“Taking out Gareth Twain would do a lot of people a lot of good.”
“Don’t worry, Barb,” Bolan said. “I won’t leave anyone out. Anybody connected to Trofimov, everyone involved in the killings of U.S. service people and in Trofimov’s antimilitary operations, is going to answer for their crimes. What have you heard about this videotaped massacre TBT is shouting about?”
“Nothing beyond the reports so far,” Price replied. “We’re checking. So far our contacts within the armed forces are drawing blanks. The Pentagon is stonewalling, saying only that it will conduct a full investigation.”
“Which means they have no idea what’s going on.”
“Exactly,” Price said. “That’s the response they give when they’re caught flat-footed. So far, we have no confirmation of the incident itself, or even of the identities of the soldiers supposedly involved. The quality of the tape is poor. It’s going to be hard to get facial recognition, and the names on the soldiers’ uniforms are too blurry to be readable. Bear did uncover some data traffic indicating the Pentagon is trying to run some enhancement on the tapes, to get to the bottom of just who is doing what to whom. Nothing so far.”
“How bad is it?”
“Really bad, Striker,” Price said. “The foreign press is screaming bloody murder. Our own people are just as loud. The massacre is the talk of every cable news show, radio program and major network broadcast. It’s on every channel and it’s twenty-four hours a day.”
Bolan said nothing; his fists clenched in anger as he considered the implications. “All right. Let me know if anything changes.”
“Understood. Everything’s uploaded. You have all the data now,” Price said. Bolan checked his phone and confirmed that. “We’re still working on the phone number you gave us. It has several layers of redundant encryption protecting it. Bear has Akira running a back-end trace to try to find it through the network in which it’s hidden.”
“Understood,” Bolan repeated. Price was referring to Akira Tokaido, one of the Farm’s computer geniuses. “The fact that someone wanted the Patriotism Riders there, just to make sure they were killed with the others, is significant. It makes the whole thing that much bolder a statement, that much more horrible. It says a lot about the people we’re dealing with.”
“We’re on it,” Price said.
“Let me know if you find anything. I’ll see you when I see you.”
“Striker?” Price had asked.
“Yeah, Barb?”
“Be careful.”
“I will.”
The soldier had busied himself with cleaning his weapons, making sure to disassemble the Beretta and give it a thorough once-over. The usually gregarious Grimaldi was quiet, for the most part, content to let Bolan work through the operation in his mind.
Bolan reviewed the mission data on the site in Cedar Rapids. It wasn’t especially significant in terms of his priority list of targets, but it was the closest Trofimov asset. The type of operation Bolan was about to run was based on the notion of shaking the tree. You targeted the enemy’s assets, made a lot of noise, caused a lot of damage and then stood back to see what shook loose. Along the way, some of Trofimov’s secrets were bound to be exposed; the facilities, by definition, were somehow dirty, or the Farm’s cybernetics staff wouldn’t have ferreted them out as suspicious.
Trofimov’s reaction to Bolan’s incursions would tell the soldier, and by extension the Farm, everything he would need to know. Countless times, Bolan had marched willingly into the jaws of death to see what would try to bite him. This was no different.
The facility outside Cedar Rapids was ostensibly an assembly plant for DVD players. The parts were manufactured abroad, mostly in China, then imported and put together for domestic sale in the United States. The legal details were irrelevant to Bolan, but he was at least vaguely aware that such an arrangement allowed Trofimov to claim the devices were “made in the U.S.A.” while achieving the cost savings of foreign import manufacture. There were probably certain import restrictions that were also being circumvented.
What was important about this particular plant, according to reports Price had sent and the data Kurtzman and his people had compiled, was that it had never made any money. Quite the contrary; when the financial records were traced all the way to their virtual conclusions, past several holding and front companies and through more than a few creative bookkeeping tricks, the plant consumed more money than it would if it were operating at a total loss. That meant it was burning through cash a lot faster than ever it could, even if Trofimov was building DVD players free of charge. While it wasn’t unheard-of for a large company to produce a commodity at a loss, to gain market share or build brand loyalty, the degree of financial drain in this case was staggering. It was far too much for the plant to be anything but a front for something else. Bolan intended to find out just what was being done behind the scenes.
When he knew that, he’d be a step closer to learning just who and what this Yuri Trofimov was, and why the man had chosen to make the United States his enemy. Bolan had no illusions. This wasn’t an investigation, nor was it a mystery. He wasn’t a detective. He was a soldier, and he was performing a soldier’s task.
Search and destroy.
CHAPTER FOUR
Yuri Trofimov sat at his desk as the makeup girl swabbed the last of the television makeup from his face. He favored her with a smile full of perfectly capped teeth. From his elaborately styled hair to his tailored suit to his spray-on tan, there was nothing about Yuri Trofimov that was not meticulously groomed, controlled and managed to effect. The man left nothing to chance, and he was very proud of that fact.
Swiveling in his chair, he took in the view from the window overlooking downtown Orlando. Several buildings, not quite as tall as his own TBT headquarters, were still under construction. He had never quite lost the joy he had felt as a boy, watching construction work, and there were times when he watched the cranes below slowly swiveling over the steel skeletons that were taking shape in the shadow of Trofimov’s own building. Downtown Orlando had been undergoing something of a commercial revitalization for some months now, though in these turbulent economic times it was anybody’s guess how long that would last.
There were precious few memories from his childhood that were pleasant ones. Growing up, he had believed he was destined for the navy. He had never known his father; his mother, little more than a prostitute who existed on the kindness of the many men she bedded, had hinted more than once that Yuri’s father had been a naval officer. Her indifference to him had set the tone for his early life. He was neither abused nor loved, neither cared for nor hated. The empty ache left him eventually, when he learned to substitute for it other, preferable emotions. Chief among these were anger and ambition.
Young Yuri Trofimov had a gift, he soon learned, when among his peers and even his teachers in school. He had a talent for influencing others, for captivating them with his stories and with the expression of his opinions. People cared about what Yuri Trofimov had to say. They cared about his opinions. They wished to hear him when he spoke. He learned, therefore, that he had power. With a taste of power came the desire for more.
As the infrastructure he had always taken for granted began to crumble, as the ships of the former Soviet navy began to rust in their docks and to sink from neglect, Trofimov gave up the last hopes he’d held of serving in that force. Already, his mind was alive with possibilities, with ways to use his talents both to enrich himself and to extend the power he believed was destined to be his. Power over his fellow men: that was Yuri Trofimov’s greatest goal, his greatest hope