“Comrades. I will do one more round with you, then I must retire to, how would you say, tie up some loose ends?”
David McCarter felt the grim smile tighten his lips. Loose ends? The Russian had a sense of humor, he’d give him that much, he thought as he stared out through the bulletproof, wire-mesh glass at the runway of the Czar-CIA special ops base with no name. They had been in the air most of the night before touching down at this remote base at the far northeast edge of Kazakhstan, McCarter wondering occasionally, between then and now, just how crazy he was to give his nod of approval and cooperation to the Russian black op. As he looked at the six MiGs that had escorted them to base, grounded near the row of hangars, dark figures armed with assault rifles plunging through the white swirl of snow-driven wind, a strange and unsettling revelation began to flare through his dark, troubled thoughts.
This mission was far from over or being settled, one way or another, on any account. What had started out as a hunt for Islamic fundamentalists responsible for the mass murder of Israeli civilians and with the five of them chasing the ghosts of corruption that howled around a vast conspiracy between the UN, some Serb-Russian-Dagestani gangsters and ESA covert ops who were bankrolling the theft of RLV technology now had them standing on the eve of infiltrating a covert Russian space program that was believed by Rushti to soon be under attack. Both from within the Zenith compound by national traitors, and beyond its walls by armed Muslim fanatics who were supposedly going to hijack his country’s prototype RLV for a thermonuclear joyride. What briefly disturbed the Phoenix Force leader was the fact they would have never blundered into what was a certain doomsday scenario if not for Zhuktul and Shistoi, who simply couldn’t confine their greed and blind ambitions to the usual plunder known to common gangsters. They had sought to go high-tech, in search of bigger money yet, their own arrogance and pride swollen so great it was beyond their control, and in the process the mighty had brought down the walls of their own respective kingdoms, and thanks, in no small part, to their own devouring avarice. Funny how that worked. One dead. One now in the custody of the CIA after McCarter had thoroughly scrubbed Shistoi’s brains clean of information.
“Will you and your men join me, Commander Mac?”
McCarter turned slowly, looked at each of his men. They were grouped around a large metal table, poring over all satellite pics, blueprints of the Zenith base. Rushti was holding up the half-empty bottle of vodka, the Rasputin grin pasted on his lips.
“It will be four to five hours before we are in the air in my country’s version of one of your own military VIP jets,” Rushti said. “Plenty of time to catch your sleep, clean weapons, check gear.”
“I’ll pass, but any of you blokes care to join the good comrade, feel free.”
Rushti lost the grin, shrugging when the Phoenix Force commandos declined another round, which didn’t stop him from killing one then two quick shots.
McCarter walked up to the table as Rushti poured another drink. He scanned the photos and sat imagery and said, “Your RLV covert compound sure doesn’t look like much to make such a big fuss over, Comrade Rushti. What do we have here? A few rows of propellant tanks. What look like two movable hangars, a launch mount and two runways.”
Rushti made some noise that resembled something between a chuckle or a long grunt. “There is a saying about appearances being deceptive.”
McCarter saw that one draw a few looks from his mates. “Exactly what I’m thinking.”
“My American comrade, I have explained. The nerve center, the ground control, is below ground.”
“Along with enough hardware,” Hawkins said, “to hold back an invasion by China.”
“T-72 main battle tanks, BMPs, batteries of your new radar-optical fire control ZSU-23-4M cannons with targeting computers around the compass,” Manning added.
“And,” James said, “mobile SA-4 Ganefs with command homing guidance systems.”
“A squad of MiGs and enough of your new Hokum attack helicopters and Hind-24s,” Encizo threw in, “to cover every rebel-held piece of square yard in all your Stan republics put together.”
“But you exaggerate.”
“But we don’t. What my men are saying, Comrade Rushti,” McCarter said, “is that all indications are this is an elaborate military base, an underground city, in fact, to house that kind of firepower you indicated they have at their disposal.”
“And, as I have already explained, most of it is there merely in the event of an emergency. Fifty troops presently stationed. Three officers I can say beyond any doubt are loyal to me.”
James snorted. “You don’t classify a bunch of Islamic terrorists working in collusion with some of your own people under the Zenith roof and who are going to seize a thermonuclear-armed space shuttle as an emergency?”
“A containable crisis, shall we call it, and that is why we are going in.”
“As ESA middlemen,” Manning huffed, “with phony ID badges and duffels stuffed to the gills with weapons? Who will be delivering some special load of rocket fuel?”
“What is this? Are you saying you are all getting cold feet?”
“We know what you’ve told us, comrade,” McCarter said. “What we would now like to know is what you haven’t told us.”
