Now, in addition to those responsibilities, they would also become jailers. With the added duties came added risk. The Americans would move heaven and the stars to find the spawn of Yelena. To find them was to find everything. If their search brought them to Saint Stephen’s the whole mission would be finished.
“Are you aware that we have not heard anything from Vasily or Pyotr?” Len asked.
“I’m sure they’re fine,” Dmitri said.
“Why would you be sure of that?” As he spoke, Len opened the top left-hand drawer of his desk and withdrew a Cohiba Espléndidos cigar and a cutter. “I’ve been monitoring the US news outlets, and there has been no word of a reporter being killed.”
Dmitri pulled a silver cigarette case from the inside pocket of his suit coat. Dmitri always wore a suit. Always dark, always at least ten years out of date. As if in competition with Len, when the spring-loaded case opened, it revealed two complete rows of black Sobra-nies. “They no longer allow smoking in America,” he said. “It’s a law that makes for very long days.”
“But much healthier fat Americans,” Len said with a smile. He allowed the light moment to glow for a few seconds, and then returned the discussion to that which could kill them all. “They should have called in by now. One of them or both of them. The fact that we’ve heard from neither is of great concern. Nor have we heard that their targets were killed. I think they may have been compromised.”
Dmitri’s features darkened. “How compromised might they be?”
“Vasily and Pyotr know most of everything. They know this facility. They know what we keep here.”
“Did they know about the plan to take the Mishin boys?”
Hearing a midthirties man referred to as a “boy” was startling. To hear the use of the plural in “boys” was troubling. “Did you know that the grandson would be visiting?” Len asked.
“I try to know as much as I can,” Dmitri said.
“So you knew all along that the boy would be a part of this?” In Len’s world—in the world of sanity and proportion—there was a sanctity to childhood that should never be breached.
“I did not choose the timing of the bitch’s betrayal. She alone chose that.” For years, Dmitri had refused to speak the name of Yelena Poltanov.
Len’s mind reeled. This was the problem with zealots. They got so wrapped up in emotion and principle that they forgot about the practical ramifications of what they did. Americans would tolerate the taking of an adult as a hostage to a larger cause—they would profess dismay and make threatening gestures—Daniel Pearl, anyone?—but they would ultimately shrug it away and tolerate it. To take a child, though, was to invoke the wrath of the self-righteous.
“This is a mistake, Dmitri. We have the San Francisco operation ready to launch in just days. And after that, the Los Angeles operation and the Washington operation.” Each focused on largely unprotected mass-transit systems. “Per your orders, I moved the explosives shipment from tomorrow to the next day. These little changes incur huge risks. Ours is a balancing act.”
Dmitri had never been one to take bad news well. His features hardened. “We cannot project weakness,” he said. “If we do that, then we lose all of the influence we have at the White House. They have to know that we say what we mean, and we mean what we say.”
Len raised his hands, a gesture of surrender. With the argument lost, it became all about coping with the reality.
“If it helps,” Dmitri said, “the Mishins will be here for only a few hours. Forty-eight at the most.”
“Where do they go after that?”
“Do you really want to know?”
Len intentionally answered before he had much time to think about his words. “No,” he said. “As long as I don’t have to worry about them and about the fallout, I don’t want to know.” He heaved a deep breath and turned a page in his mind. “We are forty-five strong now. At any given moment, we will have fifteen men on guard detail, and fifteen on operational detail, doing whatever needs to be done. That leaves fifteen to be sleeping. I am confident that we can provide coverage for the Mishins when they arrive.”
“I want everyone well-armed,” Dmitri said. “Rifles and pistols for every on-duty guard, pistols for everyone, all the time.”
“It is difficult showering with a pistol,” Len joked, but it landed dead on arrival. When he saw the deep concern in Dmitri’s face, he changed his approach. “Do you have information that I should know about?” he asked. “Information that I should share with my people?”
Dmirti took a long pull on his black cigarette, and then waved the smoke away after he’d exhaled. “You ask for
trust
, Len, yet you do not offer it in return. We have turned the corner in our struggle to hurt America, and those in power will soon wake up to the threat. It is the moment we have been waiting for, and the moment we have been training for. If we give our men the tools of strength, they will show strength. I want them to feel very, very strong.”
