"If everything goes as planned," Howard said.
"You worry too much, sir. Our squad speaks fluent Russian, and a bit of the local dialect. They got the proper travel and ID papers, they can shoot the balls off a gnat at ten paces. They'll get him. And if there is any problem they can't handle, that's what the two dozen of us sitting at the farm cleaning our weapons are for, ain't it?"
Howard nodded. He had been surprised the mission had gone forward, given how cloudy the politics were in Washington. He did not want to get into a shooting war with the Chechens. No matter whose fault it might be, he was the man in charge, and the fallout would all settle on him. No, he didn't want a war this time. He wanted a nice clean insertion and retrieval, and as Fernandez had said, to fly away home. This one was too touchy for anything else.
Ruzhyo and Grigory the Snake were at a petrol service station off 1-95, not far from the Springfield Regional Shopping Center. According to the map Ruzhyo had, the old Fort Belvoir Proving Ground was a few miles ahead, on the way to Quantico. What, he wondered, did an American proving ground look like? It must depend on what they were trying to prove, which weapon or vehicle they were testing.
Winters, the Texan, had gone home, to Dallas or Fort Worth or wherever it was he claimed he was from. Should they need him in the next few days, he'd said, he would check for messages at the secure number.
They had stopped at the station because Grigory had an urgent need to use the toilet. From the muffled groans he had made as he urinated, Ruzhyo guessed that Zmeya's own… personal snake was afflicted with some ailment. Gonorrhea, probably, since that was the venereal disease most likely to manifest itself with pain while peeing. As a soldier, Ruzhyo had heard many men groan while dribbling thus, usually a day or three after returning from the whores they had enjoyed while on leave.
Here was the Snake's reward for his adventures in Las Vegas.
Grigory came out of the toilet, his face flushed. "I need some penicillin, Mikhayl."
"Was she worth this?"
"Then, yes. Now, no."
"I do not believe you can buy penicillin without a doctor's order here," Ruzhyo said. He kept his face bland, even though he felt much like smiling. It served the fool right.
"There is a pet store nearby," Grigory said. "We can get it there."
"A pet store?"
"Da. The Americans have rules against selling antibiotics for people, but not for animals. You can buy penicillin, tetracycline, streptomycin, even chloramphenicol for your pet fish. You open the capsules, sprinkle the medicine into the water. The drugs are not so pure as those intended for people, and they are expensive, but they work just as well."
Ruzhyd shook his head. Amazing. Not just that the Americans would do such a thing — Americans no longer surprised him with how stupid they could be — but that the Snake would know this? That was truly fascinating. How had he come by such knowledge?
Ruzhyo asked him.
"I have been unlucky in love a few times," Grigory allowed.
Ruzhyo stared at the Snake. A man who knew no better was merely ignorant, a thing that could be remedied. Someone who knew better, but proceeded anyway? That was stupid, and not so easily repaired. "Very well. We shall go to your pet store, so that you may buy fish medicine to fix your sick zmeyd. Then we find a way to get within range of Net Force HQ. I am thinking we will become U.S. Marines. What better disguise in a place like Quantico?"
"Anything you like, Mikhayl, once I get my penicillin."
Howard looked at his watch, then through the dilapidated farmhouse's window. The troops had managed to roll both the copters into the massive, if decrepit, barn. There had once been stalls for rows of cows to be milked, but the spooks had gutted enough of the barn to allow for such things as hiding two beat-up Hueys. They didn't look pretty, but they were in fine mechanical condition. They were painted a dark, dead military green and not black, but they were covert birds. They didn't carry any weapons, not even machine guns. They were strictly transport. Not very fast transport — a loaded Huey might hit 120 knots — but the craft were sturdy and dependable. You weren't going to outrun an air-to-air or ground-to-air missile in anything that had a top rotor anyhow. They couldn't fight and they couldn't run too fast, but nobody could shoot you if they didn't see you. Hiding was better than shooting in this scenario.
Howard turned away. "Status, Sergeant?"
Julio stood behind three TacComp Specialists, who sat on stools in front of a bank of five field computers set up on their own telescoping legs. They were opened like big suitcases with the monitors in the hinged lids. The systems were also ugly-looking — lean-mean-GI-green — but when it came to this kind of hardware, pretty was as pretty did. These were state-of-the-art 900-MHz machines, with the new FireEye bioneuro chips, massive amounts of fiberlight memory, and fourteen hours of active battery power if the local plugs didn't work.
"Sir, our squad's GPS sig puts them here." He pointed at a map on-screen. There was a tiny red dot flashing in the approximate middle of it. "Two kilometers from their destination."
"Report?"
"Their coded signal-bounce three minutes ago stetted a continued ASG — all systems green."
"Good."
One of the TCS operators said, "We got on-line vid from the Big Bird spysat footprinting the locale. Check this out."
A ghostly phospor-green image of a truck rolling along a dark street from above appeared on one of the screens. As they watched, the truck made a right turn. It passed under a streetlight, and an image appeared on the truck's roof. The TCS op laughed.
"What's funny?" Howard asked.
The TCS op touched controls. The image freeze-framed, and increased in size. "A little unsharp mask… thus," the op said. "Look here. A message from the squad."
A crude hand-drawn image on the truck's roof sharpened enough that Howard could make it out. It was a hand, holding up the two-finger sign for the letter V.
V for victory. Howard smiled.
"You owe me five, Sarge," the op said.
Howard raised an eyebrow.
Fernandez said, "We had a small wager as to what the unit would draw on the truck roof, sir. I believe TCS Jeter here must have gotten to them with a bribe."
"What were you betting it would be?" Howard asked.
"An, uh, illustration somewhat like, uh, this one, sir. Slightly different."
"One that featured one finger, sir," the TCS op said. He kept his face deadpan.
Howard grinned again. No matter where they were, no matter what they were up against, soldiers always found some way to relieve the monotony — or the tension.
"Carry on," Howard said. He walked back to the window.
Plekhanov was getting ready for bed, brushing his teeth, when the doorbell to his house rang. His house was small, but nicely appointed, and in a neighborhood of such houses. Soon he would have one twice as big in a much better neighborhood. Everything in its own time.
The bell rang again. It had an insistent quality.
It was awfully late for someone to be calling. This could not be good news.