Collateral (Tier One #6)

PART I

Breaking a country is no different than breaking a man; all you have to do is take away hope.

—Matias Zinovenko

The Ferry House English Pub

London, England

September 14

2147 Local Time

John Dempsey ducked just before the bottle flying at him could slam into his temple. It sailed over his head instead and smashed into a life-sized ceramic English bulldog positioned just inside the pub’s entrance. The bottle, and the bulldog, shattered into a million comingled pieces. The barmaid behind the counter released an eardrum-piercing shriek—full of outrage and anguish at the loss of what must have been the pub’s mascot.

“Get ooooout!” she screamed. “All of you brigands!”

Nobody listened . . . except for the man Dempsey was there to kill. The Russian operative darted out the pub’s double doors, running like a man on fire.

“The target has just left the building,” said a professorial voice through the wireless microtransmitter stuffed deep in Dempsey’s right ear canal. The voice belonged to Task Force Ember’s Signals Chief and Acting Director, Ian Baldwin, located in a Tactical Operations Center five time zones away.

“I know,” Dempsey—a former Navy SEAL turned American assassin—said as he blocked a punch from a burly middle-aged local with his forearm. He was about to drive a hook into the guy’s jaw but decided the poor bloke didn’t deserve to spend the next six weeks drinking all his meals through a straw. So instead, he sent the tough-guy wannabe flying backward and onto his ass with a two-handed shove. He whirled toward the exit to pursue his quarry, only to find another angry brawler blocking his path.

“Dude, where are you?” said another voice, this one belonging to former SEAL and combat surgeon Dan Munn, who was also sitting in the TOC in Florida. “He’s getting away.”

“I know!” Dempsey growled, ducking a jab flying at his face.

“Well, what the hell are you doing?”

“Somehow Alpha has managed to get himself into a bar fight,” came a third voice, this one belonging to Elizabeth Grimes, Ember’s sniper in residence and overwatch for tonight’s assassination mission.

“Of course he has,” Munn said, and Dempsey could practically hear him shaking his head. “Screw this. I say we have Lizzie shoot the target.”

“No,” came Baldwin’s clipped reply. “The DNI was very specific about the approved lethal methods for this operation. No sniper action unless we can disappear the body without incident. Bravo, you are relegated to spotter and exfil activities only.”

“Check,” Grimes said, acknowledging the directive.

The chatter in Dempsey’s ear was beginning to piss him off, and so was the asshole in front of him trying to channel Rocky Balboa. The dude threw a gut punch, which Dempsey caught in a scissor block. The block made the brawler wince, but he was committed and drew back his other fist to try again. Dempsey didn’t give him that opportunity; he drove a knee into the man’s groin, buckling the wannabe boxer at the waist.

“Behind you,” Grimes said in his ear.

Dempsey dropped into a crouch and spun on the balls of his feet. A third dude, the bottle thrower, was charging with a fresh bottle raised overhead and primed to split open Dempsey’s skull. Dempsey grabbed him by the shirt, pivoted, and used the attacker’s momentum to send him flying into tough guy number two, who was still bent over, clutching his nuts. Both men crashed to the ground in a tangled heap of arms and legs amid a pile of overturned wooden chairs.

Dempsey did a quick scan for the next threat, but there was nobody left standing in the tiny pub. For an instant, he locked eyes with the woman behind the bar. Thank God this was London and not Houston, or else he would be staring down the barrel of a Remington 870. As it was, the only targeting lasers fixed on him at the moment were the invisible ones streaming from her angry eyes.

“Sorry about your bulldog,” he said with an Irish brogue as he turned to leave.

“Get the fuck out,” she screamed as he barreled out the pub’s doors and onto the street. “And never come back!”

“Which way did he go?” Dempsey asked to the ether, scanning right, then left, for his target.

“North on East Ferry Road,” Grimes answered.

“Check,” he said and took off after the Russian spy. After one block, the ancient and uneven brick pavers underfoot transitioned to asphalt, improving Dempsey’s footing and letting him push to a full tilt. “How are your eyes, Omega?” he asked, noting the misty, overcast night sky.

“We have the target on satellite thermal,” Baldwin said. “He has a two-block lead on you and is headed toward Mudchute Park.”

“Is that the giant fucking goat farm?”

“Yes, John,” Baldwin said, breaking OPSEC as usual. “Mudchute Park and Farm is the largest working farm in London. It’s heavily wooded and spans twelve hectares, so I suggest you hurry before you lose him.”

“I know, I know. I’m running. I know you can see that,” Dempsey puffed.

“Oh, we see you. Is that all you got, old man?” Munn chimed in.

Dempsey didn’t answer, preferring to conserve precious oxygen. He hated this shit. Lately, it seemed like every op ended in a footrace—either with him chasing down some fleet-footed asshole, or with him running for his life while being shot at by Russians. Ember didn’t need operators; what it needed was Olympic middle-distance runners.

I’m too old for this shit, he thought as his quads began to burn.

“Alpha, this is Bravo,” Grimes said in his ear. “I’m coming down. Gonna bring the car around to the east side and reposition on Stebondale Street. If our tango crosses Millwall Park playing fields, I’ll plink him with the long gun.”

“I said no sniper action.” Baldwin’s voice had an uncharacteristic hard edge. “Accidental death or poison—that was the OPORD.”

