Domination Bid

Mishka saw McCarter’s reaction and smartly tromped the accelerator to bring the tail of the vehicle up enough to offer McCarter a clear shot at the vehicle.

“Sorry ’bout the window, love!” he shouted before squeezing the trigger twice.

The first bullet shattered the coupe’s window and the second took out the passenger-side window on the sedan. The outline of the man’s face was all McCarter could make out in the dark, but he didn’t have trouble discerning the surprised whites of his eyes. McCarter fired a third shot and the mask disappeared in a crimson spray. The sedan swerved off its intended course as the driver whipped the wheel hard left and put the sedan into a one-eighty.

McCarter whipped a small walkie-talkie from his belt.

“Gray One to team. You got that?”

“Saw it all, Gray One.” Encizo’s voice came back immediately. “Should we pursue?”

“Hell, yes,” McCarter muttered.

McCarter checked the side mirror and saw the van slow suddenly and then begin to swing to the right so Carnes, the driver, could perform a U-turn.

The next minute seemed to happen in slow motion as another sedan approaching from the oncoming lane swerved straight into their lane and picked up speed.

“Shit!” Mishka double-clutched, popping the gearshift to neutral and then reverse as she put her vehicle into a power slide.

The sedan brushed past them, missing by a margin so narrow it made McCarter shudder to think about it. Despite the ferocious attack, Mishka was performing admirably and McCarter felt staunch confidence with her behind the wheel even as his stomach rolled with the turn of the vehicle. In a car with a higher profile the maneuver would’ve caused them to roll but the low center of gravity kept all four wheels on the pavement. Mishka jerked something down and McCarter realized he’d not even noticed she’d managed to somehow engage her parking brake at some point.

The Phoenix Force leader heard an interesting hiss as Mishka disengaged the air-powered brake. That didn’t come standard in any sports car he knew of, which meant she’d had it installed after market. Without being told, Mishka laid in a pursuit course of the sedan that had tried to ram them head-on but the effort proved futile. The sedan had continued on course and smashed into the back of the van carrying the remaining members of Phoenix Force. McCarter felt a ball of rage form in his gut and ordered her to stop short of the sedan on its right flank.

As she braked to a screeching halt, McCarter bailed from the coupe and made a beeline for the van—it had bounced onto the sidewalk and come to a smashing end in one of the storefronts—while he fired at the sedan on the run.

Four men exited the sedan, unaware McCarter had anticipated their moves. As a champion pistol marksman and veteran combatant, McCarter had never missed from that distance, which the first man out of the enemy sedan learned the hard way. Two 9 mm rounds caught McCarter’s target in the chest, puncturing his right lung and driving him backward. The man flopped against the sedan, bounced off and came to rest on the pavement.

The front-seat passenger managed to get clear before McCarter could track him, and opened up with an MP-5K on the run. Bullets buzzed past McCarter’s head like angry hornets, but the gunner hadn’t led the Briton correctly and none of the shots landed.

McCarter made the cover of the van just as Hawkins and Manning burst from the sliding door, both toting weapons from their equipment bags.

“Anyone hurt?” McCarter inquired.

“Bumps and bruises,” Hawkins replied even as Manning was already putting distance between him and his friends.

The Canadian warrior leveled his MP-5 SD6 at the survivors from the sedan and triggered a few bursts from the hip. This variant of the Heckler & Koch SMG had built-in sound suppression so the reports were little more than pops in the muggy night air. Two more of their enemy numbers were reduced, one taking a trio of 9 mm Parabellum rounds to the chest.

Hawkins joined the fray a moment later with his own weapon, identical to Manning’s, spraying a high sustained burst that swept across the hood and blew the driver’s head apart in a mess of blood, bone and gray matter.

The lone survivor popped over the roof a few times and triggered hasty bursts from his assault rifle before jumping into the driver’s seat and tromping the accelerator. The sedan blasted from the scene in a concert of squealing tires and roaring engine accompanied by the smoky aftermath of scorched rubber.

The sounds of battle died away, replaced by the distant two-tone wail of police sirens.

Encizo popped his head out from the open van door. “Driver has a monitor for the secure police bands. He says we’re going to have company in short order.”

