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CHAPTER TWO

The Game Room

“Jesus, who are these guys?” Junior Pyle leaned back from his massive, multiscreened console. Rong leaned back from his own console as he watched the men disappear into the woods with their prisoner. “Got to be the same guys as last week. Got to be.”

“No doubt,” Kun agreed.

“Yeah, no doubt.” Pyle kept his hands on the joysticks of the second drone. Drone 2 flew at a height where its rotors could not be heard and, in what was left of the gloom, not seen. Neither the Russians nor their opponents knew about Drone 2.

Pyle zoomed the camera to maximum but despite its sophistication and power, at this height the resolution was not great and the men were moving under the trees. “Listen, it’s going to be light in minutes and they’ll be able to see Drone 2 with optics. I can’t get a good picture of these guys without going low enough to let them shoot at us.” He was keenly aware of the fact that he had lost Drone 1.

“We were supposed to kick these guys’ asses. Our asses got handed to us.” Rong chewed his lip unhappily. “The Magistrate is not going to be amused.”

The three men contemplated the Magistrate’s possible ire; two with fear and one in personal disappointment. All three men were in their twenties and from Silicon Valley, Seoul and Hong Kong. Each man had run the computer world high-tech gamut from software engineer to hacker to gamer and game designer. They were some of the best cybernetic experts in the business, sought after by top-end, high-tech companies worldwide.

They had been lured, and then very handsomely remunerated, into become experts in the rapidly advancing field of high-tech mercenaries. A private army specializing in unconventional warfare and crime, including cyber crime prevention, which they found boring, and cyber crime commitment, which was proactive, fun, far more profitable and had perks two of the trio had never even dreamed about.

These men were the advantage most criminals or opponents in low-intensity conflicts did not have and could not afford. Most modern militaries had men like them, but nowhere near as good, and had much less exciting toys. However, Junior Pyle was right and all three men knew it. They had gotten their asses handed to them.

Kun smiled. The Korean was dressed immaculately in a retro, light blue suit. A 007 aficionado would have recognized it as Sean Connery’s gray, tropical-weight suit from the film Dr. No, and Kun had styled his hair to match right down to a tousled spit curl. Hardly anything Kun owned besides his high-tech equipment was not custom made and straight out of a James Bond movie. He found himself amused. “These guys are real, genuine, badasses.”

“Speaking of badasses…” Rong looked and dressed like a skateboarder. His hair was at that hedgehog look of an Asian male who had a missed a lot of haircuts but not yet grown it long enough so that it would fall over into a shag. It was a look he assiduously cultivated and had currently dyed orange. “They took Propenko, alive.”

Junior Pyle dressed as though he thought he was still in college or wanted to be the lead singer of an Emo band or both with the tattoos, piercings and black hair, black T-shirts and black jeans to match.

Pyle and Rong were certifiable, card-carrying computer geeks and Kun was a certifiable sociopath. But the three young men were all at the pinnacle of their fields and their power and, having dropped out of their civilian fields, had become urban legends. Pyle was very unhappy. “Does this mean the Russian mafia is going to kill us?”

“No.” Rong sighed. “But Propenko probably will. He looked straight into my camera before he went across the border and told me not to mess this up.”

Propenko had no idea who the three cyber warriors were or even where they were, but Propenko was a trained investigator and a very violent man. The team had chosen him for this mission and they had not picked him out of a hat.

Rong’s and Pyle’s grommets tightened at the idea of a displeased Magistrate and the big Russian filled with thoughts of revenge.

Kun contemplated the Walther PPK in his shoulder holster happily. He still hadn’t gotten around to shooting anybody with it yet. As with the best of sociopaths, Kun genuinely wasn’t afraid of anything or anybody, but he did have certain goals and objectives that he wished to achieve. He was a realist in these matters, and being on the wrong side of Propenko qualified as a genuine obstacle and not one to be taken lightly. “Money makes Propenko come. Money makes him go away.”

“Unless he goes surly Russian on us,” Pyle countered.

“Well…” Kun smiled again. Pyle was blissfully unaware of the fact that Kun disliked him intensely and intended to skin him alive. “They have our drone.”

Rong regained his good humor. “So how do you want to play it?”

All three men were genuine geniuses. All three men knew that Kun was the one who could think outside the box. Both in cyber warfare and in the outside world, which neither Rong nor Pyle functioned all that well in.

Kun contemplated. He liked Rong. Rong, like Pyle, was equally unaware that, because Kun liked him, he intended to kidnap Rong, shackle Rong, encase Rong in latex and do unspeakable things to him. Kun was already secretly interviewing replacements for both his partners in cyber space.

