Running Blind (19 page)

32

She wasn't smiling an hour later. She'd finally found what she'd been looking for.

Big, scary stuff.

She touched a finger to the radio tab against her cheek. “Cooper. Get back here. Now.”

“What's up?”

“Just get back here.”

“On my way.”

She paced as she waited, almost bursting with panic when he finally walked in the door five minutes later.

“Eagle Claw is way past its testing stage,” she blurted out. “It can be ready to go into production in a matter of days.”

He eyed her thoughtfully. “You sure?”

“I'm sure. That killing machine is ready to go.” She ripped the earbud from her ear and tossed it onto the table. “What the
hell
is DOD thinking? Something this cutting-edge, with the capacity to elevate military power to world domination, and which the government has sunk billions of dollars into—why the hell wouldn't they already have security nailed to the wall?”

His expression had grown dark, and she could see he had the exact same questions.

“They'd
have
to have this wrapped up tight,” she continued. “There can be
zero
chance that Russia gets this technology back. Or what if North Korea or Iran or any other badass regime got hold of any part of the working plans or the alloys?”

When he still said nothing, she let it all out.

“Why the
hell
don't they have this facility armed to the
gills
? I'm talking antiaircraft guns, Phantom jet patrols, hell, a battalion of Marines!”

He met her eyes then, and she knew she wasn't going to like what he had to say. “Because they don't know that Eagle Claw is ready to go,” he speculated, his words hanging in the room like a black cloud.

“How can that be?”

“Maybe because Corbet hasn't told them.”

She let that idea take shape, congeal, and finally form. “You got in to see him? Is that what he told you?”

He gave a quick shake of his head. “No. I didn't get in to see him. Short of explosives, no one's getting into that room unless Corbet gives them access. You need to keep searching his files,” he said abruptly.

“What exactly am I looking for?”

“Anything in duplicate. Progress reports. Timelines. Any files that seem redundant.”

“Now that you mention it . . .” She turned back to her tablet and scrolled through Corbet's files. “There
are
a lot of copies of the same files. I only opened the originals. Hold on.”

She went to work and soon came up with a frightening pattern.

“He's cooking the books,” she said finally. “Providing a progress timeline to DOD and keeping another timeline for himself.”

“And?”

“And,” she said, her alarm building, “according to the timelines he's been turning in to DOD, Eagle Claw is a good three months away from completion.”

She looked up at Cooper, who had stopped pacing.

“Why would he do that?”

She could see him attempting to frame all the pieces they'd uncovered into a cohesive picture. When he turned to her, she could tell that he had it all worked out in his mind. “We were sent here because of a vague but credible threat, right?”

She nodded, giving him time to pull it all together.

“We find that security is tight but not on red alert. We've got ourselves a Russian scientist who defected with his plans for a doomsday missile. A scientist who apparently has attained his mission but fudged his reports to the Department of Defense, so they have no way of knowing that Eagle Claw is mere steps away from being operational.”

She swallowed hard, afraid she knew where he was going with this.

“A scientist,” he continued, “who hasn't seen his wife and daughter in two very long years and who, according to all the data you've found, has worked day and night to complete his task.” He looked at her sharply. “The Russians got to him. That has to be it. Somehow they got someone on the inside and got to Corbet. What do you want to bet they're using his wife and daughter as bait for blackmail?”

“They want their Eagle Claw technology back,” she said as the horrible realization gelled. “And the only way they can make it work is if they get Corbet, too.” She looked him squarely in the eyes. “They're going to attack this facility to get it, aren't they? They're coming after Eagle Claw and Corbet.
That
's the credible threat.”

He looked at her long and hard before reluctantly nodding. “Yeah. I believe it is. The big question is, when are they going to make their move?”

“We've got to get word to Nate,” she said urgently.

“And how do you propose we do that? We're as locked in as the facility is locked down. We're not getting out of here until Monday morning, when the staff return from Vegas.”

He was right. Once you stepped into the bunker, all contact from the outside world ceased. That had been built into the security program. Clever, and exactly what she would have done. Until she urgently needed to contact someone on the outside. “What if we don't have until Monday?” She hated even asking. They both looked at the wall clock. It was a little after nine p.m. The longest Friday of her life—and it was about to get a lot longer.

