Conviction

35

“Think he’s going to be okay?” Noboru asked from the passenger seat.

It was an hour before dawn, and they’d been on the road for ninety minutes, having packed up as soon as Fisher realized the storm was abating. A hundred yards behind, the headlights of Hansen’s SUV bounced over the rutted road. Somewhere in the blackness out the side window were the waters of Lake Baikal.

As he had been since the interrogation, Ames lay in the cargo area, flex-cuffed, gagged, and wrapped in a sleeping bag. After he’d finished questioning Ames, Hansen had done a decent job of washing away the gasoline, but still the stench of it filled the Lada’s interior. Hansen had learned nothing more from Ames. He knew no details about the auction or who was behind it. As for his association with Kovac, however, Ames did not disappoint. As Fisher had suspected, Ames and Chuck Zahm were at least partially cut from the same cloth: Ames had meticulously documented the relationship, including digital voice records that Ames swore would put Kovac on the gallows beside him.

“Ames is a survivor,” Fisher replied. “Like him or hate him, you have to respect that. Before we know it, he’ll snap out of it and be pissed off again.”

“That sounds almost sympathetic.”

Fisher shook his head. “Sympathy and respect are different things. Once they throw Ames in jail, I’ll be happy to throw away the key.”

A few minutes later both their OPSATs beeped. Noboru checked the screen. “Qaderi’s moving. There must be a little lag time. He’s already outside Severobaikalsk. Wait a second… He’s heading south, back toward us.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah.”

“How far?”

“Thirty miles. Should we tell Hansen?”

“He knows.”

Fisher pressed the gas pedal down, and the Lada surged ahead.

“Still heading south,” Noboru reported five minutes later.

The minutes and the miles ticked away, and slowly the one-lane road widened and veered inland, away from the shore and behind a screen of pine trees. Sheltered from the wind and spray, the road lost its coating of ice. They were able to increase speed to fifty miles per hour, bumping over the washboard surface.

“Twenty miles,” Noboru reported. “Sun’s coming up.”

Fisher glanced out the passenger window. Through the trees, a pinkish orange glow backlit the mountains.

Seven minutes passed and Noboru announced, “Ten miles,” then a few minutes after that, “Five miles.”

Fisher checked his OPSAT screen and muttered, “Come on, where are you?”

“What?” asked Noboru.

“That.”

The Lada’s headlights swept over a left-hand split in the road. Fisher slammed on the brakes, eased up, then began pumping them as the Lada slewed right, then left, then corrected and came to a halt thirty feet beyond the split. Fisher glanced in the rearview mirror. Hansen’s SUV was fifty yards behind, sitting broadside in the road. Fisher put the transmission in reverse. Hansen took the hint and straightened out and began backing up. Fisher stopped, cranked the wheel to the left, and pulled onto the left-hand road. Hansen followed. The road took them up a grade, then through a series of S-curves. Fisher kept his eyes on the road but occasionally glanced out the passenger window.

“Look sharp,” Fisher ordered. “They should be along anytime now.”

Fisher reached down and shut off the Lada’s headlights. Behind him, Hansen did the same. They rounded another curve, and to the right and below, through the trees, they could see a small lake no more than a half mile across. The rising sun glinted off the flat, calm waters.

“Sludjanka Lake,” Noboru announced.

On the opposite shore, another Lada SUV was heading south.

“That’s him,” Noboru said.

“Yep.”

“Where’s he going, though? The auction site?”

Fisher didn’t answer. He got out and Noboru followed. Hansen and the others had done the same. They met between the cars at the edge of the road.

“Auction site?” Hansen echoed.

“Maybe,” Fisher said. He lifted his binoculars and watched the Lada’s progress. “Can’t see who’s inside, but unless he dumped his computer and phones, it’s Qaderi.”

Suddenly, from inside the Lada there came three overlapping orange flashes. The SUV slewed sideways off the road, then back up, and coasted to a stop.

“Holy crap!” said Gillespie.

Fisher zoomed in on the Lada and waited. After thirty seconds the front passenger door opened and a figure emerged. The man turned around, leaned back into the car, and then came out with a briefcase. He slammed the door shut and turned around. For a split second his face was illuminated by the sun. It was not Qaderi. Nor his bodyguards.

“What the hell is this?” Hansen muttered.

“I think Qaderi just got uninvited to the auction,” Fisher replied.

With his back to Fisher and the group, the man knelt down beside the Lada and opened the briefcase. He rummaged around for several minutes, then closed the briefcase and stood up. He loitered around the Lada as though waiting for something. Ten minutes passed. Then, to the east, came the thumping of helicopter rotors. They saw the mist on the lake’s surface ten seconds before the helicopter appeared. Flying at twenty feet, the robin’s-egg blue and white Sikorsky S-76 swept over the Lada, banked south, and then stopped in a hover and touched down astride the road a hundred yards away. The cabin door opened, and four men in black coveralls jumped out and sprinted to the man standing at the Lada. Without a word passing between them, the man got back into the Lada and the four men began pushing. Once the SUV was pointing at the Sludjanka Lake, the driver climbed out and helped the other four until the Lada was rolling at ten to twelve miles an hour. With only a slight bump as it went over the berm at the edge of the road, the SUV plunged into the water and sank from sight.

The five men sprinted back to the Sikorsky and climbed aboard. Thirty seconds later the helicopter was heading east over the lake. Fisher and the others stood in silence until the sound of the rotors faded.

“They must have known Qaderi was tagged,” Valentina said.

“But not how. That briefcase they took was Qaderi’s. I saw it in Romania. Everything that can identify him and his bodyguards is inside — including their phones and his laptop. If their Lada’s ever found, they’ll be John Does.”

