“You still up there?”
“Yeah, I’ve been making some calls,” the voice said. “Trying to find you a place to hide. How close are you to finding your way out of there?”
“Let you know in a second.” Gil put his hand against a pane of grime-covered glass. “I think this leads out.”
He groped about in the darkness for a chair or a trash can to break out the window.
Without warning, a German shepherd slammed into him at full tilt, sinking its teeth into his left forearm.
“Holy shit!” he shouted, completely unprepared for the suddenness of the impact. He struggled to keep his feet with the dog whipping him from side to side, not quite like a rag doll but close.
“What’s happening?” the overwatch asked anxiously.
The animal was unbelievably strong and took Gil down in seconds. He sensed more than heard the second dog’s arrival, and so he kicked out in the dark to ward it off. The animal latched onto his boot, savagely ripping it back and forth, its fangs easily penetrating both the leather upper and the instep of Gil’s already damaged right foot.
Fortunately, the narrow hall limited the dogs’ room to maneuver enough that Gil was able to pin the first one in the corner, bracing his free foot against a wall and using his forearm to jam the dog’s head against the floor, transitioning to the top position. The second
dog still had hold of his foot, and though painful, it posed no immediate threat to life or limb.
Gil was about to jam his thumb into the dog’s eye socket when he smacked his head against a fire extinguisher sitting on the floor against the wall. He grabbed it with his free hand and thrust the plastic nozzle into the dog’s mouth, squeezing the lever to emit a large blast of CO
2
. The dog howled, immediately releasing Gil’s arm, flailing insanely to get back on its feet. Gil rolled off and gave the second dog a blast in the face, causing it to let go of his foot. He sprang into a crouch and used the extinguisher to haze both animals back down the hall. Then he wheeled around and hurled the extinguisher through the window. The glass fell away, and he leapt out into the night, landing in a steel dumpster half full of garbage.
One of the German shepherds landed beside him a second later, sinking its teeth into his thigh with a snarl. “You motherfucker!” Gil busted the dog in the side of the head with his fist hard enough to make let it go. He kicked the animal away and threw a leg over the side of the dumpster as the second shepherd was leaping down from the window. Gil turned to slam the steel lid down on one of the dogs with such force that it was knocked out cold. The other dog continued barking inside the steel box as Gil trotted off down the alley.
“Christ Almighty.” He leaned against a wall, flexing his fingers to check the extent of the damage to his left arm. Gil looked up into the sky again. “How do I get outta here?”
“Keep an easterly heading,” the voice said quietly. “If you move fast, I’m pretty sure you’ll have time to hail a cab half a mile from there.”
“What about the cops?”
“Three more got shot down while you were having it out with the dogs. They’re under cover now and calling for medevac.”
“Did you see which way the shooter went?”
“No, but whoever he is, he sure as hell put the bloody finger on you.”
Gil took a second to light up a smoke, tossing the match to the ground. “Make sure you find out who ghosted this operation. I’m gonna cut his fuckin’ heart out.”
“We’ll be lucky to get you out of France.”
Gil drew from the cigarette. “Then killing Umarov is still my number one priority. Which way to that cabstand?”
2
PARIS,
France
Gil caught a cab a half mile from the target area. The overwatch told him which words to use in French, and though Gil’s accent was terrible, the cabbie understood him well enough to follow his directions along the outskirts of Paris. The cabbie saw how badly his passenger was bleeding, and it soon became apparent to him that Gil was getting his directions from someone speaking to him through an earpiece. He began jabbering away over the back of the seat in hurried French.
“He thinks you’re CIA,” the overwatch said with a chuckle.
“You’ve seen too many movies,” Gil told the cabbie. “Just drive.” He was betting the cabbie spoke at least some English, as did most Parisians, though they usually pretended not to when dealing with American tourists.
The cab driver pulled to the curb. “Get out. I don’t need your trouble.”
