Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist Aftermath (17 page)

“It’s Sam. And to be honest, you remind me of my own daughter.”

“Really?”

He nodded.

A shadow passed over them.

“Hey, Sam, my guy in Lima just called back,” said Kobin. “Oh, sorry to interrupt.
But hey, don’t you think she’s a little young for . . .”

Fisher closed his eyes, trying to contain the explosion forming at the back of his
throat.

“Sorry, yeah, well, anyway,” Kobin stammered, “My guy in Lima’s got intel that’ll
blow your mind.”

21

“THAT’S
him,” said Briggs.

Fisher zoomed in with his trifocals on the man entering the Corporación Minera Ananea’s
tin-roofed office lying in the shadows of the towering, snowcapped peaks of La Rinconada.

“You get a shot of his face?” Fisher asked.

“Got it,” Briggs answered. “And uploaded.”

“Charlie, transfer that photo back to the safe house in Virginia,” Fisher ordered.
“See if Nadia can ID this guy.”

“Already done. You want fries with that?”

“Nice. Get me confirmation ASAP.”

Fisher eased back along the mountainside, slipping behind the ice-covered boulders
along the cliff that overlooked the mining headquarters, which was no more than four
double-wide trailers lying in the cowl of the glacier. The buildings were identified
by a small sign bearing the company’s tiny blue logo. Seven dust-covered SUVs were
parked near one trailer, their off-road tires pinpricked with chips of stone.

Fisher and Briggs were perched at more than eighteen thousand feet in the Peruvian
Andes, the wind like knives across their cheeks, the night washing away into a saffron
haze to the east.

The past sixteen hours had felt like only two, and ironically, Kobin—once the selfish,
self-absorbed, egomaniacal crackhead smuggler—had come through for them in spades.

“Follow the money, find the man,” he’d said.

Trouble was, Igor Kasperov was too damned shrewd to make mistakes. Kobin believed
that he’d rely upon favors, stashes of cash, or other such underground or even illegal
means to procure both transport and living quarters, and to pay off those who needed
to remain quiet regarding his whereabouts. Sure, he’d attempt to limit his contacts
as much as possible, but he couldn’t do everything alone.

And he couldn’t pay off everyone.

That’s where Kobin came in. He always boasted that he was the go-to man with a direct
line into the seedy exploits of smugglers, cartels, mercenaries, and guerilla-backed
incursions across the globe. Sometimes the hype outweighed the facts, but not this
time.

“Okay, teammates, prepare to be schooled,” he’d told them, holding court in the control
center as though he owned the plane.

“Teammates?” Briggs asked, as though the word had gone sour on his lips.

“Shuddup, Action Jackson. So . . . I’ll put it to you this way. La Rinconada’s gold
mining operation is a money-laundering wet dream for the cartels. Here’s how it works.
The cartel-backed banks use American dollars to buy the gold from the mining company
at one hundred and ten percent over current gold spot prices—that’s the standard fee
for money laundering. The cartels have a team of gold and silver bullion traders,
and these greedy little fuckers sell the gold in the open market, and you know with
the volatility we have today, they usually recoup more than their premium fee. So
my guy in Lima has run guns, drugs, and even gold for these guys, meaning he’s tapped
into what’s going on up there. His contact at the mining company office says that
somebody’s been drafting checks drawn against some Swiss and offshore accounts to
buy untraceable U.S. dollars, ten percent over face value, which is the fee for what
we call remote and discrete ATM services.” Kobin began to gesticulate wildly, a half-crazed
glimmer flooding his eyes. “Boys and girls, think about it. Who the hell but a rich
man would be drafting off of Swiss and offshore accounts? Sam’s right. Kasperov is
up there, and he’s no dummy. He’s doing more than just lying low. That fucking Russian
is picking up some serious cash so he’s untraceable and good to go for his next trip.”

Fisher drew back his head. “Holy shit, Kobin. Nice work.”

“I plan to verify all this,” said Grim.

“Be my guest,” said Kobin. “I keep telling you fuckers how valuable I am. When are
you dumbasses gonna learn? Schooled? Oh, that would be you people.”

