The Outer Circle (The Counterpoint Trilogy Book 3) (26 page)

Moscow, Russia

Four people were gathered in a semi-dark room, watching 3-D projections.

“The pictures were taken last night in Peredelkino, at Yuriy Shelkov’s
dacha
,” informed Ivan Mershov. “Shelkov arrived at the
dacha
on Friday night. The visitors started arriving Saturday evening. This is the first arrival.”

“Leader of the Western Military District, Colonel General Valery Pashin,” commented Maxim Fedorov, head of the Kremlin Regiment. “Headquartered in St. Petersburg.”

“What the hell is he doing here?” wondered Vladimir Karpov. “Did anyone call him to Moscow?”

“Not that I know of,” dryly commented Mosin. “But he commands the 7
th
and 21
st
Guards Armies positioned on the outskirts of the city.”

The next set of pictures appeared in a holographic projection and Mosin exhaled sharply:

“Pavel Zaporozets!”

“Yes, the current head of the GRU,” nodded Mershov.

“In charge of over twenty thousand Spetsnaz troops and most of our satellite intelligence capabilities.” Added Fedorov.

Another image appeared, of a tall, thin, balding man.

“Kolotov, the Minister of Internal Affairs,” Karpov stated the obvious.

At the sight of the next image, Mosin leaned forward and braced his head in the palms of his hands.

“General Yevgeniy Kunin, head of the FSB’s Federal Protection Service,” explained Fedorov. “My boss.”

“Who is that?” asked Mosin about the next holographic image.

“Took us a bit of time to figure this out,” responded Fedorov. “That’s Arkady Primak. He used to be Nemzhov’s right hand man, his computer genius. Disappeared two years ago at the same time as Nemzhov. Just enough plastic surgery to fool the face recognition systems.”

They sat grimly through a few more images.

“Have you been able to capture their conversations?” Mosin turned to Mershov.

“No, Mr. President. Our people were under strict instructions to keep their distance and to avoid discovery. The
dacha
had electronic defenses build into it, generating enough white noise to make any distant eavesdropping useless.”

Mosin nodded:

“They have covered all their bases... the military, the police, the secret service... can you think of any reason for these people to come together in a remote location on a Saturday evening? Especially if one of them is based hundreds of kilometers away?” asked Mosin.

There was silence around the table.

Mosin drummed his fingers on the table, made a decision.

“Colonel Mershov, thank you for your service. I would like to ask you to have your people report here to Maxim Fedorov tomorrow. There are so few that we can fully trust at the moment.”

“Maxim,” Mosin pivoted to Fedorov, “you have the toughest job for tomorrow. You’ll get twenty people from Colonel Mershov. That’s not enough. Find more. We have to quietly and at the same time arrest as many of those people that were at the meeting as we can. Including your boss. Pashin will be particularly difficult, since he’s back in St. Petersburg. Find a way.”

“Vladik,” he turned to Karpov, “I am going to request that Shelkov comes here tomorrow to follow up on the Chinese situation. I want to arrest and interrogate him right here. I will need your help.”

Mosin got up.

“Gentlemen, thank you for your loyalty. It won’t be forgotten. Now, we have a lot of work to do.”

Somewhere in Nevada, USA

A trailer in a remote mountainous location looked like one of the survivalist sites, ready to be used in case of emergency. Such trailers were hidden all over Nevada, Arizona, and other states. But someone trying to break into the trailer would have quickly found that the trailer was ready to defend itself with various types of traps and motion-activated repellents. If the intruder managed to get through those and make his way to the heavily fortified door, he would be greeted with an electric shock, a spray of poisonous fumes, and a few other assorted surprises. And if despite all that he did manage to get inside, he would discover walls of dark monitors waiting to be turned on – if he could survive to get to the switch, as the deadliest ambushes were on the inside.

But the man that drove up in a big truck was not an intruder. He calmly avoided or turned off the defenses and flipped on the power. The trailer came to life. Lights came on, satellite antennas unfolded on the roof, additional monitors slid out of their hiding places. The place took an appearance of a command center. Which is exactly what it was: a remote drone command center.

