Private Beijing

Chapter 92

The back of the Transporter contained four flight cases full of gear and there was a secret compartment beneath the flatbed that held a cache of weapons.

We used a micro surveillance drone to survey the base. The drone was silent and dark, nothing more than a tiny shadow against the night sky. West used a remote control with an infrared display to pilot the device up through the trees that concealed us and over the forest that ringed the base.

The buildings were much as I remembered them. A collection of bunkers, hangars, silos, and barracks, all crumbling and rusting, the legacy of a military might long gone. In the center of the base was the command block where I’d questioned Maxim Yenen and forced him to admit his involvement in the Bright Star program — a deacades-long initiative designed to subvert America’s political system and power structure.

Apart from the lack of snow, the only other difference was the collection of vehicles parked between the command block and the largest hangar. There was a large forward-operations truck. It didn’t have any military markings but was decked out in grey-and-black camouflage. Next to it were two troop carriers and a dozen SUVs and ten vans.

There were four men patrolling the vehicles, each armed with a machine gun, each sporting night-vision goggles. There were another three stationed outside the large hangar, who were similarly equipped. Two more men stood outside the command block.

West piloted the drone around the large building. We couldn’t be sure how many people were inside, but the artificial lights coming from within meant he was able to switch from infrared to optical camera, and through holes in the walls, we counted a minimum of three guards patrolling the interior. West flew the tiny aircraft through one of the holes and found a makeshift operations center in what looked like an old communications room. Six men and two women stood in front of computers that had been placed on old concrete plinths that were designed to be blast-proof. Some of the men and women were talking on their phones.

“They are hunting us,” West translated the audio picked up by the drone. “They’re coordinating a massive search of the blocks around the embassy where we disappeared.”

And overseeing it all was Valery Alekseyev, operations director of the SVR. He wore a black pullover and pants, looking every inch as cruel and ruthless as he had in his photograph. This was the man responsible for the deaths of the three Private agents in Beijing, for killing Lewis Williams and putting Jessie Fleming in hospital, destroying Private Beijing, abducting Alison Lucas, making a traitor of Rafael, and trying to kill yet more of my friends and colleagues in New York and Moscow. I understood the depth of the anger Alekseyev felt toward me for causing his brother’s ruin because now I returned it many times over.

And then he was gone, swept off the screen as West piloted the drone around the rest of the command block. We didn’t find anything else.

“Let’s check out the hangar,” I suggested.

He nodded, switched back to infrared and flew the drone over the vehicles and high above the roof of the huge hangar. It was pocked by large holes and West took the device down through one at the heart of the building. The hangar was dark so he stayed on infrared, but we didn’t need light to spot the cluster of twenty-three blindfolded, gagged, and bound people huddled in the center of the vast space: Dinara, Feo, and the rest of the Private Moscow staff.

We had found Alekseyev’s hostages.

“I count six hostiles,” West remarked, pointing out half a dozen large men who brandished what looked like ShAK-12 urban assault rifles, extremely powerful short-range fully automatic machine guns.

I nodded. “Heavily armed and likely very well trained. You still sure you want to do this?”

West smiled. “What better way to spend my vacation?”

“Let’s get ready then,” I said, my stomach churning and adrenaline setting my body alight at the prospect of what was to come.