Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist Aftermath (2 page)

A stretch of rocks and earth about eight inches wide saved Fisher’s life.

He struck that patch shoulder-first, realized where he was—about to plunge over the
ledge—and reflexively reached out with both hands, clutching some heavy weeds and
grasses that sprouted along the cliffside.

His legs came whipping around, the force driving the grass through his fingers, his
grip now tentative at best. He dug the tips of his boots into the mountainside, but
there was no good purchase on the wet rock and mud, and his legs dangled. He groaned
with exertion, his arms literally trembling under the load. Something flashed to his
left, and there it was, the sticker of Jesus that had been peeling off his motorcycle’s
gas tank; it fluttered on a rock for a few seconds, then blew away.

Above Fisher, off to his right, the truck’s rear wheels gave out, and the lumbering
vehicle began sliding tailfirst toward the edge. The driver tried to steer out of
the slide, but it was too late.

The entire ledge quaked as the Volvo’s rear wheels hung in midair while the undercarriage
slammed down and was dragged along the stone. Finally, the front wheels left the road,
even as the driver, a lean, bearded man in coveralls, tried to bail out, but the truck
was already airborne. Fisher watched with an eerie fascination as the driver wailed
and the vehicle’s headlights shone straight up into the rain, then wiped across Fisher
before the truck tumbled away, twin beams flashing and dancing, growing fainter, fainter . . .
until a distant impact and whoosh of flames resounded from somewhere below.

The helicopter was overhead now, the rotor wash whipping through the storm. That would
be a Mil Mi-24 Russian-made helicopter gunship, one of a small fleet the government
of Bolivia had purchased from the Russians to combat the drug trade. Fisher had sent
Briggs to link up with the pilot and weapons system operator the moment their target
had bolted.

A spotlight shone on Fisher, then the nylon fast rope dropped at his shoulder, within
arm’s reach. He reached out for the rope even as, from above, an African-American
man dressed in full Kevlar-weave tactical operation suit and wearing trifocal sonar
goggles came sliding down, looking for all the world like Fisher himself.

Clutching the rope, Fisher managed to climb back up and onto the road, then he guided
the rope toward the wall so that the man, Isaac Briggs, could hop onto the mud.

Briggs was a kid, really, just twenty-seven, former U.S. Army intel officer, former
paramilitary ops officer with the CIA, current member of Fourth Echelon—which he liked
to call 4E because he hailed from a world of e-books and theories and military history,
a world dominated by acronyms and PowerPoints that, in the world according to Fisher,
didn’t mean jack when you were in the field. Briggs was a good guy, handpicked by
Fisher, and he was just now escaping from the clutches of theory and learning to trust
his instincts. No more company man for him. He worked for Fourth Echelon now.

“Got here as soon as we could,” Briggs cried, tugging up the goggles and lifting his
voice over the sound of the chopper.

Fisher shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. This thing’s gone to shit.”

Ignoring the needling pain that seemed to come from every part of his body, Fisher
led Briggs back toward the taxi, which was now hanging partially off the ledge. The
stench of leaking gasoline and oil still rose through the rain as they drew near.

“Damn,” Briggs gasped.

The taxi’s engine was somewhere in the backseat. The driver’s head—just his head—was
lying on the rear dashboard, his severed left arm jutting from a rear window.

Fisher frowned at Briggs. “You’re not gonna be sick, are you?”

“I was already sick of chasing this bastard around the world.”

“Well, you got your wish. It ends here. And not well for us.” Fisher glared at the
chopper. “Call that bird. Tell him to bug out for a few minutes till we’re ready for
him.”

Briggs nodded and barked orders into his radio.

Tensing, Fisher dropped to all fours, called for Briggs to hand him a flashlight,
and let the beam play under the wreckage. He spotted one of Rahmani’s legs, IDed by
the color of the man’s pants, shoved up into the cab’s transmission, but the rest
of him was missing.

