Dale Brown - Act of War

They were being congratulated and thumped on the back and shoulders from the moment the chopper touched ground. Ruiz wanted to ask what had them so excited, but a stern glare from Zakharov scattered the crowd. “I want the camp ready to roll in ten minutes—that’s how long it will take for the first PME helicopters to arrive if they successfully tracked us,” he told his aide in Russian. A tall, powerful, steel-blue-eyed former Russian army captain by the name of Pavel Khalimov, he barked an order in Portuguese.

Zakharov led them to his tent, which was always the last to be taken down and the first to be set up in a new forward operating location. He poured a shot of chilled vodka for each of them—despite their austere living conditions when in the field, Zakharov always had chilled vodka—offered them a slice of salted cucumber already prepared beside the bottle, then raised his glass. “Za vashe zdarov’ye!” he said, and downed the vodka in one gulp, chasing it with the cucumber. “Another successful mission. Well done!” Ruiz did the same.

Pereira took a tiny sip, nibbled at the cucumber, then took a big drink from his canteen. “Something has happened,” he said, looking at Zakharov carefully. “The men are jubilant like I have never seen them before. A few are scared.”

“Yes, something has happened,” Zakharov said casually. He cast an amused glance at the Brazilian ex-soldier. “But would it kill you to drink to our success like a man and not a sissy, Sergeant Pereira?”

“And the PME pigs that betrayed us said something about being too close to the dam and never having seen one before,” Pereira went on, ignoring Zakharov’s request. “They weren’t talking about watching a few satchels of Semtex go off.”

“Who cares what those traitors were saying, Manuel?” Ruiz asked curiously. He hated to see any discord between his senior officers, but he wondered what in hell Pereira was trying to get at. Zakharov didn’t look perturbed or worried—but then again, he never did. “They were getting ready to arrest us and turn us over to TransGlobal’s storm troopers—they were just blathering.”

“Were they, Zakharov?” Pereira asked. “Or were they talking about something else?”

Zakharov hesitated, adopting a faraway expression as he poured himself another shot of vodka. Now Ruiz was getting very concerned. “Yegor…?”

“Harold Kingman has been very seriously hurt today, tavarisch,” Zakharov said, a satisfied smile on his face. “We have won a major victory and advanced our cause tremendously.”

“What are you talking about, Yegor?” Ruiz asked.

“It means, Jorge, that he went ahead and did what he said he could do—he attacked a TransGlobal plant in the United States itself,” Pereira said ominously, carefully watching Zakharov for any sign of evasion or contradiction. “He has been telling our soldiers that he could attack Kingman on his own soil, in his own backyard, with weapons of mass destruction—apparently now he has done so.”

Ruiz looked first at Pereira, then at Zakharov. “Is this true, Yegor?”

“What I have done is take the fight to the enemy,” Zakharov said easily. “I showed that Kingman and his lackeys in Washington are not immune to attack in their own land.”

“You mean…you attacked a TransGlobal facility in the United States…?”

“You did not expect us to just keep on attacking facilities in South America, did you, Jorge?” Zakharov asked with mock surprise. “Harold Kingman cares nothing for the people of other nations, least of all in South America. You are just sources of cheap labor and land to him. If you want to get the attention of men like him, you need to hit him where he’ll really feel it and where more people will be able to witness his defeat—and there is no better place to hit a man than right where he lives.”

Ruiz was stunned. He knew of course that he would one day have to take his fight to his beloved America—he fully expected to die there, either in a gunfight with American police officers or killed while in prison by one of TransGlobal’s hired assassins, perhaps a prison guard or another inmate. And Yegor Zakharov had always said that he was going to get Kingman where he lived—Ruiz always believed he was just bragging, although he also knew that if anyone could do it, Zakharov could. But attacking Kingman in the United States was something Ruiz only prayed he’d live long enough to do.

“Well,” he said a bit hesitantly, “I think congratulations are in order.” He raised his shot glass, and Zakharov refilled it. “Za vashe zdarov’ye.”

“Spasibo,” Zakharov responded, draining then refilling his glass. Without looking, he said to Pereira, “You still won’t drink with us, Sergeant?”

“I would like a debriefing on the attack in the United States, Zakharov,” Pereira said.

“And I would like you to show a little more respect, Sergeant…”

“I am not a sergeant any longer, Zakharov, and from what you have told us, you are no longer a Russian colonel, either,” Pereira said acidly. “So shall we stop with the military lingo?”

“Very well, Pereira,” Zakharov said. “But I don’t appreciate this treatment I’m getting from you. I’m sorry about those PME turn-coats, but there was nothing I could do about them—once a traitor, always a traitor. I came to cover your withdrawal, and I’m damned glad I was there when they pulled guns on you.”

“So are we,” Ruiz interjected, trying to defuse this suddenly tense situation.

“I am not talking about Cascavel, Zakharov,” Pereira said, “although I have many questions about that incident as well…”

“Oh, really? Such as?”

“Such as how you happened to be there at the exact moment those soldiers tried to capture us.”

“I was covering your withdrawal, Manuel, I told you,” Zakharov said. “We back each other up on every mission…”

“You weren’t planned to be at Cascavel.”

“What difference does it make, Manuel—he rescued us, we’re still alive, and that’s it,” Ruiz said, more forcefully this time. “If he was working with the PME, why would he have killed all three of them? Why would he even have risked his life to go to Cascavel?”

Pereira fell silent. Zakharov smiled broadly. “Two good questions, eh, Manuel?” he asked. “I could have made a deal with those PME soldiers and split the reward money with them. There is a reward of one million reals for you two, you know—dead or alive. Does that not deserve even a little ‘thank you,’ Pereira?”

“Thank you, sir,” he said quickly. “Now, about the attack in the United States…?”

Ruiz shook his head and started to speak, but Zakharov raised a hand to him. “It’s all right, Jorge. Manuel is a volunteer, a good fighter, a dedicated member of our cause, and a senior member of the GAMMA leadership—he has earned the right to ask questions.” Zakharov put down the vodka and took a seat. “I had been planning an attack in the United States for many months. I assembled a corps of loyal soldiers, helped procure disguises, vehicles, materials, and false documents, and executed the plan when I determined that the conditions were most favorable. It appears that the operation was successful.”

“Which was?”

“The destruction of TransGlobal’s oil and natural gas transshipment facility and oil refinery in Houston, Texas.”

“ ‘Destruction?’ ” Ruiz asked. “Are you saying you destroyed the facility? You destroyed an oil refinery?”

“How did you do this?” Pereira asked immediately. “That would require tens of thousands of kilos of high explosives, with dozens of trained men to plant them over a long period of time. And Kingman City is one of TransGlobal’s largest and most secure facilities in the United States—approaching that plant with the manpower it would have taken would be almost impossible…unless…” And at that, Manuel Pereira stopped and looked aghast at Zakharov. The Russian’s expression told him that his guess was true. “Nao…nao…impossivel…inacreditavel…”