Arctic Gold (30 page)

There was money, a great deal of it, in three briefcases, in rubles, euros, and U.S. dollars. There were a number of engineering charts and reports, all of which fittedbarelyinside the tool kit. And there were a number of plastic jewel cases, each with a CD cryptically labeled

with Cyrillic notations. These went into various pouches in Akulinin combat blacks.

A groan from the bound and prone Kotenko warned that he was beginning to come around. After one last, swift check, Lia and Akulinin went to the door. We’re done, she whispered.

Passageway outside is clear, Rockman told her. Still no alarm.

She opened the door. We’re moving, she said. Ready for exfil.

Satlink is in place, Llewellyn told them. We’ll be waiting at the primary.

With luck, Kotenko would assume that one of his rivals had broken in and cleaned out his safe. The paper with the safe combination could only have one logical explanationthat someone inside Kotenko personal retinue, or, just possibly, one of his houseguests, had discovered the combination and given it to the intruders.

That

ought to make life inside the dacha interesting for the next few days.

Lia! Rockman voice called in her head. You’ve got company!

The Art Room

NSA Headquarters

Fort Meade, Maryland

1721 hours EDT

The big display screen in the Art Room showed the layout of the Kotenko dacha as a series of architectural floor plans. Two points of light, one following the other, moved along one of the hallways. On a nearby monitor, ranks of inset windows showed the overhead views of empty rooms and hallways set in pairs, one with the monochromatic image of what someone watching from

the security office was seeing, the window next to it showing the real- time image of the same scene.

In one real- time window, Lia and Akulinin, anonymous figures in their combat blacks and LI goggles, could be seen moving through one of the corridors.

And in another, a solitary figure could be seen just coming in from the back deck, a bulky, muscular man built like a professional wrestler. The Deep Black records department had already identified him as Andre Malenkovich, a onetime Moscow street criminal now in Kotenko employ as bodyguard and personal assistant.

And Malenkovich had just entered the same hallway now being used by Lia and Akulinin. The computers managing the imaging session had just thrown a third light onto the architectural schematics, showing the bodyguard just one bend in the hallway away. In another few seconds he would round a corner and come face- to- face with the Deep Black insertion team.

Turn around! Rockman told Lia and Akulinin. Back the way you came! There a janitor closet ten feet behind you! Hurry!

Malenkovich was almost up to the corner.

Kotenko Dacha

Sochi, Russia

0022 hours, GMT + 3

Akulinin reached the closet door and turned the knob. Locked!

Lia bit off a curse as she turned, pulling her sidearm from its holster. The door to Kotenko office was eight feet farther up the hall; keeping her weapon with its heavy sound suppressor trained on the bend in the corridor ahead, she started backing toward it. Akulinin did the same.

He stopped! Rockman told them. Two more people just came in from the pool! I think he talking to them!

Which might give them another few seconds. The hallway came to an abrupt end behind them, with the only way out going around the corner and squarely into Malenkovich. They didn’t have time to pick the lock on the closet, but just possibly they could hide in the office. Lia reached the office door first, opened the door, and slipped inside. Akulinin followed.

He around the corner, Rockman told them. He coming toward the office door!

Not

good. Lia looked around the office. There wasn’t much in the way of places to hide; worse, Kotenko was now awake, struggling against the plastic zip strips binding his wrists and legs and making desperate mmphing noises into his gag. As the two NSA agents reentered the office, though, he went still. He probably couldn’t see anything more than human- shaped shadows against the light spilling in from the hall, but he knew they were there.

And so would the bodyguard in another moment.

Bad guy is definitely headed for the office, Rockman warned. There nothing else in that arm of the hallway for him to go to unless he looking for a mop.

Oknah! Lia said, lowering and roughening her voice to a growl for Kotenko benefit. There was no sense in telling him that one of the intruders was a woman

and possibly letting him begin to connect the dots all the way back to the St. Petersburg warehouse.

Oknah

the office window. It was large and looked west out over the Black Sea. During daylight hours, Kotenko must have a hell of a view.

And right now, that was their only escape route. Akulinin understood her terse exclamation. Lia pulled back the drapes as he holstered his pistol and experimentally hefted the toolbox he was carrying. Beregeess’!

he warned, and slammed the long metal case squarely into the window like a battering ram.

Like the window upstairs, this one was safety glass, laminated in plastic. There was a loud thud, but the glass barely gave under the blow. Swiftly Lia raised her sound- suppressed SIG- Sauer in a two- handed stance. The weapon coughed sharply as she triggered three rounds in rapid succession into the pane; the glass crazed around three neat impacts, and Akulinin smashed the window again with the tool case.

This time, the glass bulged out, then disintegrated in a spray of rounded fragments. At the same instant, the door swung open and Kotenko bodyguard burst into the room, his own weapon already drawn.

Pivoting sharply, her P220 still in a two- handed grip, Lia squeezed off three quick shots into the center of the man considerable mass. He howled, staggering backward into the hall, and Lia put two more rounds into him as he collapsed, just to make sure. Outside, in the corridor, a woman screamed.

Akulinin used his gloved hands to peel away some of the remaining glass. Then, stooping, he patted the bound Kotenko on the shoulder. Dobreh nochee,

he said, grinning, wishing the crime lord a good night. Lia scrambled through the window and Akulinin followed.

