Black Ghosts Read online

  General Kozov settled comfortably into the soft leather upholstery of the limousine. Things had turned out very well.

  The conference produced most, if not all, of what both sides had expected. President Konyigin had made it very clear to him that neither side wanted total nuclear disarmament. “For a start,” the president had said, “safe disposal of nuclear warheads is far more expensive than keeping them poised for action, and not nearly as reassuring.” He had talked to the veteran soldier about the “what if” factor: What if some Third World upstart got a hold of a bomb and decided to play cards with the big boys? “No,” Kozov could hear the president saying, “disarmament is definitely not an option.”

  So they came up with the next best thing: trust and verify, as the old Russian proverb went, or as his American counterpart had said, “In God we trust; everybody else pays cash, baby.”

  What this translated to in practice was the deployment of several hundred Russian technicians who would be seated at computer consoles in all American strategic command posts, such as the Strategic Air Command Center, known simply as SAC, near Omaha, Nebraska. The technicians would be keeping a lookout for any targeting changes for the intercontinental ballistic missiles, referred to as ICBMs in the tedious documents the general had to read over the last several days. The technicians would be patched into the central computer, and as long as the readout confirmed that no missiles were set to land anywhere on the territory of the Confederation of Independent States, life went on as usual. At three hundred and seven locations, more than a thousand people would keep their eyes open and fixed on the screens, one shift after another, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

  Each technician would be connected at all times to the Supreme Command Center of the new Russian army in Kolozny. The telephone line would be a constant open link, emitting an electronic pulse every one-hundredth of a second. If even one of the pulses was missed or out of sync, a state of emergency would be declared.

  And, of course, for each Russian technician in the U.S., there would be an American in Russia—not a very fair trade, the general chuckled to himself. Each American would be connected to the Pentagon by a similar pulse line, likewise trusting and verifying.

  The general and the American negotiator had concluded the agreement in the early hours. The final text they had arrived at would be the primary document to be signed in less than three weeks’ time, when the president of the United States of America would fly to Moscow for the historic ceremony, “paving the way,” as President Konyigin had put it, “for Russia’s onward march to peace, prosperity, and a place of honor among the world’s democracies.” Not to mention, the general thought, the huge American aid package and the boost that the deal would give to both the Russian and American presidents in their respective bids for re-election.

  The general was proud of his day’s work. The sense of achievement energized him, although he hadn’t slept for twenty-one hours. He thought with pleasant anticipation of the journey ahead. First, a brief stop at the hotel to pick up his luggage, already packed by his trusted aides. Then the drive to LaGuardia, the flight toward dawn, and the return to Mother Russia. It had been a very satisfying day indeed.

  When it reached the Avenue of the Americas, the motorcade turned right, heading toward Central Park. Two blocks farther, it turned again along Central Park South, and the lights of the Plaza Hotel came into view. They turned in front of the hotel and parked opposite the Pulitzer Memorial Fountain.

  The hotel doorman in his gold braided uniform attempted to open the limousine door but was politely and firmly ushered aside by the Secret Service men who bolted out of their cars. The general’s aides were waiting in their trench coats and fur hats, unafraid of the winter chill. They quickly loaded the suitcases into the trunk of the limo, then climbed into the spacious interior, sitting side by side on the seat facing the general. Few words were needed; they could see from the general’s calm smile and the triumphant gleam in his eye that all had gone well.

  The lead motorcycles were revving. When Captain McPhee’s terse order came through on their headsets, the two riders edged forward. They wheeled around the fountain, the Secret Service car followed, then the limo and the rest of the motorcade. They headed north again, turning almost immediately onto 59th Street and heading east towards the Queensboro Bridge.

  All was quiet on the bridge. A lone car sped across, its driver oblivious to everything except the need to get home to Queens and go to bed. If his eyes had turned to the right, instead of fixing upon the road ahead, he might have noticed the men dressed in all black, their faces obscured beneath the frog eyes and gaping mouth of a gas mask, standing silently, each by one of the massive steel girders that reached skyward along the side of the bridge.

