Death Wave

5

Oh, God, no,” Masha said, taking several halting steps backward.

“What’s the matter?” Akulinin passed the radiation counter over the Chinese man’s body. There was no response — or very little. A few clicks that might represent normal background radiation, but nothing like the hiss of static that the other two had shown, even on his hands.

So … this one had stayed back while the other two had gotten their hands dirty. Had he been the one in charge? Or had he just not been involved with the actual transfer of radioactive materials?

“The radiation on those two …”

“Don’t worry,” Akulinin told her. “It’s not enough to make you sick or anything.”

I just hope the Art Room knows its stuff, he added to himself.

“You don’t understand,” she said. She looked desperate, and scared. “Those men who were here a few minutes ago, Vasilyev …”

“What about them?”

“They’re FSB! That means they’re part of an antiterror unit, or maybe nuclear security, and they were after these three.”

“Yeah … so …”

“So I’m not stupid, Ilya! Those two people were handling nuclear material of some sort, and they’re mafiya! That one”—she pointed at the Chinese man—“if he’s involved, this must be big. International. Big enough, even, to bring in the American CIA?”

She was quick on the uptake.

He indicated the gray-eyed corpse, “This guy was a mafiya middleman,” Akulinin told her. “We think he was selling stolen mini nukes to an Islamic extremist group, maybe al-Qaeda, maybe someone else, a Pakistani terror organization. I don’t know why the Chinese guy is here.”

“Don’t you understand? Vasilyev will be back soon with a technician to check the bodies for radiation. They’re not going want to let word of this get out. Stolen nuclear weapons? That makes the Moscow government look very bad. If they think I know too much, they … they’re not going to let me go!”

“It’s okay, Masha,” Akulinin said. He was thinking fast. It was a breach of operational security, but in for a penny—

“It is not okay!”

“Look, you said you were trying to get back to the States, right? Maybe I can help.”

Her eyes widened. “What? Really? That would be—”

“I’m going to need to clear some stuff with my superiors, but at the very least we can get you out of here.”

The immediate problem was how. Dean and Akulinin were supposed to exfiltrate across the border into Afghanistan when their part of the op was over. Bringing along a civilian woman they’d just happened to pick up along the way was definitely not a part of the plan.

“People who get on the bad side of the FSB,” she said, “they … they disappear.”

Akulinin nodded. The Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti had a bad rep both for being thoroughly corrupt and for being unnecessarily brutal in the prosecution of their duties. Most Russian civilians were terrified of them, and with good reason. There were reports of mafiya extortionists within the FSB shaking down small business owners, of ex-military and ex-KGB thugs kidnapping people and holding them for ransom.

“I know,” he said. “That’s not going to happen to you. I promise you.” He stooped over and reattached the radiation counter to his ankle. “Listen, have you tried the American Embassy here in Dushanbe? I’d think they could help you.”

“No. My parents surrendered their American citizenship when they came here … and mine, too. And I would need money, lots of money, for a plane ticket, and proof I had relatives or a job in America.” She shook her head. “They wouldn’t help me.”

“It depends on who you talk to, Masha. I have … friends. They should be able to swing something.” He saw a pad of notepaper on a desk nearby, and a pen. He walked to the desk and wrote out an address in clear block Cyrillic letters. “Do you know where this is?”

“Adkhamov Street? It’s in the eastern part of the city. About, oh, five kilometers from here.”

A long way for her to walk. “Do you have a car?”

“No … but there’s good bus service.”

“Where do you live?”

“Prospekt Apartments, on Karamova. Perhaps a kilometer and a half.”

“I want you to go home, pack whatever you need to bring with you — a small suitcase, no more. Then get to this address.”

“What is it?”

“A safe house. You’ll buzz the intercom at the front door, and when a voice answers, you’ll ask them Net li oo vahs luchshi comatih?”

She looked puzzled. “Do you have a better room?”

