Soar (43 page)

Sam walked until he reached an alley containing a row of corrugated, sheet-metal gated sheds where Muscovites bribed the watchmen in hard currency so they could keep their autos under roof. The deserted streets leading to these shanties resembled a ghost town. But even if they had been crowded, no one would have paid Sam any mind, because the tall, gray-eyed man looked like any other local.

Careful to avoid getting mud on his scuffed shoes, he stepped around a rusted Latta with a tarp spread under the
rear of its chassis. There were two blue-jeaned legs poking out. Sam’s knuckles rapped the Latta’s hood. “Yuri Gre-gorovich, is that you under there, or should I call the police?”

Yuri G. Semerov rented the shed next to his. Yuri, Sam knew (the Russian had been checked out by Langley to ensure he wasn’t a provocateur), owned a store near the Arbat, where he sold everything from fake czarist antiques to Soviet Army uniforms.

The legs crabbed from under the vehicle, followed by a torso, then a thick arm holding a big crescent wrench, and finally a broad, flat, mustached Tartar face that peered warmly up at Sam. “Hello, Sergei Anatolyvich.”

So far as Yuri Gregorovich Semerov knew, Sergei Ana-tolyvich Kozlov was an up-and-coming businessman with an unhappy marriage in Moscow and a mistress in a dacha near Podol’sk. And if he’d checked—something Sam knew he hadn’t—Sam’s cover would have been confirmed. “Long time no see. How’s it going?”

“Any better I couldn’t stand it,” Sam answered effortlessly in Moscow-accented Russian. It was a gift. Some people have a natural aptitude for mathematics, or science. Others are innate painters, or musicians. Sam had an ear for languages. He learned them quickly and retained them. He spoke Russian at a five-plus level, in addition to four-plus French, and workable German, Polish, and Czech. To get any better rating in Russian he’d have had to be born in the Soviet Union. Sam focused on Yuri Semerov and smiled mischievously. “Anytime I escape to Podol’sk for a few hours, life is great.”

“I can imagine,” Yuri said wistfully. He pulled himself into a sitting position and brandished the wrench. “Hey, have you got a number thirteen socket in there? This piece of shit won’t catch on what’s left of my tailpipe bracket bolt.”

“I’ll look.” Sam withdrew a bunch of keys attached to a chain clipped to his belt. He squinted until he selected the right three, then unlocked a trio of padlocks the size of paperback books. The locks were carefully placed back on their hasps, then he scraped the battered door across the wet ground and disappeared inside.

There was silence for about forty seconds. What Yuri couldn’t see was Sam retrieve a small electronic device from his jacket and quickly check the car for listening devices or locator beacons. The Russian heard only the sounds of an ignition stammering, followed by the hiccupping ca-ca-ca-coughs of an engine starting up, followed by half a dozen puffs of gray-black smoke emanating from the shed. Finally, Yuri watched as a beat-up Zhiguli coupe with local plates backed out onto the uneven dirt, sputtering and backfiring as it jerked clear of the shed.

Sam opened the car door and eased his big frame out from behind the wheel, his hand still playing with the choke. “I’ll look for the socket for your Bentley while my Ferrari warms up.”

Thirty seconds later he was back. “Nothing,” Sam said. “I must have taken them home.” He wrestled with the shed door, slapped the hasps closed, and replaced the padlocks. “Sorry, Yuri Gregorovich.”

“No problem.” Yuri watched as Sam compressed himself into the car.
Lucky bastard,
he thought,
to have a piece of ass on the side.
Then Yuri G. Semerov rolled onto his back and pulled himself under the Latta, cursing the cheap Georgian wrench as he heard the Zhiguli’s engine grind off into the distance.

Praise for JOHN WEISMAN and
SOAR: A Black Ops Mission

“Nobody writes better about the dark, dirty, and dangerous world of the CIA and black ops. John Weisman’s knowledge and research are phenomenal.
SOAR
will take you on a thundering ride … The pace never slows, not for a moment … Enter this story and hang on to the rip cord.”

New York Times
bestselling author Joseph Wambaugh

“John Weisman gets under the skin of SpecWar in a way no other author has ever done.”

Lt. Cdr. Roy Boehm, USN (Ret.),
U.S. Navy SEAL Teams creator, author of
First Seal

“John Weisman redefines high-impact, action-adventure suspense novels for this decade.”

James Grady, author of
Six Days of the Condor
and
River of Darkness

“This is the kind of truth you can only tell in fiction, otherwise lives would be lost … It’s a must-read if you want to know how we’ll be fighting our next war.”

