Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist Aftermath

OUT OF THE FIRE . . .

“Holy shit.”

That expletive had come from the SMI table, where Grim was bringing up Keyhole satellite
surveillance footage, along with imagery captured by the U.S. Army’s latest Vertical
Take-Off and
 Landing Unmanned Aerial System dubbed the “Hummingbird.”

Fisher reached the table and scanned the schematics of the drone, displayed on a data
bar to his right.

Equipped with the ARGUS array composed of several cameras and a host of other sensor
systems, the Hummingbird and her systems were capable of capturing 1.8 gigapixel high-resolution
mosaic images and video, making it one of the most capable surveillance drones on
the planet.

At the moment, the UAV had her cameras and sensors directed at a rugged, snowcapped
mountainside with a long pennon of black smoke rising from it.

“What?” asked Fisher.

“That’s Dykh-Tau,” said Grim. “It means ‘jagged mount’ in Russian. It’s about five
klicks north of the Georgia border, and it’s the second-highest peak in the Caucasus
Mountains.”

“That’s a pretty big fire down there.”

“That’s not just a fire. Kasperov’s plane just crashed.”

Novels by Tom Clancy

THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER

RED STORM RISING

PATRIOT GAMES

T
HE CARDINAL OF THE KREMLIN

CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER

THE SUM OF ALL FEARS

W
ITHOUT REMORSE

DEBT OF HONOR

EXECUTIVE ORDERS

RAINBOW SIX

THE BEAR AND THE D
RAGON

RED RABBIT

THE TEETH OF THE TIGER

DEAD OR ALIVE

(written with Grant Blackwood)

AGAINST ALL
ENEMIES

(written with Peter Telep)

LOCKED ON

(written with Mark Greaney)

THREAT VECTOR

(written with Mark Greaney)

SSN: STRATEGIES OF S
UBMARINE WARFARE

Nonfiction

SUBMARINE: A GUIDED TOUR INSIDE A NUCLEAR WARSHIP

ARMORED
CAV: A GUIDED TOUR OF AN ARMORED CAVALRY REGIMENT

FIGHTER WING: A
GUIDED TOUR OF AN AIR FORCE COMBAT WING

MARINE: A GUIDED TOUR OF A
MARINE EXPEDITIONARY UNIT

AIRBORNE: A GUIDED TOUR OF AN AIRBORNE TASK FORCE

CARRIER: A GUIDED TOUR OF AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER

SPECIAL FORCES: A GUIDED
TOUR OF U.S. ARMY SPECIAL FORCES

INTO THE STORM: A STUDY IN
COMMAND

(written with General Fred Franks, Jr., Ret., and Tony Koltz)

EVERY MAN A TIGER

(written with General Chuck Horner, Ret., and Tony Koltz)

SHADOW WARRIORS: INSIDE THE SPECIAL FORCES

(written with General Carl Stiner, Ret., and Tony Koltz)

BATTLE READY

(written with General Tony Zinni, Ret., and Tony Koltz)

