Page 120 of Spymaster

The driver pointed to the sign. “Ten kilometers from the Polish border. This is as far as I go.”

Harvath thanked him and, climbing down from the cab, accompanied him around back to let his teammates out.

The driver had several cases of bottled water and encouraged them to take as much as they needed.

Staelin made a point to take the driver aside and thank him personally. “You come from a family of warriors. It is an honor to know you. Thank you for helping us.”

Normally in a situation like this, Staelin would have handed the man one of his military challenge coins. This was a covert operation, though, and they weren’t carrying anything that could identify them as Americans.

But in his boot was a small backup knife designed for Delta operators called theSgian Dubh. Bending down, he removed it and handed it to the man.

The Lithuanian was touched and tried to refuse it, but Staelin insisted.

Reaching into his pocket, the man pulled out an aged pocketknife. It had been hand-painted with some sort of a religious icon, probably a saint.

It was apparent that he had owned it for a long time.

Staelin tried to refuse the gift, but the man insisted, so he relented, accepting it graciously.

“Ready to roll?” Harvath asked, interrupting the moment between Staelin and the descendant of the Forest Brothers.

“Yup,” said the Delta Force operative. “Good to go.”

One by one, the team all shook the truck driver’s hand, thanking him. Then he climbed into his cab and drove off while they disappeared into the woods and got ready for the most dangerous part of their mission yet.

CHAPTER 72

On behalf of Lithuanian Intelligence, Filip Landsbergis had done an exceptional job. The cow pasture drop zone notwithstanding, everything else had been perfect. He had provided a critical part of the operation, getting Harvath and his team into and out of enemy territory.

Landsbergis’s final piece of intelligence had been about where the team was now headed.

Across from the border checkpoint, along the shores of Lake Goldap, was a Russian campground. For all intents and purposes, it looked like a wonderful place to take a family. It had cabins, picnic tables, showers, toilets, a dining hall, a trading post, and a stage for skits. But for all its outward appearances, in reality, it was an underground railway stop for Russian spies.

As they moved into and out of Poland, Lithuania, and other adjacent NATO countries, many of the spies came to the campground to unwind and be debriefed. It was a hangover from the KGB days when vacation camps had been created to provide inexpensive holidays for officers of good standing.

There was plenty of cheap booze and even cheaper women, rotated in from neighboring Belarus a month at a time.

American movies, dubbed in Russian, played in the theater while meals that sounded classy, but were actually very low-rent, were cooked up in the vermin-infested camp kitchen.

Over at the Russian border patrol checkpoint, the officers had been instructed to ignore the alcohol-fueled parties as well as anything else that took place at the camp—if they wanted to keep their jobs.

But those kinds of things usually happened at the height of summer. Now it was off-season. Activity at the camp might just give the border guards something to pay attention to. It could go either way.

Covering the distance to the camp was made difficult by Tretyakov’s unwillingness to walk. They would shove him forward and he would cooperate for a few steps and then he’d go back to shuffling his feet.

Harvath reached over and placed his fingers beneath the man’s injured jaw. The area was so sensitive that the Russian’s entire body seized, his eyes began to water, and he came right up onto his toes.

It only took once to secure his compliance. There was no more slowing the team down after that.

From where the Lithuanian had dropped them off, it was a full ten kilometers to the border, but only three klicks to the campground.

They proceeded in a staggered formation, with their night-vision goggles on and their suppressed weapons hot, ready for anything.

Their hope, of course, was that they wouldn’t encounter anything; that they would just move quietly through the campground and no one would know they had ever been there.

That hope, though, was dashed the moment they set foot on the property. Coming up the road from the main camp building was a small Russian military unit.

Sloane was on point and gave the signal for the team to melt into the woods. There, they all froze and didn’t make a sound.