The sergeant looked over at Anneli and arched an eyebrow. “Do we fast rope or land?”
“Ropes. We hook her onto one of us with some D-rings on a harness and get down quickly. It should be only about thirty feet.”
She was standing with her hands on her hips. “You want me to jump out of a helicopter?”
“Consider it a very short circus ride, Anneli, but it will be over in a few seconds. The only alternative would be a HALO, trying to parachute in between a forest and a lake. Very bad things could happen,” said Baldwin.
“Oh. Okay.” She recalled with a shudder the idea of falling thousands of feet. “Helicopter, then.” The SAS guys laughed with her.
“Later,” snapped Kyle, keeping their minds on the job. “Once we are on site, we spend the day in our hides. The Russians are planning a little party right after dark for a visiting general, and when we acquire our targets, we all fire at the same time on a countdown. I call the bird to come get us, we exfiltrate back to the lake and the helo zooms in, we get aboard and are gone.”
“Where do we stage?”
“I’m setting up something out of Lithuania.”
“There are a lot of questions,” said Jeff in a pleading voice. “Are you really thinking this through?”
Swanson clicked off the pointer and studied the table map a little while longer in silence. “We can do it, Jeff, with a little luck.”
“What’s my job?” Anneli wrinkled her brow. “I’m not a sniper.”
“You will have a directional microphone that will allow you to listen and translate everything they say in the camp. That’s a pretty big intelligence edge for our side.”
“When do we go?”
“Two hours. I have to make some final arrangements, but you people go ahead and get ready. I want to be boots-on-ground by sunrise.”
The Excalibur helo, a gleaming white machine with the company’s gold logo, was radioed instructions to stay overnight in Belgium after dropping off the general. That left the helipad empty as the Vagabond pounded hard out of the North Sea and into the Baltic. At 2200 hours the aft deck lights were doused and the yacht nosed into the wind when a large MH-60R Seahawk helicopter, the Sikorsky workhorse of the U.S. Navy, arrived unseen in the blackness. It touched down only long enough for Swanson, the SAS team and Anneli to scramble aboard. The arrival, pickup and departure took only thirty seconds. The yacht peeled away to return to the popular pleasure cruising routes along the shoreline.
The helicopter crew chief slid the door closed and resumed his seat in the rear of the cabin, chewing gum and looking with interest at the four black-clad operators. One was a woman whose figure and face could not be disguised by the flight suit and smeared black and green face paint. All three of the men were strapped up with weapons, including long rifles in protective sheaths, while she wore a square backpack. Swanson was offered a helmet and a microphone, but did not want to communicate. His plan was in motion. The crew had been instructed not to ask questions, just to make the pickup from the Vagabond and fly directly back to the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier CVN-73, the USS George Washington, the centerpiece of the Baltic Sea Battle Group.
Anneli had never ridden on a helicopter before, much less one this large and noisy. Her friends rode as if they were on a familiar trolley car. Kyle was silent, running over the plan again and again. Baldwin read a novel on a back-lighted video screen. Gray Perry fell asleep. She could see only night through the small windows on the bulkhead and her entire being was tight with excitement. The helicopter clattered away and they were all enveloped by the dome of gloomy sky overhead and the dark waters beneath.
There was a new woman in the staid life of General Ravensdale. She had the green eyes of a jaguar and was as sleek as the jungle cat. Her chestnut hair was as stylish as her clothes. It was all very prim and proper. There was no outward change in his behavior, but everyone just knew because he was seeing her frequently in his off hours, or for lunch at some bistro or for an evening theater performance. The female staff members thought it quite romantic that the aging hero had finally discovered his Guinivere after mourning so long for his late wife. The men thought the general had landed a winner, for she was rich and beautiful and of an appropriate age, a better match for the boss than some sexy little Euro hard-body.
Arial Printas was about ten years younger than the general, the widow of a German industrialist who had left her a fortune, and she lived in a suite at a fine hotel. It was to that hotel that the general drove in his own car after being deposited ashore following the dinner aboard the Vagabond.
Arial met him at the door and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Hello, Frederick,” she said, drawing him inside by the hand and thinking how the NATO deputy supreme allied commander in Europe at times looked like a lost boy. She was barefoot and wore sky-blue silk pajamas beneath a light wrap. “You have something for me?”
Ravensdale stalked across the thick carpet and poured a stiff drink, no ice, at the bar in the long living room. “I hate myself.”
Arial settled into a big chair and tucked her feet beneath her. “Oh, stop the pity. Quit feeling sorry for yourself. It’s unbecoming.”
“I am nothing; a traitor.”
Arial made a show of yawning and pretending boredom. “We are not going through another of your emotional scenes, Frederick. You stamped your ticket many years ago with your fling with little Lorette. We rescued you from the Stasi and have left you alone for decades. In a few more weeks, we will disappear again and you will go back to whatever you want to do.”
“You people will always come back.”
“Probably not.” Her voice was smooth and disinterested. “Frederick, you are important to us right now only because of your job. I doubt that we could find much use for you after you retire unless you are foolish enough to go into politics. Now, why did you awaken me?”
The general took another full glass and sat on the dark maroon sofa. “NATO is planning a military response for the MiG attack in Finland,” he said. “Snipers are going to attack a fire base in Kaliningrad and kill a senior officer there.”
Arial spread her palms and rolled her eyes. “Is that all? When? Who?”
Ravensdale stared at the Russian intelligence operative. “The place is called FSB Artillery Camp 8351 and is located at the point where Kaliningrad meets Lithuania and Poland. I do not know the name of the target, and I do not know when, except that it will happen in no more than a few days. The information is just too fresh for all of the details. My guess is they will come in from Poland and egress the same way.”
“Frederick, my darling, this is nothing. Certainly it is not worth putting our private and personal contact at risk. One dead officer in Kaliningrad? Who cares?”
The general drank off half the glass, furious with himself for giving up an operation involving four people with whom he had just dined, and stung by her rebuke and rejection of the information. “You interpret it any way you wish, Arial. I see this raid as a strong reprisal, and therefore it is both militarily and politically important. Your superiors will want to stop it.”
She smirked, barely lifting the curved eyebrows. “Oh, very well. I will pass it along first thing tomorrow. But I warn you, Frederick. Stick to what we instruct you to do, and let these little matters go. We are not interested in every little scrap of soldier stuff that passes across your fancy desk. You are to help Ivan Strakov and legitimize his information.”