Текст книги "The Kill Switch"

Автор книги: James Rollins

Соавторы: Grant Blackwood
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

1

March 4, 7:42 A.M.

Vladivostok, Russia

His job was to protect the bad from the worst.

Not exactly the noblest of ventures, but it paid the bills.

Crouched at the edge of the Russian docks, Tucker Wayne let the weight of his duty fall over him. The icy wind and pelting sleet slowly faded from his attention, leaving him focused on a dark, quiet winterscape of cranes, haphazardly stacked shipping containers, and the hazy bulk of boats lining the pier. In the distance, a foghorn echoed once. Mooring lines creaked and groaned.

Tucker’s training as a U.S. Army Ranger was always at the ready, but it was particularly necessary this morning. It allowed him to home in on two very important issues.

First: The port city of Vladivostok, which was a vast improvement over the deserts of war-torn Afghanistan—though he’d never add this frigid place to his list of retirement locations.

Second: The assessment of the threat risk—such as, who might try to assassinate his employer today, where would they be hiding, and how would they do it?

Prior to his taking this job three weeks earlier, two attempts had already been made against the Russian industrialist’s life, and his gut told Tucker the third would happen very soon.

He had to be ready—they both did.

His hand reached down to offer a reassuring touch to his companion and partner. Through the snow-covered fur, he felt the tense muscles of the small Belgian shepherd. Kane was a military working dog, a Belgian Malinois, paired years ago with Tucker back in Afghanistan. After Tucker left the service, he took Kane with him. They were bound together tighter than any leash, each capable of reading the other, a communication that went beyond any spoken word or hand signal.

Kane sat comfortably beside him, his ears erect and his dark eyes watchful, seemingly oblivious to the snow blanketing the exposed portions of his black-and-tan fur. Covering the remainder of his compact body and camouflaged to match his coat, he wore a K9 Storm tactical vest, waterproofed and Kevlar reinforced. Hidden in the webbing of Kane’s collar were a thumbnail-sized wireless transmitter and a night-vision camera, allowing the two to be in constant visual and audio contact with each other.

Tucker returned his full attention to his surroundings.

It was early in Vladivostok, not yet dawn, so the docks were quiet, with only the occasional laborer shuffling through the gloom. Still, he did his best to keep a low profile, trying to blend into the background: just another dockworker.

At least, I hope I look the part.

He was in his late twenties, taller than average, with slightly shaggy blond hair. He further masked his muscular physique under a thick woolen coat and hid the hardness of his eyes beneath the furred brim of a Russian ushanka, or trapper’s hat.

He gave Kane a thumb stroke on the top of the head and got a single wag of his tail in response.

A far cry from home, eh, Kane?

Then again, if you took away the ocean, Vladivostok wasn’t much different from where he’d spent the first seventeen years of his life: the small town of Rolla, North Dakota, near the border with Canada. If anyplace in the United States could give Siberia a run for its money, it was there.

As a kid, he had spent his summers canoeing Willow Lake and hiking the North Woods. In winter, it was cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, and ice fishing. But life wasn’t as perfect as that postcard image made it seem. His parents—two schoolteachers—had been killed by a drunk driver when he was three, leaving him in the care of his paternal grandfather, who had a heart attack while shoveling snow one hard winter. Afterward, with no other immediate surviving relatives, he’d been dumped into foster care at thirteen, where he stayed until he petitioned for early emancipation and joined the armed services at seventeen.

He pushed those darker years away, down deep.

No wonder I like dogs better than people.

He brought his focus back to the business at hand.

In this case: assassination.

He studied the docks.

From where would the threat come? And in what form?

Against his advice, his principal—the Russian billionaire and industrialist Bogdan Fedoseev—had scheduled this early-morning visit to the port. For weeks there had been rumors of the dockworkers attempting to unionize, and Fedoseev had agreed to meet with the leaders, hoping to quash his employees into submission. If that tension wasn’t enough of a threat, Tucker suspected a fair number of the workers were also Vladikavkaz Separatists, political terrorists whose main victims were the prominent capitalists in the Russian Far East, making Bogdan Fedoseev a high-value target.

Tucker cared little about politics, but he knew understanding the social landscape came with the job—as was knowing the physical landscape.

He checked his watch. Fedoseev was due to arrive in three hours. By then, Tucker needed to know every nook and cranny of this place.

He looked down at Kane. “What do you say, pal? Ready to work?”