“Right. It’s a code phrase. They’ll let you stay there, no questions asked. I’ll come by later.”

“Wait! Where are you going?”

“I have to see about rescuing my friend.”

“Who? Oh! The Indian Air Force officer?”

“The same. He’s in a lot of trouble right now.”

“You … you know they probably have men watching the hospital outside. If they see you leave … or me …”

Damn, she was right — and he should have thought about that. He wasn’t thinking clearly, and that could spell disaster for operators in the field, especially when the carefully crafted script had just been thrown out and they were ad-libbing it.

“I know. Masha, look. I’ll see what I can do about getting you out of the building and on your way. Then I have to take care of my friend. But I will come back for you. You … you’re just going to have to trust me.”

“I … I do. It’s just …”

“Just what?”

“Why are you doing this? Why are you helping me this way?”

“Let’s just say I really liked the way you stood up to Vasilyev a little while ago. And you were willing to help me. Besides … what are the chances of two kids from Brighton Beach meeting up here, of all places, eh?”

“Thank you, Ilya.” She stepped forward, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him. After an awkward moment, he put his arms around her and hugged her close.

“Well, well,” he said as they stepped apart. “What was that for?”

“For helping me get these cadavers into the refrigerator,” she said, all business again.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Well, I don’t want to just leave them here in the open to start decomposing! Dr. Shmatko thinks better of me than that.” She began opening refrigerator doors, pulling out a morgue slab from each opening.

With a rueful shrug, Akulinin began helping her move the bodies.

They’d taken Dean out the back door to one of the cars parked beneath a pool of illumination from a security light in the alley behind the hospital. Vasilyev had told a soldier to put him in the rear seat and keep him there, then got into another vehicle just ahead, where he appeared to be making a phone call.

His guard was outside the car, leaning against the wall. The window was rolled down, but the man was far enough away that Dean could say, “I’m back. Did you miss me?”

He spoke quietly, barely vocalizing at all, but he knew the sensitive microphone would pick up the words and transmit them to a communications satellite and back to the Art Room.

“We hear you, Charlie.” It was Marie Telach. “What the hell happened?”

“No reception in the basement,” Dean said. He kept his replies terse. “I’m being held by Vympel personnel … decoy.”

“We still don’t have a signal on Ilya. Is he with you?”

“Negative. Ilya’s in the morgue. Still free, far as I know. I’ll keep you informed.”

“We copy, Charlie. Uh-oh. Hang on.”

“What’s going on?”

There was a long pause. “Your friend Vasilyev just put a call through to Subarao’s office. We had a ‘secretary’ talking to him. Now … okay. Sudhi is talking with him.”

Dr. Sudhi V. Anand was the Desk Three linguist for Hindi and several other Indian dialects.

“Have him give the SOB a good reaming for me,” Dean said.

“Copy that.”

“Listen, I used the story of possible Pakistani agents loose in Dushanbe and other bases, maybe spying, maybe working to screw the Indian-Tajik treaty. I used the name of another IAF officer — Group Captain Narayanan, at Ayni. I told him Narayanan had sent me to warn him about the threat personally.”

“Thanks, Charlie. I’ll pass that on to Dr. Anand’s monitor.”

“Hey … Hindu!” the guard outside asked in Russian, leaning closer. “What’s that you’re mumbling? Who are you talking to?”

“I’m praying,” Dean replied in the same language. “I’m calling upon my ancient and powerful gods to make sure that your commanding officer sees the error of his ways.”

From the rear seat of the vehicle, Dean could see the back of Vasilyev’s head as he spoke on the phone. The way the man’s head was jerking back and forth, it looked as though angry words were being exchanged.

Still, Subarao was the equivalent of an army major general, and Vasilyev was a mere podpolkovnik, a lieutenant colonel. The Russian might not like Indian nationals, but he wouldn’t risk insulting a high-ranking foreign general in Tajikistan’s capital and creating a truly international incident.