The man reviewed his instructions, read out the address and one of the displays obediently focused on a small single-family house. He’d done this many times before, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Nicaragua, even Mexico. But never in the U.S. The man hesitated momentarily, remembering his oath: “defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” He had a thought to check who lived at this address, something he’d never done before. Superiors decided who the enemies were, they had the information – he didn’t have to know the target personally. His job was to execute the orders. This time the enemy was domestic. The oath still stood.

The man entered the precise coordinates – put them dead center on the chimney, to minimize the collateral damage – and sent the command. Satellite bounced the signal to a receiving antenna miles away. The roof of the remote storage opened and an originally Chinese-made vertical takeoff drone armed with one 20 pounds air-to-surface missile rose from its confinement. The operator gently guided the drone with a joystick to its cruising altitude and set the course to the west.

Laguna Beach, USA

Jennifer slept fitfully. She was in the same room that she slept in years ago, when she had just moved to California to go to college. The sound of the waves used to easily lull her to sleep. Tonight, it was like a roar, heaving, threatening. She got up in the middle of the night, tiptoed to the balcony to see if a storm was gathering. It was a clear night and the ocean was the same as during the day, calm and peaceful. Perhaps it was her blood pumping through her brain as if in a tempest. She fell asleep as the light started seeping through the blinds.

When she heard screams, Jennifer first thought it was still her dream. But screams became louder and suddenly someone was shaking her hard. She jumped up and saw Nana holding her shoulder and shouting:

“There was an attack! Father! Father!”

Jennifer rushed out of bed and ran towards the sounds, into the kitchen. Her mother and grandfather were staring at a TV screen that showed burning remains of a house. They turned and looked at Jennifer in horror. Then she started connecting the image, the commentator’s voice, the letters running across the screen, the neighboring houses, her neighbor Betty on the lawn with hands folded in a prayer...

Jennifer ran outside to the car, opened and started it with her fingerprint and drove off.

Moscow, Russia

Yuriy Shelkov arrived in the Kremlin for the second Chinese briefing in two weeks. “They are so focused on China, they’re not seeing what’s going on under their noses,” he thought as his car was waved through security.

He was shown into a different conference room, a windowless one in the basement. Once there, Shelkov opened his China file and looked through a few figures. He had them memorized in any case.

Mosin and Karpov walked in. To Shelkov’s surprise, they were accompanied by two young men in paramilitary uniforms with patches that he didn’t recognize.

“Good afternoon, Yuriy,” started Mosin.

“Good afternoon, Mr. President,” responded Shelkov. “Now, you wanted to focus on the Chinese naval capabilities...”

“No, Yuriy, I don’t,” interrupted Mosin. The two young men in paramilitary uniforms stood on each side of Shelkov. “I looked at your file. Your great-grandfather fought under Marshal Budenye’s command in the Civil War, defending Moscow. Your grandfather served under General Vatutin in the Battle of Kursk and later marched on to Berlin. Your father was a distinguished officer, a division commander. You took the oath to serve your country. Who are you really serving, Yuriy?”

Shelkov remained silent, stunned, paralyzed.

Projections of Nikolai Nemzhov and Arkady Primak came up on the wall.

“These are the people you are serving now, Yuriy?” thundered Mosin. “Your co-conspirators are being arrested as we speak. Are you looking forward to your name and your family being dishonored? Answer me!”

“No,” whispered Shelkov.

“What were you planning, Yuriy? How did they get to you? Tell us and we’ll give you an honorable way out. Your family will be protected.”

“They were blackmailing me. In 2017, I suppressed incriminating information about my grandson. This man, the one that worked for Nemzhov, he knew. Then, in 2019, Nemzhov offered me a chance to profit from the coming dollar crisis. I took it. I made good money.”

“What were they planning to do?” asked Karpov.

“The plan was for the 7
th
Guards Army to move into the city. Together with the MVD forces, they were going to take over the government buildings and the TV stations.”

“And then?”

“You were to be arrested together with your supporters for being in alliance with the Americans. General Nemzhov was going to come to power with a promise to hold popular elections within twelve months.”

