A ghostly phospor-green image of a truck rolling along a dark street from above appeared on one of the screens. As they watched, the truck made a right turn. It passed under a streetlight, and an image appeared on the truck's roof. The TCS op laughed.
'What's funny?' Howard asked.
The TCS op touched controls. The image freeze-framed, and increased in size. 'A little unsharp mask… thus,' the op said. 'Look here. A message from the squad.'
A crude hand-drawn image on the truck's roof sharpened enough that Howard could make it out. It was a hand, holding up the two-finger sign for the letter V.
V for victory. Howard smiled.
'You owe me five, Sarge,' the op said.
Howard raised an eyebrow.
Fernandez said, 'We had a small wager as to what the unit would draw on the truck roof, sir. I believe TCS Jeter here must have gotten to them with a bribe.'
'What were you betting it would be?' Howard asked.
'An, uh, illustration somewhat like, uh, this one, sir. Slightly different.'
'One that featured
Howard grinned again. No matter where they were, no matter what they were up against, soldiers always found some way to relieve the monotony — or the tension.
'Carry on,' Howard said. He walked back to the window.
Plekhanov was getting ready for bed, brushing his teeth, when the doorbell to his house rang. His house was small, but nicely appointed, and in a neighborhood of such houses. Soon he would have one twice as big in a much better neighborhood. Everything in its own time.
The bell rang again. It had an insistent quality.
It was awfully late for someone to be calling. This could not be good news.
He rinsed his mouth out, dried his face, then put a robe on over his pajamas. He stopped at the small writing table near the entrance, opened the drawer and removed from it the Luger pistol his grandfather had brought back from the German front in 1943.
Pistol in hand, he peered through the fish-eye lens into the door.
A very attractive young woman stood on the stoop. Her hair was in disarray and her lipstick smeared. Her dark blouse was pulled out of her pants, unbuttoned and wide open, revealing her unfettered breasts; her pants, blue jeans, were unzipped, and she held them up with one hand, clutching a wadded bra in the other hand. She appeared to be crying. As he watched, the young woman rang the bell again. He saw her sob.
Goodness. A rape victim?
Plekhanov lowered the gun and opened the door. 'Yes? May I help you?'
A man appeared from out of nowhere. He also wore jeans, a dark T-shirt and a blue Windcheater. He pointed a gun at Plekhanov's face. 'Yes, sir, you
The gunman reached over and gently relieved him of the Luger. 'Nice gun,' he said. 'Probably worth a lot.'
A moment later, two more men joined the woman and the gunman. They seemed to materialize from the bushes and darkness. The other two looked to be cut from the same pattern — young, fit, casual dress.
What was going on? Was this a robbery? There had been a lot of criminal activity of late. What did they want?
The woman zipped up her pants and clicked the snap closed. She slipped her shirt off, put the bra on — some kind of one-piece sport thing — adjusted it, then slipped her blouse back on, buttoned it and tucked it in. One of the other men handed her a dark blue Windcheater.
'No need to do any of this on
'In your
'If you would step back inside, Dr. Plekhanov?' the gunman said.
His speech was correct, but Plekhanov still had not placed the accent. 'You aren't Russian, nor Chechen,' Plekhanov said.
'No, sir,' he said. This was spoken in English.
Plekhanov's stomach twisted. They were
He gestured with the gun. 'Inside, Professor. You'll want to change into something more appropriate for travel. We're going on a long trip.'
'They got him!' Fernandez said. 'They are en route, ETA twenty minutes.'
The men in the room cheered. Howard let them, then said, 'All right, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Get the birds on-line. We'll celebrate when we're back on our own soil.'
Ten minutes later, Howard was outside in the dark, watching the pilots preflight the copters, when Fernandez came out of the farmhouse double-time.
'Sir, we have a slight problem.'
Howard felt his belly lurch and fill with several hundred butterflies who all wanted out, now. 'What?'
'Our squad's ride just broke down. Squad Leader Captain Marcus says he thinks it blew a head gasket.'
Howard stared at him. The
39
'Where are they?' Howard asked.
TCS-op Jeter was all business now, nothing funny in his voice. 'Sir, GPS puts them in the city, south of the old Tets Komintern, in the new Visok Stal Oil Storage Area, close to the Sunzha River.'
'How far from here?'
'A long walk with a reluctant prisoner in tow, sir. I make it eighteen kilometers.'
'Wonderful.'
'Uh-oh. We've got incoming vox transmission. I'm unscrambling.' Jeter tapped keys.
If the squad leader was willing to break radio silence, even with a coded transmission, that meant things either had gone, or were about to go, right to Hell.
'Wolf Pack, this is Cub Omega One, do you copy?'
'This is Alpha Wolf, Cub. Go ahead.'
'Sir, we're broken down in the middle of a giant oil-tank farm and we've got two security officers a hundred meters away, approaching us on
Bike cops. Great. 'Follow planned procedure, Omega One. Smile politely and wave your documents, they will pass muster.'
'Yes, sir — oh,
'Say again, Cub Omega One?'
The captain's voice came back, but he wasn't talking to Howard: 'Somebody shut him the hell up!'
'Omega One, report!'
There was a dead silence that stretched long.
'Cub Omega One, reply.'
'Ah, Alpha, we have a, uh…
Next to Howard, Fernandez said, 'Jesus, what kind of trigger-happy bastards are they? They can't know who they're dealing with.'
