Senses fully alert, he moved carefully through the undergrowth, Natalia a few paces behind him. The rotted skeleton of a wooden structure came into view ahead. He whispered for her to stay where she was and remain silent, then put down the land mine and detonator before hefting the AKS and creeping silently to the edge of his cover.
The remains of the building stood on the shore beside an equally moldering wooden platform extending out into the river. Parked on the track nearby was a mudspattered but otherwise new Toyota Land Cruiser. Four figures stood beside it, talking.
Chase’s heart leapt with relief: One of the men was Castille. His friend had waited for him, just as he’d hoped. The Belgian had changed into civilian clothes, drab camouflage gear replaced by a gaudy shirt emblazoned with cheerful patterns of brightly colored birds. Beside him was Sullivan, the New Zealander wiping sweat from the top of his bald head. To the Englishman’s surprise, the third member of the group was Ivor Lock, looking out of place and uncomfortable in the humid heat. The expensive four-by-four was probably his, then; he must have been concerned enough on learning that his daughter had not been among the rescued hostages to come and wait for news in person.
The fourth man was Hoyt.
Cold anger rose in Chase at the sight of the cigarette-smoking American. Whatever his reasons for ransacking the Russian laboratory and trying to take Natalia, he undoubtedly now meant to cover his tracks. Of the group, he was the only one with a weapon at the ready, his AK-47 hanging at his hip. Sullivan’s gun was shouldered, and Castille’s propped against a tree.
Hoyt’s plan was clear. If Natalia showed up, he would kill everyone else and take the young German.
Chase wasn’t going to let that happen.
A brief glance back to make sure that she was still hidden, then he stepped out of the bushes—with his gun pointed at Hoyt. “Don’t move!”
The four men looked around in surprise. Lock flinched at the sight of the gun, Castille and Sullivan reacting with confusion—but Hoyt immediately grasped his own weapon. “I said don’t fucking move,” Chase snarled. “Drop it!”
The American froze, but the rifle remained in his hands. “You’re missing your mag there, Chase,” he said, eyeing the AKS-74U.
“It’s still chambered.”
Hoyt’s gaze flicked down to his older Kalashnikov, and its fully loaded magazine. “One bullet against thirty?”
The AKS did not waver. “I only need one.”
“Reckon you do, at that.” Hoyt spat his cigarette from his lips and reluctantly lowered the AK to the ground by its strap.
Chase glanced at his friend. “Hugo, grab his gun.”
Castille did so, though with a bewildered expression. “Edward, what is going on?”
“That’s a very good question,” said Sullivan. “What the hell’s this about, Chase?”
Lock had questions of his own. “Where’s my daughter? Did you find her?”
“Natalia’s fine.” Chase considered calling her out of cover, but decided to wait until the situation was resolved. “Hugo, have you got anything you can tie that arsehole up with? I don’t want him causing any more trouble.”
“What trouble?” Sullivan demanded.
“This bastard’s the reason we got into a firefight at the camp,” the Englishman explained as Castille, keeping a wary eye on Hoyt, went to the Land Cruiser. “He wasn’t just there to rescue the hostages. He was there specifically to get Natalia—and steal all the research on whatever the fuck the Russians were doing to her. He knew what they were up to all along.”
“What?” gasped Lock. He rounded on Hoyt. “What were they doing to my daughter?” The mercenary remained silent.
“When we went into that cabin to get her, first thing he did was start taking all their notes,” Chase went on. “One of the Russians was already in there. I told Hoyt to watch him while I helped Natalia, but instead he shot him in cold blood. Then he pointed his gun at me and told me to carry her out of there.”
Sullivan looked at Hoyt as if expecting a denial, but the American still said nothing. “Why did you do it?” he asked. Hoyt’s only response was a disdainful sneer.
“Edward,” called Castille from the rear of the Land Cruiser. “There is nothing to tie him with—but look.” He held up what Chase recognized as Hoyt’s pack, opening it. “You are right. It is full of papers, disks, a computer …”
Sullivan unshouldered his own gun and pointed it at Hoyt. “All right, you. I want some answers.”