McCarter’s expression soured as he looked over the now defunct van. Smoke wisped from the engine compartment and the odor of coolant and oil stung his nostrils. “Looks like your chariot isn’t going anywhere, mate.”

Mishka’s car pulled up before anyone could say more. The young beauty jumped from her coupe. “Store your gear in my trunk. Then split up and rendezvous at the hotel. Carnes can tell you where it’s at. I’ll meet you there.”

McCarter looked at his comrades, who all shrugged.

It was James who said, “Sounds like our best option at this point.”

McCarter nodded and his team went into action, daisy-chaining the gear into the open trunk of Mishka’s coupe. McCarter took the hotel information from Carnes, which he committed to memory before passing it on to Manning.

Through SOP, they already knew how to split up the assignments. Hawkins with James, Encizo with McCarter, and Manning on his own since he spoke French and could easily pass as a tourist. Carnes would accompany James and Hawkins since McCarter had memorized the hotel info and then given the information to Manning.

“We meet in two hours,” McCarter said. “No earlier. That should give all of us enough time to get there and scope it out before we check in. Get into trouble, send the pre-coded distress signal to the Farm. Questions?”

Nobody had any and McCarter nodded. “Good luck, mates. Move out.”

By the time the Minsk police arrived on scene, nobody but the dead remained to greet them.

* * *

NEARLY THREE HOURS passed before all the men of Phoenix Force were reunited in the small, comfortable hotel in the heart of Minsk’s Old Town. The light of dawn spilled around the corners of the heavy drapes drawn across the windows in the room shared by McCarter, Encizo and Hawkins. All team members had arrived without incident, but Mishka had been unexplainably detained—when McCarter questioned her about it she’d simply shrugged him off or changed the subject. McCarter finally gave it a rest and just accepted she’d had her reasons for being late. Mishka had already gone far and above proving her loyalty and McCarter knew he had no cause to mistrust her at this point.

“You brought our weapons?” Encizo asked her.

Mishka shook her head. “Too risky. I decided to leave them at a secure location. At least until the police patrols have thinned.”

“We can’t be without that equipment, ma’am,” Hawkins said.

Mishka blinked. “I promise you, all of your equipment is perfectly safe. The cops are out in force looking for you. It’s better to wait. Trust me, I’ve been here awhile now and I know how things work. You don’t. If any of us were caught with even the pistols we carry now, they could land us in some remote prison for life. We’d have to shoot our way out.”

“Fine,” McCarter agreed. “Let’s get to this attack and see if we can’t figure out how we got bloody compromised. Mishka, you got any idea who those bastards might’ve been?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say FSB.”

Manning raised an eyebrow. “That sounds a little out of left field.”

“I was just thinking the same thing,” McCarter said with a grunt. “If we accept her theory then we got big troubles.”

“Such as?” Mishka inquired.

“Well, for starters,” James said, “someone would’ve had to leak our arrival to the Russians.”

“Right,” Encizo agreed. “And for another, they would’ve had to know who we were, where we’d come in and just about a dozen other details about our mission here. The chances they’d have someone that deep or high inside the CIA is against any odds I’d stake.”

“How do you know the leak isn’t within your own agency?” Mishka asked with a challenging expression.

McCarter snorted. “Nice try, love, but that couldn’t happen. There are only three other people who have any details of our mission parameters. They don’t even store that information in our computers.”

“Which are practically impenetrable, anyway,” James added.

“So where does that leave us?” McCarter asked. He looked around the room. “Anybody?”

Manning cleared his throat and when McCarter nodded, he said, “Let’s assume for the moment the compromise is in the CIA. Chances are pretty good, Mishka, you’ve been here long enough that it’s your cover that’s been blown and not anybody higher up or back home. Our mission orders came practically from your lips to our ears.”

“What are you saying?” Mishka interjected.

“I’m saying that they probably figured out what was happening by keeping their eyes on you. Your apartment here in Minsk is probably bugged, and maybe even your car.”

“Impossible,” she replied. “I sweep both of them on a regular schedule.”

