Puppet Master Page 36

  “All right, well, with only three people in there, the time to go is now,” said Tolevi.

  “There are four outside around the property,” said Chelsea, zooming back. “Two at the front, two at the garage area.”

  “Yeah, I got that. Better than twenty.” He went over to the case that had their tracking device, which had been engineered to look like a watch. He took out the reader, then tested it by pressing the lower right button twice.

  “Make sure this works,” he told Porter, who was standing nearby.

  “We keep a UAV watching the place,” suggested White. “They come back early, we pull the plug.”

  “Fine,” said Tolevi. “I’ll be back.”

  Chelsea went back to the Nighthawk’s visual feed. It was flying toward a small hamlet.

  Damn.

  She banked to the north, pushing it to gain altitude.

  “How long before dark?” she asked.

  “Two and a half hours before sunset,” said White. “People spot it?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Keep it south of the homestead, and watch those roads. This way if they see it, they may not put two and two together.”

  “Maybe they’ll think it’s Russian,” said Bozzone. “Or a bird.”

  “Or a psycho ceiling fan with wings,” said Chelsea.

  For the first time since the mission had begun, everyone laughed.

  99

  North of Donetsk—an hour later

  Here it was, a million dollars. All he had to do was walk in, locate the butcher, send the signal, and let the games begin.

  Tolevi did a last-minute com check.

  “You guys hearing me?” he asked White, who was with the paras in the trucks a half mile behind him, each pulled off to the side of a different road. Any sign of trouble, and they would pounce.

  “Yeah. We’re all ready here. Everyone’s in place.”

  “Doin’ it,” said Tolevi, taking a deep breath as he started his car.

  Chelsea and the bots were with White. Assuming Tolevi found the butcher, they’d launch the assault an hour after dusk, when it was plenty dark. If things went south in the meantime, they’d either go in with guns blazing, or . . .

  There was no “or.” This had to work.

  A million dollars. Not as much as I’ve made in three hours, but up there.

  Actually, profitwise, it had to be his best score. Practically no overhead on this mission, assuming you didn’t count the abortion of a trip a few weeks before.

  That should be counted. R&D.

  He made a mental note to do the math on the proceeds per minute.

  Focusing on the rewards made the risks seem less imposing. He hated White for playing Mr. Cautious—surely it was an act, because the CIA officer would clearly have been urging something even more reckless if Tolevi hadn’t suggested this. He was only playing to the girl, Chelsea.

  Who, despite being a bit of a know-it-all, was very pretty.

  Only a few years older than Borya.

  Probably older than she looks.

  “White?” he said. Disguised as a cell phone, the low-probability-of-intercept radio was always on.

  “Good coms.”

  “I’m moving.”

  Tolevi put the car in gear and drove up the road. The guards were still there, leaning against their truck, blocking the driveway.

  “I’m here to see the colonel,” Tolevi said in Russian, skidding on the gravel as he stopped.

  One of the men threw down his cigarette and came over. Tolevi recognized him as one of the thugs who’d held him two weeks before, but the man didn’t seem to remember.

  “I have business with the colonel.”

  “There is no colonel here.”

  “The hell with you, dog. Moscow sent me. You have a problem with that, you take it up with them.”

  “Let me see your papers.”

  “Fuck yourself and your mother’s mother. Greshkin in Moscow said he’d sack the whole bunch of you if you gave me shit again.”

  The name of the head of SVR’s Directorate S—the covert unit—apparently didn’t mean anything to the man, for he didn’t react.

  “Are you gonna move?” Tolevi demanded in terse Russian, “or am I going to sit here and insult you until the colonel comes out?”

  “The colonel is on a mission,” said the other soldier, coming over.

  “I’ll wait inside. I gotta take a dump. Or maybe I should do it in your truck.”

  The threat of defecation did the trick. The second soldier pulled the first soldier aside. After a few seconds’ consultation, he went to move the truck.

  “Driving to the front door,” Tolevi said over the radio.

  He parked near the door, checked the pistol at his belt, then got out. He’d debated about the gun—they would surely search him when he went in and confiscate it, but since they thought he was working for the intelligence service, the weapon would be more or less expected. It might even enhance his story.

  And if they didn’t search him, then he’d have a gun. That would make everything easier.

  He could hear the thin buzz of the UAV nearby. The soldiers’ truck at the front was loud enough to drown it out, but away from other noises you could detect it if you tried hard enough.

  “Keep that UAV as high as you can,” he told them. “I can hear the buzz.”

  Knock on the door, or just go in?

  Why knock?

  But the choice wasn’t his to make: the door flew open. One of the colonel’s aides stood on the threshold.

  “I’m back,” Tolevi told him. “I have a message from Moscow, and instructions.”

  “You are not welcome here.” The aide pointed at his ear. “Don’t you learn?”

  “This is a debt that will be paid in the future.” Tolevi pointed at his ear. “Right now we both have orders. You think I wanted to come back? Get the hell out of my way, asshole.”

