Long Shot

25

It took Stan Baldwin a while to determine that Swanson was fine, other than being knocked silly by the blast. A cut on the left thigh would need a few stitches and the Brit slapped a sterile bandage around the leg. There was a neat puncture wound in the right forearm from a sharp splinter. Baldwin pulled the wood free and patched the hole with gauze pad and tape. Most of the blood that drenched the American was not his. Anneli had absorbed the full force of the blast while clinging to Kyle’s back when they dove for cover. She, plus the extra protection of the backpack and his ruck, had shielded him.

When Baldwin finally sat back on his heels and turned Kyle loose, Swanson scrambled over to Anneli. She lay on her stomach and her lacerated back was fully exposed, as was a massive head wound. Perry and the medic were already pulling a green plastic sheet over her body. The Estonian girl had died at the moment of impact; aboard the helicopter, the medic had found no signs of life. Kyle had one last look at the pretty face, which was turned sideways, with black hair still trailing over her forehead to the sightless eyes, then Perry finished covering her with the sheet.

The medic packed up his gear, and the three snipers sat stunned on the vibrating deck of the helicopter, all watching the sheet as if willing it to move aside so that Anneli could spring up and bathe them with a smile. The death of a comrade always hits close to home, but this was especially tough. She had been their friend, their ward, almost a pet in many ways because she was so different from them. She was just a kid, a fascinating and brave kid, small in stature but strong in everything important. Her political activism in her hometown of Narva had helped start what was fast becoming a global showdown between great powers.

“Don’t mean nothin’” was a normal refrain among troops when a soldier was killed, for soldiers often died. It was part of the job description, part of the warrior creed. If you did not know the name of the unlucky guy, then it was easier to accept. “Don’t mean nothin’ at all.” Such bravado help shut out the nightmares that were sure to come, and for special operators like themselves, it was a peculiar armor that protected their souls against the monsters. Everyone had to die sometime. “Don’t mean a thing.” Such mutterings did not apply in this case, not where Anneli Kallasti was concerned. The snipers knew they would be seeing her face in dreams forever. Her death really did mean something. They took it personally.

Kyle Swanson tore his eyes away from the grim scene only by turning his entire body around until he faced out into the infinite darkness and the harsh, hammering wind chilled him. It was my goddam fault. Why did I bring her along? We didn’t really need her, but her incredible translation pinpointed the target and kept them informed in real time on what was happening in the camp. Like when the officer was bullshitting the men about making things perfect, and the men were criticizing the officer behind his back, and the advance knowledge of the exact time that the general would arrive, and that they had swiveled the mortars to point south. Everything she had done had added value to the overall mission. But she was my responsibility and I might as well have murdered her back on the boat or at the Narva castle. Stupid decision. Stupid. What a dumb fuck I am.

The helicopter whirred on low, fast and unseen by radar, and landed once again at the secret air strip in Lithuania, where it rolled to the hangar shared by NATO special operations. The CIA Gulfstream was waiting inside, engines shut down. On the return trip, time was not the important factor it had been when it had delivered the sniper team en route from Latvia.

Swanson, Baldwin and Perry climbed out, weary to the bone and mentally exhausted as well. They were at a loss for what to do. Leaving the body of Anneli behind was unthinkable. Swanson leaned against the side of the helo, with the Englishmen facing him, as the Nightstalker crew unbuckled and exited the aircraft. The pilot, Major Rick Allen, took off his helmet and left it on the seat, then joined them. The pilot of the waiting CIA jet walked over and was shocked at the condition of the men, who seemed drained of energy and on the point of utter collapse. Allen headed him off before he could speak, took him back to the Gulfstream and explained things. One of the team members, the woman, had been killed and her body was still on board.

Then the army flier went back to the group of operators. He had been through this before on other special missions. Their sense of loss had set in during the ride and the battered operators felt they could only communicate to those who had endured exactly the same experience. “Hey, guys. I’m sorry about your friend. Rough one.”

Perry lifted his gaze. “Yeah. Well, thanks for coming to get us.” Swanson and Baldwin also muttered appreciation.

Allen took over. “Look. I know this is a dirty thing to do, but you three men have to get on that airplane over there and get the hell out of here.”

Swanson’s eyes glittered like green crystal in the harsh fluorescent lights of the big building. “Not leaving her behind.”

“Yes, you are going to do exactly that, sir. She was not left on the battlefield, so the conditions are different. Give her to us now, and we will take her back to our own base, our own people. We will render every possible consideration, as if she was a Nightstalker herself. My entire crew and I personally promise that.”