In answer, Kane stood and did a full-body shake. Snow billowed off his fur, and the wind whipped it away.

Tucker started walking, with Kane trotting alongside him.

9:54 A.M.

By midmorning, Tucker had located six of the eight workers he suspected of being Vladikavkazists. The remaining two had called in sick that morning, something neither had done before.

Standing in a warehouse doorway, he studied the docks. The port was fully alive now, with forklifts moving here and there, cranes swinging containers onto outbound ships, all accompanied by a cacophony of hammering, grinding, and shouted orders.

Tucker pulled out his phone and scrolled through his list of PDF dossiers and found the two men who had called in sick. Both were former soldiers, petty officers in the Russian Naval Infantry. Worse still, they were both trained snipers.

Two and two equals a credible threat.

He set the men’s faces in his memory.

His first instinct was to call Yuri, the head of Fedoseev’s protective detail, but it would do no good. I do not run, Fedoseev had proclaimed loudly and frequently. But most damning of all, Tucker was an interloper, the American none of the other security detail wanted here.

Tucker’s mind shifted again, visualizing Fedoseev’s route through the docks. He judged the exposure windows, the angles of fire. He surveyed for any likely sniper perches. There were a half-dozen spots that would work.

He glanced at the sky. The sun was up now, a dull white disk above the horizon. The wind had also died, and the sleet had turned to big fat snowflakes.

Not good. Much easier to make a long-range shot now.

Tucker looked down at Kane, knowing they couldn’t sit back and wait.

“Let’s go find some bad guys.”

10:07 A.M.

The six potential sniper nests were spread across the dockyard, some twenty acres of warehouses, catwalks, narrow alleys, and crane towers. Tucker and Kane covered the ground as quickly as possible without appearing hurried, using shortcuts wherever possible, never staring too long at any one spot.

As the pair passed a warehouse front, Kane let out a low growl. Tucker turned in a half crouch, going tense. Kane had stopped in his tracks and was staring down an alleyway between a pair of stacked containers.

Tucker caught the barest glimpse of a figure slipping out of view. Such a sighting would be easy to dismiss, but he knew his dog. Something in the stranger’s body language or scent must have piqued Kane’s interest: tension, posture, furtive movements. Kane’s instincts were razor honed after several dangerous years in Afghanistan.

Tucker recalled his mental map of the dockyard, thought for a moment, then flipped Kane’s collar cam into its upright position.

“GO SCOUT,” he ordered tersely.

Kane had a vocabulary of a thousand words and understanding of a hundred hand gestures, making him an extension of Tucker’s own body.

He pointed forward and motioned for Kane to circle around the bulk of containers to the far side.

Without hesitation, his partner trotted off.

Tucker watched him disappear into the gloom, then turned and jogged directly into the nest of giant container boxes where his target had vanished.

Reaching the first intersection, he stopped short and glanced around the corner of the container.

Another alley.

Empty.

He sprinted along it and arrived at the next intersection, this one branching left and right. It was a damned maze back here among the giant containers.

Easy to get lost, he thought, and even easier to lose my target.

He pictured Kane somewhere on the far side, hunkered down, watching this pile of containers. He needed his partner’s eyes out there, while he hunted within this maze.

Tucker punched up Kane’s video feed on his modified satellite phone. A flickering, digital image appeared on the tiny screen, live from Kane’s camera.

A figure suddenly sprinted out of the line of containers, heading east.

Good enough.

Tucker ran in that direction. He caught a glimpse on the screen of Kane doing the same, tracking the man, still scouting as ordered.

Both were on the hunt now—which is what army rangers did. Aside from rare exceptions, rangers didn’t patrol or provide humanitarian relief. They were single-minded in purpose: find and destroy the enemy.

Tucker had enjoyed the simplicity of that.

Brutal, true enough, but pure in a strange way.

He emerged from the container maze in time to draw even with Kane. He motioned the shepherd to him. Kane came trotting up and sat down beside him, awaiting his next command, his tongue lolling, his eyes bright.

They were now near the eastern edge of the dockyard. Directly ahead, across a gravel lot, lay a set of train tracks, lined with abandoned and rusted freight cars. Their quarry had vanished among them.

Beyond the train yard, a perimeter barbed-wire fence rose high—and beyond that, a dense pine forest.

Aside from the muffled dock sounds in the distance, all was quiet.

