Black Ghosts Read online

  It was the key to the prisoners’ shackles. The role of the truck guard was to hand the key over to the security man at the complex. Now Peter had the key, and some of the inmates in the back knew this was their final trip out of this damned place. The driver, who’d been paid handsomely by Peter’s colleagues for his cooperation, turned the ignition and followed the convoy on its way out.

  The camp’s commandant stood by the guard’s booth, pressing his stopwatch as he waved the last truck on its way. He was pleased at the record time in which he had managed to mobilize the work crews. Grinning, he walked back toward one of his lieutenants and held the stopwatch above his head.

  The concrete bridge halfway between the camp and the nuclear complex came into sight. “Slow down,” Peter ordered, pointing at the truck ahead. “Put more distance between us.” By the time they reached the bridge, the truck in front of them was out of sight.

  “Stop,” said Peter, and the driver slammed on the brakes. The truck skidded closer to the edge of the bridge. They could hear thuds from the back as some of the inmates were tossed to the floor. The driver sat silently, a worried look on his face, like a thief on his first job. His eyes scanned the end of the road.

  Getting out of the prison camp was only half of Peter’s problem. Tomsk-7 was a vast, well-guarded territory, a fenced-in county. Peter estimated that the other trucks would have reached the smoldering nuclear facility by now and would be unloading their prisoners before heading back for a second batch.

  “You wait here,” Peter ordered the driver. “I’ll be right back.” He got out of the truck and walked to the rear. His four-man rescue team jumped off the truck. Three of them ran toward a fork in the road and down a narrow trail leading away from the bend. The fourth, a giant of a man, nodded to Peter and moved around the side of the truck toward the cab on the driver’s side.

  The prisoners sat motionless, staring at Peter through the opening. Some of them, Peter’s close friends, were smiling. They had served him faithfully over the last six years and were about to collect their reward. Peter raised his hand to them, dangling the key that could unlock their leg irons.

  “A few more minutes,” he said, “you’ll be free.”

  They nodded anxiously. Peter headed back to the cab. He opened the passenger door with one hand, heaving himself onto the wide running board.

  “Okay,” he said to the driver, “let’s move her over there.” He pointed to the center of the bridge. The driver put the truck in gear; seconds later, he came to a stop at the exact spot Peter had designated. He took it out of gear and pulled the hand brake. The driver turned to face Peter, smiling uncertainly. Without warning, his door violently swung open. The giant moved swiftly. He grabbed the driver, placing one hand on the man’s chin, the other on the back of his head. With a single sharp tug, he turned the head around, snapping the neck with a loud popping sound like the breaking of a dry twig. The driver’s head was now facing in the wrong direction, still wearing the same uncertain smile.

  “Goodbye, comrade,” Peter muttered, returning to the back of the truck. He glanced into the dark interior. Slowly, hesitantly, his comrades got up. Grinning, they held forth their leg irons for him to unlock. Peter did not move. Then they heard the truck’s ignition fire again.

  “Come on, hurry up,” said one.

  “Quick, unlock the bloody chains,” shouted another.

  Peter stood there, a hint of a smile on his face. When the truck started moving, the prisoners turned to one another, baffled. Some tumbled to the floor, pushing others with them. Lev, near the door, pulled furiously on his chain, cursing at Peter. The truck gathered speed as it rolled toward the rotting wooden railing.

  Peter could not make out what Lev was yelling, his voice drowned out by the screams of the others. The railing gave way and the truck plunged twenty feet, crashing through the frozen crust. It slowly began to sink in the icy river, its rear wheels still turning.

  Peter moved closer to the edge to see the men he had sacrificed for his freedom. They were still screaming, fighting their chains as the truck slowly slid under. He turned to the giant who stood next to him, hypnotized by the sight. “Let’s go.”

  “Yes, sir,” the big man said.

  They followed the trail from the fork in the road to where a military ambulance was waiting. Peter lay on a gurney, and his face was bandaged so he would not be recognized. They settled down to wait.

