Dale Brown - Act of War

“You got out with your skin and struck a blow for our cause—that is enough for now,” Zakharov said casually, lowering his Dragunov.

“I thought you said those PME guys were trustworthy, Zakharov,” Pereira said angrily.

Yegor Viktorvich Zakharov safetied his sniper rifle, removed the magazine, and ejected the live round from the chamber, leaving the action open. “I did say that, Manuel—but as we all know, money speaks louder than words,” he said in very good Portuguese, laced with a thick Russian accent, like percebes—boiled barnacles—served on fine china. “There is more money than law, authority, morality, or evil out here in western Paraná these days. I guess we just didn’t come up with the right amount of it, and TransGlobal did.”

Jorge Ruiz sometimes wished he had the life experience and real-world wisdom of men like Pereira and Zakharov, not just his ivory-towered view of right and wrong. He was right, of course—Yegor Zakharov was most often right, at least when it came to operations like this.

Yegor Viktorvick Zakharov was a former Strategic Rocket Forces brigade commander within the Eleventh Corps, the Black Raiders of the Napoleonic Wars and World War Two fame, headquartered in Kirov, four hundred and eighty kilometers east of Moscow. Large, barrel-chested, and square-jawed, he was a very imposing figure and seemed to be the archtypical Soviet warrior. He was a trained military pilot and an expert marksman, as he’d demonstrated just now and quite often to their men; he was also a weapons expert, intimate with everything from pistols to nuclear weapons and everything in between. He liked to drink straight vodka but would make do with strong Brazilian agua ardente; he had a grudging liking for American whiskey because it made him feel that he was absorbing some secret or clue to the American psyche with every bottle he consumed. Zakharov loved his women as much as his alcohol and, although a husband and father of two sons and a daughter who lived somewhere in the Caribbean, was never without a woman or two in the evenings.

During the Cold War, Zakharov commanded seven regiments of medium-and intermediate-range surface-to-surface missiles, including the SS-12, SSC-1 cruise missile, and SS-15 mobile ballistic missile, all capable of carrying high-explosive, chemical, biological, or nuclear warheads. His assignment, in case of a massive attack by NATO forces against Moscow, was to blanket Eastern Europe with missiles to stop any thoughts of occupying Russian territory—a modern version of the “scorched Earth” policy used by the Black Raiders in their campaigns against Napoleon and Hitler.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the advent of more and more onerous arms-control agreements, it was made clear to Zakharov that after twenty-two years his services were no longer required by his beloved country, so he took what was left of his measly pension and went into the growing private sector. He became a security officer with the giant Russian oil company KirovPyerviy, one of Russia’s largest private oil companies outside Siberia. He rose quickly in status, power, and wealth, and soon became a vice president. Many believed he would enter politics, but as an ultranationalist his views were not very popular with the Russian Duma, which sought a more centrist leader whom they could use to extract partnerships and favorable financing agreements with the West. Zakharov continued to be an outspoken critic of Russia’s growing rapprochement with the West in general and the United States in particular.

Then, the unthinkable happened: the Russian government, which—as was true for all oil and gas companies in Russia—was the principal shareholder in KirovPyerviy, sold its shares of the company to the American oil giant TransGlobal Energy Corporation. Although Zakharov had overnight become a multibillionaire from the value of his own shares in the company, he was outraged and felt betrayed. A foreign company—an American company in particular—owned a majority stake in a large Russian oil firm! It was the very thing he had been warning the Russian people about for years, but he never truly believed it would ever come to pass.

It was too much to stomach. Zakharov dumped his shares and sold all of his belongings in his hometown of Kirov. It was widely known that he had many residences and mistresses all over the world, particularly in South America and Southeast Asia, but he had virtually disappeared overnight…

…until one day, about a year after he left KirovPyerviy, Yegor Viktorvich Zakharov mysteriously appeared in Ruiz’s base camp near Porto Feliz, about ninety kilometers northwest of São Paulo, and pledged his personal, financial, and moral support for Ruiz’s guerrilla organization. He admitted he used contacts and resources within the Russian Eleventh Corps, along with his skills and intuition as a security officer and military man, to locate Ruiz and his GAMMA organization. But he tried to assure Ruiz and his followers that he was not here to spy on them but to offer his services and support to the cause.

At first everyone was wary and believed him to be working undercover for the government—until they saw Zakharov kill a Policia Militar do Estado officer with his own hands on a raid near Macae. The usually cold, indifferent Brazilian state military police would not favor an undercover agent killing one of their own, even a highly placed informant—there appeared to be no doubt that he was tapping into his own connections and resources to assist GAMMA. Slowly but surely, Ruiz was won over. Zakharov was charismatic, powerful, wealthy, and committed to the cause of breaking down all multinational corporations. His focus of course was on TransGlobal Energy, the company that financed the corruption of the Russian government and the betrayal of the Russian working class, but he participated in all of Ruiz’s operations with equal zeal.

Since his sudden arrival, GAMMA quickly had plenty of skilled, highly effective men and women working in various operations, mostly involving direct attacks on security forces belonging to large corporations—men and women who weren’t afraid to get their hands bloody. They were much different than the usual “treehuggers” who belonged to GAMMA: they knew explosives, sabotage, intimidation, and even darker arts, but they seemed to be genuinely dedicated to the cause and devoted to Zakharov and, therefore, to Jorge Ruiz and GAMMA. They also brought extremely useful, incredibly detailed, first-class, near-real-time intelligence information. Many were Russian, but men and women of action from all over the world followed Zakharov. The leadership of GAMMA did not change, which suited the membership fine. Jorge Ruiz stayed in control and was forever the spiritual and inspirational leader, but Yegor Viktorvich Zakharov quickly became second in command and the man in charge of direct action operations.

There appeared to be a great deal of excitement and energy on the ground as the helicopter set down in their encampment, a remote clearing in the forest about sixty kilometers from Cascavel. The men and women were busy breaking down the camp and packing up, ready to scatter and head to their temporary base, but something else was definitely stirring—Ruiz could feel it, even before they touched down. He looked at his trusted friend Manuel Pereira with concern. “I like seeing our people happy after a successful mission, Manuel,” he said on the interphone, “but this is rather unusual.” Zakharov glanced at him and smiled but said nothing and continued idly checking his rifle.

“They could not have heard about Cascavel, Jorge,” Pereira said. “We are under strict comm security. Something else has happened.”

“I could use some good news,” Ruiz said cheerfully. Pereira glanced at Zakharov; he nodded but offered nothing else.