Gryphon, page 24
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Mike’s itches had saved all their lives more than once.
She made a point of looking casual as she scanned their team.
They’d planned to have Mike and Elene in civilian clothes to act as lookouts. Elene remained stock still by the passenger door as if the December morning had frozen her into a statue.
Max had rounded up three Georgian Defence Forces uniforms for the rest of them. Tad had walked to the edge of the empty parking lot and appeared to be admiring the view.
According to Max, the place was a good bet to be deserted on a chill winter weekday morning. But he’d taught Tad how to say, Training exercise. Come back after one hour, in passable Georgian. He had a good ear and looked dangerous enough to not argue with. Though he was probably the only black man in uniform anywhere in the country.
Holly eased back to Max’s side as he reached for a submachine gun for Tad. She flashed him a quick Freeze hand sign and hoped that the signals were universal. He stopped.
Holly pushed the submachine gun under a blanket that had been drawn over the cases.
“Hey, Tad.” As he turned from the view and ambled over, she picked up a handgun, dumped the magazine, and slammed in an empty mag. Then she turned to him and made a show of cycling the slide, catching and hiding the ejected live round from the chamber into her cupped fingers.
“We ready?” he asked. “Stunner of a place you folks have here. Even in winter, it’s got this good feel to it.”
“Here you go.” Holly jammed the sidearm into his holster in case he could feel it was underweight for having no rounds. “Don’t go shooting anybody with that.” Because it was empty and wouldn’t work.
“Deal!”
She trusted him, so what the hell did Mike know about Tad that she didn’t?
“A hundred steps,” Max nodded upslope.
No way to ask Mike or answer Max’s questioning look. Time to switch to action mode. She dropped the question, then nodded.
“Uphill all the way.”
A pair of giant columns guarded the steps. One looking properly Greek, its mate looking as if it had survived a battle between Picasso and a chain saw artist. At the head of the long flight rose sixteen pillars of stone ten stories tall. They were like some neat freak had rearranged Stonehenge into symmetrical rows and squared up all the rocks until perfectly smooth.
She scanned the tactical situation. Low trees blocked their view in most directions except where Tad had been. But the trees were sparse up the hillside.
“Okay, let’s hustle.” She resisted the temptation to race. They both needed slow and steady heartbeats at the top. Max’s half smile acknowledged the choice and a bit of regret that they wouldn’t be doing that.
Still, they took them faster than most would, traveling smoothly side-by-side, leaving the other three in their wake.
70
“You seem…nervous.” Mike stepped up beside Elene after the others had moved off.
“I suppose.”
Actually, by his assessment, she teetered near the edge of a nervous breakdown.
He offered his arm. She looked steadier after she looped a gloved hand around his parka’s elbow. They began climbing the stairs at a much slower pace.
Tad had set off on a circular patrol around the lower level path.
“So, did you meet your fiancé here?”
That actually earned him a laugh. “I never, ever come here. This is where my father’s hope and heart died. I sometimes think my mother got herself killed to get away from his dark cloud. She traveled to South Ossetia during the Russian War as a volunteer nurse. No training, simply to help. The Russians trapped them and killed everyone in the town as a part of their ethnic cleansing campaign.”
“No good memories here.”
“No. Pavle is my first truly good memories since Mother died.”
Mike had to stop and catch his breath though they were barely half up the stairs and hadn’t been hurrying.
Had he ever measured his life in good memories?
In good times, sure. Snow bunnies and fine restaurants. A con well played. A game won.
But good memories? How many of those did he have before joining Miranda’s team? Before pairing up with Holly? That should be easy to answer but it wasn’t.
They resumed their climb.
Yes, he wanted to go back to the good times. Life on Miranda’s team had none of the ease and flow that came with surviving on his own and in his own way. It had also included a wide variety of near-death experiences, right up to last night’s shooting.
Yet…
The memories were good. As if he actually fulfilled some purpose. But what a cost. The chaos. The near-death experiences. The crushing weight of each successive crisis.
They crested the last riser. His eyes didn’t track the fantastic sculptures. Nor the sweeping views.
Instead, he spotted Max and Holly setting up on the southern parapet.
71
Holly stood along the wide stone parapet of The Chronicle. It was as if it had been made for snipers. Chest high, smooth stone, and a sweeping view.
The Tbilisi Sea stretched away to the left. The morning sun still lay to the left and behind them offering excellent visibility. Any morning breeze had died and the chill air meant a minimum of turbulence.
The GIS headquarters building lay approximately a kilometer off and fifty meters lower. They couldn’t ask for a better vantage point.
Frankly, she’d been worried about being caught out alongside Max. She hadn’t shot a proper sniper rifle in years and it was a skill that staled quickly. But this shot would be almost easy. At half the rated effective range and a quarter of the longest recorded kill, she wouldn’t be pushing the weapon’s limits at all, only her own.
“You’re zeroed for five hundred meters,” Max’s voice dropped to a sniper’s whisper even with no one about to overhear them.
Not to be outdone, she answered, “I make the wind at five knots off the water and distance just shy of a kilometer.”