Hawkins shook his head. “Which could well be part of the problem. If you sweep on a schedule, they’d be wise to that, too. All they’d have to do is deactivate the bugs, wait until you completed your sweeps and then reactivate them.”

“So I’ll go sweep them right now,” Mishka said.

McCarter shook his head. “Too dangerous. They still know your vehicle and your movements. They might’ve even traced you here, which means we’re compromised, as well.”

“Not a chance,” she replied. “I didn’t bring my car. After I dropped off the weapons, I returned it to the parking lot across from my apartment. I didn’t want to drive it around with the damage, in case the police noticed and stopped me. I took the first available bus, took another connection, and then walked the rest of the way to be sure I wasn’t followed.”

“Smart and beautiful,” Hawkins said with a wink.

Mishka smiled. “I try. And you’re a player, mister.”

“I try.”

“Axe the cute stuff,” McCarter said. “What we need to do is reevaluate our situation and determine if we’re safe here or if we should change venue.”

“I think it goes without saying we should get out of here anyway,” Manning said. “Just for the sake of caution.”

McCarter nodded. “Fair enough, but I want to think about it for a bit. Meanwhile, let’s get your side arms cleaned up best you can with what’s available while I call the Farm to update them on the situation.”

“What do you want me to do?” Mishka asked.

“Why don’t you and Carnes go stake out the lobby, just to be safe. And find all of the possible alternate exits just in case we have to beat feet in a hurry.”

Mishka nodded before gesturing for Carnes to follow her out.

Once they’d gone, James sidled up next to McCarter and nodded in the direction of the door through which the pair of CIA agents had exited. “Do you trust them?”

McCarter frowned into the secure phone as he dialed the number that would connect them by satellite relay directly to Stony Man Farm using high-speed bursts of heavily encrypted data. “I don’t know. I want to, but…”

“But?”

“I just don’t know.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Major Riley Braden would never have admitted it to anyone, but he didn’t trust David Steinham. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something about the defense contractor just didn’t add up. For one thing, he’d managed to find a way to violate his agreement with Cyrus without actually making it look otherwise. Braden had mentioned this to Cyrus, but his friend and CO had dismissed the idea as ludicrous.

Braden suspected it might have something to do with Cyrus’s fear of losing their contract with Steinham, along with the money that came with it. Braden firmly believed there were other fish in the sea, easier to catch than holding on to the DCDI contract. At the same time, they’d lost a number of good men in a single operation, something that had never happened to Cyrus since starting the company. Braden had worked with Cyrus long enough to know it was partly a matter of professional pride and partly Cyrus’s wish that the deaths of their comrades did not become a vain sacrifice.

It was for this reason Braden agreed to take the mission to Belarus, even though he felt deep down the operation would turn out to be a dud.

Now aboard one of Steinham’s corporate jets, Braden sifted through the intelligence that had come from the DCDI contact Steinham claimed to have inside the country. Among the scant intelligence reports, Braden took particular interest in a section that theorized a special ops unit of the United States government might be dispatched to investigate Dratshev’s disappearance.

All the rest of it had to do with the EMP research Dratshev had supposedly been working on, most of which went over Braden’s head. His specialties were covert military tactics and special operations. He had no expertise in the actual science of such weapons—most of it sounded farfetched and theoretical than anything else. Braden had reached out to his own contacts, as well; who’d informed him those holding the purse strings in Moscow hadn’t exactly been smitten with Dratshev’s work. Braden thought that a most interesting revelation and filed it as highly important if not outright provocative. It also made him wonder if the chance didn’t exist that Dratshev’s progress hadn’t been sabotaged by other elements within his own government. Hadn’t Steinham said he’d procured some of the finest minds on the subject and for five years it had gone nowhere? What did that mean in relationship to Dratshev’s research?

Braden finally pushed the question from his mind. He closed the file folder, leaned back in his seat and rubbed his eyes. For now he’d rest on what he knew and let his subconscious push the pieces around on the board until something fell into place.

Sooner or later, the answer would come to him.

* * *

“ARE YOU SURE you want to drive back to Washington?” Brognola asked.

“Positive, Hal,” Carl Lyons replied.

The Able Team warriors had retrieved all the information they could from Higgs and the data crew at the NSA.

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