“Was he going to make promises to the Chinese?”

“Yes, he was going to promise that we would support them in taking over Taiwan. That our Pacific Fleet was going to join their attack. Also, we were going to tell them that we can jam some of the American communications capabilities because the chips from MRA Technologies, the company that supplied them, had a backdoor we could exploit. But it was all a deception.”

“Deception?”

“Yes, deception. The Chinese attack was going to take place in January, right when the new American president was going to take the office. Supposedly, Nemzhov had a deal with the incoming U.S. President Dimon: our Pacific Fleet was going to stay put, no electronic jamming would have taken place. We were goading the Chinese to attack the Americans so the Chinese army and navy would be destroyed.”

“But why?”

“In return, America would stand by while we attack Eastern Europe. We were going to take the Baltics, Poland, Slovakia, Finland, Chech Republic, Romania, Belorussia, the rest of Ukraine. Back to the two superpowers, America and Russia dividing the world.”

“This is insane!” shouted Karpov.

“That was the plan,” responded Shelkov.

“So he was going to betray the Chinese to the Americans. Why did Nemzhov think he could get away with this?” asked Mosin.

“He was sure that Dimon was going to win the election and he must have had something on Dimon. He has something on everyone,” murmured Shelkov.

“Where is Nemzhov?”

“I don’t know. He never showed up in person, always worked through his people, like Arkady. I think he’s somewhere in Russia because he was going to show up right after the coup. That’s all I know.”

“Thank you, Yuriy,” said Mosin.

“How can I protect my family?”

“We can arrest you and sentence you to death for treason, but I’d rather avoid the spectacle of a public trial. You can be a hero, dying in a terrorist attack. I am not too fond of this solution either, since your predecessor was killed only a few months earlier. Cooperate and you can keep your life. You’ll lose your position and assets, of course. Your choice.”

Shelkov stared out the window for a minute, then said:

“If Nemzhov gets a wind of this, he’ll kill my family.”

“When we get him, your family will be safe. In the meantime, we’ll protect them.”

“I’ll do it,” Shelkov whispered hoarsely.

Mosin stood up.

“Very well. You will be debriefed.”

Mosin and Karpov left the room.

Shelkov tried to get up, but one of the men in a paramilitary uniform pushed him back into his chair.

Los Angeles, CA

Alejandro awoke from a persistent knock on his bedroom’s door. He looked at the clock: not even 7 a.m. yet. Thankfully, he did not stay up late last night.
This better be good
, he thought opening the door.

Mike Munoz, his bodyguard and security chief, stood there with a guilty expression.

“What?”

“Look, boss, it might be nothing, but you better come see this.”

Alejandro followed Mike to the ground floor, then to the closet with electronics equipment. Mike pointed to the spectrum analyzer:

“See, boss, it has a yellow light on.”

Red light meant a pre-programmed alarm was triggered, indicating a likely security breach. This would have caused a loud sound warning, waking everyone up. Yellow meant something unusual, not quite expected, not an alarm but a warning. No sound alert was programmed.

“Why?”

“If you look at the timeline, there were two unexpected short transmissions in the 2.4 Gigahertz band, one at 3 a.m. and one at 5 a.m....”

“Speak English, for God’s sake!”

“It may have been Bluetooth transmissions.”

“Where did they come from?”

“I don’t know yet. Most home devices now have Bluetooth built in.”

“So it could have been a stupid refrigerator checking what’s on sale in a local supermarket?”

“Could have been, but the analyzer flagged it because the pattern and the intensity were unusual.”

“Hmmm... how many false alarms we get here?” Alejandro nodded at the collection of electronic devices in the closet.

“About once a week,” Mike lowered his head guiltily.

Alejandro was about to go back to bed to catch another hour of sleep when Mike said:

“You probably didn’t hear yet, but Jeff Kron was attacked during the night.”

“What? How?”

“All I heard on the news was that a missile hit his house... ”

Mike froze following Alejandro’s expression.

David received a message with a file from Brobak last night. Kron hit. Bluetooth transmission.

