Tom Clancy Under Fire (37 page)

Ysabel opened her door and climbed out.

From across the parking lot, a male voice called,
“Privet, krasavitsa.”

Ysabel whispered, “Jack, it’s one of the goons.”

“He’s saying hi.”

“I know what a regular ‘Hi’ sounds like. He’s hitting on me. He’s coming this way.”

“Just say,
‘Spoki, mne nado idti,’
then point to your phone, raise it to your ear, and head for your door.”

She did so, and the guard replied,
“Khorosho!”

“Okay, he’s going back into the apartment,” Ysabel whispered. “You’re clear. Come on.”

The three of them climbed out the Suburban’s passenger side, then entered Zoya’s apartment. Ysabel locked the door behind them.

“Creepy guy,” she said. “What did I say to him?”

“Oh, you don’t wanna know,” Dom said.

“Hush.” She walked into the kitchen and turned on the overhead light.

Zoya Vetochkina’s apartment was tiny, three hundred square feet of bedroom, bathroom, front room, and kitchenette, with white walls and furniture that might have actually looked better with some duct-tape adornment—not the decor a woman from the Department of Culture would choose for herself, Jack thought. She was probably counting the minutes until her house was finished being bug-bombed.

“Do we know which apartment belongs to Wellesley?” asked Ysabel.

“Let’s find out,” Jack said, and pulled out his phone. He punched in Pechkin’s number and hit send. He wasn’t even sure their ploy would work; depending on what kind of forwarding system Wellesley was using, incoming calls might be soundless.

“It’s ringing.”

He put his fingers to his lips and gestured for the others to spread out.

Posted in the room’s four corners, the four of them listened.

Jack held up one finger . . . two fingers . . . three fingers . . .

Dom raised his hand and pointed above his head. “Second floor. Old-timey ringtone.”

Jack ended the call. “Let’s go to headsets.”

He, Dom, and Spellman donned theirs. “Dom, you and Ysabel stay here. If one of the goons shows, give a holler.”

Jack peeked out the front door. All was clear. With Spellman on his heels, he walked down the sidewalk to the stairwell, then took it to the second floor.

“Dom, call it again,” Jack said.

“Sending it now.”

Jack trotted down the balcony, hand resting on the rail until he reached the halfway point, then stopped and turned to face Spellman. They listened.

Faintly, Jack heard
brng-brng
. He turned his head, trying to localize the sound.

Brng-brng . . .

Spellman strode forward, hand cupped as he passed doors. He stopped beside apartment 206, gave Jack a thumbs-up, then pressed his ear against the door. He gave Jack another thumbs-up. “Okay, let’s see if this thing of Gavin’s works.”

Jack knelt by the door and pulled from his pocket a thumb-sized circuit board taped to a nine-volt battery; jutting from the edge of the board was a brass-colored plug. Jack ran his index finger along the bottom of the lock, found the indentation, then inserted the plug.

The lock started flashing red. As Gavin had instructed, Jack waited until the light first turned amber, then started flashing faster. No alarm system. He removed the plug and then reinserted it. The lock flashed green and the dead bolt clicked open.

Spellman whispered, “I gotta tell our DS-and-T guys about this thing. Probably save the government millions.”

Jack opened the door and they stepped through.

“Dom, we’re in.”

“Roger. All’s quiet down here.”

Jack immediately felt a chill envelop him. Above the window, cool air was gushing from a wall-mounted A/C unit. While the apartment was the same size as Zoya’s, the walls here had been crudely ripped down, leaving studs but no drywall, save what chunks were still nailed to the two-by-fours. Taking up most of the space was a circular table in whose center sat a pyramid of six computer tower hard drives, each of which was attached to an LCD monitor whose swirling multicolored screen savers cast shadows on the apartment’s walls. Dangling from the ceiling above all this was a bundle of zip-tied cables, from coaxial to standard phone and several Jack didn’t recognize. He looked for cables connecting any of the towers but saw none.

“Sure looks like a nerve center, doesn’t it?” Spellman whispered.

Jack nodded. “Start taking pictures.”

