Anyway, he wasn’t looking to blow stuff up. A bullet in the engine block of a generator or the radiator of a jeep would do the job nicely. If they could find one of those missile launch sites, he was pretty sure they would be connected to radar antennas or computers. A few .300 magnum rounds into one of those would probably mess it right up.
But an ammo dump? Maybe he should be thinking about blowing stuff up. He watched the men below at work for a few minutes more.
“Would they cover the roof in sandbags too?” Perri said, thinking out loud.
“Sure,” Dave replied. “What’s the point of protecting the sides if you don’t protect the top? You could drop a bomb right through the roof.”
“I don’t think the sandbags are meant to stop a bomb,” Perri said. “I think the sandbags are just in case there is an accident. So the whole town doesn’t go up if some dumb ass throws a cigarette on top of a crate of explosives.”
“Oh yeah. Then probably you don’t want to sandbag the roof. You got to have somewhere for the explosion to go, so you probably want it to go up, not out the sides.”
“Exactly what I’m thinking man,” Perri said. “And we can get a nice angle on the roof of that carport if we move back up about fifty yards, wouldn’t you say?”
Dave looked behind them to where the bluff rose up dramatically, “For sure.”
Perri rolled onto his back, looking up at the young boy sitting beside him, “That’s enough for today,” he said. “I want to get back to the tank and check that ammo we took from the general store. I’m hoping there’s some steel tips there to get me through the aluminum roof of that carport. And I have to clean the barrel.”
“When are we coming back?” Dave asked.
“Later tonight,” Perri said. “While most of the bad guys are asleep.”
“I knew you’d say that,” Dave said glumly.
TETE A TETE
It was neutral territory. An unprepossessing single-story building at 9 Prechistensky Lane in the Khamovniki District, with a peeling yellow painted facade, white trim around the doors and windows, and a small Danish flag hanging over the doorway.
“This is the place ma’am,” Ambassador McCarthy’s aide announced, as her security detail stepped out of their cars and took position on the deserted street. It was five in the morning, and they had gone to great pains to be sure there were no media or Russian FSB security service goons tailing them. Devlin had been ordered by her Secretary of State to deliver a message to the Kremlin, just in case they hadn’t got the message from the President’s phone call to the Russian President, or the multiple other channels through which the US was screaming in outrage at the Russians.
Devlin looked dubiously out the window at the modest building, “Have I been here before?”
“Yes ma’am,” her senior aide, Brent Harrison said. “Six months ago; dinner with Frederik, King of Denmark and his wife, Princess Mary.” The man had a memory for every engagement, and had memorized just about every street in the city too, so if he said she had been here, she must have.
She gathered up her things, “It seemed bigger at night.”
She was met at the door by her junior aide, Lucy Sellano, who had come out earlier to ensure arrangements were in place. “Foreign Minister Kelnikov is here ma’am. He had a military attaché with him — there was some confusion about who should be present for your discussion.”
“I hope you told them it was a four-eyes meeting,” she said. She wanted to be able to speak frankly to Kelnikov, even though he would assume the conversation was being recorded. They had both agreed on the venue, but that didn’t mean Kelnikov trusted the Danes not to eavesdrop. It was Devlin’s experience that Kelnikov trusted no one.
“Yes ma’am,” Sellano said, a wispy brown strand of hair across her forehead bobbing up and down. As they turned a corner they nearly walked into a large, square-shouldered man in his fifties, with thin blonde hair and round-rimmed glasses. He held out his hand. “Ah, Ambassador Vestergaard, ma’am,” Sellano said. “I think you know each other?”
“A pleasure to welcome you to our humble abode again Devlin,” the Danish Ambassador said warmly. “But under less convivial circumstances than last.”
“Yes, sorry about the intrusion Jørgen,” she replied. “I hope it wasn’t too inconvenient.”
He smiled, “I have told the staff there is a security sweep being conducted this morning and they are not to arrive until eight. I myself have a breakfast appointment,” he said, and indicated the empty corridor with a sweep of his hand. “Mit hus er dit hus,” he said. “The place is yours. Your guest awaits.” With that, he bowed slightly and left them alone in the corridor.
“So, their military attaché is…”
“Sitting with the Russian security detachment in the kitchen having coffee,” Sellano said. “We’ll join them…” she stopped and opened the door to another corridor. “When you are ready to come out, just text me; the arrangement is that we will leave first.” She looked at her watch. “We have plenty of time. The Danish embassy staff won’t be here for another two hours at least.”
“Good,” Devlin said, handing the woman her coat. As she did, Harrison handed her a file, and she looked at it. Printed across the top of the folder in letters almost big enough to be visible from space if she stepped outside with it was the title ‘OPERATION LOSOS’. She was going to make sure Kelnikov could see it clearly too. It was an unsubtle message to the Russian Foreign Minister that US Intelligence was not blind to the Russian plan to take over Saint Lawrence as a permanent maritime base. She opened the cover… okay, it was a pretty thin file, but Kelnikov didn’t need to know that.
“You talked to the analyst?” she asked Harrison as they walked. “Williams?”
“Carl Williams, yes,” Harrison said, pointing to the NSA designator on the first page. He smiled, “CIA head of station wasn’t very happy about us going straight to ‘the Ambassador’s new pet’ as they describe him…”
“Then he should try giving me more than open source wire reports I could just as easily get from one of the TV news networks,” Devlin said.
“Right… well, most of what Williams pulled together is signals intel, plus some human source stuff from CIA, but not much. He said he figured due to the situation you wouldn’t give him enough time to task any of our assets for primary intel collection, and you’d want something you could hang over Kelnikov’s head, so he directed his NSA crypto-bots to focus on trying to identify at least the code name for the Russian operation.” Harrison’s finger was resting on what looked like a Russian GRU military intelligence bureau memo, with the code word LOSOS marked clearly across the top. Devlin’s rudimentary Russian wasn’t good enough for her to be able to read it, and she didn’t even know if it was real. “He figured if we had the code name, the Russians might assume we had it all.”
“Smart guy,” Devlin said. “I like how he thinks. At worst, they’ll wonder how much we know, at best, they’ll assume we know it all and might have to modify their plans on that assumption.”
“Good luck ma’am,” Harrison said, stepping aside so her security detail could get past him into the waiting room.
“It’s the red door at the end of the corridor ma’am,” Sellano said, pointing.