Black Flagged Redux (38 page)

He poked his head over the edge and saw all three vehicles in a line less than twenty meters away, with the BTR centered on the two dead bodies. The BTR's devastating 14.5mm gun was aimed down the street, which relieved Daniel. Even a near miss from one of those shells could put him out of action. Soldiers exited the rear hatches on the Tigers and fanned out to form a hasty perimeter. Daniel kept his head pressed against the lip, tilted sideways to expose as little of him as possible. The gunners on the Tigers swiveled their night vision equipped 12.7mm machine guns in a vigilant attempt to keep watch over the formation.

The BTR-80's side hatch opened and extended into a two-step ramp between the second and third tire on the side exposed to Daniel. Two soldiers scrambled out of the hatch, followed by an officer.

Daniel pushed himself up to his knees and swung the rifle over the lip, bracing it against the concrete. He centered the scope on the officer's face and fired a hasty shot. His next shot spun the rear Tiger's gunner out of the swivel mount and onto the ground behind the vehicle. Before he could engage another target, two RPGs popped through the windows below him and slammed into the Tigers. At this point, Daniel's only job was to keep anyone from closing the BTR hatch.

He stared intensely at the scope's green image as bullets cracked overhead and skipped off the concrete. He ignored the furious firefight between the Russian soldiers and his own Black Flag team. A body filled the hatch, and Daniel squeezed the trigger, causing the figure to tumble out of the BTR onto the snow-covered pavement. An arm and head appeared, stretching to reach the hatch. Daniel centered on the top of the arm, and fired. The soldier immediately dropped to the deck of the BTR and was pulled out of sight before Daniel could fire a bullet into his torso.

He fired two shots through the hatch, to discourage anyone else from trying to close the hatch. He hoped the rounds didn't ricochet and destroy any equipment they might need to examine. Through his left eye, he saw the BTR's turret start to turn in his direction, just as two figures scrambled toward the hatch from the street. He was fairly sure they were part of his team.

"Petrovich displacing," he announced, so the team would know he was no longer covering them.

"Breach team in," he heard, followed by the sounds of muffled gunfire from the street below.

He sprinted for a few seconds and dove into the snow, glancing backward. His previous position behind the concrete rooftop lip disappeared in a series of explosions that showered him with sharp fragments. The pounding lasted a few more seconds and suddenly stopped.

"Breach team is in control of the BTR. Send Malyshev," he heard through his earpiece.

Daniel picked his bruised body up off the debris strewn roof and sprinted back to the edge of the roof. He saw Malyshev sprint toward the open hatch, under heavy small arms fire from a group of soldiers huddled near the rear Tiger. Leo fired into the soldiers from somewhere below him, dropping one of them and scrambling the rest. Daniel picked up movement out of his peripheral vision, just as Malyshev jumped into the BTR and closed the hatch. A soldier climbed onto the damaged lead Tiger and jumped behind the 12.7mm gun.

The gun started to swivel, and Daniel aimed through his scope, barely beating the turret. He squeezed the trigger, punching a 5.45mm steel jacketed projectile through the soldier's Kevlar helmet, just as a grenade flew from the building into the Tiger. The rocket's detonation penetrated the Tiger's armor and exploded it from the inside, catapulting the body in the turret several feet into the air. When the explosion settled, Daniel noticed that all he could hear were sounds of small arms fire on the street and in the distance. He couldn't help but wonder if the last grenade had attracted any attention from the soldiers engaged in battle near the Katayev Prospekt.

"Breach team needs to move fast. Have Malyshev monitor communications. The last RPG blast might have attracted some attention," he said.

"Understood. We're accessing the MBT. Keep the infantry off the vehicle," Farrington said.

Daniel leaned over the edge, searching for more targets. He saw a soldier firing from a position behind the remaining Tiger and snapped off a quick shot at his head. He saw the soldier crumple to the street, his helmet spinning in the snow on the pavement. He spotted another soldier creeping between the Tiger and a partially shattered glass storefront window, trying to approach the BTR. A short burst from Leo's assault rifle knocked him back through the remaining glass. The firefight died on the street after the last burst.

