Echo Platoon (18 page)

“I asked if you wanted to leave a message for Feliks, and you fucking hung up on me, you rude motherfucker. Maybe I should come around and kick the shit out of
you,
cockbreath.”

I gave the Russkie ample time to answer. When he didn’t, when all I heard was breathing, it was my turn to slap the receiver shut. V pizdu
48
with him.

I dropped the cell phone into my vest pocket, got my bearings, then turned southeast toward Ashley
Evans’s flat, periodically checking my six as I limped along, working my throbbing, swollen left pinky, and wondering what the politically incorrect Azeri idiomatic for
Gimme a fucking Rogue-size bottle of your most effective extra-strength painkiller
might be.

“G
EEZUS, YOU LOOK LIKE HELL.
” A
SHLEY’S EYES WERE
saucer-wide as she stared at me through the half-opened door to her flat.

“You gotta do something about the road rage in this city, Major,” I deadpanned. “Say, you got any aspirin in this here joint?”

“Aspirin?
You want
aspirin?
Dick, you’re a candidate for a Syrette of morphine and about thirty stitches.”

We caught up while I dealt with my newly acquired dings and dents. Since Ashley had her flat swept twice a week for bugs by the embassy techies, she felt secure about talking. Even so, I made sure we had the radio and TV turned on full blast. Never, ever assume, right? Anyway, she told me that there were two developments she thought I should know about. First, about two hours ago she’d heard through an Azeri military source with close ties to what’s known as the
chornye smorodiny
,
49
or Caucasian Mafiya, that a contract might have been put out on me.

“I could have told you that.”

“Yeah, well you weren’t around to confirm it. I called the hotel, but you’d already left. I didn’t want to leave a message.” She looked critically at my collection of black-and-blue (not to mention purple, green, and raw-meat-red) bruises as I applied Betadine liberally to my torso. “I will upgrade that particular source from a B to an A,” she said, dutifully jotting a reminder to herself on the legal pad on which she’d been keeping notes.

I worked on the long cut that ran from my forehead into my hairline, wincing as I moved my sore-as-hell left pinky. “Any idea who ordered the hit?”

“Not really. If it was a Mafiya job it could have been anybody—Azeri, Russian, Iranian, Armenian. Hell, Dick, you’re so politically incorrect it could have been the Pentagon Gay Women’s Support Group.”

I considered that particular possibility then dismissed the thought: “Nah. The crew looked Russkie.”

“That doesn’t tell me anything. You can hire ex-Spetsnaz Alpha Team specialists for fifty bucks a day in these parts.”

“What about the guy on the phone?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Maybe significant, maybe not. Problem is there’s no way to tell who he was, because we have no way of checking cell phone numbers here. There are so many black-market cell phones, faxes, wireless transmitters, and other stuff, the one you took off Maximov’s body might have been stolen in London, or Rome, or who knows where. They blue-box everything out here.” She hooked her thumb in the direction of the plain-paper fax on her desk. “That’s probably one of the few legally acquired faxes in Azerbaijan.”

I nodded. Another dead end.

Her face brightened. “One piece of good news is
that you can check on the Amex card. There’ll be records. Maybe someone paying the bills.”

“I’ll get Merc on the case as soon as I get back to my secure phone.” I squinted into the mirror, evaluating my handiwork, and was gladdened by the results. I turned to face Ashley. “So—how do I look?”

“Like someone tried to beat the crap out of you.”

“Killjoy.”

“Yeah, well truth is truth.” She paced nervously back and forth. “There’s something else you should know,” she said.

“Shoot.”

“You’ve been declared persona non grata at the embassy.”

I’d sensed that from my brief chat with the RSO, and told Ashley as much. She explained that even though Ambassador Madison couldn’t force the Azeris to have me declared persona non grata and tossed out of Azerbaijan, she could box me out so far as the embassy was concerned. So, she’d put a memo out to the embassy staff, and I was now officially an untouchable. No one was to have anything to do with me, or my men. No support. No assistance. No nothing.

I shrugged. “What’s your point?”

