LITMIR.BIZ

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only thing colder and clearer than the Russian’s eyes was his smile. His voice was suddenly cold and clear, as well. “So convince me to let you keep me around with one wounded leg rather than two.”

      McCarter gave a grudging noise of admiration. “Who do you work for?”

      “That information is confidential.”

      “Do you still work for them?”

      Propenko gave a very Russian shrug. “I believe the contract terminated when you smashed mission.”

      “But you were paid?”

      “I was. Half in front. Mission did not succeed. Back half will not be—” he belched “—be forthcoming.”

      McCarter allowed himself a smile.

      Propenko eyed the bottle of brännvin ruefully. “Swedish fire-piss, I must be getting old.”

      “And you won’t help me in my mission against your previous employers?”

      “Do I work for you? Do I have contract?” Propenko swirled the wood alcohol in his teacup and pursed his lips judiciously. “Have I been paid?”

      Hawkins made a noise. “The balls on this guy…”

      Propenko slowly turned his head to regard Hawkins. “Would you like to see them, Fruit Rabbit?”

      “If he calls me Fruit Rabbit one more time…”

      “Dah. And?”

      McCarter brought the conversation back on line. “So your job was to kill us?”

      “Sustain your attempted ambush, destroy you and collect information.”

      “Collect information?”

      “You would be interrogated.”

      “By you?”

      “By me. But I would start with Fruit Rabbit.”

      Hawkins shot to his feet. “That’s it!”

      Propenko kept his eyes on McCarter. “All evidence collected since Great Patriotic War says that with English? It is being more effective to make him watch torture of one of his men, then torture English himself.”

      “Lovely. Right, then. Listen, I’m in a bit of a hurry. How much?”

      “How much what?” Propenko asked.

      “To put you on the payroll.”

      “The payroll?”

      “My payroll. You contract is terminated with these people after I smashed your mission and captured you. You’re currently unemployed, Nick. You want a job or do you want to go back to Orsk?”

      Propenko’s pale eyes narrowed. “You wish to employ me against former employers? This is not strictly honorable.”

      “They’re terrorists. Work against them or for them.”

      “I am not aware of this.”

      “I’m betting on that, Nick.”

      “I am willing to entertain these ideas, but I must warn you. People I worked for apparently had ability to mint own money,” Propenko replied.

      “Fine. Then double.”

      Propenko blinked. “You do not know yet how much I am paid.”

      “Make up a number—but, be a good lad and do try not to go stark ravers about it.”

      “You do not work for British Intelligence,” Propenko declared.

      McCarter sipped liquor.

      “You do not work for American Intelligence.”

      McCarter neither confirmed nor denied.

      “Who are you?”

      McCarter spit in his palm and held out his hand. “Your boss.”

      Propenko slammed his hand into McCarter’s. The Russian had a grip like a clam but he stopped just short of the bone-breaker. “Unless you move, you must expect attack before dawn. I am surprised it has not happened already.”

      “How much?”

      “We talk money later. Now? I will be needing to lose handcuffs and get gun.”

      “One condition.”

      “And, so?”

      McCarter nodded toward Hawkins. “His name is Hawk.” He tossed the Swedish M-40 pistol onto the table. “Uncuff him.”

       CHAPTER THREE

       The War Room

      Aaron Kurtzman observed as T. J. Hawkins operated on the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle thousands of miles away in Scandinavia. Kurtzman would have preferred to have done the surgery himself, but security protocols dictated the little UAV helicopter traveled no farther until they could make sure they weren’t bringing a Trojan horse into the Farm’s precincts.

      Kurtzman secretly wished Hermann “Gadgets” Swartz was in the operating theater, but Hawkins wasn’t bad. The UAV was a standard quad-motor helicopter with four equidistant rotors on stalks sticking out of the main body. This one had a very powerful and sophisticated camera that was night-vision capable. Hawkins had separated the motors and the camera; they were amazing pieces of technology.

      “Here we go…”

      Gummer leaned in carefully. He was the team’s explosives expert and this was the point where everyone wondered if the UAV would blow sky-high. Hawkins carefully separated the two halves of the fuselage as if it were the shell of a crab.

      Kurtzman leaned forward in his wheelchair and peered at the feed from Sweden on his screen.

      The guts of the UAV were extremely interesting.

      Much like a crab shell, nothing was attached to the top. All the good stuff was attached to the bottom half.

      Hawkins looked into the camera. “Bear, I don’t know what half this stuff is.”

      Gary Manning sat back, nodding to himself. “I don’t see a booby trap. If there are any explosives in there, they are tiny and made to wipe the equipment instead of kill anyone who might be tampering.”

      “Wait a minute, before you two touch anything else.” Kurtzman took control of the camera on his end and began panning and scanning the UAV’s internal organs.

      The power supply system was easy to spot and very impressive. It was a flat stack and Kurtzman suspected this UAV would have double the range and endurance of a standard commercial model of comparable size. He had to admit he had never seen a CPU like the one he beheld mounted in a UAV like this. Most similar models were equipped with a simple GPS that allowed them to return to their launch point if they lost contact with their human operator. The sophistication of this drone’s CPU implied to the Stony Man cybernetics whiz that the drone was capable of making a number of decisions autonomously and could operate in independent search, patrol or mapping functions.

      Kurtzman was also willing to bet that this machine was capable of being operated by, or cooperating with, other autonomous drones operating as autonomous units. In effect, this baby was capable of engaging in independent small- and large-unit actions without the benefit of a human operator in control.

      It was an incredibly sophisticated piece of machinery.

      Kurtzman leaned back in his chair. It was a very strange thing to be shot down out of the sky during an engagement with Russian mafiya thugs. Of course the mafiya thugs had showed up with antiaircraft artillery. It all led to the inescapable conclusion that there was a much larger game afoot.

      Hawkins

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