“All right, but he stays in the vestibule,” said the guard on the right.
“That’s fine, as long as you call Mr. Ivkin to explain,” Gosha said, tensing for the moment the door buzzed.
His earpiece activated.
“Go,” was all Misha said to set everything in motion.
Gosha immediately kneeled to retrieve the submachine gun, beating the buzzer by half of a second. While he raised the submachine gun to his shoulder, Belyakov threw the door open and pinned it to the left side of the concrete hallway with his body, clearing Gosha’s field of fire. The operative quickly centered the leftmost guard’s head in the PP2000’s holographic sight and fired a short burst, not waiting to see the result. He had a margin of milliseconds to engage the second guard, which didn’t allow him the luxury of confirming the kill. He shifted to the second guard and fired a longer burst center mass, unaware that the guard had managed to retrieve the weapon slung around his back and put it into action.
The first armor-piercing rounds from the guard’s hastily fired burst struck the bullet-resistant glass at a shallow angle and deflected into the doorway, striking Gosha in the chest. The brute penetration force of the remaining rounds shattered the glass, chipping the smooth concrete tunnel surface behind it.
Knocked backward into the vestibule by a sledgehammer-like strike to his chest, Gosha lost his balance and hit the door frame with his head, sending a flash of light across his vision. He wasn’t exactly sure what had happened to him, but he slid to the floor confident that the two guards were dead, as evidenced through his blurred vision, by the two massive scarlet stains on the wall behind the security station. He lost consciousness as the rest of his team poured through the vestibule, crunching the glass around him.
Farrington followed his team through the vestibule, assessing the situation. The two guards were obviously hit, but their status was unknown. Gosha lay slumped against the vestibule wall, unresponsive to Seva’s attempts to revive him. He hadn’t seen any blood or gore in the vestibule, which gave him hope that Gosha had only been knocked unconscious somehow. Grisha reached the security counter and reported.
“The guards are dead. I think they were knocked clean of the desk. I don’t see any sign of an activated alarm on any of their screens.”
“Misha, can you confirm that they didn’t hit the alarm?” Farrington said.
“Hold on. I’m reviewing the feed. A couple more seconds…and, we’re clear. Neither guard hit the panic button, unless the back wall is one big panic button. Gosha nailed them both.”
“Excellent. We’re moving to Building Six.”
Farrington turned to Seva, who was still working on the downed operative. “How is he?”
“Vitals are fine. He took one hit to the vest,” Seva said, knocking on the boron carbide protective plate insert under Gosha’s uniform.
“All right. Pick him up and start moving him back to the main security station,” Farrington said.
“Got it,” Seva said.
“We have a problem,” Sasha said.
Farrington turned to face Alexander Filatov (“Sasha”), who nodded at Dr. Belyakov. The scientist stood frozen against the concrete tunnel wall, holding the shattered door open like a statue. His glassy eyes seemed to be focused on the concrete wall beyond Sasha.
“You can let go of the door now. We need to move,” Farrington said, stepping forward to grab the scientist.
“Look at his chest,” Sasha said.
Farrington examined him closer, now seeing the tight pattern of red dots stitched across his upper torso. He grabbed Belyakov by the right sleeve and pulled him forward to reveal a gore-splattered wall. Five distinct dents in the bloodied concrete indicated where the armor-piercing rounds had stopped after passing cleanly through his body. The scientist collapsed in a rapidly spreading pool of blood that he hadn’t noticed when they first burst into the tunnel.
“Motherfucker. Let’s get him to the terminal before his body temperature drops! Misha, open the door to Building Six.”
He ripped Belyakov’s security card from the lanyard hung around his neck and helped Sasha lift the dead weight onto his back. He hustled ahead to join Grisha at the first hermetic door, which slid open at an excruciatingly slow pace. Blood poured out of Belyakov onto the green floor as they waited for it to close, trapping them between two hermetic barriers. Once the outside door sealed, the inner door would slide open, admitting them to the building. Based on the schematics downloaded from the system, they would have to travel the entire length of the building to the furthest door on the right, which led directly to the bioweapons lab entrance. Farrington wasn’t overly optimistic about their chances of getting through the biometric station.
“Seva, I need you back here when you’re done. We might need the Semtex.”
“Got it. I’m halfway to the main security station,” Seva replied.
“How bad is it?” Misha asked.
“Doctor Belyakov lost half of his blood from what I can tell,” he replied.
“Should I call this in to base?”
“Negative. We’ll get the door open. We just might have to wake the entire neighborhood doing it,” Farrington said.
Chapter 49
Dmitry Ardankin sped through the maze of computer stations in the joint operations to reach his desk. He needed to contact the Foreign Intelligence Service director immediately. One of the analysts had discovered something nearly unfathomable to Ardankin while sifting through a batch of digital pictures sent to the SVR by the Federal Customs Service. The batch formed part of their expanded search protocol, which started with all documented Australian visitors and expanded to citizens of the UK and Scandinavian countries. He dialed Director Pushnoy’s direct home line and waited.
“You better have something, Dmitry,” the director answered.
“I do. You won’t fucking believe this. An Australian woman named Katie Reynolds flew into Vladivostok on Sunday and bought a ticket to Moscow on the Trans-Siberian Railway. She’s supposedly a travel journalist. We’ve been running all Australians through the facial recognition software against known military personnel or agents associated with Richard Farrington. We included the young woman, Erin Foley, who disappeared from the American Embassy in Stockholm. One of our operatives in Stockholm was killed with a knife from behind. Everyone here agreed that this wasn’t done by the team that hit Reznikov’s apartment and—”
“I assume this is going somewhere?”
“Of course, sir. Katie Reynolds’ face is an 88 % match with Erin Foley’s. Two high-profile operatives from the Stockholm disaster are back in Russia, and they might be headed to Moscow,” Ardankin said.
“You have no idea where this woman is?” Pushnoy asked.
“I just received facial recognition confirmation. We’re trying to piece this together right now,” Ardankin said.
“I doubt very much that they are headed to Moscow. The Trans-Siberian stops in Yekaterinburg, the last known destination for the other agent,” Pushnoy said.
“But there’s nothing critical there. We’ve analyzed it and have so far come up empty. No high-ranking visits are scheduled, no sensitive installations worth targeting…hold on a second,” he said, covering the receiver.