Gil wasn’t in the mood for games. He lunged forward over the
back of the seat, punching the cabbie in the face Indiana Jones style. “Now, you either drive this cab, or I will! I don’t have time for your shit!
Comprendre, mon ami
?
”
The cab driver leaned against the door, holding the side of his face where Gil had struck him, his eyes full of anger. “You
are
CIA.”
“You’re damn right I am,” Gil grumbled. “Now drive!”
The driver sullenly shifted into gear and pulled away from the curb. “Why are you bleeding?” he asked a couple minutes later.
“I was attacked by a werewolf.” Gil sat listening to the overwatch, who was monitoring the cab from above in infrared via satellite locked in geosynchronous orbit two hundred miles up.
“Make a right up here,” he told the driver. “We’re close.”
A minute later, they pulled to the curb, and Gil got out in a Muslim section of Paris, shoving three hundred dollars’ worth of euros into the cabbie’s hand. “Keep it.” He shut the door, and the cab pulled quickly away up the street.
Gil stood in the shadows, eyeing the three-story apartment building on the far corner. There was a light on in one of the apartments on the top floor. “I don’t suppose you know which floor Umarov is on,” he said to the overwatch.
“Not a clue, but the SUV on the corner is the one he arrived in. It’s probably got an alarm.”
Gil rooted around in a trash can on the corner until he found a glass bottle. He hurled the bottle across the street, and it shattered against the windshield of the SUV, causing the car alarm to start blaring and the headlights to flash on and off.
“I guess that’s one way of doing it,” the overwatch said in amusement.
Gil stepped into the shadows. The curtains in the lighted room parted, and a man stood looking down at the SUV for a moment before closing the curtains again.
“It worked.” Gil slipped across the street, where he hopped a waist-high stone wall and took cover in the darkness beyond the amber light of the streetlamp.
The car alarm fell silent after a minute, and the man from the window came out the front door of the building. He stood staring at the fractured window of the SUV in the light of the lamp, his visage at once discerning and predatory. He watched hawkishly up and down in all directions from the intersection, with a hand inside his jacket.
Gil lowered himself into a crouch, keeping low as he made his way along the stone wall toward the corner. The man reset the car alarm and turned to go back into the building. As he passed the end of the wall, Gil pounced like a cougar, delivering him a deadly strike to the cerebellum and knocking him forward off his feet. Even as the man fell face-first onto the sidewalk, Gil followed through with his attack, bringing down the heel of his boot on the back of his neck fast and hard to break the spinal cord.
He immediately dragged the body into the shadows by the head, searching it for weapons and intel. Gil found a ring of three keys—one of which went to the SUV—and a Glock 39 subcompact .45 with a six-round magazine. He made sure a round was chambered and moved out around the back of the building. One of the keys fit the rear door, so he slipped inside easily. He was casual about mounting the staircase, keeping the pistol gripped in his right hand but concealed behind his thigh. The halls of the ancient building were dimly lit, and the wooden stairs creaked with every step.
He reached the top floor and stood watching the door to the apartment. A light shone beneath it, and Gil could hear at least two men speaking in Chechen. Their voices were anxious, and he assumed it had to do with the car alarm, but there was no way to be sure. He looked at the third key on the ring, guessing it would fit the knob, but he didn’t know if the Chechens used some sort of secret knock before keying into the room. There was no telling how many hostile Muslims might be living in the building, and six rounds wouldn’t last long in a protracted firefight. Not to mention he didn’t fancy another encounter with the French police.
Deciding to keep the initiative, Gil pocketed the keys and stalked
forward, kicking in the door to the room and shooting the first man he saw. The wide-eyed Chechen grabbed his throat and fell backward over a coffee table. Gil’s original target, the bearded Dokka Umarov, leapt up from the couch, grabbing for a Glock 39 tucked into the waistband of his trousers, and Gil shot him through the top of the forehead. Most of the skullcap disappeared in a spray of bone and blood as Gil pivoted left to shoot the last remaining man in the room.
