29
WASHINGTON, DC
General Couture was in the White House kitchen drinking coffee and chatting with the French chef, who was making him an early breakfast, when the White House chief of staff came looking for him.
“I heard I might find you in here,” Brooks said with a smile.
Couture shook his hand. “I learned as a second lieutenant to make friends in the kitchen.” He gave the chef a wink. “Whattaya got?”
Brooks hesitated, glancing at the chef, who stood over the stove sautéing a pan of mushrooms.
“Don’t worry about old Jacque,” Couture said, patting the chef on the shoulder. “He’s on our side. What’s up?”
“The SDV team’s been transferred aboard the
Ohio
,” Brooks said. “She’ll be on station off the point of San Vito Lo Capo within the hour, ready to bring Shannon and Dragunov aboard.”
“Comms?”
“They have a sat phone. It’s less than ideal, but it’s going to have
to do. As we speak, they’ve got Kovalenko cornered in a house outside of Palermo. Pope’s technician says it’s still touch and go.”
“Sicilian authorities?”
“Still searching for them to the south in Corleone.” Brooks shrugged. “Don’t ask me why.”
Couture answered with a shrug of his own. “Small mercies.” He took a drink from his coffee. “Latest intel out of Georgia says the Spetsnaz are moving against Umarov, so with any luck, Shannon won’t have to go to Georgia.”
“Speaking of Georgia, the president is wondering whether to call a meeting with British Petroleum. He thinks maybe we should brief them on the pipeline plot. Thoughts?”
Couture shook his head, leading Brooks away from the stove and out of earshot from the chef. “Fuck BP. It’s not even an American corporation. We’re not letting that camel’s nose back under our tent. If the pipeline gets hit, they can learn about it in the news like everybody else. All they have to hear is a whisper about trouble along that pipeline, and they’ll have their Obsidian mercenaries tear-assing all over southern Georgia—doing God
knows
what—and the last thing we need is a bunch of corporate warriors getting in the way if Shannon ends up in-country.”
“Okay. So how should I put that to the president?”
“Just like that,” Couture said evenly. “You don’t have to sugarcoat shit with him anymore. He gets it now. That fucking idiot Hagen is out, and you’re in. No more dog and pony show.”
“About Hagen . . .” Brooks lowered his voice even more. “I’ve just been given reason to believe that Pope may have something
clandestine
in mind for him.”
Couture took another drink of coffee, locking eyes. “Glen, do you know how many men I’ve lost under my direct command during my long and storied career?”
Brooks shook his head.
“Six hundred forty-three men and women,” Couture said. “That’s not counting the suicides among those who made it home. Tim Ha
gen’s no better than any of them, and if Pope’s got something
clandestine
in mind for him, then I’m guessing he’s earned it—in spades.”
“Okay. Suppose I had direct information—proof?”
“Do you?”
Brooks thought it over and then let out a sigh. “I don’t know. Not for sure.”
“Then look at this way,” Couture said. “If not for Pope, we’d have lost two supercarriers and a huge chunk of the Pacific Fleet to that nuke last summer—not to mention half a million lives or more. Now, I know you’ve never met Hagen personally, but I know the little prick as well as anybody, and I wouldn’t piss in his mouth if his teeth were on fire.”
Brooks grinned. “Senator Grieves speaks rather highly of him.”
Couture’s scarred face turned to stone. “Senator Grieves would. Leave Hagen to Pope—that’s my recommendation.”
30
NORTH OSSETIA,
Russia
Yakunin and his Spetsnaz were in hot pursuit of Dokka Umarov and his men, charging through the forest in a running battle against a stubborn Chechen rearguard action designed to buy time for Umarov’s escape. The staccato of automatic-weapons fire was constant, interspersed with exploding 40 mm grenades and the occasional burst of fire from the supporting Hind helicopter, which by now was running low on ammo.
Yakunin drove his men hard, determined to see the end of Dokka Umarov. He estimated that they had burned through half their ammunition, but he was confident they would soon finish off the middling force of Chechens.
