Under Fire Read online

  Inside the tailgate, the rock sparked.

  With an audible whoosh the material burst into flame, immediately engulfing the rear and middle seats. Fire streamed from the half-open windows, blooming as the Suburban picked up speed and oxygen was funneled through the interior.

  The lead Krasukha was still reversing. Behind it, the second vehicle sped up and veered toward the shoulder, trying to avoid the collision. As they slid past each other, the left-hand Krasukha’s wheels slipped off the edge and the vehicle began tipping sideways with the sound of groaning steel.

  Fully engulfed now, the Suburban slammed into the lead Krasukha, and its push bumper crushed the Suburban’s hood beneath it. Fire shot from the Suburban’s side windows and splashed across the Krasukha’s windshield, over the roof, then down the sides.

  The second truck rolled onto its side, teetered there for a moment, then began barrel-rolling down the slope, its engine revving and headlights spiraling. Jack heard shouting, barked orders in Russian. There wasn’t a trace of panic in the voices.

  Men came running up the side of the first Krasukha, dodging flames and firing from the hip. Jack counted four of them, then five, then eight charging past the engulfed Krasukha and up the hill toward them.

  “So much for the shock factor,” Dom shouted from his tree across the road.

  Jack took aim on the lead soldier and pulled the trigger. The man went down. Dom opened up, firing in tight three-round bursts, dropping two more.

  The others spread apart, making themselves harder targets, then went prone and began returning fire.

  Jack heard a snap beside his head, then a second. Bullets thudded into his tree and peppered the soil beside his foot.

  Four more soldiers joined the first group, and together they began leapfrogging up the road, two prone and laying down suppressing fire while two others advanced. They were thirty yards away and rapidly closing the distance.

  These men were disciplined and well trained, Jack realized. It had taken them less than a minute to recover from the suddenness of the ambush, then to regroup and attack. This had never been a fight he and Dom were going to win; the best they could hope for was to hold these soldiers off for more than another couple of minutes, by which time they’d be within hand-to-hand range—if they survived that long.

  From down the road came the roar of a diesel engine at high revolutions. Jack saw the glare of headlights, and then the third Krasukha emerged from the flames, scraping down the length of the first one and shoving it sideways as it chugged its way up the slope. More men came charging around the side of the vehicle, firing as they went.

  Dom shouted, “Jack, time to GTFO!”

  “Yep. Let’s get their heads down first!”

  Simultaneously they peeked out from behind their trees, braced the ARXs on the trunks, and opened fire on full auto. The soldiers scattered.

  Jack and Dom turned and started running.

  • • •

  TWELVE MINUTES LATER, Jack turned left off the trail, then over a rise, then lost his footing in the mud and started sliding. He clawed at the passing branches and jerked to a stop. Only a few feet behind, Dom tried to leap over him but fell short. He landed hard on his back and his head smacked into Jack’s sternum. Dom rolled over and started crawling. Jack followed him until he felt pavement under his palms, then stopped. His heart thundered. His ears pulsed with rushing blood.

  Where were they?

  He saw white lines on the asphalt. A parking lot. It was empty. At the lot’s entrance was a green-and-white sign with a pine tree emblem on it. A nature reserve or hiking area, Jack decided.

  Dom gasped, “Do you see them?”

  “What? I can’t hear you.”

  “Are . . . they . . . following . . . us?”

  Jack pushed himself to his knees and looked around, trying to get his bearings. He glanced back the way they’d come. It was getting lighter out and the wind had died away, but the sky was still full of leaden clouds. In the distance, barely visible through the rain, he could see the ridge road winding up the slope. He saw no headlights. Somewhere up there the two Krasukhas they’d failed to stop were probably in place and spooling up.

  “No, we’re fine,” Jack said. “I’m not exactly sure where we are, though.”

  “We’re off that damned ridge, that’s good enough for me. How many did we take out?”

  “Bad guys or Krasukhas?”

  “Krasukhas.”

