LITMIR.BIZ

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ships in there any time we like.”

      “Yes, but is it really true?” Luke said. “Are they back? If we go in there and try to rescue those men, are we going to walk into a buzz saw?”

      Trudy shook her head, offering the ghost of a smile. “No. They’re not back. Not yet. Morale is still low. Command and control is still poor. Corruption is rampant. Lots and lots of infrastructure and equipment are degraded or nonfunctional. With a clever enough plan, and a fast-moving attack, I think you’ll catch them flat-footed. I don’t say this lightly, but I think we can get the men out of there.”

      Luke stared at her. He thought of her plan for taking out the renegade American military contractor Edwin Lee Parr and his ragtag militia in Iraq, and her optimistic assessment of the odds of doing so. At the time, Luke had been dismissive of her, her plan, and her assessment.

      Then the whole thing turned out very similar to how she had described it. Luke and Ed still had to go in there and do it, but that part was a given.

      “Boy, I hope you’re right,” he said.

* * *

      Luke had fallen into a restless sleep. His dreams were strange, frightening, and rapidly shifting. A night skydive. As he fell, his parachute wouldn’t open. Below him was a wide expanse of dark river. Alligators, dozens of them, watched him fall from the sky. They converged on him. But his leg was attached to a bungee cord. He bounced, a long slow-motion bounce, just above the water, his arms hanging down, the alligators lunging and snapping at him.

      Then it was daytime. A Black Hawk helicopter had been shot out of the sky. Its tail rotor was gone, the chopper spinning out of control and coming down hard. Luke ran across a field, an old, empty soccer stadium, toward the chopper. If he could just get there before it hit, he could catch it and save those men on board. But the grass was growing all around him, reaching up, twisting, pulling at his legs, slowing him down. His arms were out, reaching… He was too late. He was too late.

      God, the chopper was coming down sideways. Here… it… came…

      He bucked awake in the midst of midair turbulence—the plane shuddered, then rode the unsettled air like a roller coaster. Luke glanced around. The lights were out. For a moment, he wasn’t sure if he was asleep or awake. Then he noticed the rest of his team, sprawled out unconscious in various parts of the darkened cabin.

      He gazed out his window—he couldn’t see anything but a blinking light on the wing. Far below, the ocean was vast, endless, and black. The sun was far behind them now, the day long gone.

      They’d been flying for hours, and they had more to go.

      Hours from now, as they moved further east, the sky would begin to brighten. He checked his watch. Just after midnight back in DC, which meant that in Sochi, it was a little after eight a.m. Morning already.

      Watching the clock gave him the sense of events surging out ahead. The Russians could move those men any time they wanted. They could have already moved them during the night.

      It was frustrating to be trapped on this plane with the clock ticking.

      Luke hadn’t gotten much shut-eye, but he knew he wasn’t going to fall asleep again. He had a lot weighing on him. The ghosts of the past. Becca and Gunner. The uncertain future of a baby born into a terrible world. This dangerous mission.

      He got up, went to the tiny kitchenette at the back of the plane. He passed Ed Newsam and Mark Swann, who were dozing on opposite sides of the aisle from each other. Without turning on a light, he poured half a mug of hot water from the spigot and mixed some instant coffee, black with a touch of sugar. He tasted it. Eh. It wasn’t bad. He grabbed an apple Danish wrapped in plastic and went back to his seat.

      He turned on the overhead spotlight.

      He glanced across the aisle from him. Trudy was asleep, curled into a ball. She was young for this job. It must be nice to know so much at such a tender age. He thought of himself in his early twenties. He’d been like that off-brand superhero, the one made out of granite, whose answer to any problem was to put his head down and run through walls. Not a lot going on upstairs.

      He shook his head and looked at the paperwork in his lap. She had given him a ton of useful data. He had satellite imagery of the freighter, including close-ups of the upstairs catwalks and the rooms where the men were thought to be held, and the holds below where the sub was likely hiding.

      Luke had to admit that the sub wasn’t a major priority for him personally, but he knew that others didn’t agree. They wanted that thing destroyed. Okay. If it was possible, and it didn’t jeopardize the men, okay. He would do it.

      Hmmm. What else did he have? A bunch of stuff. Schematics of the freighter. Maps and satellite imagery of the surrounding city streets, the docks, and the long seawall that protected the port from the Black Sea. Long-view maps and imagery of the entire area, with the sprawling beach resort of Sochi just to the north, the wide open water, and the border with Georgia to the south, tantalizingly close.

      So near, and yet so far.

      What else? Assessments of troop strength at the port and nearly facilities—best guesses, really. Assessments of first responder capabilities in metropolitan Sochi—good once upon a time, but underfunded and badly degraded now. Assessments of morale—low across the board. The two apocalyptic Chechen wars and the resulting terrorist attacks on civilian soft targets, combined with the Kursk disaster, had heads rolling among the Russian military brass, and the frontline troops in disarray.

      Luke didn’t doubt it. The shock of September 11, along with repeated setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, bad press at home… it had left a lot of people on this side of the fence feeling the same way. American equipment, training, and personnel were generally tip-top, but people were people, and when things went sideways, it hurt.

      He let the information wash over him.

      Don had promised him more people when he arrived in Turkey, deep cover operatives with local knowledge, fluency in the Russian language, and experience in fast-moving, hard-hitting black ops. Don didn’t say where they were coming from, only that they would be the best available. He had promised Luke methods for both him and Ed, moving separately, to enter Russia undetected. He had promised Luke any materials he wanted, within reason—guns, bombs, cars, airplanes, whatever.

      A picture began to emerge…

      Yeah. He started to imagine the broad outlines of it. In an ideal world… if he got everything he wanted… with the element of surprise… total commitment… and moving at warp speed…

      He could see how this just might work.

* * *

      “They used to call me Monster.”

      Luke stared at Ed. They were the only two awake, sitting in the back seats of the plane. But now Luke was fading. Further up, Trudy was still curled into a ball, and Swann was sprawled out, his long legs crossing the aisle.

      The window shades were down, but Luke could see bits of sunlight peeking in along the bottom edges. Wherever they were in the world, it was morning now.

      Luke had just laid out the mission to Ed, as he was starting to imagine it. He was thinking he might get a little feedback. Did this part seem possible? Was there a gaping hole he was overlooking? What kind of weapons should they carry? What kind of equipment did they need?

      Instead, he got this: “They used to call me Monster.”

      It was all the answer he needed, he supposed. The man was a monster. If it came to it, he would go at this problem with half a plan and a handful of rusty nails.

      “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me,” Luke said.

      Ed shook his head. He was half asleep himself. “Not because of my size. Because I was so evil. I grew up in Crenshaw, in LA. Four kids, I was the oldest. The closest thing to a grocery store in the neighborhood was a place that sold liquor, lottery tickets, and cans of soup and tuna fish. My mom couldn’t keep the lights on sometimes.

      “I said, un-unh. It ain’t gonna be like this. It’s not right we gotta live this way, and I’m gonna fix it. I was out working on the corner

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