Releasing another string of curses, Fisher sprang to his feet and directed the light
across the road, the beam slowly exposing a trail of body parts near the wall, one
they’d missed walking over because it was hidden in the shadows. They found the torso
with the head still attached; it was lying among some rocks, the blood washing off
in the rain.

Fisher was ready to strangle someone, and Briggs sensed that. He kept his distance,
and without a word, they began a meticulous search of the body and scoured the rest
of the road for anything Rahmani might have been carrying. Fisher found a small pistol,
a beat-up old Makarov, but nothing else. Briggs snapped as many photos as he could
before they gathered up the body parts in a “glad bag” and sent them up to the chopper
when it returned.

Rahmani had been the best lead they’d had in locating that stolen uranium. That his
group had pulled off the robbery was nothing short of miraculous, which had the world’s
intelligence communities assuming that it was an inside job. The general public had
no idea what was happening, and the Russians were thus far tight-lipped about the
entire affair. Sorry, nyet, this is state secret information.

The Mayak facility was two hours south of Ekaterinburg, at the end of unmarked back
roads, near a forested plateau of lakes and small rivers. It was protected by chain-link
barbed-wire fences and a deforested strip of land that provided no cover. The facility
had just been updated with a new electronic surveillance system provided by the United
States and a radiation monitoring system that was well-nigh impossible to defeat—unless
your name was Sam Fisher. The rest of its defenses were classified, but it was not
reckless to assume that the Russians had a keen interest in guarding their nuclear
material—especially when they’d been backed by the U.S. Congress to the tune of 350
million dollars to build a heavily fortified warehouse or “Plutonium Palace” to store
approximately 40 percent of their military’s excess fissile material.

Nevertheless, Rahmani and his unidentified cronies had not only broken into the facility
but had managed to escape from it with their pockets glowing green. Their smuggling
route was still a point of conjecture. Kazakhstan was only a four-hour drive to the
south, but that course would’ve taken them through Chelyabinsk and many border checkpoints.
They had more likely gone southwest, traveling some 1,200 miles or more to the Caspian
Sea, with the goal of smuggling the uranium through Azerbaijan and into Turkey.

What’s more, it took the Russian government more than three days to officially report
the incident, giving the thieves ample time to escape the country. Whether the Russians
were doing their own damage control or the theft was entirely unnoticed by their staff
at the facility was a second point of conjecture.

A tip from the National Intelligence Organization of Turkey—Milli I.stihbarat
, or MI.T—led to a raid on a small machine shop in an industrial sector of Istanbul
situated near slums where the noise of constructing a nuclear weapon was easily masked.
And yes, Fisher had learned long ago that the process of nuclear bomb making was,
in fact, quite loud, which seemed rather fitting, given the nature of the device.

Their raid—a joint effort between the United States and Russia’s own foreign intelligence
service, Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, or SVR—had
turned up little. Rahmani’s group had already pulled up stakes before they’d fully
moved in and begun constructing their weapon. The SVR agent operating with them was
a sour-faced mute who offered little more than shrugs between playing on his smartphone.
Fisher had suggested that Istanbul was merely a diversionary stop along their route.
The SVR agent had agreed. Then shrugged. Then agreed again.

Bottom line: Rahmani had known where to find the uranium. And if he hadn’t, he would’ve
at least known the players who could point Fisher and his team in the right direction.

For now, though, all Fisher could do was stare through the rain as he was hoisted
up to the chopper.

The mountainside seemed darker and even emptier now. El Camino de la Muerte had claimed
three more victims, and Fisher should have been grateful that he hadn’t been the fourth,
but he wasn’t. He felt only anger—knots of anger—tightening in his gut.

