Tom Clancy Under Fire (44 page)

Makhachkala

T
HEY FOLLOWED
the canyon’s narrow road to a rural neighborhood, then turned west and started picking their way into Makhachkala proper. Soon they caught the stench of burning rubber. Tires, Jack guessed. He wondered if Seth’s protesters had gone from peaceful to violent.

The fringe neighborhoods appeared normal, if a little quiet, with no protesters in sight, but the closer to the city center they got, the more crowds they saw, first in small clusters, then in the dozens on street corners, and then in the hundreds in intersections. Gone was the chanting and singing from the day before, replaced with something Jack couldn’t put his finger on. Discouragement? Worry? Faces tracked them as they passed. He felt eyes on his back.

“Jack,” Dom whispered. “Our guns.”

They tucked their ARXs beneath their ponchos and kept walking.

Finally, they reached Amet Road, a major north-south thoroughfare. The traffic was heavy, with almost bumper-to-bumper traffic, but eerily, Jack heard little honking. He saw the black smoke now, hovering over the northern end of the city.

“All the cars are headed south,” Dom said.

Jack wasn’t sure if this was a good sign or a bad sign. Seth’s plan called for the bulk of the protests to take place in the northern third of Makhachkala, where most of the government institutions were located. This southbound exodus suggested that’s exactly what was happening; it also suggested these citizens wanted to be far from the action.

“They know the border garrisons are coming,” said Dom.

“Probably so.”

People liked the idea of freedom, but not the prospect of being clubbed or shot.

Jack got out his phone and tried Ysabel and the others again, and again got no answer. The MOI switchboard was still busy.

“Where do you want to go?” asked Dom.

Jack assumed—hoped—his lack of contact with the others was simply a communications glitch and that they were still safe within Medzhid’s war room.

“The docks,” he said. “Maybe Matt was able to get there.”

“Maybe he’s already sunk the
Igarka
,” Dom replied.

Jack glanced sideways at him.

“What, Jack? A man can dream.”

They kept walking until they hit Gamidova, where they were able to hail a taxi. The driver agreed to take them to the docks, but at triple the going rate. They agreed.

•   •   •

UNSURPRISINGLY,
the docks were also strangely quiet. Roughly two-thirds of the vessels that had been tied up the last time Jack was here were gone.

They made their way to the harbormaster’s shack.

Matt Spellman was sitting down, his back against the wall, eyes closed. As they approached he cracked an eyelid and said, “Hi, guys. Whatchya been up to?”

Jack and Dom laughed.

“A little of this, a little of that,” Dom said. “We only got two of the Krasukhas.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Spellman got to his feet and they shook hands.

“You look like shit, Matt,” Dom said, nodding at Spellman’s face.

The CIA man’s left eye was almost swollen shut and his bottom lip was split.

“I got ambushed on the way here. My phone got smashed.”

“I’ve been trying to reach the Ministry,” Jack said.

“Yeah, when I left, Medzhid was sending everyone into the basement. It was a bit crazy.”

Jack felt his heart lurch. “Why the move?”

“Ysabel’s okay, Jack, don’t worry. Rebaz is just playing it safe. Last night we started getting reports of gangs roaming the government district, bashing heads, looting stores, and setting cars on fire.”

“And videotaping it all, no doubt,” Jack said.

Volodin and Nabiyev’s opening moves had been to shut down the Internet and the power grid; flooding the streets with provocateurs was Wellesley’s.

Until Seth’s hub system was up and running, the only images the outside world would see wouldn’t be ones of a peaceful, grassroots uprising, but rather ones of violence and chaos. Why rally behind a country whose citizens had no qualms about turning on one another?

The world would watch, of course, and news outlets would play the images over and over until something nastier and juicier came along, and then Dagestan would be forgotten.

“Medzhid’s sending in his
politsiya
to find them, but he’s got to play it right,” said Spellman. “Videos of club-wielding cops in riot masks will only give Wellesley exactly what he wants.”

Jack said, “Seth should have used the hubs. Now he’s playing catch-up.”