“Eight hundred and thirty meters,” Max held up his phone. “Google Maps.”
Holly sighed and dialed the corrections into the scope, double-checking that she was dialing in the right direction to compensate for the amount of gravity-induced bullet drop across the distance past five hundred.
Their voices overlapped as they both looked up compensations for the denser cold air and the Earth’s spin. The Coriolis effect became a notable factor especially as they were shooting just west of due south. In the full second of the bullet’s travel time across eight hundred meters, the target would be carried sideways by…three inches due to the Earth’s spin. She clicked in that setting as well.
“Are you sure, Holly?” Mike’s voice close by her right side jolted her badly enough to add three extra clicks on the scope setting.
She carefully dialed the three clicks back before looking at him. He was standing there with Elene clutching his arm like she was a drowning woman. Mike was always good with the women. Is that what had happened to her? Swept away by that Mike magnetism? Maybe she would be better off if he was gone. “Am I sure about what?”
He nodded in the direction of the GIS headquarters. “Long time since you shot someone.”
She turned back to her weapon. “These guys? I’m fine with it.”
“Okay,” his answer barely registered.
Yet she was aware of Max’s sudden scrutiny. “I’m fine with it,” she offered him a sniper’s whisper that wouldn’t even carry to Mike.
He didn’t turn away.
“Just mind your own damn dials.”
With her settings dialed in and checked, Holly turned her full attention to the target for the first time.
Through the scope, the triangular building with its rooftop glass office resolved into a heavy glass door. An area paved with slate between the door and the knee-high parapet along the roof’s edge that she could cover in an easy sweep.
She checked her watch. At least five minutes to wait before Pavle would even start his part of the plan.
Most of being an effective sniper came down to patience.
She glanced aside at Mike. He’d walked off to wander among the monument’s pillars with Elene on his arm.
Yeah, patience wouldn’t be coming easy today.
72
“How could I possibly predict where that helicopter and its torpedoes will target?” Miranda felt weary to the very bones of the fingers that she was rubbing across her forehead. She, Jeremy, and Général Vachon had looked at everything known about the missing armaments.
The Unmanned Little Bird had been packed in a forty-foot-long high-cube container; high-cube meant that it was one foot taller than a standard shipping container, intended for over-height items—like the ULB. All that would be required to make it operational was mounting the six rotor blades onto the hub and pouring in sixty-two gallons of fuel—an operation requiring under fifteen minutes and no specialized personnel. The Mark 46 torpedoes were designed to mount quickly onto the helo’s hard points.
“They could be fired into any harbor,” she pictured the Swedish shoreline. “And they have hundreds of harbors. The Mark 46 torpedo has a range of eleven kilometers. They don’t even have to fly it into the harbor; they could start the attack from out at sea.”
“Patterns,” Jeremy spoke up. “When we do a crash investigation, we’re looking for patterns.”
“And what doesn’t fit into those patterns,” Miranda stopped rubbing her forehead. “What’s broken or missing? Or perhaps—”
“Shouldn’t be there in the first place.”
They thought so alike, Miranda had never minded Jeremy’s interruptions.
“The attacks have all been against Swedish assets,” Jeremy tapped the table rapidly with a pointed index finger as if the tablecloth held some secret location. But she understood his idea.
“General, can you look up all the locations of Swedish deployment? Especially ships and submarines.”
They all turned to watch the big screens at the front of the conference room used for lecture slides during the sessions. His team at NATO were listening in on an open phone connection, and feeding their results back to his computer to show on the screen.
First they visited MarineTraffic.com.
From the Gulf of Bothnia to the north, Denmark to the south, and all the way up the Baltic to St. Petersburg, his map was soon covered with hundreds of tiny boat icons. Traffic flow, thick with cargo and fishing vessels. Because it was midwinter, there were very few pleasure or passenger vessels.
He selected vessels flagged as Swedish.
The three of them leaned in to study the map as it shifted. Nothing struck her as being unusual. All the patterns appeared normal, heavy traffic along the shore, fishing and small cargo vessels out in deeper waters.
“Anyone?” Général Vachon asked.
She looked at Jeremy and he shook his head. She matched the gesture.
“NATO secure traffic,” Vachon spoke into his phone.
A far simpler map appeared onscreen.
“Sweden only,” he called out.
Someone selected the Countries submenu and switched off everyone except Sweden.
Most of the icons showed ships in ports. Of their five submarines, only one was deep in the Baltic, halfway between Sweden and Helsinki, Finland.
“What’s that one?” Jeremy pointed.
As soon as she saw it, she knew he was right.
Général Vachon hovered his mouse over the small icon.
A Visby-class corvette. Mid-channel in the Gulf of Finland close by Russian territorial waters where the Gripen pilot had been ejected and died on Daughter’s Island.
The HSwMS Karlstad stood alone with four jets overhead.
The tip of the spear.
73
“On the move,” Max whispered.
Holly shifted the TAC-50 rifle into position and settled her gaze on the scope. Three men stepped out onto the patio of the GIS building eight hundred meters away.