“Get the car ready and call Pablo to execute Plan B!”

“Why?”

“Go, now! We’re getting out of here!”

Alejandro ran upstairs two steps at a time and started pounding on bedrooms’ doors:

“David, Maggie, Oleg, get up! We are leaving! Now!”

His guests ran out of their rooms to see Alejandro in a robe, screaming:

“Get dressed, you must be down in the garage in five minutes! Don’t take anything!”

Ten minutes later, the black SUV rushed out of the garage, tires screeching. Mike was driving, no auto pilot this time, his phone ringing repeatedly. Alejandro in the passenger’s seat next to him, a sports bag in his lap, explaining to a bewildered and disheveled Oleg, David, and Maggie:
“There was an assassination attempt on Jeff Kron’s life, and we have had a suspicious transmission out of the house during the night, right after you received a message from Brobak. If it was from Brobak.”

“It was a bit strange, another run of the same query that Brobak did earlier.”

“Then it probably was not from him but from someone who’s got the phone we sent.”

“What happened to Jeff Kron?” asked Maggie.

“Don’t know. Right now, we have to worry about ourselves. We must assume that the house was under surveillance and that this car is being tracked. We are going to try to trade cars in a large covered parking structure. The exchange should be ready in half an hour.”

“There are files on my computer...” started David, but Alejandro already turned to Mike:

“Why the hell is Nick not responding?”

“Might be asleep,” shrugged Mike.

Just then, a young man’s voice came out of the speaker:

“Yo, Mike!”

“Hey, Nick, Alejandro here. We need some help.”

“Alejandro, what’s up? It’s a fucking crazy morning! A missile attack in Culver City, police copters and drones all over the place!”

“Nick, look, we are heading towards your area using side streets. Black Caddy SUV. Going south on Crenshaw, about to cross Slauson. Can you tell me if there are any drones on our tail?”

“Oh, man, with all this shit going on I’ve been keeping my observation drone below two hundred feet...”

“Come on, Nick, we really need a hand here!” shouted Alejandro.

“OK, OK, lifting it, the police are to the north of us and might let it go... Zooming in... Hey, I see a black Caddy with a hump, must be you. Oh, shit!”

“What???”

“There are two birdies half a mile behind you, at about three hundred feet.”

“What kind of birdies?”

“Zooming in... looks like commercial AeroHawk 7D model drone.”

“No weapons?”

“No, this thing is optimized for tracking. 3D imaging, infrared, onboard pattern recognition ...” Nick was getting excited, but Alejandro cut him off:

“Good, no weapons. Now, Nick, as we get to Torrance, I need you to get rid of them.”

“You want me to knock them down?”

“Yes, damn it! You told me you could do that!”

“Yes, but I might lose my drones,” whined Nick.

“Nick, don’t give me this crap! With what I’ve been paying you, you should be able to make plenty more!”

“OK, OK, I am starting my interceptors. Oh, fuck!”

“What is it now??” screamed Alejandro.

“I see two more birdies... these look like military Firestorm-5X bitches. They are three miles behind you but gaining fast.”

“Are they armed?”

“Yes, with grenades. Designed to attack tanks and vehicles. They should get to you just around Artesia.”

“Nick, you have to take them out too!”

“These are tough, Alejandro. I am putting everything I’ve got in the air.”

“Do you best, Nick! Stay on the line!” barked out Alejandro and turned to Mike:

“Get Pablo back on the phone on another line; tell him the rendezvous place is now at Del Amo!”

Mike turned on the 360 degrees projection display and zoomed on the sky above. They could clearly see two small fixed-wing drones, now almost directly above them. Further behind, two much larger black machines loomed.

As the car was racing through the streets, an aerial battle was unfolding above. Six quadricopter drones raced from the south. Three peeled off to face the two tracking drones right above the car, three others continued forward to the attack drones that were only a mile away. When getting close to the tracking drones, the quadricopters one by one fired metallic nets. One missed but two others found their targets, snaring the propellers of their marks. Both AeroHawks stalled and fell to the ground.

