Y
uri watched the parking lot with a pair of binoculars, waiting on the Boko Haram man to leave. Praying he could follow simple directions. He put the binos down on the seat and a chilling thought entered his head.
What if he can’t drive a car?
He’d taken the folder provided by Vlad—a dossier of the Boko Haram facilitator, to include local habits and lodging—and had spent five days studying the man. It took two just to make contact without contaminating his team, then another three to determine that he was, in fact, under surveillance. It was loose surveillance, to be sure, but it was there nonetheless.
Knowing what he did about such operations, he decided that the surveillance wasn’t designed to capture the facilitator, but was intended to lead to further information. They were trying to see who he met or talked to, what actions he was taking. They were building a pattern of life.
Given that, he had to assume that every electronic device the facilitator used was already owned by the Americans, making his job much, much harder. On the plus side, since the Americans weren’t looking at the facilitator as an imminent threat, they’d back off if he hit the team. If he killed one or two members, he was sure that the Americans would focus on the death and not the mission. To that end, he’d set up a pretty good trap, but now, not having the luxury of physically meeting the Nigerian facilitator, he wasn’t sure the man could actually accomplish what he’d planned.
He looked at his team member in the passenger seat and said, “Dmitri, you think this savage can operate a vehicle? I mean, you think he would have said he couldn’t after we transmitted the plan to him?”
Picking the binos off the seat, Dmitri said, “Honestly, I don’t know. We never got a chance to vet him. But surely he couldn’t travel here for a meeting with a Syrian colonel without having some rudimentary skills.”
“I’m not so sure. Did you read the dossier? The guy is a lunatic. A fanatic. I hope Control knows what he’s doing.”
Looking through the glass, Dmitri said, “He’s just exited the building. Moving to the car. I guess he found the keys we placed in the dead drop. That’s a good sign.”
Yuri tensed, knowing the building was boxed in by American surveillance. Planning on using that to trap them. First, he’d peel them off, then he’d peel one car for real. He said, “See any correlation?”
One of the first ways to spot surveillance was to correlate activity around the target. Did someone get on a cell phone right as you left a building? Did a car sitting stagnant for four hours pull into traffic at the same time you did? Probably not a coincidence.
Little things like that didn’t
prove
surveillance, but were an indicator. Yuri was past the indicator stage, though. He’d already determined that the target was being chased. Now he just wanted to confirm that the chase was happening today.
Dmitri said, “Yeah. Northeast corner. Vehicle just pulled out. It’s way outside of effective control, but also out of view of the target. Someone triggered by radio. If they’re good, that’s the surveillance.”
They’re good all right.
“Let him go and keep looking. We know where the target’s headed. See if the box collapses.”
From their vantage point on the side of a hill, they could see the entire surroundings of the parking lot, to include the three different exits. Like clockwork, each exit had a vehicle break away and start to chase the target. When Yuri was sure they were all on the move, he put the car in gear.
“Now we get to see if this savage can follow instructions.”
The target entered Highway 86 heading south, toward the town of Asenovgrad, the follow now forced to trail behind. Yuri picked up the rear, happy that the target—so far—was driving as instructed.
They passed the road to the Plovdiv airport and the target pulled into a petrol station. Just as planned.
Yuri watched the follow cars spread out and slow, taking lefts and rights in order to wait until the target moved again. Yuri blasted past them all, as the whole point of the stop was to get him in the lead. Get him in a position to execute his plan.
He pointed at a small duffel bag in the footwell and said, “You sure that thing is going to work?”
Dmitri said, “Yes. It’s really simple. The hard part will be you driving close enough to use the Bluetooth connection.”
“How sure? These men are no amateurs. If it isn’t swift, they will realize they’re being hunted, and the entire mission will be in jeopardy.”
“Then why don’t we just shoot them?”
“Control wants it to look like an accident. He wants a Vympel hit.”
“Fuck Control. That bastard doesn’t even know what he’s asking for.”
This Control does.
Yuri hadn’t told the team of his meeting, unsure if he was allowed to. As far as they knew, they were working for their original chain of command.
“We have our orders. These aren’t a couple of Mafia men. We can’t do anything that looks like an offensive attack. The repercussions will be profound if we can’t execute clandestinely. Will it work?”
“Yes. Believe it or not, the United States Department of Defense paid for the research, then published a paper showing how it’s done. All I did was establish the connection wirelessly. You get him on the fortress road, and I’ll cut the brakes, flood the accelerator, then jerk the wheel. It’ll work, I promise.”
