The first hint of gray caressed the eastern horizon, faint brushstrokes of a false dawn suggesting the silhouette of snow-capped peaks that would soon be gilded into majestic relief.
Cody steered the BTR-60 to the side of the road before the terrain dipped again.
The two-lane blacktop had begun climbing almost as soon as they left the Sofia suburbs, winding its way into foothills that would begin rising more sharply beyond to where the peaks of the range linked with the Balkans farther to the north.
They had just passed a signpost stating that Padomir was two kilometers ahead, and beyond the sign the land along the road dropped sharply, as if a giant ax had sliced away a chunk of the topography, revealing two abbreviated rows of streetlights shimmering in the crisp, high-altitude air.
Padomir looked from this high ground like a toy village laid out upon a child’s floor, so flat was the floor of the valley in which the village nestled.
Cody and his men climbed from the armored vehicle and moved to the edge of the road to gaze down, not at the village but closer, at where the government installation sat, where Narda had told them they would find it, about one kilometer short of the village on the road, this road, where it straightened out after winding down to where the valley began.
The withdrawal thus far from Sofia had been relatively uneventful except for the moment south of the city when they had found themselves bearing down on one of the floating military checkpoints one encounters throughout Eastern Europe, routine checks, although, of course, these Nersko-Tsopsak had undoubtedly heard the alert about the battle at the Charova warehouse.
Cody had downshifted as they approached the checkpoint, which was in fact no more than two Chor-7s, one parked to either side of the highway, two Nersko-Tsopska in each of the jeeplike vehicles, both of whom looked cold and unenthused about their duties, probably having been posted to spot-check the traffic that would be filling the road over the next several hours as the day got under way.
Cody knew that their only chance was if the militia might not yet be certain that one of their armored vehicles had actually been hijacked. It was less than a half hour since the blowout at the warehouse. Nothing ever went exactly the way it was supposed to when something like this happened, Cody knew this from his experience as a foot soldier.
During the coming thirty minutes there would be mounting concern about the vehicle, but for the moment a harried commander could be forgiven for assuming that perhaps this BTR-60s crew had taken off in hot pursuit and did not have their radio on or something equally foolish. Such things happened.
One of the militia men had signaled the armored personnel carrier on through with an indifferent motion of his arm, the men apparently having no inclination to harass those whom they perceived as their own.
Cody picked up speed before they even reached the checkpoint. The BTR-60 glided through, the Nersko-Tsopska in the Chor-7s paying no more attention to the armored car that continued on its way, not that the militiamen could have made out the features of the occupants of the personnel carrier, thanks to the BTR-60’s design, built higher off the ground than the checkpoint vehicles.
They encountered virtually no traffic for the rest of the trip through fields of wheat and corn bathed in the moonlight, flanked and separated by forests that began taking over from the farmland by the time Cody had pulled the vehicle to a stop on a natural overlook.
The mass of real estate that had been taken over by the Bulgarian government for the KGB—and which, according to Narda Rykov, was run by Colonel Vronski—boasted a high stone wall around the perimeter of the property.
The main house looked from here in the moonlight like a nineteenth-century two-level structure situated on a terraced hillside that commanded a full view of the valley and the village below.
Several structures stretched out behind the main house, forming something of a compound.
“This could be the jackpot,” Murphy said over Cody’s shoulder. “Those other buildings look like barracks.”
“Prefabs.” Hawkeye nodded. “Thrown up quick. Maybe to house Kamal and his bunch?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” said Cody.
“I hear this one corning,” Hawkeye grunted. “A soft probe?”
“No other way. We can’t make out much from up here without daylight, butif Vronski is running that show, he’llhave the place hard, plenvy of firepower. Vronski is nothing if not efficient. We try to hit that place with force, we won’t stand a chance.”
“So we go in soft, not hard.” Rufe nodded. “Makes sense.”
They climbed back aboard.
“Here’s how we’ll do it…” Cody began as he steered the armored car back onto the road.
Ten minutes later thefour members of Cody’s Army were again togged in the commando black they had worn during the embassy rescue mission in Rome, similar combat webbing across their chests carrying grenades, spare ammo, knives, and in addition, this time each man carried small packets of high explosives.
Cody had parked the BTR-60 well off the road, beneath a craggy lurch in the topography that would shield the vehicle from sight of the road even in daylight.
Daylight.
His primary concern right now was time.
The peaks to the east were taking clearer shape against the horizon, the metallic gray creeping upward, diluting star-flecked black.
Hawkeye turned to Caine.
“Gonna miss you backing me up on this one, tea bag.”
