Long Shot

31

The sniper had to make certain he did not eat too much. A taste of the creamy dessert and a sip of water to finish. This was the way to work, Kyle thought. All the comforts of home. It was much better than slumming around in a hole in the ground, dirty, hungry and uncomfortable, as was the case just a few days ago in Kaliningrad. Unbidden, the memories flooded back and he was running for the chopper, Anneli at his heels, while high-explosive mortar shells slammed down.

Damn! The niggling feeling that had been itching in his brain ever since the fight, that something was off-kilter, came around again and he still could not put a finger on it.

The sound of an automobile pulling up outside brought him back to the job at hand, and Swanson readjusted his mask, picked up the gun and checked his watch. Forty minutes had passed since the mayor had left. Moving to the wife, he tied a napkin around her eyes for a blindfold. “This is almost over,” he said.

Swanson heard one car door close, and a few seconds later, another was shut, and then a third, which was one too many. He put away his Colt because any shooting inside would be loud enough to draw attention from neighbors. Instead, he slid a broad-bladed KA-BAR knife into his hand. He backed against the wall beside the door and waited. Footfalls on the steps, then the porch, and the door opened. Mayor Pran came inside first, calling out desperately for his wife, “Ivi!”

Calico was next in line, handcuffed. She stepped tentatively inside, guided by the hand of the uniformed policeman who was last in line. Swanson jerked the cop off balance and jammed seven inches of razor sharp carbon steel into the neck twice, and ruthlessly gouged through muscles, tissue and arteries. Another thrust went into the chest and sliced through a chunk of heart before the point stopped against the spine. The cop exhaled a long, final bubble of breath. While Swanson closed the door, blood poured from the cop’s severed carotid artery and hosed everything near it, painting the floor and the furniture crimson.

The mayor had thought about his next move during the drive home, betting that the man in the black mask would attack the policeman. Ignoring his wife’s scream, Pran yanked open the top drawer of a small and polished table to grab a Makarov PM pistol stored inside. He stopped cold when he saw the drawer was empty. He turned with his hands in the air, and saw the invader watching him, holding a long knife that dripped blood on the carpet. “No. Please don’t kill me,” he mumbled.

Kyle waved him to the chair across from his wife and lightly touched the arm of Jan Hollings, who had rolled away from the fighting. “You OK?” he asked softly, never taking his eyes off the mayor. Calico knew it was Swanson. She bobbed her head.

Konstantin Pran was roughly bound with tape again until he was completely immobilized, except for his mouth.

“I warned you not to bring the police,” Swanson hissed at him.

“I tried. The man insisted, but we were wasting time. I knew you could handle him.” Pran’s eyes were huge in fear. He looked at the dead policeman and the quarts of red blood that were still spilling from the body.

“Well, you made it with eleven minutes to spare.”

“The bomb,” said the mayor, his eye catching the red numbers of the detonator of his wife’s clay necklace. They were still blinking. 9:36… 9:35. “Stop the bomb. Don’t blow us up.”

Kyle ignored him. A quick search of the mayor gave up the car keys, and the key to the handcuffs was on the belt of the dead cop. Swanson freed Calico. “Don’t say a word until we’re in the car. Walk normally. Let’s go!”

The mayor shouted as they left, no longer pleading for his life, but a bellowing, defiant challenge. “You cannot stop it! Even if you kill us tonight, you cannot stop it!”

That made no sense to Swanson, but as he opened the door, he felt Jan Hollings hesitate and look back over her shoulder. The mayor was wobbling in the chair, trying to escape. He was trussed like a trapped hog, and his screams were matched by the muffled cries of his terrified wife. “Oh, shit,” Swanson muttered, and dashed over long enough to slap strips of tape over Pran’s mouth.

Calico was still in the doorway, with tears running down her face. She also moved to the mayor and slapped him hard across the cheek. “Yes, we can, and we will!” she hissed, then slapped again with the other hand.

Swanson pulled her back. “Stop that. We’ve got to go, and right now! Get to the car.” He gave her a push and followed her out. Something he did not understand had just happened right in front of him, and Calico seemed to be on fire.

In less than two minutes, the Volvo was on the move. Kyle rolled his mask off and tossed it in the back. Jan knew the roads better, but she was bent over in the passenger seat, her head between her knees and her hands threading in her hair as she hauled in great gulps of air. “Are you sick? What’s wrong, Calico? Talk to me.”

She turned to look at him. There was effort and fright in her gaze that he had never seen before. “Kyle, do you have comms? Anything at all we can use to get in touch with somebody?”

“No. I don’t do this sort of thing with a phone on me. No tracking allowed. What’s the fastest way out of here, back to Tallinn?” He took a corner and drove down a darkened street.

She peeked up over the dash and got her bearings. “Take a right in two blocks. That leads to the traffic circle, then straight west on the E-20.” She still seemed on the edge of panic.

“Calm down now. We’re safe. Comms aren’t necessary because we are only a couple of hours from Tallinn. You will be back home. Tom is worried sick about you.”

She squirmed around to face him directly, gathering her strength. “I can’t wait to get there and be with him, Kyle, but that’s not why we need immediate communications.”

“Then what the hell are you talking about? Don’t play games.”

“World War Three, Kyle. World War Fuckin’ Three!” She looked at the digital clock on the dashboard. “Almost midnight. We have only got nine hours!”

