“You’ve said that before.”
“They’re updating, tovarisch. The weather is a problem.”
That was for certain. Monitoring the progress of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team was maddeningly slow work. “They’ll need a couple hours to get in place in this snow. We should have time.”
“What are they using for intel support?”
The boy took another sip of his Coca-Cola, glancing at the image of the polar bear on the glass bottle. “A KH-13 spy satellite — equipped with thermal imaging.”
Yuri swore, his eyes fixed on Korsakov’s face. “They’ll see us the moment we go in.”
Viktor held up a finger, a smile dancing in his eyes. “Unless…”
“Unless what, Viktor?” Korsakov demanded. It was clear that the boy was enjoying himself, but time was critical. No time for games.
“The spy sat will come in range in the next hour. Three hours over target. Then, gone.”
Yuri shook his head. “No good. They could launch the assault any time within the window — we have to be on that mountain.”
“Nichevo,” Viktor replied. It was his moment of triumph. “It won’t matter if their network is blinded by a worm.”
“You can do this?” Korsakov could have laughed.
A smile. “Da.”
He wasn’t cut out for field work. That much Ron Carter knew. If he’d ever held any romantic delusions of the spy business, they were evaporating as the grass of the National Mall crunched beneath his feet.
It was a deuce of a place for a covert meeting. If he had to have guessed, Thomas had picked the spot. The New Yorker had always had a regrettable flair for the dramatic.
On any normal night, the mall would have been filled with tourists, enjoying the sight of D.C. after dark. It was deserted now.
A lone security guard walked past, pushing his bike over the icy grass. He didn’t give Carter a second glance.
On a bench near the WWII memorial, Carter found the signal, a vertical line of yellow chalk against the wood. What was this, the Cold War?
He brushed the dusting of snow off the bench and sat down, easing the strap of the laptop case off his shoulder.
The HP booted up quickly and he went to work, preparing.
The sound of footsteps — someone moving off to his left and Ron glanced up, his fingers trembling. Was every moment in the field like this?
It was nothing, just a drunk moving up the pathway — his swaying form backlit by the lights of the Memorial. As Carter watched, the wino tilted a small bottle of vodka back and emptied it in a single draught.
Ron shook his head, turning back to his laptop. He found himself wondering if the drunk would survive the night.
Singing, as the man wavered closer — an off-key rendition of a rap song. He was about to pass the bench when he turned suddenly, placing a hand on Carter’s knee. “How’s it goin’?”
Thomas’s voice. Ron nearly came out of his skin. “Don’t do that to me!” he exclaimed, punctuating his words with a curse. A flair for the dramatic. Yeah, right.
Thomas collapsed onto the bench beside him, laughing. “I thought that was one of my better impressions. Had enough practice.”
“Could we get down to business?” Tex materialized out of the darkness from the opposite direction.
Carter nodded. It was going to take hours for his heart rate to go back down. He inserted his thumb drive into the USB port of the laptop and brought up a picture. “Can you tell me who this is?”
Tex took a seat. “It looks like Harry sitting there with his back to the camera — the other man’s Sammy Han.”
“Yeah, I know, those are obvious,” Carter replied. “Look at the woman sitting at the other table. I had to digitally enhance her face.”
He heard Thomas’s sharp intake of breath, and knew that he was right. “That’s Rhoda Stevens — when was this shot taken?”
“January of 2013. Over eight months after I attended her funeral.”
“With any luck, we should be able to take out roughly half of the assault team at the entry point,” Han observed, looking up from his work. He finished taping the last packet of C-4 to the frame of the door and tested the knob. Locked. Reaching up, he unfastened the heavy deadbolt. It was going to stay that way. A strong kick would send the door crashing inward — and detonate the explosives. “Any idea of Korsakov’s actual strength?”
Harry shook his head.
“Oh, joy,” the SEAL murmured. “At least tell me you have an estimate.”
“Judging from his previous ops, I’d say he brought 10–15 men into the country. Two of them are dead. You do the math.”
“We can figure on at least three-quarters of them assaulting the house — probably Korsakov himself will hold back to provide command and control — a few snipers in the treeline.” Han gestured from the wired door and windows down the long corridor that led to the bunker. “We’ve got the two Claymores in the corridor — they should take out more of the assaulters if we camouflage them well enough. Any survivors? They’ll be caught between you and I when they enter the bunker — enfilading fields of fire. No chance to react. No quarter.”
The former SEAL paused as the reality of his own words washed over him. His body shuddered and he leaned against the doorframe. “I don’t know if I can do this, Harry. You give two decades of your life to your country and what do you get out of it? A broken marriage — a wife that hangs up every time you call. Two little boys that don’t even remember they once called you ‘daddy’. Visions of the men you’ve killed haunting you at night. It doesn’t matter how much they deserved to die — you don’t remember that when they visit you in your dreams. I don’t need any new ghosts.”
Harry looked up from wiring the Claymore mines. Linked together, they would spray the passageway with ball bearings, eviscerating anything in their path. “I know, Sammy.”
“I know you do — you think I’d bother telling someone who didn’t understand?” Han walked over and put his hand on Harry’s shoulder. “We were brothers once, you and I — and I would give my life for yours. I’m not going to desert you now. But I will remember your role in bringing this day to pass.”
There was a quiet threat there in his old friend’s eyes, but Harry just nodded. “I can live with that.”
“Good,” Han replied, turning away after a long moment. “Because I’m not sure I can…”
Getting a tight perimeter in place was always a challenge — toss in the darkness, the blinding snow, the vagaries of the West Virginian mountains, and it was turning into a full-fledged nightmare.
Caruso dug a gloved hand from the depths of his pocket and reached out, opening the door of the mobile trailer that served as the HRT’s Tactical Operations Center, or TOC, in the community parlance. The trailer was parked crossways on the narrow road, in itself forming an effective roadblock against anyone who sought egress from the mountain.
Marika was already inside, working over the computers with one of the members of the support team.
“Do we have the perimeter in place?”
She looked up. “Take it easy, Vic — just because you’re good at groping about in the darkness doesn’t mean we all are. We just got satellite support fifteen minutes ago — Petersen nearly went over a cliff before she saw it was there. Thank God for technology.”
Leah Petersen was the HRT’s lead sniper. “Where’s Jicha?”