Sergeant Baldwin and Corporal Perry watched their leader. Swanson was still swathed in dark, dried blood and shaky on his feet. “The major is right, Kyle,” Gray Perry said. “To keep this story secret, we have to get back to the Vagabond.”

“So it will be like we had never been anywhere else at all,” Baldwin agreed. “That’s important.”

The pilot added, “Honest to God, Mister Swanson. It will be an honor for our team to take care of this operator. You’ve got to go.”

Kyle knew they were right. The end of the mission was as important as the start. He had planned it to the minute, and it was best to stick to the schedule. Had it been from anyone else, he probably would have refused. Major Allen was one of them, and had flown unflinchingly into a mortar barrage to bring them out. He deserved to be heard. Swanson inhaled a deep breath and blew it out. Get back on the horse. Deal with the shakes later.

He reached back into the helo and wrapped his hand around one of Anneli’s small boots and squeezed. He didn’t have the proper good-bye words, and this wasn’t the time. “It’s better to die young and have truly lived, than to grow old merely to exist,” he said, louder than intended.

“What’s that, Kyle?” asked Perry.

“Something she told me the first day we met, when I asked if she understood the risks she was taking by being such a rebel.” Then he picked up his weapons and his pack and walked away, followed by the two British shooters.

Ivan Strakov ripped open a pink packet of artificial sugar and dumped it into his morning coffee, and then used his fingernails to open three small plastic tubs of creamer. It was 0900 on Saturday morning, April 16. The election in Narva was tomorrow.

“You seem to be feeling better this morning,” said Colonel Tom Markey, sipping his own coffee.

“It was just a nasty bug of some sort. I thought I would shit myself to death.” Strakov gulped the hot brew. “This nectar of the gods will finish the cure. I saw on the morning TV news that Russia and Lithuania are trading accusations about provocation. Some general got shot? What’s that all about?”

“Not my monkeys; not my circus,” Markey said. “I’m just a NATO nerd, so let’s talk about why we are here.”

Strakov wandered over to a window, cup in hand, its heat warm to his palm. The morning was bright and the outside temperature was warming. All was well in the world. “Blaise Pascal started it all, don’t you think? The Frenchman who built the first mechanical calculator to help out his tax-collector father?”

Markey played along. “Pascal gets the credit, but Gottfried Leibnez in Germany and Charles Babbage in England were just as important. The history of computers is hazy, going back to Arab and Chinese merchants using beads on a string or an abacus to count. Don’t fuck around with history, Ivan. You are just wasting time again.”

The Russian came back to the table and fingered a triangle of toast, then bit off a corner. “Let me continue in this vein, Tom. You’ll see my point in a minute. Anyway, after the manual age, like the beads on the string, the mechanical devices moved in, with inventors such as Pascal, Babbage and Leibnez. Handcrafted metal and wood counting machines could do basic computations.”

“Uh-huh. Then electricity comes along and, presto, we are into punch cards and rudimentary computers as big as warehouses.” Markey drank from his cup, waiting.

“Follow that trail into war and the space age and computer science really surges forward.” Ivan seemed more animated than usual.

Markey enjoyed the history of computers. You couldn’t understand today without knowing about yesterday. “Silicon chips and miniaturization, and now automobiles that possess more computing power than the early rockets that went into space. Almost everybody has a desktop computer.”

Ivan was back in his chair with a fresh cup of coffee, his eyes almost sparking. “And it all goes to prove that computer science is not static. What comes next? That is where you and I come in, Tom, about halfway through the play. We specialize in cyberwarfare and are always looking for the next shiny thing so we can kill each other better and faster. A new and improved space race; both sides have to have it first!”

Markey was puzzled by this new direction. “What are you talking about, Colonel?”

“We, I mean the Russians, are, I estimate, about a year ahead of you guys.”

“We are all working on optical systems. Everybody in the world is trying to figure it out.”

Strakov leaned back and cupped both hands around his coffee. “Once again, Russia was first. The Z-seed protocol was the key, Tom. We already have a fully operational optical computer system. I watched it at work, and it is about a thousand times faster than today’s best digital systems.”

Markey tried to keep his emotions in check and his face neutral. If Strakov was telling the truth, then everything NATO had on line was obsolete. “Bullshit. We would have known.”

