Day Of Wrath (13 page)

The Russian captain lit an American cigarette and, with his ship safely tied up, relaxed for a few moments, curiosity for once eclipsing his natural laziness. He stood in a shadow and tracked Kleiner while the German watched the first jet engine they were carrying being hoisted out of the Star’s hold. The ship had other cargo aboard—mostly dried fish and scrap metal—but his contracts with Arrus were always clear.

Their shipments always got top priority.

Once the first crate was lifted off the ship, Kleiner hurried to the dock and greeted a tall, dour-looking man in a suit’. Tumarev spat to one side. The Norwegian had the look of an inspector or customs official, and he had scant use for either sort.

Like their counterparts in Russia, the local bureaucrats often seemed to exist only to make his life difficult and to skim off a percentage of his already meager profits in tariffs, taxes, and fees.

To his surprise, the Russian sea captain actually saw a thin smile cross Kleiner’s lips as he shook the newcomer’s hand. Then the Norwegian official showed his teeth, too—the kind of greedy smile one often saw on the face of someone about to receive an expected gift.

The German produced a large manila envelope and passed it to the official, then turned away, heading back up the gangplank.

Tumarev, absorbed in the transaction, almost forgot to turn away himself, but he was sure he hadn’t been seen. He was also sure that whatever Arrus Export’s crated jet engines had been listed as on his ship’s manifests, they would appear as something else entirely at their ultimate destination.

Tumarev also noticed that the engines were not being unloaded to the pier. Instead, the cargo handling cranes were swinging them—he could see three of the five crates now—directly into the hold of another ship on the other side of the pier, in 91B. He squinted at the name painted below her superstructure.

Baltic Venturer. She appeared to be both newer than the Star and bigger by half. She was also moored portside to, with her bow out.

Line-handling crews and a tug were already standing by.

The Russian snorted. Evidently, Kleiner’s employers weren’t planning to waste any time in moving their newly transshipped cargo out of Norwegian territorial waters. But then they never did.

Well, it was none of his business, Tumarev reminded himself.

He had a ship to take care of. Left to her own devices, Star of the White Sea would probably take them all to the bottom in a cloud of rust. He tossed his cigarette over the side and went below to remind the engineer about the need to check their starboard fuel pump.

When he came back on deck an hour later, the Baltic Venturer was already underway—steaming back down the narrow, winding channel toward the open North Sea.

FBI
Legal Attache Office, U.S. Embassy, Moscow Spring was slowly giving way to summer all across Moscow—heralded by blue, cloudless skies and longer, hotter days. Red-tinged sunlight streamed through the window in Helen Gray’s fifth-floor office, dancing on dust motes swirling in the warm air.

Colonel Peter Thorn sat in a chair with his back to the window, letting the late afternoon sun relax shoulders that were still stiff from a long day spent in cramped airplane seats and uncomfortable airfield waiting rooms. Covering the thousand miles between Kandalaksha and the Russian capital had required first hopping a military cargo flight to Arkhangelsk, and then waiting for the once-a-day commercial flight south. For now he was content to wait for Helen to finish the phone call she’d received within minutes of their return to the embassy.

He stretched his legs out and accidentally bumped into Alexei Koniev’s feet. “Sorry, Major.”

Koniev chuckled. “Don’t worry about it, Colonel. Rabbits do not complain about their teeming warrens. Why should we be any different?”

Thorn nodded. The
MVD
officer’s imagery was apt. One person could work comfortably in Helen’s narrow office. Two people might squeeze in for a short time without driving each other crazy. But three was very definitely a crowd. When added to her desk, computer, bookshelves, and filing cabinets bulging with case files, two extra chairs left barely enough room to breathe.

His gaze drifted to the framed pictures on Helen’s walls and desk. One showed her parents, brother, and two sisters. Two familiar faces smiled back at him from another photo — an older man in U.S. Army dress blues and the stars of a major general and a silver-haired woman wearing an elegant evening dress.

Sam and Louisa Farrell.

They were two of the most important people in his own life.

Major General Sam Farrell had been his mentor and commanding officer for most of his years with Delta Force. Thorn knew his old friend had called in every favor he was owed to keep him in the Army after the Teheran raid. Farrell had retired the year before, but he still carried a lot of weight in the special warfare and intelligence communities. And Louisa Farrell had first introduced him to Helen.