He froze a mere fraction of an instant before squeezing the trigger, finding himself face-to-face with agent Trent Lerher of the CIA, formerly attached to Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC. “What the fuck are
you
doin’ here?”
Lerher was tall and slender, and highly experienced in the world of espionage. “Take it easy, Gil. This isn’t what it looks like.”
“Answer the question!”
Gil had worked with Lerher on two separate occasions during his time with SEAL Team VI. Once in Indonesia years earlier, and once more recently in Afghanistan when Lerher had sent Gil into Iran to eliminate an Al Qaeda bomb maker and his pregnant wife. Gil had refused to kill the wife, instead bringing her back alive to Afghanistan and making a stink about Lerher’s mishandling of the operation. The CIA agent’s controversial order to assassinate a pregnant woman hadn’t sat well with his superiors at headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and as a result, Lerher had been demoted from JSOC and returned to regular field operations.
“Who’s there?” the overwatch asked in Gil’s ear.
“It’s Lerher!”
Lerher spotted the earpiece. “Tell Pope that I’m—”
“How the fuck do you know it’s Pope?” Gil demanded. “Get those hands back up!”
Lerher lifted his hands higher. “We don’t have time to do this here, Gil. Let’s go, and I’ll explain on the way.”
“Gil!” said Bob Pope into Gil’s ear.
“I’m listening.”
“He’s the one who fed you to the wolves. Take him out.”
“You’re sure?”
“Listen!” Lerher said, realizing he was losing the initiative. “This isn’t what it looks like! Pope doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about!”
“Gil, kill him and get the hell out of there. You don’t have much time.”
“Goddamnit. You’re sure?”
“I’m an American!” Lerher shouted.
“Kill ’im, Gil! The police are on the way.”
Lerher grabbed for the inside of his jacket, and Gil shot him through the face. Lerher stumbled backward, twitching and blinking, making a sickening strangling sound, and Gil shot him again in the chest. The agent went down, and Gil jumped forward to search him. All he found was the same model pistol that the Chechens were carrying, so he grabbed up the spare magazines and dashed out of the room, running down three flights of stairs to the street and getting into the black SUV. European high-low sirens were approaching from the north, so he sped off south.
“What the fuck is going on, Bob? Lerher isn’t even attached to JSOC anymore!”
“He’s not really attached to anything anymore,” Pope deadpanned.
Gil stopped for a red light. “That’s not funny.”
“You said you wanted him dead. You got what you wanted.”
“I want to know what the fuck he’s doing in Paris with Dokka Umarov.”
“I’ll get to the bottom of it,” Pope promised. “Right now you have to head for the Russian Embassy.”
The light turned green, but Gil didn’t notice. “What the fuck am I gonna do at the Russian Embassy?”
“Get yourself stitched up, for one thing. Maybe even a shot of penicillin. Those dog bites are going to fester.”
“You’re saying the
Russians
have agreed to take me in?”
“You just killed Russia’s bin Laden,” Pope said, referring to the Chechen Islamist warlord Umarov. “It’s the least they can do for you. Now make a left, and try not to drive like you’re fleeing the scene of a multiple homicide, will ya?”
3
PARIS,
France
Security at the Russian Embassy was expecting Gil when he arrived, and he was immediately admitted through a side entrance to the garish-looking building. Four hulking soldiers escorted him to a conference room with a one-way mirror set into the wall.
“If you have weapons, put them on the table,” one of the stone-faced soldiers said in good English. On his shoulders, he wore the rank insignia of a sergeant major—or a
starshina
, as they were called in the Russian army, a rank roughly similar to that of a US Navy master chief.
Gil slowly took the Glock 39 from beneath his jacket, placing it on the table along with three extra six-round magazines and the cigarettes. “That’s everything,” he said, his blue eyes smiling.
The
starshina
pointed at Gil’s earpiece. “That too.”
“They’re making me sign off, Bob.”