“I don’t think so,” said Briggs.

Kobin ignored him and faced Fisher. “You see? You never want to turn me over to Kestrel.
I’m way too valuable.”

Grim stepped between them and said, “I hate ’im. But he’s earned his keep—for now.”

“Agreed,” Fisher said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

After transferring Nadia to the CIA charter, they had taken off. The flight from Incirlik
to Juliaca, Peru, was over 7,300 miles, meaning they had about 2,700 miles between
each midair refueling. With a cruising speed of about 515 miles per hour, the flight
had taken more than fourteen hours, giving them ample time to sleep and prep.

In the meantime, Grim had coordinated with the Special Activities Division. They sent
a paramilitary ops officer to Juliaca to reconnoiter the airport, searching for any
spotters Kasperov might have planted there.

Grim had also pointed out that Paladin’s arrival might raise a few suspicions, so
they’d planned to land at about 0200 local time and have the plane met by refueling
services to make it appear as though this was only a brief layover.

Presently, they displayed bogus tail numbers along with the letters “AETC” and additional
markings for the 97th Air Mobility Wing out of Altus AFB, Oklahoma. Altus AFB was
the Air Education and Training Command, or AETC, for C-17s and KC-135s. Mission permitting,
Paladin’s tail markings were changed every ninety days, and it was imperative that
the transport always displayed them, lest they be immediately pegged as a spec ops
unit.

Their CIA contact in Juliaca had reported no signs of spotters at the airport or its
environs; however, there was still no way to tell if Kasperov had someone on the inside
who worked at the airport and who’d been overlooked.

Charlie’s research on helicopter charters up to the mountain was inconclusive because
several companies operated daily, ferrying, he assumed, mining executives, engineers,
and reps from equipment manufacturers. None of those records indicated anything more
than the numbers of passengers, not descriptions, names, IDs, or anything else useful.
Some of the companies might’ve kept hard-copy files of that data in their offices,
but Charlie found none available electronically. This was, after all, Peru.

Once they’d landed, Fisher and Briggs had rented an old 2003 Toyota Tacoma crew cab
pickup. They headed up for the seventy-five-mile drive to the city along a road notorious
for bandits who preyed upon miners returning with their pockets stuffed with cash.

Adjusting to the altitude had been a significant challenge, more so because they parked
their rental about a mile outside the city and hiked in on foot, arriving in the early-morning
hours, their weapons and goggles concealed under heavy parkas purchased at the airport.

Fighting for breath, they’d worked their way along the perimeter hills to avoid being
spotted, then had descended to overlook the city, a shantytown of tin huts built at
precarious angles and glittering like a hellish oasis.

Perhaps that was an understatement.

This was a slum more garbage-laden, more foul-smelling, and more . . .
sad
 . . . than any Fisher had ever encountered—despite his world travels. According to
the team’s intel, as many as fifty thousand people braved the stiflingly thin air
and bitter cold to work in the deep tunnels and pick along the mountainsides. There
was no sewage system, no running water, no paved roads, no sanitation of any kind.
The gold found here was, as Grim had earlier mentioned, processed with mercury, one
of the planet’s most toxic elements, and it had found its way into everything. The
only reason why electrical wires spanned the huts like the circuit board of an old
operator’s system was because the mining company had brought in that convenience to
power their drilling machinery and recharge their shuttles that rumbled through the
maze of mine shafts.

Up on the side of a mountain the locals ironically called “Sleeping Beauty,” bulldozers
were already plowing deep gashes into the earth, with whole families wading out into
the icy pools of contaminated mud, fishing for gold. Women in broad skirts were struggling
up the cliffs of loose shale, heaving bags of ore, believing they could find some
gold flecks hidden among the waste. Even more disturbing were the children stumbling
behind them, shouldering bags of their own.

