Stephen Coonts - Arctic Gold

Lia’s biggest advantage at the moment was that damned light the bad guys were waving around. It was a handheld spotlight with a pistol grip, and a civilian with an AKM slung over his shoulder was using it to try to penetrate the shadows deeper inside the warehouse. Any dark adaptation these people had possessed when they’d entered the building had been shot to hell by now. Lia was still in deep shadow in her combat blacks, though she would have to emerge into the glare of the overhead lights to reach the door.

The two Russians were less than ten feet away now, their backs to her. Beyond, she saw Alekseev and two more Russians. She could hear the shouts and crashes of yet more Russians moving through the labyrinth of crates.

Silently she stepped up to the garbage can, grabbed the lid by the rim, and hefted it. Moving back a few feet, she gauged the distance to another pile of warehoused crates on the far side of the main door, pulled her arm back, and flung the round lid hard, whirling it like an underhanded Frisbee.

The lid sailed past the door, rising, arcing, falling… then struck the top of the far row of crates with a boiler factory clatter.

Instantly gunfire erupted inside the echoing cavern of the warehouse, as one of the men with Alekseev opened up with his AKM on full-auto.

“ Tudah! ” the man with the spotlight screamed, swinging the beam to the northeastern end of the warehouse. He pointed. “Tudah!”

Another Russian joined in, spraying the northern corner of the room, sending up clouds of whirling splinters.

“Stoy!”

“Nyeh shevileetes!”

“Now, Ilya!” Lia called. “Take them out!”

She lunged forward.

Akulinin Operation Magpie Waterfront, St. Petersburg 0034 hours

Gunfire thundered from inside the building. Akulinin had been holding his MP5K on the Russian to the left of the entrance, waiting for Lia’s command. It was an awkward stance. The MP5K was a ridiculously stubby weapon, even with the shoulder stock locked open, and Akulinin was trying to brace it with his left hand on the small handgrip beneath the almost nonexistent barrel. Leaning into the recoil, he tapped the trigger, loosing a three-round burst with a sharp, harsh clatter.

Fifty yards was the upper end of the weapon’s effective range, meaning he had perhaps one chance in two of hitting his target. The range was too great for trying a finesse shot at head or center of mass. Instead he aimed low, with the expectation that muzzle climb would throw at least one or two of the three rounds into the target.

Both of the outside sentries were in the process of turning as he fired, distracted from the sudden gunfire inside. The man on the left seemed to stumble as he turned, then sagged, clutching at his side as he dropped to his knees. Akulinin had already shifted his aim to the man on the right, drawing a bead and triggering another three-round burst.

The man on the right, apparently not hit, went to his partner’s aid. Akulinin took aim again and tapped off two more bursts. The man staggered, slammed backward into the half-open sliding door, and crumpled to the ground. The wounded man on the left slumped into an untidy heap.

“Two down outside the door,” Akulinin reported.

“Check fire!” Lia called. “I’m coming through!”

DeFrancesa Operation Magpie Waterfront, St. Petersburg 0035 hours

For just an instant, every armed man in the warehouse was turned toward the northeast end of the huge room, some of them firing with wild imprecision, weapons blasting away on full rock and roll.

“Prekrazhenii ogeya! Prekrazhenii ogeya!”

From five feet away, Lia put a bullet into the back of the head of the man with the spotlight, her pistol emitting a harsh chuff as it fired. She was so close she didn’t even need to watch for the red blip of laser light marking the impact point.

She fired as she moved, holding the SOCOM pistol two-handed and stiff-armed as she tapped off two more rounds at the first target, then shifted to the man next to him. That man was just beginning to register the fact that the guy with the spotlight had been hit, the front of his skull blossoming in a nasty red burst of blood, bone, and tissue. The second man turned, mouth gaping, hands fumbling at his assault rifle… and pitched backward as two of Lia’s rounds slammed into his throat and upper chest.

Then she was through the open door. Two bodies lay sprawled on the concrete; she leaped over one and bounded across the open parking lot.

“ Stoy! ” another voice called, not from straight behind, but from behind and to her right. “Slushaisya elee ya budu strelyaht’!”

She kept running.

The Art Room NSA Headquarters Fort Meade, Maryland 1636 hours EDT

GUNFIRE, MUFFLED BY DISTANCE, boomed and rattled.

“Now, Ilya! Take them out!”

“Two down outside the door.”

“Check fire! I’m coming through!”

The words emerged from the overhead speaker, and Rubens felt an inward sag of relief. Ghost Blue was picking up Magpie’s transmissions and relaying them through the satellite net to the Art Room.

“Someone’s yelling at her to stop, to obey, or he’ll fire,” Ivan Maslovski said from his console, several stations away. He was one of Desk Three’s Russian specialists, brought in to provide linguistic support for Magpie. “Should I translate?”

One of the advantages of the implanted com system used by Desk Three operatives was that an agent in the field didn’t need to speak the local language. Someone listening in from the Art Room could provide a running translation and even lead the agent through a simple but appropriate response.

“No,” Rubens said, shaking his head. “I think she gets the general idea.”

The big map on the main display screen had been resized again, zooming in on two warehouses, some storage sheds, and the concrete wharf along the river. Lia’s icon was moving south across the open parking and loading zone between the two warehouses; Akulinin was at the corner of the warehouse to the south.

Two new pinpoints of light, red this time, marking presumed hostiles, appeared on the satellite map. The ground sensors placed by Lia during her approach to the warehouse picked up sound and motion over a wide area and transmitted the data back to Fort Meade, where the enormous computational power resident within the Tordella Supercomputer Facility translated raw data into moving points of light on a map.

“Lia! Ilya!” Jeff Rockman said at his console. “Two hostiles, southeast of the big warehouse!”

Sounds of gunfire erupted from the speaker. “I see them,” Akulinin replied. “Lia, drop !…”

Akulinin Operation Magpie Waterfront, St. Petersburg 0036 hours

Akulinin had risen to a half crouch, still holding the tiny MP5K tucked in against his shoulder. Lia, running straight toward him from the main warehouse entrance, was almost between him and the hostiles emerging from between the warehouse and the shed. One of the gunmen opened fire with his AK, the sharp crack-crack-crack echoing across the parking lot. Bullets slammed into sheet metal somewhere above Akulinin’s head.

As he shouted, “ Drop! ” Lia fell to the pavement in what must have been a painful slide, hugging the ground as the gunmen behind her sprayed rounds above her. Akulinin had a clear shot, now, at one of the Russians as he emerged from between the two buildings at a dead run. With luck, he thought he’d knocked Lia down and didn’t yet know Akulinin was there.