Oceans Of Fire

CHAPTER FOUR

“We have the Shark.” David McCarter sat, apparently reading the paper, in the terminal. He watched the bullet-headed Russian mobster disembark with a pair of bodyguards. Sharypa Sharkov was a big man, built like a rugby striker who had let himself go. His men weren’t particularly large or imposing, but they scanned the crowd around their boss with hard and searching eyes. The men weren’t mindless muscle. They were shooters, and their right hands never strayed far from the front of their black leather jackets. McCarter subvocalized into his throat mike. His signal was being picked up at the safehouse and bounced to Virginia through the sat link. “Two bodyguards. My instinct is they’re ex-Special Forces. Packing heat.”

“Affirmative, Phoenix One.” Barbara Price confirmed. “Tail is go.”

“Roger that.” McCarter tossed down his paper and walked through the terminal slightly behind and parallel to Sharkov. They stepped out into the drizzly Tajikistani morning. Sharkov stepped into the back of a dilapidated Toyota Land Cruiser. McCarter eyed the vehicle. “Base, according to intel, Sharkov likes to live large, correct?”

“Affirmative, Phoenix One. According to what we got from CIA Moscow Station, Sharkov tries to keep up with Zhol in the style department and usually fails.”

“What’s his usual ride?”

Price looked over the Sharkov report. “He keeps a Mercedes-Benz in every city he has a residence in.”

“Right.” McCarter threw a leg over his BMW F650 Dakar motorcycle. There was another nondescript SUV parked behind the one Sharkov had just gotten in. The vehicles had dents and scratched paint, and had apparently seen hard use over the years. Sharkov’s had one headlight out. There was nothing strange about that. Toyota SUVs were one of the workhorses of the Third World. They were nothing if not reliable. If you just changed the oil every three thousand miles they could limp along for decades doing yeoman’s work. Manning’s eyes narrowed as he took in the tinted windows. He smiled as the SUVs’ engines snarled into life and spit blue smoke into the misting rain. These weren’t workhorses.

They were thoroughbreds.

The dirt and dings were cosmetic. Beneath the sheep’s clothing their V-6 engines were supercharged. David McCarter was a connoisseur of motor vehicles. He took in the run-flat tires and recognized the work. The two Land Cruisers were the product of Asbeck Armoring Bonn. He suspected they were VIP 100 Models, and custom. They would be armored against massive attack, undoubtedly European “extreme protection” B6 category. They would be impervious to direct hits of up to .30-caliber. It would take a .50-caliber, crew-served machine gun or a shoulder-launched rocket to crack them.

McCarter’s instincts spoke to him. Sharkov was going incognito and with maximum protection. The Briton followed the two-car caravan for a couple of blocks, and their destination was evident. “Base, targets are headed for the casino.”

“Affirmative, Phoenix One. It’s your call.”

McCarter considered his options. If his suspicions were correct, he had just located the courier vehicles for the nukes. They needed to be marked. Once they went into the casino they’d be parked in Zhol’s private garage. There were three options. James could go in and tag them, but that would risk his cover. Two, McCarter could send in a team to break into the garage and do it. It probably wouldn’t be too difficult, but security would have to be overcome. There was a good chance that the enemy might know they had been breeched. They wouldn’t know why or by whom, but the enemy security level would rise, and that threatened the entire mission.

Option three was for McCarter to do it himself, now.

“Base, I’m taking the shot.”

“Affirmative, Phoenix One.”

McCarter pulled up behind the Toyotas. He reached into his jacket. His hand brushed past the concealed Browning Hi-Power pistol and pulled out a slightly oversize cell phone. At a traffic light he came to stop beside Sharkov’s vehicle. He could feel the gaze of the hardmen inside from behind the tinted windows. McCarter flipped open his phone as the light changed. The back passenger window of the Land Cruiser cracked slightly. McCarter passed the armored vehicle, apparently oblivious of scrutiny as he shouted into his phone in angry French.

