Assassin's Edge Read online

  “Do you have sweet melons today?” she asked, because to say nothing would have been odd.

  “These are the best,” the old man replied, gesturing near where Ayla wanted to go.

  She briefly held the old man’s gaze, searching for recognition. Seeing nothing, she smiled and ran her long fingers over his fare. She squeezed a few, as she’d seen other women do, checking their softness or texture or whatever. The old Kazakh turned away as she reached the critical bin. She half lifted a melon as if testing its weight, then lowered it and let her fingers probe. She felt nothing. Ayla didn’t panic. She tested a second melon, went through the same drill. Still nothing. This was a contingency she’d thought through ahead of time. She would search the other bins, but that would take time. Which meant getting the merchant on her side.

  “I’ll take this one to begin,” she said, setting a melon aside without negotiating the price. She glanced at him, expecting a smile—and that was when everything went wrong.

  The man seemed suddenly wary.

  Feeling the first stab of caution, Ayla said, “Do you have any—”

  “No,” he said cutting her off. He put the melon she’d chosen back in a bin. “There is nothing here for you!” A harsh, clipped tone.

  For this Ayla had no contingency, so she did the most natural thing that came to mind. She picked up an orange and turned it in the sun. She saw the man’s eyes snag on something behind her. As much as she wanted to turn, Ayla kept her cool. She set down the orange, turned left, and walked away calmly. Steady and unhurried. In her peripheral vision she discerned two heavy shadows ten paces behind her.

  She willed herself to ignore them.

  Ayla had come to the market alone—the source was adamant about that—yet she wasn’t without backup. Two members of her team were waiting in a car on a nearby street. She made a right turn, which took her in that direction. Ayla ventured a quick glance behind and saw them: two men, casually dressed and definitely following her.

  Her support detail was two blocks away. They’d discussed setting up closer, but the chief of station had overruled it—he didn’t want to risk irritating the source. It was clearly a mistake. Outside the market, Ayla picked up her pace on a charmless cobblestone sidewalk. Not running, but damn near it.

  There were fewer people here, and Ayla realized she should have stayed in the market, let the team come to her. Another mistake. She pulled out her phone and discovered how hard it was to text while walking fast over cobblestones. She got off a one-word message: Aborting.

  With the situation degrading quickly, Ayla tried to think clearly. She scanned ahead for options. A storefront fifty feet away had its door blocked open. Was there a back door if she turned inside? Perhaps an alley behind that would take her in the right direction? She should have known. The footsteps behind her quickened, and out of nowhere a sedan bounded over the curb ahead and cut her off.

  No more pretenses.

  She stopped and turned, saw the two men closing in. They looked at her with glares meant to intimidate. The one in the lead towered six inches above her own five-foot-seven frame and had to be twice her well-conditioned weight. The other was smaller and squat, a pugilist’s face.

  Ayla kept her composure, kept searching. To her right she noticed a damaged section of sidewalk near the gutter, and she was suddenly very glad she’d taken her Krav Maga training seriously.

  As the bigger of the two men closed in, she looked at him questioningly, all doe eyes and slack posture. Then, the moment he was in range, she lashed out and kicked him in the balls. She made solid contact, and the man grunted and dropped to his knees, his hands cradling his crotch.

  Ayla pretended to stumble to her right, dropping a hand as if to arrest her fall. As she did, she picked up the only improvised weapon within reach, a loose cobblestone the size of a beer stein. The second man rushed full force. Ayla feinted right, then moved left and spun, swinging the stone toward his head in a wicked forehand arc. It caught him a glancing blow and he reeled toward the car. But it was only half a victory. On contact she lost her grip on the stone, and the pugilist seized a handful of her dress—never the clothing of choice for close-quarters combat. It put Ayla off-balance, and together they careened into the car’s fender.

  Ayla was first to regain her balance, and she lashed out with a solid kick to his knee. He screamed as it buckled and started to go down, but he never lost the fistful of fabric. Ayla heard a car door open behind her, and before she could turn something hard struck her in the head.

  She lurched away, dazed. Her vision went blurry and she felt her arms being seized on either side. She tried to swing an elbow, making marginal contact before a fist struck her on the temple. She thrashed and writhed, trying to twist her limbs free. Trying to fight. It was hopeless. There were too many of them—three, four?—all bigger and stronger.

  Still, she never gave up, and it took another thirty seconds for them to wrestle her into the car’s backseat. Once inside they pummeled her without mercy, her face and her body, and she was sure she broke a nose in return. They cursed in a language she didn’t recognize. A massive blow to the head stunned Ayla, and the next thing she knew she was hopelessly immobilized on the floor, big hands and boots holding her down.

  To her credit, she kept gathering information, all the way to the moment when the needle sank deep into her thigh. Only then, finally, did fear take its grip.

  * * *

  There were but a handful of witnesses to the donnybrook on the curb. A mailman down the street saw the end of the scuffle, and a nearsighted spinster knitting at the window of her second-floor flat caught a few flashes of motion. A teenager on his way to a music lesson saw the car bump onto the curb and watched a woman get accosted, but organized crime being what it was in Almaty, the boy instinctively turned and ran away with his violin clutched to his chest.

