Blacklist Aftermath

13

Two hours and fifty-one minutes later, Paladin touched down at Kiev’s Zhuliany Airport, where Fisher and Briggs rented Suzuki C90T touring bikes for the trip over to Vilcha, with plans to arrive before sunset. The irradiated ghost town lay about seventy-nine miles northwest of Kiev and twenty-five miles east of Chernobyl in Ukraine.

Since its 1991 breakaway from the old Soviet Union, Ukraine remained a country vacillating between its past and uncertain future. The official language was Ukrainian, although Russian was the native tongue of a quarter of the country’s forty-five million citizens and was designated an official language in thirteen of its twenty-seven regions. The country had a working partnership with NATO yet remained home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Inside the exclusion zone, where all time had ceased in 1986, everything that was unequivocally Ukraine said so — only in Russian. The photos Fisher had reviewed during the flight over left a hollow feeling in his gut. Vilcha had been ripped straight from some postapocalyptic novel like I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. The place would make them feel like the last men on earth.

They reached the main checkpoint — a meager striped pole barrier along with a ramshackle guardhouse that had a familiar red stop sign in English hanging crookedly from its side wall. They slowed, then came to a halt, and Fisher lifted the visor on his helmet, wincing slightly at the frigid air. He handed the old man smoking an unfiltered Camel an envelope stuffed with greenbacks.

The man narrowed his gaze on Fisher before accepting the envelope.

Fisher returned a hard gaze of his own and said curtly in Russian, “Andriy Kobin sends his regards.”

The guard seemed unimpressed — meaning he’d probably met Kobin before. He counted the money, turned back to his younger partner, then nodded. He faced Fisher and asked in broken English, “Why you go into zone?”

Fisher answered in Russian and without hesitation: “We’re on vacation.”

The old guard rubbed the corners of his eyes, removed his cigarette from his chapped lips, and revealed to Fisher the ugliest missing-toothed grin this side of Siberia. He turned back to his partner, then began to chuckle so violently that he broke into a fit of coughing. Once he finally cleared his throat, he beamed and cried, “Send postcard. Have fun! Good times!” He waved them on.

Fisher gave a quick nod to Briggs, the barrier lifted, and they sped on through.

The Suzuki was a far cry from the bike Fisher had stolen back in Bolivia, and the road, while glistening here and there with streaks of ice, had certainly not claimed more than two hundred lives this past year. However, it did present a different kind of danger.

They cut through a heavily forested area, the barren limbs already suggesting the lifelessness of the towns to come. Grim had gained them access into one of the satellites of the National Reconnaissance Office, or NRO, and while they’d only had the Keyhole on target for a few minutes, she’d been able to photograph a 2009 Renault Kangoo minivan heading into Vilcha less than an hour ago. Grim had photographed the tag; it was a rental signed out to one Glib Lakeev. Moreover, Kobin had confirmed that, yes indeed, Kestrel had gone through the checkpoint and was heading home.

Consequently, they were losing precious time. Fisher had planned to arrive at the town before Kestrel in order to stage an ambush, but maybe it was better they didn’t spend additional time here. During the first five years after the catastrophe, the level of radioactive isotopes of cesium had reached 60 curies per square kilometer, with plutonium at 0.7 curies and strontium at 15 curies. Such radiation levels were deadly for humans; however, Grim had assured Fisher that while some of the radioactive isotopes, such as strontium-90 and cesium-137, still lingered, they were at tolerable exposure levels for limited periods of time.

The narrow road began showing signs of serious neglect as they left the forest and passed through several fields. Larger cracks and ruts rattled Fisher’s bones, and weeds heavily encroached up from the embankments. Leaves and branches booted by high winds were strewn everywhere, cleared only by more winds, and in some sections Fisher found himself leaning hard into turns to navigate around a branch and even a few fallen trees. Soon the fields surrendered back to the more dense woods, with trees beginning to tower over roofless houses and barns whose pale white walls were streaked in heavy layers of rust visible even in the dim headlights. A few signs written in Cyrillic and English proclaimed: DANGER.

Fisher’s skin began to crawl. He imagined he could feel the radioactive particles entering his lungs, then flowing into his bloodstream. He shuddered off the thought and checked his rearview mirror.

Briggs kept his bike about five meters back, allowing Fisher to pick the route across the potholes and debris. He’d been beating himself up over that missed shot, and while Fisher appreciated his determination, Briggs needed to accept and learn from setbacks. The lessons were sometimes bitter tasting, but you took your mental notes and moved on. Although he’d never admit it, Fisher thought that maybe, just maybe, Briggs was a better rifleman than he was. Fisher spent much more time firing pistols, perfecting his quick draw and close combat skills. Briggs did demonstrate an appreciable advantage with his various sniper rifles. One day they’d have to compete to see exactly where they stood.

As they neared the outskirts of the town, marked by a blue faded placard that read simply , they pulled over, killed their engines and lights, then began walking their bikes quietly down the road, with the buildings lying about two hundred meters ahead.

For a moment, the pervading darkness and silence were overwhelming. The plinks and pings of their cooling 1,462cc engines, along with the scuffle of their boots, barely rose above the soft wind.

They seemed to be the only living creatures here.