  Near the end of the span, between Manhattan and Roosevelt Island, Yazarinsky looked at his watch and listened tensely for the sound of the helicopter. Shouldn’t be long now. He had it all planned to the last second, but it was the prey who would spring the trap. His men were in position, twenty-four of them, waiting, their backs pressed against the rivets that held the bridge together.

  Yazarinsky was a small man with thick eyebrows and tiny rodent’s eyes that barely moved behind the orbs of the gas mask. Under his bulletproof vest and black protective clothing, he was an unremarkable specimen. His somewhat oversized head sat directly on his shoulders, and he tended to tilt his entire body in the direction he was looking. You might even regard him as somewhat comical—until you got to know him. Then you might discover something remarkable about Yazarinsky: his uncommon talent for hurting people, and the enormous pleasure he got from watching them suffer.

  Boris had filled him in on the proposed route less than twenty-four hours ago. Good old Boris. Yazarinsky would make sure he received due reward for his efforts.

  Now he could hear the helicopter thumping above. The motorcade was on its way. Yazarinsky’s men, affectionately referred to by General Rogov as “Yazarinsky’s morticians,” readied themselves. In order to succeed they must act with split-second precision. No room for error; they knew their foes were not amateurs. When dealing with the American Secret Service, Yazarinsky had told them, there was no middle ground. “We are dealing with people who are mentally prepared to die; we must therefore accommodate them.”

  At twenty-seven minutes after three, the motorcade turned onto the entry ramp to the Queensboro Bridge, each car sounding a thud as it rolled over the metal mesh. The general heard the motorcycle team changing gears as it slowed slightly on the bridge. Captain McPhee made contact with a new escort team that was waiting for the motorcade to enter Queens. The radio mike thrust against his teeth, he exchanged a word with the helicopter pilot who had by now checked the route all the way through to the Queens Plaza. Somewhere above, the second chopper was circling back.

  Yazarinsky leaned out from his niche in the steel girder. He saw the empty pavement of the bridge stretching back to Manhattan. Then, at the mouth of the bridge, the lead motorcyclists came into view, their red and blue lights flashing. Silently, Yazarinsky waited. The motorcade drew closer. He could feel the bridge vibrate beneath his feet. In his mind, he had marked a diagonal line from where he stood to a point on the other side of the road.

  The Harley was almost thirty feet from him when it crossed the line. It was time. He stepped out from his shelter, submachine gun tucked hard into his shoulder. When the motorcyclist’s white helmet filled his sights, he squeezed the trigger.

  That first volley was the signal. Six more figures stepped out from their hiding places as one man, each with a Heckler and Koch MP5 machine gun spitting fire.

  The Heckler is a handy little gun; it can discharge a salvo of fifteen 9 mm bullets in one second. Reload, and you can fire another forty-five rounds from the extended cross clip. Because of its light weight, high accuracy, and excellent reliability, the Heckler is the weapon of choice for hostage-rescue work—and for other, more evil activities.

  Yazarinsky
’s armor-piercing bullets exploded the lead motorcyclist’s helmet and what was in it. For a moment the bike careened on wildly, lurching across the pavement like a chicken with its head cut off. Then it keeled over and was immediately struck by the second leader bike, now likewise out of action and blocking the road.

  The first of the cars—with Boris and the two American Secret Service men in it—veered and skidded to avoid the remains of the motorcycles. Behind it the limo slammed on the brakes, as did the two other Secret Service cars that were following. Stopping was against every bit of training the drivers had ever been given. But to proceed, you need a path, an opening, and Yazarinsky had made sure they had none. As the cars were being hit by one burst of machine-gun fire after another, any of the Secret Service men who were still living rolled out of the cars onto the ground, aiming their weapons at the source of the deadly storm. It was then that the six shooters and Yazarinsky moved back into the safety of the metal girders, as twelve other morticians stepped out with double the firepower, and from a new position down the road, they opened up. The men on the ground didn’t have a chance; not one shot had been returned from the motorcade.