Len found himself nodding as he listened. He’d seen it before: Good soldiers became great soldiers when they were entrusted with live ammunition. When all was said and done, potential became reality when the choice was to live or to kill.
But in all of Len’s experience, these truisms only worked when the enemy was clearly identifiable, and the mission was clear. In this case, neither factor applied, and that worried him.
“I will make them feel as strong as I know how,” Len said. As for the rest, the clock would tick as it ticked, and he would learn what history wanted him to know.
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-THREE
S
triker—real name Carl Oppenheimer—had spent a career as a pilot for the 160th Special Operations Air Regiment—the Night Stalkers—flying Special Forces operators into and out of some of the hottest LZs on the planet. He’d been shot down once that Jonathan knew of, and ultimately was forced to retire with a bum leg, thanks to a lucky 7.62 round that came through the floor of his Blackhawk while he was flaring to land in a place that he couldn’t even tell Jonathan about. The bullet took out three toes and just a tiny trace of his sanity.
In the intervening years, he’d either spent a lot of money or made a lot of money—Jonathan couldn’t figure out which, but it had to be one or the other—buying discarded hulks of helicopters and restoring them to their former glory. According to the buzz mill within the Community, he made good coin renting out his equipment to people who needed to fly fast and hard and didn’t want to leave a paper trail.
“You know this changes everything, right?” Boxers asked in a low whisper. He and Jonathan were huddled at Jonathan’s desk while the others talked among themselves around the fireplace.
Jonathan looked up from the satellite photos he’d been studying. “What are we talking about?”
“Our business,” Big Guy replied. “OpSec used to be king. We flew under the radar, no one knew who we were, and no one knew what we did. Now we’re just lifting the kimono and showing all the goods to anyone who wants to see.”
Over all the years that they’d worked together, Jonathan and Boxers had engaged in maybe a dozen serious conversations, and this was clearly one of them.
“Given the cast of characters, I think we have a fair amount of cover.”
“I’d have agreed if Wolverine had decided to come along.” He looked directly at Irene, who was hovering close. “It bugs me that you want to stay behind.”
Irene crossed her arms and shifted her weight to one foot. The comment made her uncomfortable. “If I could be there, I would,” she said. “I think our history proves that. And if this were going down in Des Moines or Bangor, I might well be all over it. But this is foreign soil, and I’m the director of the FBI. What you’re planning—what
we’re
planning—is an illegal act. If it goes bad and I’m there, it becomes an act of war. I swore my oath to the Constitution, not to you guys. I’m sorry.”
“Forgive me, Wolverine,” Boxers pressed, “but it feels like cowardice to me. Feels like a setup.”
Jonathan jumped in, even as he felt a swell of anger. “No,” he said. “Wolverine is too good a friend.”
“No one is a friend in official Washington.”
“Except those who have proven themselves,” Jonathan said. He shot an apologetic glance to Irene and she received it in kind. No one was more cynical than he, but there was no denying the number of times that Jonathan had saved Irene’s ass, just as she had saved his. She’d earned not only his respect, but the benefit of his doubt. “Does it make you more comfortable to think of the damage we could do if we were ever called to testify?” It was of a magnitude that would topple this government and others.
“What about the reporters?”
“We’ve had this discussion.”
“But I didn’t get the answer I wanted,” Boxers said. “On the one hand, they’re reporter scum, and on the other, they’ve never engaged an enemy before.”
“You know I can hear you, right?” David called from the sofa in front of the fire.
“Then quit listening!” Boxers yelled. When Boxers yelled, he caused seismic activity.
“Way to go, Big Guy,” Jonathan said with a smile. “Pretty much guarantees that everyone listens to everything.”
Becky stood from the spot next to David. “What do you want from us?” she asked. “We’ve promised to do everything you’ve asked, with the clear understanding that if we don’t, you two will hunt us down and kill us, even if it takes the rest of your lives.”
David reached for her arm, but she pulled away.
“I’m tired of being treated as if I did something wrong. I’m going on this
mission
because I care, and because I have nothing else to do. I can’t go home, and without home, I have nowhere else.”
