Threat Vector

and down steep roads.

It was a long, nausea-inducing drive. The blacktop underneath them turned to gravel, and the sedan slowed and then stopped. The three Americans were led out the back and inside a building. Ding smelled the unmistakable scent of livestock, and he felt the cold damp of a barn.

There were a few minutes of conversation around him as he stood there with his teammates. Several men were in conversation, and then Ding was surprised by a woman’s voice. An argument erupted, he could not fathom what it was about, but he just stood there, silently waiting to be addressed by someone in the room.

Finally the barn door shut behind him, his hood was removed, and he looked around.

Dom and Sam were with him; they had also just had their hoods removed. Together the three of them looked across the dark barn interior at about two dozen men and women. They were all armed with rifles.

A young woman walked up to the three Americans. “I am Yin Yin. I will be your translator.”

Chavez was confused. The people in front of him looked like college kids. They did not look like criminals. Not one of them had an ounce of muscle on their bodies, and they looked scared.

It was pretty much the opposite of what Ding had hoped to find.

“You are Red Hand?” he asked.

She made an expression of distaste and shook her head vigorously. “No, we are not Red Hand. We are Pathway of Liberty.”

Ding, Sam, and Dom looked at one another.

Sam said what was on the other men’s minds: “This is our rebel force?”

Dom just shook his head in disgust. “We do any direct action with this gang, and we are condemning the entire movement to slaughter. Look at them. These folks couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag.”

Yin Yin heard this, and she stormed over to the three Americans. “We have been training.”

“On Xbox?” asked Driscoll, coolly.

“No! We have a farm where we have practiced with our rifles.”

“Awesome,” muttered Dom. He looked to Chavez.

Chavez smiled at the woman, doing his best to be the diplomat in the room. He excused himself and his colleagues, took Dom and Sam to a corner of the barn, and said, “Looks like Red Hand sold CIA a bill of goods. They passed us off to some coffee-shop student movement.”

“Son of a bitch,” said Caruso. “These guys aren’t ready for prime time. That didn’t take long to figure out.”

Chavez sighed. “I don’t really see how we can just walk out of here at this point. Let’s keep an open mind and spend some time with them to learn what they have accomplished. They may be just a gaggle of kids, but they sure as shit are brave to be standing up to the Chicom government in Beijing. We owe them some respect, guys.”

“Roger that,” said Dom, and Driscoll just nodded.

SIXTY-FIVE

Valentin Kovalenko watched the news reports of another wild shooting on the streets of Washington, D.C. This time there were two fatalities, a Syrian cabdriver and an unidentified Asian man in his thirties. Witnesses said two vehicles fled the scene, and “dozens” of shots rang out during the gunfight.

Valentin did not waste a moment wondering if this had something to do with the Center organization. He knew. And while it was apparent Center’s assassins had failed to eliminate their target, it was also obvious that their target was Darren Lipton’s agent.

The address Kovalenko had given Lipton to pass on to his agent was less than a mile from the location of the shoot-out. That a submachine gun was used by the dead Asian made it even more obvious that this was a crew of Center’s people. Whether or not the dead man was Crane himself, Valentin had no idea, but it did not matter.

Valentin understood the larger meaning of the news story.

Center kills his own agents when he has no further use for them.

Which was why Kovalenko turned off the television, went into the bedroom, and began throwing his clothes in a suitcase.

He came out a few minutes later and went into the kitchen. He poured a double shot of cold Ketel One into a glass, and then drained it as he began packing items in the living room.

Yes, he had SVR sanction, and yes, Dema Apilikov had told him to see this through, but he’d already seen enough through, and he knew that at any moment Crane or his goons could show up at his door and kill him, at which point his promise of a plum position in Moscow at R Directorate would lose its ability to motivate him onward.

No. Valentin needed to run, to get away. From a place of safety he could negotiate with SVR for a return to active service, he could point to all the time he put his life on the line while going solo, working in Russia’s interests by following Center’s commands.

That would get him back in the good graces of SVR.

He reached to turn off his computer, and he saw Cryptogram was open and a new message was blinking. He figured Center was watching him right now, so he opened it and sat down.

The message read: “We need to talk.”

“So talk,” he typed.

“On the phone. I will call.”

Kovalenko’s eyebrows rose. He had not spoken to Center before. This was indeed odd.

A new Cryptogram window opened on his computer, and on it was the icon of a telephone. Kovalenko plugged a set of headphones into his laptop and then double-clicked the icon.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Kovalenko.” The voice was a male in his forties or fifties, and he was most definitely Chinese. “I need you to remain in Washington.”

“So you can send your people to kill me?”

“I do not want to send my people to kill you.”

“You just tried to kill Lipton’s girl.”

“That is true, and Crane’s men failed. But that was because she stopped working for us without permission. I suggest you do not follow her path, because we will find her and the next time we will not fail.”

Kovalenko needed some leverage, so he played the only card he had. “SVR knows all about you. They sanctioned me to continue helping you, but I am pulling the plug on this right now and getting out of here. You can try to send your Chinese wrecking crew to find me, but I will return to my former employers, and they will—”

“Your former employers in SVR will shoot you on sight, Mr. Kovalenko.”

“You aren’t listening to me, Center! I met with them, and they said—”

“You met with Dema Apilikov on October twenty-first in Dupont Circle.”

Kovalenko abruptly stopped talking. His hands squeezed the edge of the desk so tightly it seemed the wood would break off in his hands.

Center knew.

Center always knew.

Still, that did not change a thing. Kovalenko said, “That’s right, and if you think about touching Apilikov, you will have the entire illegals department after you.”

“Touch Apilikov? Mr. Kovalenko, I own Dema Apilikov. He has been working for me, providing details of SVR communications technology, for over two and a half years. I sent him to you. I could see that you were losing your vigor for the operation after the Georgetown action. I knew that the only way to bring you back into the program to the extent that you would follow orders was if you thought your efforts would earn you a glorious return to SVR.”

Kovalenko slid off his chair, sat on the floor of his apartment, and cradled his head between his knees.

“Listen to me very, very carefully, Mr. Kovalenko. I know that now you are thinking that there is no more incentive to follow my instructions. But you are wrong about that. I have wired four million euros into a bank