  “Two, the one that went over the side and the first one. It might be operational, but there’s no way they’re getting it up that hill.”

  “Fifty percent. Not bad,” said Dom.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “I hurt everywhere. How far do you think that was?”

  “Two miles, at least.”

  “I’ve never run that fast in my life.”

  Jack got to his feet; his legs were rubber. He helped Dom up, then Jack patted his pockets until he found his phone. He was down to fifteen-percent battery life.

  He dialed Ysabel and got no answer, then tried Seth and Spellman with the same result. He dialed the Ministry of the Interior’s main switchboard and got a busy signal. Cell towers were down, either shut down locally or fried remotely by the Krasukhas.

  Jack dialed The Campus and explained to John and Gerry what had just happened. Gerry said, “We don’t know about cell service, but the whole of Dagestan’s Internet went dark about an hour ago. Nothing’s getting out.”

  “Nabiyev and Volodin have shut down the ISPs, and probably the power grid, too. Seth won’t bring his hubs online with the Krasukhas still operational.”

  “Well, you sure as hell can’t go back up to that ridge, Jack. You gotta go after the Igarka,” said Clark.

  Jack disconnected. He said to Dom, “We need to find a way back. We need to find out what’s going on.”

  “Whatever’s happening, that can’t be good,” Dom said, pointing.

  To the east, Makhachkala’s skyline was cloaked in roiling black smoke.

  Makhachkala

  THEY FOLLOWED the canyon’s narrow road to a rural neighborhood, then turned west and started picking their way into Makhachkala proper. Soon they caught the stench of burning rubber. Tires, Jack guessed. He wondered if Seth’s protesters had gone from peaceful to violent.

  The fringe neighborhoods appeared normal, if a little quiet, with no protesters in sight, but the closer to the city center they got, the more crowds they saw, first in small clusters, then in the dozens on street corners, and then in the hundreds in intersections. Gone was the chanting and singing from the day before, replaced with something Jack couldn’t put his finger on. Discouragement? Worry? Faces tracked them as they passed. He felt eyes on his back.

  “Jack,” Dom whispered. “Our guns.”

  They tucked their ARXs beneath their ponchos and kept walking.

  Finally, they reached Amet Road, a major north-south thoroughfare. The traffic was heavy, with almost bumper-to-bumper traffic, but eerily, Jack heard little honking. He saw the black smoke now, hovering over the northern end of the city.

  “All the cars are headed south,” Dom said.

  Jack wasn’t sure if this was a good sign or a bad sign. Seth’s plan called for the bulk of the protests to take place in the northern third of Makhachkala, where most of the government institutions were located. This southbound exodus suggested that’s exactly what was happening; it also suggested these citizens wanted to be far from the action.

  “They know the border garrisons are coming,” said Dom.

  “Probably so.”

  People liked the idea of freedom, but not the prospect of being clubbed or shot.

  Jack got out his phone and tried Ysabel and the others again, and again got no answer. The MOI switchboard was still busy.

  “Where do you want to go?” aske
d Dom.

  Jack assumed—hoped—his lack of contact with the others was simply a communications glitch and that they were still safe within Medzhid’s war room.

  “The docks,” he said. “Maybe Matt was able to get there.”

  “Maybe he’s already sunk the Igarka,” Dom replied.

  Jack glanced sideways at him.

  “What, Jack? A man can dream.”

  They kept walking until they hit Gamidova, where they were able to hail a taxi. The driver agreed to take them to the docks, but at triple the going rate. They agreed.

  • • •

  UNSURPRISINGLY, the docks were also strangely quiet. Roughly two-thirds of the vessels that had been tied up the last time Jack was here were gone.

  They made their way to the harbormaster’s shack.

  Matt Spellman was sitting down, his back against the wall, eyes closed. As they approached he cracked an eyelid and said, “Hi, guys. Whatchya been up to?”

  Jack and Dom laughed.

  “A little of this, a little of that,” Dom said. “We only got two of the Krasukhas.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Spellman got to his feet and they shook hands.