Yuri nodded, passing through the town of Asenovgrad. He reached the Cheplare River and veered off the main highway, clawing up a side road that plied steeply uphill.
Climbing higher and higher, he could see the little ribbon of Highway 86 far below, the cliff itself a jagged shelf with an almost-vertical drop-off.
Perfect
.
He studied every switchback, determining which would be the best for attack. Everything was focused on the tactics. The killing itself never entered his mind.
Yuri had grown up at the end of the cold war, joining the KGB in time to watch the USSR implode. He’d been insulated to the upheavals for longer than most, training for years to attain the honor of serving in the Vympel of the KGB’s First Directorate—back when the mission was targeting the west.
Designed to blend into the population of foreign countries, its mission was to conduct sabotage operations in the event of all-out war. He’d spent three years learning four foreign languages, a host of foreign customs and mores, along with some decidedly lethal skills. Because of this, he had been hammered on the righteousness of the motherland and the evils of the capitalists more than most other soldiers of the USSR. He was tasked with penetrating deep into the societies of his chosen target, and the politburo had to make sure he wouldn’t decide to simply remain in his assumed role and abandon his mission. His preparation was very, very specific.
The training stuck, leaving Yuri a fierce defender of Mother Russia—even after the fall of the USSR and the disgusting way his comrades raped and pillaged whatever they could, creating oligarchs that became rich off the skin of the people. Exactly what Communism was designed to prevent. In his mind, it proved the failure of capitalism, and was the primary reason he never left the service.
His team was composed of men who had been recruited after the fall, when Vympel joined the FSB after the KGB was disbanded. They didn’t have the skill in cross-border operations that he had, but were still pretty damn effective. With Vympel no longer tasked with penetrating foreign societies in preparation for World War III, they’d spent the majority of their time fighting the Chechens, either head-on in Grozny or outside Russia in a stealth war.
Yuri had worked hard to instill his sense of patriotism into the team, and would not tolerate anything short of absolute devotion and perfection. Mistakes would be tolerated. Once. After that, he’d punish a team member just as easily as an enemy. Kill him if it became necessary. It was how he was trained in the old days, with the old ways, and he’d expect nothing less from Vlad the Impaler. And knew he wouldn’t be disappointed.
T
hey reached another hairpin turn, and Asen’s Fortress appeared on an outcropping of rock. An ancient citadel built to protect the valley down below, it hung out into space in an impossible display of construction from a thousand years ago.
How on earth did they build that thing way up here? Without modern tools?
They circled around the hairpin to a small parking lot. Yuri pulled in beside a panel truck and killed the engine.
Dmitri said, “How long will I have in the vehicle?”
“At least ten minutes. The rabbit will go all the way across the road, then walk the footpath on the outcropping to the old church. He’ll enter and take a seat. The surveillance won’t want to burn themselves, so they’ll stake outside until he leaves. My only concern is the follow-on team. If another car comes up here, they might stay right here in this parking lot. It’ll make things a little tricky breaking into the empty vehicle.”
“What will we do then?”
“Nothing. Come up with another plan. But I’m betting they won’t stop. If it were me, I’d continue on so as not to create a signature, parking out of sight up the mountain and waiting on a radio call. These guys will do the same.”
Fifteen minutes later the Nigerian turned around the hairpin driving a beat-up Lada two-door sedan. He parked as instructed, waited for about a minute, then exited the vehicle. Yuri strained to see the follow-on surveillance, not too concerned about being remembered by the opposition because he didn’t intend for this car to report back to anyone.
Thirty seconds later, a Ford Escape rounded the turn and parked. Yuri recognized one of the men inside as part of the surveillance effort. He waited until the men had exited the vehicle and crossed over a hillock in the middle of the hairpin, circling around picnic tables and a small children’s play area. When they’d disappeared from view, Yuri scrambled along the same path, taking a seat at a table that allowed him to view both the road up and the crosswalk that led to the entrance of the ancient fortress across the road.
Seeing a single car headed toward him, he spoke into an earpiece. “Stand by. Vehicle approaching.”
The car made the hairpin, slowed in the parking lot, then continued on up the small ribbon of road, heading deeper into the mountains. Yuri couldn’t confirm if it was part of the surveillance team, but he assumed it was. He triggered the operation.
He saw Dmitri exit the vehicle, sidle between the cars, then slim-jim the door of the Ford. He opened a bag, flopped onto his back, and began working a small device into the onboard diagnostic port, allowing him access to the controller area network that facilitated the various electronic control units of the Ford Escape.
