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Noa finishes off her drink, holds up the glass like she’s examining it. “Me, turning this down? Not a chance in the world. I just want to go into it with clear eyes and an understanding of the rewards and the possible risks. Truth be told, I like being picked out by Barrett.”
Liam picks up his empty tavern mug, clinks it against Noa’s empty glass. “Me, too. We just got our hunting license from the boss. Let’s go hunting.”
Noa clinks it in return, puts her glass down. “Yes, let’s go hunting. But remember this, Liam.”
“What’s that?”
Noa says, “One of these days, the game wardens are going to find out what we’re doing, and there’ll be hell to pay.”
CHAPTER 14
SAINT PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
TWO WEEKS AFTER that late-night meeting at Tuckerman Roadhouse outside of Langley, Virginia, Liam Grey is sitting in the front passenger seat of an orange-and-white van parked a few short meters away from a one-story concrete building with armored doors and narrow windows in an office park just outside of Saint Petersburg.
The building’s flat roof holds a number of satellite dishes and from a small substation heavy power cables run to its west side. Similar concrete buildings are scattered around this office park, the pavement cracked and bumpy, but the vehicles parked in front of the target building are sleek and new, reflecting the status of their owners.
Sitting next to him in the driver’s seat is Boyd Morris, an operator from the CIA’s Special Activities Division and a former member of the Army’s Delta Force. He’s slim, with blond hair and a charming smile, who looks like he would fall over in a stiff wind, but Liam knows from experience in the field just how hard he is behind that skinny body and sweet smile.
“Well?” Boyd asks, holding a clipboard up to his face, like he’s checking directions or a business order.
“Looks okay from here,” Liam says.
“Yeah.”
It’s a sweet sunny day in April, and traffic roars along the near E-20 highway. The landscape is flat, with lots of brush and pine trees surrounding this quiet-looking office park. Hard to believe that more than eighty years ago, German Army units came racing along these same roads on their way to nearby Saint Petersburg—then known as Leningrad—in their task to conquer or starve the city and kill millions.
History, Liam thinks. This nation is bloody with it.
He also thinks of how utterly alone they are. In the Army you had communications, contingency plans, and Air Force and other airborne assets one radio message away to save your ass if you got in trouble. That all changed when he joined the Agency, of course, but most times, there was an out. You were under some form of diplomatic protection or you were someplace where, if captured, you’d eventually be traded in some future spy swap.
But not now.
They were alone, in enemy territory, going in heavy, with no cavalry over the horizon, ready to ride in to rescue them.
Liam shifts in his seat. The president ordered him here, and that is good enough.
Boyd says, “Funny how something so important is stuck out in the middle of the sticks, no razor wire, no guard towers.”
“Hiding in plain sight,” Liam says.
Boyd grins. “Gee, you Company fellas know all of the tricks of the trade, don’t you?”
“You’d think,” he says.
Liam waits, looks at his watch.
Sixty seconds to go.
In that unimpressive concrete structure before them, adjacent to a scrapyard, a gas station, three other warehouses, and a line of old green-and-whiteAvtobusvehicles—their tires missing—from theSaint Petersburg transit system, is a facility operated by the GRU, Russian Military Intelligence.
The military personnel inside that building belong to the GRU’s Twelfth Directorate, responsible for Information Warfare and more than a decade of cyberattacks and news bots spreading lies and disinformation without consequence.
Until today.
Liam recalls what he told his crew last night, in an Agency safe house in Imatra, Finland, less than ten miles from the Russian border and just over a two-hour drive away from Saint Petersburg.
The military personnel in that building all have blood on their hands,Liam said.They’ve been responsible for disrupting elections, taking down governments, and stealing millions of dollars. They’ve taken the lead crippling the internet whenever they feel like it, and their internet postings have fostered tribal and ethnic cleansing resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people, all to fulfill their government’s strategic goals.