Paladin of Shadows 4 - Unto the Breach Read online

  Unfortunately, the excellent theory had run into far too typical Russian inefficiency. The front cameras, in fact, left precisely that dead zone to the left of the front doors. The eastern camera pointed slightly outwards as did the western. This was supposed to be covered by the two cameras over the door, but those left a solid gap, about six meters wide, along the wall. The team of four crouched in that gap for a moment as the lead checked his watch. Then he nodded and waved one of the armored and masked figures forward.

  The figure, the "policeman", drew his silenced pistol again and fired one round. The shot took out the right-hand camera and he darted forward, reaching into a pouch. From it he extracted a small device and, quickly unplugging the left-hand camera's port, he inserted the device and replugged the assembly into it. He stepped back and extracted a small PDA and looked at it for a moment. Then he hit a button on the PDA turned his head and nodded.

  * * *

  As the snipers snapped down their periscopes a new vehicle appeared out of the woods of the distant mainland.

  "Busy night," the guard muttered, stepping out of the shack and slapping his mittened hands together to try to get some feeling in them.

  "This is a restricted area," the guard said, as the passenger slid down his window.

  "I have a pass," the man said.

  The guard had no time to react to the sight of the silenced muzzle.

  * * *

  "Camera Four is out," the intercom announced to Boris on his lonely vigil at the front desk. "And five just flickered. Go check it out."

  "Got it," Boris sighed, picking up his walkie-talkie and trudging to the front door. He slid his card through the reader, a newfangled innovation in his opinion and totally unnecessary, and opened the door. The last thing he saw was the masked figure in front of him.

  * * *

  "Security, this is Boris." The radio crackled with static and was half unreadable.

  Markov set his bottle of vodka down and belched then pressed the microphone button. "Yes? What is wrong?"

  "The plug came undone again in this damned wind," Boris said. Or Markov thought he did, the reception was terrible. "There, how is that?"

  The screen for the right-hand door camera flickered for a moment and then came to life. After a moment Boris stepped in view by the door. His head was down and covered by a heavy fur hat with the flaps down, but from the way his uniform was blowing it was reasonable wear for the out-of-doors.

  "I'm going in," the guard said, sliding his card through the reader.

  * * *

  As the panel van backed up to the loading dock the new car accelerated down the causeway, it's passenger now standing in place of the guard wearing the same style uniform and markings.

  "Teams," the driver said into his microphone.

  "Team One, place."

  "Two...place."

  "Three, place."

  "Go," he said, quietly, sliding to a stop in front of the main doors.

  * * *

  The back doors of the panel van crashed open and the single external guard had just enough time to wake up from a vodka induced haze and see the four heavily armed attackers before he died. Two more shots and both cameras were out.

  "Boris" opened the front doors and drew two pistols. One shot took out each of the internal cameras and then he stepped to the side as the entry team trotted past. The lead of the team slapped a ring of thermal entry plastic onto the steel door while another slapped a breaching charge in the center. All four of the entry team turned to the side, covering their eyes with their arms, as the plastic was ignited. There was a moment of searing white and a sharp "crack" and clang as the refractory steel was first burned through and then slammed backwards by the breaching charge.

  At the side door the identical assault had opened up the loading area. Both teams were in.

  A moment later an alarm began to shrill.

  * * *

  At the sound of the alarm Dr. Arensky sighed and pulled a small device out of his side pocket. He pulled a pin from the device and then pressed the only button on the face. There was a distant "crack" and all the lights went out: on the far side of the wall in the janitor's closet was the main electrical breaker for the entire building.

  * * *

  At the first hoot of the alarm, which had been right on time according to their internal clock, the three rocket-men stood up, tracked in on the narrow slit openings of the bunkers and fired, all within the span of a second.

  The US Marines in Iraq had recently started to use a "new" thermobaric rocket system against the insurgents. It was only "new" to the Marines, though: the Russians had been using it all the way back to the Afghanistan War.

  Thermobaric, often incorrectly called "fuel-air", rounds used heat, "thermo" and overpressure "baric" to create a devastating explosion. Early thermobaric rounds had used "fuel" as their delivery medium, spreading a gas over a wide area before detonating catastrophically. Newer systems, such as the rocket being used in this instance, used a specialized "slow-fire" solid explosive that, as it exploded, continued to carry molecules of the explosive along its blast front which, in turn, exploded.

  This created massive overpressure inside of the bunkers, instantly killing everyone within, blasting off the reinforced rear doors and tossing body parts and chunks of machine-gun out through the narrow engagement slots.

  Immediately after they fired, the snipers peeked up besides them scanning for targets. There were two potential reactions that the internal defense team could take. They could respond to the bunkers being hit or to the attack on the inside. In the event of attempted reinforcement of the bunkers...there were the snipers...