“Well—”

“Look, Major—” I told Ashley in RUT—Roguishly Unvarnished Terms—what I thought of Ambassador Madison and her way of doing business. And since I don’t give a damn about Article 88,
50
I also told her
what I think of the current administration, and our commander in chief. Oh, I will salute his ass if I am in his presence, because the office, if not the man, has my respect. But when I salute, and I say, “Aye-aye, sir” to this commander in chief, I’m spelling sir
C-U-R.
That’s because, so far as I am concerned, this slimy sphincter is a traitor who has sold this country—and its armed forces—out for his own political gain.

Then, having made my views clear, I made sure Ashley understood that we SEALs don’t need a lot of support from people like Ambassador Madison. Hey, we are force multipliers. We develop our own networks for operations, intel, supply, and logistics. Bottom line? What the ambassador did, or didn’t do, frankly didn’t concern me one iota.

At the same, time, I knew that I couldn’t work in a vacuum. It’s dangerous to do so, because on this mission, everything had political ramifications. And while I’m not political, my big Slavic butt could be scorched pretty bad if I wasn’t plugged in. Bottom line? I would need someone inside the embassy to toss me infobits and political intel. Someone I could trust to watch my back.

Ashley threw up her hands. “Gee, Dick, given the long list of possibilities, I guess that person would have to be me.”

“You don’t have to volunteer—I can probably find someone else to help me out.”

She made a dismissive gesture. “You don’t believe that any more than I do. Look, Dick, I’m sure you and I don’t agree on everything—my feelings about the president, for example, aren’t as, ah, extreme as yours. And maybe I’m not altogether fond of your methods, either. But we are soldiers. We are military people. Now, the
ambassador thinks that buying off the enemy works. ‘Expediting,’ she calls it. I know better—and so do you. Most of the political people at the embassy think that talking is an end in itself. It’s kind of like diplomacy by way of Montel, or Hey-Raldo. They think that simply by
negotiating,
they’ll solve problems. Well, you and I know from experience that all that talk, without some kind of political muscle to back it up, is meaningless. Look at the way Saddam Hussein walked all over Kofi Annan. Look at how the Serbs screwed Richard Holbrooke. There are dozens of examples.”

She paused to catch her breath. “And in this part of the world? Political muscle means military force—or the very real threat of it. You know what they understand out here in
dikiy dikiy vostok
—which in case you didn’t know, means the wild, wild east? They understand that power comes either from the barrel of a gun—or from a barrel of oil. The Russians know that, and they’re trying their best to muscle in on the action. So are the Iranians. And so, frankly, are we, although we’re not quite as brazen about it as the Russkies or the Iranians. So, it’s not a good situation.” She took a gulp from her can of Coke. “Anyway, this is a long-winded way of saying that I think we have serious problems here, and I’m willing to help.”

It gratifies me, friends, to see youngsters like Ashley Evans; young officers who are willing to put their butts on the line for what they believe in. That kind of grit, pluck, fortitude, is growing rarer and rarer in today’s military. And I know when to take yes for an answer. “You’re on. And I’ll keep you out of it as much as I can.”

We spent the next couple of hours working out the essential elements of information I’d be needing from
the embassy, and figuring how Ashley could get ’em for me. I didn’t tell her about my plans to hit the Fist of Allah camp with Avi Ben Gal, because the less she knew about what I was up to, the further out of trouble she’d be when the shit hit the fan.

I had a string of messages as long as my dick waiting for me when I got back to the Grand Europe Hotel, just after 1600. I thumbed through the thick pile of pink slips and counted eight from one caller alone. Starting just after midday, a Miss Ivana from the Sirzhik Foundation had called repeatedly, asking me to get back to her as soon as possible. There was also a pair of messages from Avi Ben Gal.

Yes, I wanted to learn all I could about Sirzhik. But Avi came first. I dialed his private number and he picked up directly. “Ben Gal.”

“Lech ti-Zedayeen
—go fuck yourself.”

“Gee, I wonder who this is.” He laughed. “Where the heck have you been?”

“I’ll tell you when we’re face-to-face.”

I heard him groan in mock horror. “Listen—I called to say two things. One is that I have some of the information we’ll need to move ahead on our joint project.”

That was great news. “Terrific. I’d like to move as quickly as possible on that, Avi. Maybe as soon as tomorrow or the day after.”

“That’s going to be a problem,” he said.

I don’t like hearing about problems, and I let Avi know it in my customary RUT.

“This has to do with you,” he said. “Don’t you realize that you’re already a celebrity here in Baku.”

“Oh?”