  Tough guy had worked outside, but not here. The aide flew out the door at him. Tolevi had been an excellent street fighter in his youth, but his youth was well past. The aide had ten years and a good sixty pounds of muscle on him. He grabbed Tolevi and threw him against the wall, shoved him inside, then picked him up and tossed him to the floor on his back. Before Tolevi could react, the Russian jumped on his chest, pressing his forearm into his neck and his knee into his stomach.

  “I’ll break you in two, scum,” said the aide.

  “Fuck you,” muttered Tolevi, struggling to breathe.

  The aide held him a few more seconds, then got up. Tolevi thought he was starting to pass out. A kick into his ribs sent a wave of pain through his body, and he wished he had lost consciousness.

  Another soldier came and hauled him to his feet. Tolevi put up his hands—he’d forgotten about his gun, still in his belt—but couldn’t ward off the blow from the side to his damaged ear. As he screamed with pain, the aide snatched the pistol from his belt and smacked him across the chest with it. Then he shoved him to the ground. His radio flew across the floor.

  Fortunately, it looked like a cell phone. The soldier couldn’t tell the difference when he smashed it with his heel.

  “He’s in,” White said down by the vans. “But they’re giving him a hard time. I think we lost the radio.”

  “Are you going in?” asked Chelsea.

  “No,” said White. “He knew it would be rough. Hang tight, and keep that UAV overhead.”

  100

  Boston—a little later

  Borya looked at the clock on the wall and jumped up.

  She’d told Mary Martyak she’d be home an hour ago.

  It was hard to keep track of time when you were at Smart Metal.

  “I have to go,” she told her supervisor. “See you Friday. Regular time.”

  “Regular time,” said Lisa Macklin. “See ya then.”

  101

  North of Donetsk—around the same time

  Think about the money. Think about Borya.

&nbs
p; Tolevi felt his face swelling, blood rushing to repair the damage done by the Russian commandos’ feet. He pushed up to his haunches, sliding back against the wall, dazed but conscious.

  No money is worth this. It’s not the pain, it’s the humiliation. One of them, maybe, but two?

  Should have just blown the pricks up and been done with it.

  Blown Johansen off.

  “Get up, mafya shit,” yelled the soldier. “You’re bloodying the hall.”

  You’d think they’d at least be a little scared of the damn SVR. If it was still the KGB, they wouldn’t pull this shit.

  “I’m not mafya, asshole.” Tolevi winced, expecting to be hit again, but apparently the soldiers were satiated and walked away.

  Tolevi took a quick inventory of his teeth—still there, still intact—then attempted to get his bearings.

  Three in the house. Two just beat the shit out of me. The other . . . our prize . . . downstairs?

  He bent over to the radio and scooped it up. It was smashed and undoubtedly beyond hope. But his watch was intact; it had a signal function that he could use to alert the team. Push the button twice, and they’d move in.

  Find the butcher first.

  Tolevi staggered into the hall behind the room, heading in the direction of the kitchen. He found his two friends laughing at the table. They had coffee and some sort of goulash, half-finished, on their plates.

  “I need water,” he told them.

  They ignored him. He went to the sink, found a glass.

  There was a door to his right. He hoped it was the basement.

  “This a closet or the bathroom?” he mumbled.

  They didn’t answer, which was the response he was hoping for. He walked to the door with an exaggerated stumble, then opened it, intending to go down. Probably they would push him; he braced himself for a tumble.

  But it wasn’t the basement. It was a bathroom.

  Tolevi hesitated.

  “Make sure you close the door. We don’t want to smell your shit,” snarled the soldier who’d done most of the hitting.

  Chelsea pulled the radio earbud out and squeezed the plastic, trying to make it more comfortable. Nothing seemed to work; her ears continued to itch.

  The screen for the Nighthawks—she now had two in the air—was in front of her on the floor. Peter’s controller was to her left; the controls for the Groucho mechs sat on the floor to her right. All three of the ground robots were already positioned in the woods, ready to go.

  “Looks like he’s in the back with the two soldiers,” she told White, who was sitting in the front of the van with Bozzone.

  “Move up to the house,” White told the paras. “Let’s get ready to grab him.”

  White turned to Bozzone. “I’m going to get in position. You guys OK?”

  “We’re good,” said Bozzone.

  “Chelsea?”

  “Yeah. Go.”

  The van rocked as White hopped out. Chelsea checked the UAVs. She had the video divided in half, displaying the visual feeds for both with a small GPS map in each view’s right-hand corner.

  A warning came up on the screen to the left: the battery for Nighthawk 1, the one they had launched first, was starting to run low; she’d have to recover it soon.

  Nighthawk 2 was circling about a half mile south, ready in reserve. She checked it quickly, catching a glimpse of some kids playing soccer. Its vitals were good; she decided she would move it up now, while things were still relatively quiet.

  She plotted a new course, then took control from the computer. As she did, she noticed a cloud of dust billowing up in the corner of the forward video image. She banked the bird back south.

  “Vehicles,” she said over the radio. “I think the Russian commandos are coming back.”

