Shadow War (19 page)

“To the last superpower,” the General said.

“To the shield of the west.”

The general looked around: at the other men, at the suits, at the waiters. His wife was waiting at home. It was bridge night.

“How about some cordials?” he asked.

“I'm sorry, sir,” Winters said, “I can't. I have a plane to catch.”

Miles lay prone on a rooftop, covered by canvas he had scrounged from the factory, peering through binoculars. It was 0300, almost exactly twenty-four hours before the scheduled assault, and it was quiet. Two hundred meters in front of him was the pipeline trunk station, two nondescript brick buildings and a spaghetti of yellow and blue pipes, each about a meter in diameter. Heavy machinery pumped the liquefied natural gas from Russia through the eastern oblasts of Ukraine. At this station it was compressed and consolidated before moving on to Europe, making it a strategic choke point.

It also meant one stray bullet, and the entire facility would blow. They had to be precise, which was why Apollo sent a Tier One team. And the Russians had sent real troops instead of locals.

“I count three,” Miles said. “Probably more inside the control room.”

“Roger. Three echos.”

“Carrying Vals”—an assault rifle with built-in noise suppressor, issued primarily to Russian Spetsnaz special forces units for undercover or clandestine operations. “Sexy, sexy.”

“Roger,” I replied. “Sexy arms.”

I was hunched over the makeshift desk, with Greenlees beside me. Strewn across the desk were two Toughbooks, my GIS tablet, radios, a flashlight, a half-eaten protein bar, water bottles, maps, my equipment vest, and my FN SCAR-H assault rifle,
which I favored for its stopping power. Greenlees sat next to me, manning the radios. I was sketching the facility on butcher-block paper, and I didn't like what I was seeing. The facility's main defense was openness. It was on the edge of Kramatorsk, surrounded by open fields on three sides. The fourth side had fifty meters of standoff area between the facility wall and the closest building. An alert enemy would see us coming.

At least it will keep the civilians safe,
I thought. Contrary to reputation, real mercs like to minimize collateral damage. It's cleaner and more professional, and I hated innocent people getting hurt.

“Alpha Two, what are you seeing?”

“Open ground,” Charro said. “Too soft for wheeled vehicles. A few sniper holes.” He was scouting the field behind the facility. I marked it off as no-go. We hadn't brought any sniper teams qualified for low-visibility operations.

“Alpha Five?”

“Quiet,” Jacobsen replied. He was walking the mixed industrial and residential area near the facility, reconnoitering possible avenues of approach. For most of the night, the streets had been vacant, a sure sign of an active war zone. Even in the early morning, there should have been taxis, teenage lovers sneaking out, men coming off the late shift. Jacobsen had even wondered if the power grid was knocked out, until he noticed a few lights in apartment windows.

“Shit,” he muttered.

Four men with guns slung over their shoulders appeared at the corner two blocks up. Local militiamen, out for a stroll. Jacobsen turned right, stopping in front of a window to watch them in the reflection. He could pass for Ukrainian, with his stubble and worker's jacket, but a good look and locals would know he was not from around here.

Best, then, to avoid closer examination.

“Four echos, 150 meters northeast of my position,” he whispered. “Repeat four echoes, militia I think. Copy?”

“Roger that Alpha Five. Alpha Four, do you have eyes on?”

“Negative. Moving,” Wildman replied. He was driving a four-door Å koda, hotwired several hours ago.

“Boon?”

“En route,” Boon said. He was standing a few feet away from me in the warehouse, piloting one of AO's proprietary quadcopter drones. It was small, virtually silent, and could be flown from up to a kilometer away with a remote control and electronic glasses that allowed the operator to see through its camera.

“Got them,” Boon said, as Jacobsen appeared on the second computer screen. Boon was a Buddhist, and a man of contemplation, at least until the Myanmar military junta came over the mountains and started burning monks alive, and he was still a man of few words.

But God Almighty, if he didn't have a steady hand. I watched the live feed on the laptop as Boon took the quadcopter below the roof line, so it wouldn't be silhouetted against the sky, then hovered it in the shadow of a chimney. The copter was only a few feet wide, so an unflappable pilot like Boon could fly it almost anywhere: up walls, through windows.
Boon could probably drop it on a dragonfly,
I thought, as the copter's camera zoomed in on the militia.

“Yep, that's four local gang members,” I said to Jacobsen. “Ugly, too.”

“Moving out,” Jacobsen said, slipping out of view as Boon kept the camera on the thugs. They had probably been a small-time criminal enterprise, drugs and protection, but as soon as the shooting started, those kinds of men always found politics. And became more aggressive. These “military patrols” were the reason the street activity was dead.

Sirko said something. He was watching over my shoulder.

“Pro-Russian,” Greenlees interpreted, “at least until it becomes more profitable to be pro-Ukrainian.”

