Sentinel (3 page)

He rolled over snow and lay flat for a moment, watching the taillights of the truck move away from his position. He waited until the truck was closer to the men and would hide his movements from their vision. After counting five seconds, he rose to one knee and looked around again before dashing off the road and into darkness. Pulling out his handgun, he attached the sound suppressor to the weapon and walked carefully alongside a building wall while tightly gripping the gun. Svelte’s quarters were very close now.

He moved to the edge of the building and stood by a narrow road. There were buildings on either side of the route, and each one had an external lamp casting a dim light over the road. But none of the buildings had internal lights on, save one small hut. That building was Svelte’s quarters and would be where the man slept, washed, dressed, and sometimes ate when not dining in the officers’ mess or on board his submarine. It was about three hundred yards away from him on the left of the road. He looked up and down the route, checked his watch, and waited for a few seconds before deciding he had to move.

Moving out of the alley, he looked toward Svelte’s residence and tightly gripped his handgun. He knew he needed to be within the man’s quarters in seconds. He ran.

When he came to within a few feet of Svelte’s hut, he slowed to a walk, crouched low, and pulled out his military knife. He moved carefully forward, looking around, with his gun in one hand and the knife in the other. The narrow street was still quiet as he looked up and down the route. His eyes narrowed. A streak of light began moving slowly down the road. It was daylight.

Moving up to the hut’s door, he brought the knife up to force its lock. He frowned. The door was already ajar an inch. He pushed at it and immediately slammed his back against the adjacent wall so that he would not be visible to anyone inside. He waited, and when he heard nothing he swung himself low into the doorway with his handgun held forward. The room before him was small. It contained a tiny dining table and chair, a sofa, a television, an illuminated corner lamp, wall-mounted shelves filled with books, and a free-standing rack with a coat hanger holding an immaculately pressed naval captain’s dress uniform. Beyond the room was a corridor, and Will moved silently into it. To his left was a room with a toilet, hand basin, and shower cubicle. To his right was a closed door. He crouched down and moved to one side of the door while placing his knife into its scabbard. Then he removed his jacket hood, lifted his handgun up high, and used his free hand to open the door.

A man was lying in the center of the room, moaning. Will ran to him and crouched down. Immediately, he recognized the man from a photograph he’d seen in MI6 headquarters. It was Svelte, and he was dressed in uniform. The MI6 Russian agent’s face was screwed up in agony. His stomach had been torn open by a knife.

In Russian, Will said urgently, “I am a British intelligence officer.” He cradled the back of Svelte’s head and leaned down so that his face was inches away from the agent’s. “Who did this to you?”

Svelte’s eyes partially opened, his lips moved, but the only sound he made was a blood-filled guttural noise.

Will shook his head with disbelief. One of MI6’s most prized Russian agents was dying, and there was nothing he could do to stop it from happening. Will had traveled halfway around the world to meet him, but now it seemed that his journey might have been a waste of time. He moved even closer to him. “You sent us a message. What did it mean?”

Svelte shook his head; tears streamed down the sides of his face.

“Who did this to you? Who wants to go to war?”

Svelte gripped Will’s forearm tightly and opened his bloody mouth. But still no words came out.

Will felt anger, sorrow, and frustration that he’d not gotten to Svelte sooner. This was his fault. He’d failed the Russian officer. “Please . . . please try to speak.” He made no attempt to hide the desperation he felt. “I’m so
very
sorry. I should have got to you sooner.”

Svelte’s back arched as his body went into a spasm, and he cried out in agony. His body slumped back to the floor; his breathing was fast and shallow. Unscrewing his eyes, he stared straight at Will. “Not . . . not your fault.” He spoke with a barely audible voice. “Khmelnytsky . . . Colonel Taras Khmelnytsky. War between Russia and America.” He coughed blood and gritted his teeth. “Only Sentinel can stop him.”

His grip on Will instantly relaxed and his hand fell away to the floor, but his eyes remained wide open. He was dead.

Will briefly closed his eyes and muttered, “Fuck.” He lowered Svelte’s head to the floor, placed his fingers gently onto the Russian’s eyelids and closed them, and stared at the dead agent. Standing, he turned and kicked a bin across the room with a hushed “Damn it!”