  “You look like shit, Matt,” Dom said, nodding at Spellman’s face.

  The CIA man’s left eye was almost swollen shut and his bottom lip was split.

  “I got ambushed on the way here. My phone got smashed.”

  “I’ve been trying to reach the Ministry,” Jack said.

  “Yeah, when I left, Medzhid was sending everyone into the basement. It was a bit crazy.”

  Jack felt his heart lurch. “Why the move?”

  “Ysabel’s okay, Jack, don’t worry. Rebaz is just playing it safe. Last night we started getting reports of gangs roaming the government district, bashing heads, looting stores, and setting cars on fire.”

  “And videotaping it all, no doubt,” Jack said.

  Volodin and Nabiyev’s opening moves had been to shut down the Internet and the power grid; flooding the streets with provocateurs was Wellesley’s.

  Until Seth’s hub system was up and running, the only images the outside world would see wouldn’t be ones of a peaceful, grassroots uprising, but rather ones of violence and chaos. Why rally behind a country whose citizens had no qualms about turning on one another?

  The world would watch, of course, and news outlets would play the images over and over until something nastier and juicier came along, and then Dagestan would be forgotten.

  “Medzhid’s sending in his politsiya to find them, but he’s got to play it right,” said Spellman. “Videos of club-wielding cops in riot masks will only give Wellesley exactly what he wants.”

  Jack said, “Seth should have used the hubs. Now he’s playing catch-up.”

  “You didn’t hear? No, I guess you wouldn’t have,” replied Spellman. “After you talked to Seth, Medzhid convinced him to change his mind. He said if the world wasn’t seeing the truth of what they were trying to do here, Volodin was going to roll right over them.

  “So Seth sent out the first e-mail blast and fired up the hubs. Five minutes after they came online, the Krasukhas started frying them. We lost half of them before we figured out what was happening. No way in hell did we think the Krasukhas would be that fast.

  “Medzhid ordered Seth to pull the plug. Jack, there were five thousand people with five thousand cell phones standing outside the Parliament Building with no way to get the videos and pictures out to the world. It’s falling apart even before it got started.”

  “We’ve got half the hubs left,” Jack replied. “Is the Igarka still at anchor?”

  “Yep. When most of the other boats were running for the breakwater, she stayed put. She did circle on her anchor chain, though. Her stern is pointed inland now—against the tide.”

  So the Kvant has a clear view of the city, Jack knew.

  “Show us,” Dom said.

  They followed Spellman down to the pier. The fog thickened around them until Jack felt as though he were suspended in midair. They reached the end of the planking. Spellman handed him a pair of binoculars.

  “She’s moved a bit closer since you last saw her. Look at about two o’clock. If the fog parts, you should be able to just make out her masthead light.”

  “I see it,” Jack said. “How long until the border garrisons get here?”

  “Last I heard, five.”

  Unless they had the Internet hubs online by then, Volodin could crush Makhachkala and there wouldn’t be a single live recording to contradict his version of events.

  Jack said, “We need to find a boat we can borrow.”

  • • •

  SURPRISINGLY, they had little trouble finding a boat perfect for their needs, a blunt-prowed twenty-eight-foot crew boat with navigation radar and an enclosed forecastle cabin that not only was unlocked but also had keys jutting from the ignition.

  While Jack started up the engines, Dom and Spellman cast off the lines then hopped onto the afterdeck and joined him in the cabin.

  Jack said, “Just so you know, I haven’t got much of a plan, so let me know if you’ve got something.”

  “Let’s hear yours,” Spellman said.

  “Pull alongside the Igarka, board her, shoot anyone who points a gun at us, then drive the Kvant over the side.”

  “Works for me.”

  “Me, too,” said Dom.

  “Fire up that radar, will you?”

  • • •

  HAVING TAKEN a rough bearing on where they’d last seen the Igarka’s masthead light, Jack pulled away from the dock and pointed the bow into the harbor. Immediately the fog enveloped the cabin until the bowsprit was just a hazy vertical line floating ahead of them.