TOM CLANCY’S HAWX

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon

GHOST RECON

COMBAT OPS

CHOKEPOINT

Tom Clancy’s EndWar

ENDWAR

THE HUNTED

THE MISSING

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell

SPLINTER CELL

OPERATION BARRACUDA

CHECKMATE

FALLOUT

CONVICTION

ENDGAME

BLACKLIST A
FTERMATH

Created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik

TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER

OP-CENTER

MIRROR IMAGE

GAMES OF STATE

ACTS OF WAR

B
ALANCE OF POWER

STATE OF SIEGE

DIVIDE AND CONQUER

LINE OF CONTROL

MISSION OF HONOR

S
EA OF FIRE

CALL TO TREASON

WAR OF EAGLES

TOM CLANCY’S NET FORCE

NET FORCE

HIDDEN AGENDAS

NIGHT MOVES

BREAKING POINT

POINT OF IMPACT

CYBERNATION

STATE OF WAR

CHANGING OF THE GUARD

SPRINGBOARD

THE ARCHIMEDES EFFECT

Created by Tom Clancy and Martin Greenberg

TOM CLANCY’S POWER PLAYS

POLITIKA

RUTHLESS.COM

SHADOW WATCH

BIO-STRIKE

COLD WAR

CUTTING EDGE

ZERO HOUR

WILD CARD

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TOM CLANCY’S SPLINTER CELL
^®
: BLACKLIST
TM
AFTERMATH

A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with Ubisoft Entertainment SARL

Copyright © 2013 by Ubisoft Entertainment. All rights reserved.

Splinter Cell, Tom Clancy’s, Blacklist, Ubisoft, and the Ubisoft logo are trademarks
of Ubisoft Entertainment in the U.S. and/or other countries.

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eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-61599-7

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley premium edition / October 2013

Cover art and design by Ubisoft, Ltd.

Interior text design by Kristin del Rosario.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is
entirely coincidental.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many talented and generous artisans contributed their expertise to this manuscript:

Mr. James Ide, chief warrant officer, U.S. Navy (Ret.), has worked with me as first
reader, researcher, and collaborator on more than a dozen of my novels. His technical
prowess and military experience have not only strengthened my manuscripts but have
challenged me to strive for a level of authenticity that can pass muster with critical
veterans like him.

Jackie Fiest knows more about the Splinter Cell universe than any reader or gamer
out there. She’s even had a character named after her in the novels. It was my great
fortune to have her review this manuscript and offer her keen insights on it and the
Splinter Cell canon. I’m truly grateful for her help.

I’m particularly indebted to Mr. Sam Strachman, Mr. Richard Dansky, and Mr. Patrick
Redding of Ubisoft Entertainment for their support, encouragement, and enormous help
in shaping the story line of this novel. I’m thankful, too, to many others at Ubisoft,
including Jade Raymond, Yannick Spagna, Maxime Beland, and Christophe Martin.

Mr. Ron Cohen, Mr. Tom Jankiewicz, Mr. James “Johnny” Johnson, Mr. Adam Painchaud,
Mr. Robert Hirt, Mr. Bud Fini, Mr. Andrew Sands, and Mr. James Saltzman, along with
the rest of the helpful folks at world-renowned firearms manufacturer Sig Sauer, provided
me with technical support and hands-on training with their product line.

My agent, Mr. John Talbot, and editor, Mr. Tom Colgan, have allowed me to continue
this awe-inspiring journey as a writer, and I’m thrilled that our teamwork has once
more resulted in another rewarding project.

Last but not least, my wife, Nancy, and two lovely daughters, Lauren and Kendall,
serve as my ultimate inspiration and most loyal fans, keeping me motivated and freshly
stocked with peanut butter and coffee (writer fuel).

1

BOLIVIA’S
North Yungas Road is known by the locals as El Camino de la Muerte, the Road of Death.
It was constructed by Paraguayan prisoners of war back in the 1930s and is one of
just a few routes through the mountainous rainforest that connects the country’s seat
of government, La Paz, with the northern regions some sixty-nine kilometers away.
The road is barely wide enough for two cars abreast, with dozens of sheer vertical
drop-offs lacking any form of guardrails. There is no margin for error. When it rains,
rocks and earth grow loose from the towering hillsides above and tumble down along
the switchbacks. As drivers round a hairpin turn, they’re confronted by a mudslide
or a wall of crumbling boulders that forces them off the ledge to plummet more than
six hundred meters to the valley below, where the Coroico River rushes to join the
Amazon. Even when nothing blocks the mostly unpaved path, dense fog often descends
along the vine-covered cliffs, reducing visibility to zero. Numerous crosses and stone
cairns mark the locations where, for two to three hundred loved ones each year, the
journey ended and they became part of North Yungas’s dark legend. Though some say
it’s cursed, clutched forever in the hands of the Devil, others have simply declared
it the world’s most dangerous road.

