Death Wave

8

Rubens came awake with a start.

He’d driven back out to Fort Meade as soon as the NSC meeting was over, grabbing a fast-food burger on the way for lunch. He’d spoken with Marie by cell phone, gotten an update on the op in Dushanbe, and learned that Dean and Akulinin were at the safe house — with a stray.

He approved transport for the stray — if Charlie and Ilya were vouching for Alekseyevna, he would do his best to help her — then rattled off a string of orders. He didn’t want the boys immediately leaving Dushanbe but wanted them to pull a quick black bag job first, and Marie should expect a large download over the secure line from the CIA.

Once back at Fort Meade, he decided he had to get some sleep. He’d been on his feet now for more hours than he cared to think about, and he’d caught himself nodding at the wheel as he drove up the Baltimore-Washington Parkway out of the city.

Not good.

So when he’d finally reached his office at a bit past two thirty, he’d pulled off his shoes and collapsed into the cot in the back room off his office, facedown in the pillow.

Thirty minutes later, Ann Sawyer, his secretary, was shaking him awake. “Sir? Sir!”

“What is it?”

“Sorry to wake you, Mr. Rubens, but they say there’s something you should see on C-SPAN.”

“If this is not the end of the world, Ann …”

“Sir, I—”

“Never mind, never mind. I’m coming.”

He rolled out of the cot and made his way to the office. Ann had already switched on the monitor mounted within one wall.

He recognized the face of Rodney C. Mullins, giving an address.

“… that it is critically important that we provide timely funding for our surveillance satellite system. As I said before, we have people on the ground in places like Astana, Dushanbe, and Karachi, and they cannot do their jobs defending this great nation from the threat of rogue states or terrorists quite possibly armed with nuclear weapons if they do not have adequate technical support!

“And so I move, Mr. Speaker, that my amendment to the military appropriations bill be voted on without delay …”

Rubens stared at the screen in disbelief. “Jesus fucking H. Christ!”

Charlie Dean took another look around the dark compound, then lay down on the ground.

“Tell me again why this is a good idea, coming back in here like this?” Akulinin asked.

“Because it’s the one place in Tajikistan they’re not looking for us,” Dean told him.

“And because Mr. Rubens suggested that you might want to try it,” Vic Klein added in their implanted speakers. Vic had taken over the Art Room’s part of the mission for Dean and Akulinin at the end of Jeff Rockman’s shift some hours ago.

“Right. You ready, Charlie?”

Dean closed his eyes and nodded. “Let’s do it.” His right hand closed a little tighter around the pen he was holding cupped there, out of sight. He heard the faint crunch of gravel as Akulinin hurried away.

The nap at the safe house had been all too brief. He’d been able to sleep for perhaps two hours before the promised messenger had shown up with new plates for the car and new ID cards and papers, both for the two Desk Three operators and for Maria Alekseyevna. Now, her blond hair tucked up inside a black wig, she was Ruqiya Nazarova, and she was listed as Sergei Nazarov’s Tajik wife.

Dean wondered if the Art Room wizards had been aware of Ilya’s tryst with Masha a few hours ago when they created their new legends.

Probably not … but with them and their high-tech magic at listening in, you never knew. The two had been back in their separate rooms by the time Mrs. Konovalova had come up the stairs to wake them, and that at least had worked out well. Dean had the feeling that the old woman would not have approved.

Or … perhaps she would. Her eyes had been sparkling a bit when she’d wished them all safe travels, and it seemed to Dean that she’d been smiling in a knowing and somewhat condescending way at Ilya and Masha as they said good-bye.

Maybe the squeaks had penetrated the floor to her bedroom below.

And maybe the woman didn’t mind if two young people found a few moments of escape from a dark and pain-grim world.

Their initial goal had been to drive south as quickly as possible, using back roads to avoid the dragnet thrown up around the city by Vasilyev’s forces and by the local police. Besides the new license plates, the Dushanbe CIA resident had sent along a new drivers-side mirror to replace the one that had been shot out earlier, plus a spray can of a tacky adhesive with which to coat the car’s body. There was no time to repaint the vehicle’s green exterior, but handfuls of dirt scooped up from outside the shed and hurled against the body quickly transformed the dark green Hunter from new-looking to something that had been bouncing around on the arid dirt roads of Tajikistan’s mountains for weeks. They couldn’t do anything about replacing the car’s rear window, but they did brush some dark matte gray paint into the bright white star where the bullet had glanced off glass and metal. It wouldn’t get past a close examination, but at night, from a distance of a few yards, the scar was now invisible.

