Jerome Preisler: Net Force--Attack Protocol

He straightened in his seat.

“Well, company’s here,” he said. “Better roll up close.”

Mario shifted into Drive, eased forward onto the apron, and braked a few feet from the plane, leaving on his low beams. As the airstair lowered from its cabin door, Fernandez got out, smoothed his clothes, and walked toward it. The pilot and copilot stepped down, the copilot toting a wheeled carry-on. They acknowledged him with nods, handed off the bag to him, stood to one side on the tarmac, and waited.

Adrian Soto was the next and last to exit. He descended the stairs in a hooded bomber jacket, exchanged handshakes with the crew, and approached the sergeant.

Fernandez gulped dryly and saluted. “Welcome to Romania, Mr. Soto, sir!” he said, introducing himself.

Soto offered a broad smile. Fernandez thought he looked younger in person, somehow, than in photos and videos.

“At ease,” he said. He extended his arm. “It’s a great honor to meet you, Sergeant.”

Oh my God, this is flipping unreal. Fernandez swallowed dryly again. Hitched in a breath. And clasped his hand.

“Thank you, Mr. Soto, sir,” he said, managing to sound calm. “ I’m the one who’s honored. And privileged.”

“Then we can agree the feeling is mutual.” Soto glanced toward the Jolt. “Is that my ride over there?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Let’s get to it,” Soto said and made a kind of all-inclusive gesture with both hands. “It’s brisk out tonight.”

They walked to the vehicle together. Mario had gone around to open the rear passenger door, lifting Buttons’s carrier out of the back seat.

Soto noticed it at once and bent to examine the large custom patch on its side. It showed the Net Force insignia, and beneath it in neatly embroidered lettering:

FOB Janus

Buttons the Cat

Camp Mascot

“Well,” he said, “that’s fine work.”

“My fiancée gets the credit, sir,” Mario said.

Soto smiled, peering through the carrier’s mesh window.

“Hello there, little one,” he cooed. “Pleasure to meet you.”

Buttons pushed against the mesh from inside and mewled plaintively.

“Apologies, sir. He’s an okay traveler. But he gets kind of claustrophobic,” Mario said. “There’s room for him in front...”

Soto looked at him.

“No need, he can stay with me,” he said. “It so happens I have two cats of my own.”

Mario did not miss Fernandez’s covert glance. The sergeant stood there a second looking satisfied with himself, then nodded toward the Jolt.

“It’s warm in there, and the roads are clear,” he said. “I think it’ll be a smooth ride to the base.”

Crimean Peninsula

The submarine’s hatches stood open on its upper deck, limned by the glow of the Kliegs on the long concrete pier. Of the sixteen vertical launch tubes, four were about to receive their payloads. Shore hands worked their machines, and guards in hooded parkas watched with rifles across their middles. The trial run was minutes away.

Farther down the pier, Sergei Cosa and Drajan Petrovik were two shadows approaching in the darkness.

“The boat is magnificent. Perfect,” Cosa said. He paused as he spoke. “Perfection always leaves me breathless. Whether in art, music, science, technology...breathless.”

Drajan paused beside him, his hands deep in the pockets of a black full-length overcoat. The wind was strong and cold, and the water slapped against the edge of the pier. He smelled the rich organic soup of seaweed and minerals and brine. Of phytoplankton bursting open in decomposition, releasing tiny bursts of gas, the smell of decay that drew the fish, crabs, and gulls upon them. The food chain beginning with the death of unseen drifters on tides and currents.

There was a splash out on the water—the wind, possibly, or some unseen creature breaking its surface.

Drajan stared into the night.

“For me,” he said quietly, “it’s the lunge and swipe.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t care about the method of the kill,” Drajan said. “Magnificence is in action. Perfection hinges on the strike’s success.”

“Spoken like a true apex predator.”

Drajan shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not sure there’s such a thing.”

“Really. That surprises me. You’re the Wolf, after all.”

“And you are feared as Koschei the Deathless,” Drajan said. “The dark rider. The shape changer who strikes down his enemies as a living tornado. His soul hidden in a needle, in an egg, in a fowl, in a hare locked in a chest, and buried deep.”

“You know your Russian myths.”

“I know what is myth. And I know enough not to believe them. Yours, mine, or anyone’s.” Drajan turned toward Cosa, his gaze direct. “If we aim to take down two Goliaths with one strike, I had better have my eyes open. We’d better.”

Both were silent. They could hear a mechanical throb and clatter farther up the pier, where an operator on an elevated pedestal seat was working a giant robotic arm with his joysticks. In its curved, steel prongs was an eighteen-foot metal canister. Extended out over the submarine, the arm and canister swung slowly over one of the open hatches. Four or five hands stood topside directing the operator over radio headsets.

Cosa resumed walking toward the sub, Drajan keeping pace, his coat blowing around his legs in the fierce wind.

“You must admit, she’s quite the impressive beast,” the Russian said. “A hundred and fifty yards from bow to stern, electric-drive stealth propulsion...our creation is as big as a whale and quiet as a lover’s whisper.”

“But still, she must wear a disguise. And it’s all nothing without our sleeper in the cloud.”

Cosa paused a step in the wind.

“Grigor is with the cable-layer. As of only hours ago. Did I mention it?”

“Yes,” Drajan said. “So you do see after all, Sergei. Deception and distraction...they’re the fine points that will lift our plan to greatness. To the perfection we seek.”

Cosa regarded him, standing on the concrete walk between land and sea.

“I think I can understand Castle Graguscu’s allure to you,” he said. “With its trick walls and hidden passages, it must have been a wonderland.”

Drajan shrugged. “It was one of many places I’ve rested my head in the past. Now it’s just rubble.”

Cosa looked at him for a moment. Then his thick lips parted, and laughter erupted from deep in his chest, the sound roaring out over the chop in the wind.

“You’re a complex devil,” he said and jerked his head toward the sleek form of the submarine. “But fuck all this talk. Let’s go inspect our twin-giant killer.”

Drajan nodded.

“Into the belly of the beast,” he said. “After you.”

Cosa grinned and turned toward the boat, Drajan briefly lingering behind. The incoming waves reared high, curled in, and tumbled down on themselves. He felt their pulse inside him, their beat, as if the blood in his veins had taken up their forceful, surging rhythm.

He inhaled slowly, his nostrils tingling from the sea-smells. The wind lashed his hair in all directions as his right hand went to the tattoo on his neck. The Wheel of Hekate.

Thoughts of Kali could still overtake him, unbeckoned, at any moment. He did not quite know why, but they did.

A second passed. Drajan lowered his hand from his neck, slid it into his coat pocket, and resumed his pace, moving through the radiance of the shore lights, following Cosa past the Russian guards, and then over the gangway to the open hatch.

A glance down inside, and he descended.

Don’t miss the other books in the bestselling Net Force thriller series, created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik and written by Jerome Preisler!