Countdown to Midnight

One

Shadows cast by the setting sun stretched across a long, winding ski trail bordered by snow-dusted pines. Down in the narrow valley at the foot of the mountain, the Kitzbüheler Horn, lights were beginning to glow — outlining the streets and buildings of one of Austria’s most popular and charming Alpine villages. The forested heights of another peak, the Hahnenkamm, the Rooster’s Comb, climbed skyward on the other side of the town. Curving white trails crisscrossed the slopes of that mountain as well. Kitzbühel was the center of one of the largest ski areas in the Tyrolean Alps, attracting crowds of competitive skiers and the world’s jet-setters during the winter months.

Nicholas Flynn came gliding around a curve in the trail and turned to a quick stop off to one side. His skis sent a little curl of loose powder pattering downhill. He raised his goggles briefly, squinting down the slope ahead. This late in the day, the light was going flat, making it difficult to spot any bumps or dips along the surface. Fortunately, this was a trail designed for intermediate skiers, and not one of the steep, rugged runs favored by experts or amateurs with lots of medical insurance and a death wish.

He looked across at the Hahnenkamm. One of the sheer twisting and turning trails he could see was known as the Streif, the Streak. Since 1937, it had been the site of the World Cup’s most challenging race. Skiers plunging down the run’s two-mile length routinely topped more than sixty miles an hour — with nothing between them and a catastrophic crash but their own skill, agility, and experience.

Flynn felt a wry grin tug at the side of his mouth. Fighting hand to hand against Russian Spetsnaz commandos and parachuting into winter storms was one thing, but there was no way in hell he’d ever be crazy enough to believe he could handle a race on something like the Streif. “After all, a man’s gotta know his own limitations,” he murmured. As a kid growing up in mostly snowless Central Texas, family winter vacations to Colorado and Utah had taught him enough to make it downhill without face-planting… and to realize that any thoughts of hurtling straight down the local equivalent of a double black diamond slope were purely delusions of grandeur.

Fortunately, he wasn’t here to show off. Far from it, in fact.

About a hundred yards farther along, Flynn spotted another skier pulled off on the same side of the trail, apparently taking pictures of the spectacular views with his cell phone. The other man’s white parka, dark green ski pants, and red knit cap signaled that he was Flynn’s contact for this clandestine rendezvous. Arif Khavari was a high-ranking official in Iran’s state-owned shipping company. He’d come to Austria as part of an Iranian delegation to an OPEC meeting in Vienna. A short ski excursion had given Khavari a chance to escape the constant scrutiny of his compatriots and their official security detail.

Flynn glanced back the way he’d come. There were no other people in sight. The lifts would close at four o’clock, and with the light fading and temperatures falling fast, most skiers were already headed off the mountain to get ready for a busy evening of après-ski drinking, dining, and dancing in Kitzbühel and the even smaller neighboring villages. Satisfied for the moment that they were as alone as it was possible to be in a public place, he swung around and skied down to join the Iranian. He stopped again a few feet below Khavari — not far from the edge of the woods lining the trail.

The other man, shorter by a few inches and dark-eyed, looked nervous.

Flynn donned a friendly smile. “Excuse me?” he asked, in plainly American-accented English. “Can you tell me the time?” He nodded over his shoulder. “I’ve got a business call at five, but I’d still like to make one more run down the mountain if I can.”

Khavari made a show of checking his phone screen. “The Hornbahn gondola stops running in minutes,” he said hurriedly, rushing through the agreed-upon recognition phrase selected for this rendezvous. “I do not believe you could reach it soon enough to ride back up.”

“Too bad, but I guess those are the breaks,” Flynn answered with a shrug, finishing the protocol. He allowed his easy smile to tighten just a bit. “Okay, Mr. Khavari, now that we’ve confirmed our respective bona fides, maybe you can clue me in on just why you needed to see someone in person instead of communicating through the usual secure channels. We can’t take a lot of time here.” In the shadowy world of espionage and counterespionage, any face-to-face contact was highly risky, no matter how many precautions those involved took. It was something that should be done only when absolutely necessary. And keeping any meeting as short and to the point as possible was one way to minimize those inevitable hazards.

The Iranian swallowed hard. “You represent your decision-makers in Washington?” he asked quietly.

Flynn nodded, opting for discretion over the absolute truth. If Khavari was under the mistaken impression that he was in touch with an official U.S. government intelligence agency, so much the better for operational security. What the Iranian didn’t know couldn’t be forced out of him if the Revolutionary Guard’s goons ever figured out that he’d turned against the regime.

Besides, Flynn thought dryly, up to about a year ago, he had been working for the government — as a captain assigned to U.S. Air Force intelligence activities. Unfortunately, acting boldly to salvage things when the CIA’s own people screwed up not just one but two of the agency’s sketchy covert operations in a row turned out to be a really bad career move. The bureaucrats at Langley needed a scapegoat to blame for their own blunders. And Nick Flynn, a junior military officer without a drop of influence in D.C.’s political circles, must have seemed perfect for the part.