Suddenly Kane’s head snapped to the left. A section of the barbed-wire fence shook violently for a few moments, then went still. In his mind’s eye, Tucker envisioned a second target wriggling through a gap in the fencing to enter the dockyards from that direction, using the cover of the forest.

Why?

Searching farther to their left, he spotted a tall crane tower, once used to load the freight cars. The tower was one of the six potential sniper perches he had marked in his head.

Tucker checked his watch. Fedoseev would arrive in six minutes. Hurrying, he pulled out a pair of small binoculars from his jacket’s pocket and focused on the top of the crane. At first he saw nothing but indistinct scaffolding in the swirling snow. Then a shadowy figure appeared, slowly scaling the ladder toward the high platform.

That’s who came through the fence just now—but where’s the guy I was following?

He considered calling Yuri with the abort code, but even if his message got past that gatekeeper, his boss’s careless bravado would win out. Fedoseev would not back down from a threat. Bullets would have to be flying before the industrialist would consider a retreat.

It was the Russian way.

Tucker dropped to his belly and scanned beneath the freight cars. He spotted a pair of legs moving to the right, disappearing and reappearing as the figure passed the steel wheels. Whether this was in fact his guy, he didn’t know, but it seemed likely.

He reached back and drew the Makarov PMM pistol from the paddle holster attached to his waistband. A decent weapon, but not his preference.

But when in Rome . . .

He looked over to Kane, who was crouched on his belly beside him. His partner’s eyes had already locked on to the target jogging down the rail line, heading away from the man climbing the crane.

Tucker gave a one-word command, knowing it would be enough. He pointed to the target moving on the ground.

“TRACK.”

Kane took off, silently sprinting after the man on foot.

Tucker angled toward the left, toward the crane tower.

Hunched over, he swept across the gravel lot, reached the train yard, and belly-crawled beneath a freight car and down the sloped ballast into a drainage ditch beyond. From the meager cover, he spotted the gap in the perimeter fencing; the cut was clean, recent.

To his left, a hundred yards away, rose the crane tower. Rolling to his side, he zoomed his binoculars and panned upward until he spotted his target. The assassin was perched on a ladder a few feet below the crane’s glassed-in control cab. A gloved hand reached for the entry hatch.

Tucker quickly considered taking a shot at him but immediately decided against it. With a rifle, perhaps, but not with the Makarov. The distance and the scaffolding made a successful hit improbable. Plus the snow fell heavier now, slowly obscuring the view.

He checked his watch. Three minutes before Fedoseev’s limousine entered the main gate. Fleetingly, he wondered about Kane, then brought his mind back to the task at hand.

One thing at a time, Ranger. Work the problem.

Let Kane be Kane.

Kane runs low to the ground, his ears high, picking out the crunch of boot through ice-crusted snow. The command given to him is etched behind his eyes.

TRACK.

He sticks to the shadows of the rusted cars, following the dark shape through the whiteness, which grows thicker. But his world is not one of sight alone. That is the dullest of what he perceives, a shadow of a larger truth.

He stops long enough to bring his nose to a treaded print, scenting rubber, dirt, and leather. He rises higher to catch the wafting trail of wet wool, cigarette smoke, and sweat. He smells the fear in the salt off his prey’s skin; distantly his ears pick out the rasp of a hurried breath.

He moves on, keeping pace with his quarry, his paws padding silently.

As he follows, he draws the rest of his surroundings inside him, reading the past and present in the flow of old and fresh trails. His ears note every distant shout, every grind of motor, every wash of wave from the neighboring sea. On the back of his tongue, he tastes frost and winter.

Through it all, one path shines brightest, leading to his prey.

He flows along it, a ghost on that trail.

10:18 A.M.

From his vantage in the drainage ditch, Tucker watched his target slip through the hatch at the top of the crane and close it with a muffled snick.

With the man out of direct sight, Tucker stood up and sprinted toward the tower, holstering the Makarov as he went. Discarding stealth, he jumped onto the ladder’s third rung and started climbing. The rungs were slick with snow and ice. His boots slipped with every step, but he kept going. Two rungs beneath the hatch, he stopped. The hatch’s padlock was missing.

Holding his breath, he drew the Makarov and then gently, slowly, pressed the barrel against the hatch. It gave way ever so slightly.

Tucker didn’t allow himself a chance to think, to judge the stupidity of his next action. Hesitation could get you killed as easily as bravado.