He sat down before one of the monitors, put on his gloves, then tapped the keyboard to wake the monitor. An administrator log-in page appeared.

“No surprise there.” Jack dialed Gavin and put him on speakerphone. Jack explained what he was seeing.

“Operating system?”

“Windows Vista.”

“Fantastic. Don’t worry about the password. We won’t be able to brute-force it from your side of the screen. Are there USB ports?”

Jack checked the tower behind his monitor. “Yeah, but they’ve got plug locks.”

“Optical drive?”

“Yes, and it’s clear.”

“Okay, let’s see if these guys think small. Get out that CD I downloaded to you, the one called ‘PoodleCrack,’ then press and hold the computer’s power button until it shuts down, and then power it up again. When you hear the start-up chime, insert the CD and tell me what you see.”

Jack did all this and then said, “Admin log-in again.”

“Okay. Repeat the process, but hold down the left mouse button to eject the CD, then stick in the one labeled ‘WidgeonRescue,’ then tell me what you see.”

When the screen reappeared the log-in page was gone, replaced by a black screen with white block lettering.

“I’m in the command line screen,” said Jack.

“Ha!” Gavin blurted. “You’d be surprised how many people don’t reboot-protect their systems—even guys like Wellesley and Pechkin. Okay, now type in those commands I gave you and tell me if you get any ‘Yes’ answers.”

Jack did so. “Nothing.”

“That means there’s no key-logger stuff on there. Do that with every drive before you start digging into any files.”

Jack disconnected. “Matt, you get started on the next one.”

They concentrated on sorting folders by size, then files by extension type and whether or not they were encrypted. Aside from the standard folders and applications the systems were shipped with, they found nothing of interest on the first four computers. Whether they had missed anything, Jack didn’t know, but short of cloning each hard drive and uploading it for Gavin to dissect, they could only keep moving.

Spellman said, “Jack, about Anton and Vasim: I can probably get their addresses. We can pay them a visit and use Pechkin’s phone to nail whichever one has turned.”

“It’s tempting, but we need Medzhid in the room when it happens. Plus, who knows, maybe both their phones would ring.”

At the fifth computer, neither the PoodleCrack nor the WidgeonRescue got Jack to the command line. Jack rebooted, then inserted the final CD that Gavin had given him, labeled “GongShowItAll.” This did the trick.

Spellman stood up from his monitor and leaned over Jack’s shoulder. “You got something?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Jack replied, his eyes scanning the directory names.

“There, try that one,” Spellman said, tapping the screen.

Jack clicked on the file labeled “Khibiny-Borisoglebsk” and the text document opened. It was one page long and covered in thirty-four lines of characters, in almost identical formats:

Hepo5..38GZT.703971mE.4759623mN

Zore6.38GTZ.703408.62mE4759419.87mN

Gaxy4..38GTZ.702170.47mE.4758546.44mN

Gefo9..38GZT.706544.22mE.4757843.69mN

Cuce4.38GZT.704959.76mE.4760436.66mN

Xole8..38GZT.702999.03mE.4760085.31mN

Juky6.38GZT.704430.97mE.4759664.05mN

Hevu9,,38GZT.704185.57mE.4760505.20mN

“What the hell is that?” Spellman whispered, squinting at the screen.

“I have no idea.”

Jack dialed Gavin back and said, “You need to see this.”

“Go into network settings and give me your IP address.” Jack did this, then waited as Gavin set himself up a remote access port. “Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff here, but it’d take days to clone it all. I’ll just grab whatever looks juicy.”

“Great, bye.”

Dom’s voice came over Jack’s headset. “We may have a problem down here. Somebody’s at the door—Ysabel’s new boyfriend, we think.”

In the background, Jack could hear the man lightly tapping on the door with his finger.
“. . . vodka, krasavitsa.”
I have vodka, beautiful.

Jack thought for a moment. His grasp of Russian was being stretched. “Tell her to slap the door, shout ‘
ukhodi
’ then ‘
otchet,
’ followed by ‘
mer.
’”

Dom did this and Jack heard Ysabel shouting.

“Izvinite, izvinite . . .”