Breathing deeply, he tried to control the anger he felt toward himself. He had to take control of the situation. Though Svelte’s dying words had no meaning to him, his priority now was getting out of the base and taking the information back to people who almost certainly would know what Svelte had meant. But daylight and the presence of the paratroopers would make an attempted covert escape suicidal.

His eyes fixed onto a tumbler glass on a bedside table. Within it was an inch of clear liquid. Lifting it to his nose, he smelled vodka. He moved quickly around the room, opening the small number of cupboards and drawers. Only clothes and stationery. Entering the lounge, he spotted a small fridge unit in one corner. Pulling it open, he saw eight full bottles of vodka. He glanced at the sofa next to him. It was cheap and made of foam, ideal for what he needed. Opening the first bottle, he poured its contents over the sofa; then he did the same with a second bottle before splashing the contents of the remaining bottles over anything in Svelte’s quarters that might be flammable. Grabbing a copy of an
Izvestia
newspaper from the dinner table, he tore it apart, wadded pieces of the paper into small balls, and scattered them over the sofa and elsewhere. He lit some of the balls, watched them start to burn, and then jogged back into the bedroom.

From the window, he saw that this side of the residence butted up against an alley and more buildings. Easing the window open, he clambered out of Svelte’s quarters. The alley was empty; snow was falling thick and fast. Looking back into the quarters, he saw black smoke beginning to emerge from the lounge into the bedroom, and he walked quickly to the end of the alley before stopping. Ahead of him was open ground, and to his right was the main road. Smoke was now billowing out of Svelte’s window. He ran north alongside a large warehouse and ducked into a narrow gap between buildings. His only hope lay in luring the paratroopers to Svelte’s quarters so that he could escape on foot. It was a vain hope. He doubted they’d all break formation to come here.

Engine noises came from his right. Easing farther into the gap, he saw two jeeps emerge through the blizzard, driving off the road and stopping on the open ground ahead of him. Four troopers got out; one of them was shouting into a radio mic, the others had their rifles held ready to shoot. None of the men was wearing a balaclava. They sped toward the alley that led to the rear of Svelte’s residence.

A minute later, a truck arrived and braked opposite the jeeps. Six airborne soldiers and four navy conscripts jumped out of the truck and ran along the road toward the front entrance of the burning building. When they were out of sight, Will braced himself to sprint across the open ground to reach a cluster of more buildings and the cover they would provide. He hesitated as an idea came to him. Staying low, and with his pistol held with both hands, he moved to the jeeps. One of them had its engine idling, the keys still in the ignition.

Seeing that the soldiers were out of sight in Svelte’s quarters, he got into the vehicle, jammed his handgun between the seat and door, and slowly drove away from the road across the open ground. Turning, he moved the jeep between two long huts before stopping and glancing over his shoulder. One white balaclava lay on a rear seat. He put it on and drove the vehicle out of the alley, across more snow-covered rough ground, and onto the main road.

Snow was hitting the windshield fast. He engaged the wipers on high, turned on the headlights, and lowered the driver’s window. Depressing the accelerator, he increased speed until he was driving at fifty miles an hour. He saw a group of conscripts ahead of him, walking along the road. Flashing his lights and beeping the horn, he maintained his speed and pointed urgently out of the window in the direction of the fire behind him. As he passed the group, they broke into a run toward the fire.

He drove past the submarines until he was a mile and a half away from Svelte’s residence. Checking the fuel gauge, he saw that the tank was half full. If he could escape the base, that would be more than enough. He only needed to drive fourteen miles south across roads and tracks to reach the coast. There, he’d be met by the Russian merchant navy captain who’d brought him to Russia. The captain, a CIA asset, would then take him to Alaska.

He saw the headlights of a four-ton truck. The vehicle stopped by the inner checkpoint to the submarine pens. As he neared it, five paratroopers emerged from the blizzard and got into the vehicle. The truck pulled away, coming right toward him, but it did not slow as it passed.

