Sokov watched the two soldiers pull a section of the bookshelves out on its hinge to uncover a thick metal door. They unlatched the door and swung it open revealing a dark passageway. The smell of dirt filled the air.
Kozlov finished tightening a tourniquet around his leg and grabbed an LED torch from his desk.
“Move, now.”
Chapter 142
The four men began to make their way through the massive room toward the others. They were taking fire from two directions, but the aggressors behind were clearly a much stronger force. Their forward progress had come to a stop. In order to cross the gap to Throaty and Victoria Eden, they needed to deal with the four motivated Russians in the hallway adjacent to their destination.
Trust was an issue amongst them, but each man understood friends of convenience could prove to be just as helpful as those of choice. It was a sticky situation, but there was enough experience between them to honor their truce.
“Throaty, we’re four strong now, over,” Brendan Manion confirmed.
“Roger that, over,” Throaty responded, a question mark formed by his tone.
The soldiers behind were getting closer by the second. Jake Sanders looked in the direction of the incoming onslaught and back to Manion.
“Where’s your boy, Brendan?” he asked, pointing out that they were now a trio.
Manion shot him an annoyed look.
Rudy Pagano jumped in and said, “He took off that way.” He motioned to the other side of the room. “I hope he’s got something in mind. Otherwise, we’re screwed.”
“Shit,” Sanders said, shaking his head, “we need to get the fuck out of here pronto. I’m low on ammo.”
Manion surveyed the room and quickly looked toward the pool of red where the pair of dead Russians lay, and just beyond them, saw signs of the other four ready to pounce.
“Throaty, we’ve got Tangos breathing down our back, and if we don’t do something to move forward, soon they’ll be up our ass. Any way you can part the Red Sea, over?”
“Negative, Caretaker,” Throaty answered. “I can’t get a shot on them, and there’s no more ka-pow to toss out there, over.”
A violent screeching erupted from behind. Manion looked back and saw a massive piece of equipment being pushed toward them. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to understand there were several combatants tucked in safely behind. Each effort caused it to screech in protest as the steel object moved several inches closer. The makeshift shield was effective, and before long they would be sandwiched in. The situation for the three operatives had reached the critical point. The looming confrontation was about to turn bloody.
“Finger, we’re in the shit,” Manion said. “Whatever you’ve got cookin’ out there, we need you to serve it up, or you’ll be eating supper alone, over.”
Chapter 143
Trent Turner had just made it to his precarious perch high above the action. Time was short, so he worked quickly.
“Copy that, Caretaker.” He could see the enemy closing in on the three operatives, “I’m at your eight high and have eyes on you. Head to Throaty on three, over.”
Brendan Manion gave the signal to the others and started counting down with his fingers at three, two, one… Four shots spat out from Turner’s position when the three men began their sprint. Two men dropped to the floor, while Throaty provided cover fire so they wouldn’t get hit from behind.
Turner worked his way down the massive piece of machinery he had climbed. His position had been compromised. Sparks marked the heavy fire that followed his shadowed form. When he reached the bottom, he quickly dropped down to the prone position. He crawled toward the men he’d just eliminated, careful to stay out of the line of fire.
“I’ll need some cover fire, folks,” he said, “I’ll be making tracks toward the stiffs. Light it up whenever you’re ready, over.”
“Copy that, Finger. The two hallways meet up near the server room. We’ll meet you there. Go on three, over.”
Like clockwork, Turner launched his move toward the hallway. He armed himself with a stray AK-74 and scored a spare magazine before he headed off to meet the others. It didn’t take long to reach the intersection.
Throaty motioned him to stop and examined a door before kicking it open. Curiously, the door wasn’t completely shut. Had it been, it would have been sturdy enough to have given them a problem. Manion and Turner headed inside the room, while Throaty guided the others back to the position he had come from to hold off the men advancing on them.
The metallic smell of blood led Turner’s eyes to the gruesome mass of corpses. They were riddled with gunshot wounds, and the overuse of force resembled the final scene of the movie Bonnie and Clyde.
“Jesus,” Turner said in a grim tone. “They didn’t want anybody talking, that’s for sure.”
“The server room is through that door in the back,” Manion said, apparently receiving word from Zander through the comms.
They were headed toward the server room when a flicker of movement stopped Manion in his tracks. One of the men had crawled his way over to a desk and struggled to scribble something on a piece of paper. Turner continued toward the server room, while Manion headed to check out the lone survivor.
“Ghhe…t.”
The man struggled to speak as he coughed up blood. Hatred and betrayal were in his eyes. This was a man who had given everything for his motherland and had been left for dead. Pavel Kozlov’s promises had been empty.
“That’s Mikhail,” Zander said nervously as he saw the image from Manion’s helmet cam. “He’s the Russian guy who worked with us. He was one of them.”
Mikhail’s eyes showed grave concern, and his voice was more desperate. “Ghhe…t!” He coughed as he made one final effort and offered Manion the piece of paper clutched in his hand. “Ghhe…t!”
Manion pried the piece of paper from his hand and turned the cryptic message toward him. His eyes focused on the writing, he understood, and his heart began to pound. It was a four-letter word. One that could kill.
“Shit, Trent. Get the hell out of here. There’s a bomb!”
Chapter 144
He pulled out another cigarette and held it between his thick, nicotine-stained fingers. The hacker squirmed in the passenger seat, noting it was the man’s second since they had left the compound in Leesburg, Virginia. Through the corner of his eye he watched the Bratva soldier flick his lighter open, fire it up and take a slow drag as he lit the tobacco. The thick cloud of smoke he exhaled was annoying, but he knew better than to complain.
“Is this far enough?” he questioned in Russian. It was the third time he had asked the question.
The passenger turned to the driver and nodded quickly, just wanting to get this over with. “Da, I think so.”
The driver clenched the cigarette between his teeth and pulled the car off to the side of the road. He wiped the ashes that had fallen onto his utility jacket toward his passenger and flashed him an intimidating glance, prompting him to get on with things.
The hacker looked nervously out the windows of the car as he plugged the USB stick into his computer and initiated a connection to the Internet. He pulled out a slip of paper and used the information written on it to log in to the compromised system somewhere out in the ether. He punched in the commands to transfer the files Dimitri Sokov had copied to the server onto his computer. The hacker fidgeted in his seat as the files trickled in slowly over the connection, his eyes darting from the screen to the car windows and then to the soldier next to him.