Shadow War (16 page)

Jim Miles pulled his sleeping bag up to his eyebrows and tried to stay warm. Usually missions for Apollo Outcomes were top-notch: first-class airfare, five-star hotels, stuff the army would never provide. Stuff you deserved, when you were risking your ass for the bottom line.

On this mission, they'd already flown the military transport “bus” overnight from Romania, after hightailing it from the Libyan desert. Now they were on their way to some industrial facility in some place called Kramatorsk in the back of a fish delivery truck. Most delivery trucks had transparent tops for light, but this one was refrigerated. The cooling unit was off, but it was still cold and dark, and the only reliable light came from four bullet holes Wildman had shot in the side a hundred miles ago, before Miles could stop him.

If not for Locke, he never would have taken the mission, Miles thought, but somebody had to watch out for the kid. Miles had been Locke's platoon sergeant in the 82nd Airborne Division, starting in 1992. Locke was a butter bar then, a month out of ranger school and one of the few officers in Division who hadn't received his commission from West Point. He'd gone to liberal Brown University, of all places. He was an opera zealot. He liked to quote some chick named Michelle Foucault and received an honest-to-God letter of reprimand from the CO ordering him to speak English at a sixth-grade level. Fucking Ivy Leaguers.

Still, the kid had potential, and Miles had wanted to get his claws in before the officer corps lobotomized him. So he took him to the one place they could talk undisturbed, a titty bar on Murchison Road, or “the Murch,” as the men called it.

“You heard the term ‘fragging'?” Miles asked, as young Locke picked up his Wild Turkey shot, tipped it down his throat, and almost coughed it back up.

“It means getting sabotaged by your own men,” Locke said, sucking wind.

Miles ordered another round. “It comes from the Vietnam War,” he said, “when arrogant and stupid lieutenants got troops killed.” The bourbon arrived. They slugged back another round. “So troops would roll a frag grenade into an officer's tent, and problem solved.”

“What are you saying?”

“I'm saying stop listening to Captain Franks.”

“But he's the company commander.”

“Doesn't mean you suck his ass,” Miles said. “I'd hate to see you turn into one of those monkeyclowns.” Then he gave Locke the only piece of advice a commander needed to follow every damn day of his life. “Take care of your troops, and they will take care of you.”

Nice delivery truck, kid,
Miles now thought with a laugh.
Glad you took my advice.

Truthfully, though, Miles knew there was no place he would rather be. He'd dropped out of the South Hudson Institute of Technology (aka West Point, aka SHIT) after one semester to become a real soldier, sending his TAC officers into apeshit apoplexy, and he'd soldiered for twenty-four years. CAG, also known as “Delta Force.” JSOC,
the
task force in Iraq under the legendary Stan McChrystal. Bosnia. Somalia. Afghanistan. Yemen. He knew more about Arabia at this point than he did
about America. The only things waiting for him back home were two ex-wives, two kids he didn't know, and the equipment for his beer brewing operation stashed in a storage locker on the outskirts of Phoenix. The only thing he really wanted, at this point, were Rottweilers and the warm thighs of a woman who didn't ask where he was going, or why he couldn't stay. The only thing he cared about were his brothers-in-arms, and most of them were suffering in this truck with him right now.

“Roadblock,” Jacobsen said in his earpiece.

Miles sprang out of his bag, his rifle in firing position. There was just enough light coming in through the bullet holes to see Boon, the best damn Thai ex-special forces op in the business, and Charro, El Salvadorean anticorruption death squad motherfucker, kicking out of their fart sacks and hunching over their weapons, too. Charro was a corruption of
Charral,
meaning “bush” in Spanish, because he had Moses' burning bush tattooed on his chest. Charro was a devout Catholic; he'd fled San Salvador after shooting up a drug gang that had taken over his sister's church. He had prayers for mercy tattooed halfway up his neck and all the way down to his boots.

“Lock and load,” Wildman whispered, as the delivery truck started to slow. Miles didn't need to see him to know that Wildman was smiling. The man had a darkness in his soul; he'd once sent a goat into the officer's mess hall out of boredom, not to mention fistfighting several of his British 22 Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) comrades and almost killing a guy outside a gay bar late one night while on leave in Aberdeen. Even when not in the combat zone, Wildman was known to sleep with his SA80 assault rifle for a teddy bear and a block of C-4 for a pillow. The man had a serious relationship with det cord.

