Mission Critical
Zoya had no answer for this. It seemed like a pretty obvious flaw in her father’s plan, but she knew he was far too good not to see it himself.
* * *
• • •
The patrol boats out in Loch Ness traveled in a lazy pattern, and the twenty men under the water simply waited for them to churn away from the area they planned to use to land ashore. By the time they did, the divers had all moved to shallow water, and they rose as one in the dark, almost invisible in their thick black wetsuits on the cloudy evening. Each man had a large waterproof pack strapped to his chest and a smaller one on his hip, and each pair of mercs carried a massive heavy Pelican case between them.
The men took cover behind boulders on the narrow shoreline, then moved into the thick brush towards the hidden iron door to the staircase into the castle. After doffing their scuba equipment, two members of the team moved acetylene and oxygen tanks up to the door, attached and fired up the torch, and began working on the hinges. The rest began dressing in dark business suits and dress shoes brought in waterproof bags. This done, they pulled on thin nylon coveralls to keep their suits clean from the climb. Soon the team pulled their short-barreled rifles from their packs and slung the weapons, packing extra magazines and radios into pockets. Each of the men put a headset on, and soon they ran a whispered comms check.
It took the men with acetylene torches five minutes to open the rusty door, and then while those two got dressed it took the rest of the group five minutes more to remove the rock and dirt filling the bottom part of the tiny stairwell to make it appear inaccessible if the iron door had been checked by security.
The passage was less than five feet high and so narrow it was claustrophobic, but eventually the first man on the team began climbing, and the next man followed. Fox entered, with Hines behind him, struggling to fit. The fifth man hefted the Pelican case containing the three canisters full of the weaponized Yersinia pestis spores, and the rest carried the other cases of equipment.
Finally the last man pulled the door closed behind him and jammed it back into place on the off chance someone discovered it.
* * *
• • •
Two security officials from Scotland Yard stood with flashlights in one of the dozens of darkened basement chambers below Castle Enrick, their beams pointed at a rusty metal door they’d just cleared of stacked boxes of dishes and plastic-wrapped linens. On the other side they could hear movement, an acetylene torch being used on the inside of the sealed door.
The shorter of the two men looked at his watch. “Taking too bloody long.”
His partner wiped sweat from his brow and shined his light back over his shoulder, out of this little room and into a main chamber, once used as a common area for the servants’ apartments built down here but now used simply as a storage room for old, scratched, and broken banquet tables and chairs.
“We’re okay,” the man said, but his voice belied his words.
The men were not, in fact, English. One was born in Sevastopol, Ukraine, to Russian parents, and the other in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. They were Russian agents, infiltrated into the UK fifteen years earlier as part of the sleeper program that Zakharov’s wife had been part of. They spoke perfect British English and possessed fully backstopped and rock-solid legends and a decentralized controller in David Mars, their only link with their home nation.
Suddenly the door opened with a painful screeching of iron on stone. A flashlight beam illuminated the two men for a moment, then switched off.
“Dobry vecher,” Good evening, said the shorter Scotland Yard investigator.
* * *
• • •
Roger Fox climbed out of the tiny stairwell third in line, stood up fully, and wiped a small amount of the debris and dirt from his hands. He wore black coveralls and carried a backpack. Behind him, the men with the acetylene tank and the men with guns and heavy packs and cases struggled out of the passage and into the light, and then Hines crawled out on his hands and knees and slowly stood erect.
As more men made it out of the stairwell and into the room, Fox looked over the two cops in the employ of David Mars. He said, “Have you heard anything about someone being taken in at the front gate?”
The men looked at each other. The short one said, “Not a word.”
Fox said, “That must mean the Americans have him sequestered to interrogate him. Where would they take him?”
“The Americans have the entire third floor to themselves. If I was gonna take someone for a chat without the rest of the castle knowin’ about it, I’d take him up to three.”
Fox nodded, then turned to the mercenary team leader. “Okay. Take twelve men to the banquet hall to meet up with the other two sleepers there. I’ll take two of your men along with Jon, and these two sleepers. We’ll go to the third floor and recover the general. The rest will set up the explosives down here.”
All the new arrivals to the basement took off their coveralls, revealing their dark business attire. Their short-barreled weapons were checked one last time in the dim light, and cases were opened. Three men began pulling out several explosives and detonation cord, and with head lamps on they began positioning them around the dungeon level of the castle, while the others headed for the stairs.
CHAPTER 62
Suzanne Brewer looked at her watch. It was nine p.m. and the banquet was in full swing downstairs. Up here in the makeshift interrogation room she’d spent the last fifteen minutes explaining to Feodor Zakharov that he had no rights, that he would have no contact with the British here, and if the Americans wanted to, they would shove him in a suitcase and take him out of the Five Eyes conference and deliver him to an Agency black site without anyone knowing they had him in custody.
Zakharov seemed positively relaxed about his predicament. He noticed her looking at her watch and said, “Can I bother you for the time? Seems someone nicked my watch.”
To this Brewer said, “It’s time to tell me why you are here.”
“My plan has failed. I see that. I am able to face the facts. There is no sense trying to hide from the long arm of the United States of America. I decided it was best I turn myself in. Throw myself at your mercy.”
Brewer just replied with, “Horseshit.”
* * *
• • •
Thirteen men in suits and ties walked up the wide corridor, not in formation, but grouped closely together. They approached the great hall; the three sets of doors were closed and the murmur of voices and the clanking of plates could be heard over music playing.
There were a pair of UK security men in front of each set of doors. The farthest pair from the approaching Russians watched them coming and immediately reached into pockets, removing red elastic sweat bands. These they both quickly slipped around their right biceps, indicating to the other Russians that they were the sleepers infiltrated into the security services and should therefore not be engaged as hostiles.