LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER FOUR

      “We have the Shark.” David McCarter sat, apparently reading the paper, in the terminal. He watched the bullet-headed Russian mobster disembark with a pair of bodyguards. Sharypa Sharkov was a big man, built like a rugby striker who had let himself go. His men weren’t particularly large or imposing, but they scanned the crowd around their boss with hard and searching eyes. The men weren’t mindless muscle. They were shooters, and their right hands never strayed far from the front of their black leather jackets. McCarter subvocalized into his throat mike. His signal was being picked up at the safehouse and bounced to Virginia through the sat link. “Two bodyguards. My instinct is they’re ex-Special Forces. Packing heat.”

      “Affirmative, Phoenix One.” Barbara Price confirmed. “Tail is go.”

      “Roger that.” McCarter tossed down his paper and walked through the terminal slightly behind and parallel to Sharkov. They stepped out into the drizzly Tajikistani morning. Sharkov stepped into the back of a dilapidated Toyota Land Cruiser. McCarter eyed the vehicle. “Base, according to intel, Sharkov likes to live large, correct?”

      “Affirmative, Phoenix One. According to what we got from CIA Moscow Station, Sharkov tries to keep up with Zhol in the style department and usually fails.”

      “What’s his usual ride?”

      Price looked over the Sharkov report. “He keeps a Mercedes-Benz in every city he has a residence in.”

      “Right.” McCarter threw a leg over his BMW F650 Dakar motorcycle. There was another nondescript SUV parked behind the one Sharkov had just gotten in. The vehicles had dents and scratched paint, and had apparently seen hard use over the years. Sharkov’s had one headlight out. There was nothing strange about that. Toyota SUVs were one of the workhorses of the Third World. They were nothing if not reliable. If you just changed the oil every three thousand miles they could limp along for decades doing yeoman’s work. Manning’s eyes narrowed as he took in the tinted windows. He smiled as the SUVs’ engines snarled into life and spit blue smoke into the misting rain. These weren’t workhorses.

      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

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