Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist Aftermath (4 page)

“Madame President, sorry to interrupt,” said Briggs from behind Fisher. “But if you
want the CIA to back us, then let me suggest a few good operators.”

“Excellent. You send me those recommendations.”

“I will.”

“But we’re still off the books here,” Fisher reminded the president.

“Of course. I don’t think the CIA would have a problem with that, do you?”

Fisher cocked a brow at Briggs, who vigorously shook his head.

“Madame President, you think there’s a link between the missing uranium and Kasperov?”
asked Grim.

“That’s what I need to know. As usual all our intel assets will be available to you.”

“We’re on it,” said Fisher. “We’ll get to Turkey and refuel there. Hopefully by the
time we land we’ll have a lead on Kasperov’s location.”

“Stay in touch. I’m counting on you.”

The president’s seal reappeared, then the screens went blank.

“Charlie, full profile on Kasperov,” Grim ordered. “Right down to the brand of vodka
he likes. Briggs, see what you can dig up on his employees, people from his past.
We’ll have the SMI analyze possible escape routes.”

“Got something good already,” said Charlie, who’d already been diving into his databases
while the president was speaking. “He was married for thirteen years, but his wife
died of ovarian cancer. They have a daughter, Nadia, now twenty. We’ll locate her.
Right now he’s got an American girlfriend, Jessica North, super hottie. We can follow
up with her entire family. Also, he was a Soviet intel officer. I’ll search for old
buddies. Says he attended the Institute of Cryptography. Could find an old teacher
or somebody providing a safe house.”

“Go for it,” said Fisher.

Briggs chimed in: “Kasperov’s right hand was a young guy named Patrik Ruggov, aka
Kannonball. Big Russian bear. I’ll see if I can find him. In the meantime, the NSA’s
telling us they’ve already flagged Kasperov’s family members’ and known intimates’
landlines and cell phones for intercept. They’ve been logging in every incoming and
outgoing phone call for the last couple of years.”

“I’ll get the SMI on that, too,” said Grim.

Fisher was working through a sidebar on the SMI, sifting through magazine articles
on Kasperov. “Jesus, this guy’s been everywhere. He sponsors an F1 race team: Kasperov-McClaren.
Maybe he’s got contacts in one of the race cities. And look at this, he’s hung out
with rock stars all over the UK, going on pub crawls and taking his people on lavish
company retreats in Costa del Sol, Monte Carlo, and Cancún. Says here he threw a New
Year’s Eve party with over a thousand guests. His company operates in more than one
hundred countries. Gonna be tough to narrow down this search.”

“No kidding,” said Grim. “And that localized virus? It’s affecting ATC over Moscow
right now. Look at these reports.”

Fisher scanned the airport map and the transcripts from intercepted radio transmissions.
Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo, Vnukovo, Myachkovo, Ostafyevo, Bykovo, and Ramenskoye Airports
were all reporting radar service disruptions, distortion, false blips on radar, and
other unexplained interference.

“Like I said,” Charlie began, “he’s a genius. He won’t do anything stupid like use
a credit card or allow his face to be photographed. He knows where the security cameras
are, and he knows all about facial recognition software. Hell, he wrote some of it.
If he wanted to run, then he planned it well, used his expertise with computers and
viruses to cover his ass. Maybe he’s had an escape plan in place for years. The airport
disruption suggests he flew out. We’ll pull up every flight plan we can.”

Fisher turned to the image of Kasperov glowing now on one of the big screens. “So,
comrade, where are you going? Are you going to pull a Bin Laden and hide in the open?
Or maybe something completely different.”

“You’ve gone underground before,” said Grim. “Where would you go if you were him?”

Fisher thought for a long moment but didn’t answer.

4

MAJOR
Viktoria Kolosov—code-named Snegurochka, the Snow Maiden—had tied her long, black
hair into a neat bun. This was not because she preferred it that way, but because
most times when she knifed a man he tended to flail about, reaching violently for
anything he could grasp—and she liked her hair, thought it was one of her best features,
didn’t want any dying bastard to mess it up.