The phone had no communications capability. Two stubby smooth-bore barrels and a pair of compressed air cylinders took up body of the phone. The flip-top acted as a simple see-through optical sight. McCarter slid open the muzzle cover and unlocked the safety while he blithered away about getting out of the goddamn country and delivery schedules. He let Sharkov’s car pull slightly ahead.

“Merde!” McCarter took the phone away from his ear and held it forward, his thumb working the buttons as if he were dialing another number. He peered through the sight and put the crosshairs on the brake light above the cargo door of Sharkov’s Toyota. He pressed zero on the keypad and the phone chuffed in his hand.

McCarter was rewarded as the .40-caliber paintball hit the bulge of the brake light and shattered, splattering across the top of the vehicle. He was slightly worried by the rain factor. He had only two shots, and one positive mark was better than two partials, and the window of opportunity was now. He pressed the button and fired his second barrel. He missed the brake light but luck was with him as the plastic sphere struck the luggage rack and broke apart.

“Marking complete, Base. Do you have the target acquired?”

“One moment, Phoenix One.” Back in Virginia, Price turned to Kurtzman. “Aaron?”

The computer wizard was staring intently at a six-foot flat screen. The feed showed an overhead view of traffic. Cars and trucks moved through the grid of streets and buildings in high-contrast black-and-white. The paintballs McCarter had fired were filled with a liquid infrared luminescent material. Once it was exposed to air, it gelled and hardened, and the infrared chemical reaction began. The luminescent material was clear and, after it hardened, almost undetectable. Minute scrutiny would reveal it as a hardened film that would be difficult to scrub off. The infrared goo in the projectile was its own power source. Over the course of time it would fade. However, for the next three months, it would glow at a steady 300 candlepower in the infrared spectrum, invisible to the unaided human eye.

Three hundred miles above the surface of the Earth a distinctly nonhuman eye was peering intently at the traffic in downtown Dushanbe. The satellite’s radio receiver was tracking McCarter by triangulation. Once he was acquired, it was child’s play to keep him under observation. Kurtzman could make out McCarter on his motorcycle and he could see the truck he trailed. The infrared feed of the satellite was set to high-polarity white on black. Infrared light sources appeared in varying shades of white. McCarter’s high-performance motorcycle had its own very distinctive infrared signature.

Kurtzman grinned as the top of Sharkov’s armored SUV suddenly began to glow in brilliant bright white. The satellite instantly noted the candlepower and frequency of the infrared light source and transmitted them to the net of satellites that the NSA had programmed to observe Tajikistan. Day or night, rain or shine, anytime Sharkov’s vehicle was above ground, Kurtzman and his team would be watching it.

Kurtzman nodded at Price. “The Shark is marked.”

“Good work, Phoenix One. Target has been acquired.”

“Affirmative, Base.” McCarter’s motorcycle peeled down a side street. “Breaking contact.”

The Stony Man computer wizard watched Sharkov’s armored convoy as it wound its way through traffic and disappeared into the casino’s rear garage. He leaned back in his wheelchair and typed a few keys. The giant screen split between the real-time feed of the satellite watching the Silk Road casino and a geopolitical map of Southern Asia. “The question is, Sharkman,” Kurtzman mused, “if you have the packages, where are you planning on taking them?”

“NOW, I DON’T NORMALLY dig nines.” Clayborne Forbes held up an SR-3 Vikhr short assault rifle. “But this baby puts them out at a thousand feet per second with a bullet twice the weight of a normal 9 mm. Throw in the tungsten steel penetrator? This shit sings. Kevlar? Car doors? Titanium? If you aren’t wearing ceramic when this hits you—” Forbes’s smile was ugly as he handed it to Calvin James “—Jack, you are dead.”

Sharkov laughed harshly and took another weapon from the crate.

James examined the weapon. It had a stubby barrel and a folding sheet-metal stock. The super-heavy 9 mm bullet was fired from a cut-down AK-47 rifle shell. The weapon’s light weight produced heavy recoil and a cyclic rate of 900 rounds a minute that was almost impossible to control on full-auto, and ate up the 20-round magazine in a matter of heartbeats.