  Then two more men moving in unison stood out from the bridge’s metalwork, aiming Soviet-made rocket-propelled antitank grenade launchers—known in the trade as RPGs—that they carried on their shoulders. The men drew their sights and fired.

  From each of the launchers, a rocket hissed through the air, and all the black-clad figures stepped back into the shelter of the steel girders. There was a moment of silence as the RPGs sought their targets. Then they struck. One hit the lead Secret Service car in the front passenger door. The second hit the car following the general’s limousine, entering the vehicle through the front windshield. Each car exploded in a ball of fire, blowing off the roof, hood, trunk, and doors, leaving only a burning shell with grotesque smoldering bodies twisted and melted into the hot metal.

  The gas escaping from the ruptured tank of the second Secret Service car engulfed the car behind it, which also blew up in flames. The blast sent the two motorcyclists who followed flying backward, one landing with his Harley on the windshield of the first patrol car. Not that the driver minded. As the black hole in his forehead testified, he would never mind anything again.

  By this time Yazarinsky’s men had stepped out again, firing at anything that still moved, sending a spray of cartridge cases flying upward and rattling against the bridge.

  On its way in from Queens, a Volkswagen minibus, filled with bleary-eyed tourists eager for their first sight of New York City, chanced to cross the bridge on the westbound lane. When they saw the flames and the men in their black protective clothing, the astonished passengers thought at first that a movie was being made—until the bullets tore through the side of the bus and ripped into their flesh. The driver died immediately, and the vehicle crashed at full speed into the railing, sending up sparks that ignited its damaged gas tank—a warm New York welcome for the few surviving passengers.

  McPhee, still outside the line of fire, hidden by the flaming car ahead of him and the black smoke from the burning tires, had seen enough. He yelled at his driver, “Back it up! Off the fucking bridge! Back, back, back!” The driver slammed the car into reverse and it screeched backward, hardly moving at first, as a hail of bullets bounced and rattled around it. The front windshield shattered into a million tiny bits of glass. From under the dashboard, McPhee looked up at his driver. The man’s head was tilted back at an unnatural angle, and McPhee realized he was looking at a dead man. The car was still moving furiously in reverse. Without hesitating, McPhee shouldered the corpse against the driver’s-side door, kicked the lifeless foot away from the pedal, reached across to grab the wheel, and struggled to regain control of the vehicle. At the end of the bridge he stopped, picked up the radio mike, and yelled into it.

  “Eagle One! Eagle One! What the fuck is this shit! Eagle One! Get me some fucking support! I need backup now!”

  Eagle One was approaching the bridge, hovering over the Hudson River on the Queens side.

  “Eagle Two! This is Eagle One! What’s happening?” The two choppers could not understand McPhee’s garbled message.

  “This is Eagle Two! I’m going in! Calling for backup!” The helicopter moved forward from its position above the 59th Street interchange to try to make sense of the confusion below.

  Like a beached whale, the limo was trapped between the burning shells of the Secret Service cars. Five men from the assault team rushed toward it. They attached a small detonation device to the door and stood aside. Seconds later the blast ripped the door off its hinges, tossing it onto the pavement. Instantly two of the five were facing the limo, firing into the opening. If anyone was still alive by the time the first of the men got inside the vehicle, that life was extinguished immediately. The men worked quickly: They knew what they had to do.

  “Eagle One! Eagle One!” The two helicopters were trying to establish communication, their radios screeching. Moving toward the midpoint of the bridge from either end, they drew close to the scene of battle.

  “Eagle Two, this is Eagle One. Can you see anything? Over.”

  “Negative, Eagle One, too much smoke.”

  “I’m going in closer. Did you get through to McPhee? Over.”

  “Negative.”

  Facing away from the bridge, two more of Yazarinsky’s men emerged from the shadows, each carrying on his shoulder a sleek, dark green cylinder containing a deadly Stinger surface-to-air missile. There was a thud and a cloud of smoke as each was fired, and a gray streak pointed skyward.