Unsurprisingly, Boris reached out as she punched the folding blade into his neck,
ripped it free, then stabbed him in the heart, which was her original target before
he’d turned and spoiled her whole attack.

As he fell to the asphalt with a gurgling “Why?” she raised the stolen PSS silent
pistol at Oleg.

She cut loose with a pair of 7.62mm rounds that traveled at two hundred meters per
second to impact squarely with his forehead, a textbook double tap that kicked him
back into the old subway’s crumbling wall.

The knife attack on Boris was quieter than the gun and gave her enough time to shoot
Oleg before he realized what was happening. Besides, she liked variety when it came
to killing. Blade, pistol, weak arm, strong arm. Also, a combination knife/gun attack
was riskier than just shooting both of them in the back of the head. There was no
sport in that.

She leaned over, wiping the bloody blade on Oleg’s chest and thankful she had remembered
her gloves, always a good idea when you planned to murder your partners. Was she insane?
Of course not. This was an important operation with career advancement at stake, too
important to share credit, so now the extra baggage was gone. Never mind the investigation
into their deaths. There would be none. She would ensure that, too.

The Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravleniye, or GRU, the motherland’s foreign military
intelligence agency, was headed by Sergei Izotov, who’d called upon any SVR operatives
in the immediate area. They were to capture Igor Kasperov’s twenty-year-old daughter,
Nadia, after the girl had made the fatal mistake of posting a status update to her
VK page, saying good-bye to Moscow. She was, the SVR had assumed, rushing to the airport
to link up with her father.

While a domestic job like this ordinarily belonged to the FSB, the Snow Maiden, Boris,
and Oleg had been heading out to their airport themselves to catch a plane to Poland
when they’d picked up the daughter’s limousine. Nadia and her four bodyguards had
either spotted the tail or been tipped off.

The Snow Maiden had enjoyed taking out both tires on the limo and forcing them off
the road, but it seemed the bodyguards had already planned an alternate escape route
and had reached it in the crippled limo. They took Nadia on foot into the “third basement”
of Moscow State University, entering Metro-2, the informal name for the secret underground
metro system that paralleled the public Moscow Metro. The Snow Maiden wondered if
Kasperov and his people were also privy to the Yastreb Complex, that highly classified
subterranean fortress beneath Red Square. These were all part of an interconnected
system supposedly built during Stalin’s reign and code-named D-6 by the KGB. The tunnels,
subway, and secure bunkers provided a fast and secure means of evacuation for leadership
through concealed entryways and into protective quarters beneath the city, helping
to maintain national command authority during wartime. The trains themselves were
safeguarded by electronic surveillance and a small garrison of troops. Nadia’s bodyguards
seemed to know about that, too, and they were escorting her down a series of abandoned
access tunnels that ran adjacent to the tracks and well out of sight and earshot of
that garrison. This section lacked any security and was, in effect, a dilapidated
maze leading toward the VIP terminal at Vnukovo Airport.

The Snow Maiden sprinted off and turned left into the first arching entranceway, spotting
the shifting lights in the distance. The bodyguards had improvised on the fly, using
the flashlight apps on their smartphones to lead the way. The Snow Maiden did likewise.
She grimaced as the musty scent grew thicker and the cobwebs wafting down from the
ceiling blew across her face. The concrete walls were scarred by rust and mold, and
the floors alternated between dirt-covered concrete and what felt like mushy earth.

One of the bodyguards broke off at a T-shaped intersection, turning right while the
rest of the group went left. He knew exactly what he was doing, thinking he’d ambush
her from behind as she was forced to go after the others.

She ran straight up to the intersection, dropped to her stomach, then shifted the
pistol to her weak hand and peered around the corner, her cheek just off the floor.

