Tom Clancy Red Winter, page 35
North held out her hand to Ryan. “Can I have my gun back?”
Foley groaned. “Go ahead.”
“Okay,” North said, the pistol under her arm and out of sight from any passersby. “Ready?”
Uwe Hauptman picked up his little boy and nodded.
* * *
—
It was over almost before it began. North put her boot to the door, but it didn’t budge. A trickle of dust skittered down off the hinges into the snow. The guards inside had surely been alerted by the loud bang.
Rather than kicking it again, North put two rounds through the locking mechanism, severing the bolt. She shouldered her way in, H&K P7 low at her waist, firing point-blank at the sallow-faced guard who had come to check out the noise. The shots took him low in the belly and his finger convulsed around the trigger of the black machine pistol slung around his neck, firing an automatic burst into his own foot. The second guard had been in the restroom and came out slightly behind North. Ryan shot him once, hitting him in the chest. North finished him off and barked at everyone to keep moving.
Having peeled off to take care of the guards, Ryan and North were at the rear of the stack. Foley and the Hauptmans were at the base of the stairs by the time Ryan hit the first step at a dead run. Oddly, they were all stopped at the bottom, bunched together as if they’d hit a barrier. Ryan saw what it was when he reached the last step.
North gasped behind him.
“Rolfe!”
“Let me see your hands!” a tall man with perfect teeth said, motioning with a PM-63 machine pistol identical to the ones the dead guards upstairs had carried. “I do not want to shoot you, but I will.”
North gasped again. “How did you—”
“Oh, my sweet Jennifer . . . When I could not locate you today, I knew you would come here. Frankly, I had thought you might try to break your little pet out of Hohenschönhausen and bring her through.” He pushed the muzzle of the weapon toward her. “Are you going to introduce me to your friends?”
“Rolfe Schneider,” North whispered. “Stasi colonel.”
“And?” the German prodded.
“And my control.”
Hans Hauptman swayed on his feet, terrified that there was about to be more killing. His father reached for him.
“Hands!” Colonel Schneider barked again.
Hauptman did as he was told. Hans leaned in to his legs for support.
Schneider pointed the machine pistol at Foley’s chest. “You, too, little lady.”
Her hands had dropped appreciably toward her coat pocket. She complied, wincing visibly.
“Oh,” Schneider said. “Are you hurt, my dear? Were you, perhaps, shot by a young KGB officer in the Linde Plattenbau?” His face grew darker. “Oh, Jennifer, do you betray everyone you know?”
Ryan watched in horror as Foley’s hand dropped toward her coat again. He’d taken the Makarov to deal with the upstairs guards. But she didn’t need a pistol. Serious about not being taken alive, she only needed him to think she had a pistol.
Ryan spoke up, hoping to interrupt her plan.
“Colonel,” he said. “I’d like to propose a deal.”
“Americans . . .” Schneider laughed. “You are in no position to make deals.”
Up to this point, Elke Hauptman, partially hidden behind her husband and son, had to Schneider been nothing but an East German housewife. Ryan and the other two women were spies, that much was clear. Dr. Hauptman was a man, so he bore watching. But Elke had been completely invisible, a gnat. She cocked the Nagant revolver in her hand, pointed directly at Schneider’s belly.
“This is the gun that killed the KGB pig,” she said, remarkably calm. “All we want to do is leave.”
Ryan drew the Makarov. North followed suit and aimed her H&K.
“You bastard . . .”
“Don’t!” Ryan barked.
Schneider raised his right hand and lowered the machine pistol to the concrete floor with his left.
“I do not know what your name is,” he said to Ryan. “But if you think she is not going to shoot me—”
“Seriously, Jen,” Ryan said. “I want him alive.” Then, to Schneider. “Now, let me tell you what I am thinking . . .”
“If you have the authority to make that happen,” Schneider said after Ryan had finished, “then I should keep you here as a prize.”
“You should,” Ryan said. “Except you have three guns pointed at your lungs, so I think you’d like my plan better.”
“Please go,” North said. “His men will be here any minute.”
“Come with us,” Foley said. “I’ll tell them what you’ve done.”
North shook her head. “They know what I’ve done. No, someone needs to stay here and babysit Rolfe, make sure he keeps his end of the deal. He might just decide to blow the tunnel on you.”
Foley put a hand on her shoulder. “You know what you are?”
North sobbed.
“A traitor?”
“Well, yeah.” Foley sniffed back a tear. “But there’s more to it than that . . .”
* * *
—
In October of 1985, East German runner Marita Koch ran four hundred meters in a world record time of 47.6 seconds. Ryan and the others didn’t cover the tunnel quite that fast, but they were all panting by the time they popped out in the basement of an office building rented by a West German construction company fronting for the Stasi. The frumpy woman at the desk, who up to now had gotten to live a cushy life in the West and do nothing all day but sit and answer telephones, stood up and screamed when she saw them.
“I am going to use your phone,” Foley said to the woman in curt German. “If you get in my way I will shoot you in the ass.”
Hans Hauptman giggled.
His parents began to weep.
The woman raised her hands and stepped aside.