Swanson struggled to stay steady on the wheel and not stomp the accelerator. Getting stopped for a traffic violation would be a disaster. The egress on a mission was critical. He kept his eyes on the road. Thankfully, there was not much traffic and in a moment, the Volvo was leaning through the traffic circle. “What happens at nine o’clock?”

“This new city council of Narva is seceding from the rest of Estonia. At nine, that crazy mayor will go to the bridge and invite Russian troops to come over and occupy the city.”

He couldn’t believe that. It was insanity. Such a move would mean war. “That was probably booze talking. He was almost drunk when I first found him at his house. He told you that and you believed him?”

“The man was drinking and bragging, yes. But, Kyle, we cannot afford not to believe him.”

Swanson pushed the button and lowered his window to allow some night air to wash through the car. She was right. “Well, we can’t use a regular cell phone for this kind of stuff anyway. If we tried a pay phone, it would take fifteen minutes, when instead we could be fifteen miles closer to Tallinn. The CIA is all set up at your house, so we can get direct links to Langley. So let’s see how fast we can drive a hundred and twenty miles,” he said as they plunged onto the E-20. Traffic cops be damned.

Twenty minutes went by before they spoke again.

“Thanks for coming so quickly. You are very good at your job, but despite the rescue, you and I still have an unsettled debt.”

“You’re welcome, and whatever,” Kyle responded. “We will straighten up sometime in the future. There’s something more important at hand right now, wouldn’t you agree?”

“What bomb did the old man want to stop?”

“Nothing. He believes I put a necklace of C-four around his wife’s neck, but it was just a roll of Play-Doh with a dud detonator. It will not go off. Even so, it will be several hours before they wiggle out of the tape, and then the mayor is going to have to explain how he lost two cops and his prized CIA spook.”

“You have a cold, dead heart,” she said.

“Warm and fuzzy doesn’t get the job done in this line of work.”

They lapsed back into silence for another ten miles, letting the cool night air rush through the open windows. “Do you know anything about the status of my network?” she finally asked.

“No. I doubt if it exists any longer. The Agency probably pulled the plug and warned them all to take off as soon as you went missing. You can ask the people at Langley.” He leaned his head back, adjusted the seat down and to the rear. The Volvo went on cruise control at eighty.

Ten more minutes of quiet, and few cars passed in the night. No headlights loomed in the mirrors. “Tell me about Anneli.” This time her voice was softer. “What happened?”

“You sure we need to do this right now?”

“I know you did not personally kill her,” said Hollings. “We still have an hour on the road. Help me understand. I really, really liked that girl.”

Without emotion, Kyle told her the story and when he was done, Calico said, “She wanted to go?”

“Yes, it was her choice. I am glad she went because she proved to be a valuable asset. Just like when we snatched that prisoner during the war games. I really liked her, too.”

“And she was not just another tool for you to use? I know how you are, how you put mission before everything. And your rep with women stinks.”

“Anneli saved my life by giving her own, Calico. Do you think that I can ever forget that? When she died, something inside me went away, too. So whatever you want to do to me, go ahead and take your best shot. I don’t give a shit. Enough of that for now.”

It was almost one o’clock, the beginning of Tuesday morning. In eight hours, Russian tanks would be on the Narva Bridge.

A lone figure stalked the ancient battlements of the Ivangorod Fortress, looking to the west and planning the future. Valery Levchenko had arrived about midnight, and after reviewing plans with the local staff, he gave in to temptation. Like generations of generals before him, he climbed up to the highest point and peered with lust at the rich panorama right across the Narva River. The night chill invigorated the man from St. Petersburg, and his obvious confidence inspired his soldiers. It was an impure dark, with a fog hanging on the river like a gray beast, and clouds cut off the moonlight. If he couldn’t see over there, the enemy couldn’t see over here, even if they had been looking.

The colonel general could not make out the Narva end of the big, wide bridge in such decimated visibility. Turning around, he also saw thick darkness coating his side of the river, where strict light and noise discipline had been imposed. What could not be totally suppressed was the grumble of dozens of vehicles being guided into position: Armata tanks and armored personnel carriers and missile batteries and trucks of every sort clattered and ground their gears and squeaked. The stirring of troops rose as a hushed shuffle.

He took a final look at the bulk of the Hermann Castle on the Narva side and thought briefly about how useless such things had become. Instead of months of bombardment by cannonballs and a starvation siege, the big castle would fall to him tomorrow morning with a simple handshake with the mayor, whose name Levchenko could not recall at the moment.

Months had been spent planning this thrust, now everything was being shifted into final positions through these vital last hours of darkness. When nine o’clock came, his force would uncoil like a powerful snake. As they moved over the 530-foot-long major bridge, they would also seize the pedestrian bridge near Kreenholm Island and the important railroad span that connected the two countries. Trains loaded with gear and supplies waited on sidings deeper in Russia.

By the end of the day, he would have about two hundred vehicles and five thousand men across the river. They would be guarded by artillery tubes set deep behind Ivanogrod, thickets of antiaircraft missiles, squadrons of helicopter gunships and stacks of fighter-bombers.

Once it began, Levchenko had no intention of stopping at the Narva city limits. The Estonians probably would be in action by then, and the general could order a full assault all along the border. The battle for the Baltics could begin in earnest. He took a final sniff of the wet air, and it had the smell of glory. He then left the rugged stone wall and walked back to his headquarters. The staff was hard at work, and a big clock was just striking two o’clock in the morning.