Going Dark (22 page)

I don’t know much about mining, but my guess is that this UGF was never used as a mine. I’m imagining some paranoid government or well-heeled revolutionary army deliberately carving it from the guts of a mountain to serve as a hideout, a fortress, a bomb shelter.

Just a few meters behind the LTV is a massive gate, closed now, but that must be the way we came in. The gate is made of heavy, riveted plates of black steel, and like the tunnel, it’s big enough to drive a tank through. I’m going to assume Colonel Abajian’s surveillance drone successfully tracked us to that gate. Our job now is to confirm the presence of the missile launcher, but whether we succeed or not, this sanctuary has become a marked target.

Abaza notices my interest in the gate. He grins, showing off yellow teeth. “Come have a look.”

I follow him. The gate towers over our heads, its surface cold under my palm. Abaza spins a mechanical lock. I listen to its smooth, well-oiled mechanism. He’s taunting me, making sure I understand that we’re trapped in here. “Steel bolts bigger than an elephant’s dick hold the doors. No one in. No one out, until our business here is done.”

Leonid joins us, laying his big arms around our shoulders. “And we should get to business, my friends. There is much to do and, I think, not much time?”

Abaza scowls, not appreciating the reminder. “There is time enough, Papa. Come. We will have coffee and a last meal.” He shrugs out from under Leonid’s arm and stalks off toward the tunnel. I watch him go, wondering if there are more men here, or if the thirteen we’ve seen so far are all of Northern Sword.

Leonid’s grip on my shoulder tightens. “Patience, my friend. There is much to assess, much to do. These things always take time.”

•  •  •  •

We follow Abaza into the tunnel, his men trailing behind us. Spillover from the garage lights illuminates the first several meters. More light comes from a side opening twenty meters along. Past that, I can see the black outline of another side chamber or tunnel, though it’s unlit. Without night vision, I can’t see any farther, though I can hear the low rumble of a generator. Louder than the generator are the echoes of our footsteps. Both the echoes and a slight breeze hint that the tunnel runs a long way into the rock.

Abaza disappears into the lighted opening. We follow, and find a deep chamber cut back at an angle to the tunnel. Barrels along one wall probably hold water, or maybe fuel. There’s a workbench with a propane stove and two microwaves. Cushions surround a long, low table, and there are clusters of thin mattresses with crumpled sleeping bags. I count nine, less than the number of men here. Maybe they have a watch rotation, sleep in shifts. But this is definitely a barracks room.

Abaza invites us to sit at the table while his men brew coffee and heat prepackaged food. Across the table, he speaks in Russian with Leonid. My overlay tries to translate, but after I decide they’re discussing business terms, I
ignore it and look around instead, trying to estimate the size of the chamber.

Logan is ahead of me in working things out.
Tank tunnel,
he says.

I glance at him, sitting beside me. Then I consider our surroundings again. A tank tunnel is used to hide tanks and other battlefield assets, and to secretly deploy them close to or across a contested border. This chamber is easily large enough to house a tank. It’s probably possible to park two in here, end to end. The angle of the chamber would make it easy to roll a tank out into the tunnel. We don’t know for sure that there are more chambers, but my guess is there are. I imagine a series of them, hollowed out in a herringbone pattern. A chamber of this size would be big enough to house the missile launcher.

Where the hell are we, that the politics and geography make a tank tunnel worthwhile?

I pop my regional map back into my overlay and scan the terrain, but there’s no obvious candidate for our location, so I close the map again, not wanting to call attention to myself with a vacant-eyed stare.

Steaming plastic trays are set out on the table. Coffee is poured. We eat, until after a few minutes Abaza speaks, this time in English. “Shelley,” he tells me, nodding toward one of his soldiers. “My friend is curious. He wants to ask you about the women soldiers in the American army.”

I feel my stonewall expression slide into place. Around the table, everyone is watching, waiting to hear what use we make of women on the front lines.

The man with questions speaks. My overlay starts to translate, but I stop it, holding out for Abaza’s version—Abaza, who leans back, putting on a cold smile. “When my friend fought in Africa, the older men told him that some of the American soldiers were women. He thought
they were making a fool of him and he refused to believe it.”

