He returned to his seat, leaned forward toward the computer screen, and reminded himself of the dream he shared with his subordinates, the dream he shared with the president:
There could be only one superpower. And he would do everything he could to ensure that.
Why? To restore the Motherland to greatness. To achieve a level of personal power nearly unimaginable.
And to be like his hero, Stalin, who never wore a personal sidearm yet boldly thrust out his chest against the Nazis. Stalin would know how to bring the European Federation and the American Joint Strike Force to their knees.
At sixty-one, there weren’t many things left in this world that truly moved General Sergei Izotov.
War was one of them.
And while agonizing at times, it was still terribly fun.
THREE
Major Alice Dennison, USMC, wanted to speak to the prisoner herself, so she had caught a flight to Helsinki, where he was being temporarily housed at Vantaa Prison before being sent to Guantánamo Bay.
Two well-armed rifle squads of European Federation Enforcers Corps troops had been dispatched to reinforce security at the prison, and two sergeants stood at the gate, unflinching in the morning rain.
But as Dennison exited her armored SUV, their expressions shifted, eyes playing over her face and drifting down to her legs, despite the trench coat.
She was used to the ogling but never tolerated it. Her glare sent their gazes straight ahead, and she offered them a crisp and official-sounding, “Good morning.”
“Morning, ma’am,” they said in unison with thick accents.
Dennison was escorted into the building by a trio of heavily armed Joint Strike Force military police, along with a pair of her own personal security guards dressed in civilian clothes.
After passing through four separate checkpoints, they reached the small, ten-by-ten interrogation room.
The JSF had already sent in a team of six of their best interrogators, and they had already spent more than ten hours questioning Colonel Pavel Doletskaya.
Joint Strike Force doctrine gave the interrogators twenty-one approaches to “convince” prisoners of war to divulge critical intelligence. The approaches were designed to exploit the prisoner’s personal history, morality, sense of duty, love of country, relationships with comrades, and even his sense of futility. Carefully applied in the correct combinations, the approaches were said to work on nearly everyone.
But during the flight over, Dennison had learned that Doletskaya had given up nothing. He made no attempt to invent information or misdirect the interrogators. He simply refused to cooperate and demanded that the consequences of such refusal be carried out immediately.
“Hello, Major,” came a voice from behind her.
The lead interrogator, Charles Shakura, proffered his large hand and introduced himself. He was an impressive-looking black man despite his tattered business attire and the dull haze in his eyes.
“Nothing new since we last spoke?”
He shook his head and sighed in disgust. “I haven’t been given authority to use enhanced measures.”
“We’ll go there, but only if it’s absolutely necessary. I want to speak to him now.” She headed toward the door, while Shakura motioned to one of the guards to unlock it.
Dennison stepped into the room, closed the door behind her.
The colonel sat at the head of a small, steel table bolted to the floor and kept his head lowered.
He had a graying crew cut, and from what she could tell from beneath his straight jacket, a barrel chest and thick arms. His face was flushed, the white stubble of a beard tracing his mouth. He was, in most respects, a beautiful man, a predator with his wings clipped.
“Colonel, look at me.”
Slowly, his head rose, and his semi-vacant eyes began to focus, grow brighter. He spoke with a Russian accent, but his English was excellent: “Major Dennison, the most famous executive officer of the Joint Strike Force. And one of the youngest. You are more beautiful than all of the photos and videos I’ve studied. They do you no justice. How old are you? Twenty-nine?”
“What’s going on up in the Amundsen Gulf?”
“You are thirty-four. I know how old you are. And such a beautiful young woman given such a terrible job.”
Dennison spoke through her teeth. “What’s going on up there?”
“Nothing.”
“What is Operation 2659? Who is Snegurochka?”
“Major, if you came to ask me those painfully obvious questions, you’ve wasted your time. Don’t you want to know more about your adversary? Doesn’t it fascinate you that I am here, in the flesh? I’ve studied you for a very long time. I know everything. Your father was an Air Force pilot. You went to Virginia Military Institute, graduated the class of 2005.”