  Only one person saw the row in its entirety.

  He was sitting in a mostly empty coffee shop, across the street and on a slight diagonal. Dressed in simple work pants and a worn jacket, he was rooted to a stool at the window-side counter. A small tablet computer was in front of him, a lukewarm café Americano near his left hand—he’d been born right-handed, but an injury had forced him to adjust. Once a robust man, lean and athletic, he sat crookedly on the stool with one leg askew. He was thirty-eight years old, although on first impression most gave him ten more. The lines in his leathered face were deeper than they should have been, and flecks of white in his thinning hair were well ahead of schedule. His most remarkable feature was a pair of emerald-green eyes, although these, too, were faded beyond his years. At that moment, they were obscured by a pair of wire-frame glasses.

  He’d spotted the woman as soon as she turned out of the market, two burly men trailing behind her like loosely joined boxcars. He had seen her before, but never this close, and even from across the street he was struck by how pretty she was. He had once appreciated beautiful women, even pursued them. That, however, was a thing of the past.

  The car came out of nowhere, and he watched it veer onto the curb and cut her off. The girl’s reaction was perfectly natural. He sat transfixed by the violence taking place not thirty meters away and was impressed—and not completely surprised—by the fight she put up. He glanced once around the nearly empty coffee shop to see if anyone else was watching. There were only three others, including the nose-studded barista, and none of them were in a position to see the melee.

  He held his coffee and sat still, mesmerized, while the altercation played out in what seemed like slow motion. In fact, it was over in less than a minute. When the car finally backed into the street and spun away in a squeal of burning rubber, the man let go a long breath, no idea how long he’d been holding it.

  He knew he had to leave—remaining here would be inordinately risky. He needed to get across town, to the safety of his room. If the police arrived quickly, he might be questioned, even compromised. Still, he had wanted to get one look at her: the
woman who was risking her life for his information.

  And so he had.

  The agent, who Mossad now knew as Lazarus, never tried to call the police. Ten minutes earlier, he’d composed a hasty message and placed it in the draft folder. It was a warning that the drop had been compromised. Now, of course, the point was moot, and anyway, they never could have reacted quickly enough. Still, they would at least know he’d tried.

  He folded the tablet closed, drained his cup, and slid carefully off his stool. On the sidewalk outside he turned left and set out at his usual slow pace into the chill morning. He walked with a distinct limp—the cold weather worsened the pain in his right hip. Lazarus looked up and down the street, listened for approaching sirens. So far, nothing. The poor woman, his primary link to Mossad, was probably a mile away by now. Swept up cleanly and professionally. He was sure Mossad would find a replacement—the information he’d been providing was first-rate. Teams of case officers would follow up, discover his too-late warning in the email account, and watch for new messages.

  He was mentally composing the next one—he had no shortage of information to give—when the first sirens began rising in the distance. Lazarus tried to quicken his pace, but his hip protested. He cursed under his breath.

  With one look over his shoulder, he turned left at the first corner and disappeared.

  THREE

  Reaction to the two events ran distant parallels.

  The loss of Raven 44 launched through the power corridors of Washington, D.C., like an unguided rocket. It lit off at the Pentagon, shot toward the director of national intelligence, and apexed in the Oval Office.

  President Elayne Cleveland was pulled from her morning intelligence briefing to be apprised of the fast-moving situation. The messengers were Secretary of Defense John Mattingly and Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, Lieutenant General Margaret Tran. After the doors were closed, the SecDef took the lead.

  “One of our Rivet Joint aircraft has gone down in the Arctic, very near the Russian border. It was conducting a standard surveillance mission last night when it disappeared suddenly.”

  “Suddenly?” the president remarked. “Does that imply a hostile act?” Having long ago served as an intel officer in the Army Reserves, Cleveland was better versed than most politicians in the nuances of military vernacular.

  “Based on what we know so far, it doesn’t look that way. We were able to layer data from certain air and space sensors, and there’s nothing to suggest a missile launch or an intercept by fighters. Rivet Joint aircraft also stream live sensor information over the course of their missions. Raven 44—that was the mishap airplane’s call sign—was picking up some radar activity, but nothing high rate to suggest missile guidance.”

  “Well, that’s good at least. What else do we know?”

  “We’re in the initial stages of planning a search, but the extremely remote location, combined with the impending weather conditions—there’s a fierce Arctic storm on the way—will tie our hands for the next thirty-six to forty-eight hours.”

  “What about the Russians? Could they help with a search?”

  The SecDef’s answer was measured. “That is something we need to discuss.” He yielded to Tran, a three-star general who’d risen through the Air Force’s technical side—an outlier in the pilot-dominated upper ranks of the service. Tran had a PhD in engineering and a proven knack for translating technical breakthroughs to strategic implementation.

  “Madam President, our intelligence networks are in overdrive trying to determine if the Russians have even noticed this crash. Based on radio traffic and communications intercepts, we see no sign of it. I will tell you straightaway that the fate of the crew, seventeen good airmen, remains foremost in everyone’s mind.”

  “As it should be,” the president seconded.