  * * *

  Team Two, the side-door team, blew down the cargo door on the side and turned immediately to the right. The internal door here was only wood and the lock blew off at the blast of a shotgun. As the door thudded open the lights went out. The alarm continued to shrill but only spotty emergency lighting, red and dim, came on throughout the facility. The team waited patiently, however, for what was about to occur as shotgun blasts, regular as clockwork, began to boom down the corridor.

  * * *

  Team One, the front entry team, spread out. Two team members started down the hallway to the left, two more to the right. As each team came to a door, the lead placed his shotgun against the lock, pulled the trigger and then stepped back. The trail then stepped forward tossed a head sized device into the room and the cycle was repeated.

  The right-hand team did the same, moving down the corridor to Dr. Arensky's office then passing by.

  As the two teams spread out the driver of the sedan strolled into the main corridor and turned to the right. When he reached Dr. Arensky's office, as the right-hand team reached the end of the corridor and tossed a device into the janitor's closet, he knocked on the door, three times, with pauses between.

  The door was jerked open as Dr. Arensky struggled into his heavy outer coat, the briefcase in his hand.

  "This is madness," the doctor said, sputtering.

  "You do have it, though, yes?" the man asked. He was tall and broad with gray-shot black hair and a tanned face lined by much time out-of-doors.

  "I have it," Dr. Arensky snapped, lifting the case.

  "Let us go, then," the man said, lifting his arm to look at his watch and then nodding as a sharp crack sounded down the corridor. The crack, and flash of light, was followed by a series of rapid, short bursts of fire. Seven in all. "Our ride is on the way and we don't want to keep them waiting."

  He waved down the hallway as the team of two men, one of them "Boris/Policeman" walked to the door. "Boris" casually tossed his last packet in the room and the two followed Arensky and the broad man out the front door.

  From out of the cloudy sky, which was now drifting snowflakes downward, an Alouette helicopter dropped, twin to the one dropping to the rear of the facility. The team boarded silently, the broad man and "Boris" simultaneously pushing Dr. Arensky into one of the seats a
nd buckling him in. When they were done, and in their own seats, the rest of the team was in and secured.

  The broad man looked at his watch and nodded as the helicopter lifted into the sky.

  "One minute forty seven seconds," he said across Arensky to "Boris." "Very good time, Kurt, very good." He pulled a device similar to the one that Dr. Arensky had had out of his pocket and extended an antenna. When he depressed the plunger the entire administrative section of the Russian Institute for Agricultural and Biological Research disappeared in a blinding flash. The concussion slightly rocked the rapidly ascending helicopter.

  "Very good time indeed."

  * * *

  Chapter One

  "Fuck me."

  Mike Harmon, AKA Michael James, AKA Michael Duncan and currently Mike Jenkins or "Kildar", was thirty-seven years old, brown of hair and eye, medium height with a muscular build and a face that, while slightly handsome, was also so "normal" that he could pass as a local in just about any Indo-European culture from the US to Northern India. That trait, and an almost prescient talent for silent-kill, had earned him the nickname "Ghost" while on the SEAL teams. After sixteen years as a SEAL, most of it spent as an instructor, he had found himself unable to readjust to team life, gotten out and gone to college. Since then his life had taken so many weird turns that he had ended up as a feudal lord in the country of Georgia. With a harem, no less. Oh, and with every terrorist on earth searching for his head. Which was why he never used the name "Ghost" or "Harmon" except around a very few, very close, friends.

  Mike was sitting on the summit of Mount Sumri, drinking in the cold, heady air of the high mountains and just taking a look around. He'd taken to climbing the mountain every few days as a way to get exercise and some time away from his various duties.

  The Keldara called it "Mount Raven" for the flocks that gathered on its slopes. It was the highest peak of the many surrounding the valley and the birds apparently liked the viewpoint. So did Mike: one of the reasons to climb it was to take a look around.

  As he'd been examining the mountains to the north, a source of constant low-grade anxiety, a flash of movement caught his eye. The hills had small herds of deer, wild pigs, mountain goats and even a few wolves. But this shape was different. Low-slung, slow-moving and...predatory.

  He steadied the binoculars by resting his elbows on his knees and engaged the digital zoom. The picture tended to pixellate but he could zoom to a hundred times normal view magnification at the maximum. He zoomed it out to about seventy times and then controlled his breathing instinctively, trying to catch the shape again.

  It was a tiger. A young male Siberian if he wasn't mistaken. Which was just flat impossible. The last tiger in the Caucasus Mountains had been killed off nearly a century ago. The Keldara still had a few preserved skins, but that was the only remnant. And the nearest breeding group of Siberians, which were themselves threatened with extinction, was, well, in Siberia. Eastern Siberia, which was about as close to the Caucasus as Southern California was to Nova Scotia. There was no way a tiger could have just walked all the way from Siberia.

  But the evidence was there before his eyes. He wasn't about to dismiss it. Even if it was impossible.

  The tiger only remained in sight for a moment then disappeared over the crest of the ridge. It was as if it had come into sight just to show say: Hey! Yo! Here I am!