The man speaks again. Abaza and the others laugh. I feel Logan stiffen beside me, while Leonid purses his thick lips and turns to Abaza. “You insult your guest?”

“It is not an insult,” Abaza says. “It is a fact.” He looks at me, wanting me to know what his man has said. “He refused to believe the women soldiers were more than propaganda, until they took one prisoner. Women do not belong on the battlefield.”

He doesn’t say more. He doesn’t need to.

I look at him, I look around at his men, and I wonder: How many American soldiers have they killed? How many women have they beaten and raped? How many innocent civilians have died at their hands?

They are the enemy. It’s a fact I don’t want to forget.

Abaza frowns down at the table. He has to be desperate for this deal, desperate for cash. There’s no other reason he would risk my presence here. I hope it worries him that I’m angry. But he offers no apology, choosing instead to pretend that nothing is wrong. Turning to Leonid, he says, “Damir will show you the stock. Take what you will. Take all of it! It won’t matter. Just be ready to go by dawn.”

Dawn is at least ten hours away. I hope Abajian is willing to wait that long.

•  •  •  •

Damir is tired from the road. He comes to us yawning, a young, mad stoic who accepts his fate with grace and veiled pride. “Maksim gives me these tasks because of my English skills. That is the burden of knowledge.”

“Your English is excellent, my young friend,” Leonid assures him. “It is only your driving that needs practice.”

Tran laughs, but for once, Damir does not find Leonid’s
joking funny. “You may leave your things here. We will not be going far.”

I pick up my pack by the shoulder strap. “We may need our things.”

Damir shrugs. “Come, then.”

Luftar tags along too, cuddling his Lasher as Damir leads us deeper into the dark tunnel. A dim green light gleams beside the dark chamber mouth we saw before, marking the location of a light switch. Damir turns the lights on inside a chamber identical in size, shape, and angle to the barracks room.

“Not much here,” he observes, and he’s right—the room is mostly empty. There’s a half-pallet of what turns out to be Iraq-War-era AK ammo, and a full pallet of fairly new Russian RPGs. Nothing more.

Logan and Tran stand watch on either side of the entrance, while Luftar idles in the hall, smoking a cigarette and watching every move we make. I open the crates. Leonid gets out a tablet, which he uses to log and photograph the contents. He asks my opinion and feigns interest in the little I have to say. When the crates are closed again, he straps sealing tape over the seams and affixes RF tags to each piece.

He explains, “When these goods reach my warehouse they will be scanned again. When all the tags are accounted for, then the money you have placed in escrow will automatically transfer.”

Advanced banking for terrorists.

I haven’t placed any money in escrow, of course, but I think someone has. It’s possible to fake all kinds of data including a death—I should know—but from what people like Bryson and Cory have told me, even the Red insists that money should be real. I don’t know whose money we’re playing with and it doesn’t matter, because these terrorist toys that Leonid is so carefully inventorying will never
make it to any warehouse—I will blow them up on the road if I have to—and no money will ever change hands.

I wish Leonid would hurry the fuck up. I want to get a look at things farther down the tunnel, determine if the missile launcher really is here.

“Damir,” Leonid says. “Bring a forklift. These are ready to be loaded on the truck.”

Damir slips out past Logan and Tran. I follow with Leonid. As we leave the chamber, Logan shines a little LED light down the tunnel. “Looks like at least two more chambers.”

“More chambers with more goods!” Leonid declares. “I would not subject you to such a day of misery for a single pallet of RPGs.”

I’ve stopped paying attention to FaceValue because Leonid has defeated it. Emotional analysis is useless to gauge the intent of a man whose every word reads as a half-truth steeped in subterfuge—but it’s hard not to like the old bullshitter. I only hope we really are playing the same game.

Leaving on the lights in the first storage chamber, we move deeper into the tunnel. As we move, I watch the floor in the beam of Logan’s light, searching for any hint that tank treads ever rolled through here, but the floor is smooth.

The chambers are staggered on opposite sides of the tunnel. Tran clicks the light switch for the next one—and I stifle a groan. This one is full of pallets—but still no missile launcher.

“Ah-ha,” Leonid croons. “Look at this. Look at all this. We have found the armory.”

