Black Rose

CHAPTER 4

The Korean operation had put Major Igor Kaminsky in a good mood. Action always did. Kaminsky was a ranking field officer in Zaslon, a special ops unit so secret and ruthless that the Kremlin refused to admit it existed. He'd missed out on the Ukraine, though it was still possible his elite Spetsnaz unit would be sent there. Or they might send me to one of the Baltic territories, he thought. For Kaminsky and his masters, the Baltic states were only temporarily independent entities. They all had large ethnic Russian populations, with strong internal movements that wanted to be part of Novo Rossiya, the New Russia. His unit would be part of any future operations in the Baltics.

In the meantime, he was enjoying the comfort of a first class railroad car in a special train. Kaminsky was on his way from Moscow to the Sverdlovsk-19 Military Laboratory outside of Yekaterinburg, on the Eastern side of the Urals. Six of his men rode in the car with him. An aluminum case containing the North Korean samples sat on the green plush of the seat next to him.

The attack on the research complex had gone off without any problems. Security had been surprisingly lax. Kaminsky had expected at least twice as many guards but it seemed that the Great Leader thought the hidden facility safe by virtue of its secrecy and difficulty of access. The most complicated part of the operation had been getting himself and his men into the area and on site without being detected. All of the men he'd chosen for the mission had Asian features. Two spoke fluent Korean. Multiple language skills were part of the basic requirements for a Spetsnaz operative.

Even scientists and guards had to eat. Kaminsky had driven right up to the gates in a produce delivery van, riding in back where his Western features could not be seen. Killing the sentries at the guardhouse wasn't hard. Once inside the gates, the rest was easy.

It was too bad about the girl in the lab. She'd been pretty, until he'd cut her throat. There could be no trail back to her boyfriend and his Russian contact. Of course the boyfriend was dead as well. Perhaps they'd found each other in whatever Korean heaven they believed in, if they'd believed in anything except the illusion of the South.

The train was still on the Western side of the Urals. Ahead, the mountains that separated European Russia from the rest of the country rose bleak and cold toward a winter sky filled with fast moving gray and black clouds. Snow lay thick along the railway embankment. A fresh storm was beginning, the wet flakes spattering against Kaminsky's window.

Kaminsky didn't mind the train ride. It made a pleasant change from the helicopters and noisy troop transports he was used to. He was thankful to whatever faceless bureaucrat had decided the train was the best way to send him and his package of bugs to the laboratory. Kaminsky reached over and patted the case next to him.

The train entered a long tunnel. The lights in the car flickered, then went dark. One of his men cursed.

"Lenin strikes again," someone said.

There was brief laughter, then silence in the car except for the rhythmic clacking of the wheels over the rails. In Russia, one accepted things like electrical failures as business as usual.

The train slowed, then stopped. It was pitch black in the tunnel. Major Kaminsky reached over to touch the case. It hadn't moved. Still, the darkness was unnerving.

Kaminsky heard the door at the end of the car open. Good, he thought, now I'll find out what's holding us up. There had better be a good reason.

He had time to see a red dot appear on his chest before a bullet drilled through his tunic and ended his thoughts about the train and everything else.