Sam Fisher knew all about North Yungas, and he knew the man he was chasing had deliberately
led him up there to turn him into another statistic. The son of a bitch had no idea
that he’d awakened America’s newest and most formidable beast, a blacker-than-black
special ops and counterterrorism unit known as Fourth Echelon, commanded by Fisher
and free to sink its sharpened talons into men like him. Free to do whatever it took
with impunity.

Fisher squeezed the stolen motorcycle’s clutch lever, geared up, and accelerated.
He gritted his teeth and cut hard around the next bend, the old Yamaha fishtailing
and sending a bolt of anxiety up his spine. As he came out of the turn, the bike’s
rusting fenders rattled, and the faded sticker of Jesus affixed to the gas tank began
peeling back. At once the headlight flickered through the gloom and heavy rain, and
he found his prey just a few meters ahead, rooster tails of mud rising from the man’s
own bike. Fisher was out of gears, wailing now at full throttle.

The man known to intelligence sources as Hamed Rahmani, and with the known alias of
Abu Jafar Harawi, saw something ahead and cut his wheel sharply, weaving around two
pieces of rock appropriately shaped like coffins, one lying across the other. Fisher
did likewise, his shoulder brushing along the wet stone. The bike’s engine began to
cough and sputter as they climbed toward nearly five kilometers above sea level. They
sped by a wider section used for passing, then crossed onto a single-lane stretch
running along at least a kilometer of cliffs whose ledges sent streams of water into
the darkness.

Fisher’s arms tensed, his triceps already sore from keeping a white-knuckled grip
on the handlebars. He shifted gears again as Rahmani whipped around the next bend
and vanished momentarily, only to reappear—his headlight sweeping along the wall to
his right.

Seeing that Rahmani was widening the gap, Fisher leaned into the bike and accelerated,
tucking in his elbows, trying to make himself a little more aerodynamic to bleed every
bit of speed out of the machine.

Suddenly, he was thrown to the right, the front wheel having connected with a piece
of rock that served as a ramp, and as both wheels left the road, he thought the chase
was over and that he should’ve stopped like most locals did to pour libations of beer
into the earth and ask the goddess Pachamama for safe passage—because in three seconds
it might all end here.

As both tires slammed back onto the dirt, the impact reverberating up his spine, he
gasped and recovered control, cutting the wheel to the left to avoid another section
of larger gravel and by necessity taking the bike to within a tire’s width of the
ledge. He groaned and leaned to his right, guiding the motorcycle past the gravel,
then back, closer to the wall. Yes, he’d earned himself a breath now.

What little he could see of the next ravine gave him pause, and he thought of the
gear pack he’d left in La Paz, bulging with the rest of his weapons, along with his
surveillance and comm equipment. He’d gone into the bar completely undercover, plainclothes.
Somehow, someway, the bastard had been tipped off and had bolted. There’d been no
time, no opportunity to get on Rahmani’s wheel armed for bear. For the time being
it was just the two of them, mano a mano, motorcycle to motorcycle. Fisher’s custom
FN Five-seveN semiautomatic pistol with integrated suppressor was tucked into a concealed
holster at his hip, and he had to assume that Rahmani was packing at least one or
more small arms.

Fisher checked the fuel gauge: about half a tank. If he couldn’t overtake Rahmani,
then maybe the thug would run out of gas first. Or maybe Fisher would. There was no
way to tell, so . . . he would
have
to catch up and take this man alive. Rahmani was an army major and intel officer
with MOIS, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security. That alone made him valuable.
However, he liked to moonlight as a thief who along with a select group of friends
had gotten their hands on one hundred pounds of highly enriched uranium, or HEU, from
Mayak, one of the largest nuclear facilities in the Russian Federation. After the
theft he’d been spotted in Baghdad, then had vanished for a while until he popped
up in Bolivia with some drug smuggling associates. He’d thought he was safe. Of course,
he had no idea who he was dealing with now.