  A few minutes later, a string of military ambulances passed them on the way to the accident, sirens wailing. As the last one cleared the turn, they drove onto the road. Its siren blaring, the ambulance sped in the opposite direction, heading for the main entrance to Tomsk-7. No one even thought to stop them.

  Twenty minutes later, they reached the airfield, a lonely stretch of frozen asphalt barely visible under the blowing snow. It extended from an igloo-shaped hangar across a field. A large green snowplow was racing from the end of the runway to where a white twin-engine executive jet was waiting for them, engines humming.

  “We need to take off as soon as the strip is clear,” said one of the general’s men as they got out of the ambulance. “If we wait, the snow will cover the runway and we’ll be trapped until they can clear it again.”

  “How long does it take to clear it?” the general asked, unwinding the bandages from his face.

  “Couple of hours.” The big man pointed at the snowplow. “He’s been working since before we left.”

  The general nodded toward the gleaming jet, then turned to the big man standing beside him. “Where did this come from?”

  The big man shrugged. “Colonel Yazarinsky asked me to inform you that this was a gift from your American friend. He said the man was keeping his promise.”

  The general’s face twitched slightly. “Remarkable,” he said, “a Westerner who keeps his promise.”

  “Sir?”

  “A Westerner’s promise,” the general said in a lecturing manner, “could be written in the wind or running water, my boy.” The men headed to the plane. “Our American friend is not keeping his promise, he’s placing a bet. I wonder how much he has placed on the other side?”

  CG Command Bunker, outside Moscow

  February 17

  16:40 hours

  If the unthinkable were to happen, and there were to be an invasion and occupation of Soviet soil, it would be expedient to have a resistance already in place, a KGB general once thought at the height of the Cold War. It would be an armed faction within occupied territory that could help reclaim it for the Soviet Union. With Stalin’s approval, the general established a network of like-minded allies within the Soviet army and KGB, and before long he had created a shadow secret army known as the Chornia Gostia. “Black Ghosts.”

  Once activated, the Black Ghosts would be a force to be reckoned with. They consisted of some twenty tank and mechanized battalions, several nuclear sites, and thousands of dedicated men, most but not all of whom were drawn from the ranks of the KGB. There were also several Russian army officers at various ranks, who could be counted on to shift their allegiance to the Black Ghosts if the current leadership of Russia, which the Ghosts regarded as weak, unprincipled, and unpatriotic, were to veer too far in the direction of appeasement of the West.

  General Vladimir Kozov, according to his special designation in times of emergency, was the new official commander of the Black Ghosts. He was bent on being their last commander and the one who would disband them for good. Although he understood the fears that had brought about their creation, he believed them to be outdated. Given the fact that the Russian president was on the path of peace, Kozov assumed, as did the rest of the Russian high command, that the Black Ghosts’ three underground command posts located in Vladivostok, Novosibirsk, and Moscow were a sealed relic of a bygone era, to be dealt with at a later date.

  In order to prevent the activation of the Black Ghosts by any unauthorized personnel, new sophisticated security systems had been installed in all three command p
osts. The Moscow command bunker was protected by a new Iris Identification Scanner, which prevented anyone but General Kozov from powering up the mobilization computer, without which the units were only an imaginary army, fragmented and unreachable. The computer was at the heart of the Black Ghosts’ call-up mechanism and held all the activation codes.

  General Kozov had advocated that the Black Ghosts be disbanded altogether, but the presidential decree dissolving the units was slow in coming. Meanwhile, General Kozov had to content himself with the promise that the IIS was fail-safe.

  If tampered with, the IIS worked as an explosive lock, instantly destroying all information stored in the computer. The only way to unlock it was for Kozov to have the device scan his eye and compare the image of his iris to a previous scan. Without that image, no one could unleash the fury of the Black Ghosts.

