“One last mission.”
He nodded. “I never cared about any of the others. Or anything, really. I joined the Soviet athletics program because I had no choice and my parents saw it as a way to get me out of poverty. I joined the military because I needed work and because I was good at it. When Krupin recruited me, I agreed because it paid better than Spetsnaz and because he’s not a man you say no to. It’s interesting how we came from opposite directions to end up in the same place.”
“Yeah?” Rapp said absently, shoving a few critical items into a waterproof bag with some rocks. He’d dangle it off the side of the raft and if they were discovered, subtly cut it loose.
Azarov picked up another sausage and gnawed thoughtfully on one end. “Your life has been driven entirely by passion. The death of your young love prompted you to join the CIA. Then your love of country and rage at the people attacking it kept you there.”
Rapp slid a rifle between a cooler and the side of the raft, but didn’t respond. It made sense that Azarov would know a great deal about him—the SVR undoubtedly had everything from his college transcript to his shoe size. It made for an odd conversation with the man who had tried to kill him multiple times.
“I have a lot of explaining to do to Cara,” Azarov continued. “It’s forced me to take stock of who I am.”
“And?”
“I can’t even remember the names and faces of many of the men I’ve killed. Do you think that’s evil? Or is it something worse?”
Rapp sat on the edge of the boat and examined the Russian for a moment. Now was not the time for introspection. Maybe he’d made a mistake. Maybe he shouldn’t have left Coleman screwing around with the Latvian insurgency.
“Krupin will be different.”
“Revenge,” Azarov said. “An opportunity to look into his eyes and see them go blank for what he did to Cara. Would you believe it if I told you that he’s the first person I’ve ever hated? It’s a strangely uncomfortable feeling.”
“Yeah,” Rapp said, standing and starting to drag the boat toward the river. “It is.”
CHAPTER 48
EAST OF ZHIGANSK
RUSSIA
RAPP stayed in the shadows, circling to the east and keeping his eye on the dilapidated buildings and military refuse piled up around them. They’d spent two days on the river and then another eight hours bushwhacking through dense woods and wet marshes to get there. Now, though, he was starting to wonder if all that effort had been wasted.
Skies were clear and the afternoon sun left little hidden. Even in the unrelenting glare, there was nothing to suggest that this facility was anything more than what it looked like—a graveyard for damaged and obsolete military equipment. The fact that his satphone signal seemed to be getting jammed was the only thing giving him hope that the Agency eggheads hadn’t completely whiffed this one. Irene had surrounded herself with quite a brain trust but sometimes they had a tendency to get lost in their data and assumptions. Great in a warm, dry office in Langley, but often not worth shit in the real world.
He finally picked up movement in his peripheral vision and crouched lower as a man became visible weaving through the debris. He was wearing the dirty, ragged clothing of a workman, strolling past a partially collapsed warehouse with a complete lack of urgency. It made sense that there would be someone posted to the area—a coordinator of shipments, cataloger of inventory, and deterrent to anyone looking to scavenge weapons.
Rapp used a set of compact binoculars to examine him in more detail. He didn’t have the Asian features of the people who inhabited the area, but that didn’t mean much. He had a wiry build in place of the bulk normally associated with someone working in this environment but, again, what did that prove? That he wasn’t a big eater? He seemed a little more interested in the tree line than expected. Again, though, so what? Maybe he was a fucking bird watcher.
A twig snapped to Rapp’s right and he eased back deeper into the trees, going for a knife instead of the unsuppressed Russian weapon the Agency had provided. In all likelihood, it wouldn’t be necessary. Azarov had been circling the facility in the other direction and probably made the sound intentionally to warn of his approach. Rapp picked up a small stick and broke it audibly. A moment later, the Russian was crawling up alongside.
“If this really is a high tech medical facility, then Krupin’s done a hell of a job camouflaging it. Are we wasting our time?”
Azarov shook his head. “I passed a building north of here that has a man standing by the entrance.”
“A guy passed me a few minutes ago, too. Could just work here.”
“Except I know this man. Badden Voronin. One of Krupin’s elite guard.”
Rapp surveyed the cinder block and steel of the buildings, the debris that offered a thousand places for a security force to hide, and the weapons that looked inoperable but might be locked and loaded. Irene’s eggheads scored again. The question was what could he do about it?
? ? ?
The rust-streaked door was clearly heavier and newer than anything on the buildings surrounding it. Voronin was seated beneath an overhang constructed of multiple layers of corrugated metal that had been left shiny on the underside. Rapp scanned the scene, lingering for a moment on a pile of tangled steel and debris just past the edge of the improvised roof. “Look right,” he whispered. “See the horizontal line in that pile of junk?”
Azarov nodded. “I’d guess that’s actually two walls joined together at that line. The top part can be pushed over.”
“If they went to the trouble of building a barrier like that, you can bet they put something heavy behind it.”
“Agreed.”
“Now that you’ve seen the place, how many people do you think we’re up against?”
In his previous life, Azarov would have been involved in setting up these kinds of security measures. Still, he took some time to think about it.
“Outside, I’d guess five or less. Krupin has a passion for secrecy, and if he’s sick that passion will have become an obsession. Having said that, there would be no reason for him to reveal the purpose of this place to the exterior guards.”
Rapp nodded. “If it were me, I’d just play it off as some kind of beyond-secret military research facility. But inside, it’d be hard to hide what’s really happening.”
“Correct. Inside, I’d expect to find the head of his personal guard and Nikita Pushkin. Perhaps a handful of other men who have demonstrated blind loyalty in the past.”
“Okay then. We have a building with one visible ingress point, about forty meters square. Heavy door that I think we can assume is locked. Unknown interior layout. One guard visible, probably another with a fixed machine gun placement just out of sight. At least one more guard roaming who’s going to come up behind us if we start shooting. Probably more. Maybe a lot more. Did I miss anything?”
“You didn’t say anything about the men we speculate are inside.”
“Hard to imagine we’ll make it that far.”
“Again, I agree. Even if we kill Voronin and his exterior team, how do we breach the door?”
Rapp had taken a careful mental inventory of the mothballed military equipment at the facility, with just that question in mind. His preference would be to find something capable of blowing the entire building into the stratosphere and getting the hell out of there. Krupin wasn’t that stupid, though. Either there had never been that kind of matériel stored there or he’d had it removed.
“Could the CIA get heavy explosives to us?” Azarov asked, obviously thinking along the same lines.
“They barely got that raft onto the river bank.”
“Then as much as I want to see Krupin dead—as much as I need to see him dead—I don’t see a path forward.”
“Unacceptable.”
“We could wait for him to come out,” Azarov suggested.