Mihail Osin trailed the body by several feet and stopped in the doorway. Dragunov glanced in his direction, expecting the agent to make an unnecessary excuse for Hubner’s early demise. A few moments passed, but the agent remained quiet. He was impressed with Osin. Directorate S Spetsnaz were an impressive group, but this agent was different. He carried himself extremely well, exuded an unspoken leadership influence on his team, and had natural interrogation skills…aside from the rookie mistake that prematurely killed Hubner. He might recommend Osin for consideration within the Zaslon ranks.
“What happened to Hubner is extremely rare. I’ve seen suspects attempt to choke themselves on their own restraints or try to enrage their interrogators to the point of murder. I’ve never seen or heard of one cutting their throat like that. Lesson learned. No need to include this in the report. The suspect expired on his own…which is true,” Dragunov said.
“That was a first for me. Fuck. This guy was something different altogether,” Osin said, stepping into the rays of light peeking through the eastern tree line.
“Very different. At least we got a few new names out of him. Headquarters should be very interested in this Sanderson guy. We also confirmed that they were given Reznikov’s address at the last second.”
“Either the FSB has a mole, or we do. That alone made this trip well worth the effort.”
“He was holding out on us about Marko Resja. Something was off. I could smell it,” Osin said.
Dragunov considered his comment for a few moments, staring off into the forest. He agreed with Osin’s assessment about Hubner’s partner in Stockholm. Whoever they had captured on camera in the passenger seat was a mystery that Hubner didn’t care to expose.
“He wasn’t familiar with the name, which leads me to believe Marko Resja might have been an alias he’d never heard of. I’m starting to wonder if the entire team in Stockholm had been assembled from multiple sources. It doesn’t matter at this point. We pass the information on to Directorate S, and let them sort it out,” Dragunov said.
“I’m getting a bad feeling about this one. This isn’t a typical setup for the Americans. This is something very different,” Osin said.
“We don’t even know if the Americans are behind this. That’s the real problem here. The U.S. embassy was involved, but even those details are sketchy. Hubner never confirmed that the address was passed by the CIA station chief,” Dragunov said.
“I led the assistant station chief’s interrogation. He confirmed that this was a CIA operation. They were never given the address. That came directly from another source,” Osin said.
“That’s what the station chief told him?” Dragunov said.
Osin nodded. “Correct.”
“The link to the Americans keeps thinning,” Dragunov said, shaking his head. “The station chief could have been working for anyone. Reznikov represents an unchecked financial opportunity for some extremely dangerous, well-funded groups. If this was a mercenary crew working for one of these groups, Russia could end up in the deepest shit pile imaginable. Our job is to shed some light on who was behind the abduction. At this point, I hope to hell it was the Americans, but I’m no longer optimistic.”
Both of them turned their heads toward the sound of crackling underbrush and swearing at the edge of the clearing. The burial team had begun their long trek through the forest.
Chapter 12
The president sat back with a bleak face. He glanced at his National Security Advisor and raised both eyebrows, but Karl Berg could tell that James Quinn didn’t plan to make the first comment on their proposal. Jacob Remy, the president’s chief of staff looked eager to take the first shot in what Berg expected to be a concentrated salvo of opposition against the plan. The president didn’t wait.
“I don’t like the timing. The nation still hasn’t recovered from True America’s attack. Public outcry about our apparent lack of infrastructure security has kicked up a storm of Congressional inquiries, none of which appears coordinated…yet. Congressmen and senators are tripping over each other to satisfy their constituents, threatening to open fact-finding investigations into every organization with an acronym. When they get their collective act together and start cooperating, the 9/11 Commission Report will look like a one page intel summary. The Department of Justice has fielded over twenty-two thousand Freedom of Information Act requests over the past two weeks alone. Last year they processed sixty-one thousand in total. It’s going to be a long year for all of us, gentlemen, especially the CIA. I have it on good authority that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence plans to dig deep. I don’t think we can afford to have the operation you’ve suggested on the books.”
The CIA director nodded and tapped his pencil on the table. “I’ve been assured that this operation can be accomplished off the books,” he said. “The facility can be destroyed and the principals neutralized by a small team. No agency assets will be used. The facility appears to be a soft target.”
“How can you be sure it’s a ‘soft target’?” Jacob Remy asked, mimicking quotation marks with both hands to emphasize “soft target.” “A secret Russian bioweapons facility? I think you’re underestimating the security involved. We can’t afford an international incident. Not now.”
Karl Berg couldn’t resist interrupting the conversation. Selling them on the mechanics of a plan that hadn’t been developed was pointless if they didn’t agree that the facility represented a clear and present danger to the United States. He wasn’t sure they had reached this consensus yet.
“Mr. President, may I?”
Jacob Remy looked annoyed by the interruption.
“Please,” the president assented.
“During the Cold War, Vektor Labs was part of the Biopreparat system, a vast network of secret laboratories, each focused on a different pathogenic weapon. Vektor produced smallpox. Biopreparat dissolved with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and most of the facilities were abandoned. Vektor survived and became the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology, hosting international scientists and serving as Russia’s equivalent to our CDC. The elite army regiment that guarded the facility during the Cold War no longer exists. Our information suggests that security is provided by a small contract force consisting of Russian ex-special forces and—”
“That doesn’t sound like a soft target,” Remy interrupted.
“It’s soft for the group we’ll use. Beyond contract security, response to a facility breach would be reactive in nature. A regional Spetsnaz group is tasked to provide a rapid response team in case of emergency, but it won’t arrive in time to make a difference. They’re hiding an illegal bioweapons lab in plain sight. It’s a soft target because they’re trying to draw attention away from the facility. The team can destroy the lab. I have no doubt about that. The real question is do we believe that this facility needs to be destroyed? Based on what I’ve seen in the past month, I firmly believe that this facility spells trouble. Weaponized encephalitis is just one of many WMDs in the works at Vektor. The Russians are developing offensive weapons, and as we can clearly see by their cover-up of Monchegorsk, they’re taking extreme measures to keep this a secret. I say we bury their secret before even scarier groups get their hands on their work.”