LITMIR.BIZ

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of the place well enough to navigate it in the dark, under fire if need be. He’d made the decision to delay his extraction until Hal Brognola and the Stony Man team could reconfigure operational alternatives based on the changed situation.

      Jack Grimaldi was poised to infiltrate Grozny from a merchant ship anchored in the Caspian. The ship was run under a triple sponsor program combining Naval Intelligence, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA. All offices were coordinated by the post 9/11 Director of National Intelligence office. Task Force 280, as it was coded, provided civilian-use cover of ocean-based assets for government operations. Brognola had managed to insert the veteran Stony Man pilot into the group with a minimum of fuss.

      Bolan paced, calm, but filled with a pent-up energy left over from his confrontation with the assassin. Across the room, where he had left it on the table while fixing himself something to eat, his sat phone began to buzz.

      Bolan crossed the room quickly and picked it up. He instantly recognized the gruff voice of Hal Brognola on the other end of the encrypted line. The soldier walked over and looked out the window at the quiet residential street from behind the window blinds. He turned his back on the scene and stepped farther into the old house.

      “Striker?” Brognola asked.

      “Go ahead,” Bolan answered.

      “You safe? Things quiet?”

      “For now. What do you have?”

      “I’ve got a whole bunch of questions and not too many answers,” the big Fed said.

      “You manage to get an ID off that print I sent you?”

      “Oh, yeah. Sure did. We have a situation. The DNI has reacted to the intelligence and asked me to intervene in the matter.”

      “What problem would this be?”

      “The print you got off the shooter came back to one Andre Nicolov, former GRU commando.”

      “Okay, so he was with the Main Intelligence Directorate. Lots of ex-military types run for-profit ops these days,” Bolan said.

      “Problem is, this guy is known to be the chief operator for a player known as Sable, also ex-GRU, ex-SVR and now a freelance information broker. Sable has been the source of a CIA counterintelligence operation in Grozny. A consortium of ex-Soviet physicists and various research scientists of Chechen ethnicity opened a think tank group called the Caucasus Data Institute. The SVR, among others, was hot to get their hands on what they were cooking up. The CIA approached them undercover as a private firm about security in an effort to get our fingers into the pie.”

      “How does Sable fit into this?”

      “She ran a surveillance and procurement operation against the institute. By all accounts, the most successful one. She was always one step ahead of Grozny Station.”

      “She?” Bolan said. “Go on.”

      “Last year a field officer named Sanders was put on the case. He began making some headway, running stringers, planting misinformation, that sort of thing. Apparently, about two weeks ago, Sable went to Sanders and stated she wanted to explore life in the Federal Witness Protection Program. As a millionaire.”

      Bolan let a low, appreciative whistle. “Audacious. Her intel that good?”

      “Langley thought so. Only there was a problem.”

      “What’s new?”

      “Exactly. Sanders went around his chain of command at Grozny Station to alert the agency to the deal. He used an open channel, not the secure lines at the covert house. Immediately after making the call he disappeared and is still missing.”

      “What do they want me to do?” Bolan asked.

      “Sanders had set procedures for irregular contacts. Since you’re on the ground, we want you to try to meet with Sanders. Failing that, follow up on anything you can shake loose.”

      “Should be a piece of cake,” Bolan said dryly.

      “I know, Striker,” Brognola answered. “But there’s an operative out there who may be in trouble and a treasure trove of information that could be damaging to the U.S. if it falls into the wrong hands.”

      “Sable?”

      “Sable,” Brognola agreed. “We think she has Garabend’s laptop now.”

      “I’m a shooter, not a spy. You know that, Hal.”

      “This is Chechnya, Striker, you can’t be anything but a shooter and expect to make headway.”

      “All right, tell me everything I need to know.”

      5

      Bolan entered The Berliner casino.

      The place was full, but not crowded, and he heard the spinning of roulette wheels and the dissonance of slot machines over the more general noise of the crowd.

      Bolan gazed across the crowd. He kept his thoughts as unfocused and bland as the neutral expression on his face. He wasn’t looking for anything specific, he was simply soaking in details, waiting to see if his inner radar picked up any blips. He surveyed the casino from payout cage to bar, then from security desk to the table games.

      The guards Bolan saw looked hard. It was easy to come by veteran killers in Chechnya, though the real hard cases drifted into the heavily ex-military Russian syndicates. He saw a fat man with two blondes—each supporting improbably large breast implants—on each of his arms. He saw a nervous-looking Asian man puffing away on a cigarette as the dealer turned over cards and took his chips. A broad-shouldered guy with a crew cut leaned against an elegantly decorated pillar fiddling with a gold bracelet.

      The Berliner casino was a strange mix, influenced by the youth club in the basement of the property as well as the gaming floor. Wealthy clients mixed with the partygoers, young and old. The place was neither a dive nor too high end. There was a fair mix of Westerners in the crowd. Bolan nodded to himself. It was a good establishment to go unnoticed in, and he understood why Sanders had chosen it as a drop point and meet place.

      Bolan walked over to the bar. He watched pretty girls in revealing dresses or the sexy cocktail waitresses as a cover for his perpetual surveillance. He ordered a beer in a pint glass, left the bartender a tip and took his beer to the casino cage where he changed some cash into chips with the help of a brunette in a low cut uniform and too much eye shadow.

      The soldier shook his chips loosely in his hand and strolled toward the roulette table. He knew roulette was a sucker’s bet, but he’d do it the way Sanders wanted.

      As Bolan approached the table, he idly second-guessed himself, wondering if his decision to come unarmed was wise. He was still operating under his journalist cover and a weapons charge by overzealous police troops could unravel the whole operation at this point.

      Bolan eased up to the table and made eye contact with the croupier before putting the equivalent of a twenty-five-dollar token on Black 8.

      Barbara Price had informed him of the Agency’s covert station house location in the Grozny downtown where he could make contact and get equipment as he needed. Bolan had chosen to bypass ordinary channels, at least initially.

      Sanders had made his call from an emergency drop cutout phone and not from the Grozny to Moscow station line. There had been no explanation for this irregularity, and Bolan had chosen to follow Sanders’s lead in avoiding usual channels. Bolan’s paranoia was omnidirectional and hard earned.

      The croupier called Red 23 the winner and took Bolan’s money. The soldier slid another chip onto Black 8 to replace the one he’d lost. The big-shouldered guy with the crew cut wandered over to watch the wheel. The fat man said something, and the two blondes barked laughter like trained seals. The wheel spun and the white ball jumped and bounced its way across the device. After a moment the ball settled into one of the slots and the croupier called Red 11 the winner.

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