“Four,” Jacobsen said, as the car slowed. “With Kalashnikovs.
Two on the driver's side. One on the passenger. Fourth man at the barrier with a radio.”

Miles trusted the men with him in the back of the truck. They were outcasts, unfit for ordinary life, but they had found a home in the team, and they'd saved each other's asses so many times they'd stopped keeping count. But he didn't know Jacobsen, the driver, or Reynolds, his partner in the cab. He had needed a Russia-Ukrainian speaker on four hours' notice, and Jacobsen's two-man team was the best qualified available. And Jacobsen, the more experienced of the pair, fit the bill: an ex-Green Beret from Tenth Group, U.S. Army Special Forces, based out of Panzer Barracks in Stuttgart, Germany, meaning he'd been trained by the U.S. government in guerilla warfare against Russia. Plus he was qualified, meaning he'd been through six weeks of Apollo's training at the Ranch, just like the rest of them.

“Shit,” Reynolds whispered into his headset, “they're nervous.” Miles grimaced. Nerves were bad. Nerves meant amateurs, and amateurs did stupid things.

“Ahov,” Jacobsen said, hailing a man Miles would never see, and Miles couldn't help but think
¿Donde esta?,
the only foreign phrase he knew. The men were speaking rapid Ukrainian now, two voices back and forth. It seemed friendly enough.

Then the light went out of one of the bullet holes, and the tension increased with the darkness. One of the Ukrainians had put his finger over the hole, or maybe his eye, trying to see in. He shouted to his comrade.

It got so quiet, for so long, Miles could hear someone breathing, and knew it as Wildman, gearing up for a fight. The metal sides of the delivery van would never stop a bullet. If the Ukrainians got trigger-happy, the team was sitting ducks. And those ducks were sitting on a truckload of missiles, ammunition, and grenades. Wildman would be out the cargo doors before that
happened, Miles knew. It was only a matter of a minute, at most, before he was firing, with orders or without.

A second hole went black, and Miles rocked onto his heels. The men were shouting now, back and forth with each other and Jacobsen, and Miles slowed his breathing, his finger resting a few inches from the trigger. They could shred the Ukrainians right through the walls, and be gone within seconds . . .

“Wait, wait,” someone yelled in English. It was Reynolds, and it was a message for Miles. Reynolds knew the team could only sit in the dark so long.
Thirty seconds,
Miles thought, as the men outside grew quiet.
I'll give you twenty-five seconds, and then I'm opening up.

And when Miles started firing, the rest of the team would start firing, too. And it would all be over then, one way or the other.

Maltov pushed open the door and trudged into the club. It was crowded, especially for a Thursday lunch, but he hardly noticed. These people were insects, bouncing aside as he shouldered his way toward the bar. In the distance, a woman was onstage, under a bright light, dancing. He didn't turn to look. He didn't feel the halfhearted grip on his shoulder. He didn't care about any of these people. He was here for his nephew Pavlo, who his sister would never be able to bury, nothing more.

He saw the man in a corner beyond the bar and tilted that direction, not changing his speed. He slipped his knife into his palm, shouldered the last few people out of the way, and slid into the booth.

“Ivanych,” he said, landing an elbow as he came in.

Belenko's bullheaded mercenary turned. “Grigory,” Ivan said, without expression, like he was just taking whatever the world offered, without caring one way or the other. The piece of shit. “Let me buy you a drink.”

“I don't think so. I had a rough one last night.”

“So did I. That's why I drink today.” Beer bottles covered the table, along with cigarette butts and ashes. The two woman across from them looked as strung out as the woman onstage.

“You brought Chechens,” Maltov said.

The big man shrugged. “Not by choice.”

“You brought a fucking armored personnel carrier.”

“You drove a truck into it.”

“My friend died in that explosion,” Maltov snapped, leaning in.

Ivan stared at him halfheartedly. “That's what you get for having friends.”

Maltov felt himself tense. They were only a few inches apart now, and he could taste the man's hot breath. One thrust, and this conversation would be over.

Ivan laughed. “Do you want to compare body counts? Or do you want to compare allies? You were not exactly alone, were you, my friend?”