And stayed clustered together.
Pavle was supposed to separate himself from the others, but they were moving together in a line. Were the two on the ends about to throw the one in the middle off the rooftop to kill him? Or was the man in the middle a target but keeping Pavle in place with a hand on his shoulder?
Then Holly spotted it.
She left the rifle, raced to the other side of the parapet’s walkway and spotted Elene, still walking arm-in-arm with Mike through the monument.
“Elene! What color coat did Pavle wear this morning?”
“White with big red stripe! Georgia football team colors. I give to him as engagement present.”
Holly turned back as Max’s rifle cracked loudly.
He worked the bolt on his Orsis rifle before she even had the TAC-50 fully in her hands. She’d realigned the scope to her eye as the Orsis barked a second time.
A man in the dark blue of a NATO uniform was already down.
As she watched, a man in a black coat, halfway back to the door, jerked sideways, a hat tumbling from his gray hair as he fell.
The man in the white jacket with the red stripe, probably now sprayed with blood, turned very slowly to look up at them. There was no way to read his expression at this distance.
74
“Kommendör Holmgren, urgent radio call for you.”
“Patch it here.” She stood at the rear of the bridge, watching the AW109LUH helo lifting off the Karlstad’s rear helipad and circling wide to open the space.
Kerstin grabbed the handset by the deck commander’s station when the phone buzzed.
“Kommendör Holmgren.”
“Kommendör, this is NATO Général Pierre Vachon. We have reason to believe that you may be the target of an inbound Unmanned Little Bird helicopter armed with two American Mark 46 torpedoes.”
“I have a ULB inbound right now with proper authorization. Urgent medical supplies. I’ve just cleared my helipad so it may land.”
“Any authorization, it is forged. This is an attaque upon your ship. Le tirer. Shoot it! Shoot it now!”
Kerstin dropped the phone and snatched up a pair of binoculars.
“Distance to inbound?” She called out as she looked.
Even with the high-power binocs, it was little bigger than a ten-krona coin on the far side of her bridge.
“Seven kilometers and closing at one-seven-zero knots.”
She grabbed the handset once again and punched for another frequency. “Gripen overwatch. This is Karlstad. We have reason to believe we’re being targeted by approaching ULB Little Bird with twin torpedoes, heading nine-five degrees from our current position.”
“Roger, Karlstad. Initiating pass.”
She looked around for them, but couldn’t spot them anywhere.
Then an unholy crack sounded overhead, like thunder and lightning had struck her ship. The lead Gripen had just unleashed a sonic boom as it passed over them.
“This is Four-Two,” crackled over the radio. “Positive report of torpedoes on hardpoints.”
“This is Four-Seven. Targeting. Fox three. Missile away.”
As Kerstin watched through the binoculars, two tiny dots dropped away from the helo and plunged into the water—coming toward her ship.
One second too late, the Little Bird disappeared in a ball of fire.
75
Kurbanov’s brains were splattered across the patio. He still had a face, but the side shot meant that he didn’t really have a head anymore.
As Max and the Aussie had told him they would attempt, Chief Kancheli still lived, though not for long. His shoulder was mostly gone and blood was pumping out.
Pavle knelt clear of the fast-growing pool and grabbed Kancheli’s chin, forcing his attention onto Pavle.
“The torpedo attack. Where and when?” He felt cruel interrupting the man’s dying moments, he wanted to puke at the sight of his imminent death, but he felt a clarity of purpose that he’d been missing for a long time.
Kancheli groaned.
Pavle slapped him, hard, to force the man to focus.
“Too late,” a bloody froth came to his lips. “You little mole-rat.” He coughed. “Already gone. Done.”
“Better a mole-rat than you,” but he was talking to a dead man.
His phone rang. It would be the shooters asking what he’d witnessed.
At the same moment he heard a safety click off close behind him.
76
“Full throttle,” Kerstin ordered. “Turbines and diesels.” Usually they were run as one or the other, but their power could be combined when the need was dire. “We’ve got torpedoes in the water.” Definitely dire.
The bridge crew went impossibly silent as the Karlstad began accelerating.
“And you’re heading straight toward them?” her first officer asked. Nice that he didn’t add a have-you-lost-your-mind tone.
“It is faster to gather speed and then turn, rather than trying to spin the boat.”
The waterjet drive could turn the boat exactly on its center if needed, but with the keel designing for moving ahead rather than sideways in water, it wasn’t a fast maneuver. Instead, she’d get up speed and then carve a turn away from the two fish in the water.
“Ready depth charges, set for a spread of five, ten, and twenty meters depth. They’re Mark 46 fish. They’re designed to locate us, come in under the center of our keel, then explode to break our ship’s back. We’re not going to let that happen.”
She’d trained for seventeen years for this moment. Ever since her days as a cadet at the Naval Warfare Centre she’d dreamed of entering action. She was now older and wiser enough to hope that it never happened, but it didn’t stop her desire to bring pain to the Russians. Too many years they’d been the bogeyman of all Europe and a chance beckoned to bring them down further than they’d already done to themselves in Ukraine.
