“Vazquez!” shouted the chief.
“Yes chief?” A young officer rushed to the chief’s side.
“Get our savior here some clean clothes.” The word 'savior’ was heavy with sarcasm. “And best get the doc to arrange a few shots, God alone knows what he could have caught in there!”
With that reassuring endorsement, it was clear Sean was not going anywhere until the Governor had been.
“How long until he arrives?” asked Sean checking his watch, 3.15 a.m.. He had pretty much been on the go since leaving Afghanistan some 30 hours earlier.
Vazquez checked his watch before answering. “It’s over two hours by chopper from Austin, so at the very earliest, six a.m. But I would say nearer 6.30 a.m.”
“Do you have a shower here?” asked Sean looking around the border guards’ complex.
Ten minutes and a refreshing shower later, Sean was dressed and asleep, awaiting the arrival of Governor Rick Brown. It would be one of the most defining moments of Sean’s life and were he ever given the chance to relive it, he would vote categorically no!
Chapter 38
Katarina Guiterez was a rare Latino mix, thanks to the stationing of her Russian mother in Cuba. An intelligence officer with the GRU, she had met and fallen for Katarina’s father while working with Castro’s close advisors. Katarina, as a result, had inherited her mother’s blonde hair and blue eyes while her bronze skin struggled to hide her father’s Latin heritage. She was in any language stunning. She had the body build of an Olympic athlete and the grace of a princess and these, added to her beauty, ensured that pretty much anybody exposed to her was instantly captivated by her, male or female.
Her mother and father had fled to the US as a result of their union being frowned upon by their superiors. Their defection went unnoticed as neither held any real position of importance, power or information. New names were assigned and after a brief period of interrogation which uncovered exactly zero intelligence of any use for the US government, they were allowed to integrate into US society. A few years after the defection, the Berlin wall came down and as far as the US government was concerned, the history of the two defectors all but vanished. With a couple more name changes and the addition of Katerina, it would be almost impossible for the family to be traced back to their very un-American roots.
Katerina had long since changed her name to an American one. In fact, she herself had never once been called Katerina but deep down that was her name. Raised as an all-American girl, she had done it all and been accepted by everyone. Of course in a country where beauty was everything, this was no great issue for Katerina. Her mother had trained her well and before long, Katerina was using her womanly wiles to ensure she achieved what she wanted or needed. To her, sex was merely a means to an end. Her mother had been trained as a honey trap and it was only on meeting Katerina’s father that her role changed. Although in reality, meeting Katerina’s father and defecting were exactly the assignment she had been given. The love had come later, not that Katerina’s father ever knew that he had been used as a pawn in the GRU’s grand plan. His untimely death avoided him knowing about the plans in place for his daughter. Plans which, were he alive, he would never have approved or allowed. The untimely death itself was somewhat timely in Katerina’s mother’s eyes, or somewhat precisely timed to be more accurate.
Katerina had quite literally screwed her way to where she was. Men, women, straight, lesbian, it didn’t matter, whatever she required to do for her mother country she would do. Her mother had taught her the intricacies of pleasing her lovers, whether they be male or female, taping her exploits and analyzing them with her, pointing out areas to improve on her next conquest. Of which there were many.
Her beauty and overt sexuality ensured that whatever she wanted she got, whether it be information, jobs, promotions. Whatever Katerina wanted, Katerina could have. Her education matched her sexual ability, top of the class. She could have been a model on the front cover of every magazine in the land, a corporate executive earning millions, the world was her oyster. In fact, such was the training her mother had given her, she could even be the first lady.
Katerina re-read the message again on the cellphone that had been fedexed to her over a month ago. The instructions for delivery had been clear, only the addressee could sign for the package. Katerina had produced her American ID and ignoring the English language instruction manual that looked like any other new phone’s instructions, decoded the German. The message had arrived that morning; a rather innocuous text message inviting her to apply for a bank loan. On entering a special code, the true message came to life. Surkov had commenced the final stages of his plan. A generation in the making and Katerina had a major part to play.
Chapter 39
Major Andre Pushkin hit the dial button on an exact replica to the cellphone that Katerina had and was instantly connected to General Borodin. The state of the art handset piggybacked onto the Russian Glonass Satellite Navigation system and as such bypassed all American technology in favor of Russia’s own.
“Major, you received my message?” asked the General, no need for preamble.
“Yes Sir, General.”
“You understand the importance of your mission?”
“Of course, General!’
“Where are you now?”
“We are securing the property’s boundary and ascertaining the location of the target.”
“Is he not there?”
“It appears not, we have two heat sources on our infra red, one too small and the other has recently arrived and was not the target. We are assuming the wife and another unidentified male.”
“The child?”
“No heat source suggests a child is on site, General… wait a second, General…”
Major Pushkin listened to his number two report the news picked up by their radio operator.
“I’m sorry General we have reports coming through of a CIA assassin in the area having just competed a mission nearby. Our target perhaps.”
General Borodin almost choked on his vodka as the Major relayed the information.
“Sorry,” he spluttered. “You are picking up a radio broadcast of a CIA operation?”
“Sorry, we are not picking up a CIA broadcast, General. It is a local news channel reporting the information,” clarified Pushkin.
“Vasiliy get in here!” shouted Borodin for the world to hear.
“Pushkin, I’ll call you back!” informed the General before killing the connection.
Vasiliy rushed to his General’s command and stood ready for whatever he needed.
“I’ve just heard that the local news station is reporting a CIA assassin’s involvement in Laredo. I actually thought for a moment we were able to listen to encrypted CIA broadcasts but that’s another matter,” he digressed before coming back on subject. “ Find out what is happening!” he ordered.
“Of course, General.”
Captain John Kenny had been monitoring and analyzing the Glonass system pretty much since its reinstatement by President Putin as a top priority for modern Russia. The original system had caused great concern at the time of its inception in the late 70s and had been a fairly major priority for NSA at that time. Rooms of data on the structure and capability of Russia’s own network of Global Positioning Satellites had been filled many times over. However, with the fall of the wall and the downturn in the Russian economy in the 90s, it fell into disrepair. Putin’s reinvestment lifted some eyebrows within the NSA but nothing like the interest generated in the cold war era.