They dropped a few feet onto the back deck, where a dozen men and women stared with gaping mouths as the two insect- faced agents clambered through the broken window. Ignoring them, Lia raced to the low stone wall rising at the edge of the deck. Beyond, there was a narrow stretch of ground, and then the hillside dropped steeply away toward the road along the seaside, heavily covered with brush and small trees. Vaulting the wall, she dropped

feetfirst over the edge and began sliding rapidly down the hill.

Akulinin followed. As she bumped and rolled through loose earth and leaves, she heard shouts and screams from above, and a sharp- barked command to halt: Stoy!

Dragon! she cried as she slid, trying desperately to keep from losing control. Change of plan! Pickup at extraction two!

Got it, Lia, Llewellyn said. We’re on the way!

They’d plotted three separate pickup points, allowing for the possibility that they’d have to leave by a different route than the one they’d taken going in. Gunfire cracked from above and behind, and she heard the snap of bullets among the branches above her head.

The trouble was that Llewellyn had the van on the road above the property, while Lia and Akulinin were plunging through brush and loose dirt toward a different road, some fifty yards below Kotenko dacha. Llewellyn would have to drive like a maniac to pick up a crossroad two miles to the south, then double back along the seashore to meet them.

And the bad guys were in hot pursuit. Lia heard the deep- throated bark of a German Shepherd and the shouted orders as more guards spilled out onto the deck or began descending after the fleeing Deep Black agents.

The trees were bigger toward the bottom of the slope, a tangle of open woods, with scattered boulders, some as large as a small house, tucked in among the trees. Lia came to a jarring halt as her boots hit a tree trunk; the slope had leveled off enough here for her to stand and begin picking her way down the rest of the hill on foot.

Akulinin reached the road first, dropping to the ground and facing back up the hill with his handgun at the ready. Lia dropped down beside him. Someone above them opened fire with an assault rifle, spraying away wildly on

full- auto, but with no clear target. Bullets whined high above their heads or thunked into tree trunks; the two agents held their fire. Even sound- suppressed rounds might give away their position, and in any case, at this range they wouldn’t hit anything save by sheer luck.

They could hear thrashing sounds from above as men crashed down the slope after them. Several bright lights flared among the tree trunks, the shafts of light probing among the branches and brush. Lia nudged Akulinin in the ribs and pointed to the right. Together, the two began moving southeast along the hillside. If that crowd took the straight route down, they’d be on top of Lia and Akulinin in another few moments. Even in the dark, the men might be able to follow the double trail of skid and scuff marks down the slope.

And there were the dogs.

How many pursuers were there? During the circuit with the dragonfly, the Art Room had identified six guards outsideincluding the dog handlers and including the man at the front gatebut there might be more inside. It was a big place, and Kotenko might easily be paranoid enough to maintain a small personal army up there.

Lia and Akulinin worked their way silently about a hundred yards farther up the road and crossed over to the far side. That gave them a good view of the edge of the woods beneath the cliff, and the guards would have to leave the cover of the trees and come out into the open if they wanted to cross the road.

Behind Lia and Akulinin, a low surf hissed along the beach. The sky was overcast, hiding the moon, but her LI goggles showed the waves in oily tones of green and black. A shame we didn’t bring a getaway boat, she thought. Or a submarine.

Dragon! she called. We’re on the southwest side of the road now, just above the beach.

We’re just turning onto the coast road, Llewellyn replied. Three kilometers, maybe three and a half.

Which meant perhaps one or two more minutes. And the flashlights were much

closer now, darting and bobbing among the trees at the base of the hill, a hundred yards away. A guard emerged from the shadows, moving along the edge of the road. A second appeared a moment later, tugged along by an enthusiastic dog.

Akulinin braced his pistol, sighting along the barrel. I could try for a long shot from here, he said.

Negative, Lia told him. All that’ll do is tell them where we are, and give them a chance to surround us.

Damn. He lowered the weapon. Those dogs will

find us.

We’ll worry about that when they get closer. Lia was angry, and the words came out more harshly than she’d intended.

She was angry at herself, though she was having some trouble identifying just what it was that had made her so mad. They’d done everything right, so far as she could tell, taking the op step- by- step.

But in this kind of work, any operation that ended with shots being fired was a failure, at least on some level. The opposition should never have even known they were there. It was the op on the St. Petersburg waterfront all over again and the second op in a row for her to end in a firefight. This was getting old very, very fast.

The two men and the dog were closer now about fifty yards away. They were walking slowly, and the man in front had a flashlight that he was using to examine the bushes and shadowed recesses on both sides of the road. Other men were spreading out in the distance, some going down to the beach, others following the road to the northwest.

And she could hear the crack and snap of still more

searchers in the woods directly across the road now, moving unseen among the trees.

Dragon! Akulinin whispered. Any time now would be very

good!

Another kilometer, was the reply. Can you show me a light?

Negative! Lia replied. We have bad guys right across the road from us, and more coming along the road! If we move, they’ll spot us!

The tactical situation, she realized, was deteriorating to the impossible. Even if the van arrived right now, there were enough gunmen about to lay down a deadly barrage.

Listen, Dragon, Lia said. I think we need another plan. You can’t come in here without getting killed!

Already got a plan, m’lady! Llewellyn replied. Sit tight! We’ll have you out of there in a mo’!

The two walking down the road were twenty yards away. The dog, its nose to the earth, whined, then growled.