  "Cool." Mike whispered. But he made the decision, immediately, to keep quiet about it. There was no way he was going to mention the sighting unless other evidence turned up. Nobody would believe it. Oh, they'd be polite enough about it. He did, after all, employ or, basically, "own" just about everyone he met on a day to day basis.

  While he couldn't be said to "own" all he could survey from his lofty aerie, he did control it. The valley below, the valley of the Keldara, he did own. He had bought the valley, and the caravanserai that came with it, more or less on a whim. He had gotten lost and found himself in a remote mountain town with the strong possibility of being stuck there all winter. Since the only available living quarters, an unheated and bug infested room over the town's sole bar, were less than pleasant, he had needed some place to stay. And, frankly, he was tired of traveling. So, thinking that he could always sell the place if he had to, he had "bought the farm", mostly for the caravanserai, a castle like former caravan hostel. The "farm" was in the valley below, a fertile high-mountain pocket valley about five miles long and two in width stretching more or less north to south.

  The farm came with tenants, the Six Families of the Keldara. The Keldara were, at first, a pretty mysterious group. They were said to be fighters but on the surface they were much like any similar group of peasant farmers Mike had encountered in over forty other countries.

  The valley also came with problems. The farm had been terribly neglected for years and the Keldara still used, essentially, dark ages equipment: horse and ox drawn plows, hand scythes and threshed the grain by running oxen over it. The farm manager was a blow-hard who had all the farming and management skills of a rabid badger. And the Keldara had little or no motivation to improve things.

  Mike had solved that problem early on by finding a new farm manager, a former Keldara who had been university trained as an agronomist and then "exiled" from the families for challenging the farm manager's authority. The other fix was just throwing money at the situation: he had bought new equipment, tractors, combines, chainsaws and everything else a modern farm needs. Together with modern seeds, fertilizers, herbicides and farming techniques, the direct farming aspects were coming together. The fields below were yellow stubble from the largest bumper crop any of the Keldara had seen in their lives. The harvest festival scheduled for tomorrow was going to be a happy event.

  The other problem, though, looked to be more intractable. Right over the mountains to the north was Chechnya, where the Russians were fighting an ongoing insurgency that had continued without relief for over fifteen years. The Chechen resistance used the Pansiki Gorge, less than sixty miles from where Mike sat, as their primary basing area. Technically part of the country of Georgia, Georgian forces, limited in number, under-trained and funded and with other serious problems to handle, didn't even consider trying to contest it with the battle experienced and well-armed Chechens.

  The battles spilled over to the region of the Keldara. The Chechens used the area as a transshipment point, sending drugs and kidnapped women out to be sold or traded for weapons and ammunition and bring the ammo and weapons back. The constant trade was a source of anger on the part of the Russians who regularly threatened the area with outright invasion.

  The Chechens didn't just wander through the area. They often extorted food and girls from local farms or, in some cases, raided and burned them. Whole towns had been raided within the last few years.

  It wasn't the best security situation in the world.

  Mike's response was simple: Turn the Keldara retainers into a militia. He had, in his time, seriously pissed off every terrorist on earth. If he was going to be right next to Chechen Central, he wanted some shooters at his back. He hired a large number of trainers from the US and Britain, shipped in top quality gear and set out to turn the "simple farmers" into a group capable of, at the very least, securing their own homes and his.

  The Keldara had 120 males available between the ages of seventeen and thirty. Mike's goal was to turn them in to a decent company of militia, period. He wanted them to be able to maneuver against an enemy force while the younger women, who were trained in positional defense, held the homes. That was it.

  What he found out, as the training progressed, was that the Keldara were far from "simple farmers." They took to military training as if they had been born with a rifle in their hands. Enthusiastic didn't begin to cover it; he realized, quickly, that he had unleashed a monster.

  The reason for their response trickled out, slowly. He still wasn't sure he knew the whole story. But one part he found out even before the training began: the Keldara were not "tru
e" Georgians; they were a living remnant of an ancient elite force called the Varangian Guard. The Varangians were Norse, mostly from Russia, hired by the Byzantine Emperors as their personal bodyguards.

  In the Keldara, the fierce warrior spirit of the Viking was a present day reality. They had to survive as farmers, but at heart they were reavers and warriors that sought death in battle so that they could ascend to their heaven: "the Halls of Feasting", Valhalla. They masked as Christians but practiced their ancient worship of "the Father of All", Odin, in secret. Their preferred weapon was the axe and they trained with them as seriously as they learned to plow.

  They were, in fact, born with a weapon in their hand. When a Keldara male was born, one of the ancient battleaxes the Fathers kept—axes handed down over literally millennia—was placed in his hands and the hands closed over the great hilt. The first thing they learned to grasp was a weapon.

  The Keldara had always had a lord and that person had always been a "foreigner", a mercenary who was not of the government that controlled them. Often they had been northern European adventurers, knights, cavalrymen, wandering bravos, over the ages the position and weapons had changed but not the pattern.