He entered with his pistol held out in front of him, finding a single open room with an arched entrance to a kitchen at the back. He pointed Jarus toward it and let his momentum carry him toward a set of steps to the left. They were dangerously tight and straight, but there was no other option for clearing the top floor.
As fast as Rapp was, he wasn’t quite fast enough. The barrel of an assault rifle appeared at the top of the stairs and the deafening roar of blind automatic fire followed. He threw himself against the railing, discovering that it wasn’t as solid as it looked when it gave way. The uncontrolled drop back to the ground floor seemed unavoidable for a moment, but then he remembered the ancient beams above. The old wood was rough enough for him to get a good grip with only one hand and he arced out over the room below. After hitting the apex of his swing, he started inevitably back toward the stream of bullets pummeling the steps. Rapp emptied half his Glock’s magazine in the direction of the shooter, but didn’t really have much hope of hitting anything. He was about to drop to the floor when the shooting stopped and was replaced by unsteady footsteps on the floorboards above.
Rapp landed back on the stairs and started up them again, this time at a more cautious pace. He reached the landing and swiveled smoothly onto the second floor, leading with his weapon. It consisted of a single open space with steeply angled walls that tracked the roofline. The soldier was kneeling next to a twin bed, begging in Russian and bleeding badly from a wound in his stomach.
Rapp fired a single round into his forehead. The man’s comrades had made it clear that no quarter would be given in this fight. Not to civilians. Not to women. And not to children. Rules of engagement that Rapp was extremely familiar with.
? ? ?
“You all right?” he said as he came back down the stairs.
Jarus was on the floor, trying to get a connection on a telephone that looked like it had been around since the 1950s. “Yes. There was no one down here.”
Rapp activated his throat mike. “Scott. You copy? Give me a sitrep.”
“There was one tango in the barn. He’s down and we’re loading supplies on the horses. I can feel those Russian choppers bearing down on us, though.”
“Me too. If I’m not out there when you’re loaded, take off. We’ll catch up.”
“Roger that.”
Jarus’s expression suddenly transformed from one of concentration to one of genuine surprise. “I’m through! I have a connection!”
Rapp leaned in, listening to a woman who sounded even older than the phone speak Latvian.
“Do you have the number you wanted to call, Mitch? I don’t know how long this is going to last.”
Jarus relayed Irene Kennedy’s private number to the woman and then started pulling the bottom off the phone while Rapp waited to be connected. There was a USB port hidden in the simple electronics and the young Latvian connected his cell to it as the line started ringing.
“Hello?”
“Irene! Can you hear me?”
“Barely. Where are you?”
“Still Latvia. Roughly in the middle,” he said, not wanting to give his exact location over the line. “What’s going on out there?”
“The good news is that our plan partially worked. The Russians aren’t moving against Estonia and Lithuania.”
“Let me guess the bad news. They’re reassigning all those troops here.”
“I’m afraid so. And I need you out of there. Now.”
Rapp glanced at Jarus. The Russians were about to swarm his country like some kind of biblical plague, and unless he missed his guess, NATO wasn’t going to be able to do much about it. Abandoning him and his team felt wrong.
“I think I’m in this for the long haul, Irene.”
“We have a high-priority target for you in a different country,” she said, obviously also concerned about the line. The implication was clear, though. She’d located Krupin.
“By the time I get to a border, it’s going to be locked down. Let my Russian friend handle it.”
There was a pause over the line that was long enough to make him wonder if he’d lost the connection.
“I don’t think we can trust him to do it alone.”
“Why the hell not? I guarantee you that you’re not going to find anyone more motivated.”
“That’s true. But I recently received a package from him.” Another pause. “I think he may have lost his mind.”
? ? ?
Rapp yanked the horse’s reins and skirted a log that had become lost in shadow. They’d been working only with a map and compass, necessary because of the Russians’ ability to zero in on electronic signals. It was a strange sensation to be on the other side of the technological equation—to be forced to use all the low-tech tricks that al Qaeda and the Taliban had used against him.
“How much farther?” Janus asked, pulling alongside him when the trees thinned out enough to allow it. Rapp saw movement ahead and motioned with his head. “We’re here.”
A man holding a Heckler & Koch G36 appeared from the foliage, but immediately lowered it when he recognized Rapp’s companion. He led them on a circuitous route north, undoubtedly to avoid the mines and trip wires set up on the perimeter.
The camp consisted mostly of military tents beneath structures built of tree limbs and leaves, making everything invisible from above. The majority of people hiding out there were young men, but Rapp spotted one of the kids from the farm being comforted by a woman in civilian clothes.
A blond head appeared from a cave to his left and a moment later Coleman was jogging up to him. “Did you stop for lunch?”
“Phone call.”
“Anything interesting?”
“I’ve got to go. Irene’s going to try to get me onto a submarine from a beach near Lilaste.”
“The Russian navy’s got to be all over those waters.”
“We’ll see.”
“All right. Let me grab a horse and some supplies.”
Rapp shook his head. “I’ll make my own way. You can stay.”
“Not a chance,” he replied, grinning broadly. “With your map reading skills, you’ll end up looking for that sub in a swimming pool outside of Barcelona.”
CHAPTER 40
NORTHWEST OF ZHIGANSK
RUSSIA
MAXIM Krupin stood motionless, staring through the glass at the test subjects on the other side. As his treatment dragged on, he found himself in that sterile hallway more and more.
All were strapped to beds and, increasingly, all seemed to represent a part of what he’d become. Some stared back with defiance and rage. Others fear or pain. A few had minds damaged by experimental drugs or untested procedures. At the back was a woman with unblinking eyes fixed on the ceiling. He couldn’t remember what protocol she’d been subjected to, only that it had failed. Like the others, her body would be returned to her family with the story that her illness had been too advanced to reverse.
He finally found the strength to focus on his own reflection—the wheeled IV stand in his hand, the tracksuit that hung loose on once powerful shoulders. The bandage covering a burn on the back of his neck that his body could no longer heal. And, finally, the hollowed out eyes that stared back at him.
He heard a shout at the other end of the hallway and he turned, squinting into the semidarkness. This sector of the facility was off-limits to everyone but medical personnel and a few trusted guards.
Three men emerged from the gloom, one wearing handcuffs and chains on his ankles. He was flanked by the commander of Krupin’s security detail on one side and, on the other, Nikita Pushkin.
Krupin examined the prisoner, mesmerized by the strength with which he fought against his bonds and the two men holding him. He appeared to be in his early fifties, with the same bearlike build that Krupin himself had enjoyed before his illness. Yuri Lebedev, he remembered. A retired soldier from Salekhard.
The man stopped struggling when he saw Krupin, locking eyes with his president as he stumbled forward. When he saw the room behind the glass, though, he dropped to the floor, thrashing wildly as he was dragged inside.