Citadel Of Fear

“Well…” Kun smiled again. Pyle was blissfully unaware of the fact that Kun disliked him intensely and intended to skin him alive. “They have our drone.”

Rong regained his good humor. “So how do you want to play it?”

All three men were genuine geniuses. All three men knew that Kun was the one who could think outside the box. Both in cyber warfare and in the outside world, which neither Rong nor Pyle functioned all that well in.

Kun contemplated. He liked Rong. Rong, like Pyle, was equally unaware that, because Kun liked him, he intended to kidnap Rong, shackle Rong, encase Rong in latex and do unspeakable things to him. Kun was already secretly interviewing replacements for both his partners in cyber space.

Kun returned to the matters at hand. They had several options. “The copter is programmed to return to its launch point if it loses contact. We have to assume these assholes know this. We will need to move. However, I do not believe they have the tech to open her up and read her programming on them at the moment. They will need to go to a safe house first.”

Pyle’s equipment peeped and a window popped up on one of his screens. Data started rapidly scrolling south. “Polish state security channels are lighting up. I think these guys actually made the call themselves.”

“Interesting,” Kun mused. “They were ambushed outside Kaliningrad—and they do not know how—and it is they who have called the state police. They will want to get out of Poland without flying across it, and they certainly will not want to fly east. I think they’ll head straight north. It’s a short shot across international waters into Sweden. They’ll have something cozy set up there.”

Rong grinned. “Sweet.”

Kun considered the equipment he had personally installed in Drone 1. “Let’s play a game.”

Pyle actually raised his hand as if he were in school. “What about the Magistrate? Who’s gonna tell him?”

“The Magistrate has been watching our feed the entire time and listening to our conversation.”

Rong and Pyle collectively dropped their jaws.

“I will speak with him later and give him a full debriefing.” Unlike his compatriots, Kun was not afraid of the Magistrate. Kun loved the Magistrate as his personal god.

Kun rose and walked to the end of the Game Room. He opened the door and looked down the steps at a pair of security men smoking and watching the sunrise. Kun lit himself an unfiltered Turkish cigarette and watched the sun rise for a moment, as well. From the outside, the Game Room appeared to be a standard container vessel. The Game Room currently sat mounted on the trailer of a Russian Kamaz tractor-truck. “Hey, guys?”

The two Russian gangsters turned.

Kun nodded at the sun rising over Kaliningrad. “Let’s get back into Russia.”

* * *

Kalmar, Sweden

“NIKITA PROPENKO.” Aaron Kurtzman made an impressed noise over the link. “You landed yourself a real, genuine, Russian badass.”

McCarter sat in the master bedroom of the safe house with a laptop and satellite rig. “Right. Viking Group.” McCarter allowed himself a little smugness. “We know.”

“Right. But do you know what he did before he went private?”

“Spetsnaz?” McCarter proposed. “He’s a tough son of a bitch, I’ll give him that. The only thing he wasn’t immune to was Cal’s charms.”

“Who is?” The Stony Man cybernetics genius’s voice held a chuckle. “But your boy Propenko was Saturn Detachment.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.” McCarter frowned. “Saturn Detachment sounds a bit dark, then, doesn’t it?”

“Dark is one word for it. Saturn Detachment was the Moscow Department of the Federal Penitentiary Service—FSIN. Saturn is FSIN’s special-purpose unit.”

“The Russians have a penal special-purpose unit?” McCarter asked.

“Saturn Detachment was formed in 1992 as part of the Moscow Department of Punishment Execution, the UIN, under the Ministry of the Interior.”

“Department of Punishment Execution?” Most days McCarter woke up thinking nothing could surprise him anymore. Leading Phoenix Force and having conversations with Aaron Kurtzman consistently proved him wrong. “You know? The Soviets did have a certain Orwellian sense of style about them. I’ll give them that.”

“Well, when the Soviet Union fell, like a lot of Soviet organizations, the UIN changed their name and shuffled ministries. They’re still known by everyone as Saturn, but they were officially renamed the Federal Penitentiary Service and operate under the auspices of the Russian Ministry of Justice.”

“That does sound a little less Kafkaesque, but I intend to work this guy, Bear. Short version, what is Saturn?”

“They’re nickname in Russia is Jail Spetsnaz.”

“Jail Special Forces?” McCarter found himself surprised again. “Now there is something you don’t hear every day.”

“You are aware of the reputation of Russian prisons?” Kurtzman queried.

McCarter had fought the Russian mafiya many times. From everything he knew or had gleaned, Russian federal penitentiaries were a nasty place to be.

David McCarter thought he had an inkling but asked, anyway. “So just what does Jail Spetsnaz do, exactly?”

“Their official tasks are preventing crimes in detention facilities, antiriot actions in detention facilities, hostage rescue in detention facilities, counter terrorism actions in detention facilities, high-value prisoner transfers, personal security for Ministry of Justice and court officials, and—here is where it gets interesting—search and arrest of escaped criminals. Think of them as the most violent, messed-up version US Federal Marshals imaginable.

“By the way, your boy Propenko? For a number of years he did undercover operations in several Russian federal detention facilities. I leave it to you to decide what kind of balls a man has to have to go undercover in a federal prison.”

McCarter knew one man. His name was Mack Bolan. And no story Bolan told about the experience had been pretty. “Right. So Propenko is a real, genuine, Russian badass, then.”

“He’s airborne-trained, specifically to parachute into a prison in a riot situation, and the Russian police equivalent of a designated marksman. After the third time he was shot he took some time off and acted as UIN academy hand-to-hand-combat instructor. Turns out he was a Russian sambo champion. He was going to go to the Olympics in Sochi but he got shot again.”

“The man has a résumé.”

“You have no idea. He also earned the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Justice’s maximum achievement certification in penal psychological warfare.” Kurtzman paused at that. “You be the judge of what that means…”

“It means I’m glad I shot him and even gladder that he fell in love with Cal.”

“Yeah, that was for the best…” Kurtzman agreed.

“Right, going to go make our Captain Penal Power an offer he can’t refuse, then.”

“David, this man has operated undercover in Russian supermax prisons. I want you to consider the fact that he may have deliberately decided to let himself be captured so that he could find out who you and Phoenix Force are, kill the entire team except you, torture you for everything you know and then extract back into the Russian Federation and report to whoever is running him.”

“The thought had occurred, but thanks. I’ll be right back.”

McCarter walked down the narrow, wood-paneled stairs. For giant Viking people, Swedes had strangely narrow homes. Nonetheless the house just about fell off the hillside and had a panoramic view of the black Baltic nighttime sea, which was pretty spectacular with the full moon reflecting off it.

James and Propenko sat in the kitchenette playing speed chess. Propenko seemed to be halfway through a bottle of Swedish black market brännvin, wood-cellulose “burned wine.” McCarter raised an eyebrow at the Chicago native. “Is the prisoner drinking wood alcohol?”

“Yeah, for the past hour, mixed with morphine I gave him.” James sighed heavily at the chessboard. “I only won my first game five minutes ago. I think the drugs are kicking in.”

“Ha!” Propenko finished his move and slammed the timer. His injured leg was bound and stretched out on a chair; his right hand was handcuffed to the sink. The Russian’s words were definitely starting to slur. “American pussies…”