“So, what are you going to do?”
“What I do best,” Bolan replied. “But I have some questions first, and you’re the only one who can answer them.”
* * *
VLADIMIR MOSCOVICH PLANNED to kill Davis Haglemann. Not right away—he needed the guy at the moment to keep the workers in line until he could accomplish his mission. But the time was coming soon, and when it did, Moscovich would act on it. For now, he had to entertain the liberal bastard’s whims and avoid doing anything that would arouse suspicions. If anything, the Russian understood that Haglemann commanded a much larger following. He knew the area better, and he had greater resources from which to draw.
Moscovich and his fifty men would be no match for the hundred or so guns at Haglemann’s disposal.
“Granted, they don’t have our experience,” Moscovich told his second-in-command, Alexei Vizhgail.
“But what they lack there they make up for in sheer numbers. That is not a battle I think we can win.”
“Agreed. It has always been my contention that we must avoid a fight if we’re to complete our mission.”
Indeed, it was critical that they finish what they’d started. The technology had now been used twice with very favorable results, and those back at headquarters in St. Petersburg were pleased with his reports and progress. But it still meant little this far north.
“Maybe it won’t have to come to that, my friend,” Moscovich said.
Once they were in the sedan and headed for the plane awaiting them at the harbor, he said, “Yet these small tests feel like a hollow victory, despite our success. I want to take this much further, to make the Americans pay for what they did to us. Well, at least what one American had done. One man! It is still almost unthinkable to me!”
Indeed, it had been difficult to believe even when he’d first learned of it. Famed network leader Yuri Godunov, head of the organization’s operations in New York City, had masterminded a brilliant plan to overtake America’s banking systems. Thanks to a cowardly hacker who’d managed to get himself captured, the plan was exposed and all the players were either captured or destroyed. Somehow, a lone government agent had managed to penetrate the Godunov family security and wreak havoc from the inside out. The trail eventually had led this enigmatic killer back to St. Petersburg where he’d murdered both Godunov and an NSA asset they had managed to turn, Gregori Nasenko. The pair had been shot dead in their downtown office, Nasenko in the head and Godunov in the back as he’d attempted to flee.
“Executed in cold blood” was how Moscovich’s masters had described it.
Those words had haunted him for the next few years. He’d been childhood friends with Stepan, Godunov’s nephew, who had also allegedly met his demise at the hands of the mysterious American agent. These events had affected him deeply, and when the opportunity to get revenge came, Moscovich jumped at it.
They arrived at Adak Port, the hive of activity for Nazan Bay. Of course, it was dark and there wasn’t much happening at that time of night. By the time they reached their destination in the nearby Rat Islands it would be daylight again, a common occurrence in this part of the world. Many thought that it was cold and dark most of the time, but, in fact, the opposite was true. At least from the aspect of sunlight. The more northern the territory, the more hours of daylight. Of course, even more sunlight could not stop the bitter cold and storms, but that was hardly news.
This environment didn’t bother Moscovich or his men. They had trained for it in some of the coldest regions of Russia. They were used to it, knew how to survive in its inhospitable embrace, and they were all the better prepared for it. Of course, their base of operations was another matter entirely.
Within minutes of arriving at the port, they were aboard their motor launch and traveling at high speed across the Bering Sea. Thanks to Haglemann’s influence, they could come and go at will without having to jump through hoops. They didn’t need any clearances, naturally—it wouldn’t do to slam into another boat just to protect their autonomy—but it was better than attempting to travel by aircraft. Especially since word had it that the military had turned most of the area into a no-fly zone. But nobody questioned them, and no customs or police agents showed up to inspect their boat. Not that it would have mattered. Haglemann had the Adak police department under his thumb, too. They operated independently, but they didn’t really concern themselves with Haglemann’s specific business interests.
Greed. The entire show was run by greed, and Moscovich had been trained to take advantage of that selfish desire, particularly among American citizens.
The boat reached the island four hours later at a makeshift dock nestled along the southern fringes of the Rat Islands. Moscovich and Vizhgail left the dock and headed toward an outcropping, making their way behind the rocks and eventually reaching the entrance to a cavern concealed behind a wall of brush. Mounted to an oval frame of aluminum tubes was a heat-scattering material designed to diffuse the signature that marked it as a heat source.
They had landed on Semisopochnoi Island, though their team had taken to calling it Semisop for short. The fact that it was uninhabited was one of the main reasons for choosing it, but also because it was highly challenging terrain for outsiders to negotiate. At only three-hundred-sixty square kilometers it had four peaks that were between seven hundred and almost thirteen hundred meters. Its last volcanic eruption, in Mount Cerberus, had occurred in 1987, more than one hundred years after the previous one. However, its magma chambers were still quite active and not as viscous, so they tended to flow much faster and build up gases at a higher rate, too. All in all, it wasn’t the safest place to be, but it was abandoned and drew very little attention outside the scientific community. Nobody would bother them there—nobody would even bother to look for them there, so Moscovich was convinced they could conduct their work undisturbed.
So far, he’d been right. Semisop also had the added advantage of being a perfect prison, as could attest the group of military personnel who sat under round-the-clock guard while jailed behind giant fishing cages.
After Moscovich and his team had successfully used the new jamming technology to down the plane—there had been no survivors—they’d tested its efficacy against the USCGC Llewellyn. The device had performed with spectacular results, although Moscovich didn’t really pretend to understand all the technical achievements behind it.
All he knew was that they now had a fantastic weapon to use against the Americans.
Of course, there had been some survivors aboard the cutter that they had been forced to take prisoner. Moscovich didn’t fancy himself a soldier, but he also wasn’t a cold-blooded killer. He did not murder unarmed personnel, be they American military or otherwise. He sought only to further the ambitions of his people by stripping America of her identity and her wealth. If he could do that, nature would do the rest, as history had repeatedly shown its abhorrence of a vacuum. Then again, the prisoners hadn’t proven to be much bother. Once the key troublemakers had been dispatched by Moscovich’s group of commandos, who’d been schooled in the finest tactics by former Spetsnaz and GRU trainers, the remaining navy personnel had fallen in line quickly.
Moscovich and Vizhgail moved past the group and advanced deeper into the cavern until they reached the main operations area. The lights were powered by long-life battery cells, which were recharged using a series of small diesel generators. They had plenty of potable water hauled in regularly from Port Adak, along with food and other supplies that could last them a month, maybe two if they had to ration.
They could have operated here perhaps indefinitely. But it was damn hot, the result of molten lava that rose through natural vents in the dense basalt and rock. The operations supervisor, Benyamin Tokov, one of the toughest and smartest men he had ever known, greeted them with a curt nod. “How did it go?”