Erin shook the attendant’s hand and accepted a hug, presenting him with an overly generous tip for his four days of service. Glancing quickly at the money, he nodded and gave her a knowing look, which told her everything she needed to know. Any suspicions he might harbor had been instantly erased. She smiled and turned toward the station, shielding her eyes from the glare reflected off the massive two-story window arch that formed the center of the building’s facade.
The Vokzal-Gravny station loomed directly across the tracks, all of its windows showing traces of the deep orange sun low on the western horizon. The sun’s deep color darkened the building’s eggshell blue exterior, giving it more of a green appearance. She had been told that the station would be the most colorful building in Novosibirsk, which she could confirm by what she witnessed through her compartment window. The station stood out in a sea of drab gray buildings, featuring an incredibly incongruous blue paint job and white trim, which conjured a Scandinavian impression. Erin took in the view for a moment before turning toward the elevated walkway that would take her over a few tracks and deposit her in the building. As she cleared the train’s diesel engine, the sun struck her face, warming her slightly.
The temperature had been predicted to be in the low sixties throughout the week, leaving her grateful that the operation’s timing coincided with early summer. She couldn’t imagine a deep winter operation on the outskirts of Siberia. Sweden had been cold enough for her, but nothing compared to the average temperatures experienced here. The high temperatures in Novosibirsk for January peaked in the low single digits. Combined with the constant winds blowing in from either the Kazakhstan steppes to the west, or the Western Siberian Plain to the east, the wind chill factor rarely rose above negative ten degrees Fahrenheit during winter months.
Several minutes later, Erin found herself standing in the shadow of the building, waiting for a taxi to take her to her hotel. She’d clean up and seek massive quantities of decently prepared food, careful not to draw undue attention. She had to remember that she was an underpaid travel writer on a modest stipend to cover the Trans-Siberian Railway for an upstart travel blog. She even had business cards that linked to a real website, where several of Katie Reynolds’ previous articles were prominently featured, along with other writers, whom she suspected were real. Her picture appeared on the website, with a gracious biography chronicling her travels and accolades. Overall, the CIA had done a decent job with a fairly simple cover. The only real weakness to the cover was her spotty Australian accent, which Berg had assured her would not be an issue in Novosibirsk. Tourists were still a rarity in the city, and as long as she steered clear of the obvious “expat” haunts, her accent wouldn’t become an issue.
She reached the front of the queue and opened the door to the next taxi, placing her hiking backpack next to her in the back seat.
“Tsentralnaya Hotel, please,” she requested in passable Russian.
The driver nodded and drove her less than a kilometer to the hotel. She could have walked, but hadn’t felt like navigating the streets with the backpack. As the taxi approached the featureless gray building, she started to question her cover as a struggling writer who specialized in travelling on a budget. The hotel didn’t look promising. She should have vetoed the budget travel aspect of her cover and booked herself at one of several chain hotels in the city. It was too late to make the change at this point. Her tourist visa was connected to an “invitation” issued by the Tsentralnaya Hotel, which was a requirement to travel in the Russian Federation.
She paid the driver and hauled her backpack onto the curb. Nobody rushed out of the hotel entrance to help her with her bags. All she required was a clean room, bug-free bed and her own bathroom. That had been non-negotiable, regardless of her supposed “budget-minded nature.” As long as she didn’t have to share a bathroom, she’d be fine. She picked up her backpack and travel bag and proceeded to check into her base of operations for the next few days. She’d notify Farrington that she had arrived, and wait for him to arrange her first meeting with the Solntsevskaya Bratva. Until then, she’d do a little sightseeing and a lot of eating. She had four days’ worth of cheese sandwiches and vodka to clean out of her system.
Chapter 29
Mike McFarland scanned the southern horizon with a powerful night vision spotting scope, fighting against the stiff wind blowing in from west. The sky was clear, providing his scope with ample ambient starlight to illuminate the horizon, which yielded nothing but a bright green image of the Kazakhstan steppes. He had his doubts about the helicopters arriving tonight. Heavy gusts accompanied the warmer European air, playing havoc with their encampment. He couldn’t imagine how the wind would affect the aircraft. The landscape was flat, which was ideal for a makeshift helicopter landing zone, but the proposed refueling site was exposed to the elements on all four sides. The pilots could expect no mercy on their approach.
Despite the open terrain immediately surrounding the landing zone, the team could expect full privacy during their babysitting gig. The twisted, rugged drive to the site from Highway A345 had tested the limits of their 70 Series Land Cruisers, flattening two tires and most certainly damaging the alignment of both vehicles. Mission planners for the operation had done their research. Not only would the drive from the highway disable most vehicles, the landing zone sat in the middle of a small raised plateau, forcing the team to hide their vehicles and hike three miles to arrive at the given GPS coordinates.
The hike had been expected based on his terrain assessment, along with the flat tires. They had brought six full-size spare tires, since he had no intention of losing one of his trucks out here. They were a long way from Astana, and the only help they could count on was a salvage contract, which would require him to pay nearly seventy percent of the vehicle’s value to have it towed to the nearest repair garage. Of course, repairs would eat up the remaining value of the vehicle, so in many cases, you were better off leaving the vehicle where it died. Abandoning one of the trucks wasn’t an option on this mission. He’d greased enough palms to keep this little side venture off the books, but the unwritten rules were clear. If he lost company gear, it came out of his own pocket, which meant he’d have to take some unsavory side jobs to compensate for the lost income.
McFarland checked his watch again. 0132. The birds were late. He lowered the scope and peered through the impenetrable darkness at the rest of his team scattered around the LZ. He could barely distinguish their darkened forms against the unlit background, spread in an oval along the periphery of the proposed site. They had been instructed to sweep their sectors with night vision, searching for any possible witnesses to the landing. Prior to dispersing to take position around the LZ, they had formed a line to conduct a FOD (Foreign Object Detection) walk.
Unlike the FOD walks conducted on pristine aircraft carrier decks or concrete flight lines, his men wouldn’t clear rocks, chewing gum wrappers or discarded cigarette lighters from the ground. Instead, they would use heavy duty spray canisters to paint large rocks with an infrared paint visible to each helicopter’s Forward Looking Infrared Pods (FLIR). Anything larger than a watermelon was marked, so the pilots could pick the best locations for the initial landing.