However, in the Vikhr’s favor, the design bureau of the Russian Central Institute of Precision Machinery Construction had been asked to create a compact, concealable weapon that could penetrate most known forms of body armor and semihardened vehicles for Russian Special Forces. That was all metaphor. The real specification was in fact for a short-range weapon that would penetrate armored limousines, body armor, the bodyguards wearing it and the VIP they were trying to protect. The Vikhr had been designed as an assassination weapon, pure and simple, and it had met the specification with wild success.

James snapped the folding stock into place and shouldered the Vikhr. The weapon’s inaccuracy was somewhat mitigated by the laser-designator mounted beneath the barrel and the optical sight above. He wouldn’t care to go into open battle with it, but for slaughtering someone in a phone booth or defoliating the occupants of a limousine during a drive-by, he was hard-pressed to think of a better weapon.

Forbes seemed intimately familiar with it.

“Fact is, Cal. This town? Hell, this whole country, is wide open. Zhol’s got the local juice.” Forbes grinned at Sharkov. “And the Shark has Moscow backing him.”

“Da.” Sharkov nodded. “That is correct.”

“Hell.” Forbes checked the fit of the Vikhr’s shoulder rig. “As long as we don’t assassinate the president or blow up a mosque, we can do anything we want, kill anyone we want, hell, take anything we want.” He racked the action of his weapon and chambered an armor-piercing round. “This place is a goddamn gold mine.”

“You Navy SEAL, huh?” Sharkov turned his black eyes on Calvin James. “Like Forbes.”

“Yeah.” James tried his shoulder rig and found he could draw the weapon smoothly from under his leather jacket. “Back in the day.”

“Back in day.” The Russian savored the American slang.

“So what’s the plan?”

“Baby-sitting from Point A to Point B. Nothing could be simpler.”

James knew too much eagerness on his part would get him killed. They were both Special Forces operators, and from long, hard experience, hated being kept in the dark. He put some doubt into his voice. “Uh-huh.”

“Listen, man, I know you don’t like being out of the loop, but this shit is on a need-to-know basis.”

“Need to know.” Sharkov nodded.

James let his frown speak for him.

Forbes nodded in empathy. “We aren’t pimpin’, and we aren’t pushin’ drugs. I can tell you that.”

Sharkov scowled at the admission.

“No, man, I told you, the brother’s cool.” He looked at James frankly. “We’re transporting technology that some people with the right kind of money want to acquire. That’s really all you need to know. Consider yourself a caravan guard. You guard the boss and the goods with your life. You do that and you’re gonna see the fattest paycheck of your life, with more to follow.”

Sharkov grunted. “Exactly so.”

Forbes cocked his head. “You down with this?”

James racked his Vikhr and flicked on the safety. “I’m down with it.”

“Good, that’s real good.” Forbes handed him a bandolier with eight spare 20-round magazines. James checked each one out of habit, noting the blue-gray needle points of the tungsten carbide cobalt penetrators protruding from the tips.

“Point A to Point B, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“Does a brother get to know where Point B is?”

Forbes looked to Sharkov. The ugly Russian shrugged dismissively. “He is SEAL. He will figure it out soon enough anyway.”

James looked back and forth between the two men. “And?”

“Afghanistan, man. Kabul.” Forbes tossed his weapon and ammo on the bed. “Our old stomping ground.”

“We’re driving from Dushanbe to Kabul?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s a long-ass drive.”

“Right again.” Forbes leaned in and spoke in a conspiratorial tone. “But, strangely enough, the safest. Like I told you. We got the juice.”

“So when do we ship out?”

“Tomorrow, at dawn.” Forbes leered. “So tonight I’d go with Bermet or the twins, but not all three. You’re going to need your beauty sleep for this one.”

CHAPTER FIVE

“Wake up, Sunshine.”

