Dead fall, p.2
Dead Fall, page 2
In front of the main staircase leading down to the kitchen, Anna had shoved a bookcase. Around it she had strewn trash and a few pieces of broken furniture. It was a less-than-optimal camouflage job, but it had been the only thing they could come up with.
A few seconds later, she heard the bookcase being scraped across the floor. The fiend was pushing it away from the wall!
It was followed by the sound of his footsteps bounding down the stairs two at a time. He was headed for the kitchen.
Soon enough, a series of loud crashing and banging sounds began. She could hear the invader overturning baker’s racks and shelving units. It sounded like nothing more than wanton vandalism—destruction for destruction’s sake. Or was it?
As another terrible thought entered her mind, her blood once again ran cold. Could the bookcase at the top of the stairs have given him reason to believe that something else might be hidden in the kitchen?
She had no way of knowing, but the fear gripped Anna so tightly that she could barely breathe. The bookcase had been her idea.
Regardless of what his motivation was, if this savage was intent on tearing the kitchen apart piece by piece, the odds were that he was going to uncover the infants and other children hiding in the pantry.
She couldn’t let that happen. And while she knew it was insane—beyond insane, actually—she had to do something.
Against all the advice she had given her colleagues regarding not leaving their hiding places until after the threat had passed, she left hers.
Careful not to make any noise, she moved through the hallway and crept down the stairs, her knife clasped tightly in her hand. She had no idea how she was going to handle the situation, only that it needed to be handled and there was no one else but her.
With the sound of each broken dish or smashed cabinet, she flinched, but kept going. She had never been so terrified in all her life.
Drawing nearer to the kitchen, she took a deep breath and paused. This was it. Exhaling, she peered around the edge of the doorway into the kitchen. There, amid the destruction, she could see the Russian beast.
He had laid his hatchet on the counter and was focused on the old refrigerator, which was obscuring the entrance to the pantry. Had he figured it out?
If he hadn’t yet, Anna was certain that he was about to. And once he had discovered the children and staff hiding on the other side, there was no telling what horrors he would unleash.
She had to come up with a plan—right now, right here—before any of the other monsters joined him in the basement. She was only going to get one chance.
She didn’t want to tangle with the man, not physically, not if she didn’t have to. There was no telling what kind of psychotic tricks he might have up his sleeve. She had heard the grisly tales of Russians carrying straight razors in order to disfigure their victims once they’d had their way with them. She had no intention of becoming a victim.
The key to successfully overcoming the soldier was to use the element of surprise to her advantage. At the same time, she needed to keep as much distance between them as possible. Doing a fast scan of the kitchen, she locked onto an idea.
The only question remaining was whether she could fully launch her attack before the ghoul had a chance to react. There was only one way to find out.
Taking a final, deep breath, she counted down from three, then slid through the doorway and into the kitchen.
What she wouldn’t have given at this moment for a gun and the knowledge of how to use it. Instead she would have to rely on active-shooter training she had received at her law firm back in Chicago.
The instructor, an ex–Green Beret, had based his workshop on the Run, Hide, Fight formula and had spent most of his time focusing on the Fight component. As Anna crept toward the fire extinguisher, she was grateful for everything the Special Forces operative had taught her. She only wished she had heeded his advice about regularly checking to make sure the extinguisher was up to date.
Not that it would have mattered. With all the bombs and missiles that had been falling on Ukraine, fresh fire extinguishers were simply another unicorn of the war—something rumored to exist, but impossible to find.
With her heart thumping in her chest, she chose her steps as carefully, as quickly, and as quietly as she could. She made her way across the side of the kitchen and successfully removed the extinguisher from the wall. Pulling the pin, she headed toward the man who was still, thankfully, preoccupied with the fridge.
She was almost on top of him when something caused the Russian to spin. The moment he caught sight of her, he lunged for his hatchet.
Anna had no idea if she was close enough to blind him with the fog of the extinguisher, but she had no other choice. The moment had arrived and she squeezed the handle, deploying an enormous cloud.
Though the extinguisher was seriously out of date, there was just enough pressure to do the job.
While the demon couldn’t see, Anna had pinpointed his location and knew exactly where he was standing.
Raising the extinguisher, she charged and used all of her strength to bring the cylinder crashing down against the man’s head.
It was a death blow. Anna had succeeded in cracking open the ghoul’s skull and spilling his brains onto the kitchen floor as his lifeless body collapsed.
The mixture of fear and adrenaline only made her heart pound harder in her chest. There was no time to catch her breath or reassess the situation. There was only time to act. At some point, which she had to assume would be sooner rather than later, the monster’s colleagues would be looking for him. Eventually they would make their way to the basement. She now needed an entirely new plan.
But before she could react, she heard someone step into the kitchen and cock a pistol.
CHAPTER 1
GOMEL, BELARUS
THURSDAY
The hit, deep inside the Russian client state of Belarus, had required a tremendous amount of planning in a very short period of time. The target would be moving soon. Once the window had closed, no one knew when or where it would open again.