2

“MONEY
is like alcohol,” Igor Kasperov was telling the reporters from the
Wall Street Journal
as they toured his Moscow headquarters. “It’s good to have enough, but it’s not target.
I’m here to be global police and peacekeeper. I’m here to do charity work everywhere.
I’m here, I guess, to save our world!” He tossed a hand into the air and unleashed
one of his trademark smiles that had been featured on the cover of
Time
magazine. The two gray-haired, bespectacled reporters beamed back at him.

Kasperov was no stranger to entertaining the press in the old factory that was now
the headquarters of Kasperov Labs, one of the most successful computer antivirus corporations
on the planet. That was no boast. According to
Forbes
, between 2009 and 2012 retail sales of his software increased 174 percent, reaching
almost 5.5 million a year—nearly as much as his rivals Symantec and McAfee combined.
Worldwide, he had over 60 million users of his security network, users who sent data
to his headquarters every time they downloaded an application to their desktops. The
cloud-based system automatically checked the code against a “green base” of 300 million
software objects it knew to be trustworthy, as well as a “red base” of 94 million
known malicious objects. Kasperov’s code was also embedded in Microsoft, Cisco, and
Juniper Networks products, effectively giving the company 400 million users. His critics
often quibbled over the accuracy of those numbers. He’d send them cases of vodka with
notes that instructed them to relax and simply watch as Kasperov Labs became
the
world’s leading provider of antivirus software.

To that end, Kasperov took enormous pleasure in employing hundreds of software engineers,
coders, and designers barely out of college. This motley crew of pierced-and-tattooed
warriors created a magnificent dorm room atmosphere that was, no pun intended, infected
with their enthusiasm. They’d seen pictures of the playful Google offices in Mountain
View, California, and had become, in a word, inspired. These reporters could sense
that, and Kasperov played it up for them, joking around with the staff, high-fiving
them like a six-foot-five rock star with unkempt sandy blond hair that he constantly
tossed out of his face. His daily glasses of vodka had turned his cheeks ruddy, and
last year he’d begun wearing bifocals, but he was still young enough for an American
girlfriend barely thirty-two who’d modeled for Victoria’s Secret among others. Surrounded
by his youthful staff and his lover, he would defy time and live forever because life
was good. Life was fun.

Without question, these uptight American journalists would refer to him as an oligarch
in their reports, a continent-hopping mogul who’d made his fortune after the fall
of the Soviet Union. They’d say he was a wild man who had the president’s ear and
was, like the country’s other oligarchs, heavily influencing the government because
of his connections and wealth. He would dismiss those shopworn claims and give them
something more impressive to write about that would enthrall their readers. To begin,
he would discuss the ambitious nature of his new offices in Peru and the great work
he was going to do there.

They stood now on a balcony overlooking the hundreds of individually decorated cubicles
and walls of classic arcade games. Banks of enormous windows brought in the snowscape
and frozen Moskva River beyond. “It is wonderful, is it not?” he asked.

The reporters nodded, issued perfunctory grins, then launched quite suddenly and aggressively
into their questions, as though the sheen of his celebrity and success had suddenly
worn thin.

“What do you think about social media websites like Facebook, Instagram, and others?”

Kasperov refilled their vodka glasses as he spoke. “Freedom is good thing. We all
know this. But too much freedom allows bad guys to do bad things, right?”

“So you don’t like Facebook.”

“I’m
suspicious
of these websites. We have VK here, right? It’s like Facebook clone, very popular,
even my daughter who’s in college has account. But these websites can be used by wrong
people to send wrong messages.”

“You said freedom is a good thing. But exactly how much freedom do
you
have?”

“What do mean? I have much freedom!” He gestured with his drink toward the work floor.
“And so do they.”

Kasperov knew exactly what they were getting at, but he preferred not to discuss it.

In Russia, high-tech firms like his had to cooperate with the
siloviki
—the network of military, security, law enforcement, and KGB veterans at the core
of President Treskayev’s regime. Kasperov worked intimately with the SVR and other
agencies to hunt down, expose, and capture cybercriminals who’d already unleashed
attacks on the banking systems in the United States and Europe. In turn, the Kremlin
had given him enough freedom to become the successful entrepreneur he was, but their
arrangement was their business—not fodder for American journalism.