His light shone on her. She answered with three rounds, the clicks barely echoing
as she sprang up and saw he was down, his head blossoming with blood. The other two
rounds had struck him in the chest, but he was wearing a vest, probably an old Level
IIIA. He was middle-aged and former military, judging from his weapon, crew cut, and
tattoo on his wrist. She snatched up his 9mm pistol, an MP-443 Grach, the latest standard
issue military sidearm with a seventeen-round magazine. She tucked the pistol into
her belt and winked at the dead man. That he’d been killed by a woman had probably
annoyed him to no end. She’d bet on it. If he would’ve known she was just the daughter
of a simple schoolteacher and car transporter from Vladivostok—not some assassin prodigy
raised by a military family—he’d feel even worse.

Three to go. She raced back through the intersecting tunnel, the group’s footfalls
unmistakable ahead. The tunnel grew narrower, the concrete support structures turning
to wooden beams that resembled railroad ties for a long section, the floor speckled
with rat feces.

Nadia was wearing a strong perfume that stood out sharply, and the Snow Maiden reached
another intersection where for a moment she thought she’d have to rely on only her
sense of smell until a slight thump to the right set her off again toward two more
intersections.

They were staging another ambush. She could feel it.

Suddenly, dead silence, only her footfalls.

She stopped, waited, then shifted to the wall and crouched down, slipping her phone
into her leather jacket’s inner breast pocket. She let her eyes readjust.

With both hands, she clutched her pistol and aimed for the intersection.

Still nothing . . .

Back in the car, on the way here, Boris had been smoking a cigarette and asking why
they called her the Snow Maiden. She’d never worked with him before, and it’d been
interesting to explain it to him, even as she was plotting his death.

Snegurochka was the Snow Maiden in Russian folklore. In one tale she was the daughter
of Spring and Frost. She fell in love with a shepherd, but when her heart warmed,
she melted. In another narrative, falling in love transformed her into a mortal who
would die. In a third story she was the daughter of an old couple who created her
from snow. She leapt over a fire and melted.

Major Viktoria Kolosov felt a special attachment to the character that stemmed from
something deep in her subconscious. Never warm your heart? In this business, maybe
so.

She was holding her breath now, thinking about the single round left in her magazine,
the spare six-round mag still tucked in her hip pocket, and the bodyguard’s Grach
pressing against the small of her back. She should change guns now but feared making
even the slightest movement.

The shadows seemed to collect on the left side of the intersection, and then she saw
the silhouette of a head peering around the corner.

She fired, a spark leaping off the wall, damn it. There wasn’t even time to curse.
She was already rolling across the floor while reaching into her waistband for the
Grach. By the time she came out of her roll, she had the pistol and was raising it
while the bodyguard returned fire, three rounds booming and stitching across the floor,
extending from her ghost to her current position hunkered down at the opposite wall.

Going asymmetric in a gunfight was not a technique for amateurs or veterans turned
bodyguards, men too often married to their conventional tactics. She proved that to
this oaf by sensing his pause to check fire.

She sprinted straight up the tunnel in the pitch darkness, spun right, and caught
the whites of his eyes as he was just lifting his gun.

Simultaneously, she grabbed his pistol and shot him in the head.

Not a half second later, she dropped to the floor as the guy behind her, the guy whose
curse of surprise had given him away, fired above her head.

With her chin buried in her chest, the pistol down low near her knee, she squeezed
off two rounds that sent him staggering back.

But he didn’t fall, and the shots must’ve gone high or wide, striking him in the arm
or shoulder. She fired once more and he finally dropped.

Thump. Silence again.

She was panting and wincing over the stench of gunpowder. Her ears rang from all the
close-quarters gunfire.

Shuddering over how much time she’d wasted here, she sprang up, ejected and pocketed
the magazine from one of the bodyguards, then tugged free her phone, its narrow beam
now lighting the way.

The last bodyguard would present the greatest challenge. She had to eliminate him
without inadvertently killing Nadia, the spoiled little rich girl who, of course,
was a research student at ETH Zurich’s Swiss National Supercomputing Centre, CSCS.
ETH was considered one of the finest schools in Europe, and daddy had footed the entire
bill. Poor baby was having a bad day, wasn’t she?