Calvin James was already awake. He had sensed the door of his room opening and without opening his eyes had known it was Forbes by the big man’s footfalls and the power of his aftershave. Some of James’s limbs were pinned by the sleeping Bermet, but beneath his pillow his right hand was curled around his Heckler & Koch .45. “Morning.”

“Look at you.” Forbes stared down in mock disapproval at the tangle of bodies on the bed and the champagne bottles strewed about. The big man tsked and shook his head. “You’re a disgrace to the race.”

James began to disentangle himself from Bermet. “When you see a sister here in Tajikistan, you let me know. Until then…”

“When in Rome.” Forbes grinned and handed him a mug. The coffee was Turkish, strong enough to strip paint and heavily laced with sugar and cardamom. James sighed as he sipped the coffee. “This place does have amenities.”

“It’s good to a big fish in a small pond,” Forbes agreed.

“Yeah.” James stood. “But I want to be a big fish in a big pond.”

“Oh, yeah?” Forbes looked at him measuringly. “Well, first things first. We got a job to do. Get dressed. Bring your bag. Follow me.”

“How soon till we leave?”

“You have twenty minutes.”

James got up and went to the bathroom. He ran water and then pressed his ear to the door. He could hear Forbes speaking very quietly and Bermet answering. She was being debriefed. She had gone through his bag and dresser drawers the first night. One look at his shaving kit told him that her nocturnal trip to the bathroom had included riffling his few belongings by the sink. Forbes had already checked James and his belongings for bugs, telling him he was on “probation,” but the big man was taking no chances. James suspected his room was bugged. He couldn’t afford to be caught on the phone or sending smoke signals from the roof.

But he had the collected minds of Stony Man Farm on his side.

James took out his toothpaste and squeezed. About five inches of minty-fresh, tartar-control dentifrice squeezed out and suddenly the tube ribboned forth clear gel. He stuck his arm out of the small bathroom window and began crudely writing on the side of the casino with infrared luminescent gel.

NUKES HERE

DPT 2O MIN

DST KABUL

James shucked himself into the clothes hanging on the door hanger. He took the gel and drew an invisible circle on the back of his leather jacket, then brushed his teeth and shaved. When he came, Bermet was gone. His bag was already packed and a second gym bag contained the Vikhr compact assault rifle and ammo. Forbes sat on the bed smoking a cigar and watching news on the casino cable. James strapped on his pistol and his knife. “Let’s do it.”

Forbes rolled to his feet. “Follow me.”

They took a private elevator down to a private garage. Sitting incongruously among the limousines, sports cars and luxury sedans were three battered-looking Land Cruisers, their engines running. Zhol and Sharkov stood waiting, surrounded by a full squad of hardmen. It was bitterly cold. You could see the men’s breath in the unheated garage. Beneath their bulky jackets the hardguys were clearly wearing armor and each had a gym bag like James’s by his feet. Zhol smiled and rolled back a calfskin glove to glance at his Rolex watch. One satanic eyebrow rose in question.

“Sorry we’re late, Mr. Zhol.”

Zhol beckoned James over. “Mr. James.” He nodded at one of his men, who raised the hatchback of the center vehicle. The Phoenix Force commando gazed at the cargo. In the back bed of the SUV were two suitcase-size metal casings painted in Russian military gray-green. Each was wrapped in military webbing with a pair of padded straps so that the device could be carried like a backpack. “Do you know what those are?”

James scrutinized the casings. “Clay told me we were transporting technology. Never saw a security case like that before, but it looks like military security and tamper-proofed.”

“Indeed. And?”

“In the U.S. we liked to use thermite in security cases to burn the contents if someone messed with them. Russian military always preferred high-explosive charges. They like to kill the thief as well as destroy the contents.” James eyed the case warily. “My bet is if someone tries to get inside that case it’ll blow.

An enigmatic smile passed across Zhol’s face. “Yes, Mr. James. If someone tampers with those cases, they will blow.”

