“Nothing wrong with a little hope,” Sanderson said.
Sanderson disconnected the call and turned to Hoffman.
“This is going to be the stuff of legends, Jared. A once-in-a-lifetime mission.”
“That seems to be par for the course around here,” Hoffman said.
“That’s what happens when you’re the final option.”
Chapter 20
Nikolai Mazurov edged around the corner of the building and spotted the black sedan. He kept his body hidden, only allowing a small fraction of his head to break the plane of the building. Having just scurried along the western side of the apartment building, scraping through the tight walkway that connected the rear alley with Raskovoy Boulevard, he didn’t detect any traffic coming from either direction on the road. The empty street matched his own intelligence assessment of this distant northwest suburb of Moscow. Mostly consisting of Soviet Bloc apartment buildings, it catered to lower middle class families or recent college graduates, most of whom could not afford the luxury of an automobile. He’d have to be infinitely more cautious of pedestrians, though it really wouldn’t matter one way or the other who saw them on the street. His time as a deep-cover operative in Russia ended tonight.
He had been assured by General Sanderson that Lucya Pavrikova’s abduction would become the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service’s number one priority in the upcoming days, leaving no stones unturned in Moscow or the surrounding areas. He would depart Europe with Reinhard Klinkman and eventually find his way to Sanderson’s new Argentinian hideaway.
The thought of warmer weather suited Nikolai fine. He had grown accustomed to his life in Moscow, but yearned for more. He was in his mid-thirties, having spent nearly all of his service time in Moscow, simply waiting in the shadows. He attended Moscow University, earning a teaching degree with a concentration in foreign language. Not surprisingly, he took to English like a native speaker and was able to secure a position in a suburban Moscow secondary school, teaching English to middle graders. Attending college and teaching English to fourteen-year-olds wasn’t exactly what he had in mind after spending nearly four years training in Sanderson’s hellish program. On the flip side, he was one of the few surviving graduates of the original Black Flag program. The survival rate had been abysmally low according to Sanderson, and most that survived had endured hell on earth to return. Because of this, he really couldn’t complain about walking away from his life in Moscow. It had never really been his from the beginning.
He raised a suppressed OTs-14 assault rifle to the chipped concrete edge of the building and tucked the “bullpup” configured weapon tightly into his shoulder. The OTs-14 “Groza” was used exclusively by Russian Spetsnaz or Interior Ministry units, chambered to fire 9X39mm subsonic ammunition. Fitted with a suppressor, the subsonic rounds made the “Groza” one of the quietest Russian assault weapons on the market.
Nikolai peered through the 3X scope attached to the rifle’s carrying handle and sighted in on one of two heads visible through the sedan’s rear window. Unlike the car parked in the alley, he could not approach the sedan on Raskovoy Boulevard unseen. The four-lane road was well lit by Russian standards, and curb space on both sides of the street was mostly empty. The black sedan was one of few cars parked in front of Pavrikova’s apartment building.
He’d been able to shoot the two agents in the back alley at point-blank range, from the driver’s side window. He wouldn’t have that kind of luxury with these two, and he needed to hit both of them in rapid succession. He chose the head on the left, since it was already partially obscured by the sedan’s frame. Take the hardest shot first. He braced the suppressor against the building and steadied the green-illuminated crosshairs. Nikolai applied pressure to the trigger as he had been taught many years ago, continuing to focus on the target in the crosshairs. The scope’s point-of-aim and point-of-impact would be the same at this range. Under fifty meters, the subsonic ammo kept a flat trajectory.
The Groza cracked, biting into the concrete as the first projectile raced toward its target. The rear window turned white, obscuring his view of the second target, as the round’s impact with the safety glass caused the entire rear window to shatter in place. He had anticipated this problem. The scope’s field of view allowed him to see most of the second man’s head as he took the first shot, giving him a frame of reference for the blind shooting about to take place. He shifted the scope’s crosshairs from the small hole in the opaque window to the previous location of the second head. He used the crosshair’s mil-dots to measure the shift and pulled the trigger twice. The rest of the window collapsed from the impact of the two rifle rounds. Through the scope, he could see that a third shot would not be necessary. Two large red stains covered the spider-cracked front windshield a few feet apart.
Nikolai glanced around the city street and listened for a few seconds. The rifle’s suppressor had distorted the sound of small arms fire to a low-grade firecracker, which still had the potential to attract significant attention. Nothing. He stared up at the various windows visible from his position. Curtains remained in place and unlit windows stayed dark. Even if anyone had decided to take a look, they would think twice about calling the police. A street shooting usually meant one thing: Russian mafiya. Contacting the police only served one purpose — to identify yourself as a possible witness, and witnesses to mafiya crimes in Russia had a very short life span. For the average citizen, it was better to let the police stumble upon the crime scene.
Satisfied that the shooting had escaped overt attention, he jogged up to the car to confirm his handiwork. A quick look inside verified that his shooting had been accurate. Both bodies were slumped against each other, tangled over the car’s center console. Dark fluid poured out of the gaping holes that once resembled human faces. He started jogging to the side street corner used by the third SVR surveillance vehicle.
“Surveillance team two neutralized,” he whispered.
His throat microphone translated the vibrations from his vocal cords into sound, which was passed on to Klinkman and the driver of his own support vehicle.
“Copy. Team two neutralized. I have the door unlocked. Standing by,” Klinkman replied.
“Breach and remove target. I’m moving to cover the third surveillance team,” Nikolai said.
“Better move fast. I’m going in.”
Lucya Pavrikova poured a glass of white wine from an inexpensive bottle she had picked up on her transit home that evening. She’d left at six-thirty, later than most, hoping to get a reprieve from her new shadows. No fewer than two agents followed her wherever she’d go, regardless of the time. At this point, she was afraid to leave her apartment outside of the busy hours in the morning or evening, when the rest of her building’s inhabitants travelled back and forth to work, hopefully deterring a street-side abduction. She knew this was mostly wishful thinking. If the SVR wanted her in custody, they wouldn’t hesitate to take her in the middle of Red Square on May Day. The only place they would avoid for now was the FSB building at Lubyanka Square. She knew they were fishing for leads, overtly sweating everyone possibly connected to the Center for Special Operations at Lubyanka. They hadn’t moved on anyone yet, but the death of several SVR agents guaranteed that the rulebook would be suspended until they discovered the leak. It was only a matter of time before they started rounding them up, and once they disappeared, she didn’t feel hopeful that they’d ever see the light of day again.