sandbag tables, a lot of pretty-good-sized chunks taken out of the concrete walls.”

  Valentina reported, “Standard electronics stuff: cabinets, testing benches, old capacitors, switches, wiring . . .” She looked at Noboru.

  “Blackboards and drafting tables are all I found,” he said. “What about you, Ben?”

  Hansen explained what they’d found in the medical zone.

  Gillespie muttered, “Okay, now I’m officially creeped out.”

  “Big shop of horrors,” Valentina replied.

  “Let’s keep going.”

  AT staggered twenty-foot intervals they started down the ramp. It was wider than it had looked above, almost fifty feet from the wall to the guardrail—large enough, Fisher suspected, for the transport of heavy equipment, including rocket engines.

  Forty vertical below level 1, the ramp opened into level 2.

  Suddenly Fisher raised a closed fist. Behind him the others stopped and crouched down. Fisher pointed to his ear, then toward the railing overlooking the next level. He signaled to wait, then crept up to the rail and looked down. After a minute he returned to the group, gestured for them to follow, and led them a safe distance down the corridor.

  “Two guards stationed at the entrance to the ramp below. Both armed with AK-47s. No night vision that I could see.”

  “Where there are two, there are more,” Hansen said.

  “Agreed. Let’s check this level and regroup here.”

  Over the next half hour they each searched their assigned zones and found more of the same: experimental equipment and supplies. Noboru was the last to report in: “Sam, come down to ballistics.”

  “Coming. Everyone else regroup.” He got three “rogers” in reply. As he had with Hansen, Fisher found Noboru standing outside the main entrance to the level 2 ballistics zone. Fisher stepped through. Instead of finding four areas divided by hallways, he found a man-made cavern. Measuring roughly two football fields in length and width, the area was filled with row upon row of engine-test scaffolding ranging in size from a VW Beetle to a commercial bus and each equipped with truck-sized tires. Fisher did a rough count and came up with thirty-six units. Four of them still held rocket motors.

  “Check the far end,” Noboru said.

  Fisher got out his binoculars and zoomed in as best he could with the night-vision goggles. Near the east wall, more than an eighth of a mile away, were what looked like four garage-sized concrete sewer pipes lying on their sides and spaced evenly across the width of the space. The wall behind the pipes was charred.

  “Blast funnels for rocket exhaust,” Fisher guessed.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought, too, but I’m not talking about that. See the dark lump between the second and third funnel?”

  Fisher panned the binoculars and zoomed in. It took him a few moments to realize what he was seeing—a pyramidal stack of military-grade Anvil cases. “I’ll be damned.” Then, over the radio: “Everybody converge on ballistics.”

  38

  THERE were twenty-eight cases ranging in size from footlocker to armoire. All were secured by the same Sargent & Greenleaf 833 padlock they’d found on the door to the hut.

  “This isn’t all of it, is it?” Gillespie asked.

  “No. Unless Zahm’s inventory was wrong, I’d say this is about a third.”

  “They’re pretty well sealed,” Valentina remarked, running her hand over one of the cases. “Sure the Ajax bots can get inside?”

  “We’re talking about a fraction of a hair’s width,” Fisher replied. “They’ll get in. Everybody get behind me and back up.” Once they were a safe distan
ce from the cases, Fisher pulled Noboru’s makeshift Ajax pistol from his pack and loaded a dart. He took aim on the ceiling above the Anvil cases and fired. The pistol emitted a barely audible pfft. The dart bounced off the ceiling, bounced off one of the cases, and rolled until the case’s steel edge stopped it.

  They stood in silence for a full minute. While Fisher hadn’t expected fireworks, the dispersal of the Ajax bots was nonetheless anticlimactic.

  Standing behind Fisher, Noboru stared at his OPSAT screen. “Nothing yet.”

  “Wait for it.” Grim had said it could take up to five minutes for the Ajax bots to fully disperse and infiltrate.

  “What if there’s no power for them to gravitate to?” Hansen asked.

  “Just about every weapon or system on the inventory list is equipped with some form of EPROM—erasable programmable read-only memory—a low-power battery for housekeeping functions like date, time, and user settings. And if it doesn’t have an EPROM, it’s not one of the higher-end items. If we lose it, no disaster.”

