Under Fire

  Medzhid sighed, then walked to the apartment door.

  Dom got up and walked toward the windows while Spellman moved in the opposite direction until he was standing against the wall a few feet from the door. Ysabel stayed at the table within arm’s reach of Albina.

  Medzhid stepped back and Anton and Vasim entered.

  “Now, Jack, what’s this about?”

  “It’s about Pechkin.”

  On cue, Ysabel, holding Pechkin’s phone behind her back, hit the send button.

  “What about him?” asked Medzhid.

  A phone started ringing.

  “Pardon me, Minister,” Anton said, and reached into his coat.

  Medzhid said to Jack, “Have you found him?”

  “No, but we just found out who he’s been working with.”

  Ysabel held up the cell phone.

  “That’s Oleg Pechkin calling you, Anton,” said Jack.

  Anton glanced down at the phone, then shook his head. “I don’t know who this is. I don’t recognize the number.”

  “Show the minister your phone.”

  Anton narrowed his eyes at Jack. “You are setting me up. Why are you doing this?”

  “Show him your phone,” Jack repeated. “Do it.”

  “Anton, what is he talking about?”

  “This isn’t right, Minister. This man is lying to you. I am loyal. He’s trying to turn you against me, please believe me.”

  Anton slipped the phone back into his jacket.

  “Move, Rebaz!” Spellman shouted. He lunged for Medzhid. Vasim backpedaled out of his way, then reached out and snagged Spellman’s sleeve; Spellman tried to shake it off, his arms extended toward Medzhid.

  Startled, Anton backed away. His hand came out with a gun.

  “Drop it, drop it!” Jack shouted.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Dom moving, his Ruger out as he sidestepped and tried to clear Medzhid from his sight line.

  Anton pointed his gun at Spellman and fired. The bullet slashed across his neck. He stumbled sideways. Vasim wrapped his arm around Spellman’s neck and they fell through the doorway to the ground.

  Jack heard Ysabel shout, “Oh, God!”

  He drew his Ruger, leveled the muzzle with Anton’s chest. “Don’t!”

  Anton turned toward him, gun coming around. Jack fired. The bullet hit him in the chest, shoving him backward, but his gun was still up. Jack fired again, as did Dom, whose round struck Anton in the throat a split second after Jack’s punched into Anton’s belly. He went down.

  Jack rushed forward and kicked his gun away.

  On the other side of the door, Spellman and Vasim were wrestling, the latter trying to crawl from under the CIA agent to reach his fallen friend. “Anton! Anton!”

  “Stop, Vasim, you don’t—”

  “Get off of me!”

  Medzhid yelled, “Quiet! All of you, quiet!”

  Vasim stopped struggling. Spellman rolled off him, then helped him to his feet. Vasim shrugged off his arm. He stared down at Anton’s body.

  “Matt, you’re bleeding,” said Jack. “Your neck.”

  The CIA man touched the spot. “Ah, shit.”

  “Jack,” Ysabel called, her voice barely a whisper, “it’s Albina.”

  He turned. She was kneeling beside Medzhid’s assistant. The woman had a bullet hole below her left eye.

  “Oh my God, oh God, no . . .” Medzhid muttered, almost chanting as he backed away. His legs bumped against the back of the couch. He plopped down. His eyes were vacant.

  “What have you done? What just happened? Someone tell me!”

  Jack stooped over, reached inside Anton’s coat, and tossed it to Medzhid. “Check his call history. The last number belongs to Pechkin. Ysabel, show him.”

  She walked over and handed Medzhid the phone. The minister studied each screen in turn. “This isn’t . . . Are you sure?”

  “We’re sure,” Dom replied.

  Medzhid looked at Seth, who nodded. “Pechkin died yesterday outside Khasavyurt. That’s his phone. I’m sorry, Rebaz, I really am.”

  “Anton called Pechkin after Ysabel and I left you in Buynaksk,” Jack added. “Pechkin then called Captain Osin and told him to raid Dobromir’s house and kill him. He would have done the same to us if we’d given him the chance.”

  “Why?”

