Authors: Stephen England
“All teams. All teams…we have hostiles at our six. Prepare to engage.”
She hadn’t taken more than ten steps away from the trailer before a pair of rocket-propelled grenades flew from the treeline…
The CHRYSALIS cabin
“Don’t try to stop me, Harry.” Carol shook her head, taking another cautious step toward the front door of the cabin.
This wasn’t working. It crossed his mind that arguing with her was a lot like arguing with the DCIA. Didn’t get you anywhere.
It was at that moment that he heard it—the low, lethal
whoosh
he had heard so many times, so many places. Basra. Lahore. County Armagh.
There was no time to speak, no time to argue. Harry grabbed her by the shoulders, the Kahr falling from her hands as he shoved her down behind the table. A cry escaped her lips as he landed on top, covering her with his body.
The next moment the room exploded around them…
The blast took William Russell Cole off his feet, falling backward into a snowdrift as the western wall of the cabin vanished in a pall of smoke and fire. Moments later, the chatter of automatic weapons filled the air.
Leah Petersen and her partner died instantly, the FBI sniper team taken off-guard by the man from Leningrad. Across the perimeter, agents went down as Korsakov’s men moved in.
Her ears ringing from the explosion, Marika rolled onto her back in the snow, looking back at the TOC. Or rather, what was left of it.
The trailer was in flames, dark, oily tongues of fire licking out at the falling snow. The HRT’s nerve center was gone.
She closed her eyes, cursing bitterly. So many lives lost.
None of it made any sense. Where had their assailants come from?
Bullets whistled through the air above her head as Marika rolled to her feet, drawing her service Glock from its holster at her side. This wasn’t Hollywood—the pistol was near useless in the firefight that was unfolding, but she snapped off a couple shots at the camouflaged men emerging from the treeline.
Turning, she made a crouched run for Jicha’s truck, parked twenty feet beyond the flaming TOC. She put three bullets through the window of the Silverado, shattering the glass—the HRT leader had never invested in bulletresistant glass for his personal vehicle.
Her breathing was quick and shallow by the time she reached the truck, the mountain air stabbing at her lungs with icy daggers. Getting old was no fun. She reached through the broken glass of the window and swung the door open.
There was a rifle case behind the seat and Marika pulled it out, extracting his Colt M-4 and four loaded magazines of 5.56mm. One hundred and twenty rounds. Little enough.
Taking cover behind the engine block of the Silverado, she dug a satellite phone from her pocket. If they didn’t get backup, they were all going to die.
10:39 P.M.
The CHRYSALIS cabin
Smoke. Flames. Noise beating like hammers against his head. Harry reached out, feeling soft flesh beneath his hand, warm fluid trickling between his fingers.
Blood. A hand descended on his shoulder and he rolled onto his back, pulling the 1911 halfway out of its holster.
Sammy. It was Sammy. He saw the SEAL’s lips move, but he couldn’t hear a thing, his ears still ringing from the force of the explosion.
Didn’t matter—he could guess. They didn’t have much time. He shook his head in an effort to clear it.
Where was Carol? He shouted her name and winced, the words echoing and reverberating within his skull.
Han pointed, and Harry followed the direction of his finger. She was right beside him, laying there facedown on the floor of the cabin. Flames licked at the roof above them, snow melting and dripping down on them in the inferno.
Blood trickled from the back of her right thigh, a thick five-inch wooden splinter protruding from the flesh. A deep wound. Ideally, they wouldn’t have moved her. There was nothing ideal about this situation.
“Take her,” he bellowed, watching Han’s face as he regained his feet. Her safety was all that mattered. Nothing else.
His rifle was gone—somewhere. No time to look for it. The SEAL caught Harry’s gestures and unslung his rifle, handing it over as he bent down to scoop Carol up in his arms.
Fighting retreat…
10:42 P.M.
Help was on the way. That was the Bureau’s assurance, but Marika knew exactly how empty that assurance was. By the time the Hoover Building could mobilize reinforcements, the issue would be decided.
They’d be there in time to fill the body bags.
She pulled back the charging handle on the carbine, hearing a click as the round slid into the chamber. It was only one gun.
Deep breath—she swung herself up, leaning across the Silverado’s hood as she steadied the rifle. Five targets, clustered near the cabin. Eighty, maybe a hundred meters out. A single man, gesturing to the others.
Her finger tightened around the trigger as she centered the red dot of the scope on the white balaclava of the leader. Slow, steady.
The first burst went wild and she swore. In all her years in the Bureau, she’d never engaged targets at this range. Never done anything more than qualify. And now she was paying the price.
But it got their attention.
10:44 P.M.
The bullets fanning the air around his ears were Korsakov’s first indication that the FBI agents were starting to regroup, to rally from the ambush. He caught a glimpse of a lone figure firing over the hood of a truck down the slope as he threw himself into the snow.
Focus
.
Don’t let it distract from the mission. There was twenty-five million dollars—just on the other side of the cabin’s door. And vengeance for Pavel’s death.
It was only one agent. “
Nyet
,” he whispered impatiently, putting a restraining hand on Yuri’s shoulder. “Two of you stay here, provide covering fire—the rest of you come with me.”
Yuri glanced toward the cabin door, blown nearly off its hinges by the blast—toward the inferno consuming the roof. “
Da
. It’s now or never.”
It was all coming back—gunfire, explosions, the swirling snow. Azerbaijan.
Samuel Han laid Carol down in the passenger cabin of the helicopter, motioning for her to lie still. They would need to remove that splinter before it caused an infection.
