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Boyd says, “Nice to know, but I don’t want him looking over our shoulders if we screw up.”
Liam says, “Simple solution to that.”
“What?”
He folds his arms. “We can’t screw up. Ever.”
CHAPTER 17
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS later they are relaxing in another CIA safe house, this one near the town of Puntala, Finland, northeast of where they had started yesterday morning. Liam thinks “house” is stretching it, since their quarters is an old log home. A fire is burning in the fireplace to cut through the damp, and Liam finally unwinds, drinking a can of Karhu beer. Back outside of Saint Petersburg, he and the crew had driven about a half hour before getting to another industrial park, where the van was stripped of the interior and the fake exterior and left behind a building with keys in it. They had scattered in returning to Finland, either taking a bus or a rental car, and after rendezvousing here, the captured hard drives and files were brought to the CIA station in the American embassy in Helsinki.
Liam checks the time. Those materials were probably arriving this moment at Langley.
Yet two things are gnawing at him, like little rats coming out at night to chew at the base of his skull.
One was the woman soldier—probably attached to the GRU—whom he had shot back at the bot farm. A righteous kill, since she was armed, she was in a place that was designated as a target byPresident Barrett, and she was in uniform and about to shoot either him or Boyd.
Yet armed and in uniform, she was still a young woman, and the only woman in the GRU building.
Damn.
But he remembers the last time he saw his brother, Brian, when he was on leave before his final tour to Afghanistan. They had been drinking late into the evening in the basement of their parents’ home, and Brian suddenly said, “You know what you learn out there in the ’stan, Liam? I’ll tell you. Your job is to get home alive, you and your troops. Nothing else matters. And sometimes you gotta make a hard decision. Like that goat herder coming your way. Is he just a kid? Or is he carrying a grenade in that pouch? And what do you do if he doesn’t stop advancing? I’ll tell you. You remember job one.”
All right,he thinks. He’s done jobs in Syria and Iraq and Suriname, and has been up against bad guys and had done what had to be done …
This time, a young woman.
But a woman with a pistol.
If Liam had been a few seconds slower, a bullet could have drilled him, or could have killed Boyd Morris. And how to pass that news onto Boyd’s wife and kids?Sorry your husband and dad got killed, but I hesitated …
All right then.
The other concern is the president. He had given Liam and Noa Himel wide latitude and depth in choosing their teams, weapons, and getting the job done.
But Liam doesn’t like the eye-of-God oversight.
Was the president just being cautious?
Or paranoid about his orders being carried out?
Overall Liam is pleased with the mission outcome. Last year that bot farm had hijacked some social media platforms in Myanmarand had spread false stories and rumors about atrocities being conducted from a mountain tribe up north, leading to thousands of innocents being massacred. That led to a lockdown by the military government, which then led to international sanctions—except from Russia—which signed some lucrative development contracts for itsGazprom Neftoil corporation.
Now Russia paid a price for its killing of innocents. At the end of the day, Liam will put this op in the win column.
One of his team members sits down next to him on the sagging couch. The fire crackles and sparks.
“Ask you a question?” he says.
Liam says, “Ask away.”
“Back at the GRU bot farm, just as we were leaving, you dropped a pistol and a notebook. Looked like some of the pages were charred.”
“Good eye.”
“Thanks.”
“So what was that about?”