Oceans Of Fire

They were thoroughbreds.

The dirt and dings were cosmetic. Beneath the sheep’s clothing their V-6 engines were supercharged. David McCarter was a connoisseur of motor vehicles. He took in the run-flat tires and recognized the work. The two Land Cruisers were the product of Asbeck Armoring Bonn. He suspected they were VIP 100 Models, and custom. They would be armored against massive attack, undoubtedly European “extreme protection” B6 category. They would be impervious to direct hits of up to .30-caliber. It would take a .50-caliber, crew-served machine gun or a shoulder-launched rocket to crack them.

McCarter’s instincts spoke to him. Sharkov was going incognito and with maximum protection. The Briton followed the two-car caravan for a couple of blocks, and their destination was evident. “Base, targets are headed for the casino.”

“Affirmative, Phoenix One. It’s your call.”

McCarter considered his options. If his suspicions were correct, he had just located the courier vehicles for the nukes. They needed to be marked. Once they went into the casino they’d be parked in Zhol’s private garage. There were three options. James could go in and tag them, but that would risk his cover. Two, McCarter could send in a team to break into the garage and do it. It probably wouldn’t be too difficult, but security would have to be overcome. There was a good chance that the enemy might know they had been breeched. They wouldn’t know why or by whom, but the enemy security level would rise, and that threatened the entire mission.

Option three was for McCarter to do it himself, now.

“Base, I’m taking the shot.”

“Affirmative, Phoenix One.”

McCarter pulled up behind the Toyotas. He reached into his jacket. His hand brushed past the concealed Browning Hi-Power pistol and pulled out a slightly oversize cell phone. At a traffic light he came to stop beside Sharkov’s vehicle. He could feel the gaze of the hardmen inside from behind the tinted windows. McCarter flipped open his phone as the light changed. The back passenger window of the Land Cruiser cracked slightly. McCarter passed the armored vehicle, apparently oblivious of scrutiny as he shouted into his phone in angry French.

The phone had no communications capability. Two stubby smooth-bore barrels and a pair of compressed air cylinders took up body of the phone. The flip-top acted as a simple see-through optical sight. McCarter slid open the muzzle cover and unlocked the safety while he blithered away about getting out of the goddamn country and delivery schedules. He let Sharkov’s car pull slightly ahead.

“Merde!” McCarter took the phone away from his ear and held it forward, his thumb working the buttons as if he were dialing another number. He peered through the sight and put the crosshairs on the brake light above the cargo door of Sharkov’s Toyota. He pressed zero on the keypad and the phone chuffed in his hand.

McCarter was rewarded as the .40-caliber paintball hit the bulge of the brake light and shattered, splattering across the top of the vehicle. He was slightly worried by the rain factor. He had only two shots, and one positive mark was better than two partials, and the window of opportunity was now. He pressed the button and fired his second barrel. He missed the brake light but luck was with him as the plastic sphere struck the luggage rack and broke apart.

“Marking complete, Base. Do you have the target acquired?”

“One moment, Phoenix One.” Back in Virginia, Price turned to Kurtzman. “Aaron?”

The computer wizard was staring intently at a six-foot flat screen. The feed showed an overhead view of traffic. Cars and trucks moved through the grid of streets and buildings in high-contrast black-and-white. The paintballs McCarter had fired were filled with a liquid infrared luminescent material. Once it was exposed to air, it gelled and hardened, and the infrared chemical reaction began. The luminescent material was clear and, after it hardened, almost undetectable. Minute scrutiny would reveal it as a hardened film that would be difficult to scrub off. The infrared goo in the projectile was its own power source. Over the course of time it would fade. However, for the next three months, it would glow at a steady 300 candlepower in the infrared spectrum, invisible to the unaided human eye.

Three hundred miles above the surface of the Earth a distinctly nonhuman eye was peering intently at the traffic in downtown Dushanbe. The satellite’s radio receiver was tracking McCarter by triangulation. Once he was acquired, it was child’s play to keep him under observation. Kurtzman could make out McCarter on his motorcycle and he could see the truck he trailed. The infrared feed of the satellite was set to high-polarity white on black. Infrared light sources appeared in varying shades of white. McCarter’s high-performance motorcycle had its own very distinctive infrared signature.

Kurtzman grinned as the top of Sharkov’s armored SUV suddenly began to glow in brilliant bright white. The satellite instantly noted the candlepower and frequency of the infrared light source and transmitted them to the net of satellites that the NSA had programmed to observe Tajikistan. Day or night, rain or shine, anytime Sharkov’s vehicle was above ground, Kurtzman and his team would be watching it.

