Operation Barracuda sc-2 Read online

  “My God,” Lambert says. He can also see the papers through my trident goggles. “That document lists the location of every nuclear device in Russia and China.” I don’t risk answering him vocally but I continue to study the file. It dates back to the eighties, when the Soviet Union was a bit friendlier with its Asian neighbors, so it could be terribly out of date. The pages go on and on… uh-oh. There’s a page listing missing nuclear devices. Twenty-two of them. Holy shit. The general has scribbled coded notations beside these entries. There is a date on this page and it’s recent.

  “Snap some shots of that, Sam,” Carly says. “I’ll work on making sense out of those notes.” I quickly do so with the OPSAT.

  Another file seems to concern a Chinese general in the People’s Liberation Army by the name of Tun. I’ve heard of him. He’s a controversial figure in China, a real hawk. Tun likes to rile up the government with emotional speeches, inciting them to take action against Taiwan. I’m not sure what kind of power or influence the guy has these days but through most of the nineties he was considered a bit of a crackpot. Prokofiev’s file on the man is pretty extensive. Photos, biographical info, and… damn, lists of arms that Tun appears to have purchased from Russia. No, wait. Not from Russia. From the Shop! It has to be. These are purchase orders for arms, worth millions of dollars, that Prokofiev has signed off on.

  I quickly snap more photos and then carefully place them back in the safe. I close it, spin the combination knob, and stand.

  “Good work, Sam. Now get the hell out of there,” Lambert says.

  That’s when the office door opens. A woman, dressed in a nightgown and resembling Boris Yeltsin in drag, sees me and screams like a banshee.

  6

  I jump toward Mrs. Prokofiev, grab her by her massive shoulders, pull the woman toward me, step to the side, and place my hand firmly over her mouth. This muffles her scream to an extent.

  In Russian, I say, “Please be quiet. I won’t hurt you!” I mean it, too.

  But the woman is huge and strong. She wrestles out of my grip and swings an elbow into my stomach. The suit protects me but this woman means business.

  She starts to run from the office and I tackle her. Her bulky frame falls to the carpet with a heavy thud as she screams again. I move over her and put my hand across her mouth again.

  “Listen to me!” I shout in Russian. “I work for the government! I’m here to help you.”

  But it’s like holding a 280-pound wild boar. Because I’m pulling punches and don’t want to hurt her, she throws me off of her and manages to get to her feet. I hang on to one leg — it’s like hugging a tree trunk — and she pulls me along the carpet back into the office. Damn, she’s going for the guns.

  “Wait!” I shout, but she pulls the Winchester off the wall, cocks it, and aims it at my head.

  I raise my hands. “Mrs. Prokofiev,” I say, “please calm down and just listen to me.”

  “Who are you? What do you want?” she demands. Her voice is deep and hoarse.

  “I’m a private detective,” I blurt out. “I work for the Russian government. I’m gathering information about your husband’s extramarital activities!”

  This gets her attention. “What did you say?”

  “Please, may I stand?”

  She keeps the rifle trained on my forehead. I don’t doubt she would pull the trigger if provoked. Only now do I notice that there are curlers in her gray hair and she’s got cold cream on her face. Hideous.

  “All right, stand up, pig!” she shouts. I do so but I keep my hands high. I’m sure I could disarm her and send her to Dreamland if I wanted to, but I have a better idea.

  “My name is Vladimir Stravinsky and I work for the Russian government,” I say. “Your husband is in some trouble. I’m here to see what I can find. I honestly thought you weren’t at home.”

  “What did you do to Ivan the Terrible?” she snarls.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Ivan! My dog!”

  “Oh. He’s just asleep. It was a tranquilizer. He’s not harmed, I promise.”

  She squints at me and frowns. “What’s this about Stefan?”

  Stefan? Oh, her husband. “Mrs. Prokofiev, are you aware of your husband’s extramarital activities?”

  “His what?”

