Operator - 01 (23 page)

I’m not quite at that point, although I can feel myself approaching it. But something is forcing itself into my conscious brain as the Blackberry starts to buzz. Why did Dmitriev show up at Pig Bar & Grill? Why send a soldier? Then, as I’m raising the phone to my ear and I hear the nearly panicked voice of Dan Menetti on the other end of the line, it occurs to me. Before you send a dog on a hunt, you need to give him something to smell so he can catch the trail of the game you’re after. In an instant I am convinced that all of the blather about Yuri and his brother was a distraction – or worse. Maybe those pictures are intended to provide a motive for me to be gunned down on a mountain road.

“Sheriff Peterson is dead,” Menetti croaks, out of breath. “He had a heart attack about 11 this morning. We don’t have a toxicology report yet, so this could just be a coincidence, or a reaction to stress, but I wouldn’t lay odds on that.”

As Menetti says this, I’m slowing the G8 down as I approach an intersection. This is the center of a tiny village called Willow. I pass a U.S. Post Office on my left. There’s a gas station to my right at the intersection. It’s an odd crossing because although four roads meet here – Eighmey, Van Wagner, Jessop and Silver Hollow – Jessop hits Van Wagner about thirty feet before Eighmey does from the opposite direction. I’m effectively approaching a T-shaped crossing where I need to turn either right onto Silver Hollow Road or left to Van Wagner. As I pull up to the intersection, a tall man in an orange striped construction vest and a yellow hardhat steps in front the car with a stop sign.

There’s a white Ford F-150 waiting on Van Wagner about thirty feet away, also apparently waiting for the construction worker to flag it through. It is an extended cab-model with windows tinted so dark, I can’t see the driver. I flick my eyes back to the Caddy in the rearview mirror. It has approached to within thirty yards and stopped. I’m instantly alert. I notice the Caddy’s windows have exactly the same grade of tinting as the F-150, obscuring the passengers.
What are the odds?
I begin to think when a flash of movement from the F-150 catches my eye. A man pops up from the flatbed holding an RPG-7 – a Russian-made rocket propelled grenade, used all over the world against light vehicles and helicopters. The business end of the RPG swings toward the G8 as the bulky, broad-faced man in a black nylon jacket points it at my car. At the same moment the man in the red vest drops the stop sign and starts sprinting away from the intersection.

Dropping the Blackberry, I jam the G8’s accelerator, depressing the clutch until the engine reaches 5000 rpms as I wrench the steering wheel around to the right. Then I drop the clutch and the G8’s tail swings out – around to the left – as a cloud of smoke rises from the tires. Hopping forward, the G8 powers into the right turn just as the rocket from the RPG screams by, scant inches over the trunk. The rear end of the G8 catches the sprinting construction worker in the back and knocks him off his feet on the side of the road. The man has a silenced Glock in his hands as he goes sprawling forward. As we power through the turn, the heavy Ford pickup smashes into our tail, knocking the back end of the G8 loose. The G8 fishtails and as the stability control kicks in, I see the construction worker jump into the back seat of the F-150, the door having been thrown open for him.

I glance in the rearview mirror just in time to see the RPG rocket slam squarely into one of the two pumps at the Yancy Country Store and Gas Station, a ramshackle white building with a green awning. The shaped charge from the RPG explodes as it hits the pump, igniting the gas in the line. A double-concussion followed by a pillar of flame rises like a tsunami over the small store as the bespectacled, white-haired owner runs out, his arms waving and his face a mask of disbelief.

An instant later, another man wearing mirrored sunglasses leans out of the front passenger window of the pickup with a Benelli M4 Super 90 Shotgun, a high performance semi-automatic piece with a folding stock. The man aims the weapon at the backside of the G8 and fires. The heavy buckshot hits the rear window, sprouting a mushroom of opaque glass in the center surrounded by a peppering of small divots.

Veronica, who woke abruptly when the F-150 hit us and was momentarily paralyzed by the explosion at the gas station, finally screams, ducking her head down and covering her ears with her hands. I wrestle with the steering wheel as the stability control fights the fishtailing rear end of the G8. The tail swerves right and left before it falls back into line as the chassis recovers from the destabilizing impact of the heavy truck. Then I stomp on the accelerator and the G8 surges forward, the 415 horsepower V-8 screaming. We immediately begin putting distance on the much slower F-150. Another glance in the rearview mirror shows the CTS-V pulling around the corner behind the truck.