Farther up, inside the mines, men toiled in shafts sometimes flooded with lethal amounts
of carbon monoxide and reinforced with timbers already threatening to collapse. Every
year miners died from faulty fuses on dynamite cables, while others got trapped by
the shifting glacier. They worked for thirty days without payment under the
cachorreo
system. On the thirty-first day they were allowed to take with them as much ore as
they could carry on their shoulders. While the system seemed unfair, many of the multigenerational
miners appreciated it and did quite well; however, like an Old West boomtown, there
weren’t many places to spend their money, save for the local bars where they satisfied
their alcohol addictions. The vicious cycle continued: work, eat, get drunk, sleep.
Life here could not be much harsher, and Fisher could see why Kasperov wanted to help
these people.

“I can’t even bear to look,” said Briggs.

Fisher shook his head. “I know.”

Less then thirty minutes later, they were in position to reconnoiter the mining office,
and within another thirty minutes they had marked their target.

“Sam, I just got word back from Nadia,” Charlie said breathlessly. “That guy is definitely
one of her father’s bodyguards. His name’s Anatoly.”

“Grim, you hear that?”

“I heard it.”

“Then you agree, he’s here,” said Fisher. “So, Charlie, I hope you followed up with
a threat assessment.”

“Hell, yeah, I did. She said he usually travels with four or five bodyguards, plus
we can assume he’s got his girlfriend with him. Don’t think she’ll be an issue unless
she’s a martial artist, a gun expert, and a supermodel.”

“Just like me,” Fisher quipped.

Charlie went on: “I asked if she knew any way we could contact this Anatoly guy, and
she said they took her cell phone, she doesn’t know the numbers, and that they probably
wouldn’t answer their phones anyway.”

“That’s okay. We’ll talk to him ourselves. We’re moving in.”

Fisher gave a hand signal to Briggs. They crouched down and left their cover, shifting
gingerly along the mountain, following a ridge whose edges were piled high with snow.
His gut tightened at the sound of his footfalls, and he tried to ease his boots onto
the next length of ice-encrusted snow.

His hackles rising, Fisher called for a halt and scanned the mountainside behind them.
Nothing but blue-and-white ice and a jagged seam where the sunlight met the deep shadows.
He hesitated a moment more.

“What?” Briggs asked.

“Thought I heard something up there. Ah, probably nothing.”

“I’ll do a sonar scan.”

Suddenly, down below, a trailer door swung open, and their target appeared. Anatoly
was a barrel-chested man, well over six feet, and currently zipping up a parka that
barely fit him. He’d obviously sold Kasperov on his sheer size and intimidation factor.
Many of these apes knew how to bulk up, but their cardiovascular fitness was often
lacking.

Unfortunately, Anatoly was about to prove Fisher wrong, even in this high altitude.

A small section of rock and gray ice went tumbling down into the parking lot.

“Wasn’t me,” stage-whispered Briggs.

“Came from above,” said Fisher.

They
were
being followed.

Anatoly glanced up, beyond Fisher and Briggs, then his gaze lowered and focused on
them before they could duck.

He bolted.
Shit!

They needed to stop him before his thumb reached his smartphone. One call would trip
all the alarms and send Kasperov running.

Fisher was already analyzing the distance to the target and factoring in his equipment
load.

Thirty meters.

Anatoly not only ran, but he knew exactly what to do, seeking cover first behind one
of the parked cars, then drawing his pistol and firing four rounds into the ice just
below.

Weapons drawn, Fisher and Briggs darted across the hill toward the next shoulder of
rock jutting out about a meter and offering scant cover.

Anatoly was buying time to make that call.

Fisher held his breath. If they couldn’t stop the man, they could render the phone
useless. He let fly one of his EMP grenades, the cylinder tumbling end over end like
a dagger.

To be technical, the grenade was a flux compression generator bomb, and as it hit
the ice, rolling within a meter of Anatoly’s boots, a fuse ignited the explosive material
within. That explosion traveled up through the middle of the cylinder to create a
moving short circuit. That short circuit compressed a magnetic field and unleashed
an intense nonnuclear electromagnetic pulse. Fisher had set the target radius tight—just
two meters.

After the buzz and pop, a hissing not unlike static from a broken television resounded
for two seconds.

Anatoly’s phone was now dead.

But his legs worked just fine.

