The snipers smelled the smoke before they saw the orange glow of a cigarette being enjoyed by a sentry at an outpost shack beside the trail. They stopped and watched for a minute, logging away the information that it was just one man, and the position would have to be dealt with on the way out. They could do nothing immediately because the man probably was due for relief within a few hours and any new sentry finding the corpse would raise an alarm. Baldwin led them deeper into the woods and they bypassed the guard without being noticed.
Onward they moved, taking one careful step at a time and keeping their weapons ready beneath old growth trees that blocked the stars and held the moisture in a mist of damp, chill air. Baldwin suddenly went to one knee and raised a fist, bringing everyone to a halt. Having become accustomed to the night and the wooded labyrinth, they felt the presence of other humans. For a full minute, they remained silent and still, then Baldwin whispered into the small microphone on the radio that linked the team members, and while the others went flat, he snaked away in a low crawl and disappeared into the muck.
He told them a few minutes later that they were there: They had reached the final firing position.
By the time the new sun began to brighten the sky at their backs, the snipers had built a pair of hides among the thick bushes and tangled roots at the crest of a ridge overlooking Rooster Cap Nowak. Many years ago, when the camp was first built, bulldozers had pushed the forest back, but the need for total vigilance had been slight during decades of no wars in this tiny part of Russia that was not even in Russia, and the woodland vines had marched back in their own time.
Hide sites had been easy to find in the remarkably thick undergrowth, and they had used entrenching tools to dig in from below and behind the old foliage, and swept away their tracks. The resulting spaces were like the burrows of large animals. Through openings between the leaves and branches, each had a clear view of the artillery base, although they remained invisible to any naked eye from below. Before settling in, they took turns cautiously emptying their bladders in the undergrowth and covering the scent with dirt, and then began the long and arduous day of waiting and watching, lasering ranges and sketching the target area. Waiting. Waiting.
The camp guards stirred to life with a morning formation at 0630 in a small central square and ran the Russian flag up a pole. Around the open area were a number of buildings that were standard for any such site — supply sheds, barracks, garages and mess halls. The nearby roads had been closed at midnight, and the first shift of soldiers carrying AK-47s opened the yellow barrier gates to serve the few early-bird trucks waiting to be checked through. The snipers estimated that about seventy-five men were in the camp, all going about routine duties and indicating no unusual level of alertness. “Just another day in paradise,” Sergeant Baldwin quipped over the radio net as he studied faces through his scope.
Swanson examined the firepower at the camp’s three strongpoints — all of them .50-caliber machine guns mounted behind sandbag parapets and interlocking the road junction, not facing the surrounding area as they should. The crews were running normal checks, cleaning and loading the weapons. Each guard post also had a protected pit holding a 120mm mortar, real man-eaters that could reach up to sixteen miles with an explosive charge that had a kill radius of some seventy yards. Now he knew which monsters would be chasing them back to Lake Vištytis.
Anneli wore a set of headphones attached to the man-pack acoustical surveillance device that she had hauled in. The simple device designed for field use emitted an invisible and narrow laser beam that bounced back to a small parabolic dish and delivered signals so clear that she could pick up individual voices. During the formation, an officer addressed the men, and she listened carefully, her face scrunched in concentration as she simultaneously translated word for word. It was all routine housekeeping assignments until the end.
“This evening at eighteen hundred hours, Lieutenant General Victor Mizon will arrive by helicopter. He has been our commander as deputy chief of the Border Service here, and has recently been promoted. The general is making a farewell inspection of all Kaliningrad facilities before his reassignment to Moscow. Our camp is on the agenda because he once was posted here when he was just a lieutenant.” When the briefing officer paused, so did Anneli. When he continued, so did she.
“This is also the general’s birthday and we will honor him with a celebration.” She added as an aside that some of the men in ranks quietly cheered that news.
The briefer continued. “Most of today will be devoted to preparing for this inspection. We want our camp to be immaculate by the time his helicopter arrives. At his request, there will be a reception line at eighteen thirty hours so he can personally greet each soldier and officer here. Afterward, General Mizon will have dinner in the officers’ mess, and our cooks will prepare special dishes for everyone. The men on duty will eat on a rotation schedule. He will spend the night here. His departure is scheduled for ten hundred hours tomorrow morning. Look sharp, men. One of our own is ascending to high rank!”
Anneli removed the headset and rubbed her ears. “Was that okay?” she asked Kyle.
“Finest kind,” he said, astonished at her literal and immediate translation. “You boys hear all that?”
“Oh, yes,” said Corporal Perry. “We have him right down to the minute. He is coming in right at six o’clock. No guesswork. Good job, Anneli.”
22
Ivan Strakov showed no surprise when the door of the private conference room opened at nine o’clock on Friday morning and a tall colonel of the U.S. Army entered. There was instant recognition of the long face with the brown eyes and brown wavy hair, and it was confirmed by the man’s name tag. The Russian stood and offered a hand. “Tom Markey. Good to see you again,” he said with a touch of respect. “I haven’t seen you since that conference down in Istanbul. About two years, right?”
“Something like that. The world has changed a lot since then, Ivan.” Markey shook the hand, then they both sat down.
“A lot of change, Tom,” agreed the Russian. “We have slaved away our best years on government salaries, doing cutting-edge research and development, only to see young techies came along and use our discoveries to become filthy rich.”
“I hear you’re becoming a bit on the wealthy side yourself, Ivan.” He loathed the man with whom he was having this quiet conversation. Strakov was a dangerous genius and could not be taken for granted. If this was a game, it was a very serious one.
Strakov shrugged. “I should have left the army long ago. So how are tricks over at the Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence? Who thought up that name anyway?”
“We have developed a nuclear death-ray wristwatch app for our soldiers. Let’s get down to business, shall we?”
The Russian did not waver. “Fine. However, my rule is that I talk only with Kyle Swanson about the good stuff. No exceptions, I fear, not even for you, Tom.”
Colonel Tom Markey’s voice remained soft but was emphatic. “Swanson thinks you are a fake and a fraud, so there is no use having him in the conversation any longer. I was given the job because nobody — nobody, Ivan — is more familiar with your work than me.”