He was naked and cold. The concrete was damp, and there was a dripping noise in one direction, but the chain wouldn’t allow him to reach any wall. Just twenty feet of rough concrete floor in every direction.
He sensed something change. A presence. He looked about but he could see nothing.
He started when the voice came out of the darkness. “Professor Vasilev.”
The old man spun about but could see nothing.
“Professor Vasilev.” The voice was deep, deeper than any voice Vasilev had ever heard, with a rough edge to it that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
The old man wet his lips with a swollen tongue. “Yes?” His voice was weak, quavering, bouncing into the walls and being absorbed. His heart rate increased dramatically as two red objects appeared, about seven feet above the floor, glowing like coals in the darkness. Eyes.
“Who are you?” Vasilev whispered.
“I am Chyort,” the voice rasped. “The devil.”
Vasilev’s gaze was focused on those red dots staring at him. “What do you want?”
“Where are the computer tapes from October Revolution Island?”
Vasilev swallowed. “What are you talking about?”
“The tapes for the phased-displacement generator you took with you when you left.”
“There is— ”
“Do not lie to me,” the voice warned. “There are many things worse than dying, and I am intimate with all of them. Where are the tapes?”
Vasilev closed his eyes. “They were updated and transferred onto floppy first, then CD-ROM three years ago.”
“Where is the CD stored?”
“With everything else. GRU records.”
“Is the program current?”
Vasilev frowned. “Current?”
“Has it been updated to run with current operating systems in modern computers?”
Vasilev sighed. “As of a few years ago, yes, but I don’t know if it is current with today’s operating systems.” He looked up at the two inhuman eyes. “Where am I? Why am I here?”
“This is hell,” the voice said. “And you are here to pay retribution for your sins.”
As the rough, evil voice faded, so did the two coals, and Vasilev was left in darkness once more.
Chapter Three
The walls of the conference room were covered with plaques and photos from Special Operations units all over the world. From the Royal Danish Navy’s Fromandskorp-set, to the now defunct Canadian Parachute Regiment, to the Norwegian Jaegers, the plaques were tokens of goodwill to the men of the 2nd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) for various training and operational missions conducted with those elite units.
Dalton knew that each of those plaques represented a lot of sweat and time, and in some cases blood. He knew that because he’d been to every country represented on the wall and had taken part in practically every type of exercise with the A-Teams of 10th Group. What he also knew was that there were plenty of exercises and deployments that would never have a plaque to commemorate because they were too classified to be acknowledged.
Dalton had been in 10th Group, off and on, for twenty years, with some other assignments sprinkled in over the years. He considered the unit to be his home in the Army, although he had served in it at four different places. Fort Carson, Colorado, was a new posting for 10th Group, the unit being transferred there in the mid-nineties during a round of base closures that had shut down its longtime home at Fort Devens, Massachusetts. The 1st Battalion of the 10th Group had been staged forward in Germany since the unit had come into existence in the late fifties. First at
Bad Tolz, a former SS training barracks, where Dalton had done two tours, then, more recently, when Bad Tolz was given back to the Germans, at Stuttgart.
If there was one constant in Dalton’s military life, it was change, and this morning he was ready for whatever was going to be laid on the table. As soon as he’d come to work, he’d been grabbed by the battalion adjutant and told that there was an important meeting in five minutes in the conference room and the colonel wanted him to sit in on it.
Since the briefing hadn’t yet started, he had no idea what this was about, but he had a bad feeling, mainly due to the glimpse he’d had of the two people in the colonel’s office, which adjoined his. The man wore civilian clothes— a black turtleneck under an expensive blazer— but it was more than just the usual military distrust of those not in uniform that generated Dalton’s negative feelings. Dalton had been in Special Operations for over thirty years now, and he could read Agency in a man as easily as if he had the letters of his organization imprinted on his forehead with a bright red tattoo. The man was either CIA, DIA, or NSA. The other person in the colonel’s office was a woman, dressed in a tailored suit, her blond hair drawn tight. Dalton hadn’t been able to get a read on her.
When Dalton had walked into the conference room, he’d noted there were two other people already there: Captain Anderson and Master Sergeant Trilly, a combination that Dalton found strange. Anderson was the battalion assistant operations officer. Trilly was the team sergeant for ODA 054. Dalton had greeted them both, then taken his usual seat next to the head of the table.
ODA stood for Operational Detachment Alpha and was the official designation for the basic organizational element of Special Forces, more commonly called an A-Team. The company headquarters, one hierarchical level below Dalton but one above the ODA, was the ODB, or B-Team, each of which commanded five ODAs. Dalton was the sergeant major of the battalion, or ODC, which had three ODBs in it, and fifteen ODAs. Anderson was the man who helped plan the missions all those teams went on.
What set the Special Forces units apart from the rest of the Army was that SF troopers rarely operated tactically at any higher level than the A-Team. The B and C teams existed mainly for command and support purposes. This placed a great deal of responsibility on those at the lowest levels and was the major reason Special Forces looked for very mature soldiers to fill its ranks.
Dalton had a lot of respect for Captain Anderson, who had commanded a team for two years before being brought up to battalion for the past year, but not as much for Trilly. Anderson was a West Pointer who had commanded a company in the Infantry before going through Special Forces training. He was six feet tall and in great shape, able to keep up with the physical demands of the training a team went through. He had dark hair cut tight against his skull, flecks of gray already appearing along the sides. The most important traits Anderson had, in Dalton’s opinion, were the ability to know what he could do and what he couldn’t and his willingness to trust his men to do their jobs. Too many officers that Dalton had served with over the years had held back their implicit trust from those they commanded, and in a self-fulfilling prophecy, that lack had eaten away at the integrity of the unit.
The problem with Trilly, in Dalton’s opinion, was that he simply didn’t have enough Special Forces experience. Trilly had gone through the Special Forces qualification course as a senior E-7, after fifteen years of duty in the air defense artillery. He’d come to 10th Group three years ago, been promoted to E-8 six months ago, and, despite Dalton’s misgivings, been given the team sergeant slot based on his rank. Dalton had convinced Colonel Metter to assign Trilly to 054, which he felt had the strongest team leader in the battalion, commanding what was probably the best team. But where was the team leader? Dalton wondered. If 054 was going to be used in some sort of operation, the team leader should have been present.
Dalton knew both of the men from a training experience they had gone through as part of a two-team contingent three years ago— a classified experience that was not represented by a plaque on the wall.