“I got nothin’ to say,” Hoyt replied.
Chase lowered the AKS and joined Castille. “Did you get the other hostages out all right?”
The Belgian nodded. “We came here from the camp last night and put them on the boat. Lomax and Rios went with them—they are all safe in Da Nang now. I waited for you, and Hal stayed with me. Hoyt arrived a few hours later.”
“And decided to stick around until I got here with Natalia,” Chase added, glaring at the prisoner. “Hal, how long have you known this twat? What’s his background?”
Sullivan was concerned by the revelations. “I haven’t known him long, but he was recommended to me by someone I thought I could trust. All his references were excellent.”
“They usually are when you’re a spook.”
“Where is my daughter?” Lock asked, impatience rising over his concern.
“She’s safe—I’ll fetch her once we’ve got him secured. Hugo, take the strap off his AK—we’ll tie his hands with it.” Chase crossed back to Hoyt. “You going to tell us who you’re really working for?”
“Go fuck yourself,” Hoyt replied.
Chase gave him a crooked smile—then punched him hard in the face. Hoyt fell to the ground, a bright fan of blood spraying from both nostrils. “Never heard of ’em. They got a website? Go-fuck-yourself-dot-com?”
“Motherfucker!” Hoyt spat. He wiped his mouth, wincing as he touched his now broken nose. “You just made a big fuckin’ mistake.”
“You made a bigger one,” said Sullivan. “I don’t appreciate being lied to, or being used. So either you give us some answers, or I’ll leave you here for the Vietnamese and their Russian friends to find. After I’ve let Eddie get his licks in.”
“Speak up,” said Chase, kicking Hoyt hard in the side when no reply was immediately forthcoming.
The American clamped a hand to his bruised ribs. “You cocksucker! All right, okay,” he hurriedly added as Castille joined the group and drew back one leg to deliver a blow of his own. “But if I talk, I get to walk out of here, okay?”
Sullivan reluctantly nodded. “You’ve got my word. If I believe you.”
“Okay.” Hoyt took a deep breath. “Right. This is what’s happening. The Russians have a biological warfare department they call Unit 201. It’s been active since the Cold War, and it’s one of their biggest secrets—only people at the very top levels of the Russian government and military know about it. The Ruskies at the camp? They’re part of 201.”
“Biological warfare?” said Castille uneasily. “Why did they kidnap the aid workers?”
“They don’t give a fuck about the aid workers. They’re only interested in the German girl, Natalia.”
“Why do they want her?” Sullivan demanded.
“Natalia’s family,” Chase remembered. He quickly glanced back at the surrounding vegetation to make sure she was still hidden; there was no sign of her. “Her granddad—he was Russian, and he was a biowarfare scientist. He tried to defect to the West with his research, but didn’t make it. That’s the connection, isn’t it? They want her. Or rather, they want what’s in her.”
Castille and Sullivan were both confused, but Hoyt nodded. “Yeah. They think they can use her DNA or whatever the hell it is they’re after in their experiments.”
“Well, since you started gunning ’em down, then stole their work and set everything that was left on fire, I’m guessing you don’t work for the Russians,” said Chase scathingly.
“You’r
e goddamn right I don’t,” Hoyt replied vehemently. “Thing is, though, Unit 201 is like a fucking fortress. It works out of a maximum-security bunker at one of their nuclear bomber bases. It’s impossible to get in. So the only way we could get our hands on their work … was by getting them to come out.”
“You set them up,” Chase realized. “You told them about Natalia so they’d try to get what they were after from her.”
Hoyt wiped his nose, then gave the Englishman a twisted smile. “You ain’t quite so dumb as you seem, Chase. Yeah, we set them up. We fed Unit 201 information about Natalia, and they took the bait. She was working in a country friendly to Russia, so it was easy for them to get permission to do whatever the hell they wanted to get her. When they made their move, we were ready.”
“You little bastard,” snarled the New Zealander, baring his teeth. “How long have you been planning this?”