“I'm going to go talk to the guards and the MP,” he said. “Give 'em a heads-up to be extra alert and see if any of them are in the loop on a contingency plan to bust our asses out of here or if the plan is to go down with the ship.”

“I'll head for the server farm,” she said. “Maybe I can find a way to circumvent the system and somehow reach Nate. Or even the nearby Air Force base.”

“My money's on you,” Cooper said.

“Normally, I'd agree. But from what I've seen, even though interior communication can be breached by someone who knows what they're doing, getting outside contact is a whole other ball game. If I manage to find a way, it's going to take a while.”

“Keep something in mind, Buttercup, we're merely speculating here. What we've got is valid, and we should assume the worst and be prepared. But with the no-fly zone an exterior security, the odds of anyone even getting close to the bunker are almost nonexistent. There's every possibility that we'll spend a dull weekend playing gin . . . or strip poker?”

“Nice try, Hondo
.
But I've got a very bad feeling about this.”

He picked up her earbud and handed it to her. “Don't leave home without it.”

She slipped it into her ear and headed for the door.

His hand on her arm stopped her. “You okay?” He searched her eyes intently. “I know you didn't sign up for this.”

She was as okay as a woman who had applied for a desk job but had ended up in the middle of a possible siege situation could be. “Got my badass outfit on,” she said with a weak smile. “How could I not be okay?”

He grinned and pulled her against him. “You
do
look pretty badass in black.”

Then he kissed her. She moved into him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and pulled him close. He was the only thing that would hold her together if this weekend turned into something she had no preparation for.

When he pulled away from the kiss, he pressed his forehead to hers, still holding her. “Nothing's going to happen to you as long as I'm drawing breath, Buttercup.”

“Gosh. I bet you say that to all the computer nerds.”

He grinned. “Nah. Just the ones who smell good and wear my hickeys on their breasts.”

She felt herself redden but wouldn't give him the satisfaction of letting him know he'd embarrassed her. “I'll be sure to think about that while I do my nerd thing.”

Saturday

If the enemy is in range, so are you. When you're short of everything but the enemy, you're in combat.

—
Infantry Journal

33

1:13 a.m., above Area 51, Nevada

Twenty-five thousand feet above Nevada, twenty-five miles north of the Groom Lake Air Force facility, the Boeing 727 flew through the early-morning hours, following the route commercial airliners used going to and from Vegas. Vadar Melnik looked at the men assembled in the darkened hold of the jet. Only his second in command, Ivan Grachev, noticed his concerned scowl. Ivan nodded, his look saying,
They'll be fine.
They are ready.

They'd better be more than ready. They'd been training for months. Waiting to get the call. Not, however, expecting the timeline to be stepped up this quickly and on such short notice.

He thought of the assassin he knew only by the code name Anya.

She had too much influence. She'd altered the plan by not eliminating the U.S. government's biggest thorn in his side. Cooper, Taggart, Brown, and their friends should be dead by now. But no. Anya had thought it unwise. Worse, his employers agreed with her that it was much smarter to pick them off one by one over time, to keep the attention away from Mother Russia.

She also had too much control over the soon-to-be-dearly-departed Dr. Corbet, who had had the bad sense to defect to America and to take his Eagle Claw research with him. Once they got what they needed from him, his reward would be death, the same fate that his wife and daughter would meet.

That was what this raid was all about. In the early hours of this Saturday morning, they would bring home both Dr. Corbet and his technology and ensure Russia's military domination. And it was happening tonight because Anya had said this was their only window of opportunity.

He didn't trust her. But he had no choice.

He glanced again at Ivan, who looked secure in his place, secure in their mission. And he put his trust in Ivan's assessment of the team's readiness.

Ivan had been at his side since they were both Spetsnaz, Soviet special forces. At the end of the Cold War and with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the turmoil following, their skills had no longer been required. At least, not for many years.

But there were new games to be played in the twenty-first century. And the Russian mafia, working closely with Putin's enforcers, had once again made Vadar a key figure in the order. An order that paid him well to deliver, instead of the pittance of a soldier's wage.