Ordinarily used by mechanics to determine faults with the car, the onboard diagnostic port also allowed a pass-through for the entire brain of the vehicle. A brain that would now be controlled by the follow-on car.
Dmitri finished, and Yuri settled in to wait for the Nigerian to leave. It took longer than he expected, but a little over twenty minutes later he saw him approaching the crosswalk. He knew that the surveillance wouldn’t be too far behind.
Yuri scrambled down the hill and entered his car, asking a question without saying a word.
“It plugged in fine,” said Dmitri. “Shouldn’t be an issue.”
“We need to do more than just pull the brakes. They have to go over the cliff. I can’t trust them to lose control.”
“You won’t have to. The Ford Escape has parking assistance. It’ll parallel park the vehicle for you. Which means the computer controls the steering. I’ll have that control. You just need to be close enough.”
They watched the target leave, driving back down the hill, and waited, feeling the heat build in the car from the sunshine. Within seconds, the vehicle that Yuri had seen travel up the road earlier came flying back down, now taking the lead on surveillance and allowing the team that had penetrated the fortress a gap in time to protect them from exposure.
Yuri no longer cared about the active surveillance or the rabbit. He waited on his target. Eventually, they fired up the Ford and began driving back down the mountain. Like a snake tracking his prey, he slid in behind the car.
Driving directly behind the target, he said, “Two turns. You’ve got two turns.”
Dmitri said, “Working it.”
Yuri glanced his way and saw him stroking the keys to a laptop, a USB cable stretched out on the dash with an iPhone 5s attached to it. They passed the first turn.
“You’ve got a little over a mile. Status.”
“I have contact, but I can’t manipulate.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
Fingers flying over the keyboard, Dmitri said, “I can talk to my device, but it’s not talking to the car.”
Yuri closed his eyes for a second, then applied the brakes. Dmitri said, “What are you doing? I have to maintain our connection.”
“I’m not going to burn us for this circus.”
“It’ll work! Give me a chance. Back off after the kill-zone if it’s still not working.”
Yuri grimaced, and increased acceleration. Dmitri rattled off a string of numbers designed to instill confidence, but they meant nothing to Yuri. Dmitri continued to manipulate the keys. He called a signal strength that might as well have been describing the fluid dynamics of a rocket launch as far as Yuri was concerned.
Dmitri said one more mix of computer language and Yuri snapped, “Shut the fuck up. Is it working or not?”
Dmitri smiled. “Yes. Yes, it is. Tell me when.”
Yuri surveyed the road ahead, knowing the hairpin was about a half mile away. He said, “Cut the brakes in ten seconds. Hit the gas in twenty.”
Dmitri nodded. Ten seconds later he stroked the keys. Initially, there was no reaction from the car in front of them. Four or five seconds later, the car swerved left, then right, then continued straight. At the twenty-second mark, Dmitri typed something new, and the car jumped forward, racing straight into the hairpin turn.
Yuri could only imagine what the driver was doing, frantically slamming the brakes into the floor, jamming the gearshift into low, and scared to death because the accelerator was pouring gas into the engine as if a ghost were in the machine.
He saw the passenger’s arms waving in the air, scrambling for something in the backseat. He had no idea what it could be.
The turn approached much faster than anticipated, as they were now flying down the mountain at a good fifty miles an hour. Fast enough for him to lose control of his own vehicle, but he had to maintain his proximity or lose the Bluetooth connection.
His knuckles grew white on the steering wheel as they approached the turn, realizing too late that his plan might be the death of both of them. He saw the car enter the hairpin and screamed, “Now!”
Oblivious of his own impending fate, Dmitri continued to tap the keyboard and Yuri watched the car snap to the right, crash through the minuscule guardrail, and sail into space, as if it were trying to leap across the chasm.
Yuri had no time to appreciate the view, as his own vehicle hit the curve at over fifty-five miles an hour. He slammed on the brakes and torqued the steering wheel, fighting to keep from following the car over the cliff. He bounced against the guardrail, eliciting a shout from Dmitri, then slid to a halt, the passenger side grinding along the metal rail for close to forty meters.
Yuri sagged against the wheel for a second, panting, then looked behind him, seeing a cloud of smoke rising from the valley below.
Dead. The Vympel way.
He’d executed exactly what Vlad the Impaler wanted, believing he’d set his country on the path of redemption. Using the best-trained men the Russian Federation had to offer, he’d accomplished what few on earth could do: a targeted killing with no evidence of foul play. He smiled to himself, failing to realize that the men he’d just killed would awaken a combat skill that was more than his equal.
Failing to realize he’d declared war.