Zack swore, slipped, fell face forward, and Vatz seized his arm and dragged him up. They trudged forward, out of the puddle, toward where flashlights — three to be exact — shone across the street from an alley that divided another two factory buildings in half.
Vatz tipped his head in that direction, and they sprinted off, able to reach the wall near the alley before the Spetsnaz troops emerged.
There they paused, and in the seconds it took to catch his breath, Vatz tapped his GPS, zooming in on his location to see if they should circle around the alley and come in from the back side or simply try a frontal approach.
A man’s voice, low and heavily burred, echoed off the walls. The Russians were right there.
Zack’s expression grew emphatic with the need for orders.
Vatz motioned Zack to crouch down, then whispered into his mike: “I got the first one.”
“Okay.”
The soldier reached the end of the alley, and Vatz already had his BlackHawk Caracara knife in hand, a black talon of steel that would cut silently and effortlessly through flesh.
The soldier came forward, waving his light—
Vatz sprang on him, drawing his blade across the soldier’s neck in one fluid motion while cupping his hand over the man’s mouth.
Even as the blood gushed from the Russian’s severed carotid artery, Vatz gave the soldier a second punch — the kill shot to the spinal cord. He grew limp and crumpled.
One of the troops called out to his buddy.
Zack’s eyes could not grow any wider.
Vatz nodded, and Zack whirled forward, into the alley, just as the second soldier drew near—
Yet even as Zack fired point-blank into the man’s head, the third and final soldier fired before Vatz could.
It all happened so fast that Vatz wasn’t sure what had happened until…
The two Spetsnaz soldiers collapsed to the puddles.
Followed by Zack.
“Aw, no…”
A hollow pang struck Vatz as he rushed to his friend, dropped to his knees, eyes already burning.
Zach had taken a round to the head. He was already gone.
Vatz froze. In shock. No time now. Just nothing. Emptiness. And suddenly, he thought of the day he and Zack had been sitting in the barracks and had heard the news about the nukes going off in Saudi Arabia and Iran, destroying both countries. People always asked: where were you on the day the nukes went off?>
I was with my buddy Zack.
Vatz reached out, wanting to touch the man’s cheek, when the captain’s voice boomed in his ear: “Vortex, this is Victor Six. We’re nearing the pickup zone, taking heavy fire, over!”
Vatz just breathed.
“Vortex, this is Victor Six, over!”
“Uh, Victor Six, this is Vortex.”
“Taking heavy fire!”
“Roger that, Victor Six. We got those other guys but lost Volcano, over.”
The captain’s tone shifted. He swore then said, “Just rally on us now!”
Watching Zack die right there in the street got under Vatz’s skin, that impenetrable Special Forces skin. And suddenly, he wasn’t thirty-two years old anymore but just about eight, propelled by utter fear as he raced down the alley. He came out, glanced around, and began to hear the heavy whomping of the chopper. But it was accompanied by another sound, a whirling alarmlike noise that droned on.
He was at full sprint alongside the parking garage now, the chopper just on the other side, the alarm growing louder; and as he rounded the corner, he saw what was happening: a Russian BMP-3 was rolling up and blasting the team with its Long-Range Acoustical device. The sound was so loud that you couldn’t help but cover your ears while the enemy gunned you down.
They hadn’t opened fire with their big guns because they wanted their colonel back alive. But that didn’t stop five or six dismounts from putting more selective rifle fire on the team, just as they reached the chopper’s open bay doors.
The chopper’s two door gunners did what they could, firing wildly, but they couldn’t concentrate with that sound blaring in their ears. No helmets or plugs would help.
Vatz wasn’t sure if he’d taken a round or not as he came in from the other side of the bird and launched himself into the air, crashing into the bay, someone shrieking in agony as the helicopter tipped its nose forward and suddenly took off, the gunfire still pinging off the fuselage.
The BMP-3 crew cut loose with their 7.62 mm machine guns, deciding that they’d take the risk and bring down the bird. But the team’s pilot descended quickly to the other side of the garage, out of the line of fire, then suddenly banked right and headed back east, keeping low, weaving between buildings, heading for the front lines, for Joint Strike Force-held ground, for safety.
As he looked around the bay, entirely out of breath and bleary-eyed, Vatz realized that only Gerard, Barnes, one medic, and one engineer were onboard, along with Doletskaya.
“Where’s everyone else? Where are they?”
The captain shook his head.
Barnes and the medic were no longer moving, and the engineer was clutching his leg, shot in the femoral artery and bleeding all over the bay floor.
Just then Gerard pulled open his bloody jacket and lifted his shirt, revealing a pair of dark holes in his chest. He wouldn’t make it, and neither would the engineer.
“We need help!” Vatz cried to one of the door gunners.
The guy ignored him, tending to his own shoulder wound.
Gritting his teeth, Vatz pushed himself over to the Russian, wrenched up the man’s visor, and grabbed him by the neck. “Are you worth it, you bastard?”
The Russian stared up with vacant eyes.
Vatz glanced back at the remains of his team, then glared at the colonel once more and screamed, “Are you worth it?”
TWO
“Obviously you don’t remember my father,” said General Sergei Izotov as he rose from his office chair. “He was a division commander and hero of the Motherland in World War II. To imply that there is a lack of intelligence in my family is going much too far.”
Izotov felt certain that there was only one man in all of Russia who would take such a tone with President Vsevolod Vsevolodovich Kapalkin. He was not that man, but the chance that he might not survive such a conversation was not the point.
He would not allow Kapalkin to insult him or his family, no matter the cost. And he could not believe the insult had come from a man whose own father was a low-level functionary in the KGB, a man whose own fortune was amassed through smuggling personal computers, blue jeans, and other luxury items while attending university. How dare Kapalkin take such a tone with him!
Perhaps he would not survive the conversation!
Izotov glared at the president, who stared back at him from the computer screen. Kapalkin’s pronounced jaw, penetrating eyes, and impeccably combed hair stripped a decade off his fifty-four years, as did his daily exercise regime of swimming, which kept his waist narrow, his shoulders broad.
The president began to shake his head. “I’ll say it again. I’m shocked that your Spetsnaz and security units allowed such a breach. And now they have Doletskaya.”
“We were addressing the breach, but they had help from the inside.”
“Which is even more disturbing. And now you tell me the colonel’s chip has been deactivated by the Americans? We can’t kill him? If Doletskaya talks—”
“I think he will hold out for as long as possible. But it won’t matter either way. There’s nothing those cowboys can do to stop us. The wheels are already in motion. And I will plug this leak.”
“General, I want to believe you’re right. But then again, I believed your security was the best in the world.”