Citadel Of Fear

“I do not like you at all.”

“Of course you like me. You love me. But I’m a pillar of Nubian manhood, and that’s left a boy from Orsk a little confused.”

One corner of the Russian’s mouth quirked in amusement despite himself.

“Aw, you smiled!” The black Phoenix Force pro took out a pack of Marlboros. Nick blinked. James had given up smoking long ago, but a good deal of the planet hadn’t. In many of the world’s neighborhoods a pack of cigarettes was a perfectly acceptable small bribe or gift, and as an interrogator the offer of a smoke was often very useful in breaking the ice and bonding with a subject. It was Calvin James’s experience that most Russians smoked like chimneys.

As predicted, Nick gazed upon the pack longingly.

James shook the pack with an expert hand and put a cancer stick between Nick’s lips. He put the point of his bayonet between Nick’s collarbones and his finger on the trigger as he dug out a lighter. James lit the cigarette. Nick stopped short of sagging in relief. James lit one for himself to complete the bonding experience, and hated himself for enjoying the opportunity. The two soldiers spent a few moments smoking silently in the Polish dawn.

“Nick?”

Nick breathed out blue smoke. He savored the cigarette as if he suspected it was his last. “Yes?”

“You seem like an okay Ivan to me.”

“Thank you.”

“So I tell you what I’m going to do—despite the fact you tried to blow me apart with an antiaircraft gun.”

“This was nothing personal.”

“I know. Neither was killing most of your friends.”

“These men were not my friends.”

“I know. So you know what I’m going to do?”

“No. I do not know what you are going to do. I find you very unpredictable.”

“You’re a charmer. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to patch up that leg. I’m going to give you a shot of morphine and something to eat, and I’m going to let you live. The question is, do you want me to let you live here, handcuffed to that cannon after we drop a dime on Polish state security and anonymously tell them that there has been an armed Russian incursion across the Kaliningrad border. Or…”

“Or what?”

“Would you rather come with me?”

Nick looked as though he was getting a migraine.

“Maybe see Orsk again?” James cajoled. “Me? I’m going to Sweden. Want to go to Sweden with me?”

Nick turned pale, gray, bloodshot eyes on Calvin James. “I have never been on Swedish holiday with pillar of Nubian manhood.”

James turned to McCarter. “I like him! Can I keep him?”

McCarter got on the horn. “Dragonslayer, we need extraction. One guest.”

Right now the Stony Man chopper wore civilian clothes and currently bobbed upon the waves on pontoons just outside Poland’s three-mile international limit around the Gdansk Gulf.

“Copy that, we have room. Let me warm up the engines,” Jack Grimaldi returned from the chopper. “ETA ten minutes. You got an LZ for me?”

“It should be light by the time you get here. Right next to my signal is a glade. Hawk will be standing in it waving his arms. It’s mostly muck, but with the pontoons you should be able to land just fine.”

“Copy that. How did it go?”

“They were expecting us.” McCarter glanced at the twin barrels of the ZSU-23-2 cannons. He had grown rather fond of them. “And, Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“I think they were expecting you, as well.”

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_4c03f45e-b97e-5f74-89fc-951bf487deb2)

The Game Room

“Jesus, who are these guys?” Junior Pyle leaned back from his massive, multiscreened console. Rong leaned back from his own console as he watched the men disappear into the woods with their prisoner. “Got to be the same guys as last week. Got to be.”

“No doubt,” Kun agreed.

“Yeah, no doubt.” Pyle kept his hands on the joysticks of the second drone. Drone 2 flew at a height where its rotors could not be heard and, in what was left of the gloom, not seen. Neither the Russians nor their opponents knew about Drone 2.

Pyle zoomed the camera to maximum but despite its sophistication and power, at this height the resolution was not great and the men were moving under the trees. “Listen, it’s going to be light in minutes and they’ll be able to see Drone 2 with optics. I can’t get a good picture of these guys without going low enough to let them shoot at us.” He was keenly aware of the fact that he had lost Drone 1.

“We were supposed to kick these guys’ asses. Our asses got handed to us.” Rong chewed his lip unhappily. “The Magistrate is not going to be amused.”

The three men contemplated the Magistrate’s possible ire; two with fear and one in personal disappointment. All three men were in their twenties and from Silicon Valley, Seoul and Hong Kong. Each man had run the computer world high-tech gamut from software engineer to hacker to gamer and game designer. They were some of the best cybernetic experts in the business, sought after by top-end, high-tech companies worldwide.

They had been lured, and then very handsomely remunerated, into become experts in the rapidly advancing field of high-tech mercenaries. A private army specializing in unconventional warfare and crime, including cyber crime prevention, which they found boring, and cyber crime commitment, which was proactive, fun, far more profitable and had perks two of the trio had never even dreamed about.

These men were the advantage most criminals or opponents in low-intensity conflicts did not have and could not afford. Most modern militaries had men like them, but nowhere near as good, and had much less exciting toys. However, Junior Pyle was right and all three men knew it. They had gotten their asses handed to them.

Kun smiled. The Korean was dressed immaculately in a retro, light blue suit. A 007 aficionado would have recognized it as Sean Connery’s gray, tropical-weight suit from the film Dr. No, and Kun had styled his hair to match right down to a tousled spit curl. Hardly anything Kun owned besides his high-tech equipment was not custom made and straight out of a James Bond movie. He found himself amused. “These guys are real, genuine, badasses.”

“Speaking of badasses…” Rong looked and dressed like a skateboarder. His hair was at that hedgehog look of an Asian male who had a missed a lot of haircuts but not yet grown it long enough so that it would fall over into a shag. It was a look he assiduously cultivated and had currently dyed orange. “They took Propenko, alive.”

Junior Pyle dressed as though he thought he was still in college or wanted to be the lead singer of an Emo band or both with the tattoos, piercings and black hair, black T-shirts and black jeans to match.

Pyle and Rong were certifiable, card-carrying computer geeks and Kun was a certifiable sociopath. But the three young men were all at the pinnacle of their fields and their power and, having dropped out of their civilian fields, had become urban legends. Pyle was very unhappy. “Does this mean the Russian mafia is going to kill us?”

“No.” Rong sighed. “But Propenko probably will. He looked straight into my camera before he went across the border and told me not to mess this up.”

Propenko had no idea who the three cyber warriors were or even where they were, but Propenko was a trained investigator and a very violent man. The team had chosen him for this mission and they had not picked him out of a hat.

Rong’s and Pyle’s grommets tightened at the idea of a displeased Magistrate and the big Russian filled with thoughts of revenge.

Kun contemplated the Walther PPK in his shoulder holster happily. He still hadn’t gotten around to shooting anybody with it yet. As with the best of sociopaths, Kun genuinely wasn’t afraid of anything or anybody, but he did have certain goals and objectives that he wished to achieve. He was a realist in these matters, and being on the wrong side of Propenko qualified as a genuine obstacle and not one to be taken lightly. “Money makes Propenko come. Money makes him go away.”

“Unless he goes surly Russian on us,” Pyle countered.