At long last, Vasilyev got out of the vehicle, slammed the door hard, and walked back toward Dean’s car. He looked … subdued. Angry, too.

“Okay, Charlie,” Telach told him. “Dr. Anand says he read Vasilyev the riot act. He backed your story about rumors of Pakistani saboteurs. Vasilyev doesn’t like it, but he should let you go now.”

“Copy.”

Vasilyev reached the car and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Out of the vehicle.”

“Did you call Air Vice Marshal—”

“I don’t need a foreigner to tell me my business,” Vasilyev snapped. “I have other sources.” The way he spat the word inostranyets, foreigner, made it sound like an obscenity.

“Sir! I was simply following orders.”

“Next time you decide to follow orders, stay out of restricted military areas! It would be … unfortunate if you were shot. Your death might create an incident.”

“Yes, Lieutenant Colonel.”

“Get out of here, and don’t let me see you around my city again!”

“Yes, Lieutenant Colonel. Thank you, sir.”

Dean hurried down the alley, as if he half expected to be shot in the back. He knew Vasilyev’s type well enough — a bully who enjoyed abusing his power over others, whether under his command or in the civilian population. He was just glad the Vympels hadn’t decided to search him. The radiation counter on his ankle would have been difficult to explain, as would the folding camera-binoculars in his pocket.

He crossed Rudaki and headed for Tolstoy Street. Ilya would meet him at the car when he was finished getting the pictures.

“C’mon, Ilya, c’mon!” he muttered. “What’s taking you so long?”

Akulinin reached the top of the basement-level steps and peered through the glass in the doors opening into the hospital lobby. Through the small window, he saw a bored-looking attendant at the information desk, but there was no one else in sight. “Come on, Masha,” he called over his shoulder. “It’s clear.”

Maria came up the stairs behind him. She’d shed her white lab coat and rubber gloves and was now wearing blue jeans, a green shirt, and flat-heeled shoes.

A burst of static sounded in Akulinin’s ear. “Ilya!” Jeff Rockman’s voice called. “Ilya, do you copy?”

“Right here, Jeff. I hear you.”

“Where the hell have you been?”

“Cut off down in the basement,” Akulinin replied. “I’m back on the street level now. Still in the hospital, about to enter the front lobby.”

“Who are you talking to, Ilya?” Maria asked.

“Remember those friends I mentioned?”

“Who’s that with you, Ilya?” That was Telach’s voice.

“Long story, guys,” he said. “I’m going to need your help here. First of all, I have some data to upload.”

He pulled out his camera and touched a control on the side. Next he reached down, touching another button on the radiation counter strapped to his leg. The devices began uploading their recordings to a communications satellite.

“We’re receiving,” Rockman said after a moment. “Nice shots … if a bit morbid.”

“The bodies are the ones Podpolkovnik Vasilyev brought back on the helicopter,” he told the Art Room. “I’m thinking the clean-shaven Caucasian looks a lot like our contact, Zhernov, though his face is cut up and bruised so badly, I’m not sure. The rad counts are being transmitted in the same order as the pictures. I’d be very interested in knowing who the Asian guy is.”

“We’re running the photos through the ID database now,” Telach said. “Now … who’s that with you, and why? We can hear her over the open channel.”

“First things first, Marie. Do you have a fix on Charlie?”

“They let him go about ten minutes ago. He’s on his way back to your car.”

“Excellent.” That gave them some additional options. He wasn’t happy about turning Masha loose on the streets of Dushanbe if the FSB might be looking for her.

“And who is your little friend?”

“Maria Alekseyevna. Distressed foreign national, Russian citizenship. But she’s an American.”

“O-kay. How can she be a foreign national and an American?”

“Look, we can go into the history later. What’s important is she helped me on the mission just now, and there’s a good chance that the opposition is going to be interested in her, understand? I need to get her to the safe house — then get her out of the country.”