Blinking wind and water from his eyes, Fisher riveted his gaze on that dim light ahead,
trying to follow Rahmani’s trail in the mud, letting him have the more difficult job
of picking the lines through, around, and across the debris washing onto the roadway.

After a relatively lazy turn to the right, with a curtain of vines extending three
meters from the cliff wall to provide a few seconds of solace from the rain, Fisher’s
jaw dropped, and a curse burst from his lips.

A refrigerated shipping truck blocked most of the road. There was only a half-meter-wide
track to the left of the vehicle, running along the broken ledge. The driver had,
as many did, pulled over and parked to wait out the storm, fearful that the road ahead
might be too dangerous and he’d have better judgment in the morning. These assumptions
were borne out as the obese driver, a ball cap perched on his head, leaned out from
his cab and shouted in Spanish for Fisher to stop and seek cover.

But there, off to the left, was Rahmani, one hand on his handlebars, the other sliding
along the truck’s side for balance as he finally reached the front bumper, gunned
his engine, and was off again.

As Fisher slowed and carefully—breathlessly—guided his motorcycle around the back
of the truck, coming alongside it, he reminded himself to keep his gaze on where he
wanted to go. Don’t look down. Damn, the temptation was too great, and as he coasted
forward, he flicked his glance to the left. Through chutes of rain and the swirling
gloom, he saw how the edge of the cliff was just a hairsbreadth away and dropped off
into nothingness. Just then, his front tire shoved through some loose rocks that tumbled
over the side. Fisher’s heart was squarely in his throat.

Rahmani’s engine whined as he once again raced along the wall, creating a sizable
gap. Tensing, Fisher pushed off the truck, reached the front bumper, then geared up
and took off, popping a small and unintended wheelie as he did so. They were nearing
La Cumbre Pass, the highest point along the road, which was followed by a breakneck
descent all the way to Coroico.

After a final push at full throttle that brought Fisher within an estimated fifty
meters of Rahmani, the road veered left, then pitched forward, and abruptly they were
barreling toward the next set of hairpin turns.

Wanting to check his speed but fearful of averting his gaze for even a second, Fisher
clutched the handlebars a little tighter but maintained speed. A pile of rocks off
to his left sent him hard toward the wall once more, but he’d gone too far and was
heading for the rock when he turned back and overcorrected. He was about to lose control
but jerked once more and came out of the turn while dragging one boot along the ground.

Rahmani was weaving around the debris like a professional stuntman, his long black
hair flailing in the wind. They dropped farther, swinging around as though on a roulette
wheel until the road straightened out. Fisher thought he’d have a moment to speed
up, but from a series of ledges above came torrents of heavy rain blasting down like
a half dozen fire hoses running wide open.

Fisher wove around the first two columns of water, but the next one was falling far
too close to the wall, driving him back to the outside and along the ledge once more.
Here the ground was much more unstable; his back wheel felt mushy, and rocks tumbled
into the ravine behind him. As he cleared the gauntlet, he swore aloud—because another
lay before him:

A pair of waterfalls about three meters apart were raging down the cliff now, washing
hard over the road and eating hungrily at the ledge. Rahmani, that suicidal maniac,
muscled his bike right through the flow, getting kicked off to the side and nearly
washed over before he slammed his wheel to the right and managed at the very last
second to leap free with a high-pitched whine of his engine and sputter from his tires.

With a renewed resolve and drawing on a long career of taking risks that would leave
most men weak-kneed and clutching their throats, Fisher rolled his wrist and blasted
into the waterfall at top speed, assuring himself that his forward momentum was a
greater force than the water but realizing at the last second that his assurances
were bullshit. If he didn’t steer for the wall, he was dead.

