Devil's Fortress, page 6
Tikhonov leaned forward to take a closer look. Rows of paint cans, many of them rusting and badly dented, filled the back of the van from floor to ceiling. He pursed his lips, feeling let down. So much for his hunch. “Some of those containers look very old,” he commented acidly. “Are you pawning off junk on your customers?”
Unfazed, the assistant shrugged his rotund shoulders. “A paint can is a paint can,” he pointed out. “And cans cost money. Besides, you can refill ’em as many times as you want as long as you do it with the same color of paint.” He tapped one of the cans. “You want me to open this up and show you what’s inside, too?”
A horn honked loudly from somewhere farther back in the line of stalled traffic.
Tikhonov sighed, acknowledging defeat. “Never mind.” He flapped his hands, signaling the other man to close the van. “You can go.” He turned away toward the next vehicle in line, dismissing the battered old paint company vehicle and its scruffy occupants from his mind.
Once they were several hundred yards past the police roadblock, the UAZ’s driver, Shannon Cooke, breathed out in relief. “That sure as hell wasn’t much fun.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I hate wearing these damned prosthetics,” he grumbled. “I sweat under them like a pig.”
Slouched in the seat next to him, Nick Flynn nodded. “It is a shame to hide all our natural beauty under these disguises,” he agreed, laughing. “I guess that’s one of the downsides of being a wanted criminal.”
“Criminal?” Cooke protested. “I am not a crook. A hunted, highly dangerous foreign spy, sure. But not a crook.”
“You say ‘tomato’; the Russians say ‘tomahto,’” Flynn said with a grin. He twisted around to open a partition between the cab and the cargo area. “Everybody okay back there? Still nice and cozy?”
“Cozy? Seriously? By sardine standards, sure. By human standards, no,” Van Horn retorted. “I’m recommending a new recruitment protocol to Br’er Fox.” That was her pet nickname for their boss, Carleton Frederick Fox, the head of the Quartet Directorate’s American station. “The next time we pull one of these stunts, we only bring circus-trained contortionists.”
Flynn understood her complaint. Together with every piece of their equipment and all their weapons, Van Horn, Kossak, Hynes, and Vucovich were crammed into a small section of the panel van’s cargo compartment—with barely enough room to do anything more than sit elbow-to-elbow in the darkness. The rest of the space was taken up by the false facade of paint cans carefully stacked up to conceal them from anything but a determined inspection. Their cramped hiding place might not be comfortable, but as a desperate measure to avoid detection, it was undeniably effective.
moscow, russia
a few hours later
Located more than eleven miles south of the Kremlin, Moscow’s Biryulyovo Zapadnoye district was a mishmash of middling tall apartment buildings dating back to the mid-twentieth century, light industry, auto and electrical repair workshops, retail stores, warehouses, and a large number of walled or fenced-in lots used to store goods or old cars and trucks. Amid Russia’s current economic slump, many commercial buildings and storage areas were out of business—abandoned by owners and tenants who couldn’t afford to pay their mortgages, rents, or taxes.
Driving carefully to avoid drawing any unwanted attention, Cooke turned off one of the district’s main roads and onto a narrow, much-quieter side street. At this time of day, there were no pedestrians in sight. Children were in school. Their parents were working. And the homeless and chronically unemployed preferred to congregate in the area’s tree-lined parks, where at least there was shade and the possibility of cadging enough rubles for a meal or a drink or a pack of cigarettes.
Halfway down the street, he pulled over to the curb and parked, idling the van’s engine. They were just a few yards from a padlocked gate. The low-walled compound it secured was a maze of rusty metal storage sheds, weather-beaten crates and boxes, graffiti-covered shipping containers, and a slew of wrecked vehicles, most of which had long ago been stripped of any usable spare parts. The whole area reeked of decay and neglect.
Cooke checked his mirrors carefully. “Looks clear,” he commented.
Flynn nodded. He slid open the panel to the cargo area. “We’re at our next stop,” he announced. “Ready to work your electronic magic, Wade?”