“Two thousand four,” she corrected.
He smiled. “Of course. And then you went to the United States Naval Academy, got your B.S. in systems engineering, graduated summa cum laude. Very impressive. You’ve been in U.S. Naval intelligence and logistics and went on to serve in the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Command. I even know you were handpicked by General Scott Mitchell to join the JSF. Your favorite ice cream flavor is rocky road. And you watch that romantic comedy with . . . I don’t remember the actor’s name. You watch that over and over. Too many times.”
Her face twisted into a deep frown. “I didn’t know I had a Russian stalker.”
“Stalker? Of course not. Details are my god. Know your enemy, keep him close, study him, learn his weaknesses, exploit them, then bring him down—if you want to call that stalking. I call it hunting.”
“You’re planning another attack. And you’re going to tell us all about it.”
“Please, Major. We know where this will go and how it will end. Fly home. Forget all about me.”
She narrowed her gaze. “I’m going to get authorization to use enhanced methods to interrogate you. Do you know what that means?”
“This is where you promise to torture me, but it never comes because there are too many bleeding hearts in your government. If we had captured you, I would have already strip-searched you—and taken my time with that. And then we would stick a long needle in your arm. Do you know what SP-18 is?”
“I thought it was seventeen.”
“This is the new serum, more potent; but like the old, it’s tasteless, odorless, and has no side effects. Best of all, you would never remember our heart-to-heart talk. We use it on our own agents all the time, to ensure their loyalty. We would have what we want from you in one hour. I have been here a long time, twelve, fourteen hours? I do not know. They took my watch. And you have nothing after all that time, nothing except a team of dead soldiers, spies who deserved to die.”
Dennison’s chest grew tight, her breath shallow. She stood and came around the table, leaned over, and got into the colonel’s face. “Those men gave their lives to bring you back here. Oh, you’re going to talk. But first, I suspect, you’re going to bleed. A lot.”
“Like I said, you are a beautiful woman with a terrible job.” He laughed again, under his breath.
Her fist connected with his nose, driving his head back, and she thought, My God, I just punched him, but there was no taking it back.
The door swung open and the guards rushed in, followed by Shakura. “Major, please, we have strict orders not—”
“I issued those orders,” she said, rubbing her knuckles.
Doletskaya faced her, blood streaming over his mouth. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For allowing me to bleed for my Motherland.”
She cursed at him.
He smiled, blood filling the cracks of his teeth. “Major Dennison, you are apparently the only man here.”
She regarded Shakura. “Clean him up. He’s off to Cuba.”
“I’m sorry, Major,” said the colonel.
She frowned.
“I’m sorry we don’t have more time to talk.??
? The guards took the colonel by the arms and forced him to his feet. “I wanted to express my condolences about your mother,” he added quickly.
“My mother?”
“The cancer. And yes, I wanted to tell you that you should talk to your sister, that she is still your sister despite your political differences. And I wanted to tell you that it’s okay to cry, late at night, like you do sometimes when you eat all the ice cream. The rocky road. It’s okay.”
She balled her hands into fists, glowered at him, flicked her glance to Shakura. “Get this . . . freak . . . out of here.”
Doletskaya winked. “Dosvidaniya, Major.”
Chills ripped across her shoulders as they shoved him out of the room, blood dripping from his chin.
She trembled violently now, began to lose her breath.
“Major?” called Shakura. “Are you all right?”
She closed her eyes.
Bared her teeth.
And inside, she screamed.
FOUR
“Oh, damn, Mick, we got only ten minutes till the Russians arrive.”
Staff Sergeant Raymond McAllen, leader of a six-man USMC Force Reconnaissance team, didn’t need his assistant, Sergeant Terry Jones, to remind him of that. He’d set his stopwatch within a minute after the eighteen-man platoon fast-roped down into the valley as their Black Hawk had thundered off to seek cover until they called her back.