And if I have to die, let it be while I’m still moving.

In the past, he had pushed blindly through hundreds of doors in countless Afghan villages and bunkers. On the other side, something was always waiting to kill you.

This was no different.

He shoved the hatch open, his gun tracking left and right. The assassin knelt two feet away, crouched over an open clamshell rifle case. Behind him, one of the cab’s sliding windows stood open, allowing snow to whip inside.

The assassin spun toward Tucker. The look of surprise on his face lasted only a microsecond—then he lunged.

Tucker fired a single shot. The Makarov’s 9 mm hollow-point round entered an inch above the bridge of the man’s nose, killing him instantly. The target toppled sideways and went still.

One down . . .

Tucker didn’t regret what he’d just done, but the contradiction flashed through his mind. Though not a religious man, Tucker found himself attracted to the Buddhist philosophy of live and let live. In this case, however, letting this man live wasn’t an option. Odd that he found the necessity of taking a human life defensible, while killing an animal was an entirely different story. The conundrum was intriguing, but pondering all that would have to wait.

He holstered the Makarov, climbed into the cab, and closed the hatch behind him. He quickly searched the assassin, looking for a cell phone or radio; he found neither. If he had a partner, they were operating autonomously—probably a fire-at-will arrangement.

Time check: sixty seconds.

Fedoseev would be prompt. He always was.

First order of business from here: keep the Russian out of the kill zone.

He turned his attention to the assassin’s rifle, a Russian-made SV-98. He removed it from the case, examined it, and found it ready to fire.

Thanks, comrade, he thought as he stepped over the body and reached the open window.

He extended the rifle’s bipod legs, propped them on the sill, and aimed the barrel over the sea of shipping containers and warehouse rooftops toward the main gate. With the cold stock against his cheek, he brought his eye to the scope’s eyepiece and peered through the swirling snow.

“Where are you, Fedoseev?” Tucker muttered. “Come on—”

Then he spotted the black shadow sailing through the white snow. The limousine was thirty feet from the main gate and slowing for the cursory check-in with the guard. Tucker focused on the limousine’s windshield, his finger tightening on the trigger. He felt a moment of reluctance, then recalled the SV-98’s specifications. The weapon didn’t have enough juice to penetrate the limousine’s ballistic glass—or so he hoped.

He fired once, the blast deafening in the tight cab of the crane. The 7.62 mm round struck the limo’s windshield directly before the driver’s seat. As an extra measure, Tucker adjusted his aim and fired again, this time shattering the side mirror. To his credit, the driver reacted immediately and correctly, slamming the limousine into reverse, then accelerating hard for fifty feet before slewing into a Y-turn.

Within seconds, the vehicle was a hundred yards away and disappearing into the snow.

Satisfied, Tucker lowered the rifle. Fedoseev was safe for the moment, but someone had tried to kill Tucker’s principal. He’d be damned if he was going to let the second assassin escape and try again later.

Tucker ejected the rifle’s box magazine and pocketed it before pulling out his satellite phone. He checked the video feed from Kane’s camera. Between the wet lens and thickening snowfall, all he got for his effort was a blurry, indecipherable image.

Sighing, he opened another application on the phone. A map of the dockyard appeared on the screen. West of Tucker’s location, approximately four hundred yards away, was a pulsing green blip. It was Kane’s GPS signal, generated from a microchip embedded in the skin between his shoulder blades.

The dot was stationary, indicating Kane was doing as instructed. The shepherd had followed his quarry and was now lying in wait, watching.

Suddenly the blip moved, a slight jiggle that told him Kane had adjusted position, likely both to remain hidden and keep his quarry in sight. The blip moved again, this time heading steadily eastward and picking up speed.

It could only mean one thing.

The second assassin was sprinting in Tucker’s direction.

Hurrying, he scaled down the ladder, sliding most of the way. Once his boots hit the ground, he trudged through the thickening snow, his Makarov held at ready, following the rail line. He hadn’t covered thirty feet before he spotted a hazy figure ahead, crouched beside the cut in the fencing. His quarry leaped through the gap and sprinted into the trees.

Damn it.

Kane appeared two seconds later, ready to give chase. But once the shepherd spotted Tucker, he stopped in his tracks, ears high, waiting for further orders.

Tucker gave it.

“TAKE BRAVO!”

Playtime was over.

Kane lunged through the fence and took off in pursuit, with Tucker at his heels.