Jonathan looked to Boxers. He’d made this bed, after all.
“You weren’t supposed to hear what I was talking about,” he said.
“Well, that genie’s out of the bottle, isn’t it?” Becky said. Shouted, actually, and she had a hell of a shout. “This is our lives, too, you know.”
David Kirk chimed in with “Has it occurred to you that we want to do the right thing? That we want to help rescue people who should never have been taken hostage?”
Jonathan’s first instinct was to roll his eyes. Overt statements of altruism were so rarely real that he wanted to dismiss this as ridiculous. Then he saw the look in the kid’s eyes. Boxers might have seen it, too, because he became uncharacteristically quiet.
“One of my best friends was killed by these assholes,” David said. “Then they tried to kill me and my girlfriend.”
Jonathan caught the hiccup that came with the
g
word, and he wondered if it was the first time it had been uttered aloud.
“Throw in the fact that the United States—the country that even us reviled journalists are proud to call our home—is threatened, and maybe we’ve decided that there might just be a cause worth dying for.”
The words hung in the air. Truth be told, the altruism angle had never occurred to Jonathan. In his mind, that gene had never been bestowed upon a reporter.
“Thank you,” Yelena said.
All eyes focused on her.
“I don’t know how to describe what this means,” she said. “That you would risk your lives for my family . . .” The words trailed off.
Jonathan resisted the urge to tell her that public servants risked their lives for strangers every day, but it would have been rude. The glare he shot to Boxers said,
Let it go.
Big Guy clearly didn’t want to, but he did.
“Here’s where we are,” Jonathan said, turning his body to face the entire room. “I can’t predict the future, but each of you needs to know that we’ll be on an airplane soon, and on the far end of the flight is a helicopter ride that is going to insert all of you—all of us—into a spot from which there is no return. According to Wolverine’s numbers, there are forty-five people at the facility we’re about to assault, and they will not be pleased with what we are planning to do. For the plan to work, every one of you needs to perform at one hundred percent. If any one of you drops the ball, we all will likely die.”
“So why are
you
doing this?” Yelena asked. “Of all of us, you two are the ones who could walk away without consequence.”
It was the most obvious question in the world, yet it took Jonathan completely by surprise. “It’s my job,” he said. “It’s
our
job.”
“Too easy,” Yelena said. “As I understand it from your own mouth, your
job
was to rescue
me
. That job was completed, and I confess that I have not been as grateful as I should have been. But now you are pressing to do more. Why would you do that?”
It felt odd having his own questions turned back on him. Jonathan looked to Boxers for the right words.
“Hey, you’re the boss,” he said. “I just go where you tell me.”
That was a lie, of course, but it was a harmless one.
“Duty, honor, country,” Jonathan said.
It landed like a punch line among the others, earning a group groan.
“Don’t do that,” Jonathan said. He put a sharpness in his tone that was designed to startle, and it worked. “You asked for an answer, and I gave it to you. Don’t you dare dismiss it. When I say ‘duty, honor, country’ that’s exactly what I mean. It’s what I have always meant. That’s what
we
have always meant.”
A soapbox speech was blooming in Jonathan’s gut.
“Next time your husband talks about soldiers or sailors or airmen as pawns in some geopolitical game—or the next time you”—he pointed at David—“start thinking of them as numbers on a budgetary spreadsheet, ask yourself why they do what they do. Even back in the day, there were a hell of a lot easier ways for me to earn fifty-five thousand dollars a year. And that was after seventeen years working for Uncle. We do what we do because there is, in fact, an absolute value to right and wrong.”
He felt his ears growing hot, and, completely out of character, he felt tears pressing behind his eyes. “It’s
wrong
to snatch innocent people out of their beds and take them hostage. I don’t care who the players are or what the motivations are. That’s wrong. And when the motivation behind it is to harm the government of the country I love, that makes it a cause worth dying for.”
“You
are
getting paid, I assume,” Becky said. “Pretty well, I imagine.”
“I’m already rich. My fee is a rounding error, a test of commitment for my clients.”
“And your life?” Yelena asked.
“What about it?”
“You’re willing to risk that for people you’ve never met?”