Which brought him to the last picture—the one Helen kept prominently displayed on her desk. It was a picture of them together—a picture taken in those heady, happier days when she’d taken her first steps unaided after being wounded. Back in the days when marriage, a life together, had seemed the logical and inevitable next step to both of them.

Thorn shied away from that thought, uncomfortably aware that he didn’t have any pictures of Helen displayed in his own barren office at O.S.I.A or even in his empty town house in the Virginia suburbs. They were all packed away somewhere in envelopes.

He had lived his whole life as a uniformed nomad—always ready to move on to the next post, to the next duty station.

Permanence had never been part of the package. By the time he’d begun to accept the possibility, she was gone—to Moscow and this legal attach assignment.

“Khorosho. Da. Spasibo.” Helen hung up her phone and looked up at her two colleagues.

“So what’s the word ?” Thorn asked.

She shrugged. “You want the good news first, or the bad news ?”

“The good news.”

Helen nodded toward the phone. “That was Titenko—the deputy head of the organized crime directorate. He finally ran a militia patrol past Grushtin’s dacha earlier this afternoon.”

“And?” Koniev leaned forward.

“He’s there,” she said. “They spotted a brandnew
BMW
outside.

It’s registered in Grushtin’s name.”

Thorn smiled wryly. “Nice can-especially for a guy whose salary is just a couple of hundred dollars a month.” He straightened up. “So when do we pay Captain Grushtin a visit?”

Helen frowned. “That’s the bad news. Titenko won’t let us move without backup from an
SOBR
team.”

Thorn mentally paged through the briefing papers he’d read.

SOBR
was the Russian-language acronym for the Special Detachments of Rapid Deployment—the
MVD’S
organized crime
SWAT
unit.

“The SOBR?” Koniev said impatiently. “For God’s sake, why?

We’re talking about bringing one man in for questioning—not assaulting a drug lord’s mansion!”

Helen shook her head. “General Titenko and the rest of your superiors aren’t so sure about that, Alexei. After reading the report we filed from Kandalaksha, they’ve seized on the heroin angle to explain why Grushtin sabotaged that plane. If he is working for a smuggling syndicate, there’s no telling what kind of firepower he could have hidden in that dacha.”

In theory, Thorn agreed with this Titenko’s caution. Rushing an operation without adequate recon or backup was a good way to get yourself killed. And he could understand why the Russians were so eager to believe the An-32 crash was drug-related. Since returning from Kandalaksha, he’d seen some of the reports crossing Helen’s desk.

Heroin transshipments from Southwest Asia and China through Russia to the West were on the rise. And it would make sense for the smugglers to use Russian Air Force bases as transfer points. With the right officers in their pockets, they wouldn’t find it very difficult to slip large quantities Of heroin onto cargo aircraft ferrying in supplies, spare parts, and personnel. As chief of maintenance at Kandalaksha, Nikolai Grushtin was ideally placed to recover such shipments from any number of different hiding places aboard the aircraft arriving at the air base.

Of course, Thorn realized, pinning the blame on the Mafiya also made good political sense. It made the crash an entirely Russian tragedy—turning away any suggestion that the American nuclear arms inspection team might have been the intended target.

Well, he still wasn’t so sure. An air base in the far northern reaches of Russia seemed awfully far from the poppy fields of Afghanistan. And the connection between the heroin they’d found in Colonel Gasparov’s bag and Captain Nikolai Grushtin was still entirely theoretical. As far as he was concerned, it would stay that way until he had a chance to question the Air Force maintenance officer himself.

He cleared his throat. “Okay, so we wait for backup. Just when is this
SWAT
team available ?”

Helen glanced out the window and then checked her watch.

“Not until later tonight—after dark.”

Outside Moscow Colonel Peter Thorn crouched low beside the dark
BMW
parked outside Grushtin’s country home. He risked a cautious glance around the bumper.

Birch trees gleamed silver in the pale light cast by the rising moon.

Patches of shadow flickered in and out of existence as a cool wind stirred the trees. The sky overhead was full of stars.