Moving cautiously to avoid stepping on anyone’s fingers or toes, Vucovich scooched past the others in the rear of the van. He poked his head and shoulders out through the narrow opening, blinking a few times against the bright sunlight. Then he squinted through the grimy windshield toward the gate. They had a good line of sight from here and could easily observe the CCTV camera covering the entrance.
“I’m on it, sir,” Vucovich confirmed. He brought out a tablet computer and powered it up. A few taps on its screen opened a list of the wireless networks operating in the vicinity. One was highlighted, thanks to some preliminary hacking he’d done when they’d first visited this area a few days before. This was the network connected to that particular closed-circuit surveillance camera. His eyes narrowed in concentration as he signed into the network and then navigated through several menus until he confirmed that he had control of the camera. From there, it was easy. Activating a subroutine he’d already planted made sure that its live feed would be replaced by a prerecorded loop shot earlier. Even if someone figured out later what he’d done, there still wouldn’t be any video recording of their vehicle entering the lot. “All set,” he reported with satisfaction.
“Nice work, Wade,” Flynn said, and he meant it. The Russian capital city’s vast surveillance system was part of what made operating covertly here incredibly difficult. Moscow had more than one hundred and fifty thousand CCTV cameras in use. Nastier still, the government had also installed facial recognition software to help track so-called “criminals and dissidents.” Admittedly, the odds that anyone would ever check the footage from this one camera out of so many were relatively low, but Flynn wasn’t in the mood to take any more risks just now—not after his carefully planned move against Voronin’s country estate had somehow tripped the oligarch’s own elaborate security systems and then promptly cratered.
Minutes later, Cooke pulled up outside a dilapidated shed in the far corner of the lot. No one could see them from the street; all of the buildings overlooking this section were boarded up.
Inside their new temporary safe house, Hynes stopped dead. “Oh, just swell. Another fricking dump,” he said. He shook his head gloomily, surveying the stained concrete floor and stacks of dusty cardboard boxes lining the walls. “‘Join the Quartet Directorate,’ they said. ‘See the world,’ they said. ‘Live the life of international intrigue and adventure,’ they said.” He scowled. “How come nobody said a damned thing about spending most of your nights and days in a bunch of flea-bitten rat-traps?”
Hiding a smile, Van Horn laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Actually, they did, Cole. It was on page fifty-two of your contract,” she said kindly. “Right below the provisos on death, dismemberment, crippling injury, and the total lack of a profit-sharing plan.”
“Well, crap,” Hynes said, sounding rueful. “I knew I should have read the fine print more carefully.”
CHAPTER
SEVEN
at the raven’s nest
the next day
Flanked by Rodin, Voronin watched closely while Russia’s president, Piotr Zhdanov, inspected the burned-out wreckage of the Kazan Ansat gunship shot down over his estate during the attack. A light breeze rustled through fire-scorched trees, sending little ash swirls dancing across the broken fuselage. Twisted pieces of the helicopter’s shattered composite rotor blades littered the forest floor.
“A near-run thing, Pavel,” Zhdanov commented off-handedly. Almost idly, he prodded at a piece of charred debris with his foot before turning away. His hard brown eyes sharpened. “Who knows? If those mysterious intruders had gotten a little closer before being detected by your defenses, they might have succeeded in blowing your head off.”
Voronin nodded tersely. He was all too aware of the danger he’d been in, and still was, since those who tried to kill him remained on the loose. He was equally aware that the president was careful not to run any risks on this visit to the Raven’s Nest.
Rotors clattered somewhere overhead. Several long-nosed Ka-52 Alligator attack helicopters were on station, orbiting low over the surrounding terrain. Their mast-mounted Phazotron FH-01 millimeter wave radars probed the air and ground constantly, hunting for the slightest sign of any developing threat. The gunships aloft were matched on the ground by the wheeled armored fighting vehicles and troops of a full army motorized battalion. Zhdanov himself wore heavy plates of bullet-resistant armor over his lightweight jacket, shirt, and slacks. His glowering bodyguards ringed the crash site, weapons at the ready.