“We’ll have to see about that,” Telach said. She did not sound like she approved. There was a certain air of “wait until your father gets home” about the way she said it.

“Is the boss there?” he asked. Might as well face the music right away.

“No, he’s not. But I imagine he’ll want to talk with you when he gets in.”

“I’m sure. I … wait a second.”

“What do you have, Ilya?”

Two Vympel soldiers had just entered the hospital’s front door and taken up sentry positions on either side of it.

“Possible trouble.”

He turned, about to lead Masha back down the stairs, but he stopped when he heard a hollow thump — a door banging open — echoing up the bare stairwell. Far below, he could hear voices, someone shouting, demanding information.

“G’deh devochka?” he heard. “Where is the girl?” It sounded like Vasilyev’s voice.

He heard another voice — the junior sergeant with the copy of

Playboy stationed outside the morgue doors — but couldn’t make out the words. The man would be pointing to the stairs, however. He’d seen them go that way just moments before.

“Tell Charlie to bring the car south on Rudaki,” Akulinin told the Art Room. “Tell him there are two of us, we’re on the run, and the black hats are in pursuit! We’ll be going south, on the east side of the street, and we’ll meet him there!”

“Roger that. We’re patching through to Charlie now.”

Another boom from downstairs, closer now. Vasilyev and his troops were entering the stairwell, starting up the steps toward the first landing.

“Ilya!” Masha cried.

He gathered her close with his arm. “Trust me!” he said fiercely. “Just play along, okay? And whatever happens, smile!”

She nodded as he punched through the double doors in front of them and swept her with him into the lobby. The two soldiers looked up at the noise and began unslinging their rifles.

Akulinin laughed out loud, grinning broadly as he jogged directly toward the soldiers, his arm still tight around Masha’s waist. “This is going to be great!” he called out in Russian. “A night on the town you will not forget!”

The soldiers brought their rifles to an uncertain port arms. They would have been expecting to see the woman alone, would not be expecting to see a Russian Army major accompanying her.

“Stoy, sudar’!” the one on the left called.

“Stand aside, soldier,” Akulinin said, still laughing as they got closer. “I’m taking the most beautiful girl in the world out to dinner … then dancing and drinks at the Pamir Club … and after that …” And he kissed her.

He kept kissing her as he strode between the two soldiers, pushing through the hospital’s front doors. He was counting on his psychological advantage, on surprise and embarrassment to get them through the doors.

“Meior!” one of the soldiers said. “Please halt—”

“Go to hell!” Akulinin said, laughing again.

“Stop that girl!” Vasilyev shouted from the stairway door. “Stop them!”

Then they were through the doors and running down the concrete steps in front of the red-painted hospital. It was dark outside now, with only a little glow from the fading twilight, and pools of light beneath the streetlamps. Taking Masha’s hand, Akulinin swung left and started racing down the sidewalk.

“Stoy! Stoy! Slushaisya eelee ya budoo strelyat!”

Obey or I’ll fire.

Traffic was fairly heavy on Rudaki Avenue, a four-lane city street. They needed to get across to the other side — and civilian traffic would make the bad guys cautious about opening fire. Swerving suddenly right, he dragged Masha into the street, thankful that she was wearing sensible shoes. Headlights flared to their left, dazzlingly bright, and a horn sounded, a long, piercing blare. A northbound car slammed on its brakes and screeched to a halt, stopping close enough that Akulinin’s free hand slammed down on its hood.

A gunshot cracked from behind them … followed by a second shot, and fragments of pavement stung Akulinin’s leg. So much for the traffic making the soldiers cautious. At least they hadn’t opened up with automatic weapons. Those shots had sounded like a 9 mm pistol, probably Vasilyev’s. The range was a good thirty yards, against moving targets and uncertain lighting. They had a chance …

Akulinin dragged Masha past the halted car, weaving left to put its headlights between them and the gunmen. The car accelerated — he heard the driver screaming obscenities at them — and he swerved right once more, twisting between the lines of oncoming traffic.

