Shadow War (4 page)

Sometimes, “best man for the job” just meant the least informed. And in Ukraine, I would certainly qualify.

“Who requested me?” I assumed this was a BNR—By Name Request. A client had asked for me.

A slight hesitation. Interesting. “I did, Thomas. This one is important. I'm handling it personally, and you'll be reporting to me directly.”

I sat up a little straighter. I didn't care if Winters noticed, since there was no use pretending I wasn't intrigued. Even if Winters hadn't been my old mentor, he was a powerful man. You don't turn down pet projects. Or complete operational freedom.

“No chain of command?”

Winters nodded. “Just me.”

“Nothing through official channels?” That was the telling detail of U.S. government work. On a straight USG contract, even a classified one, everything went through the embassy—cover, communications, money, weapons. I held a top secret clearance for this purpose, even though, these days, most jobs didn't go through the embassy.

“No USG contact. No company contact.”

“A kite?” Kites were operatives that could be cut loose in the event of compromise. The riskiest assignments were always the most prestigious.

Winters nodded again.

Given the lack of actual information, company briefings were about understanding the unspoken. This mission was black, outside even Apollo's compartmentalized command structure.
I doubted if anyone outside of Winters, Wolcott, and the client would know I was on the ground.

“Who's the client?”

Winters slid a manila folder across the table. It contained one page: a picture of a middle-aged man. He was dressed in a Savile Row suit, with a stylish pocket square and a platinum Lange & Söhne precision watch, but he had questionable teeth. He was either minor British royalty or Slavic nouveau riche.

“Kostyantyn Karpenko,” Winters said, “a Ukrainian oligarch and member of parliament. He's been our man in Ukraine for the past ten years.” It was unclear who
our
was referring to, although Winters had dropped a mention of the State Department earlier. Still, you could never be sure.

“He's a patriot, Thomas. A believer in freedom. He impressed me during the Orange Revolution in 2004, and we worked with him again during the Euromaidan protests that toppled Putin's puppet government three months ago.” Meaning Apollo Outcomes sent organizers, or provided tactical assistance, or both. We were experts at manufacturing so-called color revolutions.

“We expected Karpenko to be minister of energy in the new government. President if everything went right. It didn't. Russia invaded—unofficially, of course—and the place went to shit.”

I knew Putin was using strong-arm tactics—fifth-column irregulars, soldiers out of uniform, mercenaries—to destabilize the country. Oligarchs and strong men loved instability; that was why the world was unstable. Putin had done the same thing in Chechnya in 1999 and Soviet Georgia in 2008, and both had almost ended in genocide. Fortunately, Apollo was built for these kinds of shadow wars.

“Our job,” Winters continued, “is to reintroduce Karpenko to Kiev power politics. To do this, we need to deliver him a victory. The kind ordinary citizens can rally behind.”

A symbolic victory,
I thought.
Something public.
It had worked in the Eastern Bloc before. Lech Walesa had freed Poland from Soviet rule with a dock worker's strike. “Storm the palace? Parliamentary assault?” I guessed.

Winters shook his head. “Natural gas.”

He handed me another file. It contained a photograph of what must have been a natural gas transfer station. It appeared to be mostly pipes.

“Russia and the West are fighting for energy security, the Pipeline Wars, as we'll phrase it for the press. Ukraine is the battleground. Specifically its liquid natural gas lines. Two days ago, Russian soldiers disguised as a separatist militia occupied the Donbastransgas trunkline station in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk. A strategic location. We estimate between ten and twenty men. Karpenko needs help taking it back.”

Straightforward enough. “Assets in place?”

“Karpenko has twenty-five loyal men left. And there is a pro-Ukrainian militia twenty kilometers away, the Donbas Battalion. CIA contract, Apollo execution. They're all volunteers, mostly policemen, teachers, the usual patriots. Two hundred men at last count.”

More than enough, even if poorly trained. But I could see Winters's hesitation: never trust schoolteachers against trained soldiers, no matter the odds. Especially when the target was filled with a few hundred cubic tons of highly flammable gas. I'd seen it in Africa. Someone taps the wrong pipe, and the explosion levels a hundred huts. You can't even count, much less identify, the bodies. Better for the shooting to be over before the amateurs arrive.