Kurtzman nodded at Price. “The Shark is marked.”

“Good work, Phoenix One. Target has been acquired.”

“Affirmative, Base.” McCarter’s motorcycle peeled down a side street. “Breaking contact.”

The Stony Man computer wizard watched Sharkov’s armored convoy as it wound its way through traffic and disappeared into the casino’s rear garage. He leaned back in his wheelchair and typed a few keys. The giant screen split between the real-time feed of the satellite watching the Silk Road casino and a geopolitical map of Southern Asia. “The question is, Sharkman,” Kurtzman mused, “if you have the packages, where are you planning on taking them?”

“NOW, I DON’T NORMALLY dig nines.” Clayborne Forbes held up an SR-3 Vikhr short assault rifle. “But this baby puts them out at a thousand feet per second with a bullet twice the weight of a normal 9 mm. Throw in the tungsten steel penetrator? This shit sings. Kevlar? Car doors? Titanium? If you aren’t wearing ceramic when this hits you—” Forbes’s smile was ugly as he handed it to Calvin James “—Jack, you are dead.”

Sharkov laughed harshly and took another weapon from the crate.

James examined the weapon. It had a stubby barrel and a folding sheet-metal stock. The super-heavy 9 mm bullet was fired from a cut-down AK-47 rifle shell. The weapon’s light weight produced heavy recoil and a cyclic rate of 900 rounds a minute that was almost impossible to control on full-auto, and ate up the 20-round magazine in a matter of heartbeats.

However, in the Vikhr’s favor, the design bureau of the Russian Central Institute of Precision Machinery Construction had been asked to create a compact, concealable weapon that could penetrate most known forms of body armor and semihardened vehicles for Russian Special Forces. That was all metaphor. The real specification was in fact for a short-range weapon that would penetrate armored limousines, body armor, the bodyguards wearing it and the VIP they were trying to protect. The Vikhr had been designed as an assassination weapon, pure and simple, and it had met the specification with wild success.

James snapped the folding stock into place and shouldered the Vikhr. The weapon’s inaccuracy was somewhat mitigated by the laser-designator mounted beneath the barrel and the optical sight above. He wouldn’t care to go into open battle with it, but for slaughtering someone in a phone booth or defoliating the occupants of a limousine during a drive-by, he was hard-pressed to think of a better weapon.

Forbes seemed intimately familiar with it.

“Fact is, Cal. This town? Hell, this whole country, is wide open. Zhol’s got the local juice.” Forbes grinned at Sharkov. “And the Shark has Moscow backing him.”

“Da.” Sharkov nodded. “That is correct.”

“Hell.” Forbes checked the fit of the Vikhr’s shoulder rig. “As long as we don’t assassinate the president or blow up a mosque, we can do anything we want, kill anyone we want, hell, take anything we want.” He racked the action of his weapon and chambered an armor-piercing round. “This place is a goddamn gold mine.”

“You Navy SEAL, huh?” Sharkov turned his black eyes on Calvin James. “Like Forbes.”

“Yeah.” James tried his shoulder rig and found he could draw the weapon smoothly from under his leather jacket. “Back in the day.”

“Back in day.” The Russian savored the American slang.

“So what’s the plan?”

“Baby-sitting from Point A to Point B. Nothing could be simpler.”

James knew too much eagerness on his part would get him killed. They were both Special Forces operators, and from long, hard experience, hated being kept in the dark. He put some doubt into his voice. “Uh-huh.”

“Listen, man, I know you don’t like being out of the loop, but this shit is on a need-to-know basis.”

“Need to know.” Sharkov nodded.

James let his frown speak for him.

Forbes nodded in empathy. “We aren’t pimpin’, and we aren’t pushin’ drugs. I can tell you that.”

Sharkov scowled at the admission.

“No, man, I told you, the brother’s cool.” He looked at James frankly. “We’re transporting technology that some people with the right kind of money want to acquire. That’s really all you need to know. Consider yourself a caravan guard. You guard the boss and the goods with your life. You do that and you’re gonna see the fattest paycheck of your life, with more to follow.”

Sharkov grunted. “Exactly so.”

Forbes cocked his head. “You down with this?”

James racked his Vikhr and flicked on the safety. “I’m down with it.”

“Good, that’s real good.” Forbes handed him a bandolier with eight spare 20-round magazines. James checked each one out of habit, noting the blue-gray needle points of the tungsten carbide cobalt penetrators protruding from the tips.

“Point A to Point B, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“Does a brother get to know where Point B is?”

Forbes looked to Sharkov. The ugly Russian shrugged dismissively. “He is SEAL. He will figure it out soon enough anyway.”