All of his instincts were proven dead wrong, however, the second he and his men ran head-on into the defensive line set up by Prina Basayev and his Chechen force from the east.
A barrage of RPG-7s streaked across the forest, detonating
among Yakunin and his Spetsnaz. Bodies flew into the air, were hurled into trees, blew apart. Fifteen men were obliterated in the blink of an eye, and the remaining few were quickly picked off.
Yakunin landed on his belly, bleeding from multiple wounds. He felt broken inside, reaching for his carbine only to find that his right arm was missing from the elbow down. The firing died off, and he blacked out.
He came too with someone kneeling on his back, rifling his trouser pockets. The Chechen flipped him over and began rifling his harness, jamming the spare magazines and grenades onto a battered rucksack.
“My men?” Yakunin croaked.
“All gone,” the Chechen said, not even bothering to look him in the eye as he flipped open Yakunin’s wallet.
“The photo.” Yakunin reached out with what was left of a bloody left hand.
The Chechen looked at him, took the photo of the major’s wife from the wallet and stuck it between Yakunin’s only two remaining fingers.
Yakunin stared at the photo as the Chechen stripped him of his gear and body armor.
Dokka Umarov appeared, waving the fighter away. “You are the commander?”
“Da,”
Yakunin croaked, still staring at the photo.
“Who betrayed my location?”
Yakunin glanced up, knowing he didn’t have long to live. “You were observed by a reconnaissance team. We almost had you this time,
ublyudok
!
” Bastard!
Umarov nodded sullenly, holding Yakunin’s carbine. “Yes, I admit I got lucky. But luck is the only quality in a commander that really counts.”
“True enough,” Yakunin admitted, choking on the blood rising up the back of his throat.
Umarov knelt beside him to poke a cigarette into the corner of
his mouth, lighting it for him with a match. Then he gestured with the carbine. “You want to go quick? Or to wait?”
“I’ll wait,” Yakunin whispered. “It won’t be long.”
Umarov stood up and slung the carbine, giving orders to his men. “Leave nothing of value!” They could hear the Hind, long out of ammo, flying away to the northwest. “They may send more crocodiles, so we’ll travel southeast until nightfall, then bear west over the mountain to link up with Mukhammad.”
Umarov was joined by Lom on the march out. “It was close,” the younger man said.
“Yes,” Umarov agreed. “They should have killed us to a man. They had every advantage, but war is like that sometimes. The superior force does not always win.”
“It was the will of Allah. He was with us.”
“He is with us always, but you would do well not to place too much credit or too much blame where He is concerned. There will be days when He expects you to take care of yourself, and you will never know which days those are. Today may have been such a day.”
Lom thought about his uncle’s words as they marched along through the afternoon, attempting to reconcile them with those in the sixth
surah
of the Qur’an, verse seventeen: “And if Allah should touch you with adversity, there is no remover of it except Him. And if He touches you with good—then He is over all things competent.”
By sundown, Lom concluded that his uncle either possessed a deeper understanding of the Qur’an than he did, or he had allowed himself to become jaded after so many years of war.
He looked toward the head of the column, where Umarov marched alongside the Basayev brothers—Anzor and Prina. “He is Allah in the heavens and in the earth,” he whispered to himself. “He knows your secret thoughts, and your open words . . . and He knows what you earn.”
31
SICILY
“There goes the sun,” muttered Ivan Dragunov.
Gil glanced toward the horizon, the stock of the G28 still pulled into his shoulder. “I’ve been thinkin’. Suppose Kovalenko’s men brought night vision. We could be in for a shift in the initiative here.”
Dragunov considered the possibility. “If Kovalenko had infrared, we’d already be dead. It’s not likely the men brought night vision with them.”
Gil adjusted the sat phone’s earpiece. “Midori, you still reading us?”
“Roger. I copy direct.” Midori was now monitoring both of their phones on separate channels back in Langley, and they could both hear her, but they could not hear each other.