Dom said, “He’s going away. She wants to know what she said.”

“For him to go away or she’ll report him to the mayor.”

“You also suggested they were married,” Spellman said.

“Oops. Dom, we’re almost done up here.”

“We’ll meet you back at the Suburban.”

Makhachkala

T
HE NEXT MORNING
after breakfast, as Medzhid was getting ready to go into the Ministry, Jack, Ysabel, Dom, Spellman, and Seth sat down at the conference table. Jack ran through the plan one more time. “I don’t expect it to go bad, but assume it will.”
Advice you should have taken with Pechkin,
he reminded himself. “Either way, Medzhid will want to find a way to dismiss it. We can’t let him. This close to the coup, he needs to get his head right. Questions?”

Seth said, “I hope you’re wrong about this.”

“I’m not, but if I am we’ve got much bigger problems.”

Now that Jack had already decided that Seth, Spellman, and Medzhid were innocent of burning him and Ysabel in Khasavyurt, only two suspects remained: Anton and Vasmin. But which one?

Followed by his personal assistant Albina, Medzhid strode down the hallway from his suite, adjusting his tie and cuffs as he walked. “Good morning, everyone. I will be—”

“Rebaz, we need to chat.”

“I am running late, Jack. Can we do it later?”

“No. Anton and Vasim should hear this, too.”

Medzhid frowned. “Jack, I don’t like the expression on your face. What is going on?”

“Just call them and I’ll explain.”

Medzhid sighed, then walked to the apartment door.

Dom got up and walked toward the windows while Spellman moved in the opposite direction until he was standing against the wall a few feet from the door. Ysabel stayed at the table within arm’s reach of Albina.

Medzhid stepped back and Anton and Vasim entered.

“Now, Jack, what’s this about?”

“It’s about Pechkin.”

On cue, Ysabel, holding Pechkin’s phone behind her back, hit the send button.

“What about him?” asked Medzhid.

A phone started ringing.

“Pardon me, Minister,” Anton said, and reached into his coat.

Medzhid said to Jack, “Have you found him?”

“No, but we just found out who he’s been working with.”

Ysabel held up the cell phone.

“That’s Oleg Pechkin calling you, Anton,” said Jack.

Anton glanced down at the phone, then shook his head. “I don’t know who this is. I don’t recognize the number.”

“Show the minister your phone.”

Anton narrowed his eyes at Jack. “You are setting me up. Why are you doing this?”

“Show him your phone,” Jack repeated. “Do it.”

“Anton, what is he talking about?”

“This isn’t right, Minister. This man is lying to you. I am loyal. He’s trying to turn you against me, please believe me.”

Anton slipped the phone back into his jacket.

“Move, Rebaz!” Spellman shouted. He lunged for Medzhid. Vasim backpedaled out of his way, then reached out and snagged Spellman’s sleeve; Spellman tried to shake it off, his arms extended toward Medzhid.

Startled, Anton backed away. His hand came out with a gun.

“Drop it, drop it!” Jack shouted.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Dom moving, his Ruger out as he sidestepped and tried to clear Medzhid from his sight line.

Anton pointed his gun at Spellman and fired. The bullet slashed across his neck. He stumbled sideways. Vasim wrapped his arm around Spellman’s neck and they fell through the doorway to the ground.

Jack heard Ysabel shout, “Oh, God!”

He drew his Ruger, leveled the muzzle with Anton’s chest. “Don’t!”

Anton turned toward him, gun coming around. Jack fired. The bullet hit him in the chest, shoving him backward, but his gun was still up. Jack fired again, as did Dom, whose round struck Anton in the throat a split second after Jack’s punched into Anton’s belly. He went down.

Jack rushed forward and kicked his gun away.

On the other side of the door, Spellman and Vasim were wrestling, the latter trying to crawl from under the CIA agent to reach his fallen friend. “Anton! Anton!”

“Stop, Vasim, you don’t—”

“Get off of me!”

Medzhid yelled, “Quiet! All of you, quiet!”

Vasim stopped struggling. Spellman rolled off him, then helped him to his feet. Vasim shrugged off his arm. He stared down at Anton’s body.