Jack Ryan turned and watched the black mouth of the tunnel behind them, wondering what kind of evil might follow them out.
* * *
—
Holy shit,” Billy Dunn said when he met the group on the street. He was armed and facing outbound, covering them from any HVA operatives on this side of the Wall. A squad of heavily armed CIA case officers wrapped the Hauptmans in blankets and escorted them to a convoy of waiting vehicles. One of them, on orders from Foley’s SRAC message, had brought a plastic train for Hans.
Hulse and Ryan helped Foley to a waiting ambulance.
“Somebody should be helping you, Ryan,” Hulse said. “You look like warmed-over shit.”
“I’m fine,” he said. Then, to Foley, “You notice how good it smells over here?”
“We are literally four hundred yards away from where we just were,” Foley said. She stopped, took a deep breath, grimacing from the effort, then said, “You know what . . . It does smell better.”
62
Dan Murray took one look at the airplanes and felt his stomach do a flip.
“What in the actual hell . . .”
Two Air Force Security police officers had taken one look at his FBI credentials when he’d arrived at the front gate and requested that he follow them.
Instead of a comfortable Lear 35, he found three Northrop T-38 Talons ready and waiting on the flight line. The sleek two-seat supersonic trainers were ubiquitous across the Air Force and Navy. Virtually every fighter pilot had spent time in a T-38 cockpit at the beginning of their career. By NASA tradition, space shuttle astronauts arrived at Kennedy Space Center before a flight in the little fighter trainer.
A bantam rooster of a man strode up like he owned the place and shook Murray’s hand. “Colonel Dave Finn,” he said. “My friends call me Huck.” He glanced down at a clipboard in his left hand. “I have Special Agents Murray, Harris, and Gillum. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” Murray said, dumbfounded.
“Outstanding,” Colonel Finn said. “I understand you’re in a hurry. Chief Robbins will get y’all into flight suits and we can be on our way.” He turned to go, then spun, shaking his head, mouth tight. “You know I’ve gotta say it . . .”
“Gotta say what?”
Murray was still trying to get his head wrapped around strapping himself into the backseat of a supersonic jet.
“If you’re goin’ to Winnemucca, man, with me you can ride . . .”
* * *
—
Max is somewhere around seven hundred forty-six knots,” Colonel Finn said over the intercom when they were zipping along at thirty thousand feet somewhere over eastern Nevada. “That’s eight hundred fifty miles an hour, give or take. I told my guys we’d keep it around six if that’s okay with you. That’ll get us there in a little over thirty minutes.”
“Plenty of time,” Murray said, and did not speak again until they touched down in Winnemucca Municipal Airport.
* * *
—
That was amazing!” Betty Harris said, a smile permanently affixed to her freckled face.
“Yeah,” Murray said, wiping some of the sandwich he’d eaten four hours earlier off the corner of his mouth. “I’d rather not do that again.”
Two plainclothes officers from Winnemucca PD met the team in unmarked Ford Crown Victorias and took them to the train station. George Ortiz, resident agent in the Reno FBI office, arrived shortly after they did.
They were two hours early.
Harris spied a stack of dusty suitcases in the corner.
“More passengers?”
“Lost and abandoned bags,” the Amtrak agent said. His name was Rodgers, and he looked as tired as Murray felt.
“Mind if we borrow them for a few minutes when we get on the train?”
“Knock yourself out,” Rodger said. “Like I said, they’re abandoned. I just haven’t gotten around to tossing them in the dumpster.”
“Coffee?” Murray asked.
“I wish,” Rodger said. “There’s Cokes in the machine outside and some Fritos, I think, but that’s about it.”
Murray thought about the combination of Fritos and Coca-Cola on his belly for a minute and decided to stick with the water fountain.
“The life of an FBI agent, eh, boss?” Harris said, still beaming from the flight.
Murray gave a sardonic chuckle. “I was just thinking the same thing, Betty. The exact same thing . . .”
* * *
—
The California Zephyr squealed to a halt in front of the Winnemucca, Nevada, station ten minutes late and an hour before dawn.
Nine other outbound passengers didn’t arrive until just before the train, and the three FBI agents and AFOSI agent Gillum were able to board with the group. They carried duffels from the abandoned bag pile in case their UNSUB happened to be looking out the window.
* * *
—
Fast asleep in roomette number 11 on #531, one coach away from the dining car, Garit Richter opened his eyes when the train rolled to a stop. He held his breath and listened for sirens, marching boots, anything else that might suggest authorities. Instead, he heard the grunt of passengers dragging their bags down the narrow corridors, doors sliding open, a child whimpering from fatigue.
Then a woman’s voice, trying to locate her room.
“Number fourteen,” she whispered, taking special care not to bother her fellow passengers. “This is us, hon . . .”
It was a sweet voice, and Richter rolled onto his back in the narrow lower berth, thinking he might like to meet a woman with such a voice.
An instant later, the door of his roomette slid open with a terrifying whoosh and a very angry-looking man shoved a black revolver in his face.
* * *
—
You know,” Harris said, after they’d gotten their still-unidentified subject seated in the rear of Special Agent Ortiz’s Crown Victoria, “in the Academy every practical exercise where we’re going to arrest someone ends up in a bloody gunfight.”