“Grab the phone!” I shout to Veronica, who is already starting to regain her composure. Her arm snakes into the well beside my seat and emerges with the Blackberry after a moment. “Hit the speaker button,” I yell. It takes her a moment to find it.

“Dan, are you still there?”

“What in the hell just happened?” It’s the first time I’ve ever heard Menetti – a Catholic altar boy – swear.

“We just came about two inches away from being vaporized by an RPG-7.”

“Fired by who?”

“I think it’s a team led by the guy I just met for lunch – Karl Ivanov Dmitriev. I pegged him as an operator, maybe the leader of a Spetznaz team for the SVR. I’ll bet you a steak dinner they’re the same ones who took Buddy Peterson this morning. It means that someone – either Drubich or someone above him in the SVR – is trying to erase all the links between the Russian government and the Tambov Gang.”

“Why wouldn’t he have one of his guys pick you off on your way out of the restaurant, then?”

“I have a feeling that it’s not me they’re after. Veronica is the one who made the connection between the gang and the SVR. She’s also the only one other than Drubich who’s seen the redheaded man we’re guessing might have been compromised.” I glance over at Veronica as I say this. I did not consider the impact on her before I spoke the words. She starts trembling.

“What can I do?” Menetti asks.

“You should be able to pinpoint our location from the GPS chip in my Blackberry. Get me help as soon as you can.” As I ask this I realize that by the time they mobilize they’ll be doing cleanup of one sort or another.

“You got it. Good luck,” Menetti says and gets off quickly.

Veronica is looking back at the truck and car pursuing us. She notices the damage to the rear windshield.

“Is that some kind of bulletproof glass?” she asks.

“It’s a government car. There’s no such thing as ‘bulletproof,’ but the car is lightly armored. The front and rear windshields are reinforced. There’s also Kevlar in your seat back.”

“Well they should have reinforced it some more. It looks like the rear window is about to fall off,” Veronica says. The G8 bounds over a dip in the road, momentarily going airborne at 90 miles an hour.

“It’s all a tradeoff,” I respond, checking the rearview mirror. We are already a half-mile ahead of the F-150, which will never catch the G8 on a paved road. As I watch, the Cadillac CTS-V pulls around to pass the pickup. Then Silver Mountain Road sweeps right and I briefly lose sight of both vehicles. “If this car was armored well enough to stop high-velocity weapons, it would be a lot heavier and slower. Most pistols wouldn’t penetrate the windshield but that Benelli fires a hot load – it’ll eventually punch through. We need to make sure he doesn’t get another clear shot.” Still, I am less worried about the men in the F-150 than the Cadillac. The engine modifications to the G8 add enough horsepower to compensate for the additional weight of the up-armoring, but the CTS-V is a much faster car. Then again, I’ve seen a trained driver in a Honda Accord pass an amateur driving a Porsche 911 at Willow Springs in California.

As we reach the intersection of Silver Hollow Road and Lang, I whip the G8 into a right turn to stay on Silver Hollow, braking at the last moment, then swinging the car’s rear end out intentionally to decrease the radius of the turn while maintain the maximum possible speed. As soon as I completed the maneuver, I’m back on the gas. In the rearview mirror, I see the Cadillac swing through the same intersection, perfectly lining up the rear wheels. It is gaining ground on us. So much for my hopes that an unskilled driver is chasing us. I push the G8 through a sweeping left hand turn followed by a right-hander. As I power through the second wide bend in the road, the outer wheels briefly scrape gravel.

As the CTS-V pulls to within a quarter mile, I see a sign blur by, showing an upcoming turn. I realize that Silver Hollow Road takes yet another turn, this one a full ninety degrees to the left, and that going straight will mean joining Cross Patch Road – a dead-end street that shoots straight up the side of a mountain. I stomp down on the accelerator, briefly gaining yards on the Cadillac. I blow past the intersection, ignoring the turn. After 300 yards, Cross Patch Road takes a dogleg to the left as it starts to ascend Little Rock Mountain. The moment we pass the turn and are temporarily out of sight of the Caddy, I hit the brake pedal full-force. The enormous ventilated disc brakes scrub the G8’s momentum quickly as the antilock brakes with brake force distribution trigger, allowing me to keep steering control while braking. The speedometer needle sinks like the mercury on a weather gauge in the face of an approaching hurricane.