While they’d been detailing the car to give it its new look, Rubens had explained the new plan.

According to various surveillance sources, Lieutenant Colonel Vasilyev had his office in the Ayni Airfield tower building. Analysts going over the footage Dean had transmitted of Vasilyev jumping out of the helicopter had shown him carrying a briefcase — not the sort of fashion accessory normally taken by FSB officers on board helicopters. The NSA analysts were not sure what happened to that briefcase. Dean and Akulinin had not seen it in the hospital morgue. It might have been in Vasilyev’s car, or it could have been passed to a subordinate and taken to Vasilyev’s office in the Ayni control tower building.

Either way, the chances were good that the briefcase was in his Ayni office now, and Rubens wanted the Desk Three operatives to slip inside and have a look.

They’d returned in the middle of the night to Ayni, a few kilometers southwest of Dushanbe. Getting back onto the base had been simple enough. The Deep Black electronic support unit back at Fort Meade had for the past several hours been busily infiltrating the radio and cell phone calls crisscrossing the airwaves over Tajikistan, adding reports, sightings, and orders designed to confuse the manhunt now under way. In several cases, they’d even used the Internet to modify local police and military records and files. Numerous new reports now had the fugitive vehicle fleeing north on the M34 toward the border with Uzbekistan, while other reports suggested that the fugitives were not two men and a woman, as originally reported, but one man and one woman, the female described as blond, the male as being Pakistani, with black hair and beard.

And so a dusty, travel-worn car with different license plates than were on the fugitive vehicle had entered the Ayni front gate. The bored Indian guards there had looked at their IDs and waved them through. Dean had parked the vehicle in the main parking lot, and Masha had stayed in the back, huddled underneath a blanket, while Dean and Akulinin had approached the control tower.

The building — indeed, the entire base — appeared to have shut down for the night. There were two guards in front of the control tower entrance, however, both of them Russians. Dean and Akulinin had watched them for a moment from behind the corner of a large tool shed a hundred yards from the tower. The windows were probably covered by an alarm system; the only way in, then, was through the front door, directly between the guards.

Now Dean lay on his back behind the tool shed, listening as Akulinin’s footsteps receded into the distance. A moment later, he heard shouting — Akulinin barking orders.

He heard multiple footsteps returning, crunching over gravel, running this time. “He’s over here, around this corner!” Dean heard Akulinin say in out-of-breath Russian. “I think he’s still alive.”

“I’m not supposed to leave my post, sir,” another voice said.

“Don’t worry. We just need to get him to the infirmary.”

Dean felt someone standing beside him, leaning over him, felt a cold hand touch the side of his face, then probe for a pulse at his throat. He opened his eyes, looking up into the startled face of a Russian soldier, then snapped his arm straight up, shoving the tip of the pen directly into the man’s solar plexus.

The applicator was based on emergency medical injector units — the kind used to autoinject massive jolts of atropine in case of an attack by nerve gas. When the tip hit the man’s shirt, the needle fired, sending a dose of a powerful relaxant into his central torso. He opened his mouth to yell … but no sound came out, and his knees were already buckling. Dean rolled out from beneath him as Akulinin grabbed him from behind, clamping his mouth shut and lowering the sagging body to the ground.

The neurosuppressive cocktail in that pen would keep the man unconscious for at least six hours. As soon as he was down, Akulinin stepped around the corner and waved at the other guard. “It’s okay! The son of a bitch is just drunk! Come give us a hand, will you?”

A moment later, the second guard rounded the corner of the shed, his weapon slung. He barely had time to register the fact that the body on the ground was that of the other guard before Akulinin’s arm swept around from the side and slammed the tip of another auto-injector into his chest. The second guard collapsed as swiftly and as silently as the first.

