He’d been friends with Mulinkov since the Afghan War, and Kashkin had long suspected the KGB man to be in possession of a Cold War suitcase nuke, but Mulinkov had always denied it. “There’s no such thing, Nikolai,” he would say, waving his hand. “There never was.”
Then came the day five months ago when Mulinkov had arrived unexpectedly at Kashkin’s home in Grozny, the whites of his eyes just beginning to yellow, the cancer in his pancreas having spread to his liver. He admitted to being in possession of not just one but two RA-115s, confiding in Kashkin that it had been his responsibility to retrieve them from East Berlin in the final days of the Soviet Union. Very few people in the Soviet government had been privy to the bombs’ existence in those days, so when Mulinkov’s direct superior died of a heart attack while making love to his mistress, there had been no one left alive who knew that Mulinkov was in possession of the weapons. It was in this manner that a pair of two-kiloton nuclear bombs had simply ceased to be.
Kashkin’s cellular phone beeped on the nightstand. He picked it up. “Hello?” he said in English.
“What went wrong?” asked a voice in English with an Arabic accent. “Did one of your stupid couriers make a mistake?”
Kashkin looked at himself in the mirror, his pale blue eyes smiling back at him. “There have been no mistakes, Faisal. Everything is fine.”
“So then you people won’t be bothering me for more money?”
“I don’t think so,” Kashkin lied. “Everything is going according to plan.”
“That’s it then,” the caller replied. “I’m out. Leave me alone.”
The caller hung up without another word, and Kashkin tossed the phone onto the bed.
He was packing his bag a short time later when there came a knock at the door.
It was his nephew Bworz, another blue-eyed Caucasian from the Caucasus. “What happened?” was the first thing he said after closing the door behind him.
Kashkin shrugged, going back to packing his bag. He had important business up in Montana. A request had been made by his AQAP allies living in Windsor, Canada, two brothers named Akram and Haroun al-Rashid. He had met the fundamentalist Wahhabi brothers through his contacts in the Riyad us-Saliheyn Martyrs’ Brigade, and they had arranged for the funding he needed to purchase the RA-115s, asking only a simple quid pro quo in return… to kill an American hero at his own game… on his own soil.
“Obviously something went wrong,” he said. “There’s no point to worry about it. What’s important is that Zakayev did his duty. The bomb did not fall into enemy hands. Your men are protecting the other weapon?”
“Yes,” Bworz said. “We rented the house on the corner… the one you suggested. It’s extremely close to the target.”
“Good.” Kashkin flipped the suitcase closed and buckled it. “I’ll meet you there as soon as I’m finished in Montana, and we’ll work out the details of our escape.”
Bworz stood staring at him. “I don’t like the idea of you going after Shannon by yourself. He’s dangerous… as dangerous as any the Americans have.”
“I can travel more easily alone.” Kashkin handed him a small blue laptop from the dresser. It was one of two, the only difference between them being the color. “There’s no need for the red one now that the second bomb has been lost.”
“There’s no need for this one either,” Bworz said, tucking the blue laptop under his arm. “We’ve studied the target area in great detail. My men know it by heart.”
“Then be sure to destroy the hard drive before you get rid of it.”
“I will,” Bworz promised. “Have you purchased a rifle for the hit?”
“I found one yesterday at a local gun show,” Kashkin replied. “I had to pay the vendor quadruple his asking price because I’m not a citizen, but it’s a good rifle. The Germans killed many Russians with it during the Great War.”
“A Mauser,” Bworz muttered. “Shannon will have something much better.”
Kashkin hefted the suitcase from the bed to the floor. “The man will never even know I am there. Now take that down to the car for me. I have to pray.”
11
Antonio Castañeda was thirty-seven years old and a former member of the Mexican Special Forces. Trained by American Green Berets in the midnineties, he knew a great deal about military operations and the Mexican Army that hunted him. He also knew a thing or two about explosives, and you didn’t need to be Alberto Einstein to know the explosion in Puerto Paloma the night before had been a hell of a lot bigger than anything a footlocker full of C4 could’ve produced. This meant he’d been lied to by the Chechen dogs who had paid to use his tunnel, and he was more than a little sore in the ass about it.
To look at him, however, you would not have guessed he had anything at all unpleasant on his mind. Castañeda was sitting on a white leather sofa in his villa on the west coast of Mexico, sipping tequila and scratching his German shepherd between the ears while a beautiful Mexican woman with long black hair stood behind him massaging his shoulders. He was not a particularly handsome man. His face was heavily pockmarked, and his dark eyes bulged slightly in their sockets. He had recently finished eating dinner with a thirty-four-year-old Chechen member of the RSMB named Marko Dudaev, and they were now relaxing in the living room.
There was a young lady massaging Dudaev as well. She was the other woman’s younger sister, and they looked very much alike.
“Her name is Tanya,” Castañeda said across the thick white marble coffee table. “I’m sorry she doesn’t speak any English.”
Dudaev smiled up at her, his blue eyes glassy from the tequila he was not yet accustomed to drinking. He had never tasted alcohol or smoked marijuana before coming to Mexico, as it was forbidden within Islam, but, as with any religion, some Muslims were more easily led astray than others. “I’m sure we’ll manage,” he said with a playful wink at Tanya, his own English heavily accented. “They say love is an international language.”
Castañeda chortled. “Allow me to thank you for the deposit that was made to the account yesterday.” He was referring to a bank account in the Cayman Islands. “Your people are very punctual when it comes to payment.”
“We try hard to be,” Dudaev said, still gazing up at Tanya, who could not have been a day over nineteen. “It is important to be punctual in business.”
Tanya smiled down at him as she stood kneading the knotted muscles in his neck and shoulders, her touch strong and deft.
“It is, sí,” Castañeda said with a nod, taking a sip from his tequila. “Honesty is important as well, would you not agree?”
“Of course,” Dudaev remarked, obviously enchanted by the young lady with the silky black hair. He took a stiff belt from his own glass, marveling at the feel of being drunk. It was as though he were floating on a cloud without a single care in the world.
“Bueno,” Castañeda said, setting his glass down on the table as he remarked casually to Tanya, “Prepárate, corazón.”
Tanya gave him a knowing wink as he sat back to extend his arms across the back of the sofa. He told the shepherd to go outside, and it trotted out the open door toward the pool, where a number of other women and a half dozen security personnel lounged around. As the dog slipped out, one of the security men got up to close the sliding glass door.