Politika

TWENTY-SIX

As legend goes, when Alexander the Great was presented with the riddle of undoing the Gordian knot, he simply severed it with a blow of his sword rather than ponder its intricate twists and turns. Problem solved, according to Alexander, who was always pragmatic and direct.

When Roger Gordian, Megan Breen, and Peter Nimec had conceived of a troubleshooting and crisis-control team within UpLink, the idea to name it Sword had flashed into Megan’s mind as naturally as a beam of sunshine piercing the clouds on a midsummer morning. The play on Roger’s last name seemed exceedingly appropriate, given how his own realistic, determined approach to tackling obstacles paralleled that of Alexander.

Sword was, in effect, his answer to modern Gordian knots: a global special intelligence network that relied on a combination of risk management and scenario planning to anticipate most outbreaks of trouble, defusing them before they threatened international peace and stability, his country’s interests, or the interests of his firm — all three of which generally coincided.

This did not, however, mean Sword was without physical resources in the event things got rough. Comprised of hundreds of men and women who had been carefully screened by Nimec, and hired away from police and intelligence agencies around the world, its security arm could aggressively do whatever it took to handle dangerous, and even violent, situations. The organizational and operational framework upon which Nimec had built this force was clear, consistent, and almost elegant in its simplicity: for maximum secrecy and effectiveness, regional offices were to be established separately from UpLink’s corporate locations; members of the group were to be based in areas with which they had close personal or professional familiarity; and field teams were to abide by the laws of the nations to which they were assigned, employing non-lethal weapons whenever possible.

Right now, Nimec was thinking that his local section chief, Tony Barnhart, had followed every one of those guidelines to the letter, giving him high confidence that their operation would go off according to plan in spite of the wicked nor’easter that was slamming the area.

The turn-of-the century meat packing factory that had been converted into Sword’s New York headquarters was inconspicuously tucked away between Hudson and Dowar streets in Soho, a part of downtown Manhattan whose name not only reflected its position on the city map — which was south of Houston Street — but was also a nod to the renowned London theatrical district from the neighborhood’s large artsy population. In the old days, before the onslaught of the high-rises, someone looking out the French doors that gave onto the building’s third-story terrace could have seen the Washington Square Arch amid the twisting streets of Greenwich Village, and Gramercy Park to the north, and farther uptown the Empire State Building towering resolutely above an agglomeration of more modern — and less graceful — basalt-and-glass sky-scrapers. These days, however, the old landmarks were invisible, all but buried in a sea of newer, taller buildings.

Tonight even this skyline had been blotted out by the storm, and Nimec saw nothing but thick curtains of mixed rain and snow charged with pyrotechnic lightning.

Turning from the balcony, he let his eyes tour the room where Barnhart and his teammate, Noriko Cousins, were quietly engaged in last-minute preparations, with fitted black tactical hoods pulled back behind their necks. The room had been done up in shades of gray and white, the fireplace surrounded by marble tiles, no mantel or hearth, very sleek and spare. The crackling flame threw a soft orange glow across the pile carpet, the plump white sofa, and the wall panel that had fulcrumed open at the touch of a hidden button, revealing the equipment cache from which Nimec had extracted the tools and weapons they would be using on their break-in.

Laid out across Barnhart’s lap was a Benelli semiautomatic combat shotgun with a rubber-coated pistol grip, nonreflecting synthetic black finish, and barrel-mounted target light. The tubular magazine he had slapped into its stock contained six 12-gauge sabots, each of which would peel away upon firing to release a fin-stabilized CS tear-gas bomblet. In pouches on the nylon utility harness worn over his chest were a half-dozen additional magazines filled with rubber stingball cartridges, blunt-impact foam rounds, incendiary rounds, and other types of disabling and distraction projectiles. Also attached to the crisscrossing straps of his rig were pen-shaped aerosol canisters of dimethyl sulfoxide, or DMSO, a chemical sedative which human skin would rapidly absorb like a sponge. There was a high-voltage taser baton in the scabbard clipped to his belt.

Cross-legged on the floor, Noriko was carefully arranging her lockpicking tools on the tabletop, her black hair in a tight ponytail, her dark Asian eyes narrowed in concentration. Holstered at her hip was a Foster-Miller suppression weapon she called her webshooter, after the device used by the Spiderman comic book character. About the size of a flare gun, it discharged filament-thin netting coated with a polymer superglue. On the carpet to her right was a lightweight jamb spreader that looked something like a car jack, which she would strap over her shoulder and use only if doorway entry became more a matter of speed than stealth.

Beside her on the floor, within easy reach, was the hard plastic capsule of a Saber laser-dazzler. Before they moved out, the last thing she would do was to insert the Saber into a 40mm grenade launcher, itself fitted beneath the barrel of an M16 rifle. A targeting control box for the optical weapon was snapped to the underside of the grenade tube. The ammunition she had fed into the gun’s banana clip consisted of 5.56mm bullets encased within.50-caliber plastic sabots. Fired at a low muzzle speed from the specially designed VVRS upper receiver, the sabots would remain in place as blunt, less-than-lethal cushions. At a higher velocity they would split apart to release the deadly metal rounds within them.

Nimec smiled a little. It was all so very high-tech, wasn’t it? A far cry from some of the improvised SpecOp gear he’d carried way back when. But old habits died hard and he was still something of a traditionalist. He would go in carrying smoke and flash-bang grenades, OC spray canisters, and his 9mm Beretta — loaded with standard ammo in case lethal force was needed despite his intentions to the contrary.

He checked his watch.

It was seven-forty-five, almost time to roll.

“You think Roma’s going to stick to his routine even in that mess?” he said to Barnhart, nodding his head back to indicate the sheets of wintry precipitation outside the sliding doors.

Barnhart glanced over at him.

“Unless Nicky’s snowed in to his ears, he’ll stay true to form,” he said.

“Let’s just hope there’s something in his office we can use,” Noriko said without looking up from her tools.

Nimec nodded. He slipped his hand into his trouser pocket, crossed his fingers out of sight.

“Let’s,” he said.