The lead Tiger burned furiously, sending a column of superheated smoke and sparks skyward. There was little chance of the ambush going unnoticed for very long, and he suspected a few of the vehicles' soldiers had disappeared into the neighborhood, headed back to the infantry company deployed less than 1000 meters away. Sabitov had told them that his soldiers would expend most of their remaining rockets to provide a diversion for the ambush. There would be no second volley to distract the battalion. Daniel scanned the air for what they all feared the most. He spotted one of the Havocs hovering less than a mile away firing cannon shells into one of the center buildings, which now burned brightly. Every building in the Katayev Prospekt apartment development had caught fire at this point, illuminating the area around the buildings.

He heard motors rumble in the distance, and a Havoc helicopter suddenly appeared from behind a tall building down the street.

"Leo, get the RPGs to the roof, but stay in the stairwell. Yuri, get Malyshev on the BTR's cannon. We have a Havoc moving up the street, fifty meters above the buildings. It's moving slowly. Scanning."

He dashed back to the stairwell and ran inside, closing the door behind him. The sound of the rotors grew thunderous as the Havoc drew within a few buildings of the wrecked vehicle formation.

Leo and Major Sabitov raced up the stairs with loaded RPG launchers. Daniel reached out to take Sabitov's.

"Ready?" he said.

Leo stared at him with an incredulous look and nodded.

"Is Malyshev on the gun?"

"Affirmative. He's very familiar with the BTR," Farrington said.

"We're going to try and hit it with a double RPG salvo. You pound away with the gun. We have to get the Havoc to withdraw. More vehicles are inbound."

"We just heard on the radio. Let's get this over with," Farrington said.

"Roger. Here we go," he said and cracked the door open.

The only thing he cared about was the direction of the 30mm gun. It was aimed down the street and to the left, so he pushed the door open and stepped out far enough to make room for Leo. He aimed at the Havoc's center through the crude sight and depressed the hand trigger. The rocket's booster detonated, shooting the projectile out of the launcher. Less than a half second later, the rocket's motor fired and propelled the 85mm high explosive grenade toward the Havoc at nearly one thousand feet per second. Daniel heard the second RPG fire and ran back toward the door, pushing Leo and Sabitov down the staircase.

The first rocket missed the Havoc's right weapons pylon by less than a meter and struck the helicopter's rotor blade arc, failing to detonate or cause any disruption to its flight stability. Leo's rocket struck the underside of the helicopter, just behind the landing gear, bucking the helicopter, but causing no structural or mechanical damage that would end its flight.

Daniel and his accomplices tumbled over each other past the second floor when the first of the 30mm projectiles started to tear the roof apart. They dumped the rocket launchers at the bottom of the staircase and pulled Sabitov out of the back door as the ceiling above the ground floor started to disintegrate in successive blasts. They turned right and ran along the back of the stores, in the direction of the helicopter. They heard the BTR's 14.5mm gun start firing and Sabitov yelled to them.

"One more round for the RPG!"

The major held up one of the launchers they had dropped and reached behind him for the last rocket, which rested in a specialized munitions backpack that had been previously carried by one of the infected soldiers. Leo and Sabitov scrambled to load the rocket while Daniel rushed toward the street between the nearest two buildings. As he approached the street, he could hear the BTR's 14.5mm rounds strike the helicopter above. The cracks against the helicopter's metal were answered by the deafening bark of the Havoc's 30mm cannon. He poked his head around the building's corner in time to see several 30mm rounds puncture the BTR, exploding its fuel tanks and flattening all of its oversized tires. The Havoc hovered over their side of the street and fired another burst of projectiles into the BTR and the building behind it.

"Over here!" he screamed back to the men.

Leo rushed down the opening to join him, just as the Havoc moved forward above the buildings. The helicopter's rotor wash scattered the snow between buildings, lifting it into a painful frozen mist that engulfed the small space. The helicopter slowly appeared above them, and Leo aimed skyward. The rocket's blast instantly cleared the tight alleyway, and they saw the rocket explode behind the under mounted 30mm gun, just below the cockpit. Neither of them waited around for the result. They ran back though the alleyway and sprinted down the back of the buildings as the sounds of the Havoc droned off into the distance, replaced by the rumble of diesel engines. Daniel stopped them as they reached an open area.