I turn to Luftar. He nods, as if to say
I’ll wait
, and lights another cigarette. I watch the smoke drift back toward the garage. Is the launcher here? If I asked Luftar about it, would he tell me?

“Shelley!” Leonid calls. “There is more here than I anticipated. More than will fit on the truck!”

This is Leonid’s way of reminding me that I am here as an arms dealer and I need to play that role. I signal Logan and Tran to again take up posts on either side of the entrance. Leaving my pack with them, I join Leonid.

We work quickly, inventorying crates of AKs, grenade launchers, boxes of C-4, and pallets of ammo. Other crates hold body armor, some used, some new, and antique night vision gear, incendiary and fragmentation grenades, antipersonnel mines, and shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles. And then Leonid hesitates at an open crate. It holds gas canisters labeled in Arabic characters. My overlay translates the writing, but it’s just a manufacturer’s code. “Probably Syrian,” Leonid decides. “From before.”

My skin prickles. “Wait . . . you think it’s sarin?”

“Da.”

This is a yard sale at the Devil’s house.

I look over my shoulder. Luftar is still watching from the hall. He gives me a smile and a slight nod. If there were other men here, apart from those I’ve already seen, there would be some indication of them, lights or noise, but there’s nothing. I conclude there are only the thirteen. If we could arm ourselves adequately and hit them without warning, we might win a firefight. Luftar is on watch to make sure that doesn’t happen.

“Where is that boy?” Leonid growls. “Damir!” He stomps out and yells up the tunnel. “Damir! Where—”

He breaks off when he realizes someone up there is yelling too, dark and dirty Russian. It’s Abaza. Leonid goes still, listening to a furious tirade.
“Shit,”
he whispers.

And I think,
Abaza must know.
He must know who we’re working for and why we’re really here.

I move to the chamber’s entrance, to stand with Logan and Tran. Luftar is looking away, toward the disturbance out front. I edge closer to him, my hand drifting toward the pistol in my chest holster.

I don’t want to kill Luftar. He seems like a decent guy. But then, so do I, most of the time. The overriding fact is that he is the enemy, assigned to stand over us with a Lasher.

I can’t give him a chance to use it.

Take him?
Logan asks.

We have only the three Stonewall pistols between us. When Luftar goes down, his Lasher won’t do us any good, because it’s registered to his biometrics, but we have a room full of weapons behind us—enough to start a war.

I review in my mind where the RPGs are stashed; I calculate the number of seconds it will take me to reopen the crate and distribute the weapons.

Violence of action has won battles for me before.

So I say,
Yes.

Logan and Tran both reach for their pistols. I take a step back toward the RPGs. From deeper in the tunnel, someone speaks a question.

I don’t understand the words. I don’t know who it is. I turn, my pistol out, aiming the Stonewall’s long, fat barrel into the darkness. Someone yells. Everyone yells—Logan, Luftar, Tran, Leonid, the unknown voice, and me—all of us agreed on one thing:
“Don’t shoot!”

For half a second, all is silent, and then Abaza’s voice booms down the tunnel. “What the
fuck
? What the
fuck
?”

I don’t turn to look at him, knowing Logan has my back. I keep my attention on the unknown. In the dim light spilling into the tunnel I see a young man, mid-twenties. My first thought is that he is no soldier. And my second:
Can I use him as a hostage?

His eyes are hidden behind farsights that gleam faint green. The narrow lens rests above sharp cheekbones and a prominent nose—Middle Eastern features framed in a short mane of thick black hair. He’s dressed like a civilian with money who’s decided to spend a week in the mountains: khaki pants, lug boots, a dirty sage-green thermal coat for warmth, and several days of beard stubble. No weapons that I can see—but there is a look of shocked recognition on his face—an
oh holy shit
expression that I don’t like at all.

He turns to run. I go after him. I catch him in two steps. Get him by the shoulder. Shove him back against the tunnel wall, the Stonewall under his chin, the ruby glow of its laser sight so bright it looks like it’s burning a hole in his skin. “Who the fuck are you?” I growl, trusting Logan and Tran to cover me against Luftar, Abaza, and his men.

“No one,” he whispers. English, this time, with an American accent. “I’m not armed.”