  Noboru said, “I’ve got action. Something’s pinging in there. Another one . . . three more . . .” He looked up. “I’d say our first live-fire exercise is a success.”

  They gave the area one last quick search, then headed for the door. From inside one of the blast funnels Gillespie called, “Check this out.” They walked through the funnel to where she was standing. “Watch your step,” she said. “It’s gotta be extra venting for the engines.”

  Fisher stepped forward and looked down. In the darkness they’d failed to see the gap between the funnels and the wall. It was hard to judge depth through the night-vision goggles, but he suspected the vent extended to the lowermost level.

  BACK at the ramp, Fisher pulled Noboru and Valentina aside and whispered, “The guards are yours. Knives if you can manage it; PSS pistols as backup.”

  The both nodded.

  Again Fisher led the staggered column down the ramp. At the halfway point he called a halt, gestured for Hansen and Gillespie to take up overwatch positions, and then gave Noboru and Valentina the nod. Grozas slung and secured, they continued down the ramp. Fisher crept to the railing to watch their progress. He slung his own Groza and drew his PSS and extended the barrel through the railing, making sure he had a clear line of fire on each guard.

  As trained, Noboru and Valentina moved with exaggerated slowness, pausing between each heel-to-toe step until they were within ten feet of the guards. In unison, they stopped. Stepped forward. Stopped. When they were each within an arm’s reach of their targets, they stood up, took a fluid step forward . . .

  Hands clamped over mouths and knives came up. The guards slumped down, dead. Noboru and Valentina dragged the bodies back up the ramp to where Fisher was crouched. He nodded to Hansen and Gillespie, who came forward and took the bodies the rest of the way up the ramp. They were back five minutes later.

  “Stashed them in medical,” Hansen whispered to Fisher.

  “Apt,” Fisher replied.

  THEY kept going, pausing only briefly at the next ramp’s railing so Fisher could check the next level. He pointed to his eyes and his ears and shook his head, then gave the split-up signal. Over the next ten minutes Gillespie, Noboru, and Valentina checked in. Fisher ordered them back.

  Noboru crouched down and said, “Found another stack of Anvil cases. They’re tagged.”

  “How big?” Fisher asked.

  “About the size of the first one.”

  “Two down. One to go.” Fisher radioed Hansen: “Status report.”

  “Stand by.” Two minutes passed, then: “Coming back.”

  When he rejoined the group, his face was red and flushed. “We’ve got company. Medical’s been turned into a barracks. I counted a couple of dozen beds, all occupied.”

  “The attendees?” Noboru guessed.

  Fisher nodded. “The hosts wouldn’t be bunked with the guests.”

  “Maybe he’s not here yet,” Valentina offered.

  “Maybe. We’ve got one more level to check. With any luck, we’ll tag the last batch of cases and be back to Severobaikalsk for breakfast.”

  Behind them, a familiar voice broke the silence: “Not gonna happen, dickheads.”

  EVEN before Fisher turned around, the expressions on Valentina’s and Gillespie’s faces confirmed what his ears had told him: Ames.

  Valentina muttered, “He’s got a grenade.”

  “Armed?”

  “Can’t tell.”

  Fisher whispered, “Distance?”

  “Sixty feet,” replied Gillespie. “He’s right on your six o’clock.”

  It was a long shot, especially off a quick heel turn, but not impossible. Still, having never used the Groza before, Fisher put his chances at only 70 percent.

  Ames said, “Don’t even think it. Don’t even turn around. I go down, so does the grenade. No way you’ll cover the distance in time.”

  Fisher noted that Ames’s voice was still relatively soft. He wants something.

  Gillespie said, “He’s moving. Coming ahead . . . six o’clock . . . seven . . . eight. Forty feet. He’s at the ramp railing. Damn!”

  “What?”

  “I can hear you whispering,” Ames replied. “Turn around and you’ll see what.”

  Slowly Fisher rotated on the ball of his foot, simultaneously raising the butt of the Groza closer to his shoulder. Hansen mirrored his movements. The entire group was now facing Ames. Gillespie and Valentina tried to crab-walk sideways to expand their fields of fire, but Ames stopped them. “Nope. Not another step.”