“Long enough. But it was worth it. We drew 201 out of Russia to somewhere we could reach them. And once they were out in the open, well …” Another unpleasant smile. “We took their research, we destroyed everything they’d been working on, we killed some of their top scientists—about the only way things could have gone better would be if their head honcho had been there so I coulda blown the fucker away as well.”
“You didn’t get everything you were after, though,” said Chase. “You didn’t get Natalia.”
Hoyt snorted. “We will. You think this is over, Chase? You dumb limey fuck. We’re only getting started—”
Chase slammed his boot deep into Hoyt’s stomach, leaving him gasping and writhing. “So are we.”
Jaw clenched in anger, Sullivan stood over Hoyt, pointing his rifle at the treacherous mercenary’s head. “I want answers, Hoyt. You kept saying ‘we’—who are you working for? Who’s your employer?”
Hoyt stared up defiantly at the three men. Sullivan’s finger slowly tightened on the trigger—
The sharp crack of a gunshot echoed around the riverbank.
But it didn’t come from Sullivan’s gun. The mercenary leader flinched, confused shock rising on his face … then he toppled and crashed to the rotten wooden decking. Blood gushed from a wound in the center of his back.
Chase and Castille whirled—to find the smoking weapon now aimed at them.
“You want to know Hoyt’s employer?” said Lock, the slim chrome-plated Glock 26 pistol in his hand rock-steady. “That would be me.”
17
Russia
“So, how long are you planning to ignore me?” asked Eddie.
Nina refused to turn her head toward him, keeping her gaze fixed on the dawn-lit steppes of southern Russia as they rolled past far below the small business jet. “I’m not ignoring you. I’m just so mad at you right now that if I looked at you, I might have trouble stopping myself from punching you in your goddamn lying face.” She jabbed an angry finger at the man on the other side of the cabin. “How long have you been working with your Russian friend over there?”
“He’s not my friend,” Eddie insisted, exasperated. “The only reason I was working with him was because … I had to.”
“You had to,” she echoed sarcastically. “You had to let him go after he tried to kidnap Tova.” The Swede, who was in the row of seats behind them, sleepily raised her head at the mention of her name. “You had to try to sabotage the expedition. You had to plant a goddamn bomb on the runestone!” She finally looked around at her husband as her voice rose to a shout. “And you still won’t tell me why you had to do all of this? Why not, Eddie? Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?”
The conflict was clear in his voice. “Because … because I made a promise. I told you, I can’t say any more.”
“But I can,” said the Russian.
It had taken considerable cajoling by Eddie to persuade Nina and Tova that the Russian was not a threat, but neither woman was willing to trust their mysterious—and until now taciturn—benefactor. At the lake, he had radioed for a helicopter of his own to fly Nina, Eddie, and Tova away from the scene of the battle, though Nina had insisted that he also alert the Norwegian authorities so Matt and the other survivors could be taken to safety. A jet waiting at a small airport had then flown into the night to deliver them to a destination deep inside the vast former communist country.
Beyond that, however, he had not been forthcoming with further information. “So you’ve decided to talk now?” Nina said. “Why?”
He smiled. “I do not like it when a husband and wife fight. It reminds me too much of my parents. So. What do you want to know?”
She eyed him coldly. “Everything. Starting with: Who the hell are you?”
He straightened, giving her a salute. “I am Colonel Grigory Alekseyevich Kagan, commander of operations for Sekcija dvesti odin—or as it is called in English, Unit 201.”
“And just what is Unit 201?”
“On a normal day, if I told you I would have to kill you. It is a state secret. Today, though … I believe that you need to know. So I will tell you, and not kill you.” Another sly grin. “For now.”
Nina was not amused. “So? Get on with it.”
Kagan turned to Eddie. “She is impatient, yes? Red hair, it is like fire in a woman. I like it.”
“Just tell her, Yuri,” the Englishman grumbled.
“Grigory. As you wish.” He looked back at Nina. “Unit 201 was created during the Cold War. It is a biological counterwarfare agency.”
“Counterwarfare?” said Nina.