So he’d been laid up under guard in a military hospital, recuperating from his last brush with one of the CIA’s “brilliant” plans, when the mysterious Mr. Fox arrived to recruit him to join what the older man had modestly described as a “little private intelligence outfit.” Months later, after intensive courses to further hone his language, espionage tradecraft, and weapons skills, Flynn had come to understand that the Quartet Directorate — commonly referred to as Four by those in the loop — was actually something considerably larger and more important. This mountainside rendezvous with Arif Khavari was his first solo operational assignment for his new employer.

“I have a friend; a good friend,” the Iranian said, lowering his voice even further. “Like me, he secretly despises the corrupt men who are ruining our country.” He hesitated briefly before going on. “First, you should know that we both love our nation and our people. We are not traitors. The insane mullahs in Tehran and their evil servants are the real traitors.”

Flynn nodded his understanding. No one except the utterly mercenary or sociopathic could find it easy to break faith with his or her own native land, no matter how vile its current government might be. He fought down an urge to hurry the other man along again. Spooking Khavari or unintentionally insulting him now would do more harm than good.

“My friend is a naval architect,” the Iranian went on. “He works at our state-owned shipyards west of Bandar Abbas. Recently, he approached with me strange news about one of their current projects. Strange and disturbing news.”

Flynn hid his surprise. Iran’s seemingly perpetual quest for nuclear weapons was the hot topic in Western intelligence circles, not its ship-construction plans. “Go on,” he prompted.

Quickly, Khavari explained. According to his friend, Navid Daneshvar, major modifications had been ordered to a large oil tanker named Gulf Venture now under repair at the Shahid Darvishi shipyards — modifications which made no sense for any vessel genuinely intended to carry petroleum products to ports around the world. No commercial oil tanker needed concealed compartments, hydraulic cranes, special ship stabilizers, and additional high-speed pumps.

Equally troubling were strict new security measures that seemed intended to shroud this project in absolute secrecy. Among other things, Tehran had ordained the construction of a huge temporary roof over the yard’s largest dry dock in order to block any satellite imagery of the work in progress. And all shipyard personnel assigned to the project were being kept under close watch in special housing, forbidden to communicate with their families or anyone on the outside, except under very limited circumstances. The only exceptions to this policy were a handful of senior staff believed to be absolutely loyal to the regime, like his friend Daneshvar. Finally, large numbers of special commandos from the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force had been deployed as guards around the Darvishi complex — backed up by foreign “mercenaries,” probably Russians.

“Russians?” Flynn said, unable to hide his surprise at the thought of Iran’s notoriously xenophobic rulers allowing armed foreigners of any stripe to operate inside their jealously guarded territory.

Khavari nodded darkly. “So Daneshvar says. Either Russians or maybe Eastern Europeans. Slavs of some kind, for sure.”

Flynn thought for a moment and then asked, “Can you get your hands on blueprints that show the specific alterations being made to this ship? That’d give our analysts a much better shot at figuring out what your government is planning.”

Sorrowfully, Khavari shook his head. “It’s proved impossible to smuggle out any documentation from the shipyard complex. Everyone is thoroughly searched on entry and departure. And it’s strictly forbidden to take anything, whether on paper or a USB drive, beyond the gates. Or to bring any data storage devices inside. Even the main computer systems are ‘air-gapped’—cut off from any physical or wireless connection to the internet. So far, Daneshvar has been forced to relay every scrap of information to me solely by word of mouth. And even that is incredibly dangerous.”

“Yeah,” Flynn frowned. If only half of the security measures the Iranian described were actually in place, Tehran was taking no chances. Besides a defense against espionage, blocking both physical and internet access to the shipyard’s computers would also prevent cyberattacks like those periodically used by the Israelis and other hostile countries to sabotage Iran’s nuclear and missile development facilities. Thinking hard, he dug one of his ski poles a little deeper into the snow. “Look, what’s the time frame on this project? When are the modifications to this tanker supposed to be complete?”

“Not long,” Khavari told him gravely. “Perhaps only a matter of weeks. Two months at the outside. The yard is working around the clock to finish its work on the Gulf Venture. No delays are tolerated.”

Flynn’s jaw tightened. “A couple of months? That’s not much time to—” He stopped abruptly, aware that his subconscious had just sent up a warning flare. Something was off, somewhere. He stared over the Iranian’s shoulder, peering at the slope higher up the trail. Was that movement in the trees over on the other side? Maybe around a couple of hundred yards off?

Suddenly, Khavari’s chest exploded high up, right over his heart — spraying bright red blood and bits of pulverized bone across the white surface of the snow. He’d been shot in the back.

Shit, shit, shit, Flynn thought furiously. He threw himself prone, just as another bullet ripped past his own head and smacked into a tree farther downslope. A third round slammed into the Iranian, who was already dead. His corpse toppled sideways and fell in a heap just uphill.

