It wasn’t the best thing that could have happened. Nor was it the worst, in Ibrahim’s estimate. He’d hoped to have surprise on his side, but had considered the eventuality that it might turn against him. And had familiarized himself with the lay of the land, making sure he had a few tricks of his own up his sleeve.
He turned to the American at his right.
“Take your men around the front, Mark,” he said. “I’ll bring my team to where our man is sure to try wriggling from his nest.”
Mark’s blue eyes regarded him from under his sunburned brow. Then he nodded, signaled to the dozen men behind him.
As their horses thundered toward the rock shelf in an arrow-straight line, Ibrahim broke to his left with the other half of the team, leading them there as quickly as his mare could carry him.
Racing up to the foot of the bluff, the American-led Sword team instantly lifted the RAG launchers — weapons with a range of forty to sixty yards — to their shoulders and took aim through their built-in sights. Rounds snapped down at them from the defenders on the ledges, close enough now to present a deadly threat. Mark saw one of his men go tumbling off his saddle, clutching at his throat, blood spraying between his fingers. Another man fell to the dust, crimson petals blossoming on his desert tunic. Beside him, one of the horses was raked across the chest and collapsed in a writhing heap, its legs giving out all at once, throwing its stunned rider several yards through the air. The screech of pain that issued from the dying animal sounded horribly, sickeningly human.
“Fire!” Mark shouted. “Hit the bastards hard!”
In a tightly coordinated fusillade, his remaining teammates released the ring-shaped energy grenades from their tubes, sent them spinning toward the cave entrances at five thousand revolutions per minute, spirals of propellant trailing behind. The gyro-stabilized airfoil projectiles flew upward with flat, dead-on trajectories, slamming into the men on the rock ledges, hurling them off their feet with yelps of agony and confusion. Soft rubber O rings fitted around the grenades gave way on impact, pouring CS1 tear gas into the cave entrances.
Satisfied that the opening wave of his strike had had its desired effect, Mark barked out another command. In response, his men pulled their gas masks down over their faces, dismounted their horses, and began scrambling up the slope, their boot heels scuffing over the arid soil, triggering off a near-continuous volley of VVRS rounds as they ascended.
The tear gas-blinded men above them thrashed atop the overhanging ledges, screaming, seized by convulsive, wracking coughs. Some stumbled blindly for several seconds, arms pinwheeling for balance, and then tripped off their feet and dropped earthward. Others tried to retreat, groping, crawling on hands and knees, helpless, unable to use their weapons, barely able to find the cave openings in their pain and disorientation.
Reaching the ledges, the Sword team hastily reloaded their airfoil launchers and fired another salvo of RAG/CS grenades into the cave mouths.
Then, clouds of gas swirling in the dimness ahead of them, they went storming into the tunnels to mop up what was left of the resistance.
Korut dashed toward the stairs rising toward the fallback exit, the dim electric lights on the walls throwing tiger stripes of shadow across his features. He could hear the screams and stricken gasps of his fellows echoing in the shaft behind him, but there was nothing he could do for them now. He had thought that even with half their number in Russia, they would be able to fend off attackers unfamiliar with the terrain. But the men that had come after him were hardly performing like outsiders. Who were they? How had they discovered the underground complex?
He would have to figure it out. Have to send word to Gilea about what had happened here today. But all that was for later. Unless he made off right away, he wouldn’t be able to do anything at all. For her, or for himself.
He slipped into the narrow stairwell and bounded toward the surface, taking the steps two at a time, his gun held out at the ready. He could see daylight splashing into the chamber from above, could hear the frightened whinnying of his horse in its stable.
He reached the top of the stairs, turned a jutting corner, plunged into the stable. Though cross-tied in its stall, the horse pawed the ground with its hooves in a jittery little dance, obviously rattled by the sounds of combat down below.
Korut pulled the saddle blanket off its steel wall peg, then the saddle, and tossed both of them over the beast. He tightened the girth quickly, praying that he’d gotten it secure. Then he shoved his foot into the stirrup, hefted himself onto the horse’s back, yanked the reins so the animal turned toward the stable exit, and dug his heels deep into its sides.
The horse bridled for only a moment. Then, with a shrill, startled neigh, it left the stable, bolting into the glare of the undiluted desert sun.
Ibrahim’s team had been told about the stable, had had its precise location mapped out for them by a local merchant who had valued their U.S. currency above tribal loyalty. And after splitting off from Mark’s group, he and his men had gone to wait outside the rim of rock that formed its entrance, knowing Korut would try using it as an escape route if he eluded the frontal assault.
He caught sight of them as soon as he emerged from the cave, sitting astride their horses in a loose semicircle, their weapons trained in his direction.
“Pigs,” he rasped, realizing he’d been trapped. “Fucking pigs.”
He raised his weapon to fire it, thinking he would take down as many of his enemies as he possibly could, but a RAG projectile smashed into his midsection before his finger had even curled around the trigger, bouncing him from the saddle, sending him crashing to the ground in an agonized ball, his knees drawn up, his hands wrapped around his stomach.
“Let’s scrape him up and get him out of here,” Ibrahim said, and climbed off his horse.
THIRTY-NINE
Gregor Sadov was at the firing range, working with Nikita, when the phone call came in. He had a cell phone clipped to his belt, its ringer set to Silent, but he felt the vibration in the small of his back.
Slamming home a fresh magazine in the AKMS, he pulled back the cocking lever, handed it to Nikita, spun away without a word, unclipped the phone from his belt, and took the call. “Yes?” he said into the cell phone.
“It’s time.” The voice on the other end of the line was masculine, but that didn’t mean anything. It had obviously been altered electronically, and could have belonged to his own grandmother for all Gregor could tell. He did know, however, even with all the electronic modifications, that it was the same voice that had originally hired Gregor for this series of missions, and that relayed Gregor’s orders to him. He had no idea whom he was speaking to, but that wasn’t unusual. In Gregor’s line of work, he was used to several layers of insulation between himself and his employer. What wasn’t usual was the fact that this time Gregor didn’t actually know whom he was working for. He knew it was someone high up in the government, and he could make a good guess who was selecting his targets, but with this job he knew he was better off not knowing.
“Do you have the target selected?” Gregor asked.
“Yes. A satellite ground station in the Kaliningrad region.”
Gregor nodded to himself. He didn’t ask why this particular site had been targeted. He didn’t need to know. “Any special requests?” Gregor didn’t need to explain what he meant. He needed to know if there were any individuals in particular who needed to be killed — or who needed to survive.
“None. Just make sure you’re thorough.”
Sadov nodded again. “Understood,” he said.
“There’s one more thing,” the electronically altered voice said.
Gregor’s hand tightened around the tiny phone. That little “one more thing” would invariably turn out to be something he didn’t like.
“The mission needs to be carried out as quickly as possible.”