“Yes. Over fifty years ago, the Soviet Union discovered something deep within the earth, a poisonous substance—something first found more than a thousand years earlier by the Vikings.” Nina and Tova, now fully awake, exchanged surprised glances. “At the time, the Soviet leaders thought to turn it into a weapon. That was a mistake. As they found out, it was too terrible to use, ever. So Unit 201 was created to make sure that no one ever did. It worked on ways to deal with the substance, but it was also authorized to take … direct action.”
Nina’s eyes narrowed. “Direct action like killing anybody who might find more of it?” Behind her, Tova stiffened in resurgent fear.
Kagan shook his head firmly. “We are not murderers. We would not have killed you, Dr. Skilfinger. But our enemies had already stolen the runestone, and your research. They would use them to find the second runestone, and from there, Valhalla. We could not allow that to happen, so our intention was to use what you had learned to find and destroy the second stone before they reached it. My apologies.”
Nina was already making connections. “According to the text on the runestone, the Vikings would only travel to Valhalla to prepare for Ragnarök—the final battle. The end of the world.”
“It will be the end of the world if our enemies find it,” said Kagan, nodding.
“But who are your enemies?” asked Tova.
“I am afraid, Dr. Wilde, that they are from your country,” the Russian told Nina, who reacted with shock. “In 1961, a Russian scientist tried to defect to America, taking this terrible weapon with him.”
“Natalia’s grandfather,” Eddie said quietly. Kagan nodded again.
Nina regarded her husband quizzically. “Who’s Natalia?”
Kagan answered for him when it became clear he was unwilling to reply. “A young woman, an innocent. Eight years ago, we learned that the Americans had taken an interest in her. Her DNA, her very blood, could give them what they needed to re-create this scientist’s work. We found her in Vietnam—”
“You kidnapped her,” Eddie cut in. “And all the people with her.”
“We had to do it. We could not let the Americans get her. Our plan was to use her DNA to create a neutralizing agent. She and the others would then have been released—the story would be that the Vietnamese police had rescued them. But then”—he gave Eddie a sharp look—“you and your mercenary friends interfered.”
“We were hired to find them,” Eddie told Nina. “Me and Hugo, and some others.”
“But you did not know who had hired you, did you?” Kagan clucked his tongue. “Or that one of your team was a spy working for our enemies. And because of that, two of Unit 201’s best scientists were killed, their research destroyed. And an innocent woman—”
Eddie interrupted again, much more forcefully. “I know what happened.”
The pilot’s voice came from a loudspeaker. Kagan listened, then told the other passengers: “We will be landing soon. The Academician will explain everything.”
“Good,” said Nina, peering back out of the window. The snowy landscape was indeed getting closer. “It’s about damn time somebody gave me a proper answer.” She directed this last at Eddie, who looked apologetic but still said nothing.
Soon the plane crossed over a wide river with towns on both sides, descending toward a long runway beyond the settlement on the east bank. Their destination was not inviting. The surrounding land was a flat expanse of frozen marshes, crisscrossed by concrete taxiways. As the business jet landed and slowed, Nina saw lines of parked aircraft: large, lumbering old beasts whose brutally functional designs, very different from the sleek modernism she associated with American military planes, gave them an almost alien feel.
Eddie looked past her. “It’s Engels air base.”
Kagan reacted with suspicion. “How do you know that?”
“ ’Cause Russia’s only got two active nuclear bomber bases, and the other one’s way, waaaay over in the far east.” He indicated some of the aircraft, these long and menacing jets resembling winged hypodermic syringes rather than the hulking turboprops they had just passed. “And the Tu-160 is a nuclear bomber.”
“You know a lot about the Russian military, Mr. Chase.”
Eddie grinned. “Part of my old job. We never knew when we might be sent to blow up all your planes, so we had to be prepared.”
“You will not be blowing any of them up today,” said Kagan sourly.
Nina sighed. “Oh God. Someone always has to tempt fate, don’t they?” Her husband’s grin widened, while the Russian’s expression became even more disapproving.