  “May I lower my hands?” I ask as politely as possible. “I can show you some, um, pictures.”

  She glares at me, unsure whether or not to trust me. Finally, she nods her head but keeps the barrel in my face. “What are you talking about?” she whispers.

  “Your husband has a mistress in Ukraine. In Kyiv, to be exact. A fashion model.” I decide to rub it in. “She’s in her twenties.”

  The woman’s eyes flare. I swear they turn red for a moment. “I don’t believe it!” she says.

  “It’s true. I’m afraid this affair he’s having is causing some concern in the Kremlin. The general has been neglecting some of his, er, duties.”

  “You lie, pig!” She lifts the rifle to her eye, taking a bead on my nose.

  “I can show you pictures!” I say.

  Mrs. Prokofiev slowly lowers the gun again and jerks her head. “All right. Show me.”

  I hold out my wrist and reveal the OPSAT. “They’re on here. This is like a digital camera. Look.” I quickly bring up the shots I took in Kyiv and display them to her, one by one. Her facial expression exhibits incredulity at first and then her pallor changes from white to red, even through that awful cold cream. If she could breathe fire, she would.

  “I’ll kill him,” she mutters. The woman lowers the rifle and commands me to stand. She appears a little unsteady, so she moves to the desk and sits in the general’s chair. “What is going to happen to him?” she asks.

  “I don’t know. I’m just gathering information for now.”

  “You don’t need to do anything,” she says. “I’ll kill him first.”

  I figure this is anger and bravado talking. “That’s not necessary, Mrs. Prokofiev. I’m sure that—”

  But I’m interrupted by the sound of cars moving past the office window. I remember that the driveway leading to the garage is on the side of the house directly next to the office.

  “My husband!” she says, standing. “He is home!”

  I curse to myself. “I’ll have to hide.”

  She waves her finger at me. “No. Do not hide. Go out the back door. I will keep him occupied when he comes in. Hurry!”

  I nod, thank her, and leave the office. Ivan the Terrible is beginning to wake up. He sees me and growls sleepily. I jump over his body and he springs to his feet. When he barks, Mrs. Prokofiev shouts, “Ivan! No!” The dog whimpers slightly and sits. He apparently knows who his master is.

  I go out the back door, close it, and step into my old footprints to keep from creating new ones.

  “Sam, you’re not alone,” Lambert says. “Man at three o’clock.”

  Sure enough, a uniformed guard comes around the house to the back, apparently performing a routine security sweep for the general’s arrival home. He sees me and shouts for help. As he draws his pistol, I forget about the footprints and rush him. I slam into him head-on and together we fall into the snow. I punch him in the face as hard as I can but the man is well trained. He plunges his knee into my side, sending a jolt of pain into my kidney. I roll off of him and attempt to get to my feet but the guard whips his arm out and stiff-hands me in the neck. If the angle had been a little better for him, he would have broken it. As it is, I fear he’s destroyed my larynx. I struggle for breath but the pain is intense.

  The guard stands, draws his weapon, and points it at my head. I’m on my knees, helpless and groveling before him, but I do have the presence of mind to clutch handfuls of snow and pack them together.

  The guard says, “I should go ahead and kill you but I think we’ll see what the general has to say about you.”

  Suddenly there’s a loud gunshot inside the house. The guard stiffens and looks up. I use the o
pportunity to throw my slush ball into his face. It’s one of Krav Maga’s basic tenets — use whatever you have available in order to gain an advantage. I then spring at him, pushing off with my legs like a jack-in-the-box. I ram him in the abdomen, knocking him down once again. His pistol, a Makarov, flies into the air. This time I don’t give him a chance to rebound. I jump and bring the soles of my heavy boots down on his head. I twist, land with legs on either side of his temples, and then I give him a solid kick in the right cheekbone.

  He stops squirming.