“Don’t get your ass shot off, peckerhead,” Caine countered, the last word, which he had picked up from the Texan, sounding comically mispronounced, coming as it did with the Brit’s impeccable delivery.
“Let’s hit it,” Cody said.
“Good luck, lads,” Caine sent them off with a thumbs-up sign each of them returned.
Cody, Murphy, and Hawkins faded away from the concealed vehicle, approaching the wall of the converted estate. They wordlessly separated as they moved with no sound whatsoever down a wooded hill toward a cleared stretch adjacent to the wall. This was the opposite side of the property from the single entrance Cody had noted from higher ground, so the three black-clad figures were coming in from behind the prefab barracks structures.
There existed the possibility, of course, that those barracks could be jammed full of security troops about to rise and shine for another day, the main reason Cody’s team probed this site from the back. Those buildings, or rather the possibility of troops inside those buildings, had to be dealt with before any penetration of the main house.
They reached the base of the wall together, perhaps ten feet separating each man. They each unstrapped the climbing ropes from around their belts and twirled them over their heads, pitching the ropes over the edge of the wall.
The pronged hooks at the end of each rope gripped into place.
Keeping their Uzis strapped over their shoulders, the three commandos commenced “walking” up the side of that ten-foot wall, pausing when they reached the top before actually climbing over on top of the three-foot-wide wall.
Cody sensed no movement along this stretch of the night-clad grounds inside.
“Vronski will have root patrols making their rounds,” he whispered. “Keep your eyes open. There could be cameras planted around too.”
They heaved themselves up onto the top of the wall.
“Who takes what?” Hawkeye whispered.
“I’ll take the barracks building to the right,” said Cody. “Rufe, the one on the left is yours.”
“Gotcha,” the big black nodded.
“What about little old me, Sarge?” Hawkeye asked.
“You,” said Cody, “keep your eyes open and try to keep us from getting killed if trouble comes our way.”
They left the wall in loose-jointed drops to the ground, then pushed away from the wall, advancing up the gradual incline of land toward the structures.
The eastern peaks were taking on the first warm pink of the coming dawn, though Cody and the two with him would have the cover of night for a few minutes yet.
A light went on inside one of the barracks.
Hawkins and Murphy saw it too. Hawkins let out a curse under his breath.
The landscape became shrubbier and thicker with trees as they got to within three yards of the prefab structures, probably the landscape design of the previous occupant who had not counted on this nice expanse of cleared acreage to be taken over by the State and endure the further sacrilege of these barracks.
The shrubbery worked to the advantage of Cody, Murphy, and Hawkins, all of whom crouched low behind it, too close to the buildings for any spoken exchange.
Cody gave each of his men the nod, then broke from the line of shrubs. He saw Murphy, hardly visible in his combat getup despite his mountainous heft, jog off toward the other building.
Cody reached the barracks building where the light had gone on. He hunkered down low at the far end of the building from the lit window. He heard the vague moving around inside of men waking up to begin a new day, and the language they spoke was not Bulgarian but Russian, similar-sounding languages, but Cody knew Russian well enough to tell the difference.
He removed a clear plastic-wrapped explosive charge from a pack attached to his combat webbing and placed the charge at the base of the building. He inserted the detonator, which would be triggered by a signal transmitted by a small, pocket-computer-size device each man carried.
When the triggering safety device was thumbed aside and the tiny buttons depressed, planted explosives would detonate with a ferocious power that would destroy those caught inside the barracks buildings and distract the rest of Vronski’s security force.
It had been impossible during the approach to the property to ascertain to what degree the KGB had beefed up security. There was, of course, the possibility that Vronski had not behaved according to Cody’s estimation of the man, but Cody had enough respect for his opponent’s capabilities to dismiss that possibility.
Cody had told Kamal his name—something he probably should not have done, he now realized—but at the time, negotiating with the terrorist for Laura Parker’s young life had taken priority over every other consideration with the man who, at that point, had held the barrel of a gun to the girl’s head.
What Cody suspected had happened since then was that Kamal had probably told Vronski about Cody’s involvement. It might take a while for Vronski to remember Cody. The two had never crossed swords face-to-face but had simply been on opposite sides of the fence during the affair in Bonn. Vronski would have already gotten word about the goings-on at Charova’s. He would not take long to put two and two together.
There was no proof that it had been Cody at Charova’s, but Vronski and Kamal would know in their hearts who it was this soon after the Rome business. They would know that Cody and his men were in Bulgaria, coming after them.
Cody’s reading of those - two slimebags suggested that they would depart with all due haste to let others do the fighting for them, not out it any real fear that Cody’s unit would overcome these defenses but simply because their job was to plan and execute atrocities like the murders of children and innocent civil servants, not to personally defend their base against commando assaults.