  “Look out! Something’s coming at you!” squawked the helicopter radio. But it was too late. The infrared heat-seeking missiles locked onto the choppers’ exhaust pipes, both Stingers found their marks, and simultaneously the helicopters were blown out of the sky in a flash and a thunder, leaving only a shower of debris.

  “Move! Move! Move!” Yazarinsky shouted to his men in the limo. The five ran back, two carrying a metal container, the kind used to house cameras or other delicate equipment.

  Down toward the mouth of the bridge, McPhee rolled out of the car and onto the pavement, gun in hand. He took cover between two of the bridge’s girders. The gunfire had stopped and it was ominously quiet, except for the occasional pop of exploding ammunition in the burning cars. He peeked out. The carnage was gruesome. There was no movement other than the flicker of flames and the black smoke billowing from the burning hulks of metal. None of the burnt and mangled bodies littering the bridge was moving. A stench of burnt flesh and rubber stood in the air.

  “Where are they?” he said to himself, peeking out from his cover on the other side, along the sidewalk that stretched between the girders and the railing, beyond which was nothing but the East River three hundred feet below. The big man was shaking: For the first time in his life, he knew what fear really was. His movements were frantic—he expected them behind him, blowing him to kingdom come at any second.

  He couldn’t believe his eyes. Amid the smoke and fire he saw them, all in black, standing on the railing, facing out. And then, as if by a prearranged signal, they all jumped off the bridge and into the black frigid air.

  Was this some bizarre kamikaze ritual? Without the benefit of a protective mask, McPhee’s eyes stung and watered from the smoke and dust. Nevertheless, he wasn’t blind. He knew what he had seen. He moved quickly across the sidewalk, leaving the cover of the steel girders, and leaned over the railing. It was then that he saw the long strands of the bungee cords, stretching down from the railings and disappearing into the darkness.

  At the other end of those cords, Yazarinsky and his men floated gently down toward the glimmering black surface of the river. When each man reached the lowest stretch of the cord, a couple of feet from the water’s surface, he released the catch on his belt and was left to slide easily into the waves as the bungee snapped back upward, twisting and writhing.

  Underneath the bridge, five motor launches w
ere waiting. As soon as the men hit the water, the outboard motors roared into life, and their gray rubber noses edged forward to the heads bobbing in the waves. Soon the men were hauled into the launches, five men to a boat. Special care was taken for the two men who between them bore the metal container, now wrapped in a flotation device. Once Yazarinsky was satisfied, he gave the word and the launches sped downriver.

  On the bridge, McPhee was tearing his hair in frustration. He had run back to the car and was trying to raise some backup on the radio.

  “They’re on the water!” he screamed, not realizing his radio antenna had been blown off in the blast. “In boats! Get after them, you fuckheads!”

  Even if he had been heard, it would have made very little difference. No one had expected any of this. They were used to dealing with emergencies on land, and even now a posse of squad cars was assembling at either end of the bridge. Ambulance sirens wailed, although there would be little for the ambulances to do other than put the bodies in bags and take them to the morgue.

  McPhee tried to console himself. Nobody could have dreamed of an attack in midair, halfway across a bridge, and an escape across the water far below. He had been attacked by a circus, he thought. It was a goddamn circus.

  “Get me the fucking Coast Guard!” McPhee yelled into his dead radio. “Where are those assholes when you need them! I want those boats stopped!”

  He ran back to the railing, leaned over the bridge, and emptied the magazine of his pistol into the black water in a futile gesture of fury. “Don’t they know bungeeing off a bridge is illegal in New York!” he shouted into the night.

  CHAPTER 4

  Grantsville, Utah

  February 19

  16:30 hours

  The antibiotics began to take effect on his friend two days after Edward had found him unconscious in a pool of blood. Still delirious and running a fever, he kept calling out for Natalie and mumbling something or other about the microcircuit. Then his words would trail off into delirium and he’d pass out again.