“We got less time than that, Jonesy. But the crash site should be just over that ridge.”
“Yeah, but it don’t look good. No contact from them. We don’t even know if this guy is still alive.”
“Our job’s to find out. Come on!”
The sun was beginning to set over the Sierra Maestra mountains in southern Cuba, and the shadows grew longer across slopes covered in mud from the midday rains. McAllen and his men had already shouldered their way through some dense jungle in sweltering, humid air, but they were almost at the site.
And no, this wasn’t a run-of-the-mill TRAP (Tactical Recovery of Aircraft and Personnel) mission. Apparently, one of the passengers onboard the Learjet was a Russian colonel who’d been on his way to Guantánamo when the Russians had shot down his escort fighters. They’d also managed to strike a glancing blow to the jet, forcing it down into the mountains.
Fortunately, McAllen and his entire Force Recon company had been engaged in a weeklong, live-fire training exercise at Gitmo and been able to respond within minutes of the call.
Unfortunately, they’d been out in the field doing some physical training when the call had come, and they’d been forced to board the chopper with whatever they had, leaving behind their best high-tech toys—advanced body armor, weapons, and communications systems that were all part of the military’s Future Force Warrior program.
They’d get by with just the conventional gear. McAllen believed that if you depended too much upon technology in the field, you’d become sloppy and soft, a kid at a convenience store who can’t make change, a Marine who can’t aim because the computer does it for him.
He waved on the others, Jonesy first; then his two recon scouts, Corporals Palladino and Szymanski; his radio operator, Lance Corporal Friskis; and finally the team’s medic, Navy Corpsman Gutierrez, who carried the team’s biggest gun, the Squad Automatic Weapon, because putting more steel on target was the best form of preventative medicine.
Palladino and Szymanski moved out ahead, walking point, ready to throw hand signals or call in via the intra-team radio at their first sign of contact.
Meanwhile, the other two six-man teams were about three kilometers west, moving to head off part of a company-size Russian ground force that had already inserted, minutes after the crash. A second Russian team was just north of the site, and higher was scrambling to put another Force Recon platoon on the ground there, but McAllen still bet that his team would reach the jet before the Russians did.
Their friends in Moscow were taking no chances and assuming nothing. They’d actually planned in advance to drop troops on the ground and ensure that this colonel was dead.
That certainly had McAllen’s attention.
He pulled up the rear, sweeping the jungle with his carbine, head low, repeatedly stealing glances behind.
They stole their way even higher up the slope, boots digging deeper into the mud, as the mountain grew darker and the hoots and cries of birds seemed to drift off into an eerie silence, save for their footfalls. The stench of the crash grew stronger, a combination of mildew, smoke, and spilled fuel.
“Outlaw Three, this is Outlaw One, over,” called McAllen over the radio.
“Go ahead, One,” answered Palladino; he was also the team’s sniper, six feet of muscle and hard heart.
“Got eyes on the site, over?”
“Just now, but we’ll need to approach over that hill to the east. We can’t get down this way. Too steep. Come on up and have a look, over.”
“Coming up.”
After reaching the ridge and jogging over to where Palladino and Szymanski were hunkered down, McAllen caught his breath and saw what the sniper was talking about.
The approach was far too steep. Even so, this perch afforded a perfect view of the valley below.
The Learjet had burrowed into the side of the mountain, yet most of the fuselage was intact. Its wings were gone, though, its side door open, smoke still pouring from its engines and the long, meter-deep furrow stretching out behind. They couldn’t get to it, but circling around as Palladino had suggested would kill even more time.
“What do you want do, Sergeant?” asked Szymanski, his chiseled face and thick neck dappled with sweat.
“Shift around.”
“Uh-oh,” interrupted Palladino, staring through a pair of night-vision goggles into the gloom ahead. “Enemy contact, tree line north. At least six guys, maybe more. They’re moving in.”
