Hearing the chopper in the distance, Kozachenko knew time was running out. GROM had been searching all day. He and his men had played a cat-and-mouse game, but now their enemies were getting closer, and time was running short.
They were outside of Nowinka, approximately thirty-one kilometers west of the Russian border. In one hour’s time, this would all be done and they would safely be home, provided they weren’t discovered.
“Is the gun ready?” He’d asked the question before, and he got the same answer.
“It’s ready, Vasyl.” Barkov slapped a hand on Kozachenko’s shoulder. “Maybe it’s time for a shot of vodka.”
“We can toast once the job is done,” Kozachenko said, shaking off Barkov’s hand. “We are not home free yet. We need to keep our wits about us.”
“You worry too much, Vasyl.”
Kozachenko ignored him and gathered the men. “Up to this point you have done an admirable job. We have one more task, and then we go home to Russia. It is most important that we get the gun back to Kaliningrad, and we all know that the Polish Special Forces will try to stop us.” His thought went to the DSS agent responsible for the manhunt. The pakhan indicated she was in Poland, no doubt leading the chase. “Many of you have military training, but these men are like our own Spetsnaz. They have better training than you, better weapons. Once we fire the gun, we must move quickly for the border.”
Kozachenko outlined the route they would take on the map, then asked if anyone had any questions.
“Won’t they already have patrols set up on the major roads?” Yolkin asked.
“I’m sure they will have the guards on alert at the checkpoints, but I know of a crossing place to the north. It’s here.” He showed the men on the map.
“And what if they catch us?” Celek asked.
“Then Barkov and Yolkin will keep driving toward the border, and the rest of us will stand and fight.”
“You want me driving the truck?” Barkov said.
Kozachenko wanted nothing more than to drive the truck himself, but a leader stood with his men. “Yolkin is injured and, next to me, you stand the best chance of reaching the homeland.”
* * *
The team dropped Jordan and Adamski at Łęcze, where an armored Range Rover waited for them. Davis stayed with the team on the chopper while they continued their aerial search. They’d switched back to their code names. Avatar (Adamski) and Ratchet, the name of the chopper team leader, were both on VOX. The others could listen but not speak without pushing their transmit buttons.
Jordan tapped the captain on the shoulder. “Avatar, tell your men to keep the thermal imaging camera lens open to its widest aperture. When the gun is fired, it’s going to get hot, so hot that it should light up the truck, at least long enough for us to spot it.”
“What then?”
“First we get the GPS coordinates of the location for Zhen, and then we go for the Russians. They’ll make a run for it. If the team can get eyes on and guide us in, we may be able to stop them before they can cross the border.”
At five minutes to 4:00 PM, Jordan got Lory on the line. “It’s almost time, sir. Are you ready on your end?”
“As ready as we’ll ever be.”
She kept the line open as she listened to the voices through the comm. She could occasionally pick up Davis’s voice and pictured him happily snapping photographs of GROM in action. Then the urgency of the voices changed. She heard a shout, then Ratchet confirming what she already knew: the Russians had fired the weapon.
“Lory, it’s coming,” she said. “Tell Zhen! Lory?”
“He’s already working on it.”
“Stay on the line.” Jordan could hear him urging Zhen to hurry.
Ratchet’s voice came through the comm. “Avatar, the Russians are somewhere near Nowinka. We’re headed there now.”
“Roger that.” The captain turned to Jordan, throwing the SUV into gear. “Buckle up, Jumper. We’re sixteen minutes away, and I plan on making better than average time.”
Jordan tightened her seat belt, still hanging on the phone. “Lory, tell me he’s found it.”
“Not yet, he’s still working.”
They were two minutes in.
Adamski drove at breakneck speed along the winding country road, sirens blaring. Birch and oak trees whipped past the window, and Jordan found herself hanging on.
“Avatar, we’ve lost the signal,” Ratchet said.
“That’s impossible,” the captain said. “The heat couldn’t have dissipated that quickly.”
Jordan shook her head. “Unless they covered the gun. Maybe the tarp has a heat shield? Tell them to keep looking, to look for a cluster of people, several vehicles.”
“Lory?” The line was dead. Shit!
Redialing his number, she checked the time. They were four minutes in and counting.
“He’s still working on it,” Lory said when he answered. Jordan’s fear climbed into her chest, making her skin tingle.
“We’re at four minutes, twenty seconds.”
“I know where we are. We’re fu—Wait! I think he’s got it. Yes, it’s locked on!” Lory celebrated, then stopped short. “He says there isn’t enough time. It’s not going to go far enough out in the gulf. Fuck. No!”
“Lory, what’s happening?”
Jordan heard the explosion, then the phone went dead. Twisting, she looked out the back window of the Land Rover and saw a plume of smoke rising into the air along the coastline.
“We need to turn back,” Adamski said.
“No! We need to stop the Russians from taking the gun across the border.” Jordan didn’t like not knowing what had happened in Gdánsk. But she knew with no uncertainty that if the Russians managed to get away with the gun, they could back engineer the latest in U.S. weaponry, and the world would be screwed.
The captain pressed harder on the accelerator. The Land Rover picked up speed. “Ratchet, keep eyes on the main road. Use extreme measures.”
Jordan felt him brake as they came to a small town, and then he accelerated through a series of S-curves that followed. Time was quickly running out.
* * *
The Russians had gotten out ahead of GROM and made their way north along the Pasłęka River. The road across the border that Kozachenko knew was an old abandoned farm road north of Rusy. From where they were stopped now, getting there posed a problem.
Kozachenko leaned against one tree, Barkov against another, both staring out at the farm fields.
“We’ll be out in the open for over three kilometers, then visible along the trees for another one and a half, Vasyl.”
Kozachenko looked at Barkov and shrugged. “It’s the only way. It’s simple. We wait for the air patrol to fly south along the border, and we make our run.”
“We shoot them down with an RPG.” Kozachenko could see the distaste on Barkov’s face. “What? You don’t have the stomach to kill a few Poles?”
“I don’t have the stomach for going to jail for committing terrorist acts. You can’t believe for one second that pakhan can save us if we’re caught.”
Kozachenko swallowed the sour taste in his mouth. He wasn’t used to having his orders challenged; something Barkov had been doing for days. If he were any other man, Kozachenko would have put a bullet through his head by now.
“No more discussion,” he said. “We go at dusk.”