“You still got visual on us?”
“Roger that as well.”
“Okay.” Gil took the 1911 pistol from the small of his back and
gave it to Dragunov. “As soon as the light fades, you can work your way down close to the house on the blind side to the east. Stay away from the barn and the goat pens, though. If those fuckers start bleating, Kovalenko’s gonna know what we’re up to.”
Gripping the Italian cop’s Beretta, Dragunov tucked the 1911 into his belly.
“You know how to work a 1911?”
“Of course,” Dragunov said. “It was the preferred weapon of my enemy for a long time.”
Gil chuckled. “It’s still my preferred weapon.”
“I suppose you’re staying up here where it’s safe?”
“Well, this ain’t exactly a close-quarter weapon, Ivan. We have to play to our strengths.”
“I’ll man the rifle,” Dragunov said, taking the 1911 back out of his pants.
Gil moved away from the G28, almost preferring to take the fight to the enemy, and put out his hand for the pistol. “Okay, chief.”
His bluff called, Dragunov put away the pistol again. “Don’t miss, Vassili—and don’t shoot me by mistake.”
Gil repositioned himself behind the rifle. “Midori will make sure I know where you are at all times. Right, Midori?”
“Roger that.”
When the light faded, Dragunov moved out to the east, skirting the farm until he reached the edge of the road. Visibility was less than fifty feet in the darkness. “No movement outside the house?” he asked Midori.
“None,” she answered. “You’re exactly in line with the blind side of the house now. You should be able to advance without being detected. I’ll vector you in.”
Over the next couple of minutes, she fed him directions for the most expedient approach to the house, helping him to skirt copses of trees and brush without getting disoriented in the dark. He arrived at the eastern side and lowered himself into a crouch with his back
to the wall, trading the Beretta for the 1911. “Make sure Gil knows I’m in position,” he said in a low voice, knowing that whispers carried in the dark.
“Roger.”
Back up the bluff, Gil scanned the silhouetted terrain below. There was no light inside the house; not so much as a candle burning. “I can’t see much of anything from here,” he said. “It’s just too dark. Advise Ivan I’m moving in closer.”
He began to slither forward down the slope, knowing that if Kovalenko possessed even a chintzy nightscope, he was a dead man.
“Stop!” Midori said. “A man with a rifle just climbed out the opposite side of the house from Ivan.”
Gil backed into his hide among the brush. “What’s he doing?”
“Nothing. Just waiting.”
“Do I have line of sight from my position?”
“Negative,” she said. “He’s still around the corner. Ivan’s asking what he should do.”
“Tell him to hold position.” Gil knew that Dragunov would willingly defer to his judgment because he held the high ground. “We’ll give the situation time to develop.”
Inside the house, Kovalenko decided that his enemies did not have night vision capabilities. The badly wounded Tapa had voluntarily crept past the kitchen window three different times without taking a bullet. So Kovalenko sent Zargan out the side window with orders to stalk the American sniper. He understood they might be under infrared satellite surveillance, but there was simply no other choice.
“We have to put an end to this,” he said to Vitsin and two other Spetsnaz men. With Zargan outside now, there were only four of them left in the house, and though Tapa was bearing up well under incredible pain, he was fast losing what little remained of his combat effectiveness. “Either we fight our way out, or we die here on this fucking goat farm.”
“I’ll stay behind to cover your withdrawal,” Tapa said, holding a
Kashtan submachine pistol against his leg, his right arm now bound tightly across his chest with a torn bedsheet.
Kovalenko patted him on the good shoulder, regretting having sacrificed him for a shot at Gil. He knew in his gut that the American was still out there and still very much alive, because the goats were still bleating in their pens, when they should have been bedded down for the night. “We’ll take you with us if we can. First, we have to find out whether we have an open avenue of escape.”
“Is it just me,” asked Anatoly, a Chechen born in Moscow, “or are the goats carrying on more these past couple of minutes?”