Rushti heaved a dramatic sigh, straightened, ramrod-stiff, clasped his hands behind his back. “Very well. There is corruption beyond the highest levels of our space program, and which we are trying to root out by this counterattack on Zenith. Unless it is dealt with in swift, certain fashion, my superiors fear that our joint spacelab station program could be jeopardized, if not permanently damaged.”
“You’re telling us,” Hawkins said, “that maybe you’ve known for some time the marquee players and what they were up to?”
“Yes. More or less.”
“But, we just happened along to lend a helping hand?” Encizo said.
“More or less,” James added.
“Comrades, I have heard it said that timing is everything in life. Perhaps this is merely Fate steering you to me to aid the few good men of my country in thwarting what could be a monstrous agenda, one that could see hundreds of thousands perish in a nuclear holocaust.”
“Which leaves us wondering still,” McCarter said. “Are you holding out?”
Rushti fell silent, then bobbed his head, McCarter watching him closely as a strange fire lit his eyes. The Czar black op filled another shot, killed it, heaved a dramatic breath. “Comrades, where is your faith?” he said, as if so exasperated he verged on despair. Another nod, and Rushti hurled the glass. It missiled, inches past McCarter’s face, shattering against the window, but the ex-SAS commando didn’t flinch, though he read the sudden anger and confusion in the eyes of his teammates.
“What the hell,” Encizo growled.
“Call it coincidence, call it Fate, call it justice about to be meted out by whatever God you pray to,” Rushti said, squaring his shoulders as if defying any of them to physically attack. “Yes, I knew you were coming to Dagestan, as you knew that I knew, though you did not know who I was until we met. I do not, and will not stand here and justify myself to any of you, nor will I implore you to believe me at my word, which, I tell you now on my blood is better than gold. The world in which we live and deal is one of traitors with many hidden skeletons, as I am sure you are aware of. They want money. They wish to perpetuate twisted ideology through the mass murder of countless innocents. Or they want both. And to achieve their aims they will go so far as to eat their own like a child to be sacrificed on their personal altars of greed and ambition. I learn what I now know because I thrust my very capable hands into these nests of serpents and withdraw them to squeeze the life out of them until they give me the truth.
“Should you proceed with me to Zenith, I can assure you it will not be easy, and I cannot and will not guarantee the outcome, whether success or failure or the ultimate sacrifice of your own lives. Men are going to die, bad men who have deceived my country and brought in Muslim extremists to hijack a prototype space plane. How, precisely, it will be done, what they intend to do with it, where they intend to strike with thermonuclear weapons, I do not know. It could be Moscow. It could be Iraq. It could be Hawaii or any city or cities on your continental United States. My personal source inside Zenith tells me the supreme hour of the conspiracy has already begun. That was the loose end I mentioned. Final details, last-minute intelligence.
“Now. In exchange for your help, for you disabling this space plane by, yes, blowing it up and helping me and my men to smuggle out the thermonuclear payload—assuming, that is, it is not already on board—you will receive all schematics, all critical intelligence and prisoners, anything that was stolen by these traitors from the ESA and your own NASA. This base will be shut down, permanently. And, should that happen, the world at large will never need to know how close it was pushed to the brink of World War Three. Now. I have spoken my mind, and from the heart. Are you in or out?”
McCarter kept his composure as he wandered a look over the faces of his commandos, none of whom appeared to know what to make of the Russian’s outburst. He found Rushti staring at him, waiting for his final answer. McCarter could never be positive of anything in their world of murder, sabotage and mayhem but he believed Rushti was sincere. May God help him, the ex-SAS commando decided, if he wasn’t shooting straight. If his will be perverse, if his intentions were crooked, McCarter would have no problem straightening him out.
The Phoenix Force leader showed Rushti an easy smile, held his arms out, and said, “We’re in. Was there ever any doubt?”
THE MERE SIGHT of the ostentatious playboy mansion, perched high like some gilded eagle’s nest to overlord the Adriatic Sea and the beach crowd far below, was enough to make Carl Lyons want to throttle the arrogant life right out of the guy. For just one nasty little tidbit, the pedigree on the Serb boss read like a nightmare straight out of Hell, one for which Dante would have created a whole new circle. Between his suspected track record as a war criminal and his career as a major crime figure in charge of an enterprise that stretched from Moscow to, apparently, Dallas, Texas, there was enough murder, torture, rape and every abomination in between this Serb bloodsucker would have made the Romanian prince known as Vlad the Impaler look like a teetotaling, wispy fop by comparison. The bottom line to all the madness, thanks to his underworld endeavors, his connection to the UN oil scam and rogue contacts in the European Space Agency, the FBI believed the Serb was one of the richest men in Europe.
