Echo Platoon (41 page)

Nod and Digger’d done their jobs: they were standing over corpses. That left Boomerang free to back me up. I shouted “Bedroom” in his direction. I checked my position. The bedroom would be the door on the right-hand side of the suite. We stacked, I hit the door with my shoulder, and the wood frame splintered.

As it did, a scream came from inside. That sound fucking spurred me on. I went in and headed left. Boomerang tight behind me went to the right.

Scanbreathe. Scanbreathe.
Shit, I was hyperventilating. I caught myself in time and took a slow, even load of fresh air into my lungs.
Scan. Breathe.
Better. Now I forced my eyes to work, not tunnel; kept the front sight of the USP moving right/left, left/right.

And then:
threat at eight o’clock.
Steve Sarkesian. Standing in front of Ambassador Madison, his body pressing her tight, up against the wall, her hands hidden. But I could see his hands. There was a small stainless steel Walther pistol in them, held in an old-fashioned cup-and-saucer grip. The gun was pointed at the floor. Then he saw me—recognized me—and its muzzle started up, vaguely in my direction.

Here’s the difference between Steve and me: he had to raise his pistol, and I could see his eyes tunneling,
fixating on me, not seeing anything else but the bulk of my body as I closed on him, moving carefully, foot by foot by foot.

I held my front sight right on him. And if you don’t mind a micromomentary digression at this point in time, I’d like to say I had a great sight picture, too.

I’d swung my pistol onto his left clavicle, because his left clavicle and shoulder were both completely clear of the ambassador’s body. I could take him out anytime I wanted to. But I didn’t want to. Not yet. Not until he knew that he was about to be closed down for good. “Yo, Steve—”

“You,”
he said.
“You!”
The pistol muzzle rose another two inches. He looked straight at me with his violet eyes. His hair was messy and his demeanor seemed confused. Now he shifted and put his body squarely between me and Marybeth Madison.

I kept my front sight on his left clavicle. “I’ve got news for you, Steve: you’re out of the expediting bidness.”

Now it was the ambassador’s turn. She looked at me with undisguised loathing. “What the fuck are you doing here, Captain Marcinko?” I guess she really
was
confused.

I didn’t have time to explain myself to her right now, because I had some killing to do first. So I ignored her excellency, and spoke to the asshole I’d come to kill. “I have your target list, Steve. Yours and Sherafi’s. The embassies in Abu Dhabi, Qatar, and London—they’re safe. The folks who were gonna blow up those banks in Paris are spilling their guts to DST.
77
So are the
goons you ordered to hit the oil companies and the Turkish foreign ministry. Your nets are all rolled up, Steve. And even though the Israelis missed you, I’m not gonna miss you. You killed the wife of my friend. That makes you my enemy, and you’re gonna die. As of now, Steve, the Sirzhik Foundation is going out of business for good.”

He kept his weight against the ambassador’s body and started to shrug, as if he didn’t understand what I was getting at. Except . . . except . . . except, that the muzzle of his fucking pistol started moving in my direction again.

I wasn’t about to wait for him to get the first shot in—besides, I knew he wasn’t a trained shooter and he’d hesitate. And as much as I wanted to blow his head off right then, I wasn’t about to do it with him standing directly in front of the ambassador. All I’d need was Mister Murphy to adjust the round’s path—and we’d have a big fucking incident. I saw the headline in the
Washington Post
in my mind: N
AVY
SEAL K
ILLS
U.S. A
MBASSADOR TO
A
ZERBAIJAN
D
URING
B
OTCHED
H
OSTAGE
R
ESCUE
A
TTEMPT.
And so, I closed the distance between us in a millisecond and was all over the motherfucker, just like stink on shit. I swatted him across the face with my pistol, shattering his perfect teeth. The blow made him drop his Walther, which went clattering off to my left. Too bad for him.

The ambassador tried to insinuate herself between us, her hands clawing at my face. I thought about cold-cocking her, but it just wasn’t an option. I looked around, saw a closet door six feet away, took her by the scruff of her neck, thrust her inside, and turned the key to make sure she’d stay out of the way.

Bad idea. That had left Steve-o alone long enough for him to go scrambling for his weapon.

