LITMIR.BIZ

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Prof.” The Able Team leader surveyed what he considered to be a shot-down toy helicopter. He was aware of the burgeoning world of 3-D printing, but mostly over the hysterics surrounding the idea of people being able to print their own guns. He hadn’t found the single-shot, .22-caliber zip guns the size of a small megaphone all that impressive, but he knew the technology involved was growing by leaps and bounds and revolutionizing a lot of industries. “The whole thing?”

      “Every component save the wiring was put together one micron-thin layer at a time.”

      “So we can trace the wires?”

      “Oh, yeah.” Tokaido nodded absently as he tried to make the UAV’s CPU communicate with his laptop. The young hacker frowned. The CPU’s encryption was fighting him. To his chagrin it was holding its own. Whoever had designed the CPU, its programming and encryption was starting to disturbingly remind Tokaido of himself. “The wires came from China.”

      “That’s a start?”

      Schwarz looked at his Able teammate wryly. “Carl, do you have any idea how many meters of wire the PRC manufactures per year?”

      “Millions?” Lyons ventured.

      “Billions.”

      “Oh.”

      “This specific component wire could have been bought in any Radio Shack in America or, for that matter, any place that sells wire on planet earth. I myself happen to own reams of it. Trying to trace the wire is a nonstarter, buddy. Sorry.”

      Lyons gazed down upon the remains of the immaculately conceived UAV. The detective part of his mind had already leapfrogged past the wire. “So this was an expensive proposition?”

      Kurtzman shook his head at the wreckage in admiration. “Carl? You have no idea.”

      “Give me an idea.”

      “All right. The United States military has all sorts of unmanned vehicles, aerial, terrestrial and aquatic vehicles both surface combatant and submersibles. But this baby? Every last piece is custom designed and printed. You could not get Congress to pass a spending budget that included something like this. The Europeans? Forget it. The Chinese or the Russians? Maybe, just maybe, if they were really that motivated, but they would probably have to subcontract the work and why bother? They’ve got their own unmanned vehicles, not as good as ours—at least not yet. But again, why wouldn’t they just use commercial parts and if the UAV got captured just deny everything? It’s what they do. Someone cared enough to make this baby from scratch.”

      Lyons leaned over the table. “Cal shot this bird down over Gdansk, and it was watching a bunch of Russian mafiya assholes that had been sent to wipe out Phoenix, except they didn’t know who Phoenix was or they wouldn’t have been so stupid.”

      Kurtzman agreed. “Exactly.”

      Lyons’s instincts spoke to him. “This is a private venture, a very well-funded private venture, and they’ve got an agenda we haven’t even begun to fathom.”

      “That sounds about right,” Wethers agreed.

      Lyons nodded to himself. “Somewhere there is a money and a technology trail. Whoever these guys are they used Russian muscle in Gdansk. That’s where the money trail starts. Where’s David and Phoenix now?”

      Barbara Price, Stony Man’s mission controller, stepped into the room. “They’re about to sneak into Russia.”

      * * *

       Kaliningrad, Moskovsky District

      IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL, sunny day in the Russian Federation oblast. The past three days of misting rain had stopped and the sun had broken out.

      McCarter, Manning and Propenko were not in a very beautiful part of town. The Kaliningrad oblast was almost the Russian version of Okinawa. The exclave was a small landmass overloaded with naval bases, air bases and army bases. That many military men crammed into such a small amount of acreage required a great deal of off-duty entertainment.

      In the Moskovsky District the strips that provided neon-lit clubs with strippers and liquor quickly gave way to the back streets that provided prostitutes and drugs. Those gave way to the rotting back alleys that provided shooting galleries and the worst of streetwalkers.

      McCarter and his two-man team walked through the worst part of town at high noon. The area, much like most of its denizens, was decidedly unattractive in direct sunlight. Spent needles and cigarette butts littered the gutters. Russia did not believe in recycling, so no bums collected the sea of empty liquor bottles. Garbage and human sewage was openly dumped in the streets, and snarling, sprung-ribbed mongrel dogs ate the parts they could digest. Given the smell and the swarm of flies, McCarter was fairly certain one of the soiled-newspaper-covered bums they had passed was dead.

      The plan was fairly simple. Phoenix Force had deliberately left Propenko’s two remaining associates alive and sent an anonymous call to Polish State Security forces. The Polish State Police had arrived to find a fairly massive, recent battleground, a sea of bodies and weapons, and two Russian mobsters handcuffed to a truck. Polish gun-control laws were fairly lax compared to a great deal of Europe, but owning and operating antiaircraft guns was strictly illegal. Poles as a general rule had very little love for Russians, much less Russian gangsters without visas but with automatic cannons. The Polish state justice system was not particularly known for its leniency; it was, however, known for being utterly corrupt.

      Neither Phoenix Force nor Propenko was surprised to learn that Ilya and Artyom Gazinskiy had made the Polish equivalent of bail and disappeared. Using Occam’s Razor, the obvious answer was that whoever had bailed them out had most likely had them killed. However, Ilya and Artyom were Kaliningrad mafiya born and raised. They would have connections and, for a short time, possibly even people who would protect them. The question was where would they go to ground?

      Propenko had not hired the Gazinskiy brothers. Rather, they had been bequeathed onto him by money-hemorrhaging parties unknown. Still, he had run the Gazinskiys in the Gdansk operation, listened to them drink and shoot their mouths off, and he felt as though he had a pretty firm idea of where they might be found if they were to be found at all.

      That would be the worst part of the Moskovsky District.

      Walking across the Polish/Russian Federation oblast border and walking to Kaliningrad had been a very bold move, but even in a militarized area like the oblast, borders were mostly long and unguarded things. In the city of Kaliningrad the team was simply three very dangerous-looking men in a very dangerous part of town. No one gave them a second look. In fact, most of the local denizens immediately cast their gaze down and refused to make eye contact.

      Propenko pointed at a sagging, grimy, prewar, three-story tenement. All the windows were boarded up. It didn’t have a neon sign or even a red light. However, over the door faded red paint in a very sloppy version of western graffiti read $$$Luffy-Land$$$.

      “Luffy?” McCarter inquired.

      “Ilya and Artyom brag about how they are ‘pimping large’ when not kicking ass. This is establishment. Luffy-Land.”

      Manning stared at the hideous, rotting building. He could almost swear the spavined structure was staring back, malevolently. “Why is Luffy written in English instead of Cyrillic?”

      Propenko kept a remarkably straight face. “Classier.”

      “I thought you said they didn’t speak English,” McCarter mentioned.

      “I lied. They speak better than me.”

      “Thanks.”

      “This serves, easier for you to interrogate, and I lied for them. This may be enough to make them trust for a few minutes. Gives us advantage. They only dealt with Nubian. Gummer was sniper, not seen. You, English, were mostly being smoke-obscured man behind cannons. We may be able to be lying our way in.”

      Manning nodded reluctantly

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