Flynn reacted without hesitation. Khavari’s body wasn’t good cover. Not for long, anyway. It wouldn’t take whoever’d just bushwhacked them more than a few seconds to find a new vantage point, one with a clear angle on him. So it was move and move fast. Or die right here.

He punched the tip of one of his poles into the binding release levers on his skis — popping them free. Then he curled around, grabbed both skis, and tossed them sideways into the woods lining this side of the run. Frantically, he rolled after them across the slope. Ice crystals spurted up near his face from another near miss.

Swearing under his breath, Flynn reached the wood line and scrambled behind the trunk of a pine tree, whose heavy, snow-covered lower branches almost brushed the ground. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered through clenched teeth. Being shot at sure got old fast. Especially since he wasn’t armed himself right now. Austrian gun laws were more relaxed than those of many other European countries, but he’d still figured the local authorities would pretty seriously frown on a foreign “business consultant” carrying a concealed pistol if he was caught. Well, mark that decision down as a triumph of excessive caution over common sense, he thought bitterly.

Then again, he realized, the assassin who’d just killed Khavari and tried to blow his own brains out had to be using a scoped rifle. And one with a hellaciously effective suppressor at that. Even through the crystal-clear Alpine air, the sound of the shots had been remarkably muffled, more like the mechanical snap of a bolt cycling than the sharp-edged crack usually made by a high-powered round exploding outward from a rifle barrel. So even if he had a sidearm right now, charging back up the mountain through the snow to go mano a mano with a trained sniper would be a terminally stupid plan. The enemy would nail him the instant he broke cover and came out into the open.

No, Flynn decided. There were situations where attacking into an ambush was the least bad option. But this was most definitely not one of those situations. Instead, much as he hated it, the smart play now was to bail out and get clear.

Swiftly, he scooted downhill to where his skis had slid, careful to keep the trees between him and that unseen, distant gunman. It took only moments to brush away the caked snow from his boots and bindings and snap back into his skis. He paused for another few seconds to get his bearings. He’d ducked into the woods on the northwestern edge of the trail. And according to the trail maps he’d studied before meeting Khavari, there was another run just on the other side of this thin strip of forest, one that would get him off the mountain.

Flynn’s mouth twisted in a self-conscious grin. So much for his earlier plan of taking the easier way down the Kitzbüheler Horn. His chosen alternate route was marked as a more advanced slope, a lot steeper and more rugged than he ordinarily found comfortable. Still, he was okay with taking the risk of sprawling flat on his ass in front of more experienced skiers if it meant staying out of the rifle sights of an assassin. Moving carefully through the softer, deeper snow under the trees, he glided away at an angle, heading for the neighboring run.

He stopped again just before coming back out into the open. Both native caution and his training dictated that he make a few rapid changes to his appearance. For one thing, the bright blue outer shell of his ski jacket was spattered with Khavari’s blood. That was bound to draw unwanted attention, whether from the ski area’s security personnel, the general public, or, just conceivably, other members of the hit team who might already be looking for him near the lower lifts.

Quickly, Flynn unzipped the shell from its insulating layer and then reversed it to show the black inner lining instead. Next, he pulled off his goggles and stuffed them out of sight in a pocket. This late in the day, they were more hindrance than help anyway. Finally, he tugged a ski hat down over his bare head. Taken separately, none of these tiny alterations were exactly major measures of disguise. But together, he hoped they would alter his visual profile just enough to confuse anyone hunting for the man who’d been seen talking to Khavari right before he was shot.

Satisfied that he’d done all he could for now, Nick Flynn squared his shoulders and skied out from the tree line.

Several hundred meters higher up the Kitzbüheler Horn, Viktor Skoblin finished disassembling the VSS Vintorez sniper rifle he’d used to eliminate the Iranian traitor. The separate components of the silenced weapon, originally designed for use by Russia’s Spetsnaz units, fit easily into an inconspicuous backpack of the type carried by many skiers. He zipped the backpack closed and slid it across his broad shoulders.

Then he glanced over at his spotter, another former Spetsnaz officer like him. “Any sign of movement?”

The other man, slimmer and shorter than the bullnecked Skoblin, lowered his binoculars. “None. Our second bird has flown. There’s no way we can hope to catch up to him now.”

Skoblin scowled. Their orders from Pavel Voronin were explicit: the security leak represented by Arif Khavari must be permanently sealed shut, by any means necessary. Dead men, the Raven Syndicate’s head had reminded them tartly, could tell no further tales. That made this failed attempt to kill the Iranian government official’s unknown foreign contact deeply worrying. Voronin was not known for forgiving those who disappointed him.

Still, the Russian reminded himself uneasily, there were only so many ways out of Kitzbühel. Sooner rather than later, they would get another shot at their second, more elusive target. And in the meantime, he and his spotter still had one more task to complete here on the mountain. He stomped back into his skis. Then, together with the other Raven Syndicate operative, Skoblin moved off down the slope toward the red-stained patch of snow marking the location of Khavari’s bullet-riddled body.