I tackled him just as he was reaching out for it. I clubbed him in the face. Bit his ear. Kneed him in the balls. He tried to fight back, but it was impossible. The white heat of my rage was too hot; too intense; too concentrated, to allow him any kind of progress.

I slapped him silly, then rolled him over, straddled him, and sat on his chest.

“You scumbag.” I raked the front sight of the USP over his eyes, ripping right through his eyelids. He screamed and flailed.

“You kill innocent women,” I told him. “I don’t like that.” I raked the front sight over his eyes again.

Then he really started to protest, screaming about all kinds of shit, in all kinds of languages. Well, fuck him. I wasn’t here to listen. I was here to take Old Testament revenge. I ended his monologue by forcing the muzzle of the USP into his mouth, breaking more teeth in the process.

I looked down at him. “Say good-bye, Steve.”

Oh, he fought. He bucked his shoulders, and he tried to kick me in the back of my head, and he writhed like the fucking snake he was. But it did him absofuckinglutely no good at all.

I smiled down into his face, and pulled the trigger.

The back end of his skull exploded like a fucking ripe melon. Bits of brain and bone imprinted a nasty Rorschach on the suite’s marble floor.

I pulled myself off Sarkesian’s body, stood over him, and put three more shots into his corpse just to make sure he stayed as dead as he deserved to be.

Then I unlocked the closet door and retrieved Madame Ambassador so we could hustle her out and save her ass.

This was harder to accomplish than you might think, because once freed, the ambassador jumped my bones, swatting me around the head and shoulders, kicking at me with her bare feet, and was screaming her head off very undiplomatically about my being a goddamn fucking murderer and having me fucking arrested. Maybe it was because she’d slipped on some of the spatter and was now covered in Steve-o’s blood. To be honest, I didn’t give much of the old rusty
F
-word right now. We had to get her bundled up, bundled out, and back to Baku before the reinforcements arrived.

0925. I posted security while Ashley tried to calm the ambassador (but didn’t have much luck, since she wasn’t carrying any Ketamine with her today). I sent Digger scurrying to bring Ashley’s coveralls. While he ran that errand we went through the suite and the surrounding rooms, which had been occupied by Steve-o’s security force, checking to make sure there was no lose intel lying around.

I had to admit there wasn’t much. It appeared to be exactly what ambassador Madison kept screaming it was, which is, “A private fucking assignation that you had no fucking right to stick your fucking nose in the middle of.”

Hadn’t anyone ever taught her that a preposition is not a word to end a sentence with?

0929. Syntactics be damned, we had to get our butts in gear, and fast. I tossed the scanner to Ashley, who spoke the local lingo, so she could monitor the situation. The LAMA was going to be no use at all, so I took Nigel, Hammer, and Gator out to the hangar to get Ambassador Madison’s chopper prepped and ready to fly.

0932. We ran into Oleg in the lobby. “Where the fuck have you been?”

He shrugged noncommittally. “Looking for documents in the hotel safe.”

“Yeah, well, we could have used you.”

The Ivan’s eyes flashed. “You had your work to do; I had mine.” He paused. “Sarkesian?”

“Dead.”

His face brightened. “That is good,” he said. “And your ambassador?”

“She’ll live.”

In response he grunted, and turned away.

I wasn’t about to wait for him. I had work to do. I turned to my guys. “Let’s go.”

0941. Gator used a tractor to ease the Dauphin-2 out of the hangar. Nigel and I pushed the fuel unit into position and topped off the tank. I dropped the hatchway and peered inside. It was going to be a fucking tight fit. Ambassador Madison had configured this chopper as a VIP craft, which meant it held only eight passengers. We were going to be more than double that number. Weight wasn’t a problem because Dauphin-2s can hold twenty-two troops. But given the VIP configuration, interior space made fitting us all in impossible.

I looked over at Gator and Hammer. “Anything that Nigel says we don’t need, you rip out.”

0952. The ambassador had finally quieted down. But when I came back into the suite, the look she gave me wasn’t very sociable. Ashley shook the scanner in my direction. “We got company coming,” she reported. “Russians. Lots of ’em. They’re traveling by chopper.”

“Arrival time?”

“I’m not sure. The radio chatter says they just lifted off an airstrip near someplace called Uytash.”

