“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.