“And this could have,” Murray said. “If this puke would have had a gun—or been able to reach his knife. Don’t forget he murdered two people and nearly did the same to a third.”
Harris lifted the burned piece of metal. “All for this,” she said.
“Yeah,” Murray said. “I was always more concerned with the murders than the top secret aircraft tech. They’ll develop something, then we’ll develop something better, then they’ll top that, and so on and so on . . . This shit that caused us so much grief will be on the cover of Popular Mechanics in two years, mark my words.”
“Until then . . .” Special Agent Gillum swooped in. “I’ll take that.” He shot Harris a wink. “Colonel Finn’s waiting to take me back to Tonopah. I’m sure his guys could drop you off in SLC if—”
“She can go if she wants,” Murray said. “I am good to take a ride to Reno in a subsonic Crown Vic.”
“Rain check on that, Gillum.” Harris chuckled. “I’d better stay with my wingman and get this asshole to Reno.”
Though their UNSUB had been arrested in Winnemucca, he’d be transported to Reno to appear before the nearest federal magistrate for an initial appearance and an identity hearing the following day. Attorneys from Main Justice were flying out the next morning to make certain the hearing was sealed for national security reasons. The local PD was instructed to keep quiet about the arrest. All the news and cable channels were still camped out near Whitney Pocket, hoping for a shot of the super-secret airplane, and had no idea there had been a piece of it in FBI custody in Winnemucca. As secrets went, northern Nevada was a good place to keep one.
“I wonder if he’ll tell us what ‘mint’ had to do with anything?”
Murray shook his head. “This asshole won’t even tell us his name.”
Special Agent Ortiz came around the Crown Victoria in time to hear the end of the conversation.
“Mint?”
“Part of the coded message,” Harris said. “What’s mint in Spanish?”
“Yerba buena,” Ortiz said.
Harris took the folded page out of her folio and smoothed it out on the hood of the Crown Vic. She tapped where the tunnel ran under the Bay Bridge between San Francisco and Oakland with her index finger.
“Yerba Buena.”
“Yerba buena means ‘mint’?” Murray chuckled. “I always thought that had something to do with marijuana . . . you know, ‘good herb’ . . . I’m willing to bet you we are victims of over translation. Whoever caught this intel in Germany likely spoke Spanish, translated it into English, thinking they were doing us a favor. Let’s get on the phone with San Fran and have them check out Yerba Buena. Good chance our guy’s meeting a boat there. They can snatch his contact.”
“Will do.” Harris gave a long, feline yawn. “This makes my brain hurt. I’m looking forward to a hot bath and a long sleep.”
“Me too,” Murray said, studying the UNSUB through the window. “But it occurs to me that I have some apology calls to make to that police sketch artist. This guy does look a little bit like Captain Kangaroo.”
63
Huge popcorn flakes sifted from a gunmetal sky turning the Grunewald Forest into a snow globe.
Kurt Pfeiffer walked purposefully up the wooded path off Clayallee toward the McDonald’s. Eyes wide, he enjoyed the feeling of snow kissing his face. He could not help but smile inside that he’d pulled this off.
Thirty feet in front of him, at the edge of a small parking lot, were two faces he recognized, Skip Hulse, the chief of base of Berlin Mission, and William Dunn, a junior clandestine service officer who two of Mielke’s Maidens—prostitutes in the employ of the Stasi—had been trying unsuccessfully to recruit for the past four months. So far, the lad would go no further than buying them a drink and showing them how to fold paper cranes.
Hulse was holding a copy of Der Spiegel, as he’d said he would if all was well. Pfeiffer was to travel under a pseudonym and he was taken aback when Hulse tucked the magazine in his pocket and called him by his true name.
Four very large military-looking men stepped out of the shadows and surrounded him, pinning his arms. Before he knew it, they’d spun him around and wrenched his hands behind his back, ratcheting on a pair of handcuffs.
“Kurt Pfeiffer,” Hulse said. “You are under arrest.”
He gasped. “For what?” His throat convulsed, sending his voice up an octave. “We had an agreement!” He struggled against the cruel metal cuffs. “I am telling you we had an agreement. Talk to the woman. She will tell you!”
Hulse scoffed and glanced to his left toward the forest. “You mean that woman?”
Pfeiffer turned to look through the falling snow and found none other than Elke Hauptman standing at the base of a large linden tree.
She smiled and blew him a kiss as the military men led him away and shoved him into the back of a waiting Mercedes sedan.
He had to hunch over to keep from hurting his hands on the cuffs.
He leaned forward to get the driver’s attention. “Where are we going?”
Hulse sat down beside him, but said nothing.
“Are we going to see a judge? What is the meaning of all this? I demand to know where you are taking me!”
Hulse looked sideways without moving his head, as if deciding whether or not to waste any words.
“Well . . . since you demand,” he finally said, mocking. He let his head fall to the side, meeting Pfeiffer’s eye. “We’re taking you home, Kurt. You’re officially PNG’d in the West.”
Pfeiffer released a sputtering gasp. “Persona non grata? What are you talking about? I thought you said I was under arrest.”