Will increased speed. Within five minutes he was nearing the outer perimeter of the base. He raced by more buildings, civilian workers, and two navy soldiers, who took no notice of him. His only hope was to put enough distance between him and the soldiers he’d lured to the fire. He needed that distance because in a few seconds the whole base would be alerted to his jeep and the paratroopers would be chasing after him. The alert would be raised by one of the six airborne soldiers now standing ahead of him at the bottleneck entrance to Rybachiy. They were five hundred feet away, and he could see that they were facing him but had not yet raised their weapons. He put his foot to the floor and got to within three hundred feet of them. The troopers remained still. When he was 150 feet away, he flashed his headlights. One of the soldiers raised a hand. Will returned the gesture. The soldiers moved away from the center of the road, no doubt expecting him to screech to a halt between them. He slowed down to half speed, got to within thirty feet of them, and gunned the engine again. The paratroopers leapt aside and fell to the ground as Will’s vehicle sped by, spraying snow over the prone soldiers.

Swerving the jeep left and right, Will moved out of the base and onto the mountain road. Shots rang out. Two bullets smashed through the rear window and front windshield, narrowly missing Will’s head. He swerved again just as more bullets slammed into the passenger door. One hundred feet ahead of him were the outskirts of the forest and a bend in the road that would take him out of the paratroopers’ sight. His heart pounded. He was just as concerned about bullets striking the jeep’s tires, fuel tank, or engine as he was about them hitting his body. A sustained burst of gunfire pounded the snow by his vehicle. More rounds rushed through the broken windows, one of them grazing his jacket. Yanking hard down on the steering wheel, he careered left and skidded, desperately trying to maintain control of the vehicle, then he yanked right, and momentarily took his foot off the accelerator. The jeep stayed on the road. Accelerating fast again, he approached the bend. Trees were now around him. He was just a few feet away from cover.

He heard a final volley of automatic gunfire.

Chapter Three

Y
ou were lucky to get out alive.”

Will thought about Patrick’s comment while looking around the large windowless room. He was sitting by a long oak table in the CIA’s headquarters in Langley. Aside from the table and twelve chairs, the room was bare of any other furniture. Bright ceiling spotlights doused the room with an electric blue light.

Alongside Patrick sat Will’s MI6 controller, Alistair. They were the coheads of the MI6-CIA Task Force. Both officers were immaculately dressed in suits. Though Patrick’s hair was silver and Alistair’s blond, in every other respect they looked physically similar—slender but strong, with faces that showed wisdom, humor, and sadness. Both men were in their fifties but appeared ten years younger.

“Yes, I suppose it was luck. What or who is Sentinel?”

Neither officer replied.

Will smoothed a hand over his smart suit. “Does it make sense?”

They remained silent.

“If it’s classified, let me sign something to get clearance.”

Patrick glanced at Alistair before speaking. “That won’t be necessary.” He returned his attention to Will. “We’ll tell you everything we know, but”—he lifted a thick file that had the inscription
SVELTE: ULTRA EYES ONLY
, held it for a moment, and dropped it onto the table—“we’d know a lot more if Svelte was still alive.”

Will was about to respond, but Alistair held up a hand and quietly said, “There was no way any of us could have predicted what happened in the base.”

“True, but I should have got to him sooner.”

“Get rid of that thought.” Patrick picked up some papers. “Svelte died through no fault of yours. Thank God you escaped, because matters are escalating fast.”

Alistair leaned forward and pointed at the papers in Patrick’s hand while keeping his gaze fixed on Will. “We’ve got multiple reports from covert intelligence sources and overt diplomatic channels. Political and economic tensions between America and Russia are the highest they’ve been since the Cold War.”

“I thought we were getting along quite nicely.”

“So did the Russian and American premiers, until”—Patrick tossed the papers to one side—“we recently caught some Russian sleeper agents in America and interrogated them. Not to be outdone, the Russians rounded up a handful of our spies whom they’d had under surveillance and put the thumbscrews on them. As a result, some uncomfortable home truths, concerns, and agendas emerged.”

Alistair checked the knot on his Royal Navy tie and leaned back, his eyes still locked on Will. “Collective lies were laid bare.”