Kun returned to the matters at hand. They had several options. “The copter is programmed to return to its launch point if it loses contact. We have to assume these assholes know this. We will need to move. However, I do not believe they have the tech to open her up and read her programming on them at the moment. They will need to go to a safe house first.”

Pyle’s equipment peeped and a window popped up on one of his screens. Data started rapidly scrolling south. “Polish state security channels are lighting up. I think these guys actually made the call themselves.”

“Interesting,” Kun mused. “They were ambushed outside Kaliningrad—and they do not know how—and it is they who have called the state police. They will want to get out of Poland without flying across it, and they certainly will not want to fly east. I think they’ll head straight north. It’s a short shot across international waters into Sweden. They’ll have something cozy set up there.”

Rong grinned. “Sweet.”

Kun considered the equipment he had personally installed in Drone 1. “Let’s play a game.”

Pyle actually raised his hand as if he were in school. “What about the Magistrate? Who’s gonna tell him?”

“The Magistrate has been watching our feed the entire time and listening to our conversation.”

Rong and Pyle collectively dropped their jaws.

“I will speak with him later and give him a full debriefing.” Unlike his compatriots, Kun was not afraid of the Magistrate. Kun loved the Magistrate as his personal god.

Kun rose and walked to the end of the Game Room. He opened the door and looked down the steps at a pair of security men smoking and watching the sunrise. Kun lit himself an unfiltered Turkish cigarette and watched the sun rise for a moment, as well. From the outside, the Game Room appeared to be a standard container vessel. The Game Room currently sat mounted on the trailer of a Russian Kamaz tractor-truck. “Hey, guys?”

The two Russian gangsters turned.

Kun nodded at the sun rising over Kaliningrad. “Let’s get back into Russia.”

* * *

Kalmar, Sweden

“NIKITA PROPENKO.” Aaron Kurtzman made an impressed noise over the link. “You landed yourself a real, genuine, Russian badass.”

McCarter sat in the master bedroom of the safe house with a laptop and satellite rig. “Right. Viking Group.” McCarter allowed himself a little smugness. “We know.”

“Right. But do you know what he did before he went private?”

“Spetsnaz?” McCarter proposed. “He’s a tough son of a bitch, I’ll give him that. The only thing he wasn’t immune to was Cal’s charms.”

“Who is?” The Stony Man cybernetics genius’s voice held a chuckle. “But your boy Propenko was Saturn Detachment.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.” McCarter frowned. “Saturn Detachment sounds a bit dark, then, doesn’t it?”

“Dark is one word for it. Saturn Detachment was the Moscow Department of the Federal Penitentiary Service—FSIN. Saturn is FSIN’s special-purpose unit.”

“The Russians have a penal special-purpose unit?” McCarter asked.

“Saturn Detachment was formed in 1992 as part of the Moscow Department of Punishment Execution, the UIN, under the Ministry of the Interior.”

“Department of Punishment Execution?” Most days McCarter woke up thinking nothing could surprise him anymore. Leading Phoenix Force and having conversations with Aaron Kurtzman consistently proved him wrong. “You know? The Soviets did have a certain Orwellian sense of style about them. I’ll give them that.”

“Well, when the Soviet Union fell, like a lot of Soviet organizations, the UIN changed their name and shuffled ministries. They’re still known by everyone as Saturn, but they were officially renamed the Federal Penitentiary Service and operate under the auspices of the Russian Ministry of Justice.”

“That does sound a little less Kafkaesque, but I intend to work this guy, Bear. Short version, what is Saturn?”

“They’re nickname in Russia is Jail Spetsnaz.”

“Jail Special Forces?” McCarter found himself surprised again. “Now there is something you don’t hear every day.”

“You are aware of the reputation of Russian prisons?” Kurtzman queried.

McCarter had fought the Russian mafiya many times. From everything he knew or had gleaned, Russian federal penitentiaries were a nasty place to be.

David McCarter thought he had an inkling but asked, anyway. “So just what does Jail Spetsnaz do, exactly?”

“Their official tasks are preventing crimes in detention facilities, antiriot actions in detention facilities, hostage rescue in detention facilities, counter terrorism actions in detention facilities, high-value prisoner transfers, personal security for Ministry of Justice and court officials, and—here is where it gets interesting—search and arrest of escaped criminals. Think of them as the most violent, messed-up version US Federal Marshals imaginable.

“By the way, your boy Propenko? For a number of years he did undercover operations in several Russian federal detention facilities. I leave it to you to decide what kind of balls a man has to have to go undercover in a federal prison.”