  The career of Kozov’s predecessor as commander of the Black Ghosts was less auspicious. Implicated in the 1988 coup attempt against Gorbachev, he had been exiled to a prison colony in Siberia and was now presumed dead, a victim of the horrific accident at the nuclear facility adjacent to where he was incarcerated.

  Peter, however, was sitting in the Combat Information Center of the Black Ghosts’ underground command bunker outside Moscow. He was well rested and felt comfortable in his tailored black uniform, with gold general’s shoulder braids. His legs were raised on the dark wooden desk, his chair tilted back. In these surroundings—the familiar charts, screens, the smell of fresh paint, a staple of underground military bunkers—Peter felt at home. It was almost as if the years at the prison colony had never happened. But they had, and for that Peter was about to tear his revenge from the living tissue of his adversaries.

  “Operation Czar is on schedule, sir,” said Colonel Sokolov, a tall, slim man with a sophisticated aura about him.

  Peter lit a cigarette. “And the communication array?” His eyes were like two slits scanning Sokolov’s face.

  “Most of it has been delivered, sir. The rest should arrive any day.”

  “How about installation?”

  “On schedule, sir.”

  “What is the status of the prisoners?”

  Before Peter had arrived at the bunker, his men had found a small maintenance crew and a contingent of guards. They’d been quickly overrun and taken prisoner.

  “They were interrogated, sir. Colonel Yazarinsky handled that.”

  “And?”

  Sokolov’s face showed his distaste for his fellow colonel. “He disposed of them, sir.”

  “I see.” The general leaned back in his chair and gazed for several seconds at the darkened computer screens on the walls of the control room. Except for the yellowish glow of the emergency lights, nothing was on. The only system that worked was the life-support system for the skeleton maintenance crews. “Any progress on breaking the lock on the computer?”

  Sokolov looked uncomfortable. “Not very much, sir. The technician said we might have to find an alternative to the computer.”

  “An alternative?” Peter was about to pour out all his anger on the slim officer standing to attention on the other side of his desk. But he reconsidered. Still staring at the blank screen, Peter seemed to reach some kind of decision. There was a hint of a smile on his face.

  “Get Colonel Yazarinsky in here now,” he said absently. “I have a little job for him.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Grantsville, Utah

  February 17

  06:05 hours

  Dawn cautiously probed the winter sky, dragging the valley from under the shadows of the jagged snow-covered peaks to the east.

  “Le Bistro” was located in an old converted warehouse at the west end of Grantsville, where Main Street bends northwest, joining up with Highway 138 on its way from Salt Lake City. The restaurant was the source of a mouth-watering aroma of fresh-baked croissants that lingered in the cold air. Using a recipe he picked up in the south of France, Edward baked an increasing number of the crescent-shaped rolls every morning. He now removed the last sizzling tray from the oven, placing it in a tall metal rack.

  Whistling a tune only he could have recognized, Edward attended to his favorite part of the morning: preparing a hearty, somewhat oversized breakfast for himself. His staff was not due in for another hour, which gave him all the time he needed.

  He had begun this routine the day after he opened ten months ago, and since then he had guarded it as a sacred rite. For someone who had dragged himself through some of the bloodiest gutters the world had to offer, as an officer with Alpha 27, a highly specialized and extremely covert operation unit of U.S. Military Intelligence, this was as close to heaven as it could get.

  Edward had just poured himself a cup of hot black Colombian coffee and set his loaded plate—three eggs over easy, six crispy strips of bacon, and a basket of fresh croissants—on the counter separating the open kitchen from the bistro’s main seating area, when he heard a knock at the door. It was the door leading from the kitchen into a back alley.

  Edward glanced quickly at the neon Michelob clock on the wall above the cash register. It was ten past six. The road in front of the restaurant was empty, and large, fluffy snowflakes descended gently through the fading yellow glow of the street lamp.

  The second knock was stronger, more vigorous. Edward felt the hairs bristle on the back of his neck: In his book, surprises were rarely pleasant. All his senses were now alert. Moving fast, he reached under the counter and drew a .357 Magnum Ruger revolver from a secret compartment.

