71
THE CAUCASUS
When Gil came across the ruptured bodies of Anzor Basayev and the other two security men, he recognized Basayev’s face from the mission dossier he’d been shown in Moscow, making a mental note to tell someone back in the world that at least one high-priority target had been taken out. A short time later, he picked up what he hoped was Kovalenko’s trail, and it didn’t take long to determine that he was tracking two men. He stopped to study the separate boot prints, seeing that one of the men had cut a notch into the heel of his left boot, and this was all Gil needed to confirm that the Wolf was still alive. Many soldiers who spent a lot of time operating alone—such as snipers—chose to notch the soles of their boots to help guard against walking in circles or tracking themselves. Gil had never employed the technique himself, thinking he could always notch his boot if and when the circumstances called for it. Otherwise the notch might end up being used to track him, the way he was using it to track Kovalenko now.
With the sun nearing its apex, he moved out.
The bolt-action TAC-338 was slung across his back. Chambered in .338 Lapua Magnum, it was a far superior weapon to the semiauto Dragunov SVD, and the scope was far superior as well: a Nightforce 8-32 x 56 mm. For the first time since mission start, he felt like he was adequately equipped, which was ironic, considering his physical condition. His belly wounds were festering but not particularly painful. The shrapnel wounds from the grenade, however, were hurting like hell and suppurated constantly, making it so that his left sleeve and trouser legs clung annoyingly to his skin.
He estimated that, if need be, he could function in this condition for perhaps another thirty-six hours with the help of the dextroamphetamines. By that time, he would be robbing Peter to pay Paul for each additional hour in the field, growing steadily less effective. Once infection set in and fever took hold, he would have to change his priorities.
Sucking down the last of Dragunov’s water on the move, he discarded the water bladder and dug into Mason’s rucksack for a pair of high-energy bars, wanting to get some food in his belly before reestablishing contact with the enemy. He wondered idly who had arranged for the Obsidian helos, but the answer was obvious. Pope was watching from above. Always Pope—like the omniscient eye of God.
He imagined everyone back in DC throwing a fit the second they realized he was jumping off the helo to go “rogue” again. How he’d come to hate that word. The simple truth was that he loved to fight, and he no longer made any apology for it. His love for combat had already cost him his marriage, so what was left to lose—other than his life? And that was why he’d gotten off the helo—that and because fuck Sasha Kovalenko. Kovalenko liked to fight, too, and he was damn good at it. Gil realized that he liked being well met, and in the last forty-eight hours, he’d come to understand that combat was a lot like the game of chess: the only real way to improve was to compete against someone better than you.
He set a brisk pace down the mountain, wanting to catch Kova
lenko before dark. There was a forest camp to the south near the Georgian border. The camp was controlled by an Umarov ally named Ali Abu Mukhammad. Gil had seen it on a map in the mission dossier, and he remembered it was only a few clicks west of the bridge where he and Dragunov had originally planned on hitting Kovalenko. If the man Kovalenko was traveling with was Dokka Umarov, it was almost a sure bet they were headed to Mukhammad’s camp.
The titanium implant in his foot began to give him trouble after the few hundred yards of the downhill grind, so Gil slowed his pace. If the foot gave out on him, he was finished.
He was down on one knee beside a brook, cupping the ice-cold water to his mouth, when an enemy patrol of perhaps a half dozen happened by on the far side, partially obscured by the dense undergrowth that grew at the lower elevation—two different species of rhododendron that kept their leaves year-round. He waited for the patrol to pass, but then a Chechen emerged from a gap in the thicket to his right, no more than fifteen feet away on the opposite bank. Gil dropped flat to the ground and froze like a lizard.
The Chechen knelt and dipped a canteen into the water.
Gil was partially hidden behind a rhododendron, but not well enough to conceal him from a direct look. The rifle was beneath him, attached to the three-point sling, and at such close range, he didn’t dare move to draw the pistol.
Another Chechen emerged and knelt beside the first, dipping his canteen as well. Within a half minute, there was a regular canteen-filling convention taking place, with six Chechens kneeling shoulder to shoulder at the water’s edge. They were talking in regular voices, entirely unconcerned about their security. Two were smoking cigarettes. This was their territory, and they obviously felt safe. Whether or not they had any knowledge of the battle that had taken place a full click to the north was anybody’s guess.