Moscow’s lights were a distant orange glow on the northern horizon.

They were thirty kilometers south of the city. The dacha itself was just meters away—separated from the rutted dirt lane by an unpainted wood fence and a stretch of weed-choked open ground.

Thorn pulled back into cover.

“Anything?” Helen Gray whispered in his ear.

“Nothing new,” he reported softly. “The lights are on, but the curtains are drawn.”

Koniev appeared out of the darkness, bent low, and dropped to the ground beside them. He unsnapped the holster at his side and drew an automatic pistol-a 5.45mm Makarov
PSM
. “The
SOBR
team is almost in place. They will go in first—on my signal.

Are you ready?”

Thorn nodded tightly, aware that his pulse was accelerating.

He glanced again at Koniev’s pistol. His own hands felt empty—too empty. Neither he nor Helen was armed. The Russian authorities frowned on foreigners-even foreigners with military or law enforcement connections—carrying weapons. Koniev had only bent the rules at the An-32 crash site because Helen had been the only woman quartered among hundreds of men. Once they’d come back to Moscow, her sidearm had gone straight back into an embassy lockbox.

The Russian
MVD
major risked his own look around the BMW’s bumper. He clicked the transmit button on a handheld radio.

“Tri. Dva. ODIN!”

The shadows came alive.

SOBR
commandos wearing dark ski masks, jeans, running shoes, and bulky body armor charged out of concealment, covering the short distance from their hiding places to the dacha in seconds. One smashed in the front door with a sledgehammer—covered by two more armed with AKS-74U submachine guns.

The door crumpled, torn off at the hinges, and they poured inside.

At the same time, others broke in through the groundfloor windows.

More commandos armed with night scopes and sniper rifles swept their weapons through tight firing arcs—looking for targets on the upper floor.

The area fell silent again.

Suddenly, Koniev’s radio crackled with a hurried report from inside the dacha. His face fell. He stood up.

Thorn stood with him. “What’s wrong, Major?”

“They found Captain Grushtin,” Koniev said heavily.

Helen joined them. “Good.”

The Russian
MVD
officer shook his head tiredly. “No, not good. Come with me.”

Thorn and Helen exchanged a troubled look before following Koniev inside.

The dacha’s front room was packed with evidence of Grushtin’s illicit activities. A Japanese-made television set,
VCR
, and high-end stereo system filled an imported Scandinavian entertainment center on one wall. Personal computer components sat atop a handsome oak desk in the opposite corner. An expensive Persian carpet covered the hardwood floor.

A stepladder lay on its side on the carpet, next to a high-peaked officer’s cap and two empty vodka bottles.

Four
SOBR
commandos were inside the room, cradling their weapons in their gloved hands. All of them were staring up at the ceiling.

Thorn turned his own gaze upward.

Wearing his full Russian Air Force dress uniform—right down to his polished brown boots—Captain Nikolai Grushtin dangled from the rafters of his own ceiling. His face bulged out over the noose tied tight around his neck. Dark stains down the back of his uniform trousers showed where he had voided his bowels in death.

Thorn sighed. “Oh, hell.”

“Hell, indeed,” Koniev echoed him. He turned away and snapped out a question to the ranking
SOBR
trooper in the room. The commando stiffened to attention, hurriedly replied, and then carefully handed him a folded piece of paper.

“A suicide note?” Helen asked grimly, turning away from the body dangling above them.

“So it seems,” the
MVD
major said cautiously. “The assault team found it on the desk over there. Right by the computer.”

Holding it by the edges, he carefully unfolded the piece of paper.

Thorn looked over his shoulder. Scrawled Cyrillic characters filled the page above a signature. The writing looked shaky, uneven.

There were splotches where the ink had run. Were they tear stains? Or sweat?

Koniev frowned. “It’s dated yesterday.” Still holding the note, he began translating. ““I, Nikolai Grushtin, write this last testament and confession in great turmoil of soul and mind. Once a loyal officer in our noble Air Force, I end my days as a murderer, a drunkard, and a peddler of drugs. I accuse Colonel Anatoly Gasparov of leading me down this evil path. It was he who played on my weaknesses until at last I succumbed—selling my honor for money and the things money could buy.