Up ahead, maybe a mile or so, he could see what was causing the holdup. Flashing red-and-blue lights showed where police, ambulance, and fire crews were working to clear a serious accident that had blocked the highway.
“Specter Lead to Checkmate One, what’s going on up there? Why are we stopped? Is there a mechanical problem with your vehicle?” Colonel Ruslan Baryshev asked suddenly through Aristov’s headphones. They’d rigged up an intercom between the truck’s cab and the trailer it was hauling — enabling communication with the pilots of the two KVM robots hidden aboard.
“We’re fine, Colonel,” Aristov assured the other man. “We’re just stuck in traffic. The local American authorities are clearing a wreck ahead of us. Once they’re finished, we’ll be moving again.”
“Are you sure that isn’t a security checkpoint set up by the American military or spy services to hunt for us?” Baryshev snapped. “This so-called accident could be a ruse.”
Aristov exchanged glances with Nikolai Dobrynin in the passenger seat. The other veteran Spetsnaz trooper rolled his eyes. The captain shrugged his own shoulders in a wordless reply. Their passengers were still jumpy. Baryshev and his KVM pilots seemed to be taking a long time to come down off the adrenaline high they’d experienced during their attack on the American Air Force base.
“We’re already more than one hundred and twenty kilometers from Barksdale, sir,” Aristov said patiently. “That’s well beyond the zone of any likely search. The Americans would have to deploy thousands of soldiers and police to cover all the possible roads and highways this far out. And they simply do not have that kind of manpower available to them.”
“Let us hope you are right, Aristov,” the colonel replied. “Stay alert. If you are wrong and there are American police or military units blocking our path, my machines will eliminate them.” And the intercom went dead.
Dobrynin shook his head. “Those guys are a little too kill-happy for my comfort, Captain. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather make it to Dallas without having their robots burst out of those trailers and start shooting up the whole highway.”
“That makes two of us.” Aristov saw the traffic ahead of him starting to inch forward. He reached down to put the big rig in gear. “Let’s hope they calm down once we reach the warehouse and get them out of those metal suits.”
Gennadiy Gryzlov prowled back and forth across his office like a caged animal. From time to time, he paused to check the newscasts streaming across the screen of his smartphone. But never for very long. After the first deeply satisfying images of burning aircraft and dead Americans, no new information had emerged. Instead, journalists around the world were busy doing what they always did in times of crisis — replaying the same tired video clips, indulging in pointless speculation, and interviewing the usual groups of “experts,” none of whom could shed any useful light on events.
He was getting tired of waiting. In his view, patience was a virtue desirable in underlings, not for those with real power. A soft chime sounded from his phone. He stabbed the answer button icon. “Yes?”
“Mr. Kurakin has arrived, Mr. President,” his long-suffering private secretary, Ivan Ulanov, announced. “By your orders, I have not logged his arrival.”
“Good,” Gryzlov approved. Now that things were heating up, it was time to make sure there were no obvious connections between Russia’s head of state and Vladimir Kurakin’s “private” military company. “Send him in.”
He spun on his heel and sat down at his desk while Ulanov ushered the head of RKU into the office. A curt nod sent his secretary scurrying back to his post. He waited only long enough for the door to close before demanding, “Well?”
“Our attacks were completely successful,” Kurakin reported. It was clear that he was enormously relieved. From the moment Gryzlov set Stacy Anne Barbeau’s political rally at Barksdale Air Force Base as Shakh i Mat’s first target, he had been focused on the dangers involved in carrying out a military operation that could easily kill or wound America’s national leader — even if only by accident.
“Spare me the standard briefing boilerplate, Vladimir.” Gryzlov nodded the other man toward a chair. “I want solid numbers.”
“Yes, sir.” Kurakin pulled out his own smartphone. He opened up several files. “From satellite photos, my analysts estimate that fourteen of our Kh-35 missiles hit their assigned targets.”
“And the other two?”
“One detonated prematurely seconds before impact,” Kurakin said. “The other appears to have crashed in the swamps east of the air base, probably due to an engine or avionics failure of some kind.”
“So the Americans will find it?”
“Eventually,” Kurakin agreed. He shrugged his shoulders. “But even then, the wreckage shouldn’t lead their investigators anywhere.”
Gryzlov nodded. Besides Russia, at least eight other countries around the world used the same subsonic cruise missiles. Many of them were building their own versions of the Kh-35 under license or reverse-engineering their own designs. No one would be shocked by the possibility that some of them had filtered out onto the international arms black market. As an added precaution, the missile components shipped covertly to Annenkov and his men had been thoroughly “sanitized”—stripped of any identifying serial numbers. That would certainly arouse suspicion, but it would also delay any investigation.
“Has your 737 returned to its base?” Gryzlov asked.
“It landed in Utah an hour ago,” Kurakin confirmed. “Annenkov made his scheduled stop at Dallas/Fort Worth and then continued on as planned without any delay.” He smiled thinly. “In the circumstances, the local airport officials were only too glad to expedite the departure of as many aircraft as possible.”
“I can imagine,” Gryzlov said dryly. News of the attack had caused the American FAA to temporarily ground or reroute all passenger and cargo flights scheduled to pass anywhere within a couple of hundred miles of Barksdale. Naturally, the effects had rippled across the entire United States, spreading havoc as connecting flights were canceled or delayed. With eastbound passenger jets and air freighters stacking up at their gates and on their runways, Dallas/Fort Worth’s managers had no interest in holding up planes headed in other directions.
He leaned forward. “What about your ground units? What’s their status?”
“The trucks carrying Baryshev’s KVMs and Aristov’s covering force have reached our safe house in Dallas,” Kurakin continued. “Again, without incident.”
Like the sites Aristov’s teams had set up in several other places across the U.S., the Dallas secure site was a warehouse nominally owned by FXR Trucking. Most were located on the outskirts of cities and large towns — in busy industrial parks where no one would be surprised by trucks and other vehicles coming and going at all hours of the day and night. As far as FXR’s American corporate executives were concerned, these warehouses now belonged to yet another fledgling subsidiary funded by the company’s new owners. Employees who once worked in those warehouses had either been transferred to other facilities or laid off with generous severance packages.