Though now in takedown mode, Kane didn’t get too far ahead of him. The shepherd wove between trees and leaped over fallen trunks with ease, while simultaneously keeping his quarry and Tucker in view.

Engulfed by the forest, the sounds of the shipyard had completely faded. The snow hissed softly through the boughs around him. Somewhere ahead, a branch snapped. He stopped moving, crouched down. To his right, forty feet ahead, Kane was also frozen, crouched atop a fallen trunk, his eyes fixed.

Their quarry must have stopped.

Tucker pulled out his phone, checked the map screen.

Two hundred yards away, a narrow canal cut through the forest, a part of the dockyard’s old layout when it had belonged to the Russian Navy. His quarry was former naval infantry, smart enough to have planned for an escape route like this, one by water.

But was that the plan?

According to the map, there was also a major road on the far side of the canal.

What if the man had a vehicle waiting?

Decide, Tucker.

Would his quarry flee by land or sea?

He let out a soft tsst, and Kane turned to look at him. Tucker held up a closed fist, then forked fingers: Track.

Kane took off straight south.

Tucker headed southeast, hedging his bet, ready to cut the man off if necessary.

As he ran, he kept half an eye on Kane’s position using the GPS feed. His partner reached the canal and stopped. The blip held steady for a few seconds—then began moving again, paralleling the canal and rapidly picking up speed.

It could only mean one thing.

Their quarry had boarded a boat.

Tucker took off in a sprint, darting and ducking through the last of the trees. He burst out of the forest and into an open field. Ahead, a tall levy hid the canal’s waterway. To his right came the grumble of a marine engine. He ran toward the noise as Kane came racing hard along the top of the levy.

Tucker knew he couldn’t hope to match the dog’s speed. According to the map, the canal was narrow, no more than fifteen feet.

Doable, Tucker thought.

He shouted, “TAKE DOWN . . . DISARM!”

The shepherd dropped his head lower, put on a burst of speed, then leaped from the levy and vanished beyond the berm.

Kane flies high, thrilled by the rush of air over his fur. Here is what he lived for, as ingrained in his nature as the beat of his heart.

To hunt and take down prey.

His front paws strike the wood of the deck, but he is already moving, shifting his hind end, to bring his back legs into perfect position. He bounds off the boards and toward the cabin of the boat.

His senses swell, filling in details.

The reek of burnt oil . . .

The resin of the polished wood . . .

The trail of salt and fear that lead to that open door of the cabin . . .

He follows that scent, dragged along by both command and nature.

He bolts through the door, sees the man swing toward him, his skin bursting with terror, his breath gasping out in surprise.

An arm lifts, not in reflexive defense, but bringing up a gun.

Kane knows guns.

The blast deafens as he lunges.

10:33 A.M.

The gunshot echoed over the water as Tucker reached the top of the levy. His heart clenched in concern. Fifty yards down the waterway, a center-cabin dredge boat tilted crookedly in the canal, nosing toward the bank.

Tucker ran, fear firing his limbs. As he reached the foundering boat, he coiled his legs and vaulted high, flying. He hit the boat’s afterdeck hard and slammed into the gunwale. Pain burst behind his eyes. Rolling sideways, he got to his knees and brought the Makarov up.

Through the open cabin door, he saw a man sprawled on his back, his left arm flailing, his legs kicking. His right forearm was clamped between Kane’s jaws. The shepherd’s muscled bulk was rag-dolling the man from side to side.

The Russian screamed in his native tongue. Tucker’s grasp of the language was rudimentary, but the man’s tone said it all.

Get him off me! Please!

With his gun trained on the man’s chest, Tucker stepped through the cabin door. Calmly he said, “RELEASE.”

Kane instantly let go of the man’s arm and stepped back, his lips still curled in a half snarl.

The Russian clutched his shattered arm to his chest, his eyes wide and damp with pain. Judging by where Kane had clamped on to the man’s forearm, the ulna was likely broken and possibly the radius as well.

Tucker felt no pity.

The asshole had almost shot his partner.

A few feet away lay a revolver, still smoking in the cold.

Tucker stepped forward and looked down at the man. “Do you speak English?”

“English . . . yes, I speak some English.”

“You’re under arrest.”

“What? I don’t—”

Tucker drew back his right foot and heel-kicked the man squarely in the forehead, knocking him unconscious.

“More or less,” he added.