Now his blood was boiling. “Yeah, Yelena, I am. Your family is my mission, I’m willing to die for them. And kill for them.”
He leaned in closer as he delivered the rest. “Just as your Secret Service detail was willing to do for you.”
He felt Boxers’ hand on his arm, a signal that he was a few degrees too hot.
“Tell me what you’re implying,” Yelena said.
“I’m implying that a lot of good, dedicated people died in service to your security,” Jonathan said. “Their wives and children will never see them again. I refuse to let that sacrifice be in vain.”
A long silence followed—every bit of sixty seconds and more—as no one made eye contact with anyone, except for Jonathan, whose eyes demanded a response from the First Lady.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” she said. “That I am sorry?”
“No,” Jonathan said. “No one gives a shit whether you’re sorry. The dead will remain dead, even if you drop to your knees and offer up a novena. What I want from you is acknowledgment that a lot of people have paid the ultimate price to protect you, and that now a bunch more are willing to pay that price for your family.”
Tears welled in Yelena’s eyes. “Why are you doing this? Did you think I didn’t feel guilty enough?”
“I don’t care,” Jonathan said. “That’s the key. Listen to it again: This isn’t about your feelings. It isn’t about publicity, and it isn’t about anything that resembles politicking or selling papers. We’re going into battle tomorrow. People are likely to die, but if we get home alive, then the killing will have been worth it. That’s what mission focus is all about.”
Ordinarily, Boxers would have driven the plane, but Austin Mannix announced that he needed his plane back later in the day. Thus, they had to accept a ride from two pilots who seemed very contented to know nothing about their passengers. It was a short flight, too. Just a little over an hour.
Venice had arranged for a Cadillac Escalade to meet the Lear on the tarmac at BTV—Burlington International Airport—where Jonathan and his team could transfer the tools of their trade directly from the plane without triggering about a thousand security traps that frowned upon the kinds of hardware they were transporting. To the casual observer, the Escalade was being filled with heavy duffel bags.
And Yelena Poltanov had transformed herself into a cross between June Cleaver and Granny Clampett. Her hair had gone from its natural brown to strawberry blond, and she’d cashed her après ski outfit in for an unremarkable brown dress that drooped to below her knees, where brown stockings took over and led to brown hiking boots.
Yelena caught Jonathan’s amused look. “It’s a lesson I learned from the Marshals Service,” she said. “If people are noticing the outfit, they’re not noticing the face.”
But even her face had transformed to be unrecognizable. She’d broadened the bridge of her nose and donned a pair of clear-lens glasses. A prosthetic appliance on her upper teeth added puffiness to her cheeks which, combined with pale pink lipstick, erased the glamor that had made her such a hot property for ladies’ magazines.
“I’m impressed,” Jonathan said. “When this is all over, I’d like a lesson in disguises.”
“Particularly that lipstick, Boss,” Boxers said as he passed with the last of the duffels and laid them on the flat bed of the Escalade. “I’m tired of that red shit you usually wear.”
Jonathan flipped him off.
“I can see you wearing that,” Yelena quipped.
He flipped her off too. But added, “Ma’am.”
Following the directions downloaded by Venice to Jonathan’s GPS, Boxers piloted the enormous SUV through ever-narrowing roads in the general direction of Lake Champlain. The farther they got from the major thoroughfares, the more snow-covered the roads became. As they closed to within the last two miles, Big Guy had to throw the switch for four-wheel low. Though clearly built more for sports than utility, the Cadillac performed better as a truck than Jonathan had expected.
At just after 9:00
A.M.
, Jonathan held up his hand and said, “Okay, slow it down.”
“I’m doing seven miles an hour. Slower would mean reverse.”
Jonathan kept his eyes on his GPS. “According to this, we’re coming up on the road that leads to the road to Striker’s property. It’ll be up here on the left.”
Every occupant leaned forward and to the left to help with the scanning. Encrusted in white, the woods looked stunning in a way that you can only see in New England. It must have snowed the night before because the coating on the branches was still powdery enough to whisper away from the breeze created by the monstrous vehicle.
“Is that it?” Becky asked from the second rank of rear seats. “See those red reflectors on the trees?”