Robert Baer, veteran CIA case officer
and author of
See No Evil
and
Sleeping with the Devil

“Better than Clancy at his best. It’s like getting on a galloping horse and just letting him run. SOAR shows how the face of war is changing.”

Lt. Gen. Sam Wilson, USA (Ret.),
former director of DIA
and a godfather of Delta Force

“[Weisman] knows that future wars will be nothing like the past. No one will put this down. If you have a seat belt, fasten it.”

Richard Perle, former chairman of the
Defense Policy Board and former
U.S. Asst. Secretary of Defense

“In an age when you can watch war up close on television 24/7, it still takes John Weisman to bring you deep inside the black op.”

Sherry Sontag, coauthor of
Blind Man’s Bluff

“Weisman … imbues every stage of the operation with appropriate complexity and suspense. His clear, precise prose should make the story riveting for both fans and newcomers.”

Publishers Weekly

“Good guys, stirring esprit de corps, and spectacular explosions make for a suspenseful war fantasy.”

Kirkus Reviews

“A knowledgeable, fast-paced, near-future thriller … Weisman draws on his own and many others’ covert intelligence and special operations experience to craft a convincing scenario and a great many gripping scenes and believable characters. A definite treat for thriller fans.”

Booklist

“As readable as Clancy at his best … Mr. Weisman is perhaps wired more tightly into the reclusive special operations community than any other writer, and his knowledge of weaponry and field techniques is staggering.”

Washington Times

Also by John Weisman

FICTION
The Rogue Warrior series
(with Richard Marcinko)

D
ETACHMENT
B
RAVO
• E
CHO
P
LATOON

SEAL F
ORCE
A
LPHA
• O
PTION
D
ELTA

D
ESIGNATION
G
OLD
• T
ASK
F
ORCE
B
LUE

G
REEN
T
EAM
• R
ED
C
ELL

B
LOOD
C
RIES
W
ATCHDOGS
E
VIDENCE

NONFICTION

R
OGUE
W
ARRIOR
(with Richard Marcinko)

S
HADOW
W
ARRIOR
(with Felix Rodriguez)

ANTHOLOGIES

T
HE
B
EST
A
MERICAN
M
YSTERY
S
TORIES OF 1997
(edited by Robert B. Parker)
U
NUSUAL
S
USPECTS
(edited by James Grady)

1.
Military acronym for temporary duty.

2.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. A pilotless drone surveillance aircraft.

3.
Non-Official Cover intelligence officers.

4.
Directorate of Operations, the CIA’s clandestine spy service.

5.
All China runs officially on Beijing time. But most of the provinces operate on their own local schedules, which reflect their geographic position vis-à-vis Universal (Greenwich Mean) Time. Xinjiang’s “unofficial” clocks run two hours behind Beijing’s.

6.
Standard Operating Procedure.

7.
RUMor INTelligence
is military slang for “urinal gossip.”

8.
Commander CENTral Command.

9.
Security level above top secret known as SCI, or Sensitive Compartmented Information, which requires code-word clearance.

10.
Ram Air Parachute Systems.

11.
Assault boots specially designed by Adidas for
Grenzchutzgruppe
9, Germany’s primary counterterrorist unit.

12.
Handheld multiband inter/intra team radios.

13.
Fast Onboard Recognition of Transient Atomic Experiments.

14.
Night-Vision.

15.
Net-Centric warfare makes real-time data and information available on demand across the entire battlefield spectrum, both horizontally and vertically.

16.
Aurora is the stealth-technology successor to the SR-71 “Blackbird” spy plane. It was first flown tactically over Afghanistan. Its existence has not yet been disclosed.

17.
Office of the Secretary of Defense.

18.
Military Free Fall High Altitude Low Opening-High Altitude High Opening.

19.
The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, an umbrella organization for El Salvador’s Marxist-Leninist terrorist groups.

20.
Lay Up Position.

21.
Keep-It-Simple-Stupid.

22.
High Explosive.

23.
Explosives Ordnance Disposal.

24.
Improvised Explosive Devices.

25.
Milli Istihbarat Teskilati, Turkey’s intelligence service.

26.
Congressional Delegation.

¹
Federal’nay a Sluzhba Bezopasnosti

²
CIA in-house pseudonyms are invariably three-part names: first name, middle initial, and last name. The last name is always spelled entirely in capital letters.

³
Personal Meeting Plan.

⁴
Counterintelligence

⁵
Dosht’.