The next room’s lock also needed to be taken out. This was an IT room filled with banks of computers and blinking lights, and one frightened Pakistani, huddled over a keyboard, who Poacher calmly double-tapped.
While Flounder went to the end of the corridor to the last door, Poacher likewise blasted the lock on the third door, and barged in. He followed his SOCOM pistol — the tactical light beneath the barrel now turned on — into the darkened room and swept the light’s beam left to right.
The room was small, looked more like a closet, and there was a single cot with a figure stirring on it. Poacher reflexively took aim on the figure, shining his light over it. He directed his barrel toward the floor and relaxed his finger over the trigger when he saw who it was.
Poacher looked around the walls, found a light switch, and flipped it.
Aleksa Denisova’s wrists were handcuffed to the metal framework of the cot on either side of her, and she looked battered and bruised, a lot worse than when Poacher had last seen her in Dushanbe. She looked up at him and jumped. Her eyes were bloodshot, dilated, and glossy. She’d been drugged, Poacher thought. Well, that wasn’t nearly as bad as other interrogation methods they could have employed against her. He pulled up his balaclava mask to show her his face. After a couple seconds, he saw the recognition in Aleksa’s eyes.
“You were with Avery in Dushanbe.”
“That’s right.”
Poacher knelt beside her and examined her wounds.
“I’m okay. They didn’t hurt me. How did you find this place?”
Poacher ignored the question and said, “How many people are here?”
“I don’t know. They kept me in here the whole time. I’ve only seen the American from Minsk and a couple Russians, but I’ve heard Pasthun or Dari coming from outside a couple times.” She frowned. “Where are we?”
“We’re at the processing plant in Gorno-Badakhshan. Everything’s going to be all right. Avery’s here.” Poacher snipped the chains on her handcuffs with his bolt cutters. “You’re safe now, understand? We’re going to get you out.”
Aleksa started to respond but was cut-off by Flounder calling out to Poacher from outside.
“Stay right here. I’m not going far,” Poacher told Aleksa, standing up and heading back out. When she protested, he stopped to look back at her and said, “We’ll be back for you. I promise. Stay here and keep quiet.”
The last room at the end of the corridor was unique. It was a heavy vault of reinforced steel with a cipher-lock keypad. Suspecting what the vault contained, Flounder selected his handheld radiation detector from his vest, switched it on, and swept it over the door. The steel was thick, but the detector still picked up faint gamma traces.
Flounder turned to Poacher and nodded.
They’d located the HEU.
But still no sign of Cramer.
01:33. Half a minute before Poacher tossed the first flashbang and broke the mission’s stealth profile, Avery took the stairs to an identical corridor on the third and top level. Nearing the landing, he at once heard footfalls against the metal floor. He held the Mk 23 in front of him in both hands. Taking another step up, Avery’s eyes cleared the landing, and he saw a Russian, in black jeans and a t-shirt with a holstered pistol, and a Pakistani in a lab coat with protective goggles walking in his direction from about two dozen feet down the corridor.
And they saw him too.
The Russian pushed the Pakistani back with his left hand, placing himself in front of the scientist, while the right reached for the pistol holstered beneath his left armpit. His voice bounced off the walls as he shouted something out to whoever else was nearby. Avery didn’t understand the words, but the meaning was clear; he was announcing the presence of an intruder, and one intruder meant the whole place was under attack.
Springing up the remaining stairs two at a time, Avery sighted the Russian first and hit the trigger twice, catching him center mass in mid-draw. The big Russian staggered back a couple steps, reeling from the bullets, blood forming at his mouth, but he was still in the fight. He continued raising his pistol and got off a single shot, aimed too wide, before Avery gave him a third round of .45 ACP, below his throat, this time putting him on the deck.
Avery shifted his sights over the bewildered Pakistani scientist.
But before he could tap the trigger, Avery heard the thunderous blast coming from below and felt the floor shudder beneath his feet. He hesitated for a microsecond, until his mind registered the sound as a flashbang grenade — Poacher and Flounder — then he shot the Pakistani, who held his hands up in the air in surrender.
Before stepping into the corridor, Avery quickly reloaded and then holstered the SOCOM pistol and switched to his M4. He knew he wasn’t the only one to have heard the stun grenade — the damned thing was loud—and it was time to sacrifice stealth for firepower.
He barely had the rifle to his shoulder before a door thirty feet down the corridor flew open into the hallway with enough force that it looked like it would snap off its hinges. Two big, shaved-headed Russians in armored vests and carrying AK-12 assault rifles poured out, looking determined to kick ass.
Before they caught sight of him, Avery fired a three-round burst in their direction. Poorly aimed reactionary fire, these shots plinked off the surface of the heavy steel door, which, open, took up a third of the corridor’s width, and the Russians opened up with their brand-new Kalashnikovs, sending a torrent of 5.45mm forty feet down the corridor toward Avery.
As Avery retreated back down the stairs, one round smacked against his vest. He felt it even through the layered ceramic plates, like taking a blow from a baseball bat. His upper body bucked against the hit, and he nearly fell off his feet. He heard the whip-like crack as another supersonic round broke the air inches past his head. Then another searing hot round cut through the flesh and meat of his left biceps. His left hand went instantly slack, giving out beneath the barrel of his rifle. His vest caught another bullet, knocking him down the last couple stairs to the landing, in the temporary safety of the stairwell.
Catching his breath, Avery became conscious of the warm, sticky sensation of blood pouring over his arm. He’d been shot before. Once, while in the army, and he hadn’t even known until after the enemy contact, when another soldier spotted and pointed out the hole in the fabric of his BDUs. The pain didn’t bother Avery, the adrenaline and endorphins took care of that, for the short term, but he didn’t much care for the thought of the dirty, fragmented led embedded inside his torn muscle, hindering his ability to fight, leaving him susceptible to infection.
But there was nothing to be done about that now.
FIDO, as they said in 75th Rangers, Fuck it, drive on.
More 5.45mm spat above him into the upper stairwell wall behind him.
They couldn’t see him, but the Russians were determined to keep him pinned down until they reached his position to finish him off.
Avery replaced his left hand beneath the barrel of his M4, squeezing his grip tight through the pain in his arm. He sucked in a couple deep breaths to oxygenate his body and clear his head. Then, when there was a lull in the incoming fire, he sprung up, breaking cover, and fired back at the Russians from the stairs. One of them yelled out, but not because he’d taken a bullet. Avery’s shots had gone past him, but his weapon jammed, as AKs were prone to do.
Avery’s eyes caught a flash of movement some ten feet behind the Russian shooters. Squinting against the cordite and smoke haze burning his eyes, he saw Cramer and Litvin, along with three bodyguards, who were kitted up like spetsnaz, as they stepped out from behind the open door and ran down the corridor in the opposite direction.