But whether they were still on this base or had already fled, or whether or not they had been here at all, Vronski would have taken precautions. And Cody had no idea how many men were in the barracks.
He noticed that the barracks across the way—where he could see no sign of Rufe going about his dirty-work—still looked vacant or, at the very least, asleep. He was willing to bet on vacant and that there were no more than a handful of men in this building where he had planted his explosive.
If this was in fact Vronski’s base, where the KGB oversaw the activities of Kamal’s terrorist organization, then, the system working the way it does, these prefab structures would house the Arabs while the Russian administrators and security had their living quarters in the main house. There looked to be more than enough room for living quarters, offices, briefing rooms, and the like, thought Cody, and anyway, there would not be an overly large concentration of Russian military personnel here or there would have been some sign of their presence. There would have been no “mystery” on the part of the local villagers concerning what was going on here.
Vronski and Kamal wanted this operation strictly low - key, considering the nature of what they were up to in neighboring countries. They would hardly advertise that this was the jumping-off point for missions like the Rome and Vienna massacres, or the ship and airplane hijackings that had been plaguing the West lately. The whole idea of setting up here, away from Sofia, was secrecy.
It added up this way, thought Cody: Vronski would have every available sentry on duty, patrolling the perimeter just inside the wall on foot, in teams of three or four, at the front gate and perhaps even in and around the main building; but the kicker was that this security force would be watching for some sort of commando attack, not a soft probe like this.
At this moment Caine would, or should, be going about his work around the outside of the perimeter wall.
Cody stepped back from having placed the explosive charge. He turned and took a moment to locate where Hawkeye had positioned himself by the shrubbery, where the Texan had been keeping an eye out for sentries. Cody made him out just as Hawkeye looked in his direction. He waved Hotkeys over.
Hotkeys advanced through the blackness, and when he reached Cody, the two of them pushed over to linkup with Rude.
The three of them paused there to check out the final distance, several hundred feet, separating them from the rear of the main building.
“The offices will be in there,” Cody guessed with a nod toward an unlighted rear entrance in the middle part of the Y formed by the two extended wings of the house. “Vronski and Kamal will be in the office section if they’re here at all.”
From their positions by the barracks they could also make out a parking area and mechanics’ garage that had been blocked from their sight prior to this, even during the preliminary recon from the higher ground, by one wing of the main house.
The bay door of the garage was open. A light from inside tossed out a feeble glow that did not reach the dozen or so vehicles parked outside, including one BTR-60, some Chor-7s, and a troop bus.
“I’m going into the main house alone,” said Cody.
“You should have some backup, Sarge.” Murphy frowned.
“I want my backup out here.” There was no time to tell them how he had sized up Vronski’s deployment of available manpower, his belief that the KGB force would be deployed out here, not in the house; Vronski would never expect Cody and his commandos to succeed in penetrating their defenses this far. “You guys take out their transportation.”
“And when it all hits the fan?” Hawkeye asked.
“Alternate Plan Bravo,” said Cody. “We rendezvous with Richard in”—he glanced at his watch—“three minutes. And try to avoid those,” he said with a nod.
Two poles stood between their position and either wing of the main house. Atop each post was a TV camera mounted on pivots, observing an arc of forty-five degrees.
It did not take long to determine the length of time during which each of the cameras would scan away from the distance across which they had to travel, although it was highly probable that those watching the camera monitors in the house would not even notice this night-trained hit squad.
Cody and his men broke away from the barracks building, timing their run to coincide with the cameras scanning away. He angled toward that rear entrance to the main building while the other two disappeared into the gloom toward the garage and parked vehicles.
So far the numbers had clicked away like clockwork. The operation had been laid out simply enough: Caine moving around the perimeter, outside the wall, planting explosive charges. Hawkeye and Murphy took care of the motor pool, and Cody went into the house in search of Kamal and Vronski. He would find and terminate them if they were there. If not, he would find out where they were, then the team would withdraw as soundlessly as they had penetrated these defenses, and whether Vronski and Kamal were here or not, the explosive charges would be detonated and two child killers would have to find a new base to operate from.
So far. so good. Sure.
Famous last words.
He had his hand out to reach for the door handle to open it and take a look inside when the door abruptly drew inward. He dodged back from the rectangle of white that shone across the ground and almost caught him. He pinned his back to the wall next to the doorway.
Three men strode out, chuckling among themselves at some joke one of them had just told.
He waited until the third man stepped from the doorway.