For the span of three full heartbeats, he saw only the water, haloed in gloom and
washing over him, until abruptly he broke free, smiled—and the bike slid out from
beneath him. That he got his foot down before dumping was a small miracle, and he
was able to kick up and right himself—just as his handlebar began dragging along the
wall, a few sparks flickering. He leaned into his next turn and reached a stretch
of more level ground.

Rahmani was far below now, having already negotiated the next hairpin, his headlight
like a firefly, tiny against the colossal skyscrapers of rock.

But just ahead of him, lumbering downhill like a tortoise, was another pair of lights,
and for just a moment the vehicle’s silhouette appeared: a sedan, probably a taxi,
whose driver was either carrying a very high-paying fare or was desperate to get home
despite the weather. At any rate, that driver was suddenly Fisher’s best buddy. If
the road remained as narrow as it presently was, Rahmani would either lose time trying
to pass the taxi or find himself stuck behind it—with Fisher roaring up behind him.

Riding a new rush of adrenaline, Fisher set about taking the hairpin turn as swiftly
and violently as he could, letting his left foot drag as he flung himself into the
curve, wishing he had a dedicated race bike so he could brush his knee along the mud.
He spun out again, nearly lost it, then drifted his way to a straight course and began
sewing up the gap.

One of the road’s few surviving signs—most of them had been struck by drivers and
flattened or smashed off the cliff—indicated another sharp turn ahead. Fisher took
a deep breath and held it. Bringing himself as close to the wall as he dared and locking
his gaze on his headlight’s meager beam, he soared around the turn, losing a bit of
traction before easing up and letting the bike guide him into the corner. The old
Yamaha was a true piece of crap, but she was growing on him now, his gear shifts a
little more intuitive, the sounds of the motor communicating speed much more clearly.

Rahmani drew up fast on the taxi, and a second glance there showed he was trapped
behind it. Fisher gritted his teeth and remained tight to the wall, his speed nearly
twice that of Rahmani’s. The cabdriver had to be confronting his own mortality, and
for a moment, Rahmani looked back, his face cast in the pallid glow of Fisher’s light.
His eyes bugged out as he realized he’d failed to lose Fisher and was seconds away
from being caught.

A faint thrumming of rotors sent Fisher’s gaze skyward. Then another sound erupted,
a large diesel engine, an engine much louder than the taxi’s.

They were nearing another sharp turn to the right, and abruptly it was there: an old
Volvo F6 delivery truck from the 1970s, its daredevil of a driver taking up the entire
road and rumbling head-on toward the taxi.

The truck driver locked up his brakes, as did the cabdriver, but their tires had little
traction across the sheets of rain and mud.

“Sam, we’re back online, target locked on with FLIR, and Briggs is inbound,” came
a familiar voice through the nickel-sized subdermal embedded behind his ear.

Fisher wasn’t wearing the subvocal transceiver, or SVT, patch on his throat, so he
couldn’t respond, but that hardly mattered.

The truck and taxi collided in a thundering, screeching explosion of twisting metal
and fiberglass and shattering glass that stole his breath and sent debris hurtling
toward him.

The taxi’s front end crushed as though it were made of papier-mâché, and the truck
kept coming, plowing the taxi back with the front wheels rising off the dirt.

Rahmani had no time to react. He screamed and struck the sedan’s rear bumper. His
front wheel folded like a taco as the bike slid sideways, and in the next second he
caromed off the rear window and vanished beneath the vehicle—

Into the meat grinder.

The squealing and gurgling and crunching of metal grew to a crescendo as Fisher cursed
and steered for the barest of openings on the left side, trying to skirt around the
bulldozing truck. He swore again because the taxicab with Rahmani beneath began sliding
toward the ledge, cutting him off. He crashed into the taxi and flew headfirst over
the handlebars, went tumbling across the cab’s trunk, and then the force of the Volvo’s
momentum sent him rolling off the side of the sedan.