“He’s as patient as a snake.”
“Yeah, well, so am I,” Gil said. “And we’ve got the fucker boxed in. I can send you for pizza and beer if comes to that. Meanwhile, they’re stuck in there.”
“A beer sounds good,” Dragunov said. “I’ll be back to check on you later.”
“Just don’t come back drunk,” Gil said with a grin. “Last thing I need is a drunk Russian stumblin’ around in the weeds to give away my position.”
“Fuck it, then,” Dragunov said. “We’ll drink after.”
“You’re buyin’.”
Kovalenko had the AWS rifle set up across the kitchen table on its bipod, scanning the terrain beyond the farm, but the glare of the sun on the kitchen window made it difficult to see with much detail.
“They have to be up there on the bluff,” he muttered.
“How in hell did they find us?” Vitsin wondered aloud. “There’s no way they could have followed us — none.”
“Satellite.” Kovalenko’s eye was still to the scope. “You came in a red car, remember?”
Vitsin suddenly felt very stupid for not having told Tapa — the team’s car thief — to steal something else. “Do you think that’s how?”
“That’s the American out there,” Kovalenko said, half to himself. “The damn Americans have everything. He probably had satellite surveillance in Paris too. Those fools we relied upon in the CIA are worthless. If we hadn’t needed their help planning the pipeline operation…”
He shook his head. “They fucked us somehow, but it doesn’t matter now. Lie down with a whore, you get what you pay for.”
“Maybe we could run for the cars,” Vitsin suggested. “Could he get all five of us?”
“We’d be dead before anyone could even turn a key.” Kovalenko wiped a bead of sweat from his brow, glancing down at Anton, who still lay half in, half out of the house, his head blown apart like a ripe watermelon. “The American has a rifle, which means his people are supplying him. And that means we don’t have all day and night.”
“For all we know,” said one of the others, a veteran named Zargan, “there could be an entire Spetsnaz team out there waiting to hit us when it gets dark. We should barricade the house.”
“Make the necessary preparations,” Kovalenko ordered. “And someone drag Robert inside so we can close the door.” Then an idea occurred to him. “Tapa, go upstairs to the bedroom and get the blanket from the bed to wrap the body.”
Tapa went up the stairs, and Kovalenko put his eye back to the scope.
Zargan used the poker from the fireplace to hook Anton’s belt and drag him the rest of the way inside. Vitsin kicked the door closed.
Tapa stepped into the bedroom, grabbing the wool blanket from the bed. A window pane shattered, and he was thrown against the wall with the force of mule kick, the ball of his shoulder joint shot completely away.
Kovalenko spotted the small dust cloud kicked up by Gil’s shot, shifted his aim a fraction of a degree and fired.
When Gil saw Tapa’s dim figure in the upstairs window, he squeezed the trigger and rolled immediately to his left, knowing that Kovalenko or someone else might be scanning the bluff. An instant later, a round cut through the air exactly where Gil’s head had been, close enough for him to feel the energy of the bullet as it passed. Both he and Dragunov pulled quickly back out of sight.
“That fucker’s fast!”
“I told you,” Dragunov said. “He’s been shooting since he was a child.”
“That was too fast! He sacrificed that guy to draw me out.”
Dragunov’s face was grim. “That’s why he’s called the Wolf. Kovalenko is willing to do whatever it takes to win.”
Gil sat back on his haunches, holding the sat phone in the crook of his neck and lighting a cigarette as he spoke with Midori. “Keep an eye on things,” he told her. “We’re eyes off target for the moment.”
“Nothing’s happening,” she said. “Are you hit again?”
“No.” He drew from the cigarette to settle his nerves. “But that bastard’s almost killed me three times now. I’d like to get just one shot at him.”
Dragunov reached for Gil’s smokes. “Maybe if you had waited,” he said under his breath.
“Hey, smoke your own,” Gil told him.
Dragunov gave him the finger and shook a cigarette from the pack, lighting it with a wooden match and lying back in the dry grass to stare up at the sky. “We’re going to have to fight them in the dark again. I hate fighting in the fucking dark.”
29
General Couture was in the White House kitchen drinking coffee and chatting with the French chef, who was making him an early breakfast, when the White House chief of staff came looking for him.
“I heard I might find you in here,” Brooks said with a smile.
Couture shook his hand. “I learned as a second lieutenant to make friends in the kitchen.” He gave the chef a wink. “Whattaya got?”
Brooks hesitated, glancing at the chef, who stood over the stove sautéing a pan of mushrooms.
“Don’t worry about old Jacque,” Couture said, patting the chef on the shoulder. “He’s on our side. What’s up?”
“The SDV team’s been transferred aboard the Ohio,” Brooks said. “She’ll be on station off the point of San Vito Lo Capo within the hour, ready to bring Shannon and Dragunov aboard.”
“Comms?”
“They have a sat phone. It’s less than ideal, but it’s going to have to do. As we speak, they’ve got Kovalenko cornered in a house outside of Palermo. Pope’s technician says it’s still touch and go.”
“Sicilian authorities?”
“Still searching for them to the south in Corleone.” Brooks shrugged. “Don’t ask me why.”
Couture answered with a shrug of his own. “Small mercies.” He took a drink from his coffee. “Latest intel out of Georgia says the Spetsnaz are moving against Umarov, so with any luck, Shannon won’t have to go to Georgia.”
“Speaking of Georgia, the president is wondering whether to call a meeting with British Petroleum. He thinks maybe we should brief them on the pipeline plot. Thoughts?”
Couture shook his head, leading Brooks away from the stove and out of earshot from the chef. “Fuck BP. It’s not even an American corporation. We’re not letting that camel’s nose back under our tent. If the pipeline gets hit, they can learn about it in the news like everybody else. All they have to hear is a whisper about trouble along that pipeline, and they’ll have their Obsidian mercenaries tear-assing all over southern Georgia — doing God knows what — and the last thing we need is a bunch of corporate warriors getting in the way if Shannon ends up in-country.”
“Okay. So how should I put that to the president?”
“Just like that,” Couture said evenly. “You don’t have to sugarcoat shit with him anymore. He gets it now. That fucking idiot Hagen is out, and you’re in. No more dog and pony show.”
“About Hagen…” Brooks lowered his voice even more. “I’ve just been given reason to believe that Pope may have something clandestine in mind for him.”
Couture took another drink of coffee, locking eyes. “Glen, do you know how many men I’ve lost under my direct command during my long and storied career?”
Brooks shook his head.
“Six hundred forty-three men and women,” Couture said. “That’s not counting the suicides among those who made it home. Tim Hagen’s no better than any of them, and if Pope’s got something clandestine in mind for him, then I’m guessing he’s earned it — in spades.”
“Okay. Suppose I had direct information — proof?”