Brass Monkey: A James Acton Thriller Book #2 (10 page)

Koslov and Chernov hustled their two prisoners to the balcony. Koslov leaned over the edge and whistled. One of his men below looked up. Koslov signaled for a rope and the man removed a long coil from over his shoulder, then swung it up to the balcony. Koslov secured one end to the railing, then tied the other end around the first prisoner’s ankles. The man, still unconscious, didn’t protest as he was thrown over the balcony edge, Koslov letting the rope play out quickly, but controlled. The men below snagged the first prisoner, untied him and Koslov quickly wound the rope up and secured the second prisoner, who struggled. Chernov hit him with a right cross, sending the man over the railing, screaming into his taped mouth. Koslov gripped the rope and slowed the descent, but only slightly, the man hitting the ground with a thud. Chernov flipped over the railing and quickly slid down the rope, Koslov and the rest of his team immediately behind him.

They grabbed their two captives and rushed them to the waiting dinghies, then back to the yacht. The entire extract had taken less than five minutes, and the yacht was now heading for international waters at high speed.

Chernov activated his comm. “We have two targets. They were warned. Somehow they knew we were there.”

“How?”

“Unknown. The occupants received a phone call from someone they called ‘Colonel’.”

“Very well, prepare for extraction.”

“Roger.”

Chernov turned to his men. “Hook them up!”

His men quickly attached a crotch and shoulder harness to the two prisoners, now wide awake but no longer struggling, recognizing their position as hopeless. Koslov and Chernov were then strapped into the same harnesses, and the men hooked all four to a long, thick, steel reinforced rope they pulled from a large container on the deck. All four now connected, they hooked onto a metal clasp of a larger orange bag his men had retrieved from below decks. The two prisoners stared at it, their eyes questioning what was going on. One of his men turned a knob and a hissing sound filled their ears as the bag rapidly expanded into a balloon. As it filled with air, it began to float, then once full, his men disconnected it from its air supply, and let it float up, into the night sky, two beacon lights flashing rhythmically as it raced into the darkness. The long rope attached to it quickly played out, and as less and less of it lay coiled on the deck, the two prisoners suddenly realized what was about to happen, and screamed again into their muzzled mouths. One tried to run to the boat edge, but a gun to his temple quickly silenced him.

Chernov dragged the now unconscious man to the water’s edge of the floating harbor located at the rear of the boat, as Koslov shoved his partner into position. Overhead they heard the rumble of a large aircraft. Chernov looked up and saw a dark mass pass in front of the stars, the only evidence it was there, all of its running lights turned off. “Brace yourselves!” he yelled. A snap was heard above their heads then the first prisoner was pulled into the air as if on an elastic band. Chernov smiled as he saw the second prisoner’s eyes shoot open a moment before he too was yanked from the boat and into the night sky. Koslov was next, followed by Chernov. He had used this method of extraction many times before, and the initial jolt of going from zero to two hundred miles per hour always took your breath away, but once over, it was riotously fun.

The muffled screams above him suggested not everyone agreed.

Somewhere over the Mediterranean

Dymovsky watched the Spetsnaz commander, Chernov, unbuckle his harness as the wind howled through the hold of the Antonov An-70 transport plane, its cargo ramp still down as the crew hauled in the final Spetsnaz operative. The two prisoners huddled against the wall, still recovering from the shock of being yanked a thousand meters into the air. Dymovsky stood in front of them, gripping a handhold above him as the plane buffeted during the recovery.

“All clear!” he heard a crew member shout over the din. Another leaned over and hit a large red button on the side of the hold, beginning the process of raising the ramp. As it closed, the wind died down, its howling slowly replaced by the turboprop engines’ dull roar which seemed quiet after the last fifteen minutes.

Dymovsky turned to the prisoners. “I am Alexey Dymovsky, Prosecutor-General’s Office.” He sat down in a row of seats along the outer fuselage and opened a file he had been gripping. He flipped through it, looking at the prisoner’s faces and back at the file. He nodded at the first. “You are Corporal Konstantin Lukin, and you,” he nodded at the other man, flipping through the file. “You are Private Misha Mayorsky.” Dymovsky closed the file and looked at both men. “Who will talk first?”