  “Wellesley and Pechkin hired Dobromir to kidnap Aminat. They didn’t want him talking to us.”

  “Anton and I have been together for almost nine years. I can’t believe he would be a part of this.”

  “He did it for the same reason Salko snatched Koikov. He thinks you’re a traitor.”

  “I’m not a traitor.”

  “We all know that, but they thought otherwise, and there might be others close to you who feel the same way. You need to wake up, Rebaz. This is the second time the bad guys have tried to stop what you’re doing, first with Aminat, and then this. What’s about to happen in Makhachkala is going to be bloody and people are going to die. You need to get your head around that. Either that or we call it off.”

  • • •

  “THAT WAS PRETTY HARSH, JACK,” Seth whispered. “He didn’t deserve that.”

  They were sitting at the conference table. Medzhid had retreated to his suite. Grim-faced and avoiding eye contact with Jack and the others, Vasim had called in the rest of Medzhid’s day-shift bodyguards, who were gently wrapping Anton’s and Albina’s bodies in blankets for removal. The carpet where Albina’s head had lain was saturated with blood. Ysabel had found the bullet from Anton’s gun in the wall behind the conference table.

  “Maybe so,” Jack replied, “but he needed to hear it. I learned a hard lesson yesterday and he’s learned one today—actually, his third lesson, counting Aminat and Koikov. Wellesley’s going to keep coming at us, probably even harder now that we’ve evened the odds a bit.”

  “Well, we’re not calling it off, that’s for damned sure. That’s not your decision to make.”

  “I know it isn’t.”

  Dom said, “Jack’s right. The man needs to understand—really understand—what he’s signed on for.”

  “You really don’t think he knows that?”

  “You know him better than anyone else. What do you think?”

  “If he didn’t get it before, he does now,” said Spellman.

  “I’m not so sure,” Ysabel replied. “Has he given any thought about what will happen to his wife and Aminat if this fails?”

  “Of course he has,” said Seth. “He’ll be moving them both out of the capital the day after tomorrow. The MOI minister in Azerbaijan has agreed to take them in.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  Vasim walked up to the table. He handed Spellman a handkerchief. “You will need sutures to close that. I will take you to the minister’s doctor later.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You weren’t lying about Anton? You did not set him up?”

  Jack shook his head. “And we didn’t want it to happen this way.”

  “Did this Pechkin man say anything before he died, anything that might explain why Anton did this? Perhaps he was being forced into it.”

  “It’s possible,” Ysabel replied. “I don’t think we’ll ever know. We’re very sorry, Vasim. We know you were friends.”

  “Yes, and for a long time, but he was the traitor, not the minister. You said Pechkin’s partner is still out there, yes?”

  “Raymond Wellesley.”

  “I hope you find him and kill him.”

  “We’ll do our best.”

  Makhachkala

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON Gavin called, having spent the previous fourteen hours sorting through the bits and pieces he’d cloned from Wellesley’s computer. “John and Gerry are on the line, too.”


  “Are you alone, Jack?” asked Gerry.

  “I’m with Ysabel, why?”

  “That’s fine. You need to be careful who you share this with,” said Clark. “Gavin’s found something—probably a game changer, and not in a good way.”

  “Well, hell, now you’ve got me worried. What’s going on?”

  Gavin said, “I’ve got a lot more of the hard drive to go through, but what we’re mostly worried about is that text document you found, the one with the strings of numbers. Have you got it in front of you?”

  Jack called up the screenshot of the doc he’d taken with his phone. The first one read Hepo5..38GZT.703971mE.4759623mN. “I’m looking at it,” he said.

  “I must be a little sleep-deprived to have not seen it right away. I don’t know about the characters before the first decimal point—maybe a location identifier—but the next set of numbers is UTM,” Gavin said, referring to the Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system.

  Jack knew UTM well, though using it had taken some getting used to. UTM was both simpler and more accurate than latitude and longitude, so much so that the U.S. military used a customized version of it, the Military Grid Reference System, or MGRS.

  “Yeah, I see what you’re talking about now,” said Jack. “Don’t feel bad, we both missed it. The way it’s grouped is odd.”