“Right. Remember that you didn’t know about the Armata weapons systems being in the field until I told you? Same story again, Tom. The first militarized optical computers are ready — think of it; computing with accelerated lasers through the air instead of electricity through circuit boards, using photons instead of electrons. We call it the Nehche, which means ‘Eyeglasses.’ This is good information.”

Markey recognized it as another game-changer. The frustrating Ivan Strakov was once again proving his worth. Markey and others in the cyber-war field believed that such a gizmo was barely in the theoretical stages at the Skolkovo Innovation Center, the Moscow version of Silicon Valley. “Where is it?”

“Not an it, Tom… them! Plural. I helped install the first Nehche myself.”

“Where?”

“Up north. Actually, it is not too far from where the MiG tangled with that Finn missile. This is all part of the Arctic Circle strategy. Moscow chose to put the first optical lens up there because there is no place more important for President Pushkin’s climb to regain superpower status.”

Colonel Markey unconsciously looked up at the camera recording the session. He hoped other people were hearing this news, too. “Actually, we have that iceberg territory under pretty tight control,” he said, feeling somewhat defensive. He could not comprehend NATO and the United States having fallen behind in optics.

It was as if Strakov was not even listening to his comments. The Russian was on a roll. “When Moscow controls the Arctic, it can control the world, and it’s there for the taking. You Americans and NATO are so militarily scattered, from Afghanistan and the Middle East to Ukraine to the Baltics and all over Europe that you are virtually naked in the region. A couple of submarines, some airplanes and some soldiers on skis? Why, President Pushkin could take that frozen frontier in no more than two weeks of fighting. It would be over before it started, unless you went nuclear.”

“If all that he has is an untested computer system that may not even work under stress in extremely cold weather, we will be all right.” Markey did not believe his own words.

Strakov was totally calm. “The Nehche system was more than a peaceful breakthrough. It opened the door, Tom, for improved laser weaponry. Where you use missiles, we will use beams of light. Mounted in a long-range Tupolev bomber, for instance, a high-energy laser system with Nehche guidance is a fearsome weapon.”

It was another blow to Colonel Markey. The U.S. Air Force had tried to build that very type of airborne laser with the YAL-1 system but eventually scrapped it. Years ago, the Boeing 747 that carried the experimental device had been taken to the USAF boneyard in Arizona and turned into scrap metal.

Markey put down his coffee and leaned forward. “Are you telling me that Russia has an operational airborne-laser system?”

“We have a lot of things, Tom. Which is why I came over to tell you about all of them.” The Russian stood and stretched, ready for a mid-morning nap.

“I’m no American general, Tom. But if I was, I would start looking more at the sophisticated enemy in the north and less at the deserts of the ragtag Muslims. Your country and NATO are pledged to defend these little nothings like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Pushkin counts on that, which is why he is pushing these minor military diversions such as overflights. So while you are tied down in the Middle East, and locked here in the Baltics defending the indefensible, things are going to get pretty hot in the world of the polar bears, who are not members of NATO. You are totally out of position.”

After a shower and clean underwear and a heavy robe, and then some chow, Kyle Swanson disappeared into the communication suite and set up a secure link to Marty Atkins at CIA headquarters in Virginia. “It is done,” he said.

“Yeah, I heard. Any damage to our team?” Atkins knew the risk factor had been high.

“One KIA,” Swanson replied, tired and expressionless. The emotions were under steel bands. “Our translator. The girl we pulled out of Estonia.”

“Does Calico know that?”

“Not yet. When she finds out, be ready for some blowback.”

“Tough.”

“Yeah. Did her death really make any difference, Marty?”

The CIA’s deputy director for clandestine operations chose his words carefully. “We may never know, Kyle. That’s not unusual in our world. But it definitely has created a stir. The Russkies are all bent out of shape because their general got popped. The Lithuanians are denying that any of their troops were involved except for ducking incoming Russian mortar shells.”

“Okay. Watch out for Calico. She will be on the warpath. Now I’m going to sleep. Appreciate it if you contact the One Sixtieth SOAR concerning the body.”

“Talk to you later, then. Good job.”

Swanson terminated the call and sat motionless for a few minutes. He had brought both Sir Jeff on the yacht and Marty at Langley up to date. Nothing more important left to do. Then he made his way back to the infirmary to get a few stitches and sterile bandages for minor scratches. A pain pill would help get him to sleep, although he knew as soon as he was in dreamland, the nightmarish but familiar Boatman probably would come to visit with a boatload of guilt. Anneli had crossed over. She would be a passenger.