The three were not in uniform, but the AK-47 assault rifles strapped across their shoulders and their conversation in Russian tagged them clearly enough: some of Vronski’s KGB sentries on their way to relieve or back up sentries patrolling outside.
He came in on them from the side, taking the third man out silently, permanently, with a judo chop from the side of a flattened hand that caved in the man’s skull behind the right ear, killing him on his feet.
Cody whirled to the other two as they whirled on him. His right leg shot up and out, a combat boot kicking the rifle from the second soldier’s grip. He pivoted on his other foot in a martial arts twist-kick that sent the heel of the boot crunching into the bridge of the man’s nose like a swinging baseball bat, and he, too, died on his feet.
Cody went at sentry number three before the shout in the guy’s throat could spurt from his mouth. He punched on the man, his left hand going to the throat even as he keeled the sentry over, while the two corpses were still toppling into death sprawls. He came down atop the man, deflecting the rifle from the guy’s grip when the sentry hit the ground, keeping his hand around the man’s throat, cutting off his wind. He knelt on the guy, pinning him with his knee.
The soldier, a hard-faced young man whose eyes were old, stared frightfully up at the apparition in black that had come out of nowhere to kill his comrades.
Cody hissed in Russian, “Live or die, the choice is yours. Is Vronski here?”
The soldier’s head shook frantically: No. He was starting to turn purple from loss of air.
Cody stemmed the stabbing flood of disappointment that wanted to course through him.
He whispered harshly, “Kamal?”
Again the head shake but not a blank look.
This one knows who Kamal is!
“Where did they go?” Cody demanded in Russian, keeping fully alert of their surroundings.
In the fifteen seconds or so since he had launched his attack on these three, no one else had showed themselves near this dark back door.
“I—I don’t know,” the sentry gasped. “It’s the truth, I don’t know!”
Cody knew real fear of death when he saw it. He had seen it often enough to know when a man’s back was against the wall and he was incapable of lying.
“Were they here tonight?”
“Yes…yes! They left perhaps twenty minutes ago! Spare me, I beg of you! I have a wife, a child—”
Cody swung his right list to clip the man squarely on the jaw, a short punch packing power enough to put the man out for a while but not enough power to give the world one more widow and orphan.
The Russian’s eyes rolled back in his head. He flopped out upon the ground.
Cody grabbed the unconscious soldier by both feet and hurriedly dragged him behind some bushes along the back of the building. He also stashed the two dead men there.
They would be easy enough to spot when the sun came up, but they would not be found for a while, and a very short while was all Cody would need.
He threw their weapons behind the bushes after them. It occurred to him that the soldier he spared could have been lying no matter what, in which case Kamal and Vronski were inside, waiting.
Cody brought his Uzi around, becoming little more than a darkening blur of rearranged shadows as he stormed into that house.
Hawkeye and Murphy reached the parking area where dark shapes of vehicles were parked in two even rows, the vehicles between them and the open bay door of the garage.
“The mechanic is always the first one on the job,” Rufe whispered. “Looks like the KGB is no exception.”
“Let’s hope this one’s alone,” Hawkeye growled. “All right, let’s go to work.”
They separated, each man moving to opposite ends of one of the rows of vehicles.
Murphy knelt at BTR-60 and wedged some C-4 beneath the gas tank, then he dodged across to the second row. He sensed more than saw Hawkeye shift over at the other end of the row.
He stood back from having placed another wad of explosive and the detonator on the other side of the Chor-7 and turned to see Hawkeye advancing along between the rows, toward him.
There had been no activity inside the garage, but Murphy figured that would change soon enough.
The first dreamy half light of pre-dawn started rendering shape and luster to buildings, vehicles, and landscape.
He thought again that he should have accompanied Cody into the main building.
Hawkeye reached him.
“Reckon it’s time we pull back toward that rendezvous point.”
“I hear that,” Murphy rumbled in a low whisper.
They traveled along, side by side, between the vehicles until they reached the end of the rows from where they could withdraw toward the wall on the far side of the prefab barracks. They knelt beside the vehicles and looked around them in the gloom that still made visibility difficult for more than a few feet.
No one in sight, they jogged off away from the vehicles, circling well around the poles with the pivoting cameras.
Easy, thought Murphy.
Too damn easy.
The three-man sentry patrol came around the back wing of the main house and pulled up, responding automatically when they saw the commandos, separating from each other, unlimbering their assault rifles.
“Aw, shit!” Murphy and Caine hissed together.
They flung themselves to the ground, triggering their Uzis at the same moment the obviously well-trained sentries opened fire on them.
The night banged with weapons fire that blew this “soft probe” all to hell.