"You're on your own, Major. Sorry it didn't work out for you. I need to be on my way out of Monchegorsk within thirty minutes. Farrington gave me the phone, so we can still make the calls you wanted. I'll take care of this once we've reached a safe distance," Daniel said.

"That wasn't part of the deal," Sabitov said.

"Neither was losing most of my team."

"The deal is still on! Keep moving! Half the Russian Army just turned the corner!" Farrington said, emerging from the same opening in the alley they had used just seconds earlier.

Farrington, Sergei and Schafer caught up to them, and the entire group sprinted across a soccer field to the next neighborhood, praying that the second helicopter didn't make a sudden appearance. A few streets into the neighborhood, they heard several massive explosions, and Daniel turned to see the second helicopter fire dozens of rockets into the lower floors of the centermost apartment building in Katayev Prospekt. The explosive impacts lit up the night sky and showered burning chunks of debris down from the mortally damaged structure.

A second salvo of rockets raced toward the building and exploded inside, blowing chunks of flaming orange fragments out of the back of the building. Daniel watched as the ten-story building tipped forward and slowly collapsed out of his view. The ground shook beneath his feet, rattling the buildings around him. He turned to leave and ran right into Major Sabitov, who stared at Katayev Prospekt in disbelief and listened to the hiss of static on his radio.

"You've done everything you could possibly do for these people. Keep moving," he said; his hand on Sabitov's shoulder.

The sound of diesel engines died out as they plowed ahead at full speed toward Grozny Prospekt. As they ran, Daniel thought about Malyshev. The sergeant had sacrificed himself so they'd have a chance to escape with the data from the BTR. There was no way he was going to screw Sabitov after that.

They'd return to the original apartment building on the outskirts of Monchegorsk, if it was still safe, and transmit the data wherever Sabitov chose to send it. At the snowmobiles they would take the time to file a report with Berg. He wished they could find another live volunteer to return with them, but he wasn't optimistic about finding another early-stage infected civilian willing to leave.

As they crossed another bleak, windswept street, he caught some movement a few houses away, followed by nonsensical muttering. He slowed to a walk in the middle of the street.

"You need the PPS?" Farrington asked, several steps ahead.

Daniel’s hand gripped the razor-sharp combat knife strapped to his leg. "No. I should be fine."

He pulled the seven-inch serrated blade from its sheath. Maybe he could find something a little more compact to carry back to Finland.

Chapter 38

7:50 PM

CIA Headquarters

Langley, Virginia

Karl Berg shut his laptop and looked up at Audra, who was rubbing her temples and staring at one of her two flat-screen monitors. It was nearly eight o'clock on Sunday evening, and the two agents had been working in her office since nine in the morning. They had put most of the final touches on the package that Audra would bring to the National Clandestine Service's director, Thomas Manning, as soon as he arrived on Monday morning. Berg would meet Audra here a few hours before the director's usual arrival time and add the laboratory evidence they expected to receive from Finland.

"I wish I could be there to see the looks on their faces. It’s not every day that someone delivers a cooler stuffed with a severed head," Berg said.

"I don't like to think about it. Brilliant overall, considering what we suspect…but gruesome," she said.

"They don't seem to be constrained by the same psychological processes that keep the rest of us in check. I don't know where Sanderson finds these guys, but he certainly does his homework."

"I hate to say it, but we need people like this on our side."

"I couldn't agree with you more. I'm calling it a night. I'll be in at 3:30 to make sure the lab reports are available for your report. I'm keeping the team in Helsinki for now, just in case," he added.

The embassy in Helsinki had arranged for priority handling of the team's biological sample at the Division of Infectious Diseases in the Helsinki University Hospital. They felt confident with Sanderson's team moving the sample. The location of the Gulfstream's wreckage remained a mystery, and she didn't expect the Russians to disclose the location. Damage from an air-to-air missile was nearly impossible to hide from seasoned investigators. With the Russians playing hardball, anything was possible. The team was expected to arrive in Ouru, Finland, within three hours and would be placed on a commercial flight leaving at 11:30 AM, local time. They both doubted the Russians would shoot down a Boeing 717 flown by Scandinavian Airlines.