After a few close calls with a relentless assassination team in South America, Zuyev brought him by ship to the west coast of India, where he’d spent the past year working in an isolated P4 biosafety laboratory built specifically for him. The Bratva had undoubtedly spent a fortune on the lab, both in terms of money and time, and all they had to show for it right now was a cooler full of virus samples and the genius who created them.
He could expect Zuyev to be in a particularly vicious mood after this, the brunt of which would be taken out on him. Yes. He’d make sure Zuyev died a miserable death, preferably at the hands of one of the viruses he paid Reznikov to create. He appreciated a sense of irony.
Reznikov slogged forward through the water, following the dark forms in front of him toward what he assumed was the riverbank. Zuyev and one of the other men manhandled him up the steep, five-foot bank, pushing him into the thick, untamed forest. He started to think they’d made a mistake when the foliage cleared, dumping them on a hard-packed dirt trail.
“Not much furth—” started Zuyev, his words replaced by a sickening gurgle.
To his left, a dark shape swiftly but silently materialized from the forest, instantly closing the distance to the mafiya guard directly in front of him. A crack broke the silence, a brief flash illuminating the suppressed pistol pressed against the guard’s head. The man dropped to the trail at Reznikov’s feet, landing with a heavy thump. He had no idea where the third security guy had gone.
Now he was truly fucked. Zuyev and two former Russian Spetsnaz taken down in the blink of an eye? A helicopter raid at three thirty in the morning? He was dealing with professionals, which meant one thing — a secure prison cell for the rest of his life.
“All clear,” said a Russian voice behind him. “Start the truck.”
The man put a gloved hand on his shoulder, causing him to flinch.
“Dr. Reznikov, we need to move immediately. It’s not safe here,” the dark figure said in Russian.
No kidding.
Grigor was missing, and he didn’t need the half-witted mafiya guard deciding to kill him rather than let him fall into enemy hands.
“There’s a third man in my group. He was first on the trail,” whispered Reznikov. “I don’t see him.”
A car engine roared in the near distance.
“That’s him starting the SUV. Grigor has been on our payroll for a while now.”
Grigor was one of the ex-GRU Spetsnaz that had freed him from the CIA prison in Vermont. The Bratva had extended his contract, assigning him a job as one of Reznikov’s primary bodyguards. The gruff asshole had followed him around like a shadow for close to three years, apparently waiting to sell him to the highest bidder. Was there no end to the double-crossing with these people?
“Where are we going?” asked Reznikov, resigned to his current fate with his new captors.
“Anywhere but here,” said the man, pushing a piece of gear with straps into his hand. “Hold these up to your face for now; we’ll get them strapped on later.”
Reznikov raised the device in front of his head, placing the two green-glowing eyepieces to his face. The darkness transformed into a monochromatic green picture, revealing the true nature of his rescue. The man that had given him the goggles was dressed in military camouflage and armed with a suppressed shortbarreled AK-74. He wore a heavily laden tactical vest rigged with communications gear and bulging magazine pouches; night-vision goggles were strapped to his bearded face.
The absence of a helmet led Reznikov to believe the man was not part of the raid against the laboratory. Those soldiers would be covered head to toe in body armor. This guy looked like he had geared up for an extended jungle operation. He wasn’t sure if this was a good or bad sign. The fact that they hadn’t put a bullet in his head was a decent enough start.
He turned to face the second, similarly outfitted commando, who scanned the trail behind them with his rifle. Valery Zuyev lay at Reznikov’s feet, blood pumping from the back of his neck onto the hardened mud. Zuyev’s lifeless eyes stared past him, fixed skyward. Reznikov spit on his face.
“We need to go,” said the commando, picking up the temperature-controlled specimen cooler dropped by Zuyev.
“Who are you? What is this?”
“You’ve been liberated, Dr. Reznikov. But if we’re not on the road moving south within the next thirty seconds, that may well change. I don’t hear any more shooting from the lab. It’s only a matter of time before they realize you’re gone.”
“Liberated by whom?”
“People with deep pockets,” the commando replied, nudging him forward. “That’s all I know — or care to know.
“Be careful with that cooler,” said Reznikov, remaining fixed in place.
“The cooler was our primary objective,” said the commando. “I suggest you start moving. If you slow us down too much, I’ll have to leave you behind like Zuyev. Risk versus reward. The faster you move, the less risk.”
Reznikov shook his head. Sold like cattle to the highest bidder. He could figure it all out later, after finishing off his second flask.
Chapter 3
Alexei Kaparov strained to view the live camera feed displayed on the operation center’s main projection screen. An impenetrable crowd of senior agents and high-ranking bureaucrats gathered in a tight semicircle around the display wall, essentially blocking most of his view. Only a cattle prod at its highest setting could open a space between these piranhas.
Mercifully, he’d been ushered into the darkened, overcrowded room several minutes after the Alpha Group Spetsnaz team had gone to work on the suspected bioweapons laboratory site. The FSB higher-ups obviously didn’t want him and the rest of the B team to see the special operations team’s insertion. Thank the world for small miracles. He really didn’t care at all to watch the operation unfold. Unwatchable shaky green images, heavy breathing, and gunfire didn’t interest him in the least. The end result was all that really mattered, especially in this case.
Killing Reznikov would close a dark chapter in Russia’s history, a chapter the government had rewritten several times over the past decade, the most creative revision foisted on the Russian people and the international community several months ago. He had to give them credit. They must have dusted off the best Communist-era propagandists to pull it off.
Instead of continuing to blame the astonishingly tragic situation in Monchegorsk on some kind of separatist uprising, which nobody believed from the outset, the government took the unprecedented step of admitting that the city’s population had been deliberately infected with a bioweapon created at the Vektor Institute State Research Center for Virology and Biotechnology. With a caveat, of course.
That faux caveat being that Russian authorities were completely unaware that a rogue group of scientists had secretly restarted Biopreparat’s banned bioweapons research and development program until it was too late to stop the tragedy. Of course, as soon as Russian Federation authorities discovered the illegal and clearly unauthorized program, they did what any responsible government would do under the circumstances. They destroyed it. History was rewritten, and with the United States government’s complicit silence, the story was bought hook, line and sinker, for the good of everyone, especially Kaparov.
Prior to the historical rewrite, he’d found it increasingly difficult as the head of the Bioweapons and Chemical Threat Assessment Directorate to pretend that the number one threat to Russian Federation security didn’t exist. He couldn’t wait to hear the Alpha team’s final confirmation that Reznikov was dead. A late night drink — or five — could be in order.