But that was just the way of the world, Lyons thought. Sad to say there were few greater axioms on Earth than crime did pay.
The bad guys never believed it, Lyons knew, but there was a heavy price tag attached to that sordid truth for those who would become king of an illegitimate empire at the expense of untold suffering humanity.
And Franjo Balayko’s tab was long overdue.
Lyons clenched his jaw so hard he felt his heart beating through his teeth as he shoved down murderous fantasies of what he’d like to do to the guy, but lived in hope he might just get the chance to act it all out, and in short order.
According to the FBI, the Serb’s main pleasure palace was two stories and had thirty bedrooms. The facade and roofline were all hung and trimmed in marble and cedar, with hand-tooled carvings of Greek and Roman gods jutting up from a gold-tiled roof that reflected the afternoon sun like divine light. Looked about right to Lyons, and yet he was faced with the not-so-little problem of covering all that ground when they crashed the gate. Then the pool, custom-designed, no less, in female statuesque, legs and all, Lyons observed, with breasts reaching out as giant melons for the Jacuzzi crowd. Another hard scan through his field glasses, and Lyons gave up counting all the beauties strutting or lounging about pool and barside. Innocent, or maybe not-so-innocent bystanders. Well, Lyons decided, they’d better duck or hit the water and hold their breath until the storm blew over. He wasn’t a fan of collateral damage, but he hadn’t come all this way to get tripped up from bagging the big man-eating sharks because a few guppies didn’t know when to get out of the way.
The good news was that the security force in black tux, dark shades and wielding stubby machine pistols—five in all—was having some well-understood difficulty concentrating on watching the store. In fact, two of them were busy chatting it up with the girls, with another hardman taking a long time out to rub oil over two of the sunbathing kittens while number four appeared more interested in helping himself to the boss’s liquor in one of three thatch-roofed bars. Grunting, not quite sure it was contempt and disgust he felt, Lyons could only imagine what was going on inside where the boss and his VIP entourage were stashed away, but if the hardforce under the roof was as sloppy and lackadaisical as this bunch of gun-toting playboy wannabes…
Lyons heaved a breath, then glanced at Schwarz and Blancanales, his commandos flanking him, but taking the time all of a sudden to throw him a look that told him they suspected what he was thinking.
“No,” Lyons rebuffed, “I’m not jealous.”
Schwarz grinned. “You sure could have fooled me.”
“That would be no major accomplishment, my friend,” Lyons said.
If he judged his teammates by how he felt—weary from more than just jet lag but with fresh reserves of adrenaline and pure malice of heart now kicking in—then it was a safe bet they were good to go. The question was how, exactly, to proceed? Or did they even bother to shift tactics, other than a full rampage straight down Broadway?
Their surveillance roost was a boulder-studded bowl, swaddled by pine trees, a few hundred yards southeast and up from the gangster’s getaway from the trials and tribulations of Belgrade. Those woes currently plaguing Franjo Balayko and threatening to crash his 24/7 party were the FBI. Two of the Serb Don’s headaches were right then squeezed in behind, and practically breathing down Lyons’s neck with a sickening mix of cologne, cigarette smoke residue and a lunch that was heavy on garlic, onions and sausage. They were wearing flak vests, and sweating like lambs over the fire, Beretta M-9s in shoulder holsters beneath windbreakers, tactical radios hooked to their belts. Lyons flashed them a look—both of them scowling but pulling back a few inches—before he went back to scanning the lay of the land in search of a battle strategy. Special Agent in Charge Feodor Jomanski, he noted, looked especially eager to start putting his HK-33 assault rifle with scope to good use. In fact, the word from Brognola was the guy liked to kick down doors and go in shooting. His kind of agent, a little rogue and a lot of gung-ho, but Lyons had fairly informed them they were backup.
“You boys really hit the jackpot,” Jomanski said, raking the compound with a sweep of his field glasses.
“That’s the third time you’ve said that,” Lyons observed, “since you picked us up and flew us here by chopper from Belgrade. Why don’t you just come right out and say what’s on your mind?”
Jomanski lowered the glasses, looked at Lyons with a narrowed gaze. “I’m just saying your timing couldn’t have been better. According to my agent watching the Zruna Dtiva airfield, the Russian Don just landed. Congratulations. You’ve got all the fat cats about to be gathered under the same roof.”