Wildman's Å koda turned into view, driving slowly to avoid suspicion. By the time Wildman passed them, one of the men was peeing on the side of a building while the others lit cigarettes.

“Confirmed, four local muscle, inebriated,” Wildman said.

“Solid copy, Alpha Two,” I said. “Charlie mike.”

Wildman turned onto the road that dead-ended at the facility's front gate. He had already placed two surveillance cameras. The first was eight feet up a pole, hidden in a tangle of dangerous-looking wires. It watched the facility's pedestrian door. The second was buried in debris on a ledge above a trash container, with eyes on the front gate.

The last camera needed to be high enough to see over the wall into the facility itself. The quadcopter drone could take clear footage inside the walls, but only at night, otherwise it would be detected. They needed to know the movement of men, inside and outside, at all times of day.

He slowed the car and examined the building on his right. It was an apartment tower, two stories taller than any nearby building, and only three blocks from the entrance to the facility.
Perfect.

He eyed the fire escape. It was an older style: ten feet above the street and not connected to an alarm. He took a right into the alley and parked underneath it. He got out, climbed on top of the car, and pulled himself onto the ladder.

The rooftop was flat, but there were air conditioners and an old pigeon coop for cover, so he wouldn't be highlighted against the sky. From the back, he could see the downtown square in the distance, where militants had set up tire barricades and were
flying the flag of the breakaway Donetsk People's Republic. The flag was blue, red, and black, with a two-headed bird holding a shield in the center, but Wildman couldn't have identified it on a dartboard. From this distance, it looked like a rag.

He turned back to the pipeline facility. There were two small buildings, but most of the space inside the wall was open ground, pipes, or pumping equipment. He saw the three sentries smoking behind the larger building—he was close enough to see the flare of their cigarettes—and, less than ten meters away, dozens of pipes full of highly flammable natural gas.

The fools might blow themselves up,
he thought,
before I have the chance. That would suck.

Lying on his back, he pulled the small camera and transmitter from his bag, removed the adhesive tape from the bottom, and stuck it to the edge of the roof. He sighted it in on the facility, switched it on, and held his middle finger in front of the lens.

“How do you read me?”

“Fuck you, too.”

He grinned and crawled back to the fire escape.

“Bollocks,” Wildman said, looking down. Three armed men, weaving like drunks and singing what sounded like old Soviet marches, had stumbled into the alley and spotted the Å koda. The singing stopped, as they peered inside the car. One took his mobile phone from his pocket.

Not good,
Wildman thought.

He crawled to the roof's center, where there was a trap door. It was unlocked. Thank God for teenagers smoking cigarettes. He dropped into the stairwell and ran down, leaping three or four steps at a time. Before he got to the exit, he unholstered his 9 mm pistol and screwed on the large noise suppressor. He concealed it behind his body, then walked out the front door.

The men were arguing when he appeared in the mouth of
the alley, but they stopped when they saw him. They spoke, but he kept walking toward them. The first yelled and raised his weapon. Wildman drew and squeezed off three rounds so fast it sounded like automatic gunfire, but a thud rather than a bang.

Two bodies fell to the pavement. The third man stumbled backward in a pink mist of blood. Wildman's shot had gone wide and struck him under his right clavicle, rather than at his center of mass.

“
Ey! Chto yebat!
” the man yelled in Ukrainian as he fumbled with his rifle.

Wildman corrected his mistake, and the man slumped forward, landing on his AK-47, then clattering to the ground. Wildman looked around. Nobody yet. Casually, he walked toward the car.

“Fuck,” he said, as he stared down at the dead men. How was he going to fit all three bodies in the trunk?

Brad Winters straightened his red Hermès tie in the bathroom mirror, then brushed lint from the right shoulder of his Brioni suit. He checked his shave. He hadn't missed a spot. He never did.

He brushed his teeth. He combed his hair to the point it looked sculpted, and put an American flag pin on his lapel. He walked into the bedroom of his Manhattan apartment—a one-bedroom on Sutton Place, owned by Apollo Outcomes, of course—then into the living room. There was a bar and a piano, but he hadn't touched either. He didn't turn on the lights. He never did. It was 8:30
P.M.
EST. 3:30
A.M.
EBS: Eastern Bloc Standard. He wondered, for a moment, what Locke and his team were doing. So much, after all, depended on them. He went to the window and saw, one hundred blocks down, the Freedom Tower. It looked like his mother's favorite cut-glass vase. It was ugly, but he didn't think it an embarrassment, or a sign that America had lost its way. The things that made America great were intangible, and always had been. But was there anything worse than spending billions of dollars for something that looked cheap?