I looked over at Oleg. “What do you know, Oleg?”

In answer, the Russkie’s arms opened wide. “Maybe the
byki
got a message out.”

That was possible. “How far is Uytash?”

Oleg shrugged. “Maybe two hundred twenty-five miles. Maybe less, maybe more.”

That gave us plenty of time to clean things up and get outta Dodge, because I didn’t want to be around when the Ivans got here—too many questions, and not enough answers. We picked up every bit of intel we could lay our hands on, then we bundled everyone out of the hotel and moved down to the chopper pad.

Nigel was just finishing the walkaround. I looked at the pile of custom-made furnishings piled on the macadam and then over at him. “Ready?”

He gave me a thumbs-up. “Right on, Gov.”

1019. I got Ambassador Madison, who was still in shock, loaded. My guys were ready to go. I looked over at the big Ivan. “Oleg, you coming?”

He shook his head. “I will wait for my people,” he said. “This will take some explaining, and I want to make sure they get it right.”

Well, they were his people and he could handle ’em. “That’s your call, General.”

He threw me an offhanded salute. “Your men did well today,” he said. “They learn fast, Captain.”

“Spasiba,
Oleg. Thanks for all your help.” I climbed aboard and pulled on the hatch cable to raise the steps.
“Poká
—see you later.”

“Schastlivovo putí
—bon voyage,” the big Russian said, waving at me, a blank stare on his Mister Clean
®
face. Then he turned, hunching his shoulders against the prop wash, and headed back toward the hotel.

1021. The Russkies were about forty minutes out. It was time to haul ass. I looked into the cockpit where Nigel was waiting and gave him a “circle the wagons” gesture.

1022. The big chopper rose slowly into the morning sky. I looked around at my Warriors, who’d overcome the odds once more. They were true Samurai, who lived by a code that would not allow them to fail. They were better than Samurai: they were Warriors in my own image, and I loved them as only a Warrior can love his troops.

And then, as Nigel dipped the Dauphin’s nose, and we turned east toward Baku, just as I started to stretch and relax, secure in the knowledge that we had not failed, the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up, and I suddenly understood that something was very, very wrong.

“Set this fucking thing down—
now!”
I shouted.

Nigel gave me a confused look, but he complied. Thirty-eight seconds later we were back on the deck. It wasn’t a pretty landing. But it got us back on terra firma.

I dropped the hatch. “Out—everybody out.”

My troops were confused. So was Ashley. So was the ambassador. But I didn’t give a shit. When the hair on the back of my neck stands up straight, someone is trying to kill me.

Oleg had obviously heard the chopper return, because he was standing on the pad as I climbed out. “A problem, Captain?”

I scratched my beard. “Maybe. I’m not sure.” And I wasn’t sure. But the hair on the back of my neck had stood straight up. And in all my years of Warriordom, that danger signal had never been false. My instincts
had told me something was wrong—and I always trust my instincts in situations like this one.

I thought about all the DVFs. Like the explosives Steve Sarkesian might have already planted on the Dauphin. I replayed the mental videotape of how Steve looked at me as I came through the door of his suite—and how he’d tried to protect Madame Ambassador with his own body before I tossed her into the closet and killed him.

And then, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth hit me like the proverbial ton o’ bricks:
Steve Sarkesian may have been guilty of many things. But planning to assassinate Marybeth Madison wasn’t one of them.

I went into the hangar. I looked around. There was nothing that seemed out of the ordinary. So, I stopped. I sat on the cool concrete floor. I crossed my legs, and followed the Roy Boehm Zen precept of mind clearing. Then, newly focused, I stood up and started to look.
Really
look.

That is when I found the small rectangle of shiny paper that led me to believe someone had recently used a piece of two-faced tape. And then I discovered the canvas document case, stuffed way down in the bottom of the fifty-five-gallon oil drum the mechanics used as a garbage container. It was the very same document case Oleg Lapinov had been carrying.

I dug it out of the trash, rolled it in a shop towel, and jogged back to the chopper pad. Nigel had the engine idling. I took my right index finger and slashed it across my throat. “Shut it down.”

I waited until I got close to Oleg before I let the case drop out of the shop towel. When he saw it, his expression told me all I had to know.