“So that’s what the guy was doing when he was kneeling,” Gillespie said. “Checking for beacons.”

“Safe bet.” Fisher told Valentina and Gillespie about the Ajax bots. He checked his watch. “Grim briefed him two hours ago. Just enough time for him to pass along the message. She left out any mention of Ajax, though, and he would have assumed she meant standard, Third Echelon-issue beacons.”

Hansen was studying his OPSAT’s screen. “The bots are heading due east at 150 miles an hour.”

“We’re still in the game,” said Gillespie.

“What now?” asked Noboru.

“We hide.”

Hansen was the first to spot it on their foldable, topographical map of the area, an abandoned Stalin-era mica mine built into the cliffs a mile west of the lake. The dirt tract that led from the lake to the mine was littered with boulders and axle deep in a snow-mud mix the consistency of oatmeal, so it was an hour before they pulled into the clearing before the mine’s entrance. Fisher backed in his SUV, followed by Hansen. Everyone climbed out.

“Okay, now tell us: Why are we hiding?” Noboru said.

“They killed Qaderi because Kovac reported the trackers. Grim told Kovac we were still in Irkutsk, and the weather was causing problems with the GPS. That’s why the Sikorsky didn’t look for anyone tailing the Lada. My gut tells me they’ll be back — about the time we’d arrive if we’d left Irkutsk when Kovac thinks we did.”

Hansen said, “You and Grim put some thought into this, didn’t you?”

Fisher nodded.

“How long do we wait?” asked Valentina.

“Depends on where the Ajax bots go and how long it takes the Sikorsky to leave.”

They got the answer to their first question two hours later, when Hansen called out from where he was sitting against the tunnel wall. “They’re back.” After leaving the site of Qaderi’s execution, the Sikorsky had flown lazy figure-eight patterns up and down the lake’s eastern shore and the foothills beyond. “Looks like its touching down. Thirty miles due east of us, about one and a half miles inland from Ayaya Bay.”

Fisher got the topographical map, unfolded it on the Lada’s hood, and found the spot Hansen had indicated. It sat two-thirds of the way between Ayaya Bay and a smaller V-shaped lake called Frolikha. “Middle of nowhere,” he said. “The perfect spot for a black-market auction.”

“I don’t see any roads,” Gillespie said.

“You’re right. We’re going to need a boat.”

The Sikorsky returned shortly before noon and spent two hours flying up and down the shoreline, using Sludjanka Lake as a datum. Several times it passed directly over the cliffs outside the tunnel entrance, but it neither slowed nor descended.

As the afternoon wore on the team members grew restless, pacing the tunnel, checking and rechecking their equipment, and cleaning weapons. Fisher gave them something to do, briefing each on what they would be carrying when and if they found the auction site. He’d gotten the same reports before leaving Irkutsk, but the task broke the monotony.

“Communications.” Gillespie began laying out the equipment. “We’ll all have hands-free, voice-activated headsets and microphones. We synced them to the OPSATs. They’re not SVTs or subdermals, but they’ll get the job done.” She donned one of the headsets; it was a commercial cell-phone model with a dangling microphone and a miniature alligator clip. “The audio pickup is decent, but there’s a half-second lag in the voice activation. Also, you need to cup the microphone, bring it to your mouth, and whisper.”

“We also jury-rigged a flexicam,” Valentina said. “It’s primitive — no night vision, EM, or infrared, but the picture’s fairly clear.”

“Good work,” Fisher said. “Ben?”

Hansen laid out their makeshift uniforms: wool-lined black cargo-style pants and heavy black sweaters, a dual layer of silk long underwear, fingerless mittens, and full balaclavas.

Fisher nodded, turned to Noboru. “Time to unveil your project.”

Noboru walked to the Lada, pulled a duffel from the backseat, and returned. He laid out the modified paintball guns and launchers and ran through the operation and specifications. “Hold on,” he said. “Forgot the CO₂ cartridges.”

Moments later he called, “Ah, goddamn it…”

“What?” Fisher called.

“Better come see for yourself.”

Fisher and the others walked to the rear of the Lada. Noboru was standing beside the open tailgate. Fisher felt his stomach lurch. He leaned into the cargo area and looked around.

Ames was gone.

After passing out the Groza assault rifles, Fisher left Hansen and Valentina at the tunnel entrance and took Noboru and Gillespie deeper into the mine. A few hundred yards in, at a triple branch in the tunnel, they found a pair of flex-cuffs lying on the ground. They each took a tunnel and searched for fifteen minutes before meeting back at the branch.

“Nothing,” Noboru said.

“Me neither,” replied Gillespie. “I counted nine side tunnels in mine. There have to be other entrances. We can check the map, then split up and find a way around the cliffs—”

“No,” Fisher said. “Forget him.”

“Forget him?” Noboru repeated. “This is Ames we’re talking about. After what he did—”

“We’ve got what we need from him. He’s irrelevant now,” Fisher said. This was only partially true. Ames had given Hansen the location of his insurance stash against Kovac, but if the case ever saw the inside of a courtroom, without Ames a conviction was uncertain. Right now, however, his team didn’t need such worries clouding their thinking. “Focus on the mission,” Fisher told them.

They waited until nightfall, then packed up and left the tunnels, picking their way back down the rutted tract to the main road, where they turned north and drove until the lights of Severobaikalsk came into view. They pulled off the road, shut off their engines and headlights, and waited for another two hours until, slowly, the town’s lights began going out.

“Early to bed, early to rise,” Gillespie muttered.

“Not much nightlife on a Tuesday night in Severobaikalsk,” replied Noboru.

Fisher started the engine. “Let’s go steal ourselves a boat.”