“That’s to be expected,” Pope replied. “Good luck, Gil. There isn’t much more I can do for you.”
“Just find out what Lerher was up to.” Gil took the earpiece from his ear and tossed it onto the table.
“Passport?” the
starshina
asked.
Gil was almost six feet tall, lean and wiry, and with brown hair cut high and tight. He took the passport from his jacket and handed it to the sergeant.
The Russian looked it over. “You’re Canadian?”
Gil shook his head.
“CIA?”
“I guess that sorta depends on who you ask. ‘CIA’ don’t mean what it used to.”
The sergeant stood eyeing him and then pointed to a steel chair against the wall. “Sit there.”
Gil did as he was told, and the solider gathered his possessions into a leather attaché case, which he took with him when he left the room. The other three guards, a junior sergeant and two
efreitors
(similar to corporals), stood at three different points around the room watching Gil with their arms folded across their broad chests.
“I don’t suppose you guys have any—”
The door opened, and a doctor in his late twenties came into the room carrying a large red case of medical equipment. “Take off your clothes, please.” He set the case down on the table. “There is not a lot of time.”
Gil got to his feet, stripped to his skivvies, and retook his seat. He was bleeding from wounds to his left forearm, left thigh, left hip, and his right foot. There was also a two-inch gash in his scalp that he couldn’t explain.
Seeing Gil’s many battle scars to his legs, torso, and head, the three soldiers exchanged glances of what might have been approval.
“This is from dog?” the doctor asked, examining Gil’s ripped-up forearm.
“Yes.”
“And this?” the doctor asked a moment later, carefully probing the bite marks to Gil’s thigh.
“Along with my foot, yeah. This here on my hip is a bullet wound. And I don’t know why the fuck my head is bleeding.”
The doctor looked over at the youngest soldier, one of the
efreitors
, speaking at length in Russian. When he finished, the
efreitor
gathered up all of Gil’s clothes, including his boots and socks, and left the room.
“I am going to treat your wounds now,” the doctor said, taking a syringe and a small bottle of lidocaine from the medical case. His fingers were deft, and he had all of Gil’s wounds neatly stitched within a half hour.
The stone-faced sergeant returned with a new set of street clothes the same moment the doctor finished, and this was when Gil fully took in that he must be under observation through the one-way mirror.
Gil got dressed and wasn’t a little impressed to find that the new shoes were his exact size. He smiled at the soldier. “Well done,
Starshina
. You guys are pretty good.”
The Russian allowed a thin smile.
The doctor left the room, and a photographer came in immediately after with a digital camera.
“Sit,” the sergeant said. “Don’t smile.”
Gil sat back down, and the photographer took his photo, disappearing again almost as fast as he had appeared.
“So what now?” Gil asked.
The sergeant motioned the other two soldiers to leave and followed them out. Gil was alone in the room for forty-five minutes before the door opened again, and a healthy-looking man in his early seventies came in. He offered Gil his hand, and Gil stood up from his chair to take it.
“My name is Vladimir Federov,” the old man said.
“Good to meet you, sir. I’m—”
“I know who you are. Come sit at the table. We’ll have a talk.”
They sat across from each other, and Gil waited to hear what the man had to say.
Federov laced his fingers in front of him. “I was captured in Berlin in 1973 by the CIA,” he began. “I was a young KGB agent then, and, luckily for me, a CIA agent had been captured in East Berlin the day before. After twenty-four hours, it was agreed we would be exchanged at Checkpoint Charlie.” Checkpoint C had been the most famous crossing point in the Berlin Wall during the Cold War, and many spies were exchanged there during that period. After the final collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany in the 1990s, the location became a tourist attraction.
“I hope you were well treated,” Gil said, meaning it.
“Oh, I was very well treated,” Federov replied. “I was captured by a young agent named Robert Pope. I understand you know him quite well.”
Gil smiled. “Pretty well, yeah, but I didn’t know he’d ever captured himself a genuine KGB agent.”