Dean used a small lockpick set to open the simple padlock on its hasp securing the tool shed door. They dragged the Russian soldiers inside, relieved them of weapons, ammunition pouches, and IDs, and left them with their hands and feet bound in plastic zip-strips. Somebody would find them when they finally woke up and started yelling, if not before.

The front door to the control tower facility was unlocked — a somewhat worrisome fact. It suggested that there might be an officer of the watch who made periodic rounds inside the building as well as outside. Since they didn’t know his schedule, they would have to work fast.

They’d brought a small leather satchel with them, another present from the embassy. Dean pulled out a small device the size of a paperback book and scanned the door carefully, searching for live wires and circuits hidden in the wood or bricks — an indication that there might be silent alarms or hidden cameras. “Nothing,” he whispered.

Akulinin pulled a small black cylinder from the bag and planted it in the dirt next to the door. “Okay,” Vic Klein’s voice told them through their implant communicators. “Good picture. Go ahead.”

Inside, the building was completely dark. They didn’t have IR or starlight gear, but the two operators used tiny lights to find their way down a long hall and left, to a suite of back offices, the lights red-hued to preserve their night vision. A search through airport staffing records indicated that Vasilyev’s office was number 12; a search of architectural records in Dushanbe had pinpointed number 12 at the end of the dogleg to the left. The door was locked. Another electronic scan showed an absence of hidden alarms. Dean pulled out a slender rectangle of steel the size of a credit card and slid it between the door and the jamb, popping the bolt.

The office had two rooms, an outer room for a secretary and reception, an inner sanctum for the boss. They performed yet another electronic sweep with negative results. Akulinin left a micro camera positioned where it could watch the door, then checked with the Art Room to make sure the device was transmitting. Next the two operatives picked the lock to the inner door and entered Vasilyev’s private office.

They left the lights off, unwilling to let them show through the closed blinds at the back of the room and make someone suspicious. Using their red minilights, though, they found Vasilyev’s desk, then swept the entire room for electronic signatures. Against the wall in one corner was a four-foot steel safe. Akulinin sat down at the computer and powered it up. Dean moved to the safe.

The safe had been imported from the United States — with a Sargent and Greenleaf Model R6730 locking mechanism — and had been identified as such already in the architectural plans uncovered by Desk Three’s long-distance computer snooping.

The lock mechanisms for safes rated for holding classified DoD documents back in the United States were now required to be electronic, using a keypad to punch in the combination. Though more secure against safecrackers employing traditional methods — listening to tumblers fall through stethoscopes or manipulating the lock — electronic locks were actually easier to penetrate using modern computer technology.

This kind of lock was tougher to get past. A three-number combination lock like this one theoretically had 100³, or one million, possible combinations, though minor imperfections and inefficiencies in the way the numbers lined up on the dial and the way the tumblers worked together in practice reduced that number to roughly 283,000 possible distinct combinations. There were several ways of quickly circumventing such a purely mechanical system, but the NSA operatives didn’t have a high-speed hardened tungsten-carbide drill, a thermal lance, or a plastic-explosives shaped charge, and they didn’t want to make that much noise and call down base security on their heads.

The CIA resident at the U.S. Embassy had sent along something better.

Called a sonic cracker, the battery-powered device fitted around the safe’s dial, the back fitting closely against the surface of the safe’s steel door. Dean pressed a button and felt the unit vibrate. It operated by sending a subsonic pulse through the steel and the lock mechanism and listening for echoed returns, a form of sonar that worked through steel and brass instead of water or air. A green LED light winked on at the top of the device. Signal return received.

He rotated the dial ten to the right and pressed the button again. He continued the process, turning the dial farther and farther to the right until he’d finished a complete circuit. Then he repeated the process, turning to the left.

Behind him, he heard Akulinin mutter as Vasilyev’s desktop came up. “Vista crap, tee-em,” he said. “Are we trying to make other countries mad at us by exporting this stuff to them?”

“As long as the back door is there,” Dean murmured. He was beginning the third set of combination setups now, as the computer chip inside the cracker stored more and more sonic images of the interior of the lock.

“Let’s keep the chatter down,” Rubens’ voice said over their link. “Just in case you missed a passive recorder.”