Azerbaijan.
Han took a step back, feeling the past roll over him like a torrent. He moved toward the helicopter’s door, feeling as if the earth itself had opened at his feet. Focus. He had to remain calm. Hold the memories in check.
Passing a hand over his forehead, the SEAL jumped down onto the concrete floor of the bunker’s hangar, moving toward the control panel mounted on the far wall.
Aged hydraulics, operating massive blast doors which opened out onto the helipad. The power from the generator was already engaged, running for the last hour.
There was only one question left in his mind: after all these years—would the doors still open? If they didn’t—then he’d led them into a death trap. Just like he had that winter so long ago.
He took a deep breath and pulled the lever…
10:47 P.M.
Korsakov wasn’t the first man through the door, into the cabin. Or the second. It was protocol—bad American action movies aside, a team leader never took point. It also saved his life.
The first room of the cabin was on fire and littered with debris—splintered wood and shards of glass thrown about as if by a giant’s hand. Among the chaos, the destruction, the tripwire stretching across the entrance to the corridor went unnoticed.
Red laser beams cut through the flaming darkness as the
Spetsnaz
picked their way over the wreckage. Almost—the point man stepped into the corridor, the toe of his boot catching on the wire.
Korsakov’s team never knew what hit them. The pair of
M18A2 Claymores were wired together, to a single trigger. Decimation—three pounds of C-4 explosive between them, fourteen hundred steel balls flying outward in a sixty-degree arc.
The man standing beside Korsakov—in the doorway of the cabin—screamed, an unearthly, haunting cry, as he doubled over, clutching at what remained of his stomach.
Blood stained the white snow.
Nothing like this had ever happened before—never in thirty years with the Bureau. He’d never seen so many agents die.
William Russell Cole raised himself up on his elbows in the snow, beside the corpse of a young HRT assaulter. The kid had been the youngest member of Jicha’s assault team—now he lay there, on his side in the snow—a ragged hole in his temple. Sightless eyes staring out into the winter night.
The negotiator whispered a silent prayer, moving the young man’s stiffening arms to remove the sling of the Heckler & Koch MP-5 from around his shoulders.
He’d never fired a submachine gun in combat before in his life, but this was turning into a night of evil firsts. Cole rolled onto his side, pulling back the charging handle to chamber a round.
Movement in the darkness. There, beside a tree—only a few feet away. No way he could move fast enough.
“Easy, Russ. It’s just me.” He looked up into the face of Vic Caruso and nearly collapsed in relief. The FBI agent’s right arm hung limply at his side, dark blood staining the sleeve. No one had escaped unscathed…
10:53 P.M.
A cold blast of air smote Harry in the face as he entered the hangar, closing the door behind him and spinning the handles until it locked.
He turned, taking in the aged Sikorsky S-55 helicopter sitting there in the middle of the hangar—his eyes flickering toward the open blast doors.
“How’s she doing?” he asked, moving across the concrete floor. Sammy was kneeling at the bulbous nose of the Sikorsky, the clamshell doors peeled back to reveal the engine.
“Still losing blood,” the Asian SEAL replied, removing a screwdriver from between his teeth. “I’ll do my best to extract the splinter once we’re airborne.”
Harry cast a critical glance out into the darkness, wind-driven snow sweeping across the exposed helipad. “There something wrong with the engine?”
“Negative,” Han replied, reaching briefly inside the engine. He tapped something and pulled the screwdriver back out. “Nothing that I can tell—but the last time this bird flew, Jimmy Carter was President. We’ve only got one chance at this, Harry.”
That went without saying and a part of him didn’t appreciate it being voiced. Harry moved back, hoisting himself into the Sikorsky’s cockpit. He’d held a pilot’s license for eight years—the Agency had trained him to fly most types of small aircraft and helos. Unfortunately, 1950s avionics hadn’t been covered in the syllabus. A lot had changed. Maybe too much.
He looked out through the high windows of the Sikorsky, toward the door separating the hangar from the rest of the bunker. Korsakov and his men would be through there soon, once they’d regrouped from the Claymores.
One chance…
11:01 P.M.
Warren County, Virginia
Watching Tex drive was enough to drive a man to drink. Actually being in the car—that was even worse. Thomas waited a moment to make sure he wasn’t being watched, then tilted back the hip flask of brandy until the amber liquid spilled down his throat.
“Drinking again?” Tex asked, no emotion showing in his voice.
Crap
. There were times when he thought the big man was psychic. “Yeah, and thinkin’ again.” He was surprised to hear the slur in his own words. He hadn’t been drinking
that
much. Or had he? It was so hard to remember…
“Put it away,” came the peremptory order. He looked over into the Texan’s eyes, obsidian orbs staring back at him. Expressionless. A moment passed, then Tex added, “You’re no good to me drunk. No good to anyone.”
With a languid flourish, Thomas screwed the cap back on the flask and dropped it into the side pocket of the Malibu’s door. “Satisfied,
padre
?”
11:03 P.M.
West Virginia
One thing struck Harry from the moment the Sikorsky’s 700-horsepower radial engine roared to life from beneath his feet. The old helo wasn’t going to cut him any slack—it hailed from a different era—back in the days before crew comfort was considered, and the term “ergonomics” had yet to be commonly used. Going to need a smooth touch. Very smooth…
The noise was deafening, or would have been, if the explosion hadn’t already taken care of his hearing. The main rotor transmission was located inches behind his head, gears meshing and whining with all the delightful harmony of an amped-up Black Sabbath.