Federov grinned. “The son of a bitch used a woman to dupe me.”
Gil was hard pressed to conceal his amusement. “Well, knowing Pope’s taste in women, I doubt you stood much of a chance.”
“I was young and foolish,” Federov admitted. “But Robert treated me well, and he saw to it that I was exchanged quickly, something I have always been grateful for. In those days, the families of captured KGB agents were treated with suspicion by the Soviet government, and their lives were often made difficult. Robert understood that, and my quick return spared my parents those humiliations.”
“I understand.” Gil knew the pleasantries were out of the way and that it was time to get down to business.
“Dokka Umarov is dead?” Federov asked.
“Very,” Gil answered.
“He has been mistaken for dead many times,” Federov said. “I need to know every detail of your mission leading up to this moment. This is a condition which has already been agreed to by your superior.”
Gil knew it didn’t much matter whether Pope had agreed to the
condition or not—though he believed he probably had—so he told Federov every detail of the mission, from the moment he had set up on top of the railcar to his arrival at the embassy gate.
Federov appeared slightly surprised that Gil had killed Agent Lerher. “Did Lerher truly reach for his weapon? Or is that the story you plan to tell your people? Don’t worry, your secret will be safe with us.”
“He really did go for his weapon,” Gil replied, “but I would have shot him regardless.”
Federov glanced at the one-way mirror before returning his attention to Gil. “And you have no idea who shot the French gendarmes?”
“If I had to guess,” Gil said, “I’d say it was the same sniper covering the Umarov meeting, but that’s speculation. Pope lost sight of him after he displaced.”
“Who was Umarov meeting with?”
“Our intelligence had him meeting with members of Al Qaeda to discuss infiltrating Al Qaeda fighters into Georgia to help him with his war against Russia.”
“Where in Georgia? South Ossetia?” South Ossetia, the northern part of the Republic of Georgia, had attempted to claim independence in 1990. Georgia had refused to recognize its autonomy, however, and civil war erupted soon after. Battles were fought in 1991, 1992, and then again in 2004. Still more fighting broke out in 2008, and Russia finally invaded northern Georgia in support of South Ossetia. The region had been completely reliant upon Russian military and economic support ever since.
Gil shook his head. “South of Tbilisi, the Georgian capital. Intel indicates Umarov wanted to coordinate a series of attacks along the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.”
The BTC pipeline was 1,100 miles long, running northwest from Baku, Azerbaijan, on the Caspian Sea, to Tbilisi, and then southwest to Ceyhan, Turkey, on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. It af
forded Western powers access to oil fields in the Caspian Sea without having to deal with Russian or Iranian interference, and though operated by British Petroleum, the pipeline was owned by a consortium of eleven different oil companies around the world, including Chevron and ConocoPhillips.
“Tell me,” Federov said, “did you not find it strange for Umarov to take a meeting so far from the Caucasus?” The North Caucasus was Dokka Umarov’s home territory, a mountainous region of European Russia located between the Caspian and the Black Sea.
“Well, he was observed boarding a Grecian tanker in Athens, and then again transshipping to a private yacht off the coast of Sicily thirty-six hours later. He landed at Marseille the next day, and from there made his way north to Paris.”
Federov rested his chin on his fist. “The CIA tracked him?”
“One of their people in Athens made the initial identification, yes. It was just dumb luck, really. Once he boarded the tanker, it was easy to keep tabs.”
“I see.” Federov sat back in his chair with a sigh. “Agent Shannon, you did not—”
“Master chief,” Gil said good-naturedly. “I’m retired navy, not CIA.”
Federal smiled dryly. “Mr. Shannon, you did not kill Dokka Umarov tonight. You killed a GRU operative named Andrei Yeshevsky.” The GRU was the Chief Intelligence Directorate, Russia’s version of the CIA.
Gil dominated the nausea that immediately rose up in his gut. “How is that possible?”