The men with him tonight were hand-picked for this mission. All had advanced parachute infiltration skills, except for the two technical support specialists, who were merely baggage as far as he was concerned but necessary according to his employer.

For the jump, the two techs would be strapped to Nikolai's and Pavel's backs, like the explosives and weaponry the other jumpers would be carrying. Vadar shifted in his seat, where the parachute harness dug into his ass. Like his men, he carried seventy pounds of gear. It was a challenge. He wasn't as young as he used to be. And he hated the metallic taste of the oxygen that flowed into his mask. He looked forward to switching to the bailout bottles strapped to his harness which would be used to get them down to where the air was thicker.

He checked the altimeter on his wrist. Altitude twenty-five thousand feet. Air temperature minus forty-one Celsius. He went through the operation plan in his head for the hundredth time—there could be no room for mistakes. When given the go, they would jump, deploy their parachutes, group together in a “stack,” and guide themselves onto the target base using GPS. The high-altitude, high-opening, HAHO, jump was necessary for this mission. If they flew in low, radar would pick them up. By flying high above the no-fly zone surrounding the base, they'd be too small to detect on radar. And by landing precisely at their planned coordinates well inside the perimeter fence, they would avoid all but a handful of exterior guards.

Once at the base, the plan was to get in, get Dr. Corbet and all technology related to Eagle Claw—the technicians were insurance, in case Corbet refused to cooperate—and get out, commandeering vehicles from the base to drive to the preset location, where a team would be waiting to extract them.

This jump would be Vadar's forty-second combat jump. The rest of his team had similar experience, some in Chechnya and others as far back as Afghanistan. Mavriky Shirshov, his team sergeant, was a veteran of brutal combat and an animal in battle.

His second in command, Ivan Grachev, had fought alongside him in Chechnya and had once taken a bullet for his commander. Ivan was smart, tough, adaptable, and quiet; the fact that he also liked to torture prisoners was a plus. He could get a stone to talk with the tip of his blade, if the need arose.

Vadar fingered the M4 rifle strapped to his harness. American-made, all the way. They were to leave no trace that Russia was involved in the attack. Which also meant no witnesses. With Mavriky carrying the M249 machine gun and the rest of them with M4s, that was ensured.

Intel on the staffing had been thorough. The perimeter security would be tight and fully manned, but he had no concern about that. They wouldn't drop within four miles of it. Since the manned fence was the first line of resistance, the security around the actual building would be light. Only a skeleton crew, inside and out, during the weekend.

This obsession with weekends would become America's downfall.

The red light above the door lit. Five minutes to jump.

The men struggled to their feet, fighting the heavy loads, then disconnected from the plane's oxygen system to their bailout bottles. Without prompting, they checked one another's gear, making sure that it was tight and strapped right. Yes, he had a good team. He'd paid a lot of money for the best in the business and fully anticipated both the rush from the jump and the money he'd net from this job.

Using hand signals to communicate over the roaring jet engines, Nikolai and Pavel strapped on their unwilling technicians. Pavel had to cuff his behind the ear to get him to stop struggling.

When everyone was upright, he motioned for them to put on their night-vision goggles as he shut off the cargo hold lights. Another good American piece of equipment. The NVGs in the Russian military tended to freeze solid at this altitude. It was difficult enough to jump out of a plane in the dark, and restricted vision meant you couldn't see the team. It gave jumpers nightmares, because collisions at the speeds at which they were going to fall could be fatal.

In the greenish glow of the NVGs, Vadar made his way to the cargo hatch door and opened it. Wind tore at his body, threatening to rip him out the door. The sky was lit by the moon and stars. He couldn't see the ground, but that was never a problem; it was always down.

Ivan made his way to the front so he would be the second one out the door. Vadar checked Ivan's gear, then turned so Ivan could do the same with his.

Satisfied that they were both strapped in tightly, Vadar glanced back at his men. They all gave him a thumbs-up.

Then he stepped back far enough to see the jump light that glowed white instead of green through his NVGs.

When the light changed color, he stepped out into the icy darkness and into free fall.