“Oh, absolutely,” he said. “You are bona fide vatchamacallit, glitterati, Dick.” I could hear bemusement creeping into his tone “You’re even having a party thrown for you.”

I was? That was news to me.

“The Sirzhik Foundation office in Baku has decided to honor you.”

Oh, c’mon. This was unreal. It was like manna from heaven. It also explained all those calls from the mysterious Miss Ivana.

And Avi made sure I knew why I had to accept, even on this obviously tapped telephone. “Take it from me, you’ll want to get a good look at Sirzhik’s offices.”

I paused before answering. Then: “Oh?” I know Avi pretty well, and he was trying to pass me a message.

“I mean,
professionally,”
Avi said. “You’ll want to check out . . . the decor.”

Message received, loud and clear. “Will you be there?”

“Oh,
absolument,”
Avi said.
“Mais bien sûr.
And I’ll even bring Mikki with me.”

“Then count me in. I don’t give a shit about you. But seeing Mikki will be a real treat.”

“Hasta luego,”
Avi said. I heard his receiver slap down and the line went dead.

I hung up, then punched Ivana’s number into the phone and waited while it
bring-bringged
three times. It was picked up.

I said, “I’d like to speak to Ivana, Please.”

The sexiest, smokiest, whisky-barrel voice I’ve heard in years, responded. “Sir
jeeek
Foundation. This is Ivana. How may I help you?”

Here is what I thought:
“How about a Full Lewinsky,
right now?”
But I must be getting old, because here is what I said: “Ivana, this is Dick Marcinko. You called.”

“Cap
-ten,” she murmured warmly. “So good of you to return my call. I was
van
dering if you would be so kind as to attend an exclusive black-tie reception ve are having tomorrow evening here at the Foundation’s office, to
vel
come you to Baku. We are a small but we like to think qvite effective self-
halp
organization that is trying to better the quality of life for all peoples here in the Caucasus. We read of your arrival and our chairman,
Stephan
Sarkesian, would very much like to meet you. He will be flying in from Paris especially to do so, so it would be lovely if you will agree to come and meet with him.”

Would I ever. I wanted to stare this guy in the eyes. Check him out. My instinctive reactions to people are very, very well honed. And besides, with a voice like that I wasn’t about to turn Ivana down. “Will
you
be there, Ivana?”

“Most assuredly,
Cap
-ten.”

“Then you can count on it.”

In response, she purred. No shit, gentle reader. She fucking
p-u-r-r-r-r-r-r-e-d
. Okay, it may not have been the Full Lewinsky, but it still counted as aural sex so far as I was concerned. Then—reluctantly—it was back to business. I wrote down time, place, and directions. I hung up, her voice still smoldering in my ear, thinking about all the ruler-carrying, knuckle-smacking nuns back in parochial school who told me I’d get hairy palms if I . . .

And then the phone rang, and Boomerang’s distinctive singsong voice said, “Yo, Boss Dude, let me sit-rep you on how it’s goin’ with Araz and the boyz,”
and all—okay-okay-okay,
most
—lewd thoughts dissipated from my Roguish brain.

I spent nine of the next twelve hours on the computer. Oh, yeah, my sleeve length may be three inches longer than my inseam. And yeah, my scarred, thick knuckles are hairy and there is perpetual grime under my fingernails. And yeah, my eyebrows grow all the way around my face down to my mustache. And yeah, I look like the Rogue Neanderthal, and occasionally speak like him, too. Big fuckin’ deal. It doesn’t mean I
think
like a caveman.

In fact, I speak five languages at level-four fluency, and another three passably. I have a master’s degree in political science from Auburn University. Sure, I have killed scores of men in hand-to-hand combat. Yes, I have slit my fair share of throats. But I have also one-on-one briefed the president of the United States, the secretary of defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I have made face-to-face presentations to the director of Central Intelligence, the British undersecretary of defense, the director of MI-6, the head of the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, Germany’s top-secret counterintelligence apparatus, the French minister of defense, the president of Egypt, the late King Hussein of Jordan, and the director of Mossad. What I’m trying to tell you is that being The Rogue Warrior
®
means more than the ability to kill at whim, or will. I must also have other, more subtle tools at my disposal. Which, these days, means knowing how to find exactly what I need on the Internet, and understanding how to run complicated programs on a computer.