Voronin eyed the president carefully. He had aged significantly, even over the past several months. What had once been a fringe of thinning gray hair above Zhdanov’s round face was almost gone. He had visibly lost weight, and the shadows under his eyes were even more profound and darker. His hands trembled slightly at rest, either from pent-up stress or perhaps some undisclosed neurological disorder.
The old man is dying, Voronin realized callously. Not immediately, to be sure. And certainly not quickly. He might linger for years, becoming ever sicker and weaker. But he was dying, nonetheless. Sooner or later, the precarious stability represented by the president’s tight-fisted rule would end. And one way or another, Russia would awake one morning to find Piotr Zhdanov gone and a new master in the saddle.
All of which made it even more important for him to regain the fullness of his own power as soon as possible, the younger man thought coldly. The old man’s death or permanent incapacitation would open the floodgates—unleashing all the pent-up political rivalries among the Kremlin’s inner circle.
Inside the privacy of his own mind, Voronin sneered. That any of the shambling, geriatric dinosaurs around the president seriously believed they were fit for the office was a testimony to their own idiocy, or, just as likely, their own fast-encroaching senility. For Russia to have any hope of surviving as a great nation, let alone reclaiming her status as a superpower, she needed a leader of enormous intellect, energy, and utter ruthlessness. A leader willing to kill millions of people, or even more, if that proved necessary.
Voronin knew he was the only man among Russia’s ruling elite who deserved real power. But it was equally evident that none of his would-be rivals would tamely hand the reins to him. He had to be ready to seize his chance the instant it arose. All of which made gaining the president’s approval for VELES even more critical. After his previous two failures, only its resounding success could firmly reestablish him as Zhdanov’s unchallenged right-hand man and his logical successor.
As if in answer to his thoughts, the president frowned and swung toward Voronin. “I wonder? Is it possible this sudden assault on you is somehow related to your new special project? The one you plan to brief me on today?”
At that, Rodin stepped forward. He lowered his voice. “This may be a conversation best reserved for a more secure area, Mr. President,” he pointed out respectfully. “Besides their weapons, who knows what else our unwelcome guests may have carried with them?”
Thoughtfully, Zhdanov surveyed the dense woodland around them. “You worry that these intruders might have planted intelligence-gathering devices?” he asked.
“It’s certainly possible,” Rodin said. “We’re checking, of course. But such a search will take time.” He shrugged. “For now, I suggest it would be wiser to adjourn to the safety of the dacha. Our security personnel sweep the whole building every day for listening devices. We can speak freely there.”
“Very well,” Zhdanov agreed. He turned to Voronin and gestured. “Lead on, Pavel. Show me what you have in mind.”
Once through the dacha’s solid bronze doors and inside its high-ceilinged central hall, Zhdanov gratefully shed the bulky vest of ceramic armor plates his bodyguards had insisted he wear while outdoors. “There. Now I feel more like a man and less like a fucking tank on legs.”
Voronin smiled politely, hiding his contempt for the older man’s coarse turn of phrase. “Welcome to the Raven’s Nest, Mr. President,” he said simply, then snapped his fingers.
Servants immediately appeared to usher them all into a large living room deeper inside the building. They laid out a selection of drinks on a sideboard—vodka for Zhdanov, lemon-flavored hot tea for Voronin and Rodin—and then withdrew just as silently. The president jerked his chin toward the door, ordering his bodyguards out as well. Obeying, they filed out of the room and closed the doors behind them, leaving the three men alone.
Sipping his tea, Voronin led the others to a group of leather high-backed chairs arranged in a conversational arc facing a large-screen display. They sat down. Zhdanov tossed his vodka back with a single gulp, then he shook out a cigarette and lit it. He took one deep drag before looking over at the younger man. “So, Pavel, what is this new project of yours? What do you claim we can achieve?”
“Victory, sir,” Voronin told him confidently. “For Russia. And for you.” A tap on the screen of his smartphone brought the bigger screen to life. “A victory achieved through the intelligent application of advanced science.”