But then out in the forest to their left came the half-muted chuffs and shuffling of an unknown number of four-legged animals. They paused to remove their helmets and slip on their trifocals, the twilight now pushed back by their night vision.

Grim had said she’d known why Kestrel had come to Vilcha, and it sure as hell wasn’t to get nostalgic. A Voron agent the CIA and NSA were closely monitoring was found murdered in his hotel room in Kiev. A second agent operating in the same area was reported missing, according to their intel sources on the ground. That second agent was ID’d as Vasily Yenin, who, according to the CIA, had been a double agent working under former 3E director Tom Reed and possibly one of the men who’d been holding Kestrel prisoner.

If Kestrel was going into the contaminated zone, it was for one purpose, according to Grim: to interrogate and murder Yenin.

“Why get special permission and drive all the way into a contaminated zone just to kill a man?” Fisher had asked.

“It’s quiet. No one to hear the sounds of torture. Easy to get rid of the body.”

“If he killed one guy in Kiev, why would he take this guy to Vilcha?”

“Maybe Grim’s right. Maybe he wants to drag it out,” Briggs had suggested.

“And he’s also got another reason for going there. Killing Yenin and dumping the body is convenient,” Fisher had suggested. “He’s killing two birds.”

The answers were only minutes away.

They neared a row of shops emerging from the trees like broken teeth, their awnings shredded, their signs caked in a thick layer of dirt and dust. Fisher noted the briefest flash of light from a filthy window about midway down the row. A sign above read: , or MEAT.

“Grim, he’s gone into an old butcher shop.”

“I’ll try to confirm,” she answered.

Running now, they reached the first alley and ducked into it to park their bikes. Fisher gestured for Briggs to head out across the street and climb up into the small church with Orthodox crosses rising from its stained steeples and what looked like a small, mold-covered balcony above the archway entrance.

Briggs took off with his SIG SSG 3000 sniper rifle slung in its soft case over his back. The rifle was chambered in 7.62mm and featured a modular chassis system, making it perfect for an operation like this.

Fisher reached into his holster and deployed another of their micro UAVs like the drone they’d used up in the Caucasus Mountains. He reported the bird was in the air.

“Okay, Sam, I’ve got control,” Charlie answered.

Fisher watched as the tri-rotors purred more loudly, and the device flew away, rising high above the alley.

“I see Kestrel’s van out back behind the old butcher shop,” Charlie said.

“Hey, Sam, it’s Kobin here.”

“What the hell’s he doing on the channel?” Fisher asked.

“I wanted him to monitor,” said Grim. “Not talk.”

“Yeah, but I got something else, comes straight from Kestrel’s old mentor. So that’s not just any butcher shop. Kestrel used to work there when he was fourteen. His foster father made him lie about his age. It was all the blood and gore that made him run away to St. Petersburg.”

“It seems the blood and gore don’t bother him anymore.”

“No shit. Do us both a favor and leave that fucker there to rot.”

Fisher groaned. “Okay, Grim, get him off the line. Briggs, you in position?”

“Roger, up top, weapon ready in thirty seconds.”

“Okay, stand by.” Fisher skulked his way around the corner, along the frozen earth behind the buildings, then reached the butcher shop’s rear door, whose tarnished brass handle and splintering wood around the knob were darkened by decades-old bloodstains. He slowly turned the knob, finding the door unlocked.

When noise of any kind was your enemy, you always came prepared. From his breast pocket he withdrew a pen-sized bottle of silicone spray and doused the door’s hinges; the pump action was quiet enough to be dampened by the wind. He waited a few seconds more for the silicone to soak in.

Now, clutching his Five-seveN in one hand, he eased open the door, which pulled effortlessly aside, then he moved in, becoming one with the darkness. Holding his breath, he reached back and shut the door after himself.

A voice came from another room ahead, the Russian cadence at first strange, but then, as he pricked up his ears, Fisher recognized the voice.

Before advancing, he scanned his surroundings. He was crouched in a warehouse area of sorts where orders must’ve been wrapped and prepped to be delivered out the back door. The butcher-block tables had remained, the cabinets mounted to the walls emptied, the doors hanging open.

The narrow hallway ahead led straight out to the customer cases and butcher shop proper, with an intersecting hall lying between. Dim light filtered down from the right side of the intersection, with long shadows shifting across the wall.

“Sam, Briggs here. I got you on sonar. Looks like just two ahead, right of your position. One guy might be standing on something.”

Briggs had beat him to the punch. Fisher had been a breath away from activating his own sonar. He used his OPSAT to reply silently:

Good. Mark targets. Wait for me.

“Sam, Kestrel’s too important to lose,” said Grim. “And if he’s got Yenin, they’re both valuable assets.”

He knew that, too, but Kestrel had assumedly found and removed his tracker, meaning he was not honoring his end of the bargain to feed Fourth Echelon information when they needed it. If he had gone completely rogue, then what would stop him from trying to kill Fisher? A whole lot of cash, maybe, but not much else. Kestrel might assume they were even now. He owed Fisher and Briggs nothing for saving his life. No more deals.

In truth, Fisher had no idea how Kestrel would react, and so as he eased forward, wary of every creak of floorboard, he shoved up his trifocals and held his breath. Once he reached the intersection, he brought himself to full height and clutched his pistol with both hands before turning the corner—

To confront the man.