  38GZT signified the UTM Grid Zone, which divides the earth into sixty zones each measuring six degrees of longitude in width. The rest of the characters denoted the “easting and northing” coordinates specific to the zone.

  “Have you mapped them yet?”

  “Just the first six,” replied Gavin. “They’re streets in Makhachkala—an apartment on Penza, a house on Ayon, some kind of warehouse by the harbor. Online maps for Makhachkala are either outdated or so Cyrillic-heavy it’s going to take some time.”

  Ysabel said, “We know. We’ve switched to paper maps. They’re the only ones that are trustworthy.”

  “Do any of these streets mean anything to you, Jack?” asked Gerry.

  “No. Or at least I hope not.”

  “What’s that mean?” Clark replied.

  “One of the keys to Seth’s plan is social media, which means Internet, and the first thing Volodin and Nabiyev are going to do is shut down all the service providers in the whole country. To counter this, Seth’s set up satellite Internet hubs across the city. I don’t know where they are but if these UTM coordinates are them, we’ve got a problem.”

  A fatal problem, Jack thought.

  “If that’s the case, why haven’t they just raided the addresses and shut down the hubs?” asked Gavin.

  “It’s not enough for the coup to fail. The world has to watch it wither by itself, without Volodin dropping the hammer.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “What did you find out about the document’s file name”—Jack checked his phone—“Khibiny-Borisoglebsk?”

  “Both are place names, both in Russia,” replied Gavin. “Khibiny is a mountain range on the Kola Peninsula and Borisoglebsk is both a town in Voronezh oblast and an airbase for Su-25 Frogfoots and Su-24 Fencers.”

  “Those are ground attack birds and bombers,” said Clark. “Volodin used both of them in Ukraine and Crimea.”

  “What the holy hell is going on?” said Gerry. “Those two places are how far from Makhachkala, thousands of miles—”

  “Seventeen hundred miles and eight hundred miles, respectively,” said Gavin. “And Russia’s got airbases a whole lot closer to Dagestan than Borisoglebsk.”

  Jack asked, “Do any of the UTM coordinates match up to that or Khibiny?”

  “Not so far, but I’ve got twenty more to go.”

  Clark replied, “Wellesley could be sending Jack and the others on a wild-goose chase. What choice do they have but to run down each and every one of these coordinates, then sit on them until the coup’s over?”

  “It wouldn’t be a problem if we had a few dozen guys and a full week to plan and coordinate it,” said Jack. “We’ve got neither.”

  “John, if you’re right about this, then we need to treat everything Jack gathered from Wellesley’s apartment as suspect,” said Gavin. “Worse still, if it’s all a red herring, that means Wellesley knew you were coming, Jack.”

  “Don’t say that. I’ve played enough chess with this asshole to last me a lifetime. If Wellesley’s playing us, then we may be back where we started: Somebody else on our side has turned.”

  “Who knew you were going to Chirpoy?” asked Clark.

  “Everyone but Medzhid and his people.”

  “No way the recently departed Anton could have known?” Gerry asked.

  “Am I a hundred percent on that? No, but close to it. Listen, we could go round and round with this until our ears are bleeding. It doesn’t matter. John said it: We’ve got to chase down these coordinates. Gavin, how soon will you have them all mapped?”

  “Eight hours, give or take.”

  “Gerry, how long since you had lunch with Mary Pat Foley?”

  “Jack . . .”

  “Buy her a piece of cheesecake and ask her to retask a satellite or two.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Right now all I’ve got is Google Earth, which is fine for finding a coffee shop but lousy for what we’re talking about. Plus, Spellman’s not keen on calling Langley and pressing the panic button—not this close to the start. He’s already stuck his neck out for Seth and he’s liable to get it chopped off.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Spellman’s bosses don’t know Seth’s working off his dad’s manual, and they don’t know where he got it in the first place. I, uh, forgot to tell you about that last part.”

  “Which is what, exactly?” said Gerry.

  “Wellesley fed Seth the manual. The guy’s a master manipulator. He did his homework, saw a wound he could salt, and did just that.”