The men remained silent. Mayorsky stared at the floor, clearly still scared, Lukin met Dymovsky’s gaze with a glare of defiance.

“I see.” Dymovsky stood and grasped a handhold again. He leaned toward the men. “Let me make something perfectly clear. We are in international air space. You have information about a nuclear weapon that I need. There are no laws to protect you here.” He lightly kicked the shins of Mayorsky. “You, where is Colonel Trubitsin?”

Mayorsky glanced up momentarily, then returned his gaze to the floor.

Dymovsky looked at the other. “Tell me where Trubitsin is. I don’t care about you two, I only care about the weapon.”

“Fuck you.”

Dymovsky frowned. “Fuck me?” He jerked his thumb at Chernov. “If you don’t tell
me
, you
will
tell him.” Dymovsky took a knee. “You see, I’m the nice guy. You tell me what I want to know, everybody finishes the day with all their body parts intact.” He glanced at Chernov who stood near the far wall, staring without expression, arms crossed, somehow keeping his balance perfectly in the buffeting aircraft. Dymovsky looked back at the prisoners. “He on the other hand, is not a nice guy. If he has to interrogate you”—Dymovsky shrugged and raised his hands palm upward—“well, let’s just say I can’t be responsible for what happens.” He stood and grabbed the handhold. “So, what’s it going to be?”

Lukin glared at Chernov. “Idi na khui.”

Dymovsky shook his head. “Tsk tsk, now look what you’ve done.” He glanced over at Chernov, who stared without expression. “I think you’ve made him mad.” Dymovsky headed to the front of the plane where the passenger cabin was located. He turned back to face Chernov. “They’re all yours.”

Somewhere over the Mediterranean

Chernov waited for the passenger cabin door to close then looked over his two prisoners without moving. Koslov stood on the other side of the fuselage, his weapon trained on the two men. Chernov raised his hand and snapped his fingers, pointing at the rear door mechanism. Koslov nodded, and smiling, stepped over to the control panel and hit a large green button. An alarm sounded and a flashing red light cast its warning across the cargo area. A few seconds later the rear door opened, filling the cabin with a roaring, bitter cold wind. The file Dymovsky was holding earlier flew from the seat he had laid it upon, scattering its contents around the cabin, some pages flying out the now open access ramp.

Chernov walked over to the two prisoners and yanked them to their feet. Mayorsky was clearly terrified, however Lukin still had a look of defiance on him. He turned to his partner and yelled over the wind, “Don’t worry, he’s just trying to scare you.” Mayorsky nodded, his shaking betraying his lack of belief in his partner’s assessment of the situation.

Chernov positioned the two men in the center of the cargo area with their backs facing the open access ramp. “Tell me where I can find Trubitsin, or the missile, and you both live.”

Mayorsky stared at the floor, shaking in terror. Lukin met Chernov’s gaze and said, “Kiss—”

Chernov leaned back to his side and planted a kick square in the middle of Lukin’s chest, sending him sailing toward the back of the plane. He was silent at first until the realization of what had happened sank in. Then he screamed as he discovered his hands, still secured behind his back, had nothing to grab onto as he tumbled from the rear of the plane. His cries as he began his fall of several thousand meters were immediately lost amid the howling wind and the roar of the engines.

Chernov seized Mayorsky by the face and twisted his head around to see that his partner was gone, then twisted it back to look directly at him. “Talk!” yelled Chernov.

Mayorsky jumped. “I’ll tell you everything, oh God, please, don’t kill me, I’ll tell you everything!” Mayorsky’s eyes filled with tears, his face pale, and his pants newly soiled.

“Where is Trubitsin?”

“I-I don’t know!”

“Bullshit!” Chernov pushed Mayorsky by the head, toward the back of the plane.

“No-no, I swear, I don’t know, but—”

Chernov stopped, still having a firm grip on the man’s jaw. “But?”

“But I know where we are supposed to meet.”

“Where?”

“A-a cargo ship, in the Red Sea.”

“What ship?”

“The MS Sea Maiden.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Are you sure?”

Mayorsky nodded furiously. “Yes, I swear, that’s all I know.”