The best clue was that they were all filling two canteens apiece, indicating they had possibly spent the earlier part of day operating in the high country, where water was scarce. It might have even meant
they’d been traveling parallel to Gil during his descent, but from the ill-disciplined manner in which they carried on, he doubted it. There was no urgency about them; no sense of vigilance.
As they began standing up to put away their canteens, one of them glanced in Gil’s direction, looked away—then did a double take, shouting a warning to his compatriots, pointing with the canteen in his hand instead of grabbing for his AK-47.
Gil ripped a ready-grenade from his harness, the pin pulling automatically as he tore it loose and biffed it into the shallow water. The Chechens who saw the grenade dove for cover; those who didn’t were grabbing for their rifles when it exploded.
Two of them were blown apart as Gil rolled to his side, laying down a hail of fire from the AN-94. He killed two more, but the remaining two jumped up and fled through the gap in the rhododendron. He sprang to his feet and gave chase, not wanting to risk them warning Umarov’s camp. The Chechens crashed through the undergrowth a few meters ahead of him, just out of view as they followed a narrow deer trail, hoping to get away from Gil and whoever might be with him. They would have surely recognized his Spetsnaz camouflage, and the Spetsnaz were known to operate in wolf packs.
Gil fired at them through the undergrowth. One of them cried out, and Gil heard him go down. He leapt over the body in the trail a second later and bound unexpectedly into a glade; a small clearing in the forest. The other Chechen had vanished into thin air. Gil went immediately to ground and tuned his ears for the slightest hint of movement.
72
HAVANA,
Cuba
Mariana lay on the bed utterly petrified, naked from the waist to her ankles, her hands bound painfully behind her back.
“What did Peterson say?” the big guy asked. He had an old 1911 pistol stuck in the front of his pants.
The smaller guy tucked the cellular into his back pocket. “He wants us to kill them both.”
The guy with the gun looked at Mariana lying helpless on the bed, his eyes coming to rest on her pubic mound. “You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”
His partner glanced at Mariana and shook his head. “That’s not really my thing.”
“More for me, then.” The big man tossed him the pistol.
“You’d better make it fast.” His partner tucked the gun into the small of his back. “We’re on the clock, and that prick next door is bad news.”
“I won’t be long, bro.”
Mariana began to sob as the guy dropped his trousers and knee-walked across the bed, grabbing her knees in strong hands and forcing them apart, and then falling on her heavily as he maneuvered between them.
The other guy picked up the remote and turned on the TV to cover Mariana’s muffled cries. Then he went into the bathroom and stood peeing into the toilet. He finished and dropped the seat, pushing the button on top of the tank before stepping back into the room. After watching his partner on top of Mariana for a minute or so he decided, Why not? They were going to kill her anyhow. It wasn’t like she’d have to live very long with the trauma.
The door to the room burst inward, and he spun around just in time for Crosswhite to grab him behind the neck with both hands, holding him in a Muay Thai clinch and delivering him a vicious knee to the groin. The Cuban’s legs buckled beneath him, and Crosswhite snatched the gun from the back of his pants, kicking the door shut with his heel and thrusting the pistol before him as Mariana’s rapist was rolling off the bed.
“Freeze, motherfucker!”
The big guy stood beside the bed with his pants down around his ankles, his erection wilting rapidly.
Crosswhite stalked forward and buried the toe of his boot in the guy’s groin. The man let out a hideous squeal of pain and dropped to the floor, convulsing and vomiting onto the tile. Crosswhite kicked him in the face and stomped his skull with the heel of his boot. The little guy began get to up, and Crosswhite stalked back across the room to slug him in the side of the head with the pistol. Then he put the pistol under his shirt and grabbed the guy by the hair, giving his head a brutal twist and snapping the neck with a crunch.
He took a folding knife from his pocket and cut Mariana loose.
She leapt off the bed and shuffled into the bathroom with her pants still caught around her feet, slamming the door behind her and retching into the toilet. The shower came on a short time later.
Crosswhite was standing by the door when the big guy began to stir. He walked over and finished him off with a heavy heel to the back of the neck. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed and took out his cellular to call Ernesto the doorman.
Ernesto knocked a few minutes later, and Crosswhite let him into the room.