  “She should be just up ahead,” Spellman said.

  Leaning over the tiny radar scope set into the helm console, Dom replied, “I’ve got something, but it’s moving away from us. Two hundred yards off the starboard bow and picking up speed.”

  “Is there anything else around?”

  “Astern of us in the harbor, but out here it’s just us and this one.”

  “Why would she be moving?” Spellman asked.

  Then it hit Jack: “Wellesley. The Krasukha crews would have called in the ambush. It’s not a big leap for him to guess it was us—and what we’re up to.”

  Jack pushed the throttle to its stops and the boat surged ahead, but slowly and steadily the Igarka began pulling away from them until finally, after ten minutes, she disappeared from Dom’s scope.

  “Last bearing I had on it was about one-three-zero degrees, heading south along the coast.”

  Jack eased the wheel over until the binnacle compass read 130.

  “She has to stop sometime,” Spellman said. “Any farther south and the Kvant won’t be able to triangulate for the Krasukhas.”

  “Unless they already put the thing ashore and we missed it.”

  “Not on my watch,” Spellman said. “She never left her anchorage.”

  They kept going.

  • • •

  “I GOT A BLIP,” Dom called out a few minutes later. “Dead on our nose, about half a mile.”

  “Still moving?”

  “Yeah, but it’s . . . Jack, she’s turning to starboard, heading toward shore. She’s slowing down.”

  Spellman began rifling through the cabinets above their heads, then the drawers beneath the console. “Come on, where are you?” He pulled out a chart. “Dom, where is she?”

  Dom tapped the scope face. Spellman held the chart next to the screen, rotating it until he found a landmark on shore he recognized.

  “She’s heading for the Akgel Inlet,” he said.

  “Which leads where?” asked Jack.

  “A reservoir about a hundred yards inland. It’s a recreational boat area.”
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  “Docks? Road access?”

  “Uh . . . lemme think. Yeah. Nasrudinova Street, it heads north toward downtown.”

  “Dom, I can’t see a thing. You’re going to have to steer me.”

  “You got it.” Dom leaned closer to the scope face. “Keep going . . . Okay, start easing to starboard. Keep coming around until you hit two-two-three degrees, then straight ahead.”

  Jack did so, his eyes darting between the rotating compass and the windscreen. The fog was thinning. Off the bow he could make out fuzzy geometric shapes; slowly they began to resolve into buildings.

  When the compass hit 223, Jack let the wheel spin back to center.

  “I see lights ahead,” he said. “Off the port and starboard bow.”

  “Those’ll be the inlet markers,” replied Spellman.

  Jack eased back on the throttle until they were moving at eight knots.

  “Keep it steady, Jack. This thing looks real narrow.”

  “Forty feet, I’d guess,” Spellman added. “Tight fit for the Igarka.”

  Dom said, “She’s dead ahead, maybe a hundred yards and still slowing.”

  Out both windows Jack saw gray shadows gliding down the hull as they entered the inlet.

  “Almost through,” Dom muttered. “Igarka’s still slowing . . .”

  Spellman said, “Don’t crowd her, Jack.”

  He eased back on the throttle again. Six knots.

  “We’re through,” Dom said. “Igarka’s fifty yards off.”

  Jack throttled the engines back to idle and let momentum carry them forward. Through the haze a pair of headlights flashed twice, then twice more. Still invisible in the fog, the Igarka’s diesels revved up.

  “Moving again,” Dom said.

  The Igarka’s engines faded and they heard the scraping of steel on sand.

  Jack said to Dom, “Get Matt one of the ARXs. Same thing as before, guys: If somebody’s holding a gun, they’re a target. No gun, they better be on their bellies. Sound good?”

  Both Dom and Spellman nodded.

  “I’m going to get us alongside as quick as possible, so hold on to something. Once we’re stopped, get aboard and start clearing the decks. Dom, you’re up high, Matt and I are heading forward along the deck.”