Almost across the last lane, headlights flared to the right, and another horn sounded. This time, screeching brakes were followed by a heavy thud as the driver swerved into a tree beside the road. Another car piled into the rear of the first. More horns sounded — the beginnings of a traffic jam.

But they’d made it! They ran onto the grass beyond the curb, a strip thickly planted with large, old trees. Another shot banged out from the hospital steps, this one a deeper, flatter crack that sounded like an assault rifle being fired single-shot. Akulinin heard the snap as the bullet passed somewhere overhead and behind; another shot, and this time the round punched into the trunk of a nearby tree, close enough to fling splinters at them. Turning behind the tree, they ran flat out, racing south now, on the east side of Rudaki.

“Charlie is almost at the car,” Jeff Rockman said in his ear. “Just a few more minutes.”

“Copy!” Akulinin was panting, out of breath. Dean would be teasing him about spending more time on the obstacle course back home.

“Ilya!” Masha said. She sounded like she was in better shape than he was. “Don’t you have a gun?”

“Not with me,” he told her. A Russian officer would not have checked out a sidearm from his armory unless he was engaged in some duty that required one, and if he’d had to submit to a search, he would have had trouble explaining why he was carrying a concealed weapon.

Besides, Hollywood notwithstanding, field agents only rarely went armed in the real world. Spies were looking for information, not firefights, and depended on getting in and getting out without being noticed. If you got into a gunfight, your mission had failed.

Another rifle shot from behind, from beyond the blaring horns in the street, and Akulinin bit off a curse. He wouldn’t say this op had failed, exactly, but the getaway was proving to be a little noisier than planned. Horns began blaring somewhere behind them. The bad guys were crossing Rudaki.

“Charlie’s at the car,” Rockman told him. “Two minutes!”

“Tell him to get his ass in gear!” Akulinin replied. “We’ve got a small army chasing after us, and we’re under fire.”

“We’ve picked up radio calls in your area,” Marie Telach said. “Colonel Vasilyev is calling for backup, and he’s calling in the local police and the VV.”

Dushanbe had its own police force, of course, but there were MVD internal troops in the region as well; Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs still maintained a presence in most of the countries that had arisen from the now-defunct Soviet Union. The Vnutrenniye Voiska Ministerstva Vnutrennikh Del, usually abbreviated VV, was a paramilitary force similar to the U.S. National Guard.

“Copy.”

“He’s also calling in a GNR,” Telach said. “The guy sounds pissed.”

“Well, it’s nice to be popular …”

GNR was Gruppa Nemedlennogo Reagirovaniya, a police rapid-response group assigned to the local region. They were calling out the equivalent of a SWAT team.

“Okay, Ilya.” It was Rockman again. “We have a little problem.”

“Just what I wanted to hear.”

“Dean can’t reach you. Major traffic jam. We have a satellite map up of your part of the city, though, and we’re tracking you. We’re going to reroute Charlie onto another southbound road. I want you to look for a street or an alley going off to your right.”

“I see one just ahead, yeah. Doesn’t look like a good part of town.”

“Duck down that alley, going east.”

“Copy that.”

Akulinin and Alekseyevna turned and jogged down the alley. He was tired, fighting to get his second wind. On the street behind them, he could hear the two-toned ululations of police sirens converging on the area.

The tree-lined boulevard of Rudaki Avenue was clean, bright, and almost parklike. Less than a block to the east, however, the cityscape turned dark, with a dilapidated and abandoned factory, piles of rubble, and a distinct lack of streetlights. When the Soviet Union had collapsed in 1991, Tajikistan had almost immediately fallen into a nasty civil war. Non-Muslim minorities had fled the country, rival gangs and militias had carried out widespread ethnic cleansing, and most of the cities had been devastated. Deaths in the war were estimated at fifty thousand, and over a million people had fled the country as refugees.