McCarter knew one man. His name was Mack Bolan. And no story Bolan told about the experience had been pretty. “Right. So Propenko is a real, genuine, Russian badass, then.”

“He’s airborne-trained, specifically to parachute into a prison in a riot situation, and the Russian police equivalent of a designated marksman. After the third time he was shot he took some time off and acted as UIN academy hand-to-hand-combat instructor. Turns out he was a Russian sambo champion. He was going to go to the Olympics in Sochi but he got shot again.”

“The man has a résumé.”

“You have no idea. He also earned the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Justice’s maximum achievement certification in penal psychological warfare.” Kurtzman paused at that. “You be the judge of what that means…”

“It means I’m glad I shot him and even gladder that he fell in love with Cal.”

“Yeah, that was for the best…” Kurtzman agreed.

“Right, going to go make our Captain Penal Power an offer he can’t refuse, then.”

“David, this man has operated undercover in Russian supermax prisons. I want you to consider the fact that he may have deliberately decided to let himself be captured so that he could find out who you and Phoenix Force are, kill the entire team except you, torture you for everything you know and then extract back into the Russian Federation and report to whoever is running him.”

“The thought had occurred, but thanks. I’ll be right back.”

McCarter walked down the narrow, wood-paneled stairs. For giant Viking people, Swedes had strangely narrow homes. Nonetheless the house just about fell off the hillside and had a panoramic view of the black Baltic nighttime sea, which was pretty spectacular with the full moon reflecting off it.

James and Propenko sat in the kitchenette playing speed chess. Propenko seemed to be halfway through a bottle of Swedish black market brännvin, wood-cellulose “burned wine.” McCarter raised an eyebrow at the Chicago native. “Is the prisoner drinking wood alcohol?”

“Yeah, for the past hour, mixed with morphine I gave him.” James sighed heavily at the chessboard. “I only won my first game five minutes ago. I think the drugs are kicking in.”

“Ha!” Propenko finished his move and slammed the timer. His injured leg was bound and stretched out on a chair; his right hand was handcuffed to the sink. The Russian’s words were definitely starting to slur. “American pussies…”

James raised one hand to the side of his face and mouthed, “We may need another bottle.”

McCarter nodded. “How you doing, Nick?”

Propenko scowled at James. “Nubian has admirable qualities.”

The black Phoenix Force medic nodded demurely, made a move and tapped his timer.

The Russian lifted a grudging chin at McCarter. “I have always admired English.”

“Good to know.”

Propenko scowled down the stairs behind him. “Fish chained me to sink. I do not like Cubans.”

McCarter smiled. “My apologies.”

Propenko grunted. “Gummer is sniper. I have not met rifleman I have not liked.”

Manning called down the skylight from his perch on the roof. “Thanks!”

“And Hawk?” McCarter asked.

“He is too good-looking to be soldier.” Propenko made an extremely bold move with his knight and nearly broke the chess timer as he slammed it down. “Maybe he is not hawk. Maybe he is fruit rabbit.”

Hawkins’s head snapped up from the dining-room table. As the most tech savvy member of Phoenix Force he was doing a preliminary disassembly on the enemy drone. “Hey!”

James raised a diplomatic finger. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

McCarter smiled at Propenko, but he wasn’t fooled. Not for a minute. “Listen, old son, I like you.”

“I am liking you, too, English.”

“So let me tell you how I see it… I think you have a liver the size of a fifty-year-old speed bag with the cracks and scars to match. I think you’re going to be dead in five years, but right now I think you’re still a nasty piece of work, and in your line of work you are at the prime of your powers.

“You’re a right bloody charmer, and not a quarter as sodding drunk as you’re pretending to be. I think you might have it in mind to snap that handcuff after me and my friend there are slightly more relaxed and do something terrible. Then you do the rest of us up a treat and start rooting around for intel. And, I think you’ve done it before.”

The palest, coldest, soberest Russian eyes McCarter had ever seen regarded him unblinkingly. “So?”

“So convince me to keep you around.”

“And if I do not?”

McCarter drew his pistol. Phoenix Force had been forced to toss their weapons into the Baltic when they’d entered into Swedish airspace. Sweden was a neutral country with their own cottage arms industry and, unlike many European nations, was not awash in surplus or black market weapons. The CIA had managed to get them some very archaic armaments that had “disappeared” from a Swedish reserve armory. McCarter pointed something that looked strangely like a German Luger at Propenko’s right leg. “Then I shoot you in the other leg and I still keep you around.”

Propenko sipped wood alcohol.

McCarter pushed. “So?”

The 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.”