The Snow Maiden snorted and raced up the tunnel for some thirty meters where it terminated
at another T-shaped intersection. Straight ahead hung a small hatch cracked open.
She shone the light on the door’s hinges, the rust freshly caked off. She hustled
through, emerging into a much broader tunnel at least six meters wide where piles
of old railroad ties rose several meters and pieces of track lay in dusty piles. At
the far end of the conduit was another opening, the hatch removed from the doorway
and propped up against the wall. She assumed that the final bodyguard would want to
keep moving, no doubling back to ambush her, so the Snow Maiden picked up the pace.
She practically blasted by the doorway and followed the tunnel to the right, where
at the far end, some fifty meters away, a faint cry echoed off like a dying bird.

And there it was again. That perfume.

Gritting her teeth and tucking her arms close to her sides, she ran a marathon up
that tunnel, the light bobbing wildly, the ceiling suddenly rumbling from a train
passing overhead. Dust and debris flitted down as she gasped, wondering if the entire
tunnel might collapse.

The next passage bore to the right, the walls closing in like a compactor, just wide
enough for one person now. She slowed and held her light high above her head like
a lantern—

And there they were, twenty meters ahead. The bodyguard was helping Nadia off the
floor from where she’d fallen. Her jeans were torn at the knee and bloody, and her
dirty blond hair hung down in her face, just like her father’s.

The bodyguard spotted her light, shoved Nadia forward into a side tunnel while at
the same time opening fire.

The Snow Maiden crouched as two rounds pinged at her shoulder, the sparks on her periphery,
the bullets so close she felt their wind.

Damn, it’d be a bitch to die here. She was just a few months away from marrying Nikolai
Antsyforov, a physician ten years her senior who’d not only swept her off her feet
but who appreciated her job, her position, her strength. At the moment he was in Paldiski,
Estonia, treating workers involved in a reactor accident. He was fresh out of medical
school, and his passion, like hers, knew no bounds.

Remembering all she had to lose was wrong and weakened her. She was better than this,
better trained. She blinked away the thoughts and burst forward, crossing to the opposite
side of the tunnel. He fired again, this time hitting the floor not a finger’s length
from her boot.

Just as he doused his light, she hit the ground again, heard their footfalls. They
were making another break.

She reached the side tunnel and hunkered down. She peered around the corner and saw
them charging away, the bodyguard shielding Nadia.

Holding her breath, the Snow Maiden came around the corner, raised the gun with both
hands, and took aim.

The pistol cracked, and the single round struck the bodyguard in the right thigh.

Good enough. She charged like a pole-vaulter ready to launch herself into the air.

As he collapsed and then rolled back to fire, she dug her right boot into the side
wall, then flew forward, the bodyguard trying to get a bead on her before she collided
with him.

Together, they fell back onto the floor—which abruptly collapsed, this entire section
reinforced with rotting wooden beams that she noticed at the last second. Nadia, who’d
been just behind the bodyguard, fell through the hole as well, and all three of them
plunged some five meters into yet another tunnel, this one flooded with inky black
water rushing up around them.

Never losing her grip on the bodyguard, the Snow Maiden felt the concrete bottom slam
into him. As the impact reverberated into her arms, she kicked out and realized she
could stand, the water barely more than a meter deep. With Nadia coughing and screaming
behind them, the Snow Maiden wrapped her gloved hands around the stunned man’s throat,
then drove him back into the water. His hands locked around her own wrists. He tried
to kick with his one good leg, the other still bleeding profusely from the gunshot
wound.

The Snow Maiden raged aloud, her own cries echoing down the tunnel. The bodyguard
was twice her size, twice as strong, and he was beginning to tear free of her grip—when
he suddenly went limp. She screamed and shoved him back into the water, where he floated,
inert.