“You work very closely with the intelligence community here, don’t you?”

“What is it they say in
Top Gun
movie? I could tell you, but then I must kill you, right?” He broke out in raucous
laughter that wasn’t quite mimicked by the reporters.

“Mr. Kasperov, there have been some allegations linking you to the VK blackout during
the elections. Some say you helped the government bring down the social media website
to help quell the opposition. After all, they
had
struck a rallying cry on social media.”

“I’ve already commented on that. I had nothing to do with this. Nothing at all. We
detected no attacks on VK. None at all. We don’t know what happened.”

“And you don’t find that—to use your word—
suspicious
?”

“Of course I do, but it’s all been investigated and put to sleep. Don’t you have any
more fun questions? If not, I have some stories to tell you.”

The journalists frowned at each other, then the taller one spoke up again: “Your company
is valuable to the Kremlin, so do you think you can ever really be independent of
it?”

Kasperov tried to quell his frustration. He had been told this would be an interview,
not an interrogation. “There’s no problem here. We work together the same way other
companies work with American government. Executive orders by your past presidents
provide exchange of data between private sector and government. Your Homeland Security
regulates critical infrastructure, same as we do. We’re very happy in this marriage.”

He took a long pull on his vodka, then tipped his head and led them across the balcony
to his office door. He ushered them inside, and they gasped over the mementoes of
his past and world travels: an African lion mount from one of his safaris; thousands
of rare artifacts and gem stones meticulously arranged in glass cases; walls of software
boxes written in German and Chinese; Persian rugs splayed across the floor; a basketball
jersey from the New Jersey Nets in a glass case, the NBA team owned by a Russian billionaire
friend; photos of himself with celebrities and world dignitaries, including American
President Patricia Caldwell and the pope; and finally, his dark green dress jacket
from his tenure as an intelligence officer with the Soviet Army. His desk, which was
loosely copied from the one located in the reception area of the British House of
Commons building and cost more than a three-bedroom house in Liverpool, had an opaque
glass top and a limestone front. On it sat a picture of himself with his parents before
their house, a meager shack on the outskirts of St. Petersburg.

He gestured toward a sprawling leather sofa that, when the reporters sank deeply into
the cushions, made them look like dwarves. Kasperov gesticulated more wildly now as
he spoke: “Welcome to my life. A poor boy from St. Petersburg. I got lucky. But you
know story, right?”

One of the reporters glanced at his notes. “At sixteen you were accepted into a five-year
program at the KGB-backed Institute of Cryptography, Telecommunications, and Computer
Science. After graduation, you were commissioned as an intelligence officer in the
Soviet Army.”

“Yes, but reason I’m here is because one day, I’m like on my computer, and it’s virus
there. This is long time ago, 1989. Every time I find new virus, I get more curious.
I spend hundreds of hours thinking about them, working on them. This is how I made
name for myself in Soviet Army.” Kasperov glanced to the doorway, where, in the shadows,
a man appeared, a familiar man whose presence suddenly dampened his mood.

“Mr. Kasperov, you’ve been touted around the world as a generous and remarkable businessman,
but you have to admit, you’re surrounded by others in your country who might not be
quite as honest as you are. Oligarchs, mafia . . . How do you keep yourself above
all the corruption?”

Kasperov glanced once more at the doorway and tried to keep a happy face. “I keep
pictures of my family close to my heart. I keep pictures of children all over the
world I’ve helped close to my heart. I know they need me and believe in me. I know
this company can help me do great things because I believe in it.”

“Do you think your company can help foster better relations between our nations?”

“Oh, I think it already has.”

“I can see why you say that . . . Your girlfriend’s an American. Any talk of marriage?”

