“I see. I see.” Cornwell was making a note. “I am afraid that a lot of things have changed. Some of the calls I received were thinly veiled reminders that European governments and our friends in Washington are the biggest and best customers for Excalibur products.”
“The bastards. That’s blackmail. I don’t do what they want, we lose future contracts.”
“My dear friend Freddie R. was most vocal about the situation,” said Jeff. “You recall Freddie, of course.”
Kyle did. Left unsaid was that General Sir Frederick Ravensdale was the deputy supreme allied commander in Europe. “He was somewhat threatening, to be precise.”
“Blackmail,” Kyle repeated.
“That’s a very harsh term and should not be bandied about lightly where our friends are concerned. What I take away from all of this nattering is that they want you to stay involved. Insist on it, actually.”
“What about Excalibur?”
“Janna is handling the Washington affairs quite adequately for the time being. I am more concerned with the company’s future access to our friends and allies. Those links must be maintained at all costs, Kyle. Do you understand?”
Swanson gritted his teeth in frustration. Here it was again; that feeling that he was being used by forces unknown. Sir Jeff and General Ravensdale, the Deputy SACEUR, were formidable men. In Kyle’s view, they were also being used. By who and why; he had no clue.
“Okay, boss. I’ll do whatever the hell you want me to do. That may be the quickest way out.”
“Very well. I knew you would understand. And Pat is right. When this is all done, drop by and spend some time with us here before you head to Washington.”
“Yea.” Pat cheered off-screen.
“Still, I want some control over my own operations. How about lending me the boat for a couple of weeks? I can park it nearby and stage out of it.” The company yacht, its private helicopter, solid communications suite and crew of military veterans would provide a comfort zone. If Swanson was being forced to play the game, at least he would attempt to play by his own rules.
“Consider it done. I’ll get the Vagabond started. Be careful.” The older man’s face was now that of a concerned father and less of the former SAS colonel who knew more than he let on. “If you need anything, I am here.”
“Love you both,” Kyle said, and terminated the video call, then whispered to himself, “Damn.”
14
Staff Sergeant Brenda Hutchinson of the U.S. Air Force was startled and cried out with both surprise and pain. She was strapped into a seat aboard an RC-135U reconnaissance plane that was flying a racetrack pattern over the Baltics to keep an eye on the Russians by monitoring the electronic cloud. The long flight from the spy plane’s home base at RAF Mildenhall in the United Kingdom had so far been without incident, as they usually were. The four-engine plane with swept wings was calmly cruising in the sunlight above the Sunday storm that was pummeling the earth below, and it was over Estonia when she was blasted by a sudden eruption of signals that came out of nowhere, without warning and at a volume so loud the sergeant jerked her padded earphones from her head. The screen in front of her that charted aircraft and ships turned to green-and-white jibberish.
“What’s wrong, Hutch?” She felt a hand grip her shoulder as Captain Stan Morris leaned over. He also saw the normally crisp screen fall into meaningless flashes and zigzags and looping swirls.
“We were just jammed with an electromagnetic pulse, sir,” she said, quickly clamping her headset back on to begin working the knobs and switches and reading her dials. “Something fried us hard, all across the spectrum. We’re almost blind.”
The intercom was alive with similar reports from other stations on the aircraft and the big plane was jerking in the sky as automatic controls balked and the pilots fought to resume command. After about twenty seconds, the plane steadied and the electronics came back online through the emergency backups.
“Find them, Hutch,” the captain said. The diminutive sergeant knew her business, and her fingers attacked the keyboard. “Find the bastard. Get the source.”
On the intercom, they heard the aircraft commander tell everyone to hold on because they were breaking off from their pattern and retreating to the west, where a couple of NATO F-15C fighters could rendezvous and escort them safely home.
“Too late! They’re right on top of us!” Hutchinson yelled. “There’s an Ilyushin-20 coming up at two-sixty degrees, blasting and jamming.” The powerful Russian electronic intelligence plane had hidden in the storm by flying low and cloaking itself with the lightning and bad weather, and had jumped up when the American plane was less than five miles away and closing.
“It’s got company!” Sergeant Hutchinson shouted, discarding her normally measured, quiet tone.
Also rising like hungry sharks from the gray storm into the bright sunshine were a pair of giant Tupolev-22M2 Backfire bombers and four Sukhoi-27 Flanker fighter jets. They barreled forward to intersect with the American spy plane in the middle of its evasive curve, almost on a collision course, with the IL-20 electronics devil painting the path between them with overpowering strength.
The entire Russian formation continued to climb by them, intentionally giving the Americans a perfect view of full racks of rockets and antiaircraft missiles on the Flankers. Each Backfire bomber had a huge AS-4 cruise missile slung beneath its center line. The electronic jamming ceased abruptly and as Staff Sergeant Hutchinson watched her controls come back to normal limits, the Russian flight went majestically on its way, carving through the sky of Estonia in clear violation of designated border air space. They did not care.
Swanson mulled over his new instructions and hoped that the airline could extricate his luggage from the plane before it took off. It was to be taken back to the hotel, and he would return to the same room he had left only a few hours earlier. That gave him plenty of time to wait in the VIP lounge and try to shuffle the pieces of the puzzle.
Why me? That was the question, not what he was doing in Belgium. Whoever was running this show wanted Kyle Swanson and no one else to be on hand, which made no sense at all to Kyle. He was not suited to the task and felt uncomfortable and inadequate trying to do it. Swanson did not buy the explanation that Ivan Strakov would speak only with him, for they barely knew each other. They had been on duty together only for a single bit of time back in the day, and even then, it was not a close friendship.
Strakov had crossed over from Russia with more than enough clout to set ideal conditions of his acceptance by the United States intelligence agencies and be treated like spy royalty. Instead of residing in some comfy CIA safe house in the fox country of Northern Virginia, he had steered the decision to move to the stuffy confines of Koekelberg, a neighborhood of Brussels. Colonel Tom Markey had observed that Ivan was always devious and operated behind the scenes in the world of intelligence, and that he seldom made a move that he had not planned out thoroughly in advance. There was no reason to trust the Russian.
A hostess in a dark skirt, white blouse and a bright red scarf knotted around her neck approached Swanson and said the bags had been rescued, then she wanted to know his next step. Would the gentleman like for her to call a hire car for the trip back to the hotel, or perhaps just a taxi?
Kyle came out of his reverie. The one thing that the Russian defector really knew about Swanson was that he was a big-league sniper. They had met on the job, and Strakov, as a student in scout-sniper school, had watched Kyle fire with incredible precision. After they went their separate ways, perhaps Strakov the spy was able to keep tabs on his former mentor, although most of Kyle’s record was intentionally blank because of the secretive nature of his missions. It was a long reach, but it made some sense, because it was the only strong link between them. For some reason Strakov had this strange determination to keep him so close at hand.