“You didn’t hear? No, I guess you wouldn’t have,” replied Spellman. “After you talked to Seth, Medzhid convinced him to change his mind. He said if the world wasn’t seeing the truth of what they were trying to do here, Volodin was going to roll right over them.

“So Seth sent out the first e-mail blast and fired up the hubs. Five minutes after they came online, the Krasukhas started frying them. We lost half of them before we figured out what was happening. No way in hell did we think the Krasukhas would be that fast.

“Medzhid ordered Seth to pull the plug. Jack, there were five thousand people with five thousand cell phones standing outside the Parliament Building with no way to get the videos and pictures out to the world. It’s falling apart even before it got started.”

“We’ve got half the hubs left,” Jack replied. “Is the
Igarka
still at anchor?”

“Yep. When most of the other boats were running for the breakwater, she stayed put. She did circle on her anchor chain, though. Her stern is pointed inland now—against the tide.”

So the Kvant has a clear view of the city, Jack knew.

“Show us,” Dom said.

They followed Spellman down to the pier. The fog thickened around them until Jack felt as though he were suspended in midair. They reached the end of the planking. Spellman handed him a pair of binoculars.

“She’s moved a bit closer since you last saw her. Look at about two o’clock. If the fog parts, you should be able to just make out her masthead light.”

“I see it,” Jack said. “How long until the border garrisons get here?”

“Last I heard, five.”

Unless they had the Internet hubs online by then, Volodin could crush Makhachkala and there wouldn’t be a single live recording to contradict his version of events.

Jack said, “We need to find a boat we can borrow.”

•   •   •

SURPRISINGLY,
they had little trouble finding a boat perfect for their needs, a blunt-prowed twenty-eight-foot crew boat with navigation radar and an enclosed forecastle cabin that not only was unlocked but also had keys jutting from the ignition.

While Jack started up the engines, Dom and Spellman cast off the lines then hopped onto the afterdeck and joined him in the cabin.

Jack said, “Just so you know, I haven’t got much of a plan, so let me know if you’ve got something.”

“Let’s hear yours,” Spellman said.

“Pull alongside the
Igarka
, board her, shoot anyone who points a gun at us, then drive the Kvant over the side.”

“Works for me.”

“Me, too,” said Dom.

“Fire up that radar, will you?”

•   •   •

HAVING TAKEN
a rough bearing on where they’d last seen the
Igarka
’s masthead light, Jack pulled away from the dock and pointed the bow into the harbor. Immediately the fog enveloped the cabin until the bowsprit was just a hazy vertical line floating ahead of them.

“She should be just up ahead,” Spellman said.

Leaning over the tiny radar scope set into the helm console, Dom replied, “I’ve got something, but it’s moving away from us. Two hundred yards off the starboard bow and picking up speed.”

“Is there anything else around?”

“Astern of us in the harbor, but out here it’s just us and this one.”

“Why would she be moving?” Spellman asked.

Then it hit Jack: “Wellesley. The Krasukha crews would have called in the ambush. It’s not a big leap for him to guess it was us—and what we’re up to.”

Jack pushed the throttle to its stops and the boat surged ahead, but slowly and steadily the
Igarka
began pulling away from them until finally, after ten minutes, she disappeared from Dom’s scope.

“Last bearing I had on it was about one-three-zero degrees, heading south along the coast.”

Jack eased the wheel over until the binnacle compass read 130.

“She has to stop sometime,” Spellman said. “Any farther south and the Kvant won’t be able to triangulate for the Krasukhas.”

“Unless they already put the thing ashore and we missed it.”

“Not on my watch,” Spellman said. “She never left her anchorage.”

They kept going.

•   •   •

“I GOT A BLIP,”
Dom called out a few minutes later. “Dead on our nose, about half a mile.”

“Still moving?”

“Yeah, but it’s . . . Jack, she’s turning to starboard, heading toward shore. She’s slowing down.”

Spellman began rifling through the cabinets above their heads, then the drawers beneath the console. “Come on, where are you?” He pulled out a chart. “Dom, where is she?”

Dom tapped the scope face. Spellman held the chart next to the screen, rotating it until he found a landmark on shore he recognized.

“She’s heading for the Akgel Inlet,” he said.