stocky, square jaw and yet a slightly hollow face, the face of someone who had walked through a desert.
Physically ‘enhanced’?
There was no clear guidance on what that might mean. The intelligence was vague, based on vaguer reports. The Wolves were physically fit and in extremely good shape — that was a given for any special ops type group, which essentially described what they knew of the operation.
But they were more than that. The implication was that, at a minimum, they were using exoskeleton technology to help them run and lift things. And that the technology was more advanced than what anyone else, including the U.S., was using, since it hadn’t been detected.
Which in Danny’s view was highly unlikely.
Even staring at the old pictures, it was hard to see Stoner now. Gray hair? Fuller cheeks?
More than likely he wasn’t here. More than likely he was still at the bottom of that swamp.
Shortly before 1:00 p.m., MY-PID alerted Danny to activity at the back of the farmhouse. Danny hit the hot key on the laptop, bringing up the proper feed just in time to see two figures emerge from the cement stairwell that came out of the basement. Moments later a third and a fourth came out, finally a fifth. They trotted up the steps from the basement, moving around in a haphazard pattern — warming up, Danny thought, like a basketball team.
A sixth figure emerged. The others formed a semicircle around him. They began doing jumping jacks.
It was exactly like a basketball team. Right number, too.
Danny put his finger on the control slider and zoomed to maximum magnification, trying to get close-ups of the faces. He got a partial on one — it was clearly not Stoner.
The man next to him had what looked like the right build. But all he could see was the top of the man’s head. He was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, with only a small part of his scalp exposed.
“Request facial images,” Danny told the computer. “All subjects.”
The request had to be relayed to the Predator pilot. By the time the aircraft changed its orbit to attempt to see the face, the men had already begun to run around the property. The trees and hills — not to mention the UAV’s altitude — made getting close-ups of the faces very difficult, and the aircraft was only able to obtain two before the men returned to the house via the basement door. Neither man looked like Stoner.
Then again, the images were grainy and obscured by shadows — who could really say?
Flash came in a short time later, while Danny was replaying the warm-up routine.
“You sure we ain’t watching a soccer team?” he asked.
Danny could only shrug.
The farm was quiet for the next several hours. Then, just as dusk began to fall, figures started emerging from the house again. This time it was clear they weren’t an eccentric sports team on retreat — they were in full battle rattle, helmets and vests, rifles and sidearms. They moved over to the large steel building very deliberately, in a combat spread. Once there, they lined up in a close semicircle, waiting as the last figure came out and stepped in front of them.
Danny could easily picture the scene from the ground. He’d done it a hundred times.
Flash leaned forward next to him, watching.
“That’s not Manchester United,” he said.
They switched to the penetrating radar. From above, the image looked like a maze, with rats running through it.
“They firing, you think?” asked Flash. The infrared cameras weren’t picking up any gunfire.
“First time through, probably not,” said Danny. He’d already checked the general layout of the building interior. It didn’t match the building where the NATO meeting was taking place in Kiev. But then again, it looked fairly generic to him.
He keyed up the sensor display on the laptop that revealed electric currents. There were computer hard drives active all through the building. Six were moving — the assault team was equipped with portable computers.
“Gotta be training devices,” said Flash. “Smart helmets. They’re working with a combat information system.”
The group worked through the northern quadrant of the building twice, then reassembled for a third try. There were flashes of heat energy inside the building — flash-bangs. A takedown simulation.
The drill went on for another hour. Then the unit emerged, again one by one. They formed up outside the building, then moved out into one of the nearby fields, heading toward a small cluster of ruins. MY-PID analyzed the team based on the images. They were all between six-four and six-six, seemingly in excellent physical condition as they sprinted up the hill at an under sixty seconds per four hundred meter pace. Their weight was more of a guess, but MY-PID pegged it at just over 250 pounds apiece.
They were well equipped with what appeared to be Russian weapons — four brand-new AEK–971 assault rifles and a pair of Pecheneg squad-level machine guns. The assault rifles were using scopes the computer had not encountered before. The scopes employed what appeared to be short-range radar as well as the standard infrared. Danny guessed this was some sort of training device; he couldn’t puzzle out any other use for the radar.
Finding out about the gear would be a side benefit from the raid.
“They’re going to take that building there,” said Flash, pointing to the screen as the team split into two groups.
“I don’t know,” said Danny. “That small a force — would you split up like that?”
“Maybe. Three guys is an army, if you got the right three guys.”
But they didn’t circle the area. The groups headed to two different buildings, about a hundred meters apart. They didn’t assault them, though they were careful about getting inside.
The building on the right exploded, gray smoke blossoming on the screen.
The other building followed.
“Look,” said Danny.
A small helicopter materialized from the cloud of smoke that had consumed the first building. It looked like a stripped down Ka–126, a vintage 1960s helicopter still used in Russia for crop dusting and other utility tasks. It had two counterrotating propellers overhead, which allowed it to fly with a double tail rather than a powered rotor. The helo was little more than a metal frame strapped beneath the engine. The bulkhead for the cockpit held two seats forward and a double bench behind. There were six places in total on the benches.
A similar helicopter flew out of the roof of the second cottage. They headed north to a cluster of ruins. The team members jumped from the helo, humping toward a low mound next to a half-buried foundation. Two of them knelt down. It looked to Danny as if they were going to pray. Instead, they lifted part of the ground, revealing a dugout with a pair of SUVs hidden below.
“We didn’t see that,” said Flash. “The radar couldn’t see through the roof. The building looked empty.”
The cottages that had “exploded” were still intact — the roofs had simply opened as smoke grenades went off. The material on the roof was somehow able to deflect the penetrating radar, without revealing that it was doing so.
Not technically impossible, but not easy either.
“We didn’t see it at all,” repeated Flash.
“Yeah,” said Danny. “The question is, what else aren’t we seeing?”
37
The CIA officer in charge at Chisinau was Malcolm Gleeb, an old Eastern European hand who had served with the Agency since the Reagan administration. Gleeb greeted Nuri warily. He’d already done considerable legwork, working contacts in the military and national police force as well as contacting the interior minister. But