He broke from the cars and thundered around the back of the double-wide trailers,
picking his way between mats of shiny ice. He headed up a road leading toward an irregular-shaped
maw carved into the mountainside, with bright yellow warning placards posted to the
right and left.

22

“WHY’S
he going in there?” cried Briggs.

Fisher’s gaze swept to the left, to another pair of tunnel entrances about a hundred
meters off, in the distance. “Must come out on the other side! Shortcut back to town.”

“Sam, what’s going on?” asked Grim.

“We’ve got a tail. And our guy’s on the move, heading into a tunnel. Might lose contact
with you. Stand by.”

“Charlie, you got a map of these tunnels?” Briggs asked.

“No way. From what I read they’re constantly digging new ones while the others cave
in. Be safe in there!”

The gunfire had brought the mining company bosses out of their trailers, and Fisher
tossed a look back at those men before he and Briggs passed into the cold darkness,
their boots crunching loudly across the thick gravel bed.

They tugged down their trifocals and activated their night vision. Fisher’s loadout
for this operation included an assortment of less-than-lethal weapons, most notably
a tactical crossbow he’d been fielding, along with a quiver of sticky shocker darts.
The darts were, in effect, cordless Tasers that delivered enough current to stun an
opponent. He chose to bring them now because it’d be less than polite to kill Kasperov’s
bodyguards—especially when they were trying to persuade the man to come home with
them.

For his part Anatoly had no intention of being shocked and had lengthened his lead.
He was already out of sight, having run straight down the first shaft for about ten
meters, then he’d made a sharp left turn and was gone. He’d knocked over one miner
who was coming outside and stolen the helmet of another because he needed the man’s
light to navigate his way through the otherwise dark maze.

The tunnel was barely two meters high, about three wide, sans any reinforcements near
the entrance. The miners’ battery-powered carts and shuttles had worn deep grooves
in the floor, and Fisher dropped into one of those ruts, leading Briggs down the first
shaft toward the connecting tunnel.

With the shadows peeled back by their night vision, and their breaths trailing thick
over their shoulders, Fisher picked up the pace, with Briggs repeatedly checking their
six o’clock for that tail.

A muted roll of explosions from somewhere on the other side of the mountain sent a
wavering bass note up through their legs, followed by clouds of dust swirling down
from the ceiling. The musky scent near the entrance had given way to something colder,
dryer, like the air inside that old meat locker in Vilcha.

With a start, Fisher slowed as a golf-cart-like shuttle came humming around a corner,
straight toward them. The miner at the wheel was already waving his fist and hollering
in Spanish about no one being in the tunnels, but Fisher and Briggs hit the wall and
raced past him. The shaft grew a bit more narrow, the support beams brushing their
shoulders before the tunnel emptied into a much wider chamber at least ten meters
across where blasting had left ragged scars across the rock.

They had the span of two seconds to take in the view before a wink of muzzle fire
lit near the far exit, followed a millisecond later by the pistol’s report, the cracks
echoing so loudly that Fisher’s ears stung as he hit the ground.

Grim’s voice crackled in his subdermal, the words garbled, no comm operation down
here, as he suspected. Not much to tell her, though.
We’re pinned down, about to die. As usual.

Fisher propped up on his elbows and steadied the crossbow, but by the time he’d lined
up the shot, Anatoly had already vanished down the next shaft.

This time Briggs was on his feet first and Fisher pulled up the rear, dropping in
behind the young man, fighting to keep up. They swept through the chamber and descended
into the next passageway at a sudden and nerve-racking thirty-degree angle, their
boots threatening to give way. This was not part of the main shaft but some kind of
a detour burrow that had been constructed around a tunnel to their right that had
caved in.

For a second Fisher thought he heard rocks tumbling behind them. He swung around,
then glanced up to the top of the tunnel. Shadows shifted on the ceiling.

“Sam, come on!” shouted Briggs. “I see him!”

Fisher turned back and charged in behind Briggs as the floor finally grew more level.
Once more, concussive booms shook through the tunnel, these much more fierce, and
Fisher realized that the tunnels had been evacuated for blasting, which would explain
why they’d encountered so few miners. Despite the heavy wooden girders spanning the
ceiling above, Fisher felt the walls shaking and closing in. Briggs began to slow
and called back. “Not liking this, Sam.”

