Dale Brown - Puppet Master

It was shorter than she’d thought — barely forty-five seconds.

“Two guys there, one there,” said White. “That’s it?”

Tolevi leaned over the screen. “This is where I was. This looks like a kitchen. Maybe it’s the command room or team room. That’s why there’s two guys there.”

“How do you know that’s the kitchen?” asked White.

“Look. You can see this is a sink, right? The heat outline? And a stove.”

“OK.”

“This guy is by himself,” said Tolevi, pointing to the other side of the house.

“Prisoner?” asked White. “Or just someone taking a nap?”

Chelsea zeroed in on him, enlarging the image. His hands were together. Possibly tied, maybe not.

“Is that the basement?” White asked.

“It looks like it,” said Chelsea. “That’s how the computer is interpreting it.”

The program wasn’t sophisticated enough to make a full 3-D image, but the different angles indicated that the third person was below the others. Which did mean the basement.

“All right, well, with only three people in there, the time to go is now,” said Tolevi.

“There are four outside around the property,” said Chelsea, zooming back. “Two at the front, two at the garage area.”

“Yeah, I got that. Better than twenty.” He went over to the case that had their tracking device, which had been engineered to look like a watch. He took out the reader, then tested it by pressing the lower right button twice.

“Make sure this works,” he told Porter, who was standing nearby.

“We keep a UAV watching the place,” suggested White. “They come back early, we pull the plug.”

“Fine,” said Tolevi. “I’ll be back.”

Chelsea went back to the Nighthawk’s visual feed. It was flying toward a small hamlet.

Damn.

She banked to the north, pushing it to gain altitude.

“How long before dark?” she asked.

“Two and a half hours before sunset,” said White. “People spot it?”

“Not yet.”

“Keep it south of the homestead, and watch those roads. This way if they see it, they may not put two and two together.”

“Maybe they’ll think it’s Russian,” said Bozzone. “Or a bird.”

“Or a psycho ceiling fan with wings,” said Chelsea.

For the first time since the mission had begun, everyone laughed.

Here it was, a million dollars. All he had to do was walk in, locate the butcher, send the signal, and let the games begin.

Tolevi did a last-minute com check.

“You guys hearing me?” he asked White, who was with the paras in the trucks a half mile behind him, each pulled off to the side of a different road. Any sign of trouble, and they would pounce.

“Yeah. We’re all ready here. Everyone’s in place.”

“Doin’ it,” said Tolevi, taking a deep breath as he started his car.

Chelsea and the bots were with White. Assuming Tolevi found the butcher, they’d launch the assault an hour after dusk, when it was plenty dark. If things went south in the meantime, they’d either go in with guns blazing, or…

There was no “or.” This had to work.

A million dollars. Not as much as I’ve made in three hours, but up there.

Actually, profitwise, it had to be his best score. Practically no overhead on this mission, assuming you didn’t count the abortion of a trip a few weeks before.

That should be counted. R&D.

He made a mental note to do the math on the proceeds per minute.

Focusing on the rewards made the risks seem less imposing. He hated White for playing Mr. Cautious — surely it was an act, because the CIA officer would clearly have been urging something even more reckless if Tolevi hadn’t suggested this. He was only playing to the girl, Chelsea.

Who, despite being a bit of a know-it-all, was very pretty.

Only a few years older than Borya.

Probably older than she looks.

“White?” he said. Disguised as a cell phone, the low-probability-of-intercept radio was always on.

“Good coms.”

“I’m moving.”

Tolevi put the car in gear and drove up the road. The guards were still there, leaning against their truck, blocking the driveway.

“I’m here to see the colonel,” Tolevi said in Russian, skidding on the gravel as he stopped.

One of the men threw down his cigarette and came over. Tolevi recognized him as one of the thugs who’d held him two weeks before, but the man didn’t seem to remember.

“I have business with the colonel.”

“There is no colonel here.”

“The hell with you, dog. Moscow sent me. You have a problem with that, you take it up with them.”

“Let me see your papers.”

“Fuck yourself and your mother’s mother. Greshkin in Moscow said he’d sack the whole bunch of you if you gave me shit again.”

The name of the head of SVR’s Directorate S — the covert unit — apparently didn’t mean anything to the man, for he didn’t react.

“Are you gonna move?” Tolevi demanded in terse Russian, “or am I going to sit here and insult you until the colonel comes out?”

“The colonel is on a mission,” said the other soldier, coming over.

“I’ll wait inside. I gotta take a dump. Or maybe I should do it in your truck.”

The threat of defecation did the trick. The second soldier pulled the first soldier aside. After a few seconds’ consultation, he went to move the truck.

“Driving to the front door,” Tolevi said over the radio.

He parked near the door, checked the pistol at his belt, then got out. He’d debated about the gun — they would surely search him when he went in and confiscate it, but since they thought he was working for the intelligence service, the weapon would be more or less expected. It might even enhance his story.

And if they didn’t search him, then he’d have a gun. That would make everything easier.

He could hear the thin buzz of the UAV nearby. The soldiers’ truck at the front was loud enough to drown it out, but away from other noises you could detect it if you tried hard enough.

“Keep that UAV as high as you can,” he told them. “I can hear the buzz.”

Knock on the door, or just go in?

Why knock?

But the choice wasn’t his to make: the door flew open. One of the colonel’s aides stood on the threshold.

“I’m back,” Tolevi told him. “I have a message from Moscow, and instructions.”

“You are not welcome here.” The aide pointed at his ear. “Don’t you learn?”

“This is a debt that will be paid in the future.” Tolevi pointed at his ear. “Right now we both have orders. You think I wanted to come back? Get the hell out of my way, asshole.”

Tough guy had worked outside, but not here. The aide flew out the door at him. Tolevi had been an excellent street fighter in his youth, but his youth was well past. The aide had ten years and a good sixty pounds of muscle on him. He grabbed Tolevi and threw him against the wall, shoved him inside, then picked him up and tossed him to the floor on his back. Before Tolevi could react, the Russian jumped on his chest, pressing his forearm into his neck and his knee into his stomach.

“I’ll break you in two, scum,” said the aide.

“Fuck you,” muttered Tolevi, struggling to breathe.

The aide held him a few more seconds, then got up. Tolevi thought he was starting to pass out. A kick into his ribs sent a wave of pain through his body, and he wished he had lost consciousness.

Another soldier came and hauled him to his feet. Tolevi put up his hands — he’d forgotten about his gun, still in his belt — but couldn’t ward off the blow from the side to his damaged ear. As he screamed with pain, the aide snatched the pistol from his belt and smacked him across the chest with it. Then he shoved him to the ground. His radio flew across the floor.