  102

  Boston—about the same time

  Massina and Johnny were passing through the hallway when Lisa Macklin ran out of her lab room and nearly knocked them down.

  “Whoa, cowboy,” said Massina. “Watch where you’re driving.”

  “Trying to catch little Borya. She left this.” Macklin held up a backpack.

  “I don’t see her,” said Massina.

  “Excuse me.” Macklin trotted to the rail, looked over it, then ran to the elevator.

  Massina continued down the hall, stopping to check on the 3-D interface unit, which was refining a program that used gestures to command robots. Simple in theory, in practice the need for a complex and deep dictionary of commands made thing vastly complicated. The programming was the easy part; refining the gestures so a wide range of humans could do them unambiguously was proving nearly impossible.

  “Put on the glasses and check out our latest iteration,” offered the project director.

  “I’d love to, but I have some things I have to get to,” said Massina apologetically. He was due back in the box. The operation would be starting any minute.

  “How we doing, Shadow?” he asked Johnny back in the hall. “How are your legs?”

  “Good. Great. How’s your arm?”

  Massina gave a short, self-deprecating chuckle. “You know, you’re the first person that’s asked me that all year. Probably since my last checkup.”

  “How long did it take you to get used to it?”

  “I’m not used to it.” They stopped in front of the elevator. “You never get used to it. You accept it and move on.”

  Johnny nodded.

  “Eventually it feels more comfortable,” said Massina gently. “But there’s always loss there. Deep loss.”

  “Yeah.”

  The elevator opened. Macklin stepped out. She still had the backpack in her hand.

  “Missed her,” she said. “I’ll have to find somebody to drop it off.”

  “Why don’t you take it, Johnny?” suggested Massina. “I won’t need you for a while.”

  “Sure.”

  103

  North of Donetsk—about the same time

  They’d worked out two plans in case the Spetsnaz came back. One was to simply let them; the presence of more bodies complicated matters but didn’t make the mission more difficult per se.

  The other was to take them out as they pulled up.

  It was White’s call.

  “Set up to intercept the bastards,” said White over the team radio. “I don’t have coms with Tolevi,” he added. “Anybody?”

  No one had him.

  “What’s he doing?” White asked Chelsea.

  “He’s stopped moving. He’s near the first two.”

  “What about our jackpot?” said White.

  “Still prone downstairs.”

  “Let’s take these guys. Chelsea, get the drones moving to the house.”

  Chelsea turned to the Groucho controls. Both were loaded with explosives. She directed Groucho 1 to head toward the front of the house; Groucho 2 was programmed to move to the garage, where the vehicles would be.

  “The trucks are almost past the road,” she told Bozzone.

  “I’m ready,” he said. He raised his rifle, then twisted in the seat so he was facing the intersection where they would pass.

  Tolevi sat on the closed toilet, trying to work out where the door to the basement would be.

  Front room. Hallway to the left.

  Go back there and check it out.

  He got up and reached for the door, then realized he’d better flush the toilet, or the two bozos in the kitchen would be suspicious.

  As the toilet flushed, he heard the crack of a gunshot outside.

  God damn it, White. No way.

  There was another bullet, louder, then rounds of automatic fire.

  Son of a bitch! White, you asshole!

  Two of the paras had set up near the front of the house with scopes, using their MK 17s as light sniper rifles. The shots took down the two men at the road before the three Russian Gazes reached the property. But the gunfire brought one of the men who’d been back by the garage area forward before the CIA paras a
t the back could get a shot on him, and he began peppering the area in front of the house with covering fire—which would have been a bad thing for his comrades had they still been alive.

  More importantly for the CIA team, he radioed the men in the trucks.

  The Americans were outnumbered, but they weren’t outgunned. Porter aimed a Russian rocket-grenade launcher at the lead truck as it stopped a hundred yards from the property. The grenade hit before more than half of the men could get out; those who weren’t hit by shrapnel were burned alive.

  Tolevi yanked the door to the bathroom open, expecting to see the others in the kitchen. But they’d already run to the front room.

  He ran around the other way, hoping to get to the basement before they cut it off. Bullets shot through the front of the house, tearing up the wood and plaster. He dove to the ground, then scrambled into the room.

  The two commandos were at the windows, aiming Minimis—Belgian squad-level machine guns similar to American M249s—out the window.

  “What the hell?” Tolevi shouted as the man on the right turned toward him. “Who’s attacking?”

  “Just stay down, asshole.”

  “Where the hell is my gun? I’m not going down without a fight!”

  “Stay down or I shoot you.”

  A fusillade of bullets came through the front. Tolevi ducked.

  Where the hell did they put my pistol?

  He went through to the left. There were two doors. He opened the first. It was a stairway up.

  Other one.

  As he reached for the door, the front of the house exploded. He fell to the ground, dazed and choking with the smoke.

  “Who fired at the house?” demanded White. “What the hell—was it the robot?”

  “The robots are still fifty yards away,” said Chelsea.

  “A grenade from the Russians,” said Porter. “They must have misfired.”

  “Get these—”