The final go/no-go call was left to the team leader, Scot Harvath. The opportunity was too juicy to pass up. Faisal Al-Masri was a big fish. Taking him off the board would have global repercussions. After reviewing all of the intel, Harvath had given the mission the green light.
Al-Masri was one of the highest-ranking members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the head of Iran’s drone program. The fact that the Israelis, who were exceedingly good at what they did, had tried and failed—not once, but twice—to take him out wasn’t lost on Harvath. The man was particularly smart when it came to his security. In other areas, however, he had been making nothing but bad decisions.
In Iraq and Syria, under his orders, IRGC drones had been targeting Americans. U.S. military members, diplomatic personnel, and civilian contractors had all come under attack. For that, Al-Masri had earned himself a VIP position on the CIA’s kill list. But his problems didn’t end there.
He and the IRGC had been selling their Shahed-136 drones to the Russians, who in turn had been using them against civilian sites and critical infrastructure across Ukraine. With winter approaching, Russian President Fedor Peshkov had stepped up his attacks on hospitals, schools, power stations, water treatment facilities, bus stations, train stations, and rail lines. His goal was to terrorize and demoralize the people of Ukraine, making them as miserable as possible. What he ended up doing, however, was pissing them off more.
When Ukrainian Intelligence learned that Al-Masri and a team of ten drone instructors were headed to Belarus to train Russian forces, they passed that information on to the CIA.
Knowing that they would likely be blamed for anything that happened to Al-Masri and his team, the Ukrainians had only one request—that the strike be audacious.
Harvath was happy to take it under advisement. America’s hit a few years back on the head of the IRGC’s Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, hadn’t exactly been low-key. They’d used a Hellfire missile on his motorcade and splattered him across four Baghdad neighborhoods.
As fitting as it would have been to also take Al-Masri via a drone-fired weapon, the United States didn’t have anything in the skies above Belarus. Harvath and his group were going to have to be more creative. They were also going to have to assume a lot more risk.
Al-Masri and the IRGC instructors were being protected by the Russian National Guard and officers from the Federal Security Service, also known as the FSB, successor to the KGB. In theory, they would be alert, disciplined, and well practiced in close protection. But in reality, they were still Russians, which meant they were prone to being lazy, undisciplined, and assigned at the last minute to work they were unqualified for.
President Peshkov placed little value on the lives of his citizens. He had been feeding his people nonstop into the wood chipper that was the war in Ukraine. What kind of talent he had in reserve that he could assign to protect Al-Masri and his people was anyone’s guess.
Not that the level of talent being fielded by the Russians would have any impact on his operation. He didn’t plan on getting in a gunfight. There were too many of them. Instead, he was going to take them in transit.
Because of the sensitivity of this operation, the CIA didn’t want any official fingerprints on it. They wanted the United States to maintain full deniability. That’s why it had been given to Harvath and his team at the Carlton Group—a private intelligence agency named after its founder, Reed Carlton.
A legendary maverick at the CIA, Carlton had come up with the vision for and had helped establish the Agency’s famed Counterterrorism Center.
Unhappy with what he saw as the growing timidity of management, and choking to death on the bureaucracy and red tape, he decided to give retirement a whirl. While Mrs. Carlton had enjoyed riding off into the sunset, being out of the game drove Mr. Carlton insane. America’s enemies were only growing more dangerous and more emboldened. Something needed to be done. And so he had done it. He started his own organization.
With the rise of private military corporations, Carlton had seen the next wave of opportunity as the creation of private intelligence agencies. He had made a big bet and it had paid off handsomely. Despite his violent passing, the organization he had founded not only lived on but was thriving, accepting some of the most dangerous assignments the CIA and the White House could throw at it. At the center of it all was a highly skilled team of former spies and ex–Special Forces operatives.
Harvath, who had distinguished himself as a U.S. Navy SEAL before being brought to the White House to help bolster their counterterrorism expertise, eventually caught the attention of Carlton. The “Old Man,” as those who had known him best called him, had handpicked Harvath as his successor and had taught him everything he knew. He had taken an apex predator and had made Harvath even more cunning, more deadly, and more resolved to take the fight to America’s enemies.
In essence, Carlton had enhanced an already exceptionally lethal weapon only to realize that he couldn’t control it, at least not fully.
When Alzheimer’s kicked in and his health began failing, he had asked Harvath to take over for him and run the organization. To everyone’s surprise, including Carlton’s, Harvath had said no. He wanted to remain in the field, to keep hunting bad guys, and to make sure that America’s enemies had a constant reason to lose sleep at night. In short, he didn’t think anyone could do better at his job than him.
To a certain degree, he was right. He had learned a lot of things over the years and had an impressive set of skills. He was very good at what he did. He was also getting older.
He was now working out twice as hard and taking a range of performance-enhancing drugs just to keep up. Bumps and bruises that he never used to feel often hurt like hell and were lingering much longer than they used to. Recovery time from serious injury was bordering on ridiculous.