Maltov eased back, realizing only then how coiled he had been. The knife he had been pressing in Ivan's side slid out farther than he expected.

“It's over, Grisha,” Ivan said. He was smiling now. The moment had pulled him out of his stupor. “We are men for hire. Let it go.”

Ivan was right. He was being unprofessional. There was the work, and there was the rest of your life. Your enemy in one might be your ally in the other, so you kept them separate. No malice. No revenge. Maltov had lived by that code since walking away from the iron works and into the world of men like Ivan. It was ingrained in him. It had to be, to keep the wolves from tearing each other apart. But he could feel it slipping away, maybe under the Russian military advance, maybe under the dirty squalor of that hooker's smile. Strong things on the surface, he thought, could be rotten underneath.

“Where did the Chechens come from?”

Ivan shook his head. “Chechnya,
urod
.” Idiot.

“Why?”

“Because they were paid.”

“For what?”

“Karpenko. There's a bounty.”

“How much?”

Ivan shrugged. “A half million euros, I hear, although we were offered fifty thousand, as a finder's fee.”

Maltov hesitated. A half million euros? That was nothing to men like Karpenko, and Belenko, and Putin, who was no doubt behind the bounty, but big money to a man of fortune. Five hundred thousand was enough to drink and tell stories on for the rest of your life.

“Who offered you the fifty thousand?”

Ivan smiled. “Why are you so interested, Grigory? Are you planning to turn on your boss?”

Maltov didn't answer.

“Oh, that's right, your boss has run away.”

Maltov frowned. “Kostyantyn Karpenko would never run. Never. Unlike your traitorous boss Belenko.”

Ivan smiled with all his teeth. He reached for his glass and drank half his beer in a long swallow. His hand was huge. Whatever had been pulling him down, he seemed out from under it now.

“It's a job, Grisha. For God's sake, don't take it so seriously. If you can't enjoy yourself—” he looked at the two women, one of whom smiled back “—what is the point?”

Maltov thought of the first job he and Ivan had done together. Ivan had shot a woman in the head—the reason was never clear—and then gone into a bar and sat down, blood on his shirt, and drank four beers. He had left a few-thousand-ruble tip. Generous, but in Russian currency, not the Ukrainian hryvnia.

“He calls himself
volk,
” Ivan said. “
Chelovek-volk
. The Wolfman. What an asshole, right?” Ivan was laughing at him now, or maybe not at him, maybe just laughing. To Ivan, this was just another violent encounter in a violent life.

A month ago, it might have been the same to me,
Maltov thought. He couldn't see himself drinking with Ivan, not here, not anymore.

“I've heard of him,” Maltov said. “He's Russian.”

“We're all Russian,” Ivan said. “At least a little bit.”

Maltov felt the passion flowing back. “No, Ivanych. We're Ukrainian. We're fighting Russia.”

Ivan didn't notice the change in his companion's demeanor. “We're fighting death, Grigorivich,” he said. “And poverty. And boredom. The rest . . .” The woman across the booth bared her teeth, and Maltov could feel legs at work under the table. “. . . let God sort it out.”

Maltov pulled away and closed his knife. There was blood on the booth, but Ivan didn't seem to notice. It didn't matter. One way or another, the man was dead already. He was eaten up, Maltov could see, with disease.

“Good-bye Grigory Maltovovich,” Ivan said, as Maltov eased out of the booth. “Say hello to the
americains
for me.”

He watched Maltov disappear into the crowd, then turned back to his companions. He had a woman under his arm, whispering to her, by the time the Wolf's shadow fell over his table.

“Do you feel better now,
Chelovek-volk?
I told you he would come.”

The Wolf didn't say anything. What did he ever have to say to a man like Ivan? He threw a thousand euros on the table, the agreed-upon price for information.

“Karpenko is still here,” Ivan said, tapping the table.

“You are sure?”

“Almost. Follow that man, as I promised, and you will find out.”

The Wolf threw another hundred euros on the table.

“What about the girl?” Ivan said, still tapping.

The Wolf rubbed the necklace in his pocket, his souvenir. He could feel his hand throbbing, but that was how it always felt, when his heart was beating this hard. He threw down another hundred euros.

Yes, he felt better, thanks for asking. But only for now.

He wouldn't really feel better until Karpenko was in Moscow, and all his accomplices were dead.