“Me, neither, but there he is!”

Anatoly appeared in a section of tunnel running perfectly straight for more than ten
meters, his helmet light flickering like lightning.

He stopped short and turned back, with Briggs diving onto his chest and Fisher lunging
ahead as the gunfire ricocheted off the walls and ceiling.

“Hold your fire!” Fisher screamed at the man in Russian. “We’re with you!”

The bodyguard wasn’t falling for a gambit that simple. He answered with another round
that echoed away.

Fisher managed to roll and come up with the crossbow, cutting loose with a bolt that
arced straight down the tunnel and collided with the wall not a second after Anatoly
rolled away. Briggs was there first, scooping up the bolt and tossing it back to Fisher
even as they rounded the next corner.

Barely three breaths later, they came into an oval-shaped antechamber broadening toward
a brightly lit cavern, the largest subterranean area they’d encountered thus far,
the ceiling soaring some six meters, the place at least twice as wide. Electrical
cables snaked along the walls to power the bright lights festooned across the ceiling,
and below, along the far wall, lay piles of rock and gravel that rose above their
heads, blown free in the days prior and waiting for the miners’ picks, axes, and shovels.

Another explosion rattled the overhead lights, and Fisher was reminded of a saying
the miners had from the intel docs:
“Al labor me voy, no sé si volveré,”
which translated to
“Off to work I go, I don’t know if I’ll make it back.” He certainly shared that sentiment.

Briggs led him through the chamber, keeping tight to the piles of rock—

But before they could reach the next exit with its steel-reinforced crossbeams and
girders, the crack of Anatoly’s pistol resounded from ahead . . . followed immediately
by some lower-pitched rifle fire from behind.

“What the hell?” cried Briggs, ducking behind two boulders that had split like arrowheads.
Fisher peered out from behind the rock, magnified the view, and saw two mining company
security guards dropping to cover on the opposite side of the chamber.

He shared that news with Briggs, then gave another hand signal, indicating they should
head around the piles of rock and advance on the exit from the left flank.

Footfalls behind sent Fisher whirling around.

Both guards had broken from cover and were hightailing it straight for them.

Fisher had the crossbow up and his first bolt in the air before he could take another
breath.

Even as that bolt struck the lead guard squarely in the chest, Fisher was already
reloading the weapon.

As guard number one wailed in agony, dropped to his knees, then tried to reach up
and pry free the shocker from his body, Fisher cut loose the second bolt, dodging
from the incoming fire as the sticky shocker thumped on number two’s chest, a bit
lower but still a good hit almost center mass.

Their cursing in Spanish and wailing sounded strangely medieval and cued Briggs to
take off, with Fisher tight on his heels, repressing a grin over his counterattack.
Even suppressed weapons made a significant and audible clicking, especially as you
moved into the larger calibers, but the crossbow’s string was whisper quiet. Old guys
rule and old-school wins again.

By the time they reached the exit, they could hear shouting, muddled at first, then
growing louder behind them. They raced into the next shaft and aimed for a faint glow
bobbing on the dusty air like a channel marker.

“This bastard can run,” said Briggs.

“They’ve been up here longer than us. They’re used to the altitude,” said Fisher,
stealing his next breath.

Two more shots rang out, but they originated ahead and weren’t directed at Fisher
and Briggs. Had Anatoly just engaged more security men? Fisher hoped so. That’d slow
him down.

The tunnel began jogging lazily to the left, and then, off to their right, they spotted
another mining shuttle.

They slowed, and Briggs cursed as they took in Anatoly’s handiwork:

One man was slumped over the wheel, the other lay beside his shovel with a gunshot
wound in his neck. He clutched the wound and reached out toward them, then began pointing
at an open cardboard box beside their cart. The box was labeled
DINAMITA EXPLOSIVO
with triangular warning symbols. Several bundles remained, but the man was trying
to indicate something else that dawned on Fisher.

He opened his mouth to curse.

But he never finished.

