through the gate as it starts to close. I lie still and peer around to make sure I wasn’t seen. So far, so good. Now’s the time to play chameleon and dispose of my white outer-suit.
After stuffing the garment into my backpack, I get up and creep closer, staying to the shadows. Positioning myself behind a boarded-up water well, I watch the newcomers as they stop their vehicles in front of the small building. The guard I saw earlier goes over to the hangar and unlocks the door. He swings it open and the guy on the snowmobile guides his ride inside. After a moment, he walks out and the first guard closes the hangar door — but doesn’t lock it. The Mercedes’ driver keeps the motor running as four men get out of the car. One of them appears to be a Russian army general. I change the lenses in my trident goggles, focus on the men, and positively identify the officer as General Stefan Prokofiev. One of the other guys looks like Oskar Herzog, but if it’s him he’s grown a silly beard. The third guy I don’t recognize. He’s smaller than the others and has long, flowing black hair. Looks kind of like Rasputin. The fourth man is another soldier, probably just a bodyguard for the general. I quickly snap some photos with my OPSAT and beam them to Washington via satellite uplink with encrypted burst transmission.
The door to the main building opens and I see two men standing just beyond the threshold. They wave to the four-some as the men walk inside. Hands are shaken and then the door slams shut.
The driver gets out of the car and greets the snowmobile rider. They speak in Russian, probably talking about the weather. The guard offers the rider a cigarette and they walk around the building. As soon as they’re out of sight, I run toward the hangar — roughly twenty meters — and peek inside the door. Where an airplane once rested, the place is now full of crates, snowmobiles, and a couple of cars. Nothing else of interest. I then reach into the backpack and grab one of the nifty homing beacons that Third Echelon created for me. It looks like a hockey puck, only smaller. It’s magnetized and is activated by a twist of the top. I quickly move back outside to the Mercedes, crouch behind it, and place the device on the underside. There is a soft clink as the magnet meets metal. I push a button on my OPSAT to make sure it’s receiving the signal.
Okay, let’s get inside the building now. I try the knob but it’s locked. So I knock and whistle loudly. My Russian isn’t great but it’ll do for short innocuous phrases in case I need to converse with someone.
I hear footsteps and the sound of the guard unlocking the door. It swings open and I reach for him, pull him outside, and give him a head bonk he won’t forget. The sharp edge of my goggles slices his nose a bit but he’ll live. I drag his unconscious form around to the side of the hangar and hide him behind a generator attached to the building. I then hurry back to the front door, turn off the night vision, and step inside.
The corridor is empty but I can hear angry voices in a room down the hallway. There’s a washroom next to it, so I go in there and shut the door. I open a pouch on my leg and remove a microphone with a suction cup attached to it. I lick the cup and stick it on the wall, then adjust my OPSAT to pick up the signal. Through my headset I can now hear what they’re saying. The Russian is difficult to pick up but I can understand some of it. For good measure I start recording it just as Carly St. John, Third Echelon’s acting technical director, speaks through the implants.
“I’ll try to give you a rough translation as we go, Sam,” she says, “then later we can do the whole thing.”
Either the general or Herzog is doing most of the talking. He’s giving the two men from the building a royal chewing out.
“It’s something about ‘failure to do this and failure to do that,’ ” Carly says. “And ‘a security breach.’ They’re ‘closing down the facility.’ ”
One of the men protests and sounds very frightened. Apparently he’s about to lose more than just his job.
I open the washroom door and look into the hallway. Empty. I quickly move to the killing room and sure enough, the two men who had greeted the general and his entourage are lying in pools of blood. I snap some photos and then move toward the front door. I gently crack it open and peer outside. The general is barking orders into a radio as the four men get inside the Mercedes. The driver has returned with his snowmobile rider pal.
“You’ve got more company, Sam,” Lambert says. “Three vehicles approaching. Better get out of there now.”