  “Oh, shit,” Clark murmured under his breath.

  Gerry Hendley said nothing for a long ten seconds.

  “Jack, if you ever forget another little detail like that again, I’ll have you planted in a chair faster than you can say ‘WTF.’ You hear me?”

  “I hear you, boss.”

  “Wellesley’s in Seth’s head,” said Clark.

  “Not anymore. I’ll vouch for him.”

  “You might come to regret that.”

  “Possibly. Bottom line is, if Langley gets wind of all this, the coup is off.”

  “Doesn’t sound like a half-bad idea,” said Gerry. “I’m not even sure I want to be complicit in this. I’ll give you sixty seconds to convince me otherwise.”

  “Their plan is solid. Period. You always say, trust the guy on the ground. They’re on the ground, and so am I, and we think it’s doable. Whether it will actually succeed I can’t say.”

  “You’re losing me, Jack.”

  “Then how about this: In all likelihood Wellesley’s out here making policy against the wishes of his own government; if we derail this thing we’ll be doing the same thing with U.S. policy.”

  “He’s got a point,” Clark said.

  “Too damned good,” Gerry muttered.

  Jack said, “Like it or not, we’re neck-deep in it.”

  Gerry chuckled. “You know, Jack, I might bench you anyway just for the principle of it. But not today. I’ll give Mary Pat a call. What do you need?”

  “First things first. We need eyes overhead Borisoglebsk. We need to know if those Frogfoots and Fencers are still there.”

  If the UTM coordinates they’d found on Wellesley’s computer were not only locations within Makhachkala but also the sites of Seth and Spellman’s satellite Internet hubs, then they may have already been marked as air strike targets.

  • • •

  “SAY THE NAMES AGAIN, JACK,??
? Seth said a few minutes later. “Penza Street . . .”

  Jack checked his notes and recited the locations.

  Spellman said, “Yeah, those are all hub sites.”

  “Shit!”

  Seth bolted from the conference table. His chair bumped against the wall. He paced, running his fingers through his hair. Jack watched him, looking for the slightest crack. Their situation had just gone from raining to pouring.

  Seth took a deep breath and let it out. Nodding, he turned back to the table. “Okay, okay . . . Let’s put it into perspective. We don’t ‘know’ anything, right? We wait until Gavin’s mapped all the coordinates, then we check them against our list.”

  “We’re down to three days, Seth,” said Spellman. “If—”

  “Yeah, we’re down to three days, so we’re not playing the ‘if’ game. Jack, what else was on Wellesley’s computer?”

  “Gavin’s working on it.”

  “Have him work faster. What about this airbase? When will we know if the planes are still there or if they’ve been moved, and if they have, where are they?”

  “Slow down. Take a breath. You’re giving me a headache.”

  “Yeah, sorry,” he replied with a sheepish grin. “Anybody got any Xanax?”

  Dom replied, “No Xanax, but I’d be happy to dart you.”

  “I was kidding, Dom.”

  “I’m not.”

  Jack said, “Seth, we’ll hear about Borisoglebsk when we hear about it. It’s out of our hands.”

  “Yeah, okay. We should think about getting back into Wellesley’s place, too. Maybe we missed something. In the meantime, we hit the streets. We visit each of those hubs, talk to our people, and see if anyone’s been poking around. If so, we uproot ’em and move ’em.”

  • • •

  BY SUNDOWN all but one of the sites had been checked. None of the “Hub Captains,” as Seth had dubbed them, had reported any strange activity. Seth was visibly relieved. Jack was growing more worried. The implications of what Gavin had found were starting to sink in.

  Surgical or otherwise, if air strikes were launched against the capital’s hub sites, Seth’s plan wouldn’t simply be gutted. It would also mean they’d gravely misread Volodin’s resolve and that the man cared only about seeing the coup fail—organically or militarily, it didn’t matter—and he didn’t care if the whole world watched it happen. Unarmed protesters on Makhachkala’s streets would be targets, terrorists. Anyone involved in orchestrating the insurrection would be put against the wall.