  “Just a minute,” he called out, moving closer to the door. Through the spy hole, Edward got a fish-eye view of the back alley and the woman standing at the door. Clumps of wet snow clung to her coat and to the knitted black cap pulled over her ears. She was alone, her arms folded across her chest, trying to keep warm.

  “We open at seven,” he said through the door. “What do you want?”

  “I’m looking for Edward.” The woman’s voice was barely audible. “Larry Collins sent me.”

  Larry Collins was not a name that would come up in casual conversation. Larry was CIA, one of the few friends who knew where Edward could be found. They had met on a job about ten years ago, in the Middle East, and had become friends—not common in the murky province of covert activity. The work they had done together was usually referred to in the inner circle of the intelligence community as an INHAP OP—It Never Happened Operation—giving the politicians their precious plausible deniability. Therefore, on the record, Larry and Edward had never met, which was exactly the reason they could be friends without endangering each other.

  Edward pulled the latch and moved a few feet back. “It’s open.” He stood with his back to the wall, the gun cocked.

  The fact that it was a woman behind the door and not some gorilla made no difference to him. During his career, he had witnessed more than one incident when a tough, well-trained combat grunt had been blown to bits by a small, innocent-looking girl. Aside from that, saying “Larry sent me” didn’t necessarily make it so. For now he had only her word for it.

  It took her a moment to push the door open, as it had frozen to the jamb. A burst of cold air carrying her gentle scent reached him almost the instant she entered.

  “Hi,” she said, closing the door behind her, a brief apologetic smile touching her pale face. She seemed to be in a hurry, restless, catching her breath. She stamped her feet to get the slush off her boots and then dusted the melting snow from her shoulders. By the time she pulled off her black cap, releasing a splash of disheveled blond hair, she was standing in a small puddle of melted snow.

  “What can I do for you?” He lowered the gun slightly.

  “Are you Edward?” She stared at the menacing Magnum bore. The smile was gone. Even in her big, bulky coat, she seemed graceful, fragile. Edward thought she was very beautiful, and very tense, as though she expected something terrible to happen.

  “Yes. And you are—?”

  “Natalie,” she responded
quickly. “I work with Larry.” She stepped forward, extending her hand.

  Edward raised the gun. “Let’s not be hasty,” he said.

  She froze, her hand hanging in midair. “Right. Listen—”

  “Where’s Larry?”

  “He’s wounded, he’s in the van. We must hurry,” she pleaded.

  Edward felt a knot form in his gut. A friend was in peril, but he didn’t let it show.

  “How do I know this isn’t a trick to get me out there?”

  “Larry said you owed him a bottle of scotch—Navy Cut.”

  “That’s rum. Navy Cut’s a rum, not a scotch.”

  “He said you’d say that. Now can we go?” She pulled her cap back on and turned to leave.

  It was a joke between Larry and him, having to do with payment for a shot of illicit booze they had enjoyed together in Saudi Arabia, after a successful incursion into Iraq. Edward reached for a brown leather coat on the rack by the door and stuck the gun into his belt. “What happened?”

  “He’s been shot.” She opened the door. “The van’s a couple of blocks from here.”

  “Who shot him?” Edward followed her out, closing the door behind him.

  “Look, mister,” she said coldly and impatiently, “what goddamn difference does it make who shot him? He said you’d help.”

  “Why didn’t you park here?”

  “I wanted to be sure the place was safe before I brought him here. Things are not what they appear to be lately.”

  It stopped snowing, but the day was still very cold. By the time they had reached the end of the alley and turned onto Main Street, Edward could feel the chill penetrating his coat, and his ears were smarting. He put his hands deeper into his coat pockets, envying the woman in her black cap.

  At the corner of Apple and Hale he saw the dark blue van parked across the street from the small town hall building. The exhaust was emitting a white cloud, indicating the engine was running.

  “You drive,” she said as she entered the back seat.