A passive recorder was an electronic device that could monitor a room, switching on only when there were sounds to be heard — like conversation. The NSA used such devices frequently, utilizing ordinary telephones as the pickups.

Vasilyev wasn’t likely to have that kind of technology at his disposal, but it was simply good field operations discipline to keep the conversation to a minimum. The fact that numerous software packages distributed globally had undocumented back doors allowing interested parties like the NSA to peek at password-protected information, such as the movement of large amounts of money through different banking systems, was something the Agency wanted to keep very secret for as long as possible.

Dean mentally kicked himself on that one — and Akulinin should have known better than to say more than an absolute minimum. That was the sort of mistake that could kill you in this business.

He wondered if Ilya’s judgment had been compromised by the woman.

Had his?

He also wondered what Rubens was doing up and in the Art Room. Last he’d heard, the Old Man had been asleep.

Abruptly, a second LED flashed green. The flashing indicated that the chip inside the unit was processing all of the data.

“I’ve got something here,” Akulinin whispered. He plugged a small device into one of the computer’s USB ports, then typed on the Cyrillic-alphabet keyboard. “Transmitting,” he said after hitting the RETURN key.

“Receiving,” Klein said over their implants. “How are you doing, Charlie?”

“Working,” he replied. There was no telling how long this part of the process would take. The computer inside the cracker was small but extremely powerful, a product of the NSA’s computer research labs, where the joke had it that they were developing both hardware and software that were at least fifteen years ahead of anything yet on the market. By analyzing the patterns of reflected sound waves, it was building up a picture of the wheel-and-gate mechanism behind the safe’s external dial, looking for irregularities and imperfections that would sharply reduce the number of possible combinations. A skilled safecracker could do this with a good ear and sensitive fingers, as well as an expert knowledge of a safe’s internal mechanism, a process known in the trade as manipulation. The sonic returns in the cracker should be able to play through all possible permutations of the wheels inside and come up with just one working combination.

The question was how long that process would take. Depending on the lock, it could happen almost immediately … or it might take as long as twenty minutes.

“You might want to hurry things up,” Klein told him. “We have an officer of the guard coming up to the front of your building. He’s looking around, shining his flashlight. He’s looking for the missing guards.”

“Just freaking great,” Dean subvocalized. He didn’t want to interrupt the process. Moving the device affixed to the door meant the internal picture would be rearranged when he tried again, and he would have to start over from the beginning.

“He’s trying the front door,” Klein said. “He’s coming inside.”

Dean glanced up at Akulinin, whose face was illuminated by the glow from the computer monitor. “Watch the front office door,” he said softly. Akulinin nodded, shut down the computer, and slipped out of the inner office.

More minutes passed. “I can hear him in the hallway,” Akulinin’s voice said over the link. “He’s rattling doorknobs and calling names.”

“You’ll want to take him out,” Klein said. “If he can’t find them and sounds an alarm—”

“Wait one,” Akulinin whispered. “He’s outside …”

At that moment, the LED stopped blinking, indicating that the computations were complete. The alphanumeric R27 appeared on the one-line window. Dean turned the knob to the indicated setting and pressed the button. A second alphanumeric, L84, appeared, and after another button-press it was R36. He twisted the handle, and the safe opened easily with a soft thunk.

“I’m in,” Dean said quietly. He pulled the sonic cracker off the door and slipped it back into the bag. He shone his light into the interior and saw the briefcase, tucked in beside a sheaf of file folders and numerous papers.

In the outer office, the door opened.

“Mutko!” a voice called.

“Ignatyev! G’deh vashi—”

The call was abruptly cut short by a heavy thud.

“One bad guy down,” Akulinin’s voice said a moment later.

“It’s clear outside,” Klein told them. “If he doesn’t report in after his rounds, there may be an alarm.”

Dean pulled the briefcase out of the safe. The scanner turned up no indication of an electronic defensive system or lock — it didn’t even have a combination lock on it. There was a key-type lock, and no key, but a small pry bar from the bag snapped the hasp open with a single sharp ping.

Papers … sheets of something that looked like bank bonds … and a computer CD in a plastic jewel case. “Jackpot,” he said.