Zhdanov listened carefully while the younger man outlined the nature of the new biological weapons developed on his orders—weapons equally matched for Russia’s protection by disease-resistant seed stocks and targeted fungicides. Footage shot at the Kameshkovo Institute amplified and verified his claims.
To his credit, the president instantly grasped the implications. Using these genetically engineered bioweapons would enable Russia to trigger mass famine and chaos among its enemies, especially the United States—whose highly productive agricultural sector was the envy and the underpinning of the entire civilized world.
Nevertheless, as Rodin had already warned, Zhdanov was not a foolhardy man. “The scientific work you’ve sponsored is remarkable,” he admitted. But then he leaned forward, pinning Voronin with his hard-eyed gaze. “Whether or not it represents a practical weapon is another matter completely.”
At his direction, the younger man scrolled back to the imagery of dead and dying crops shot inside the Institute’s maximum-security greenhouses. The president waved a hand at the pictures on the screen. “Our responsibility for triggering such a catastrophic food crisis would have to be completely hidden,” he insisted. “Desperation makes people willing to do many otherwise unthinkable things. And what will it profit us to starve the Americans if they decide to drench us all in nuclear fire in retaliation?” He turned back to Voronin. “You’ve already brought us too close to the brink once, Pavel,” he reminded the other man coolly. “We may not be as lucky another time.”
Voronin controlled his expression. The failure of his last grand scheme had ended with the detonation of a tactical nuclear warhead deep in the American heartland—something that could easily have triggered a catastrophic, all-out nuclear exchange between the two countries. Only Moscow’s abject apologies and its willingness to pay substantial compensation for the fortunately limited human and property damage—along with the cold-blooded sacrifice of several military officers Voronin had suborned, falsely branding them as having been in bed with Middle Eastern terrorist groups—had persuaded the feckless American political establishment to overlook such a “regrettable incident” in the interests of “world peace.” But not even the current U.S. administration, rudderless though it was, could be expected to ignore a successful Russian biological weapons attack on American agriculture.
“I agree wholeheartedly, sir,” he assured Zhdanov. “Which is why I’ve made sure we have a plan that will allow our agents to successfully infect America’s most vital and productive agricultural regions with our weaponized disease spores—and do so without being detected.”
Zhdanov leaned forward. “Explain this plan of yours to me,” he demanded.
Speaking confidently and using video imagery and maps for emphasis, Voronin laid out what he intended. It was a detailed, comprehensive, and thoroughly persuasive summation of an inherently complex scheme.
When he finished, Zhdanov sat back, plainly impressed by what he’d heard. For a long moment, he sat silent, obviously weighing options in his mind. At last, he looked up. “So when can you be ready to initiate your VELES operation?”
“In less than a year,” Voronin assured him. “While the plan is complex and involves a large number of separate elements, we can move forward with most of them simultaneously. This includes the production of sufficient stockpiles of our weaponized fungal spores as we also quietly replace significant portions of our own seed stocks with disease-resistant strains. And while that’s in progress, we can be acquiring the special equipment needed to covertly deliver these new weapons inside the United States.”
Zhdanov held up a hand. “Listen closely, Pavel,” he said. “You may proceed with all preparations that can be completed inside our national territory, including stockpiling these new bioweapons and hardening our domestic agriculture industry against their effects. Should our enemies uncover what we’re up to, we can pass those measures off as reasonable defensive precautions against a potential biological attack by other nations. Understand?”
Voronin nodded.
“You may even conduct tests of your bioweapon delivery systems within the safety of our borders,” Zhdanov continued. “But you are strictly forbidden from conducting any covert operations related to VELES inside the United States or any other Western nation until I give you my explicit authorization.” He shook his head. “Someone has you in their sights, Pavel. Maybe the CIA. Maybe Israel’s Mossad. Or possibly Britain’s MI6. Until we figure out exactly who is after you—and just how far they’ve penetrated your Raven Syndicate’s security—I won’t risk moving too far ahead with this plan of yours.” His voice sharpened. “Are my orders in this regard clearly understood?”