“The GRU sent Yeshevsky into North Ossetia six weeks ago as an imposter to undermine the real Dokka Umarov’s credibility in the Caucasus. He made speeches in small towns where his face was not well known, renouncing Chechen terrorist attacks on Russian military targets and urging Chechen Muslims to accept Russian authority.” Federov smiled blandly. “Now, of course the GRU did not
expect this to stop the attacks. What was hoped was that the real Dokka Umarov would be forced to show himself and create an opportunity for our Spetsnaz to finally eliminate him.” Spetsnaz were Russian Special Forces, basically Russia’s version of the US Navy SEALs.
Gil was not amused. “So what the hell is this Yeshevsky doing here in France?”
Federov sat back scratching his chin. “To be honest, we have no idea. We thought he was dead. He disappeared two weeks after he was sent into North Ossetia along with his entire Spetsnaz team. It wasn’t until Robert called me this evening for help with
your
predicament that we had any idea Yeshevsky might still be alive.”
“That means it’s possible I killed the real Umarov.”
Federov shook his head. “Yeshevsky has a tattoo of a woman on his chest. One of our informants with the French police has verified the body to have such a tattoo. What’s more, we believe the sniper who was shooting the French gendarmes to be a Spetsnaz operative named Sasha Kovalenko. Kovalenko was attached to Yeshevsky’s security team, and he has always been somewhat—shall we say—unstable?”
“An entire Spetsnaz team went off the reservation?”
There was a knock at the door, and the sergeant stepped into the room, speaking briefly to Federov in Russian and stepping back out again.
Federov turned back to Gil. “It’s been verified the other two men you killed at the apartment were also members of Yeshevsky’s Spetsnaz team.”
Gil sucked his teeth. “I don’t suppose one of them was this Kovolenka fella.”
“Kov
a
lenk
o
,” Federov said, correcting Gil’s pronunciation. “No, his body was not found—and that is very unfortunate.”
Gil rubbed his face, feeling the fatigue catching up to him. “I’m going to need to fill Pope in on this. There’s a good chance he’ll be able to piece some of it together.”
“Was it him who tracked Yeshevsky from Athens?”
“No.” Gil shook his head. “The Mediterranean chief of station did that. The intel wasn’t passed on to Pope until after Umarov’s—
Yeshevsky’s
—arrival here in Paris. He’s in charge of a top-secret antiterrorism unit now, and there wasn’t time to vet the intel properly before moving on it. Things are bit disorganized within the CIA at the moment. There’s been a huge shake-up since the September nuke attacks six months ago.”
Federov nodded, obviously aware of the CIA’s internal problems. “That is always the trouble when there are too few competent men to go around.”
Another knock. The sergeant stepped in, handed Federov a dark red passport, and left, failing to close the door behind him.
Federov examined the passport briefly before sliding it across the table to Gil. “This document is one hundred percent authentic. You are no longer Gil Shannon of the United States of America. You are Vassili Vatilievich Siyanovich of the Russian Federation.”
“You’re shitting me.” Gil opened the slightly weathered-looking passport to see the photo they had taken of him less than two hours before. He noted that the passport had been issued the previous year and that many of the back pages had apparently been stamped in a number of different European countries.
“You’ll need that to get out of France.”
Gil looked up from the passport. “But I don’t speak Russian.”
Federov chuckled. “Neither do the French. So don’t worry. We’ll teach you a few words to mumble at the customs agent.” He offered his hand across the table. “Good luck to you, Vassili. You’re going to need it.”
Gil took his hand. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means you’re coming with me,” said a gruff-looking Russian who’d appeared in the doorway. He spoke in a gravelly voice and wore the blue-and-white-striped shirt of the Spetsnaz. His head was shaved, and he had pale, merciless blue eyes with a thick five o’clock shadow. Standing an inch or so taller than Gil, he appeared to be in
his mid to late thirties and looked like he’d been carved from black oak. His face cracked into a grin as he stepped into the room.