“I knew the orphanage was a front.”
Faith studied the crate’s contents. Black rubber was stretched over a round plastic case and fastened in place with a thin metal strip. Two knobs protruded outside the casing. A ring was attached to a pin inserted into the smaller knob.
Zara smiled. “Landmines. Problem solved, I take it.”
“Yep.” Summer picked up one of the mines and held it by its brown Bakelite case.
“An arms dealer,” Faith said. “A Christian arms dealer. What a hypocrite. Can you tell where it’s from? I’ve heard she’s bringing in big sums of money and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s shopping locally.”
“I’ll be darned.” He turned it over and inspected the markings. “PMNs. Roosky. I haven’t seen one of these puppies in years. This was the first mine I ever came across in the field.”
“We have reports of some corrupt military selling them on the black market,” Zara said.
“Even if she bought them here in Russia, what the heck is Mama Whitney doing with anti-personnel mines?” Summer said. “There are millions and millions of these little boogers in the world. They’re cheap, easy to manufacture. If you want to get some of these to the West or to the Third World, you sure as heck don’t have to go to the trouble of smuggling them out of the Soviet Union. Hell, the Russians give those things as door prizes to Third World guerilla movements that come begging to Moscow.” He sat at the table and unscrewed the large knob on the side.
“She’s probably not taking them out, so I’d say she’s supporting an insurgency movement here,” Zara said. “The Karabakh so-called self-defense army, maybe some groups in Chechnya, Dagestan. I’d also venture a guess they bring them in here through an underground tunnel behind that locked door. Given that this room is much warmer and damper than I’d expect, I’d say the tunnel is part of the hot-water system.”
“Hot water system?” Summer said.
“Moscow uses a centralized system to pump hot water throughout the city,” Zara said.
Faith looked at the reinforced steel door. “I totally forgot about it. In the summer they turn off the hot water for weeks at a time for entire sections of the city to clean the pipes. I remember freezing cold showers at Moscow State.”
Summer removed the brown plastic knob, turned it and looked inside. He then rolled it across the tabletop to Faith. “Here’s the detonator.”
“Will it work as a blasting cap?”
“It could, but that would be the long way around, and we’d still have the problem of no time fuse or det cord. If I remember these suckers correctly, we can solve both problems and use the whole mine as a detonator and timer.” He unscrewed the smaller knob and looked inside. “Just like I remembered. It’s delay-armed. The mine’s designed so that when you pull the pin, there’s a fifteen to thirty minute delay until it’s armed. That gives you some time to plant it and get away. That means you could actually step on it after pulling the pin but before it’s armed and it won’t go off.”
Faith turned the knob as she inspected it. “I don’t think we’re going to get the chance to plant a field of landmines around the front door.”
“It means we can trip the mine first by piling bricks or something on it, then pull the safety pin and it’ll go off in fifteen to thirty minutes,” Summer said.
Faith rolled the knob back across the table to Summer. “Give or take a few minutes?”
“The variation depends on the temp. If it’s colder it’ll take closer to thirty, warmer fifteen. You see, when you pull the pin, you release the striker, the spring-loaded firing pin. It presses against this steel wire, which eats through a lead strip. It takes a while to cut through it. When it does, the mine’s armed and any pressure on the rubber plate on top will release the actuating plunger. Then the striker-”
“We understand. It blows up,” Zara said, tapping her fingers on the table.
“There are a couple of steps before then, but you could sum it up like that.”
“Then we do have the ability to set off the blast with adequate delay,” Zara said.
“And I could cut the time in half by filing down the lead strip so the wire cuts through faster, say in seven to fifteen. Why don’t I do that on a couple, just in case we decide to go that route?” Summer opened a blade on his Leatherman and whittled at the thin lead strip. “To finalize our inventory, the gun I took from your guard has a full magazine with eight rounds. What I wouldn’t give for some night-vision equipment.”
“I have at least fifty rounds of ammunition in the car and a second magazine. The magazine on the Makarov can be a bit tricky to remove. I suggest you practice, so you can reload quickly. I do have a small night-vision monocular and a small pair of regular binoculars in the glove compartment.”
“That’s convenient,” Faith said.
“I keep them for night birding-owls.”
“What kind of power are we talking about?” Summer said.
“I got them from a guy in the KGB Spetsnaz unit. They’re not as good as what I have at home in Berlin, but they’re our latest night-vision technology.” Zara glanced at her watch. “We have to pick up our pace. The meeting is scheduled to begin in three hours. Unless someone knows of any additional resources, I propose we move on to the discussion of the target. The dacha’s located on a stream in a birch forest about a half-hour north of the Moscow ring road. It takes another half-hour to get to the city limits from here, and that’s without traffic.”
“Any neighbors?” Summer said.
“They probably wouldn’t be there this early in the season, not on a Sunday night. One is rather close, perhaps a hundred meters.”
“What I wouldn’t also give for some good overheads. We should get there as soon as we can and see if we can’t borrow a dacha as a base. I’d like some time for recon.”
“That was going to be my suggestion, but we’re discussing the target now, not the plan,” Zara said.
“You don’t have to run this thing like it’s some goddamn Communist Party meeting. We have to get a move on here,” Summer said.
“But we do need structure to this operation, and I do believe you delegated that task to me after you took control.”
“I don’t know how you do it here in Russia, but when planning a mission, we Americans like the input of ideas.”
“Give me a break, you two,” Faith said. “This isn’t the time for Soviet-American rivalry. Let’s move on and tolerate each other’s style differences.” Faith understood the competition had far less to do with international than interpersonal politics.
“As I said, it’s a two-story wooden dacha, no more than two hundred twenty-five square meters.”
“So if my rough conversion is right, that’s a bit over two thousand square feet. I take it we’re not talking sixteen-inch support beams, but regular housing construction?”
“Standard Soviet housing construction, maybe fifty years old. Things were built much better under Stalin, but it’s weathered, which says a lot with our winters.”
“We have enough C-4 to give anyone inside a really bad day. We’re going to need fifteen to twenty pounds of something to weigh down the mine. Do you know if there are any loose bricks around the house?”
“I’ve been at Stukoi’s dacha perhaps three times in ten years, each time for mushroom hunts. There was always a lot of clutter, so I don’t know what it’s like now, but I’m certain you’ll find something adequate.” Zara forced a smile.
“We know anything about the meeting we’re crashing?” Summer said.
“Not much, but it’s going to be important for me to show up and get some kind of proof of the coup attempt. Without that, who’s to believe why we blew up the place? I have a miniaturized camera and microphone I brought from Berlin that I can use to document it. We also need to find out how they’re planning to get Gorbachev, since they didn’t receive the C-4 delivery. We have to make sure that taking them out not only stops them from seizing power, but also saves the General Secretary.”