Edvin Kulcyanov bent down and started tugging the bags off. They were heavy but… something told him the weight wasn’t ammo.
Yosif continued down the line of Toyota pickups, making sure everything was being swept. You never knew where something would turn up. And intel was intel.
“Yosif,” Dima Mahona said, pulling his body out of the back of one of the pickups. “Laptop.”
“Keep it,” Yosif replied. “Vanner might be able to get something off of it.”
“Yosif!” Edvin called. “You had better take a look at this!”
Yosif walked back to where the cluster of dead guards lay on the ground and looked at what Edvin held in his hands. It was a bundle of large sheets of paper printed in a language he didn’t recognize. They were hard to see in the NVGs so he pulled up the monocular and turned on a blue lens flashlight. They still didn’t make any sense to him but he could see now that there was a person’s face on them. They looked something like money but they were far to large to be conventional bills.
“What are those?” Yosif asked.
“I don’t know,” Edvin said. “I hoped you might. There are a bunch of them.”
Edvin continued taking the bundles out and stacking them in the mud of the road. At the very bottom there was a cloth bag with a drawstring tie.
Edvin untied it and spilled some of the contents into his hands, a few of the rocks falling into the mud.
“Father of All,” Yosif whispered. He wasn’t sure what all of the gems were, but he recognized gems when he saw them. His mouth opened and closed but he couldn’t think of anything to say.
“I think we just found the payroll for whatever we captured,” Edvin said.
“Yes,” Yosif replied, then keyed his throat mike. “Kildar? I think you need to see this.”
“Bearer bonds,” Mike said, squatting down and picking up one of the bundles. “Ten thousand euro bearer bonds. Deutsch issue. Each of these sheets of paper is worth ten thousand euros.” He riffled one of the bundles. “Half a million euros, right here. I’d been told that the price for what we captured was sixty million euros. I hadn’t expected the money to be on delivery.”
“There are four bags, Kildar,” Edvin said. He’d gotten up to check one of the others. “There are more of those… bonds in here. And some euros as well.”
“Break it up among the Keldara,” Mike said. “Give the gems to Vanner. If the money weighs us down too much, we’ll dump the cash and burn it.”
“Burn it?” Yosif asked. “But Kildar… there is very much money here.”
“Do you fight for money, Yosif?” Mike asked, straightening up with a grimace. The weather was being hell on his knees. “I don’t. Oh, I like it. Just about anyone does. And it has certainly helped the Keldara, yes? But the reason we’re here, the reason that I am here, is in that tent over there. And I would not have come if it weren’t for that shit. Not for a billion euros. We’re getting paid for this op, paid well. This is just more weight to carry. If we have to run, on foot, then we’ll have the entire Chechen force on our ass. We may end up in a battle with ten, twenty, forty times our number. Now, which would you rather have if that happens, another two hundred rounds or a half a million euros?”
“Two hundred rounds,” Yosif admitted. He didn’t even have to think about it.
“Just so. But I can actually think of something very important to do with it. Distribute it among the teams when they get back. Make up bundles of appropriate size. But tell them to put it somewhere they can dump it. Because if it comes down to ammo or money, we’re going for ammo. And hurry. As soon as Dr. Arensky is done, we are out of here.”
“Now that we have containment,” Dr. Arensky said, his voice muffled by the gas mask, “we pour the material into the beaker. Normally, it is best to pour the acid into a material. But in this case, it risks explosive exgassing. That would not be good.”
“I understand,” Padrek replied, calmly. “Whatever this is, it is very bad, no?”
“Very bad,” Dr. Arensky admitted. “If any gets on us, I have asked your boss, Mr. Jenkins, to just shoot us through the tent and then pour all the acid on the result.”
“That’s bad,” Padrek admitted. The Keldara team leader was the best of the Keldara when it came to mechanisms and, as the Kildar put it, “fiddly stuff.” Which he supposed was why he was in this tent, breathing through a gas mask, covered in a rubber suit and helping this Russian destroy this white powder. Mostly he was holding the flashlight. Occasionally he poured some of the acid, what the Russian called “high molar sulfuric”, into one of the beakers or test-tubes.
The Russian had poured some of the acid into a flask, several of which the Keldara had packed in carefully wrapped in wooden boxes. Then he had wrapped a plastic bag around one of the test tubes in the strange metal containers. The bag had been taped to the flask top with the test tube contained in the whole arrangement. Only then did he remove the screw-stopper, working from the outside of the bag, and carefully pour the white powder into the flask. As it fell it the stuff melted, releasing gases that puffed up the bag like a balloon. But well before it was ready to burst all the powder except a very small dusting was gone.
“Now it’s done?” Padrek asked.
“No,” the Russian said. “That dusting could kill the world, young man. Now it gets tricky.”
The Russian carefully raised the flask and, with Padrek holding the plastic out of the way, poured some of the liquid into the test tube. This time the effect was almost impossible to notice. Last, he swirled the liquid around, poured it back into the flask, back again, getting every trace of the white powder.
“Now we are done,” the Russian said. “How many flasks do we have?”
“Seven,” Padrek said, pointing to the pile of wooden boxes in the corner of the tent.
“Good, then we don’t have to disassemble this and risk contamination,” the Russian said.
“Dr. Arenky?” the Kildar called from outside the tent. Well outside from the sound of it.
“Yes?”
“How’s it coming?”
“We have successfully neutralized one of the samples. There are four.”
“Oh. Thought you should know. We’ve got most of the Chechen army bearing down on us. They’re really pissed about something or another. Just an FYI.”
“Then I shall endeavor to hurry,” the Russian said. “Mr. Padrek, if you could get me another flask, please?”
“Just Padrek,” Padrek corrected. “Padrek Ferani. But Mr. Ferani doesn’t work either so… Just Padrek.”
“Then if you could please give me a flask, Padrek,” Dr. Arensky said. “And you may call me Victor since we’re such good friends.”
SEAL shit. SEAL shit. SEEEAL shit.
Adams was blanked. All he could do was look down the road towards the town. He’d pulled the teams down about a klick from the intersection, dispersed them on both sides of the road and at that point his mind had just gone fucking blank.
“Do some SEAL shit,” he muttered. Oh, fuck, he was starting to think like a fucking officer, or worse a trainer, but it just might work.
“Oleg!”
“Master Chief!” the team leader called from the side of the road.
“We got about five hundred Chechens approaching this position,” Adams said as the sound of vehicles started to penetrate through the rain. “You are required to delay them for twenty minutes and then retreat, preferably without any engagement. What is your answer to this test question?”