Sergei lit a cigarette, drawing on it and letting the smoke roll from his mouth as he spoke. “Your presence online is impressive, but there’s a flaw.”
“Flaw?” Rapp said as Azarov looked on with an increasingly dead expression. “What are you talking about?”
“There isn’t a single clear picture of either of your faces. Always just a bit out of focus, a bit distant, or bit shaded. What do you think the chances of that are?”
Pretty fucking low, actually. Those photos had been processed in a way that would make them impossible to identify by Russian intelligence.
“Are you kidding? With phones, people take a million pictures a minute and all of them suck. You want to see what we look like? You’re staring right at us.”
Sergei stood. “We’ll go back to camp and talk more. Perhaps take some clearer photos and send them to Moscow. If all goes well, you can come back out later this week.”
Rapp let out a long, slow breath. “No way I can change your mind?”
Something in his voice or expression alerted the Russian and he dropped his cigarette, jerking his hand toward the gun holstered beneath his arm.
Rapp slammed a palm into his nose, hard enough to disorient him, but not hard enough to drop him. The gun came out but the Russian’s grip was no longer strong enough to keep Rapp from plucking it from his hand.
“What . . . What are you doing?” he said, stumbling back against the boulder while his nose poured blood down the front of his tracksuit.
Rapp ignored the question, dropping his backpack and pulling out a rope. It took just a moment for him to fashion a noose and slip it around Sergei’s neck. The Russian panicked and tried to get it off, but Azarov pinned his arms behind his back. Rapp attached the other end of the rope to the back of his pack and started up the side of the mountain again. Sergei stumbled along behind, grabbing at the rope but unable to generate enough slack to escape.
“You fucked with the wrong people,” Rapp said over the man’s gagging. “We Americans take our research seriously.”
They made it to the ridge in just under the two hours Rapp had predicted. Sergei had probably fallen to his knees fifteen times over the last three hundred yards but credit where credit was due. The fat fuck was still alive.
They stripped off their packs and looked down the back side of the mountain at the river and the endless wilderness beyond. Sergei was on all fours, clawing the noose off and gasping for breath. He finally tried to get to his feet, but Azarov slammed a foot into his ribs and left him writhing on his back.
“Steep and narrow here,” Rapp said. “Lots of loose rock. An accident waiting to happen.”
Azarov grabbed Sergei’s ankles and Rapp took his wrists. They carried the struggling man to the edge of the slope and after a few vigorous swings, let go. He screamed as he arced out over the steep terrain, going silent again when he hit ground thirty feet below and began cartwheeling down the slope. His broken body finally came to rest against a boulder a good three hundred yards from the summit.
“He didn’t start a slide,” Rapp said, disappointed.
“Perhaps he was too light.”
Rapp emptied most of the contents of their backpacks and threw the items to create a trail that made it look like they’d gone down the same way.
The next task was more difficult: trundling boulders off an outcropping until one finally started the chain reaction they were looking for. They ended up with an obvious slide that buried most of their gear but left Sergei’s body partially visible.
“How much time do you think we have?” Azarov said.
“They won’t start to worry until we’re at least a couple hours overdue. A few more hours to put together a search party and then four more to get up here. Maybe another couple days before they’re sure our bodies aren’t in that slide.”
“Not much time,” Azarov said.
Rapp just jumped off the ledge in front of him and started down the slope.
CHAPTER 46
EAST OF ZHIGANSK
RUSSIA
“ENTER!”
The voice barely carried through the door and Andrei Sokolov didn’t immediately comply, instead taking a moment to collect himself. These personal visits to Krupin’s medical facility were long and complex—something the general had neither the time nor energy for. There was nothing that could be done, though. The secrecy surrounding Krupin’s illness and the handling of the man’s growing weakness became more critical every day.
Sokolov finally entered Krupin’s opulent living quarters, but instead of finding the Russian president wallowing in bed, he was sitting behind a modest desk, clear-eyed and wearing a business suit. The slight shaking of his hand was an indication that he was once again under the influence of Dr. Fedkin’s stimulants.
Even more concerning was the presence of Nikita Pushkin standing silently in the far corner of the room. Sokolov saw no reason to acknowledge him. He was nothing. A weapon was only as dangerous as the man wielding it.
Krupin’s attention lingered on his general for a moment and then returned to a television hanging on the wall. The screen depicted a high-altitude flyover of the Baltic Sea and the smoke plumes that represented the fate of the Russian fleet there.
“Where to from here, Andrei?”
Sokolov had been prepared for a number of specific recriminations, but not for a question so open-ended. He found himself in the rare position of fumbling for a response.
“We fight on, sir.”
Krupin laughed. “That’s the strategy you’ve devised for me? We fight on?”
“NATO has been a more aggressive opponent than we expected. But at their foundation, they’re weak. They—”
“Weak!” Krupin shouted, leaping to his feet with the power the stimulants had temporarily given him. “Half my navy is at the bottom of the ocean and the other half is either being hunted or trapped in port. And you did nothing.”
“Our ability to attack naval targets from Latvian soil hasn’t come online as quickly as we hoped. We’ve prioritized those systems and within forty-eight hours we’ll be in a position to retaliate against NATO vessels.”
“What NATO vessels, Andrei? My understanding is that they’re abandoning the Baltic.”
Sokolov didn’t immediately answer. While true, he wasn’t certain where Krupin acquired the information. Had the international media started reporting on the pullout while he’d been traveling incommunicado from Moscow? Or had the president reinitiated direct communication with Russia’s other military commanders?
“They’re one step ahead of you, Andrei. They attacked with everything they had knowing that you weren’t ready. And now they’re moving their vulnerable surface ships out and leaving their submarines to supply the insurgency. I don’t look strong. I look like an idiot.”
“I’m aware that we’ve lost control of the media narrative but we’ll regain it. Latvian terrorists have carried out a number of brutal attacks on our troops. We’ll be able to regain the sympathy of the Russian peop—”
“You think Russia is run by being the object of pity?” Krupin shouted. “Our disinformation efforts are dead! You’ve provided the West the external enemy they needed to end their squabbling and pull together. And what of the glory the Russian people crave so deeply? What have they been provided? The defeat of our navy, mounting economic sanctions, and the capture of cities inhabited only by people too old or infirm to leave.”
“These Latvian terrorists will—”
“They aren’t Afghan animals,” Krupin yelled, the red of his face turning vaguely unnatural around bulging eyes. “The international press is portraying them as courageous patriots trying to repel invasion. The success of this operation turned on a quick and decisive victory lauded by Latvia’s ethnic Russian population. A demonstration that the country would be stronger backed by the stability of Russia rather than the constant upheaval of democracy.”
His strength faltered and he lost his balance. Pushkin was immediately in motion, helping the man back into his chair.