He’s right — I see more headlights coming through the gate at the other side of the compound. Military vehicles. Two trucks and a tank! I feel my heartbeat increase as the trucks pull in front of the building as the Mercedes takes off. At least eight armed soldiers — Russian, not Ukrainian — jump out of the vehicles and rush toward the front door — exactly where I’m standing.
Well, hell. I turn and run to the back of the building, past the killing room and into a space where several cots are set up — obviously the living quarters for the men who no longer work here. There’s a grille covering a ventilation shaft high on the wall. As I hear the soldiers enter the building and stomp along the corridor, I climb on one of the cots, pull off the grille, and climb inside. But I’m too late. One of the soldiers enters the room and sees my feet disappear into the shaft. He shouts loudly for others to join him. A deafening gunshot blasts part of the wall away behind me.
I snake along the shaft as fast as I can. Luckily I come to a junction just as the soldier points his pistol inside the shaft to fire at me. The shaft turns upward here so I leap above the gunfire and begin the climb to the roof. The soldier doesn’t follow me. I’m sure he figures they can catch me when I emerge at the top.
The grille on the roof doesn’t come off easily. I’m forced to draw my Five-seveN and shoot the corners of the damned thing. I holster my gun and then give the grille a good pounding with my gloved fist and it finally loosens. I pull myself up and out onto the snow-caked roof. The gunfire commences immediately, the rounds zipping inches over my head. The angle isn’t great for the soldiers so I’m at an advantage as long as I lie low. I reach into another trouser pocket and retrieve an emergency flare. It’s not much but hopefully it will be bright enough to blind the soldiers temporarily. I aim it to the sky and set it off. The flare bursts over the compound, violently brightening the darkness. The gunfire ceases momentarily. I rise and scramble across the roof to the other side, near the hangar. It’s not a big jump — I leap off the roof and land in a snow-bank. I drop, roll, and come up unharmed. But right in front of me is the snowmobile rider. He’s halfway in the process of drawing a Makarov when I deliver a Krav Maga ax kick to his chest. This propels him backward and he drops the pistol. I move forward and give him another kick in the groin, which makes him completely docile. I kneel beside him, search his pockets, and find the keys to the snowmobile.
“Thanks,” I say in Russian. “I’ll return it. Someday.”
I rise and run to the hangar, taking just a moment to look back and see what’s going on. Some of the soldiers are apparently removing files, documents, maps, and computers from the building. Cleaning house. The Shop is definitely closing down this facility. The Russian tank, one of the older T-72s, is moving to a position from where it can fire at the place. They’re going to demolish the hangar and wipe out all traces of its existence. The rest of the soldiers, of course, are looking for me.
The Taiga snowmobile is sitting where the rider left it earlier. I mount it, insert the key, and start her up. The Taiga is a lightweight sports model, just what I need to make a quick getaway. The thing picks up on its two steering skis and one track and bolts out of the hangar. Naturally, the soldiers spot me and shout in surprise. I hunker down and speed past the tank, knock over a soldier, and head for the gate.
Machine-gun fire riddles the snow around me. A round smashes into the rear fender over the track and for a moment I think the snowmobile’s been crippled. The vehicle coughs and jerks but then I manage to regain control. I push the speed up to sixty as I fly out the gate.
Behind me, the tank’s 125mm smoothbore gun thunders, blasting a hole in the front of the facility. The resounding boom shakes the forest around me and I can feel the heat of the building going up in flames more than a hundred yards away. This is followed by a series of smaller explosions — most likely detonations placed within the building by the soldiers.
Of course, by then several soldiers are tailing me on the other snowmobiles. I switch my goggles back to night vision and turn off my Taiga’s headlights. I immediately turn off the road and head into the thick forest, zigzagging through the trees. At this speed you’d have to be crazy to try and maneuver past these natural obstacles, but I suppose I am. There’s a fine line between a death wish and being a little crazy.
I notice the headlights of the tailing snowmobiles turn off the road behind me. Damn, they figured out where