  I pause for a second and a half to make sure I’m not leaving anything behind and then I take off toward the side of the house. As I run past the office window, I hear angry voices inside but it’s impossible to identify them. And I really don’t care. My throat is on fire and I just want to get the hell out of there. I got what I needed, I think.

  Sticking to the shadows, I jump the iron fence and sprint down the street toward the van.

  7

  Colonel Irving Lambert had a bad feeling about the upcoming meeting. Senator Janice Coldwater had called it, which wasn’t a good sign. In Lambert’s opinion, the good senator was trouble. As the head of a small group of Washington, D.C., officials known by its members as “the Committee,” she had the power to tell him and other high-ranking military and intelligence officers what to do.

  Lambert felt the burden of his age as he walked down the corridor toward the designated conference room in the Pentagon. The fact that the meeting was being held in the center of all-things-military was also foreboding. He would be facing his counterparts in the other governmental intelligence organizations, as well as the politicians who made the big decisions involving Third Echelon’s administrative and budgetary requirements.

  Having been in the military intel business since he was a young man, Lambert was well connected in Washington. He could request — and receive — an audience with the president if he wanted. He could initiate covert operations that no one else in the U.S. government knew about — or needed to know about. He often held America’s security in his hands — something else that wasn’t widely known or appreciated. And yet despite all this, Lambert often felt as if he were the bottom of the bureaucratic totem pole. His colleagues in the FBI and CIA received more respect. The military commanders looked down their noses at him. Only a handful of Congress members knew he existed.

  It was no secret that Third Echelon was hanging on to threads. The past year, while productive in terms of crushing certain threats aimed at U.S. interests, had proved disastrous in terms of manpower and cost. The Shop had eliminated several Splinter Cells. How the Shop had obtained the agents’ names was still a mystery. Lambert had been ordered to find the leak and plug it up. To date he had been unsuccessful.

  Lambert entered the room and was thankful that he wasn’t the last to arrive. Senator Coldwater was already in her seat at the head of the table. She gave Lambert a curt nod and went back to the notes she was studying. An easel, covered by a drape, stood at the head of the room next to the senator.

  U.S. Navy admiral Thomas Colgan sat to her left. He stared into a cup of coffee, obviously concerned about something. Next to him was a man Lambert didn’t know. He appeared to be a civilian — a brainy type with mechanical pencils in his shirt pocket. He was the only one who had removed his jacket and draped it over his chair. Lambert could see that the guy was nervous to be there.

  Assistant FBI director Darrell Blake sat to the senator’s right. He, too, ignored Lambert and continued to look at printouts that lay in front of him. The head of the National Security Agency and Lambert’s boss, Howard Lewis, was the only one who smiled at Lambert. He sat away from the others, holding a seat open. The colonel squeezed Lewis’s shoulder and sat beside him.

  “How’s it going?” Lambert whispered to his boss.

  “We’ll see,” Lewis whispered back. Lambert rubbed the top of his graying crewcut, something he did involuntarily when he was anxious.

  The other people in the room consisted of Homeland Security representatives, a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the head of the DEA, and a handful of other military and political advisers.

  The Committee was a top secret think tank put together by the president to tackle classified issues and to police clandestine organizations within the government. Third Echelon fell into this category. The only people in Washington who knew Third Echelon existed, other than the president and vice president, were in the conference room. No one was really supposed to know about Third Echelon. The NSA’s function as the nation’s cryptologic establishment was to coordinate, direct, and perform highly specialized activities to protect U.S. information systems and produce foreign intelligence reports. Since it was on the edge of communications and data processing, the NSA was naturally a very high-tech operation.

