LITMIR.BIZ

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      It is ironical that in an age when we have prided ourselves on the intelligent care and teaching of children we have at the same time put them at the mercy of new and most terrible weapons of destruction.

      —Pearl S. Buck

      1892–1973

      What America Means to Me

      Gods are born and die, but the atom endures.

      —Alexander Chase

      1926–

      Perspectives

      Forget the old line about meddling in God’s domain. This time terrorists are meddling in mine. And they’ll regret it.

      —Mack Bolan

      For Private First Class Ross A. McGinnis

      1st Platoon, C Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry

      God keep

      CONTENTS

      PROLOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      CHAPTER THIRTEEN

      CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      CHAPTER FIFTEEN

      CHAPTER SIXTEEN

      CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

      CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

      CHAPTER NINETEEN

      CHAPTER TWENTY

      CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

      CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

      CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

      EPILOGUE

      PROLOGUE

      Kotlin Island, Gulf of Finland

      Special Agent Robert Marx thought it was funny how things seemed to change but actually stayed the same. Staring across the dark, cold water of the gulf before him, he could see the bright lights of Saint Petersburg. Founded under its present name in 1703, the regal city had been renamed Petrograd in 1914, changed to Leningrad in 1924, then had become Saint Petersburg once more in 1991.

      The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

      Take extraordinary rendition, for instance.

      It was a fancy name for kidnapping, dreamed up by some Washington bureaucrat back in the eighties, a means of returning international fugitives to America for trial, even when they were sheltered by a hostile state. After 9/11 the phrase had morphed into a euphemism for shipping terrorist suspects off to friendly nations where “aggressive questioning” was commonplace.

      Another euphemism. Why not call it torture?

      Regardless, the pendulum had swung again, and the Justice Department was saving rendition for hard-case felons whose wealth and/or political connections placed them effectively beyond the law’s reach.

      Scumbags like Gennady Sokolov.

      For his sake, Special Agent Marx and seven other members of the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team were standing in the icy early-morning darkness of Kotlin Island, twenty miles west of Saint Petersburg and a mile west of the Kronstadt seaport.

      There were no hostages at risk this night. The mission was a basic find-and-snatch.

      Extraordinary rendition.

      Their target was a dacha built by Sokolov as a retreat from the daily grind of his murderous business. The team had helicoptered in from the mainland, and their chopper was waiting to take them back again, plus one. A charter jet was also standing by at Pulkovo II International Airport, eleven miles from downtown Saint Petersburg, with its flight plan to London on file.

      From there, it was home to the States.

      If they lived through the night.

      Marx had handpicked his team, choosing only the best. He had two seasoned snipers, one packing a Remington M-40 A-1 .308 sniper rifle fitted with a Unertl target scope, and the other armed with a Barrett M-86 A-1 “light Fifty” in case they had to take out any armored cars. Chuck Osborne carried a Benelli M-4 Super 90 semiauto shotgun, for opening doors and flattening humans. Marx and the other four men on his team were armed with Heckler & Koch MP-5 SD-6 submachine guns, with retractable stocks, integrated suppressor and 3-round-burst trigger groups. As sidearms, all HRT members carried the “Bureau Model” Springfield Armory TRP-PRO in .45 caliber.

      Good to go.

      They’d waited two hours for Sokolov and his men to fall asleep. Now it was time to make the grab and get the hell off Kotlin, before they ran out of luck.

      The snipers were deployed, already covering the grand three-story house, as Marx led his team through the dark toward their selected entry point. It might not be an easy snatch, considering the target, but they’d trained on a scale model of the house, built back at Quantico specially for their mission.

      They were as ready as they’d ever be.

      Marx led the way, as usual. He was his own point man, never asking any other member of the HRT to do a job he personally shunned. Another thirty yards or so, and they’d have cover from the dacha’s seven-car garage while they prepared for entry.

      Just a little farther, and—

      The night vanished around them in a blaze of metal halide lamps. A deep metallic voice demanded their immediate surrender, first in Russian, then in English.

      Marx reacted while the faceless drone was midway through his spiel, raising his SMG and firing at the nearest bank of lights. His team responded instantly, blazing away to either side. Their submachine guns whispered, while the big Benelli shotgun thundered. From a distance, Marx’s snipers opened up, but they were short on living targets.

      Half the halide lamps were dark and smoking when the muzzle-flashes started winking all around the FBI strike team. Marx staggered as a bullet struck his body armor, bruising his chest underneath the Kevlar vest. He shifted targets, firing at live enemies instead of floodlights now, seeing the mission go to hell and praying that he could still get his team out intact.

      But two of them were down already, Jurecki

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