“I want prisoners, not corpses, Thomas. Pretty pictures for the press. We'll charter two helicopters from Kiev for the media, and lure them with the tagline: evidence of a Russian military invasion.”

“And the real story?” I said, knowing that ink was too slim to cut through the clutter of cable news.

“Karpenko's victory speech, which we're writing. It will be his Yeltsin moment.”

In 1991, hardliners in the Soviet army surrounded the Russian White House. Boris Yeltsin, then in a power struggle with other reform leaders, stood on a tank and gave a rousing speech against the coup. The troops defected. Four months later, catapulted to a new level of popularity by his speech, Yeltsin became president.

That kind of moment was hard to engineer. I knew, because I'd tried. But it was worth the risk, since leaders mattered. If the Ukrainians lacked a focal point, they needed their own George Washington. But in a pinch, a Boris Yeltsin would do.

“Time frame?”

“Saturday,” Winters said.

Five days. Tough.

“I know it's tight. And the window of opportunity is small. There will be less than an hour between the arrival of the Donbas Battalion at 0600 and the press at 0700.” If either showed up on time, that is, and militias and reporters rarely did. “This is an active war zone. We don't want to give the Russians time for a counterstrike.”

I sat back. This wasn't how Apollo operated. We took our time. We planned things carefully. That was how we stayed out of the news, not to mention the morgue. Someone was running hot on a unique opportunity, as Winters had called it. Maybe the U.S. government. Probably a business client. Someone was willing to gamble on a desperate man sitting on a lot of natural gas. I couldn't quite figure out, though, why it should be me.

“It's doable,” I said, “if the Donbas Battalion will follow Karpenko.”

“They'll follow him,” Winters said, “I can promise you that. He's partially paying them. You just need to get him there.”

I didn't like the sound of that. “Karpenko isn't with the Donbas Battalion?”

Winters laughed. “If he was, would I need someone like you?”

He was flattering me. Making me think of whatever he said next as a challenge, instead of a foolish risk. It wouldn't work. Not this time.

“Where is he?”

“In hiding,” Winters said. “Bank accounts frozen. Warrant out for his arrest. A bounty on his head from the Kremlin, under the table of course, but enough to keep him on the run.”

“Then how can I help him?”

“We have an inside man—”

“And why?”

That was the difference between being a soldier and a merc. In the army, you did what your commanding officer told you to do, no questions asked. A mercenary could turn down work if he didn't like it, logistically, morally, or for any other damn reason he pleased.

So I expected the hard sell: the importance of stopping Putin, Apollo Outcomes as the hand of the West, even Hitler-and-the-Sudetenland. Winters was a master talker, and this was the moment. Closing time. But instead of pumping me up, he stared into the distance. I couldn't tell if he was contemplating what to say next, or chewing a dramatic pause.

“There are children, Thomas,” he said finally. “Young ones.”

I thought of Burundi. The new president was the ideal leader for a war-ravaged country: a capable man, a humanitarian. That's why the opposition was desperate to assassinate him. The odds were he'd be dead in a month, everyone knew that, especially him, but he was willing to risk his life if it meant a small
chance of a better life for his people. Ten years ago, Winters had handed me exactly what I wanted: a chance to make the world a better place. And I was going to turn it down, because keeping this noble man alive
was
impossible.

Then his eight-year-old daughter walked in and gave her father a hug.

Had I told Winters that? I must have—we were inseparable at one time, and I wasn't as careful about revealing myself then as I was now—because Winters was drawing a line: a line visible only to me. Ukraine now is Burundi then. Karpenko is a good man, a
family
man. This is a war-torn nation's best chance.

“Extraction or protection?”

“Extraction. Their passports have been revoked and Interpol is watching. But we have a window, three nights from now, and an An-12 on station in Bucharest.”

A military cargo plane,
I thought, mulling the possibilities. The Antonov-12 could take a family out, but it could also bring things in. The kind of things difficult to get through customs. The kind of things you needed for an assault on a hardened natural gas facility.

