“Then do we get to string him up by his ankles?” Hansen asked.
Fisher cocked a brow. “Something like that.”
They were all awake by 7:00 A.M. and gorged themselves at the hotel’s breakfast buffet. Fisher reminded them that this would be their last decent meal for a long while. The Russian pastries were heavenly, though the eggs were watery and the bread slightly stale. Hansen pigged out to the point that he regretted it.
By 8:00 A.M. they had split up and gone on their separate hunting/gathering missions. Ames and Hansen found a military surplus store that specialized in selling old gear to hunters in the area. They loaded up on everything they’d need, though a lot of the gear had to be double-checked for age and damage. They tried to ignore the smell.
Noboru called his old contact in Bratsk, who set up a meeting with his best friend, a bald, heavily tattooed man named Pavel, who lived on the outskirts of the city in what appeared to be an old farmhouse. Noboru was led into a basement unlike anything he’d ever seen: nearly two thousand square feet of nothing but ordnance, a veritable department store of destruction, with rows of heavy metal shelving stretching off into the shadows and lightbulbs strung loosely from the old wooden beams. He could almost hear the assistant manager on the intercom:
“Attention, shoppers, we have a two-for-one sale going on! By one fragmentation grenade, get the second absolutely free! That’s right, shoppers! And we also have Semtex plastic explosives and detonators. Stock up now for those weekends when you know you’re going to blow the hell out of the neighborhood!”
“What do you need?” Pavel asked in a thick Russian accent. “I have… everything.”
Noboru beamed.
Once he’d arranged automatic payment to Pavel via Third Echelon, Noboru stocked up, drove back to the hotel, and met up with Fisher. He handed over a list of what he’d procured, beginning with several fun items:
4 Groza OTs-14-4A-03 assault rifles
2 SVU OC-AS-03 sniper rifles
6 × 600 PSS Silent Pistols with armor-piercing ammo
The Groza was a sweet little toy — a noise-suppressed assault rifle with a short barrel for sweeping around corners in urban combat; the SVU rifles were improved versions of the classic Russian SVD Dragunov sniper rifle; and the PSS pistols were designed for special- forces ops and featured a unique cartridge with an internal piston, making them some of the quietest handguns in the world.
Fisher glanced up at him, aghast. “These are Spetsnaz weapons, current issue.”
“Yep.” Noboru cracked a grin that said: Don’t ask.
The rest of the list contained items like fragmentation, smoke, and stun grenades, along with some spotting scopes, night-vision headsets, binoculars, gas masks, and the requisite Semtex plastic explosives, along with pouching and web gear for packing all that firepower.
Noboru watched as Fisher’s gaze fell on an item that Noboru knew would give the man pause.
Fisher looked up, an expression of awe washing over his face. “An ARWEN,” he said with a slight gasp. “You got an ARWEN.”
“My guy had one. Wanted twenty thousand for it. I talked him down to eight.” Noboru had saved 3E a few bucks. Call him a frugal hero.
ARWEN stood for Anti-Riot Weapon, Enfield, and the ARWEN 37 was a five-shot SAS weapon developed in the sixties as a less-than-lethal alternative to anything they faced ahead. The launcher could fire Impact Baton, tear-gas, smoke, and Barricade Penetrating rounds, among others. It was perfect for creating diversions to expedite escape.
“Good work,” Fisher said.
He went on to describe a special project he needed accomplished: He wanted Noboru to convert a pair of paintball guns so they could launch the Ajax grenade darts Fisher had smuggled into Russia via the shaving cream cans.
“I’m going to need tools,” Noboru said.
Fisher pointed to a shopping bag sitting before a chest of drawers. “Get started. Call if you need anything. I’m going to check on the others. We leave in an hour.”
As the man headed out, Noboru rifled through the bag and saw that Fisher had purchased just the tools he needed. Now it was time to get creative. Noboru gathered all the materials on the bed, stared at them for a moment, then got to work.
38
Qaderi had started moving again and was presently a hundred miles north of the Rytaya River estuary, about two hundred miles ahead of the team.
They loaded the SUVs with the gear Hansen and Ames had bought, as well as the electronic equipment Gillespie and Valentina had found in a few local shops. And they bolted off in the afternoon, the moment they got word, and were now working their way through blowing snow along the western bank of Lake Baikal — and the twelve hundred miles of shoreline that twists and turns along its four-hundred-mile length. The lake’s massive proportions were dwarfed, however, by its depth: almost a mile, making it the deepest freshwater lake in the world. When Hansen gazed out across it, he could not see the opposite shoreline through all the wind and snow.
The road was narrow, snow-and-ice covered, and Fisher didn’t dare push past fifty miles per hour, so it was generally slow going.
From the backseat, Ames announced that is was nearly 5:00 P.M. and the sun was beginning to set. “What’s the plan?”
“Depends on our target,” Fisher answered. “If he keeps going, so do we.”
Hansen agreed and asked Ames if he had a problem with that.
“Not really,” said the man, crossing his legs. “But can we take a bathroom break?”
Hansen snorted. “Hold it.”
Their target finally paused at 7:00 P.M., about twelve miles from the lake’s northern tip, in a town of twenty-seven thousand called Severobaikalsk. With nightfall came even heavier winds and snow, and Hansen, serving as navigator and sifting through satellite intel from Grim, led Fisher toward a shantytown of hunting huts on Cape Kotel’nikovskiy. The town was no more than a dozen or so thick-canvas yurt-style tents, circular structures with cone-shaped roofs.
Fisher explained to the pestering Ames that the roads were icing up and that most of the path for the next fifty miles was a single lane running along the cliffs above the lake. They could easily slide off the road, and that would be that. Moreover, their target had stopped for the same reason: weather. Ames argued that he could have reached the auction site. Fisher said that maybe he had, but others were coming and they, too, would be delayed, so they would make the best of it until the front passed. They hauled their gear into the most secure-looking hut, where they found eight wooden bunks with thin straw mattresses organized in a circle around a potbellied stove. After they’d fired up a pair of kerosene lanterns hanging from the crossbeam, Hansen spotted a sign, handwritten in Cyrillic, on one of the posts: Honor system. If you stay here, leave something: money, supplies, etc. Together Siberia is home; separate, a hell.
Ames said he was going to leave them something, all right, and headed back outside toward the outhouse.
Fisher looked at Hansen and cocked a brow.
Noboru got the high sign from Fisher and went outside to help him carry in some more gear. Fisher asked about their little project, and Noboru reassured him that he felt good about the modified paintball guns and estimated a 90 percent chance of their operating correctly. Noboru said he wasn’t comfortable keeping their plan a secret from the rest of the team, as Fisher had instructed him to do, but Fisher assured him that all would be revealed in time.