The explosion ahead thundered so loudly and the concussion came so powerfully that
Fisher and Briggs were blown flat onto their backs, the ground quaking, sharp-edged
debris blasting through the tunnel.

There might’ve been a roar of flames, he wasn’t sure, but a heat wave passed over
him, followed by clouds of choking black smoke that had him tucking his face into
his parka.

“Keep down,” he told Briggs, who was right beside him, writhing and offering up more
strings of epithets.

Fisher’s ears rang as the hailstorm of rock rained down on them, his pulse quickening
over thoughts that at any second the entire tunnel would collapse.

Still covering his mouth and nose, he forced his head up and hazarded a look through
his trifocals. Bad idea. His worst fears were coming true.

The side wall about five meters away began to collapse, splintering apart as though
a demon were kicking his way through from the other side. The ceiling buckled and
finally succumbed to all the force, the tunnel filling up with massive pieces of shale
haloed in gravel and swelling dust.

“Get up!” he cried to Briggs. “We’ll be cut off!”

Briggs rose beside Fisher, coughing, and they pushed through the billowing dust, their
goggles penetrating the veils until they reached the pile of rubble.

While Fisher expected the worst, he mounted the first pile of rubble, picking his
way carefully across it as the timbers above creaked and more dust swirled down, making
him feel as though he were shifting through an hourglass.

With a shudder of hope, he found an opening barely wide enough to squeeze through.
He handed his crossbow and quiver to Briggs, pulled himself about two meters through
it, then reached back and accepted the weapons. Briggs pulled himself through, and
Fisher helped him down. Small miracle. They’d bridged the tunnel collapse.

Yet they both coughed even more now, and the air seemed much thinner.

“I’m getting a headache,” said Briggs.

“Let’s go,” Fisher urged him, feeling his own head rage with drummers and cymbal crashers.

Briggs took a few steps forward, then thrust out his hand for balance, barely finding
the wall before he fell. “Dizzy, too.”

Intel on the mine said that symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning included headache,
dizziness, weakness, nausea, vomiting, chest pain, and confusion—all from an odorless,
colorless gas, a silent and elusive killer, the chemical version of one Sam Fisher.

“We need to get out of here,” he cried. “Come on, run!”

They started forward, but not five steps later the ground quaked again.

Gasping, Fisher turned his gaze up to the ceiling, where a crack had opened and began
splintering into more cracks, the webs threatening to pry apart the crossbars and
buckle the supporting girders to their left and right.

The first explosion must’ve weakened the tunnel in this section. Fisher was no engineer,
no seasoned miner, but he determined that if they didn’t reach the far end of the
tunnel in the next few breaths, their deaths, wakes, funerals, and burials would occur
with drive-thru expediency. At least Grim would save a few bucks on the flowers.

Briggs picked up the pace as shards of rock began plummeting behind them. The ceiling
began to give way in a timpani roll of thunder that Fisher imagined would consume
them whole.

Helmet lights were flashing at the far end, and Fisher picked up the pace, struggling
up beside Briggs, who was beginning to falter.

“Almost there,” he urged the man, his voice strangely thin and unrecognizable.

With a terrific boom the rest of the ceiling collapsed, spitting forward a huge dust
cloud that knocked both of them down onto their hands and knees.

The ground shook again, and Fisher tucked his face back into his parka for a few breaths.

When he glanced over at Briggs, the man was lying flat on his belly and unconscious.
He tried to scream, but nothing came out. His cheeks caved in.

There were few feelings in the world that Fisher despised more than helplessness.
Being in control gave him a sense of peace and security, a sense of place and purpose.

But damn it, they couldn’t fight if they couldn’t breathe. He fell forward, smiting
a fist on the ground.

No, this couldn’t be it. Not here, not now, not like this.

He thought he would vomit, but the darkness came first.

* * *

“WHAT
are you afraid of?”

Fisher wasn’t sure who was asking the question, but the voice sounded strangely like
his own.

“I’m afraid that everything I’ve done with my life will mean nothing. I’m afraid of
losing my daughter again. I’m afraid of being a terrible father.”