He blushed. “No marriage yet. Now, gentlemen, you’ll have to excuse me, I have another
visitor. If you’ll go downstairs, one of my best managers, Patrik Ruggov—we call him
Kannonball—will show you exactly how we work with customer.”

The journalists rose and Kasperov escorted them to the spiral staircase, then he returned
to the man who’d been waiting for him in the shadows.

“Hello, Chern,” Kasperov grunted in Russian.

“Igor, I see you are massaging your ego again.”

Kasperov ignored the remark and stormed back into his office. Chern followed.

“Shut the door,” Kasperov ordered him.

Chern smirked and complied.

Kasperov knew this man only by his nickname, “Chernobyl,” aka “Chern.” Leonine, with
a prominent gray widow’s peak and fiery blue eyes, Chern contaminated everything he
touched and was often the bearer of bad news. While officially he was a member of
the SBP, the Presidential Security Service, he served unofficially as President Treskayev’s
personal strong arm and courier.

“How is your daughter doing?” Chern asked.

“Very well.”

“She’s away at school, yes?”

“She just flew home for a short visit.”

Chern grinned over that, then moved to the window at the far end of the office. He
spent a long moment staring at the snow through the frosted glass, then lifted his
voice. “There’s someone else who needs to go home.”

“And who’s that?”

“Calamity Jane.”

Kasperov nearly spit out his vodka. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“That can’t be possible.”

Chern’s eyes widened. “Are you that naïve?”

“I was told from the beginning that it was a deterrent, a deterrent that would
never
be used.”

“Then you
are
that naïve.”

Calamity Jane, named after the famous American frontierswoman, was created by Kasperov
and a few of his lead programmers, most notably his man Kannonball. It was, in their
estimation, the most malicious computer virus in the world; it not only would bring
down the American banking system but would also render the country’s GPS system useless
by exploiting a systemic problem with the cryptographic keying scheme. The virus would
take advantage of this weakness before Raytheon delivered to the U.S. Air Force its
Next Generation Operational Control System, or OCX, with the GPS III, third generation,
satellites. With banks and GPS offline, the virus would move on to major utilities.
Of course, he and his team were the best people to construct such a piece of horrific
code because as antivirus champions, they knew the enemy better than anyone.

“I need to think about this,” said Kasperov.

Chern snorted. “There’s nothing to think about. You’re a brilliant man, Igor. You
follow the news and world events. You understand the pressure. You know why it’s come
to this. All the other elements are falling into place.”

Kasperov closed his eyes. Every time he consulted one of his news websites, there
was a new threat to the motherland’s interests.

The merging of local European missile systems into a NATO defense system now put each
country’s weapons under NATO command and standardized the command and control, along
with local radar access and tactical communication systems. This gave NATO HQ the
ability to launch each country’s missiles. The system was coming fully online, and
the Kremlin feared it would interfere with Russia’s ability to launch their own preemptive
strikes. The military had been threatening to attack the European sites for months . . .

The U.S. Navy’s decision to home port many of its Aegis missile system–equipped ships
throughout key Mediterranean ports served as a bold parry to Russia’s opposition to
American land-based missile defense installations in the region.

And then, of course, there was the recent surge of American natural gas being exported
and sold to European nations at less than half the cost of the Russian natural gas
those nations had been buying.

However, there was an even larger economic threat, one Kasperov himself had noted
to the Kremlin:

European nations were aggressively developing thorium reactors, the so-called green
reactors with their low levels of radiation, minimal waste materials, and outstanding
safety features. Thorium, a white radioactive metal with nonfertile isotopes, was
proving a viable substitute for nuclear fuel in reactors, and its demand was ever-increasing.
In fact, the United States had just struck a deal to sell its current stockpiles of
thorium, which were stored in Nevada, to European nations. These stockpiles would
be used to bring hundreds of liquid fluoride thorium reactors—FLTR, pronounced
flitter
—on line throughout Europe, ultimately making Europe fossil fuel independent and destroying
Russia’s customer base there.