33

1:13 a.m., above Area 51, Nevada

Twenty-five thousand feet above Nevada, twenty-five miles north of the Groom Lake Air Force facility, the Boeing 727 flew through the early-morning hours, following the route commercial airliners used going to and from Vegas. Vadar Melnik looked at the men assembled in the darkened hold of the jet. Only his second in command, Ivan Grachev, noticed his concerned scowl. Ivan nodded, his look saying, They’ll be fine. They are ready.

They’d better be more than ready. They’d been training for months. Waiting to get the call. Not, however, expecting the timeline to be stepped up this quickly and on such short notice.

He thought of the assassin he knew only by the code name Anya.

She had too much influence. She’d altered the plan by not eliminating the U.S. government’s biggest thorn in his side. Cooper, Taggart, Brown, and their friends should be dead by now. But no. Anya had thought it unwise. Worse, his employers agreed with her that it was much smarter to pick them off one by one over time, to keep the attention away from Mother Russia.

She also had too much control over the soon-to-be-dearly-departed Dr. Corbet, who had had the bad sense to defect to America and to take his Eagle Claw research with him. Once they got what they needed from him, his reward would be death, the same fate that his wife and daughter would meet.

That was what this raid was all about. In the early hours of this Saturday morning, they would bring home both Dr. Corbet and his technology and ensure Russia’s military domination. And it was happening tonight because Anya had said this was their only window of opportunity.

He didn’t trust her. But he had no choice.

He glanced again at Ivan, who looked secure in his place, secure in their mission. And he put his trust in Ivan’s assessment of the team’s readiness.

Ivan had been at his side since they were both Spetsnaz, Soviet special forces. At the end of the Cold War and with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the turmoil following, their skills had no longer been required. At least, not for many years.

But there were new games to be played in the twenty-first century. And the Russian mafia, working closely with Putin’s enforcers, had once again made Vadar a key figure in the order. An order that paid him well to deliver, instead of the pittance of a soldier’s wage.

The men with him tonight were hand-picked for this mission. All had advanced parachute infiltration skills, except for the two technical support specialists, who were merely baggage as far as he was concerned but necessary according to his employer.

For the jump, the two techs would be strapped to Nikolai’s and Pavel’s backs, like the explosives and weaponry the other jumpers would be carrying. Vadar shifted in his seat, where the parachute harness dug into his ass. Like his men, he carried seventy pounds of gear. It was a challenge. He wasn’t as young as he used to be. And he hated the metallic taste of the oxygen that flowed into his mask. He looked forward to switching to the bailout bottles strapped to his harness which would be used to get them down to where the air was thicker.

He checked the altimeter on his wrist. Altitude twenty-five thousand feet. Air temperature minus forty-one Celsius. He went through the operation plan in his head for the hundredth time—there could be no room for mistakes. When given the go, they would jump, deploy their parachutes, group together in a “stack,” and guide themselves onto the target base using GPS. The high-altitude, high-opening, HAHO, jump was necessary for this mission. If they flew in low, radar would pick them up. By flying high above the no-fly zone surrounding the base, they’d be too small to detect on radar. And by landing precisely at their planned coordinates well inside the perimeter fence, they would avoid all but a handful of exterior guards.

Once at the base, the plan was to get in, get Dr. Corbet and all technology related to Eagle Claw—the technicians were insurance, in case Corbet refused to cooperate—and get out, commandeering vehicles from the base to drive to the preset location, where a team would be waiting to extract them.

This jump would be Vadar’s forty-second combat jump. The rest of his team had similar experience, some in Chechnya and others as far back as Afghanistan. Mavriky Shirshov, his team sergeant, was a veteran of brutal combat and an animal in battle.

His second in command, Ivan Grachev, had fought alongside him in Chechnya and had once taken a bullet for his commander. Ivan was smart, tough, adaptable, and quiet; the fact that he also liked to torture prisoners was a plus. He could get a stone to talk with the tip of his blade, if the need arose.

Vadar fingered the M4 rifle strapped to his harness. American-made, all the way. They were to leave no trace that Russia was involved in the attack. Which also meant no witnesses. With Mavriky carrying the M249 machine gun and the rest of them with M4s, that was ensured.

Intel on the staffing had been thorough. The perimeter security would be tight and fully manned, but he had no concern about that. They wouldn’t drop within four miles of it. Since the manned fence was the first line of resistance, the security around the actual building would be light. Only a skeleton crew, inside and out, during the weekend.

This obsession with weekends would become America’s downfall.

The red light above the door lit. Five minutes to jump.

The men struggled to their feet, fighting the heavy loads, then disconnected from the plane’s oxygen system to their bailout bottles. Without prompting, they checked one another’s gear, making sure that it was tight and strapped right. Yes, he had a good team. He’d paid a lot of money for the best in the business and fully anticipated both the rush from the jump and the money he’d net from this job.

Using hand signals to communicate over the roaring jet engines, Nikolai and Pavel strapped on their unwilling technicians. Pavel had to cuff his behind the ear to get him to stop struggling.

When everyone was upright, he motioned for them to put on their night-vision goggles as he shut off the cargo hold lights. Another good American piece of equipment. The NVGs in the Russian military tended to freeze solid at this altitude. It was difficult enough to jump out of a plane in the dark, and restricted vision meant you couldn’t see the team. It gave jumpers nightmares, because collisions at the speeds at which they were going to fall could be fatal.

In the greenish glow of the NVGs, Vadar made his way to the cargo hatch door and opened it. Wind tore at his body, threatening to rip him out the door. The sky was lit by the moon and stars. He couldn’t see the ground, but that was never a problem; it was always down.

Ivan made his way to the front so he would be the second one out the door. Vadar checked Ivan’s gear, then turned so Ivan could do the same with his.

Satisfied that they were both strapped in tightly, Vadar glanced back at his men. They all gave him a thumbs-up.

Then he stepped back far enough to see the jump light that glowed white instead of green through his NVGs.

When the light changed color, he stepped out into the icy darkness and into free fall.