  “Unfortunately, the initial reports are not promising. Our Rivet Joints have been upgraded with a system that streams snapshots of flight information in near real time. What it shows, unfortunately, is a dive that could not have been survivable. Because the RC-135 is a standoff platform, not meant to go behind enemy lines, it’s not fitted with ejection seats or parachutes.”

  The president looked on grimly. “Are you telling me there’s no chance of survivors?”

  “I can’t say that with absolute certainty. Yet there is further damning information. Two years ago, NSA began a program to pry into Russian air defense networks. They were surprisingly successful, and the northern-tier facilities proved especially vulnerable due to undersea cables that proved … accessible.”

  This was news to Cleveland. She tried to recall if it had been in any of her daily briefings but drew a blank. “You’re saying we’ve hacked Russian air defense?”

  “Not everywhere, but we get solid information from certain regional networks. Relating to Raven 44, NSA has forwarded their data for the last twenty-four hours. A radar station in Kotelny had a solid primary return on Raven 44. It documented her final plunge.”

  “Primary return?”

  “That’s the most basic kind of radar data, with no identifying information. The Russian operators would have seen Raven 44 as a blip on their scope. We fly surveillance routes regularly, and there’s airline traffic as well, so they probably weren’t watching too closely. If anyone saw the return disappear, they likely would have written it off as an anomaly. We studied that raw data closely and found more bad news. In the critical moments near the end, we were able to discern multiple targets. That suggests the aircraft broke apart in flight.”

  Cleveland looked at Tran, then Mattingly. She was beginning to see the decision she would be facing. “That does sound damning. All the same, we prioritize the crew, no matter how slim the chances.”

  “We agree, ma’am, yet there are complications. To begin, the wreckage we were able to track came to rest near Wrangel Island. That’s Russian territory.” From a portfolio General Tran extracted a satellite photo of the area. She put her finger on a trapezoid box overlapping a remote island. “We believe parts of the aircraft fell on the island itself, while others may have ended up in the sea nearby.”

  “Is this island populated?” the president asked.

  “Minimally. There’s a radar station, manned by a few technicians and a small unit of Russian Army regulars. No more than thirty men altogether, essentially there to keep the radar running. They venture out for occasional patrols in the summer, but this time of year everyone bunkers up. The island is also a designated wildlife preserve, and there’s a small research station with three or four rangers in residence. Both these contingents live in prefabricated housing on the south shore of the island, forty miles from where the wreckage landed. Bottom line—unless the Russians realize what’s happened, and it doesn’t appear they have, nobody is going to stumble across this crash site. At least, not until summer.”

  Cleveland studied the overhead image. It reminded her of her days as a lieutenant in Army intel. “How certain are you about the location of this wreckage?”

  “It’s a rough estimate. We received a brief satellite ping from the flight data recorder immediately after the crash, but it disappeared. When an airplane goes down at sea, in deep water, the signal can be tricky to find. The hits we received are here.” She pointed to a red dot labeled FDR in the sea near the island’s northwest coast. “Plots for the rest of the wreckage field are less certain, mostly derived from the stolen radar data. It’s a lot of guesswork, and our analysts are trying to tighten their estimates. We’re coordinating some satellite passes that will hopefully give us better information.”

  “This emergency beacon—can the Russians see it as well?”

  “No … at least we don’t think so. Rivet Joints, owing to their highly classified systems, are equipped with a new black box that transmits discreetly. It was designed for this very situation. We’ve also been listening to Russian communications and watching nearby military bases for unusual activity. W
e’re pretty sure they don’t have any idea what’s going on.” General Tran looked expectantly at Mattingly.

  Cleveland did the same, and said, “Pretty sure? I’m hearing a lot of qualifiers in this briefing.”

  “Yes, ma’am, you are. We would be more definitive if we could.”

  “All right, give me options.”

  “First and foremost, we have to search for survivors. Unfortunately, our options are limited. We can’t ask the Russians for help without admitting that one of our spy aircraft has gone down on their sovereign territory. That would give them first shot at the wreckage, which is a problem—this jet was carrying some highly classified technology.”

  “Aren’t they going to find it eventually?”

  “At some point, yes. But if we beat them to it, we can recover or destroy the most sensitive equipment. On the downside, if we try to organize a search ourselves it’s going to take longer.”

  “How long?” the president asked.

  “To begin, this time of year there’s nearly solid ice coverage in the surrounding sea. The only practical surface ship would be an icebreaker, and we don’t have many of those. The nearest right now is a Coast Guard ship operating in Alaskan waters, and she’d have to plow through hundreds of miles of ice—it would take three days to reach the scene. The other option is to use a submarine. One of our fast-attack subs, New Mexico, is much closer and she’s equipped for the job—she’s taking part in our annual ICEX exercise as we speak. There are also two missile subs in the area, but they would have far less capability to respond. And of course, for national security reasons, we prefer to keep them silent. New Mexico could reach the crash site in about a day and a half.”

  “The weather is also a consideration,” Tran added. “This storm is bearing down fast. It’s going to shut down any rescue attempt for the next thirty-six hours.”

  “So even if we asked the Russians for help, they couldn’t mount a search any sooner than we could?”