Sharkov nodded, smiling at the joke. “We do not want those falling into wrong hands, Mr. James.”

“No,” James agreed earnestly, “we don’t.”

Forbes’s cell phone rang. He listened for a moment, then nodded. “Guten morgen.” Forbes shook his head. “Nien, keine Probleme, kein Problem an allen.”

James yawned and looked at his watch. Forbes was speaking German. There were no problems, no problems at all.

“Alles ist auf Zeitplan.” Forbes smiled. “Ja danke. Auf wiedersehen, meine Herr.”

All was going according to plan.

Forbes clicked his phone shut. He put a hand on James’s shoulder and pointed at the two devices in the back of the truck. “Cal, you gotta guard that shit with your life.”

James spoke with utmost sincerity. “I will.”

Stony Man Farm

“THE PACKAGE IS MOVING.” McCarter’s voice spoke calmly over the sat link. “On schedule, just like Calvin said.”

On the giant screen the satellite image of the Silk Road Casino showed three vehicles pulling out of the private rear garage. It was a misty morning, not ideal for infrared viewing, but the vehicle in the middle was still glowing bright white where McCarter had marked it the day before. “Roger that, Phoenix One.” Barbara Price swung into her chair and adjusted her headset. “Showtime, people. Phoenix Flight, you are go.”

The pilot’s voice came back over the sound of rotors. “Gary and I are airborne. ETA downtown Dushanbe five minutes.”

“I’ve established the tail.” McCarter spoke over the sound of his motorcycle. A circle of bright white infrared luminescent paint marked his helmet like a halo. “They’re heading due south, as predicted. Looks like they’re going to take route A377 all the way down to the Afghan border.”

Aaron Kurtzman shook his head. “I’m just not buying a road trip all the way to Kabul, despite the vehicles David reported. The route is too long, too mountainous and there are far too many curious and unfriendly people with AK-47’s up in those hills. Zhol and Sharkov know they got hit up in the mountains once already, and by now they know Gotron Khan’s gone missing. They’re driving now to avoid the airport and any possible surprise inspection or ambush, but I’m betting after they leave the city they’re getting off the main route ASAP. For that matter, those are off-road vehicles. I think they’re going to go cross-country where a helicopter is going to pick them up.”

Price’s brow knitted. “These are Russian gangsters. They’re known for their sticky fingers. I doubt they’d leave behind three custom-made, Asbeck-armored VIP specials. You’re looking at over half a million dollars’ worth of rides.”

“You know, you’re both right.” Everyone in the War Room could almost hear Jack Grimaldi grinning behind the stick of his helicopter as things fell into his area of expertise. “Zhol owns construction companies, and this is Tajikistan. Ninety-nine percent of the country is mountain or desert, and the roads are so bad that almost any company that can afford it does their major hauling with helicopters rather than trucks. I’m betting Zhol has one or more Mi-26 Halos hot on the pad in some clearing outside the capital. The Halo’s the most powerful helicopter on Earth. It’s like a C-130 Hercules except with rotors. We’re talking large-cargo clamshell loading doors in the back and a maximum payload of 44,000 pounds plus.”

“Damn it.” Price watched the three-car caravan wend its way south through the early morning traffic. “They’ll just drive their SUVs inside the chopper and take off.”

“It’s worse than that.” Kurtzman stared into middle distance as he began to crunch all the angles. “Jack’s right. Zhol owns construction companies, so he probably has access to a fleet of helicopters. He knows he’s been hit already. He’ll be taking every precaution. If Zhol hasn’t factored in possible satellite surveillance, Forbes has. They’ll have multiple helicopters.”

“A shell game.” Price watched the satellite feed as Rafael Encizo and T. J. Hawkins pulled into traffic in a Russian Tarantula off-road vehicle marked with a broad circle of infrared luminescent paint on the hood. “And we can’t be sure which vehicle the nukes are in, or if they’ve been split up.”

“That’s right,” Kurtzman said. “We’re playing nuclear poker with a Navy SEAL. The best of the best.”