Lyons already knew as much from Brognola’s personal team assigned to watch the private airfield. Six shooters were coming in with Vladimir Yoravky. But they were merely bit players in what Lyons knew was a freak show who’s who of the European Space Agency and the United Nations already partaking of whatever the Serb boss was offering. What galled Lyons even more was that the savages didn’t even bother to hide who they were, as he looked again to the Russian Mi-26 parked on the helipad to the north. It was a big gray transport beast, and even at a distance Lyons could read UN on the belly, with United Nations painted out on the tail. Yet another hassle. Lyons knew they were raw human sewage, would most likely bluster in outrage when he put the facts of life to them, but in the eyes of their so-called legitimate diplomatic world they were aboveboard, untouchable. What the hell, he figured, they could play with the poisonous snakes, feed at the same trough as criminal swine, why should he suffer some crisis of conscience when the lead started to fly?
The Able Team leader sensed the original bitterness from the SAC bristle even more, now that the show-time was upon them, with Special Agent Don Myers not doing much to give Lyons a good old feeling that mutual cooperation was the order of the day, as the shorter of the two agents seemed hell-bent on maintaining the same sour expression since they’d all been introduced back in the big city. One of the advantages, though, of working for America’s premier ultracovert intelligence agency, Lyons knew, was its close but secret ties to the President of the United States. Then there was, of course, Hal Brognola with his own special run of the Justice Department, and which the FBI’s operations around the world fell under his command and control whenever the crisis demanded. And woe be unto the agents, Lyons thought, who didn’t stand up, salute and obey and with a smile of peaceful resignation on his face when Brognola came knocking.
“What my partner’s saying,” Agent Myers suddenly attested, “is that we’re kind of hoping the FBI is more than just a taxi and intel service for you three cowboys. I mean, it isn’t like we don’t have anything invested in this. What would you say, Big Jo? About twenty thousand hours of surveillance? Listening to wiretaps all day and night, seven days a week, watching the Serb Don living high off the hog for how many years now? Going on five?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
Lyons kept the smart remark in check. He wasn’t here to coddle the FBI, take them in his arms and pat them on the heads and apologize for stealing their thunder and hurling up a barricade to any personal career advancement with the show he had waiting just offstage. Still, if there were any live ones left worth taking prisoner he would gladly dump them into the FBI’s lap. Paperwork wasn’t his bag anyway.
Lyons spent a few long moments scouring the vast motor pool, raking the dense tree line that flanked the long cobbled driveway. Between all the Mercedes limos, Rolls-Royces, Cadillacs, what looked like custom-made Hummers, Lyons certain every ride was armored and with windows bulletproof enough to stop anything just this side of a cruise missile…
Figure there was money enough on cars alone to buy the multiethnic mess of centuries-old festering hate and strife of whatever they called the former Yugoslavia these days, and twice over.
Lyons could feel both FBI men now boring looks into the twin .50-caliber Desert Eagle Magnums he was openly sporting, and with the SPAS-12 autoshotgun stretched out at his feet he was sure it was all they could do to keep from asking questions about who they really were. Plus, he was reasonably certain they would like nothing better than to unzip one of the two nylon body bags within Schwarz’s reach. Soon enough, they’d see just what the three of them were all about.
“You know what really bugs me?” Lyons suddenly rasped.
“Uh-oh,” Blancanales muttered, with Schwarz throwing in a loud groan.
“These guys are little more than pigs and jackals and plain insufferable jackasses, and are the worst of criminal scum, without the first shred of character, without the first scintilla of heart and guts and balls. No halfway decent-looking woman in her right mind would look even the first time at if they didn’t have cash enough to buy them their every little whim of the day. The boats, the mansions, the furs, the money. Take all that away and you have a walking bag of punk-loser those women down there wouldn’t let drink their bath-water.”
“Whoa,” Schwarz said. “I thought you said you weren’t—”
“Shuddup.”
“Maybe God in His Infinite Wisdom denied you all your heart’s sick desires and burning lust to spare you from eternal ruin.”
Lyons slowly turned and looked at Jomanski. The guy was serious, but Lyons had to wonder if maybe the guy wasn’t on to something.
“So, what’s the plan?” Myers asked in a voice that fairly demanded to know the play.
“I’m thinking,” Lyons said, his eyes drawn back to the motor pool. “It’s going to be, what? Maybe an hour, ninety minutes before those Russians get here?”
“Around that,” Jomanski answered.
“Okay,” Lyons said. “I figure let them get settled in, pop a few drinks, do some glad-handing with the hyenas, but more like a whole bunch of grab-assing with the poolside talent, I’m sure. By then, the sun will be down.”
Jomanski gritted his teeth. “But, what are you going to do?”
Lyons was wondering about that himself, then the lightbulb flashed on in his mind. Why didn’t he think of this before? he wondered, then turned and smiled at the agents. “What’s this, you ask, O, ye of little patience? Why, I’m going to walk right up to the front door and arrest the dirty SOBs. Serbs, Russians, UN scoundrels, the hired help and anybody else I don’t like the looks of. What do you think of that?”