“Matt, you’re bleeding,” said Jack. “Your neck.”

The CIA man touched the spot. “Ah, shit.”

“Jack,” Ysabel called, her voice barely a whisper, “it’s Albina.”

He turned. She was kneeling beside Medzhid’s assistant. The woman had a bullet hole below her left eye.

“Oh my God, oh God, no . . .” Medzhid muttered, almost chanting as he backed away. His legs bumped against the back of the couch. He plopped down. His eyes were vacant.

“What have you done? What just happened? Someone tell me!”

Jack stooped over, reached inside Anton’s coat, and tossed it to Medzhid. “Check his call history. The last number belongs to Pechkin. Ysabel, show him.”

She walked over and handed Medzhid the phone. The minister studied each screen in turn. “This isn’t . . . Are you sure?”

“We’re sure,” Dom replied.

Medzhid looked at Seth, who nodded. “Pechkin died yesterday outside Khasavyurt. That’s his phone. I’m sorry, Rebaz, I really am.”

“Anton called Pechkin after Ysabel and I left you in Buynaksk,” Jack added. “Pechkin then called Captain Osin and told him to raid Dobromir’s house and kill him. He would have done the same to us if we’d given him the chance.”

“Why?”

“Wellesley and Pechkin hired Dobromir to kidnap Aminat. They didn’t want him talking to us.”

“Anton and I have been together for almost nine years. I can’t believe he would be a part of this.”

“He did it for the same reason Salko snatched Koikov. He thinks you’re a traitor.”

“I’m not a traitor.”

“We all know that, but they thought otherwise, and there might be others close to you who feel the same way. You need to wake up, Rebaz. This is the second time the bad guys have tried to stop what you’re doing, first with Aminat, and then this. What’s about to happen in Makhachkala is going to be bloody and people are going to die. You need to get your head around that. Either that or we call it off.”

•   •   •

“THAT WAS PRETTY HARSH, JACK,”
Seth whispered. “He didn’t deserve that.”

They were sitting at the conference table. Medzhid had retreated to his suite. Grim-faced and avoiding eye contact with Jack and the others, Vasim had called in the rest of Medzhid’s day-shift bodyguards, who were gently wrapping Anton’s and Albina’s bodies in blankets for removal. The carpet where Albina’s head had lain was saturated with blood. Ysabel had found the bullet from Anton’s gun in the wall behind the conference table.

“Maybe so,” Jack replied, “but he needed to hear it. I learned a hard lesson yesterday and he’s learned one today—actually, his third lesson, counting Aminat and Koikov. Wellesley’s going to keep coming at us, probably even harder now that we’ve evened the odds a bit.”

“Well, we’re not calling it off, that’s for damned sure. That’s not your decision to make.”

“I know it isn’t.”

Dom said, “Jack’s right. The man needs to understand—really understand—what he’s signed on for.”

“You really don’t think he knows that?”

“You know him better than anyone else. What do you think?”

“If he didn’t get it before, he does now,” said Spellman.

“I’m not so sure,” Ysabel replied. “Has he given any thought about what will happen to his wife and Aminat if this fails?”

“Of course he has,” said Seth. “He’ll be moving them both out of the capital the day after tomorrow. The MOI minister in Azerbaijan has agreed to take them in.”

“Thank God for that.”

Vasim walked up to the table. He handed Spellman a handkerchief. “You will need sutures to close that. I will take you to the minister’s doctor later.”

“Thanks.”

“You weren’t lying about Anton? You did not set him up?”

Jack shook his head. “And we didn’t want it to happen this way.”

“Did this Pechkin man say anything before he died, anything that might explain why Anton did this? Perhaps he was being forced into it.”

“It’s possible,” Ysabel replied. “I don’t think we’ll ever know. We’re very sorry, Vasim. We know you were friends.”

“Yes, and for a long time, but he was the traitor, not the minister. You said Pechkin’s partner is still out there, yes?”

“Raymond Wellesley.”

“I hope you find him and kill him.”

“We’ll do our best.”