“How do I find them?”

Winters rose and walked to the door. Wolcott was waiting outside. Winters was the pitchman. Wolcott provided the details.

“We've set up a Sherpa,” Wolcott said, wasting no time. “John Greenlees. Former CIA station chief in Kiev, retired in place. He'll meet you at the Hyatt Regency in Kiev at 1400 tomorrow.”

He placed a box of business cards on the table. “Green Lighthouse Group. Business: facilitation services in frontier markets. You're the president, CEO, and only employee. We've created a legend. Articles on business blogs, old press releases, the usual. The website has been up since yesterday, but it looks like it's been up for months.”

Wolcott placed a thick envelope beside the business cards. I knew what was inside: a debit card and €10,000, the maximum allowable without being declared. You broke the law in this business only when you had to. A fake passport meant arrest, a false identity, a hooded car ride to a Siberian prison. You could talk your way out of a two-month-old consulting business.

Besides, there was no hiding from the Internet. If anyone Googled me, it was all there: paratrooper, special warfare training. I even had a blog, the Musical Mercenary, where I wrote opera reviews. I had been interviewed about it on NPR, of all places. It was best, in this day and age, to own your past.

“The debit card is loaded with €50,000, for expenses. Greenlees will have another €50,000 in cash when you arrive. We'll subtract out for your plane ticket and equipment.” They were making it look like I paid my own way. That was new. The company always ran cover for action, but not this deep. “Karpenko will pay additional expenses once you link up with him, anything you need.”

Wolcott dropped a gold necklace with thick links on the table. It was old school. If things got bad, I could snip off a link at a time and barter my way out of the country.

I didn't like it. Apollo Outcomes was a corporation, not an Old West saloon. They took taxes out of my paycheck. My employment contract was fourteen pages long, for God's sake—and I was a freelancer. You should see my 1099 tax forms.

“You'll get your standard rate,” he continued. “Four weeks worth, plus a 50 percent bump up for danger pay, and Mr. Winters is adding a 50 percent completion bonus.” That came out to about $80,000 for a week's worth of work. Arguably, my fee should have been higher. But you don't haggle within the company, and if things went pear shaped, I knew Winters would get me out. Trust is worth more than money when your life is on the line.

“And,” he continued, “you get a team.”

I smiled, thinking of Miles and the boys. Having good men at your side was the only thing in the world more important than trust.

“I know you, Tom,” Winters said slowly, stepping in. He always knew when to step in. “I understand why you stayed in the field.”

He didn't. He never had.

“You're right,” he said, as if reading my mind. “I don't understand. But I believed you when you said you thought you could do more good there.”

He paused again. The man used pauses better than Beethoven. “I know this is unusual. I know it's outside your area of expertise. But it's the big one. The ‘good job.' The one we've been waiting for. Forget Africa and look at the big picture. If we shift the balance of power in Ukraine, we stuff Putin back in his box. It's good for our clients and better for the world. Break Russia, Thomas, and we don't just win a victory. We change the future. Even for Africa.”

There it was, the Hitler speech, soft-pitched, but unmistakable:
History needs us
.
We're the chosen ones. This is your purpose.

He was stroking my ego. Manipulating me, like he always had. But so what? There were pieces missing here, explanations that were incomplete, but my job wasn't to see the forest, it was to cut down trees. If I didn't believe in myself, and my missions, on some deep fundamental level, why had I been risking my life all these years?

Winters rose and knocked on the door. Wolcott entered and handed me a flight itinerary. I glanced at it briefly. One way to Kiev. Three hours from now. Just enough time to head home for warmer clothes and a few appropriate downloads, such as Tchaikovsky's Second Symphony, known as the “Little Russian,” after the nickname for Ukraine during the reign of the Czar.

Wolcott handed me another piece of paper. It had my exfiltration data, handwritten: a time, date, and grid square location. I committed it to memory and handed the sheet back. Wolcott put it back into a folder with the photo of Karpenko. They would be in the shredder by lunch.