The long and the short of it was that there was only so much more he could take. As his current superior, Gary Lawlor—the man who had been brought in to run the Carlton Group—was often heard to say, Harvath was a selfish prick who should have been spotting and developing the next generation of talent, not running around the globe kicking in doors and shooting bad guys in the face.
Harvath possessed a vast wealth of knowledge. To risk it by going downrange and constantly putting his life on the line was not only foolish, it also spoke to some sort of deep-seated issue that probably required professional help.
Having heard it all countless times, Harvath let it roll off his back—though the “prick” comment stung, just a little bit, coming from Lawlor, whom Harvath had known for a very long time.
Gary’s choice of language notwithstanding, Scot wasn’t going to step off the field and hang up his cleats until he was good and ready. And right now, he wasn’t ready. Though he was beginning to think that he might be getting closer.
For the moment, however, the only thing that mattered was the Al-Masri operation. The plan was unconventional, right down to its codename, and that was exactly what he had loved about it.
In an old thriller film called Ronin, a group of ex-spies and former Special Forces members are hired to conduct a dangerous assignment. Among them is a British man who lied about his background, claiming to have been with the SAS. An American who used to work for the CIA—played by Robert De Niro—pushes the Brit on his tactically unsound plan for an ambush. When the Brit starts to stammer, De Niro presses harder, demanding, “What color is the boathouse at Hereford?”—a reference to the training facility for the SAS. The imposter is unable to answer and exposes himself for the fraud that he is.
The film was a favorite around the Carlton Group offices. So, when it was proposed that the team structure a similar ambush to what the phony SAS character had suggested, “Operation Boathouse” was born. But instead of placing shooters across the road from each other, they were going to use explosives.
The Iranians were training their would-be Russian drone pilot students at a village in Belarus called Mykulichi. Iranians being Iranians, however, they wanted to take full advantage of being away from the watchful, disapproving eyes of the mullahs back in Tehran. They wanted to party. As such, they had said no to being housed with the Russians in Mykulichi and had demanded to be put up at a hotel in the much livelier city of Gomel.
This meant a daily back-and-forth commute. The Iranians still being Iranians, they wanted to be transported in style.
Drab, uncomfortable military vehicles were totally out of the question. They wanted climate-controlled, luxury SUVs with leather seats and onboard Wi-Fi. They were absolute prima donnas and it was going to be their downfall.
The only armored, nonmilitary luxury SUVs in the country belonged to the President and were at his residence in Minsk. There was no way he was going to give them up, and the Russians in charge of guarding the Iranians knew better than to ask. That meant that they would have to source locally available, thin-skinned vehicles.
The head of the protective detail, a grizzled FSB man who had been in some of the worst battles during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, had gone to work, putting together the best motorcade he could. Their marching orders had been crystal clear—protect the Iranians, but also do everything necessary to make them happy. They were expected to be half bodyguards and half camp counselors.
The FSB man was embarrassed by how far Russia had fallen. That the Iranians would be so technologically superior that the Kremlin would have to kiss their asses in order to defeat a country like Ukraine wasn’t just a bitter pill to swallow, it was like drinking battery acid.
Everything he knew and understood about the superiority of the Russian people and their leadership was now in question. Nevertheless, he did his job to the best of his ability. He tracked down the vehicles.
The Russian National Guard troops were divided between two Chinese-made armored vehicles borrowed from the Belarusian military, Hummer knockoffs known as Dongfeng Mengshis. One had been designated as the lead vehicle and the other brought up the rear. In between were three Chevrolet Suburbans carrying Al-Masri, the Iranian drone instructors, and the FSB security agents.
The FSB man had mapped the most efficient routes. He had mapped alternatives. He had identified choke points and potential ambush areas—of which, unfortunately, there were many. Mykulichi was a remote village, which was why it had been chosen for the training. Because of its location, there were only so many ways in and out. It definitely hadn’t been optimal, but he had continued to make the best of a bad situation.
He had pinpointed hospitals and had made detailed dossiers on each Iranian, including their blood types. He had then presented the information to his men and had made them drive the routes over and over, throwing them into different, highly unusual problems to see how they would react; challenging them to adjust.
Train like you fight and fight like you train. It was one of the oldest, truest maxims of combat. While decades ago his military instructors had been fond of quoting Chief of Staff of the Prussian Army Helmuth von Moltke, who had said that no battle plan survives after first contact with the enemy, he had preferred how American boxer Mike Tyson had phrased it—everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
The FSB man wanted his men to be able to take that punch, recalibrate, and stay in the fight. So he drilled them, relentlessly, near the point of mutiny, and then he treated them to a raucous night out. They had earned it.
His plan wasn’t perfect, but given the circumstances and his limited resources, it was solid. He was confident that no matter what got thrown at them, his men would not only be able to handle it, but they would also react in a polished, professional manner. By the time the Iranians arrived, their Russian hosts were ready for them.
What they weren’t ready for, however, was Harvath, his men, and the hell they were about to rain down.
