Shooting someone from even a short distance away offered a certain protective layer that cushioned and blunted the barbarity of the act. Sneaking up silently behind someone to snuff out their life with a blade was far different from pitched battle where emotions and rage boiled into the fight.
Quinn was a hard man, accustomed to violent action, but the inevitable sounds and sensations of a life seeping away put an indelible mark on anyone’s mind and soul.
Snow covered the ground and filled the air, dampening the sound of Quinn’s approach. His target was out of shape and breathing hard from trotting in from the airstrip. Quinn doubted he could hear anything above the sound of his own wheezing — and perhaps the spatter of his urine as it hit the side of the plywood sweathouse.
Quinn’s training in both Air Force Special Operations and OSI had been excellent in all manner of fighting discipline and art, but courses in killing enemy sentries were non-existent. The only time it was even touched on, in some pre-deployment training, the preferred method was a suppressed 9mm carbine with subsonic ammunition. Emiko Miyagi, the enigmatic Japanese woman, had been deliberate and diverse in her teaching, demonstrating several relatively quiet, if extremely bloody, methods with blade and garrote. Many Internet experts revel in the philosophical niceties of the various arts of killing, but Emiko had actually done it, many times — and it brought a certain detachment to her eyes.
Quinn moved up behind the man without hesitating, knowing when he got within fifteen feet that he was too close to turn back. He snaked his left arm over the unsuspecting man’s shoulder and clasped his hand over his mouth, stifling a scream before it could escape. At the same time, he drove the thick tanto blade of the Riot into the right side of the man’s bull neck, just below the chin, sharp edge facing forward. Pulling back with his left hand, and pushing forward with his right, the razor-sharp Riot cut neatly through windpipe, jugular, and carotid in one quick and sickening motion.
The man’s hands flew to his throat. A great swath of blood sprayed the plywood, but with his face pressed tight against his target’s shoulder, Quinn heard instead of saw it. He felt no pity for the man he killed, but a great deal of pity for mankind in general that such a person ever existed at all.
In the movies, the enemy usually died instantly, but in reality, movement and noise could go on for some time. Quinn held the Russian for a full fifteen seconds until he ceased to struggle, then lowered the lifeless body to the snow. Unwilling to leave a rifle unattended, he stooped to pick up the dead man’s Kalashnikov when a deafening boom caused him to duck for cover. Something hit the plywood sweathouse with a rattling splatter. Quinn jumped sideways as a searing pain stitched his thigh.
There was no mistaking the feeling. He knew he’d been shot without even looking down.
Chapter 48
The secure telephone connection between Providenya and Moscow was spotty at best, and Rostov could not tell from General Zhestakova’s voice if he was still upset or if he’d grown ambivalent about the gas attacks on the United States. His sister was married to the Director of the FSB — the modern successor to the Soviet Union’s KGB. Salina Zhestakova was smart, but not a particularly handsome woman. Many supposed that the union required the general to pay a large sum of money in order to make the marriage go through and unite GRU and FSB as if they were powerful clans or allied nations instead of two security and intelligence components under the umbrella of the same government. It was not uncommon for Zhestakova to borrow talented FSB agents from his brother-in-law for particular missions in which he did not want the GRU directly involved — or loan GRU operatives to FSB for their more sensitive head shooting.
Rostov drummed his fingers against the desk blotter, trying to calm his nerves at having to speak with the famously impatient head of his organization. “The Black Hundreds would appear to want the same thing we do,” he said.
“My mistress wants me to take her to my dacha on the Black Sea,” Zhestakova said. “I would very much like the same thing, but I do not blather about that fact to my wife. The problem with these new Black Hundreds is that they do not know when to keep their mouths shut. They are idealistic with patriotic goals of a Mother Russia that cannot exist if we engage in a mutually destructive war with the United States. Would it be a terrible thing for the Americans to spend their resources tracking an unknown Islamic terrorist cell? Of course not, but we have seen what they do if they even have an inkling some nation is in possession of weapons of mass destruction.”
“Yes, General,” Rostov said, “but Russia is no insignificant desert nation.”
“We are not,” Zhestakova said. “But if we are honest with ourselves, we are merely a ‘near peer,’ not an equal. I am not saying we are weak. A smart dog can defeat a much larger wolf if he will but remember that he is a dog. Fighting jaw to jaw would destroy us. The Black Hundreds will kill hundreds, even thousands — some might even be willing to martyr themselves for the cause of a Novorossiya. The remaining zealots will bluster and rant — and then run back to you and me for protection.”
“I understand, sir.” It was pointless to say anything else when the general was on a tirade.
“Do you?” Zhestakova said. “Do you really? Because I am under the impression that you and Captain Lodygin have taken this for a game.”
“I assure you, General,” Rostov said. “I do—”
“You may not.” Zhestakova cut him off. “But it is clear that Lodygin does, and Lodygin falls under your command. If he is brash, it is because you allow him to be so.”
“Yes, General,” Rostov said. There was nothing more that he could say.
“I have a sense about him, you know,” Zhestakova said. “He seems to me to be a damaged man.”
“I assure you, General, he is capable.” Rostov couldn’t quite work up the will to endorse the captain any more than that. The truth was, Lodygin was broken. But he was loyal to a fault when it came to Rostov, and that alone meant something where jealousy and backstabbing were standard operating procedure.
“Perhaps,” Zhestakova said. “But I would not put him in charge of my pigs, not to mention a program with the importance of Novo Archangelsk. How is he getting this information? Who is telling him Black Hundreds are behind the theft?”
“A school friend of Dr. Volodin’s daughter.”
“Are your men making progress in retrieving Dr. Volodin?”
“I was informed this morning that they are about to make contact. It is my belief that they already have, considering the time.”
“Your belief?” The sound of Zhestakova’s fist against his desk was clearly audible over the phone. “Do not your men have a method to communicate? It seems to me that if they were to avert a nuclear war with America they might give you a call immediately.”
“Of course, General,” Rostov said. “I have sent my best men. They are close. I am certain of it.”
There was a long silence on the line. Rostov thought for a moment that the general had simply hung up, but he’d just been conferring with someone else in his office. Rostov wondered who it might be, and went through a mental list of all the people in the Kremlin who hated him.
“This situation necessitates extreme caution,” Zhestakova said. “The President has further questions that need to be answered before certain decisions can be made.”