“Yes! Take that! You bitches aren’t up for dogfighting with a big dog!” Nick was screaming. “Took down the trackers! Piece of cake!”

“What about the attack drones?”

“Just about, just about...”

“What if Nick can’t take them down?” asked Maggie in a small voice. From the vehicle, they saw the big drones soaring up, trying to get away from Nick’s interceptors.

“That won’t be good,” answered Mike.

“We better get to a parking structure and hope they won’t follow us there,” explained Alejandro in a tense voice.

On the display, one of the black birds was tumbling to the ground uncontrollably. “Yes!” exclaimed Alejandro.

Nick came back online:

“Hey, I brought one down, the other took evasive maneuvers and I can’t catch him. He lost some time, but he’ll catch up with you in thirty seconds!”

The big fixed-wing drone re-appeared on the display a couple of hundred yards behind them. Now they could see a missile hanging under each wing. Mike gunned the engine, went through a red light on a largely empty street and turned sharply into a parking structure, breaking the gate arm. Something exploded just behind them, sending a shower of cement pieces against the car. Mike then raced the car down one floor, slammed the brakes next to an “Exit” sign and barked:
“Everybody, out!”

All five jumped out of the car and ran to the door, as the noise of a propeller engine rose in the enclosed space. They were only a few steps inside when an explosion blew the door down.

Everyone caught their breath as Mike spoke on his phone.

“Pablo is in the parking structure on the other side of the mall. The mall isn’t open to the public yet, so we’ll have to run through.”

Alejandro kept his presence of mind enough to bring the sports bag, which was useful when they came to a closed door. Mike got a small electronic device out of the bag and held it next to the code entry lock. The device whirred, clicked, and displayed four numbers which Mike punched and pushed the door open.

“So much more elegant than using a crowbar or a gun,” commented Alejandro.

As they were walking through a largely empty mall, with only workers preparing for the day, nobody tried to stop them. At one point, a display started talking to them:

“Grayson Martinez, we have a sale on men’s suits in your size. It’s been two years since you last purchased a suit, isn’t it time to update your wardrobe?”

“Grayson Martinez?” wondered Maggie.

“I use a few different names,” said Alejandro matter-of-factly.

Mike was busy dialing again:

“Nick, we’re in the mall. What’s going on outside?”

“Thank God, you are OK! There are reports coming in of multiple explosions on the south-east side of the mall. Police are on the way, you better get out of there!”

“Are there any birdies waiting for us?”

“I’m going to have to bring my observation platform down just about now. There are a couple of tracking birdies coming in from the east, they should be here in a minute.”

“But no attack drones?”

“No. I saw one following you into the parking structure, he didn’t come out. Probably brought down by his own explosion.”

“Tell Nick he’s earned his pay today,” quipped Alejandro.

Mike led the group to the service entrance section of the parking lot. He carefully opened the door, looked around. Police sirens sounded in the distance, but this area seemed calmed. A bakery truck idled nearby, with one man in a white uniform in the driver’s seat and the other looking like he was about to unload something from the open rear gate.

Following Mike’s lead, everyone ran to the back of the truck and climbed in past rows of bakery products. There were two small benches in the back. The uniformed guy closed the bakery shelves behind them. In a few seconds, the truck started rolling and Alejandro exhaled.

“The insides of the truck are covered with a Mylar material to attenuate the body heat,” proudly explained Mike. “It takes about twenty minutes before your heat signatures become strong enough to be detectable by drones with infrared tracking.”

“Twenty minutes?” asked David. “What happens then?”

“In twenty minutes, we’ll be in a different car,” shrugged Alejandro. “We’ll change cars a couple of more times to make it more difficult to cross-correlate the data and track us. It’s the initial run, when they know exactly which car you are in, that’s the most dangerous one. We got out... barely. Somebody really wants you dead.”

“They got to us through Brobak?” half-asked, half-stated Maggie.

“Yes, it looks that way. You should assume Brobak is dead.”

David hung his head.
Another man dead because of us.

“Jim chose to help,” Maggie read his thoughts. “Like others did two years ago. People have the right to know.”