“I’ve got our friend out here zip-stripped and hidden in the office supply cupboard,” Akulinin said. “Let’s get the hell out of Dodge.”

Getting out proved to be easier than getting in, anticlimactic even. Akulinin retrieved the micro cameras on the way out. There was no sense in leaving obvious clues to the burglary of Vasilyev’s office. The guards at the front gate waved them through and didn’t even seem interested in recording their departure in a log.

They turned east on the Hissar Road south of the airport and drove five miles to the intersection with the A384, the main highway leading south. A broad, modern bridge spanned the river — it was the Kafirnigan here, the Varzob having joined it a few miles upriver, just south of Dushanbe. There was a roadblock at the north end of the bridge, with several bored-looking militiamen stopping and checking each car. At just past five in the morning, there was little traffic, and the short line of cars and trucks in front of the bridge appeared to be moving through quickly.

“Masha,” Dean told the woman in the backseat, “it looks like they’re not checking the cars thoroughly — just looking at IDs. Get down on the floor again and cover up.”

“With the guns?” The two AKMs they’d taken from the guards were on the floor now, under the dark blanket.

“Yup. Just don’t fire one by accident.”

“Okay, Charlie. I must say you boys do know how to show a girl a good time!”

Dean glanced back to be sure she was completely covered. The various reports out were for either a man and a woman or two men and a woman, and keeping Masha hidden would simplify the deception,

if the guards up ahead didn’t give the backseat more than a cursory glance in the darkness.

The vehicle ahead, a battered red pickup truck piled high with baskets, moved on across the bridge. Dean eased the Hunter forward and smiled as the guard with a slung rifle shone a flashlight at his face. A second man stood with an AK-74 at port arms in front of the vehicle; two more, Dean noticed, were standing off to the side, caught in the glare of the headlights, watching, weapons ready.

“Identification,” the first man said. He leaned forward, placing his left hand on the Hunter’s door. Dean watched him remove his hand and look at it curiously, rubbing the fingers with his thumb. The tacky spray, Dean thought, must still feel sticky.

“That should be ‘Identification, sir,’” Akulinin snapped in his best tyrannical-martinet tone. “I happen to be an officer in the 201st Division of the Russian Army! My driver is an officer in the Indian Air Force, and we’re out in the middle of the fucking night searching for Pakistani terrorists! Wake up and pay attention to what you’re doing!”

“Sir!” the militia soldier said, the stickiness of the car door forgotten. He straightened up, fumbling with the flashlight, attempting a salute with the wrong hand. “Yes, sir!”

Dean showed him the IDs, the new ones sent over from the embassy, since the old were compromised by now. “Have you seen anything suspicious at this checkpoint, soldier?” Dean asked.

“No, sir! But we heard on the radio earlier that the saboteurs have been sighted on the M34 well north of the city … north of Anzob.” The man’s Russian was atrocious, but he seemed most eager to please. Police militia would be poorly trained locals working under the orders of either the Dushanbe government or, possibly, the Russians. They would be more terrified of an angry Russian officer than even of the possibility of terrorists.

“Very good,” Dean told him. “We are checking out a report from the south. We’ll let you know if we hear anything.”

“Yes, sir!” He stepped back after a cursory glance at the IDs and waved them through. “Good luck, sir!”

“Sometimes,” Akulinin said, grinning as Dean accelerated onto the long bridge, “all it takes is an attitude. Step on the other guy’s toes until he apologizes.”

“That or frightening him half to death. I think the poor SOB’s trousers turned a darker shade of brown when you barked at him.”

“Whatever works! We’re in the clear now, and Afghanistan, here we come!” He reached back and patted the blanket on the floor behind him. “Come on out, sweetie. It’s safe!”

“Afghanistan?” she said uncertainly.

“Afghanistan and a NATO flight out of here!”

“Unless they turn up something for us to track,” Dean added. “We’re still waiting on satellite data, remember.”

He wasn’t going to get excited about the end of the journey just yet. Afghanistan was still a hundred to a hundred fifty miles ahead, depending on how you measured the route, at least a three-hour drive, and perhaps more depending on the condition of the road.

He would be a lot happier when they were across the border and safely inside Afghanistan. An awful lot could happen in three hours.