  Ames stood at the railing with his grenade hand extended over the ramp. He took a few steps closer, but his arm never wavered. If Fisher took the shot now, he wouldn’t miss, but there would be no stopping the grenade. The explosion would bring everyone inside the complex down onto them.

  “What do you want?” Fisher asked evenly.

  “Just wanted to let you know you were right about me. I am a survivor. You figured your little gasoline trick sent me over the edge, didn’t you?”

  “How long did it take you to get out?” Fisher asked.

  “An hour. Good thing I’m skinny. Some of those tunnels were tight. While you were hiding from the helicopter, I was flagging it down. It took a little talking, but I finally convinced them of who I was.”

  “And you waited for us.”

  “Right.”

  “Do they know we’re here?”

  “No. I wanted to make sure I saw it all happen. I told him you were still in Irkutsk.”

  “Him?” Fisher repeated. “Who?”

  Ames smiled. “You’ve met him. In fact, he told me you had him in your hands and you let him go.”

  Fisher’s mind flashed to the guards Noboru and Valentina had killed. The faces had looked familiar, but he’d dismissed it. He shouldn’t have. He had seen them before.

  In Portinho da Arrábida, at Charles “Chucky Zee” Zahm’s villa.

  39

  AMES, having read Fisher’s expression, was nodding. “Yep. That’s him.”

  Hansen said, “Who?”

  “Zahm,” Fisher replied.

  “You’re kidding me.”

  Fisher shook his head.

  It made a certain sense. Though he’d had no overt clues at the time, Fisher could now see his psychological assessment of Zahm made him an obvious candidate for the man behind the curtain. A born envelope pusher, he joins the SAS but finds the adrenaline rush of covert soldiering only temporarily satisfies his addiction, so he leaves and decides, on a whim, to become a bestselling novelist, but this, too, isn’t enough. He rounds up some former comrades and goes into the business of high-end thievery only to find himself still restless, so he raises the bar. He breaks into a secret Chinese laboratory, steals five tons of weaponry, and invites the world’s most dangerous terrorists to an auction at an abandoned Soviet complex in the middle of Siberia.

  To the average person, insanity. To Zahm, just another day.

  Wh
at Fisher didn’t know, and might never know, was Zahm’s purpose at the Korfovka rendezvous with Zhao and Murdoch. He’d probably been laying the groundwork for the Laboratory 738 heist and the auction.

  “Where is he?” Fisher now asked.

  “Around.”

  “You can still do the right thing,” Hansen said.

  “I could,” Ames conceded.

  He lifted his opposite hand in a fateful gesture. Even as Fisher’s eyes instinctively flicked to the hand, he thought, Distraction.

  “But I won’t,” Ames finished.

  He dropped the grenade, turned, and sprinted up the ramp.

  40

  FISHER jerked the Groza to his shoulder and focused the crosshairs between Ames’s shoulder blades, but he was gone an instant later, around the curve of the ramp.

  “Down,” Fisher commanded, and dropped flat. The others followed suit. Two seconds passed and then the crump of the grenade’s explosion echoed up the ramp.

  Hansen asked, “Up or down?”

  “Down. We’ve gotta tag the last of the cases.”

  “Gonna be trapped.”

  “Bad luck for us,” Fisher shot back. He turned to Noboru. “You have the ARWEN?”

  “Yeah.”

  Fisher pointed down the corridor to the medical zone. “In about ten seconds they’re going to come charging. Don’t wait until you see them. First sign of footsteps, you put two gas canisters downrange. Got it?”

  “Yep.”

  To Valentina and Hansen, Fisher said, “You’re with Noboru. Anybody comes through his gas cloud, put ’em down. They’ll back off to regroup. When they do, leapfrog down the ramp and meet up with us. We’ll try to hold the ramp intersection. You three split up and check the zones for the rest of the arsenal. Questions?”

  There was none.

  “Good luck.”

  You’re with me,” Fisher told Gillespie. They got up and sprinted to the down ramp. “Everything’s a target,” he shouted. “If it’s alive, kill it. Two rounds, center mass, then move on.”