When the speed hits thirty, I step off the brakes and wrench the wheel of the G8 around to the left as I pulled the emergency brake. The big sedan pirouettes gracefully, swapping head for tail as it reverses directions on the road. As the G8 turns, I tap the power button on the window to lower it as I draw a 9mm Sig Sauer P226 from the loop holster at the small of my back left-handed. Just as I bring the weapon up and get it pointed out the window, the Cadillac comes screaming around the turn and I empty eight rounds – over half a clip – left-handed into it point-blank as it passes. Then I mash the accelerator on the G8 and speed back towards Silver Hollow Road, making the sharp right turn just as I spot the F-150 approaching from the opposite direction.

Silver Hollow Road gains over a thousand feet in elevation in just under a mile as it tracks the Warner Creek’s twisting path through the mountains. We pull away from the F-150 immediately, building up a half-mile lead before the road bends left and starts descending, cutting through Silver Hollow Notch. We have almost pulled out of sight of the heavy-duty Ford when Silver Hollow Road abruptly ends, smacking right into Clove Road. I slam on the brakes as a BMW Mini zooms past at the intersection and the Ford pickup quickly draws closer. Then I take a right on Stony Clove Road, heading north. The road follows the valley between Hunter Mountain and Plateau – two of the thirty-five mountains in the Catskills with peaks above 3500 feet. Unfortunately, the road is dead straight, giving us no way to elude our pursuers. I quickly pull up to the Mini and attempt to pass, but I am forced to swerve back into my lane quickly as a Winnebago steams by in the opposite lane. Just as I pull the wheel left again, the boom of a rifle sounds and I see that a high-caliber rifle round has passed through both the rear and front windshields of the G8, leaving a fist-sized hole in the front windshield. In the same instant, the Mini explodes, its diminutive body flying up into the air.

I swerve left, barely avoiding the Mini careening through the air. I manage to keep the G8 on the road, but the big Ford pickup sees the Mini too late, slamming into it just as it lands. The big pickup starts to spin, almost in slow motion as it leaves the road. It hits a small depression and tips over, spinning on its roof with tremendous momentum through a nearly empty dirt parking lot and into Notch Lake. The two-ton truck crashes into the pond like a destroyer sliding out of dry-dock, sending a wall of water flying upward as it comes to an abrupt halt. The sniper who fired the big rifle from the pickup bed, the same broad-faced guy who’d handled the RPG earlier, is decapitated when the truck overturns and his headless body is dragged all the way to the pond.

I pick up speed again as we hit a clear patch in the road, but I see the Cadillac again, gaining on us quickly.

“W-what was that?” Veronica stutters, looking at the enormous hole in the front window.

“Probably a Barrett M107 – a fifty-caliber sniper rifle. That round will punch through the plating on an armored car. It penetrated both windows and hit the gas tank on that Mini,” I tell her as I look back. I have to shout to be heard above the roar of the wind in the car. The hole has created some very funky aerodynamics in the vehicle and even though the Cadillac has a half-dozen holes in its windshield, they can’t be creating the same kind of havoc we’re experiencing. “We’re just lucky he didn’t have a gyro stabilizer,” I say. Veronica just shakes her head, growing paler by the moment.

“What kind of shape are you in?” I ask.

“I’m okay, I’ll be okay.”

I shake my head. “I mean what kind of aerobic shape are you in?”

“I run about five miles a day. I’m thinking about running the New York marathon next year.”

“Good.”

“Why?”

I don’t answer immediately. The Cadillac is three quarters of a mile behind us, but it is gaining fast. Stony Clove Road is threading us between two of the taller peaks in the Catskills, and I know I have to do something before the guys in the Cadillac start shooting again. The road curves to the right as we emerge from the mountains and cross a small creek. There’s a road leading off to the left and a hundred yards further, one to the right. I slam on the brakes. The G8 immediately starts scrubbing down speed, going from eighty to forty in fifty feet. Then I pull the wheel right and the tires scream as I hang the tail of the Pontiac out, barely making the turn onto Plateau Mountain Road. It’s a narrow country lane – packed dirt and gravel with splashes of pavement – that is barely wider than the G8. We make it past the first bend and cross over a creek before I hear the big Caddy roar by. Even from a quarter mile, I can hear him hit his brakes as he sees the rubber I’ve laid down and realizes I’ve turned off the road. But he misses the turn; I’ve gained a minute on him.