“You take care of your men,” Raisor said to Dalton. He grabbed Jackson’s arm and helped her to her feet. “Come with me.”
“Hold on!” Dalton put his hand up. “I want to talk to my commander. I have to inform him about what happened to Sergeant Stith.”
Raisor stared at him for a few seconds, then nodded. “You can use the secure line down the hall there. But make sure you don’t say a word about the mission. Is that clear, Sergeant Major?”
“I hear you,” Dalton said.
“You can inform Colonel Metter about Sergeant Stith, but he has to hold official notification until we can implement a cover story.”
“I know the way the game is played.”
The red light went out. General Rurik relaxed slightly, knowing that Feteror was back inside his metal home and the window was shut.
“Report!” Rurik snapped into the microphone that linked him directly to Feteror’s auditory center. There was no way Feteror could escape the noise, and Rurik relished that power.
“I’ve done as you requested. There has been no change.” The tinny voice that came out of a speaker on the master console actually sounded tired.
“The Mafia?”
“They still plan to attack in seven days.”
Rurik smiled. “What do you know of a Colonel Seogky of the GRU?”
“I’ve never heard of him.”
“We believe he had a meeting with the same Mafia group. His body was found in a park near Kiev along with that of a member of the Mafia.”
“I know nothing of this.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
“Good night.” Rurik threw a switch and the power to the cylinder went down to bare life-support levels. “Pleasant nightmares,” Rurik whispered into the mike as he shut it off.
Barsk stared out the window of the plane at the ocean twenty thousand feet below, where white dots indicating icebergs drifted in the Arctic Ocean.
“We drop at fifteen thousand.” Leksi’s voice was hoarse from too many cigarettes and too much vodka. The men gathered around him all had the same hard look; they were former Soviet Special Operations soldiers, searching for a better life outside of the military.
Leksi unfolded a map. “This island holds the target.”
One of the men laughed. “October Revolution Island. Perfect.”
Leksi pointed at the map. “The GRU has an observation post here, on this mountain, overlooking our target.”
“I thought you said this place has been abandoned for thirty-five years,” a mercenary noted.
“It has been.”
“And the GRU is still watching it?”
“Our target holds something very important,” Leksi said.
“What can be that important?”
Leksi looked up from the map and stared at the man. Then he continued the briefing. Barsk listened, but he wasn’t jumping with the team. He was to stay on board the aircraft with the pilot and wait until Leksi gave the all-clear signal. Then they would land on the old runway that had serviced the abandoned base.
“Let’s rig,” Leksi ordered at the conclusion. He looked at his watch. “We’re fifteen minutes out.”
The plane was a military AN-12 Cub, surplus that Oma had bought off some Air Force personnel eager to make money. Barsk considered it interesting that in the blink of an eye the former Soviet Union had embraced capitalism fiercely; the problem was that there were none of the established checks and balances that Western societies had developed.
In the front half of the cargo bay, a large backhoe was chained down along with other excavating equipment. A pallet full of explosives was tied down just in front of the backhoe. Knowing that he was riding in a plane with a load of C-4 and detonating devices didn’t do much for Barsk’s emotional health.
The plane banked and Barsk eyed the pallet warily.
Leksi thrust a mask at Barsk. “Put it on.”
Barsk slipped it over his head. He felt the cool oxygen flow.
The mercenaries were hooked into small tanks on their chests, bulky parachutes on their backs. Weapons were tied off on their left shoulder. Leksi had a headset on, listening to the pilot. He pushed his mask aside to yell.
“Depressurizing!”
With a shudder, the back of the plane began opening. The bottom half lowered, making a platform, while the top slid up into the large space under the tail.
The twenty men followed Leksi as he walked onto the platform. Barsk shivered from the freezing air swirling in. He edged closer to the heat duct over his head. Leksi moved a large bundle to the edge of the ramp.
A green light flashed. Leksi pushed the bundle, and the men tumbled off the ramp, following it.
Fifteen thousand feet below, First Lieutenant Gregor Potsk was concerned about wood. With winter coming, heat was the first priority, and resupply had gotten so strained that they were lucky to get enough food, never mind kerosene for the heater built into the concrete-and-log bunker set high on the side of the mountain. Two years ago they’d converted to wood, but the problem was, they had already cut down all trees within two miles. More wood meant going further.
Potsk shrugged his greatcoat on and picked up an AK-74 and a large band saw. He waited. Two of his detail of eight men stood.
“Let us go,” Potsk said, opening the heavy door. He knew he could order his men to do this, but the situation here was strained at best. He believed in leading by example.
They’d been here for eight months already, having been flown in as soon as the weather had cleared the previous spring. They had four months left on their tour of duty, and morale was plummeting with the pending onset of winter. Especially since there seemed to be no purpose to this task-ing— watching an abandoned airstrip and the blocked entrance to a long out-of-use underground bunker. Ice crackled underfoot as Potsk traversed the hillside, heading for a valley where the closest trees were.
“Sir!” one of the men said, tapping him on the arm and then pointing upwards.
Out of the low-hanging gray clouds a parachutist appeared, then another. Soon there were twenty chutes in sight as the first one touched down about two hundred meters away, tumbling down the hillside until the man got his feet under him and cut away the chute.
“Sir?” The soldiers with Potsk were waiting on his orders.
Potsk looked from the closest jumper to the bunker, now over a quarter mile away. He knew they would never beat the paratroopers there. And he had no idea who these men were. Perhaps Spetsnatz running some sort of training exercise. But then he should have been notified. Of course, he immediately thought, things were so disorganized in the military that whoever was jumping might not have known the island was occupied. In fact, Potsk thought as he started walking toward the jumpers, these men shouldn’t know about this place at all, because it was highly classified.
“Hello!” Potsk called out.
The man stared at him. He was wearing a black jumpsuit with no markings or insignia.
“This is a classified area. There is to be no trespassing. Who is your commander?” Potsk demanded.
“I am.” The voice came from the right, and Potsk spun around.
Potsk stepped back. The man towered above him, and Potsk noted that there was a scar running down the side of his face. “I said— ”
The man brought up a submachine gun and fired a burst, blowing back one of the soldiers with Potsk. He swung the smoking muzzle toward Potsk. “Drop your weapons.”
Potsk swallowed, dropping his AK-74, the other soldier doing the same. Behind the large man, some of the paratroopers were setting up a tripod and opening a case.
“Who are you?”
“Are all the rest of your men in the bunker?” Leksi demanded.