Half an hour later, the town car pulled up to a skyscraper on Park Avenue, a few blocks north of Grand Central. The guards were still manning the desk, since it was only 9:00
P.M.
, and everyone here was putting in late hours. Occupy Wall Street had gotten it wrong; the banks had abandoned Wall Street for mid
town decades ago. The hedge fund guys thought this hilarious. Dumb hipsters.

He gave the guards the name of the company. They called upstairs. A minute later, he was in the elevator, where he took off his security sticker and crumbled it in his pocket.

Blyleven was waiting for him when the doors opened. He was twenty-seven and thought he was Matthew McConnaughy. His coat and tie were off, his white shirttail was hanging out, and he had an extra button undone for chest effect. He was handsome, and confident, and rich, but he couldn't quite pull off the look. And his wingtips were out of style.

“Bradley,” he said. Brad wasn't short for Bradley, but Winters ignored it. “Welcome home.”

They passed through the small lobby. There was new art: two white squares on white walls. Winters knew the firm had paid a few hundred thousand at least, or they wouldn't be here. The corner office—his old office—featured a painting of a nurse by Richard Prince. He knew that because Blyleven pointed at it and said, “That's a Richard Prince.” Winters didn't know or care who that was.

“Brad. Good to see you.”

“Nice to be here, David.” He shook hands with David Givens, his old partner, and took a seat in the most expensive piece of plastic money could buy. Hatcher was there as well. The venture capital firm had four hundred million dollars invested at ten times leverage, and this was half the staff. The other half was under twenty-five and in the cubicles thirty feet away, talking with Hong Kong or Singapore. Only Givens was over forty.

There were the usual pleasantries, and a bottle of Japanese whiskey, but it didn't take long to get down to business.

“What happened in Libya?”

“Growing pains.”

“Just like Guinea.”

“Not like Guinea at all.”

“But with the same results.”

“Process over product,” Winters said, sipping his Yamazaki 18, the upper echelon's whiskey of the moment. “You know that.”

“And what is the process?”

“We're putting the right team together: engineers, drill crews, suppliers, security. We're testing methods for staying off the grid. We're practicing for the right hole. We haven't found it yet.”

“It's been three years.”

Three years was nothing, but it was a dog's life on Wall Street. Three years ago, two of these partners were at Goldman Sachs, and three years before that, Wharton. Patience wasn't their deal, and he wasn't their mentor. Everything old was out, and here, Winters knew, he was old. So was Givens, if it came to that. They probably called him Yoda.

“We talked about a five-year time frame . . .” Winters started.

“So we're still two years away from striking gold.”

“I was hoping for another five.”

“Brad,” Givens said, shaking his head.

“Thirty-eight million,” Hatcher said. Hatcher was the numbers guy. He looked like a momma's boy, but he had a kink for BDSM. Winters wondered if he was wearing latex underwear.

“It's only twenty-five,” Winters said.

“Up front, yes. But we've done the numbers. That's our opportunity cost.”

That was what this was about. Hatcher, or more likely Blyleven, wanted to fund his own project, but this ancient investment was clogging the balance sheet.

“It's a lottery ticket,” Winters said. “You pay a little for the chance to make a lot.”

“It's not a lot. Not compared to Uber. It's just a lot riskier.”

Kids. They had never lived in a world of ordinary valuations. They were always chasing the next technology, willing to pay a billion even before it netted a million. Except it wasn't even technological advancement anymore. That moment had passed. It was just business models now.

“I'm sorry, Brad,” Givens said, and Winters could tell it was true. “It's a legacy investment in a legacy business. No one invests in oil anymore.” That was clearly untrue, but Winters understood the point. He was moving too slowly. Or more apt, the firm was trying to move too fast.

“We appreciate the investment in Apollo Outcomes,” Hatcher said.

Damn right, you insufferable ass. I made that investment, then moved over to the company and grew it a hundred times over.
Apollo Outcomes was no software bubble. It was real. It was boots on the ground.

“If you were willing to take a little more of the company public . . .”

“I'm not.” Ten percent already meant too much scrutiny.

“Then we're out of this side venture.”

That was all. It was over in fifteen minutes. Hatcher shook his hand, Blyleven expressed his regrets, and the relationship was done.

“I'm sorry, Brad,” Givens said, as they walked to the elevator. “But it's the right thing. No free rides. You would have done it yourself.”

“No hard feelings. I knew it was coming.” It was half the reason he had pulled out of Libya. To force their hand.

“If you want a personal investment—”

“I don't.”

“Do you want to get dinner?”

Winters looked at his former friend, but he knew that wasn't quite the right word. More like former colleague. Or understudy. “I can't. I'm on my way to London.”

“Well, tell Josey I said hi. And . . . I'm sorry.”

Winters stepped onto the elevator. Givens wasn't so bad, he thought, as the doors closed. He was simply an idiot, only forty and desperate to keep up with the younger crowd.