Ernesto saw the bodies.
“Santo Cielo!
Do you leave dead men everywhere you go, señor?”
“Looks that way,” Crosswhite answered glumly, sitting back down on the bed and taking out his cigarettes.
Ernesto looked around for Mariana. “Is the señorita okay?”
Crosswhite shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Do you want me to call the doctor?”
“Maybe, but I don’t know yet.” He struck a match. “I don’t think she needs that kind of a doctor.”
Ernesto realized for the first time that one of the dead men’s pants was down around his ankles, and his face turned ashen. “Was she . . . was she violated?”
Crosswhite tossed the match onto the floor and breathed smoke from his nostrils. “Yeah.”
Ernesto stepped over and spit on the rapist’s corpse.
“Coño!”
“Do you know somebody we can pay to get rid of these bodies, Ernie?”
“Yes, but I think it will be very expensive.”
“Expensive I can handle,” Crosswhite said. “Cops I can’t.”
“I’ll have Lupita bring her laundry cart. The cart is small, so it will take two trips, and she will want the money right away.”
“That’s fine. What happens after the laundry carts?”
“I can call my cousin. He has a fish truck. He can give the bodies to the men he buys the fish from, and they can dump the bodies in the ocean.”
“You’re sure they’ll help?”
Ernesto shrugged. “If you will pay, they will help. Money is the law here, señor.”
“Okay, Ernie. Better go find Lupita. We’re burnin’ daylight.”
Lupita was a small woman of forty. Her black hair was flecked with gray at the temples and pulled back into a ponytail. She crossed herself when she saw the bodies and then looked at the bathroom, where Mariana was still crying.
“Qué pasó con ella?”
Ernesto gestured at the half-naked body.
“Fue violada.”
Lupita crossed herself again, muttering,
“Santa Magdalena.”
Crosswhite took $2,000 from the leather pouch and offered it to her.
She tucked the money away inside her shirt without counting to see how much he’d given her.
Crosswhite pulled up the guy’s pants, and Ernesto helped him put the body into the cart. Then Ernesto and Lupita rolled the cart away down the hall, returning for the second body fifteen minutes later.
“We’re going to need some more money,” Ernesto said awkwardly. “A woman in the laundry room saw us hiding the body.”
“How much?”
“Five hundred should do nicely, señor.”
Crosswhite gave it to him. “Call me when you know how much your cousin and the fishermen are gonna want.”
“Very well. I’ll call you in half an hour.”
Ernesto and Lupita were about to take the second body away when Crosswhite had an alarming thought. He grabbed Ernesto by the throat and shoved him up against the wall. “Why the
fuck
didn’t you warn me these guys were in the
fucking
building? You fuckin’ me in the ass without a reach-around, Ernie?”
“No, señor. I swear it! I’m not working today. After last night, I didn’t think to tell any—” Ernesto began to tremble, and then a look of shame fell over him. “You’ve made me . . . you’ve made me urinate in my pants, señor.”
Crosswhite let him go and stepped back, seeing that the man had indeed pissed himself. “Sorry about that,” he said. But he continued
to eye Ernesto with suspicion. “If you’re not workin’ today, how’d you get here so fast?”
“I live upstairs, señor. I’m the head doorman.”
Lupita stood by the door, ready to escape, eyeing Crosswhite with disapproval.
“Okay, look,” Crosswhite said in Spanish. “I apologize. I had a bad night, and it’s been a very bad morning. I know money doesn’t fix everything, but I’ll make sure you’re both well taken care of when this is over.”
Lupita glanced at Ernesto and then said with a glint in her eye, “Money fixes many things, señor.”
Crosswhite nodded, putting his hand on Ernesto’s shoulder. “If it makes you feel any better, amigo, I shit myself during my first firefight. That’s a lot worse.”
Ernesto smiled halfheartedly, still very embarrassed. “You’re the most frightening man I’ve ever met, señor. There’s no need to doubt my loyalty.”
“Listen, don’t get the wrong idea now.” Crosswhite held up a finger. “If some bastard puts a gun in your face, you tell him whatever he wants to know—understand? I don’t want you dying for me. But I don’t want you fuckin’ me, either. See the difference?”
Ernesto nodded. “I failed to protect you and the señorita, but it won’t happen again, señor. You have my word.”