McAllen tensed. So the Russians had beaten them to the site, but they hadn’t reached the jet itself yet. He got on the radio: “Outlaw Team, this is One. I want Outlaws Three and Six up here on the ridge. I want sniper and SAW fire on that tree line. The rest of you come with me!”
Gutierrez hustled forward with his big machine gun, setting up a few meters away from Palladino, who dropped to lie prone with his M40A3 sniper rifle balanced on its bipod.
McAllen led Jonesy, Szymanski, and Friskis along the ridge, weaving through the palms and other trees until they reached the aforementioned hill east of their position. It, too, was particularly steep but draped in enough dense foliage to conceal their advance—and the possibility of a tumble down the hillside.
“Outlaw One, this is Outlaw Six,” called Gutierrez. “They’re breaking from the tree line, over.”
“Let Outlaw Three take the first shot, and that’s your signal to open up, over.”
“Roger that.”
McAllen imagined Palladino up there on the hill, staring through his scope, making hasty calculations—
When suddenly his rifle resounded, a great thunder-clap echoing off the mountains.
A gasp later, Gutierrez began delivering his lecture, the Professor of Doom bathing himself in brass casings, the SAW rat-tat-tating loud and clear.
McAllen’s group had a handful of seconds to make their break from the slope and weave a serpentine path toward the downed plane.
He ordered Szymanski and Friskis out first and they charged away, vanishing off into the trees, while he and Jonesy took a more westerly path, closer to the Russians in the tree line. McAllen figured that even if the enemy got closer, at least two of his men would make it to the plane, while he and Jonesy could intercept.
Up on the hill, Gutierrez and Palladino continued laying down fire, the Russians only answering with sporadic shots.
McAllen and Jonesy reached the Learjet, two seconds behind the other guys. “Stay out here,” McAllen ordered Szymanski. “Mask up. Pop smoke. Friskis, stay with him. Call the PL, tell him we’ve reached the site.”
“You got it, Sergeant.
”
McAllen and Jonesy slipped on their masks and McAllen followed Jonesy into the hazy confines of the jet, his rifle at the ready.
The cabin walls and ceiling were heavily scorched. He glanced right.
And wished he hadn’t.
At least ten people were strewn about, their blackened limbs twisted at improbable angles. A few of them were dressed in the burned remains of civilian clothes while the others wore military uniforms, Navy mostly.
“Check the cockpit,” he told Jonesy, then rushed forward to the nearest body, whose government ID had melted into his chest. There wasn’t much left of his face, either, but it was clear he wasn’t their Russian colonel. He was a black man, about middle age.
McAllen was about to move on to the next guy—
When the man’s eyes snapped open, shocking the hell out of him. “Jesus!”
The survivor’s voice came thin and cracked. “Help me.”
McAllen leaned over the man. “Whoa, God, buddy, yeah, yeah, I will. And you help me. We’re looking for a guy, a Russian colonel.”
“Sergeant!” hollered Friskis from the doorway. “I think we got another squad. They’re moving up!”
“Okay, get ready to fall back. We have a survivor here. Jonesy, check the others!”
McAllen’s assistant emerged from the cockpit. “Roger that. Pilots are dead,” he reported, his voice muffled by his mask.
The black man grabbed McAllen’s arm. “Please, my daughters need me.”
“Don’t worry, buddy, I’ll get you out of here. What’s your name?”
“Charles Shakura.”
“All right, Mr. Shakura, stay calm.” McAllen carefully unfastened the man’s seat belt. “But listen to me, man. The colonel. We need to know about that Russian colonel. He’s supposed to be onboard.”
Shakura grimaced.
Abruptly, gunfire began drumming on the outside of the fuselage—
And Jonesy came rushing forward from the back of the jet. “Looks like some civilians and officers, but no one’s cuffed, Sergeant.”
“Charlie, where’s the Russian?”
Shakura swallowed.