  For decades the NSA engaged in what was called “passive” collection of moving data by intercepting communications en route. The First Echelon was a worldwide network of international intelligence agencies and interceptors that seized communications signals and routed them back to the NSA for analysis. It was a network vital to the United States’ efforts during the Cold War. As the Soviet Union disintegrated and communications evolved, high technology became the name of the game. The NSA created Second Echelon, which focused entirely on this new breed of communications technology. Unfortunately, the immense volume of information combined with the accelerated pace of developing technology and encryption overwhelmed Second Echelon. NSA experienced its first systemwide crash. As communications became more digital, and sophisticated encryption more expansive, passive collection was simply no longer efficient. So the NSA launched the top secret initiative known as Third Echelon to return to more “classical” methods of espionage powered by the latest technology for the aggressive collection of stored data. As Lambert thought of it, Third Echelon went back to the nitty-gritty world of human spies out there in the field, risking their lives for the sake of taking a photograph or recording a conversation or copying a computer’s hard drive. The agents — the Splinter Cells — physically infiltrated dangerous and sensitive locations to gather the required intelligence by whatever means necessary. That said, the Splinter Cell’s prime directive was to do the job while remaining invisible to the public eye. They were authorized to work outside the boundaries of international treaties, but the U.S. government would neither acknowledge nor support the operations.

  When CIA head Morris Cooper entered the room, Lambert groaned inwardly. He and Cooper always seemed to be at loggerheads.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Cooper said. “Traffic in the hallways was thicker than usual.”

  No one seemed to appreciate that Cooper was attempting humor. He shrugged and sat across from Lewis and Lambert.

  “Now that we’re all here,” Senator Coldwater began, “I’d like to start with some budgetary concerns and get that out of the way before we talk about the new business at hand.” Then she looked at the two NSA representatives. “Mr. Lewis and Colonel Lambert, the Committee members have been going over the budget that handles the various agencies and organizations involved in our nation’s security. As you know, this includes Homeland Security, several antiterrorism task forces, and other classified groups within the FBI and CIA. I’m afraid that the NSA is high on the list for a reduction in funding because some headway must be made somewhere.”

  Lewis shifted in his seat and Lambert felt his stomach lurch.

  “You’re talking about Third Echelon?” Lambert asked.

  “Yes.”

  Lambert cleared his throat. “With all due respect, Senator, might I remind the Committee of what Third Echelon has accomplished since its inception. In the last year alone we stopped a major conflict in the Middle East that would have brought disaster to Israel. We completely destroyed the terrorist organization known as the Shadows. We’ve run the illegal arms-dealing entity known as the Shop out of Eastern Europe and the Middle East. You can’t say that we haven’t done our jobs. Our pl
ans for the future will make our little group even more effective. For example, we’re expanding our Field Runner program. These support agents travel with Splinter Cells to sites of operations and provide much-needed back-watching.”

  The senator nodded. “The Committee appreciates what Third Echelon has accomplished, Colonel. But I’m concerned about Third Echelon’s record of losing Splinter Cells. It’s very high, considering there aren’t very many of them. In the last year you lost how many? Three? Four?”

  “That was because the Shop had the names. We’ve discussed this in Committee meetings before, Senator. A leak—”

  “And you’ve had nearly a year to find that leak,” Cooper said. “What is it you’re doing over there in that little building of yours?”

  “Well, Morris, we’re not just pulling our puds,” Lambert said. Cooper snorted and Lewis nudged the colonel to cool it.

  The senator continued. “Colonel, the cost to recruit, train, and pay one single Splinter Cell is immense. Losing one in the field amounts to the military losing a handful of million-dollar missiles. I must also point out that the operations in the Middle East you mentioned did not occur without some public knowledge. The whole point of Third Echelon was to perform its tasks without any evidence of its actions. The business in the Middle East last year was very messy. People were killed. Governments knew you were there. The president was placed in a very uncomfortable position.”

  Lambert took a deep breath and said, “All I can say is that the results were solid. Our goals were accomplished and we prevented worldwide catastrophe. I’m sorry if the president had to tell a couple of white lies.”

  Lewis nudged Lambert again. The colonel continued. “As for the leak, we’re doing everything we can. I’d like to remind everyone that the only people that know of Third Echelon’s existence are the small group of employees working under me, the president and vice president, and the people in this room.”