Operation Barracuda

21

I switch on my thermal vision, pull the grenade pin, reach around the open door, and drop it. The men shout in alarm and then there’s a tremendous explosion in the hallway. It’s just a smoke grenade but the tight confines of the quarters magnifies the intensity of the blast. Total chaos ensues outside the office as the door is bombarded with gunfire. I fall to the floor, facedown, and crawl out beneath the line of fire. With my head in the hallway I can count four warm bodies in the smoke. Three of them are shooting blindly toward the office. I calmly aim my Five-seveN and take them out — one, two, three.

“Stop!” the fourth man shouts. “Stop shooting, you fools!” The poor guy doesn’t realize his men are already dead. I can see him moving toward the staircase, feeling his way along the wall. I stand, grab him in a one-arm choke hold, and place the barrel of my handgun to his head.

It’s Anton Antipov.

“I should just kill you now,” I say in Russian.

The guy is trembling. “Wait!” he says in English. “Please!”

“Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t.”

“If you kill me you’ll… you’ll never know what’s going on.”

“I know what’s going on.”

“Surely you don’t know the details.” The guy is desperate. The coward is ready to spill his guts. He’s right, though. I don’t know the details. I pull him back through the hallway and out of the smoke. We end up in the storeroom with the weapons. I throw him to the floor, quickly frisk him, and find that he’s unarmed. Standing over him with the Five-seveN in his face, I say, “Okay, Antipov. Tell me the details. I’m listening. Don’t leave anything out.”

The man squints at me and asks, “Who are you?”

“The Avon Lady. Now what’s the Shop doing with the MRUUV material?”

“You’re Fisher! Are you not? The Splinter Cell!”

“I asked you a question.”

“I was afraid you might show up sooner rather than later. Andrei… Andrei wouldn’t believe you’d be on our trail so quickly.”

“Are you going to answer me or not? You have three seconds.”

“Wait!” Antipov puts up his hands defensively. “Don’t shoot!”

“Okay, I’m waiting. Now talk to me.”

“We’ve sold the MRUUV plans to General Tun in China. He plans to attack Taiwan with his army. He’s mobilizing in Fuzhou and war is imminent.”

Is the general nuts? “He’s crazy if he thinks he can attack Taiwan without retaliation from the United Nations, not to mention America. Surely he knows that.”

Antipov nods. “The general apparently has a plan for that scenario.”

“And that is…?”

“I don’t know!”

The guy is too scared to lie. I think back to the information I gleaned from Zdrok’s computer. “What’s this final piece that’s coming from California?”

“You know about that?”

“Answer me.”

“It’s the guidance system for the MRUUV. A firm based in Los Angeles is designing it according to Tun’s specifications. You know how the MRUUV works?”

Yeah, I do. It’s an undersea torpedo that can be guided remotely from a submarine or ship. “Why the hell would Tun need one of those to attack Taiwan? Does he have a bomb? One of your Russian nuclear bombs? Is that what came in this crate?” I indicate the one that was marked as containing beets.

Antipov nods. “Yes, he’s got it. All he needs now is the guidance system. It will be on its way here from California any day if it isn’t already.”

I’m confused. The plan doesn’t make a bit of sense. Why would the general use a nuke on Taiwan? Isn’t the whole point to annex it to China? A nuke would completely obliterate such a tiny country. And what about the Chinese government? Do they know what he’s up to?

Antipov shivers. “Please. Let me go. We just… we’re just b-b-businessmen.”

Why in the world would China want to destroy Taiwan? They’ve been trying to get the rogue island back into their sphere of influence for decades. You’d think they’d want to inhabit the place, take it over, and exploit its resources. No, there’s something missing here.

“What else do you know, Antipov?” I ask. “There’s more to this than you’re telling me.”

I see a flicker of triumph in the man’s eyes. “Let’s… let’s work out a deal. Then perhaps I can tell you more.” He grins, nods, and pleads with his eyes like a hungry dog. “I can pay you! I’ll give you a million dollars. American! Let’s deal, Fisher!”

The guy makes me sick. The Shop doesn’t care who lives or who dies after they broker a transaction. They don’t think twice about selling a nuclear weapon to a mad-man for a bit of cash. At the moment I can’t think of anything more evil. The bribe only makes me angrier.

“Sorry,” I say. “No deals.”

Coldly and deliberately, I squeeze the trigger. Another quarter of the Shop’s leadership is eliminated.

I turn and walk through the corpse-ridden hallway back to the staircase. Once I’m upstairs I fire a couple of rounds at the store’s front plate window, shattering it to pieces. This sets off an alarm. Good. Let the Hong Kong police deal with the mess downstairs. I’m sure the little cache of weapons will interest them.

Lambert’s probably not going to approve of what I’ve done. But I have no regrets. Just like General Prokofiev in Moscow, Antipov needed to be taken out of the picture. When I run into the other two, Herzog and Zdrok, I plan on doing the same thing to them. If Lambert wants to remove me from the assignment, then so be it. The way I see it is this: A job that began over a year ago was never finished. The damage the Shop has done to Third Echelon is immeasurable. They killed several of our agents. Mike Chan and the Triad may have been responsible for Carly St. John’s murder, but if it hadn’t been for the Shop pulling the strings it wouldn’t have happened. So I say enough is enough.

I quickly leave through the back door, stick to the shadows, and make my way back to the ferry.