“It’s not you,” Kovalenko said. “They picked up just before Zargan went out the window. The enemy is near—probably around the blind side of the house. Get ready now. You’re next out.”
32
CIA HEADQUARTERS,
Langley, Virginia
Midori’s dark eyes watched the giant plasma screen in front of her as Anatoly climbed out on the west side of the house, her shoulder-length black hair falling forward as she leaned in slightly. “A second man just climbed out the same window.”
“Roger,” Gil replied in her left ear.
In her right ear, she heard Dragunov rub his thumb over the mike in acknowledgment, realizing he wanted to remain completely silent now that two of the Spetsnaz were outside the house with him.
“Make sure you’re giving Ivan second-by-second updates,” Gil reminded her.
“Neither Chechen is moving,” she answered, her eyes fixed on the infrared heat signatures. “They’re facing north and south—both holding at the corners.”
The first man stepped cautiously past the corner of the house and
held his position, scanning the terrain over the open sights of an AS Val, a Russian-made silenced automatic rifle in 9 mm.
“Gil, you’ve got line of sight on the first target. Can you see him?”
“Negative,” he said. “It’s all ink down there. You don’t have a giant spotlight on that satellite, do you?”
She smiled, running her fingers over the keyboard. “I’m going to see if I can help you another way. Adjust your aim as best you can, then hold position.”
“Roger.”
She watched as he adjusted the aim of the rifle barrel toward the corner of the house.
“That’s what feels best to me,” he said, “but I can’t really see the house.”
“Copy that,” she said. “You’re a few degrees off. Stand by.”
“Roger that.”
She heard the doubt in his tone, but that only made her all the more determined, quickly bringing up a trajectory overlay normally used for aiming artillery rounds and placing it over the video feed. She then right-clicked on the Spetsnaz man and—zooming in for the best resolution—drew a straight line to the bolt on Gil’s rifle.
“Gil, adjust three degrees left.”
She watched as he overadjusted slightly, keeping her eye on a separate screen to make sure the target hadn’t moved. “Now half a degree back to the right.”
Gil adjusted a fraction of a degree, and the barrel came perfectly in line with the line she had drawn across the screen. “Your horizontal aim is perfect,” she said. “How do you think you are on the vertical?”
“Feels good. I’ve been holding this angle all day.”
“In that case, you should be clear to fire.”
Gil didn’t hesitate. She saw the rifle buck against his shoulder and the heat signature of the gasses expelled from the end of the suppressor. In the other screen, the Spetsnaz man flew backward off his feet, writhing on the ground for a moment and then falling still.
“Target down!” she said as the second Spetsnaz man turned
and moved toward his downed compatriot. “Ivan! If you move fast around the north side, you can take the second man from behind!”
Dragunov didn’t hesitate, either. She watched him take off around the front of the house, rounding the far corner as Anatoly was pulling Zargan into the lee of the building. He fired twice, with both hands gripping the 1911 before him. Anatoly sprawled forward onto his face, and Dragunov danced away again, sprinting back around the front of the house to return to the safety of the blind side.
“Better than a video game!” his gravelly voice growled excitedly in her right ear.
Midori grinned. “Nice shooting, boys. Two tangos down. Gil, Ivan is back in position.”
“You’re a natural, Midori. If I didn’t know better, I’d think Pope was there watching over your shoulder.”
She glanced over her left shoulder to see Pope smiling at her from the corner, propped up in a hospital chair, flanked on either side by General Couture and White House Chief of Staff Brooks. A pair of navy male nurses sat nearby, monitoring Pope’s vital signs. They had arrived ten minutes before the sun set on Sicily.
“Look there,” Pope said quietly, pointing up at a second bank of monitors.
She looked up at a wider angle of the surrounding countryside. A car with a light bar on the roof was coming quickly up the road. “Master Chief, there’s a patrol car approaching fast a quarter mile from the east. I’m guessing they must have heard Ivan’s pistol shots.”
“Marvelous,” Gil replied.