Six years later, Emomali Rahmonov — or Rahmon, as he styled himself nowadays — had engineered a cease-fire with his rivals, and the country had begun to rebuild. Even so, large stretches of Dushanbe, off of the main thoroughfares and business districts, still showed the ravages of brutal civil war.

They slowed down as the darkness deepened. There was light enough, however, to see gang signs scrawled on deteriorating walls, and piles of garbage in the alley ahead.

“Where are we going?” Masha asked. “It’s not safe.”

“Safer than behind us,” he told her. “My friend is going to meet us somewhere ahead.”

Several shadows stepped out into the alley ahead.

“Behist!” someone shouted. By the uncertain light, Akulinin could make out a scarred, bearded face and the gleam of a knife.

“Ya neepanimayu,” Akulinin said in Russian. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s Tajiki,” Telach whispered in his ear. “A form of Persian. He just told you to stop.”

“Well, well,” the scarred man said in thickly accented Russian, holding up the knife. “We have a fucking Russian Army officer! And what is this?” He leered, exposing a prominent gap in his front teeth. “A pretty little girl!”

Two other men had emerged into the alley behind the first. Akulinin heard one say something to the other in Tajiki, and then they both laughed. One was holding a length of pipe, the other another knife.

Maybe he should have brought a weapon.

“Back off,” Akulinin told him. “We’re not looking for trouble.”

“Sometimes you find it anyway, neh? Or it finds you!” Gap-tooth gestured with the knife. “I want your money, pretty boy. Your cards and papers.

And that uniform! Military stuff fetches well on the black market!” He grinned at Masha. “As for you … I think we’ll take you as well. We can show you a good time, yes?”

“Please—” Masha said.

“How long ’till Dean gets here?” Akulinin muttered. He was still holding Masha’s hand, and he gave it two quick squeezes, hoping to communicate get ready.

“Coming down the street in front of you, right to left. Thirty seconds!”

The smallest of their three assailants was on the left, the one with the pipe. He looked young, probably a teenager. Hell, they all looked young, even bearded Gap-tooth. Akulinin took two steps closer, snapped out his free hand, and slammed it open-palmed against the pipe-wielder’s shoulder. The blow caught the kid by surprise and knocked him off balance, sending him stumbling back against the thug beside him.

Akulinin turned, shoving Masha ahead and through the sudden opening in their assailants’ line. “Run!” He shouted in English, then added,

“Skaray!” Quickly!

Akulinin’s training with the NSA had included long hours of martial arts at the Farm, as the CIA’s Camp Peary training center near Williamsburg, Virginia, was popularly called. He knew both Tae Soo Do and the U.S. Army Combative System, a streamlined synthesis of several martial arts forms. Pivoting, he brought his right foot up and snapped it around in a roundhouse kick hard to the falling kid’s kneecap.

Gap-tooth screamed and lunged forward, jabbing with the knife. Akulinin countered with a wrist-breaker lock, kicked his right ankle, and slammed him to the pavement.

Then Ilya ran after Masha. He’d only disabled one of the thugs — the kid was on his back shrieking, cradling a broken kneecap — but the idea was to get away, not to let himself get bogged down in a street brawl. Besides, more shouts and whistles were sounding from the west end of the alley. The police were closing in.

The two fugitives ran as hard and as fast as they could, their footsteps echoing off bare brick walls. The alley opened onto a larger north-south street, and Akulinin led Masha diagonally across, then turned south. Seconds later, headlights flashed, and the boxy Ulyanov Hunter squealed to a stop beside them. Akulinin clambered into the backseat, Masha into the front.

Then Dean squealed the tires as he accelerated down the street.

Behind them, Lieutenant Colonel Vasilyev burst out of the alley, pistol in hand, breathing hard.

He was just in time to glimpse the number on the vehicle’s license plate.