Chernov leaned within inches of Mayorsky’s face, staring into his eyes, then pulled away, nodding. “Yes, I believe that is all you know.” He shoved the man away from him and spun around, hitting him full force in the chest with a side kick. The wind knocked out of him, Mayorsky sailed through the air without a sound, his feet never making contact with the cargo area floor as he flew out the back of the plane.

Koslov hit the button to close the cargo bay door then turned to his commander. “There’s only one problem with your technique.”

“What’s that?”

“Now we have nothing to show for all our hard work.”

Chernov chuckled. “Less paperwork?”

Koslov snapped his fingers and pointed at Chernov as he raised his eyebrows, smiling. “Ah, so there is method to your madness.”

Chernov smiled and headed to the passenger cabin. “Now let’s hope this MS Sea Maiden is real.”

CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

“Sir, you need to see this.”

Leif Morrison, the Central Intelligence Agency’s newly anointed National Clandestine Service Chief, glanced up at one of his analysts, Chris Leroux, and rubbed his eyes, the strain from the computer screen he’d been staring at for far too long taking its toll. “What is it?”

Leroux handed him a file. “You know that chatter we’ve been following about a possible nuke being on the market?”

Morrison nodded, flipping open the file. “What’s this?” he asked as he ignored the cover page warning him of severe jail time if he were unauthorized and proceeded with reading the document.

“Echelon intercepts.”

Morrison leafed through the rather lengthy transcript and looked up. “Give me the skinny on it, I don’t have time to read all this.”

“Well, not sure if you remember, but one of the intercepts I brought to your attention last week had a conversation between two members of a white supremacist group, New Slate, talking about going to Egypt as part of an NGO.”

Morrison vaguely remembered the conversation, but Leroux had a habit of bringing him a lot of relatively weak-linked intelligence. The problem was that more often than not the kid was right.

“And why were we watching these guys?”

“A tip from a speech their leader gave in Knoxville a while back, where he said he knew how he was going to kill the Muslim faith.”

Morrison nodded as the conversation came back to him. “Now I remember. Go on.”

“Well, like I said last week, what the hell is a white supremacist group going to Egypt for as part of an NGO?” said Leroux, clearly getting a little more excited as he conveyed the information. “Let’s be frank. These guys hate Muslims. Why would they go to Egypt to help them?”

Morrison nodded, agreeing the conversation was odd, but failing to see how it tied to their nuke investigation. Apparently Leroux read his mind.

“I know what you’re thinking, how does this relate to the nuke investigation?”

Morrison nodded.

“Well, sir, I’ve had Echelon flags in for various keywords relating to nukes and terrorism, so things have been hitting my desk for months. I’ve found several conversations between members of New Slate suggesting they wanted to take the fight to the Muslims. It concerned me a bit, so I had all their convos flagged and found some chatter suggesting something big was going to happen soon.”

Morrison sipped his coffee, settling in for a long conversation. He had found over the two years the kid had worked for him that it was best to just let him ramble, the intuitive leaps he made fascinating, if not quick to convey.

“So when I found the convo about them going to Egypt, I had anything odd in Egypt sent to my desk, and guess what I found.”

Morrison spun his fingers in a circle, urging Leroux to continue.

“An intercept from the Russians, requesting permission for one of their military transports to refuel in Benghazi, Libya, then a flight plan taking them over the Red Sea.”

“So?”

“So?” Leroux appeared perplexed then his eyebrows shot up. “Oh! Well, that’s just it. The flight plan ends at the Red Sea, with them returning the same route, no deviation in altitude.”

Morrison cocked an eyebrow and leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. “That’s odd.”

“And here’s something even odder.”

Morrison waited patiently for what he knew would be Leroux’s ‘Pièce de résistance’.

“The Russians re-tasked a battlecruiser deployed to monitor the Somali coast for pirates, and sent it steaming north into the Red Sea at the same time as the request to Libya went out.”

“It’s thin,” said Morrison, his eyes gazing at the ceiling as he processed this new information. “So we have a white supremacist group claiming something big is going to happen, that they are going to go to Muslim Egypt as an NGO. The Russians seem to do a meaningless flight at thirty plus thousand feet, calling in political favors—”