Fisher slowly woke up, looked up him, and said some unintelligible nonsense about training and evaluations and Ames lacking the temperament.
Ames told him to go to hell; then he tried to pry info from Fisher about the target they were after. Maybe Ames should have told Fisher to go to hell after his info-gathering attempt. As expected, Fisher wasn’t talking.
“So let me get this straight: You won’t tell us who we’re after or how we’re tracking him, and we don’t have jack for a plan.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
Ames muttered, “Great, just great,” then folded his arms over his chest, closed his eyes, and rehearsed the eight silent ways he’d murder Fisher. He’d already imagined a dozen other methods that were markedly louder.
Gillespie leaned forward from the seat behind and whispered, “Don’t worry, Ames. I’m sure Sam will take good care of you… ”
He turned back and met her sarcastic grin with a hard scowl, then flumped into his seat.
Three planes and what felt like two weeks later, they finally began their descent into Irkutsk at about ten at night, local time, only to learn that, yes, indeed, a late-spring snowstorm had struck the area. After landing, they rented a pair of Lada Niva SUVs, a kind of stubby version of a Jeep Cherokee, then headed away from the airport and into the city. Fisher drove the lead SUV, with Hansen riding shotgun, and took them to a still-open diner, where they sat and discussed their course of action.
Fisher got right to the point: “We need weapons, equipment, and cold-weather gear.”
The nearest Third Echelon cache was three hundred miles north, in Bratsk, and the nearest multiple cache farther still. Fisher explained that they had to get inventive.
“Noboru, you did some work in Bratsk once, right?”
Noboru was surprised that Fisher knew about that; then he remembered to whom he was speaking, and said he had. “Great town. A lot of gray cinder-block buildings. Very Soviet.”
Fisher wanted him to make some calls, see if he could secure any weapons. Valentina and Gillespie would hit the hobby and electronics stores for communications devices. Hansen and Ames would be responsible for cold- weather and camouflage gear.
Grim interrupted the meeting with a call to Fisher to say the target was 210 miles northeast of their position and that there’d been no movement for three hours. Qaderi was, in fact, on the western shore of Lake Baikal, a worm-shaped body of water and one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world.
“The guy is going up into no-man’s-land,” said Ames. “What the hell is he doing there?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Hansen answered impatiently.
Grim updated Fisher once more, saying that the road was blocked at Qaderi’s location, which accounted for his stopping. “We’re not going anywhere tonight,” Fisher said. “We’ll find a place to stay, settle in, and wait for daylight. If we can get on the road by noon, we’ll only be four hours behind our target.”
Light blue upholstered furniture, peach carpet, and gold curtains gave the hotel’s lobby that wonderful “I know I’m in Russia” feeling that accompanies its nightmarish interior design. The garish colors reminded Hansen of the interior of the ferry he’d taken to Vladivostok nearly two years before.
While everyone else was settling in, Hansen and Fisher sat at one of the settees and discussed the Ames issue. As they got closer to Qaderi, Fisher would release more info in the hopes that Ames would try to contact his master.
“Then do we get to string him up by his ankles?” Hansen asked.
Fisher cocked a brow. “Something like that.”
They were all awake by 7:00 A.M. and gorged themselves at the hotel’s breakfast buffet. Fisher reminded them that this would be their last decent meal for a long while. The Russian pastries were heavenly, though the eggs were watery and the bread slightly stale. Hansen pigged out to the point that he regretted it.
By 8:00 A.M. they had split up and gone on their separate hunting/gathering missions. Ames and Hansen found a military surplus store that specialized in selling old gear to hunters in the area. They loaded up on everything they’d need, though a lot of the gear had to be double-checked for age and damage. They tried to ignore the smell.
Noboru called his old contact in Bratsk, who set up a meeting with his best friend, a bald, heavily tattooed man named Pavel, who lived on the outskirts of the city in what appeared to be an old farmhouse. Noboru was led into a basement unlike anything he’d ever seen: nearly two thousand square feet of nothing but ordnance, a veritable department store of destruction, with rows of heavy metal shelving stretching off into the shadows and lightbulbs strung loosely from the old wooden beams. He could almost hear the assistant manager on the intercom:
“What do you need?” Pavel asked in a thick Russian accent. “I have…
Noboru beamed.
Once he’d arranged automatic payment to Pavel via Third Echelon, Noboru stocked up, drove back to the hotel, and met up with Fisher. He handed over a list of what he’d procured, beginning with several fun items:
4 Groza OTs-14-4A-03 assault rifles
2 SVU OC-AS-03 sniper rifles
6 ? 600 PSS Silent Pistols with armor-piercing ammo
The Groza was a sweet little toy — a noise-suppressed assault rifle with a short barrel for sweeping around corners in urban combat; the SVU rifles were improved versions of the classic Russian SVD Dragunov sniper rifle; and the PSS pistols were designed for special- forces ops and featured a unique cartridge with an internal piston, making them some of the quietest handguns in the world.
Fisher glanced up at him, aghast. “These are Spetsnaz weapons, current issue.”
“Yep.” Noboru cracked a grin that said:
The rest of the list contained items like fragmentation, smoke, and stun grenades, along with some spotting scopes, night-vision headsets, binoculars, gas masks, and the requisite Semtex plastic explosives, along with pouching and web gear for packing all that firepower.
Noboru watched as Fisher’s gaze fell on an item that Noboru knew would give the man pause.
Fisher looked up, an expression of awe washing over his face. “An ARWEN,” he said with a slight gasp. “You got an ARWEN.”
“My guy had one. Wanted twenty thousand for it. I talked him down to eight.” Noboru had saved 3E a few bucks. Call him a frugal hero.
ARWEN stood for Anti-Riot Weapon, Enfield, and the ARWEN 37 was a five-shot SAS weapon developed in the sixties as a less-than-lethal alternative to anything they faced ahead. The launcher could fire Impact Baton, tear-gas, smoke, and Barricade Penetrating rounds, among others. It was perfect for creating diversions to expedite escape.
“Good work,” Fisher said.
He went on to describe a special project he needed accomplished: He wanted Noboru to convert a pair of paintball guns so they could launch the Ajax grenade darts Fisher had smuggled into Russia via the shaving cream cans.
“I’m going to need tools,” Noboru said.
Fisher pointed to a shopping bag sitting before a chest of drawers. “Get started. Call if you need anything. I’m