“We tried poison and that didn’t work out so well,” Munn said. “So now it’s time to try accidental death.”

“Enlighten me, Dan, if you will. How does a sniper round to the head qualify as accidental death?” Baldwin said.

“It qualifies when the target accidentally walks into Lizzie’s bullet while it happens to be flying in the vicinity of his head,” the former SEAL doc said, oozing with sarcasm.

“OPSEC, people, OPSEC!” snapped an acerbic fourth voice on the line. “I’m good, but so is British Intelligence. GCHQ is listening.” The rebuke from Richard Wang, Ember’s cyber and IT expert, was as out of character as truth was from a politician.

To Dempsey’s surprise, everybody shut up and locked it down.

Thank God . . .

He pulled up a mental image of the nearby greenspace complex, consisting of Millwall Park and Mudchute Farm. He didn’t have an eidetic memory, but he’d always had a knack for remembering topography and details from satellite imagery. As a SEAL with the Tier One back in the day, it had been his responsibility to plan the ops and know the terrain cold. Yes, they’d had GPS, Suunto watches, slick tablet computers, and eyes in the sky to monitor their position, but Dempsey knew better than to put all his faith in technology. Because unlike his teammates, technology seemed to have an annoying habit of letting him down when he needed it most.

Mudchute Farm was a genuine anomaly; nothing of the sort existed in American cities. At thirty-two acres, it was huge and situated on the Isle of Dogs, a peninsula inside a buttonhook bow of the Thames in central London, where real estate was going at a premium. More than just a greenspace, the farm had a wooded perimeter, an equestrian center, and grazing pastures for cows, pigs, goats, sheep, and llama. The farm had caught Dempsey’s attention not only because of its size, but also because it was the perfect place to disappear or wait in ambush.

“Target is approaching the Chapel House Street intersection,” Baldwin reported. “And he just vectored east toward the park.”

“Check,” Dempsey said.

“And he appears to be opening the gap, Alpha. Can you possibly run any faster?”

“If I . . . could run . . . any faster,” he said, his words punctuated by heavy exhales, “then I would . . . be.”

“Target is crossing the northwest quadrant . . . heading for the woods and Mudchute Farm,” Munn said. “Bravo, where are you?”

“Driving, but not in position yet,” Grimes said. “Ninety seconds.”

“Shit, you’re gonna be too late,” Munn said, as if sniper action were still on the table.

Arms pumping and legs churning, Dempsey crossed the Manchester Grove intersection. In another two hundred meters, he’d reach the park entrance. Two-story brown-brick row houses zipped past him as he sprinted up the middle of Ferry Road between twin columns of parked cars. As he ran, he noted how he could barely feel the formfitting body armor protecting his torso. This was his first time wearing the brand-new tech Baldwin had procured for all the SAD team members.

Unlike traditional antiballistic Kevlar vests with heavy, rigid SAPI plates, this new vest was light and flexible. The puncture-resistant woven shell concealed a honeycomb interior filled with “liquid” body armor. Originally conceived at MIT and then refined by DARPA, liquid body armor—or shear-thickening fluid—was flexible and viscous in normal conditions but instantly hardened when struck by a projectile, deflecting and dispersing the impact force. He’d rolled his eyes and chuckled when Baldwin had presented him with the vest, but after unloading a thirty-round magazine of 5.56 at the range and finding it intact, his skepticism had melted away. Wearing it now, however, he couldn’t help but wonder what critical little piece of information Baldwin had “forgotten” to mention.

He could almost hear the Signal Chief’s voice in his head.

Antiballistic STF performs flawlessly against all calibers of ammunition . . . so long as it doesn’t get wet. Or maybe, Liquid body armor is positively impenetrable . . . provided the gel temperature stays below ninety-one degrees Fahrenheit.

He suddenly found himself wishing for his old rigid, heavy, uncomfortable-as-fuck body armor. He’d been shot plenty of times in that rig and had walked away every time.

Well . . . almost every time.

“Target is in the woods,” Munn reported, just as Dempsey reached the park entrance.

He hurdled the entry gate and ran a dogleg path left, slowing and looking for cover as he scanned the tree line. His spidey sense was tingling as the risk profile shifted. The Russian was in cover now, and Dempsey was exposed—especially while crossing the field.

“Do you have eyes on my tango?” Dempsey said, panting and dropping into a crouch.

“Hold,” came Baldwin’s reply. “The target is loitering just inside the tree line four hundred feet from your position.”

Dempsey took a knee and pulled a compact Sig Sauer from his underarm holster. Wishing he had night vision goggles, he scanned the tree line over the new, low-profile SAS fiber-tritium sights. “Bearing?”

“Zero four five, true.”

“Check,” Dempsey said, verifying his watch compass heading and adjusting his aim right.

“The target is moving,” Baldwin said, his voice ripe with tension. “Moving north and east, through the trees.”

Dempsey popped up from his crouch and sprinted along the line he’d just been sighting. He crossed a walking path and wove his way into the trees and underbrush.

“Target is out of the woods, crossing what looks like a very large vegetable patch. He’s heading for one of the paddocks,” Baldwin said.

“I’m on it,” Dempsey said, pressing forward through the surprisingly dense undergrowth with a cringeworthy lack of stealth.

“Oh dear . . .”

“‘Oh dear’ what?” Dempsey said, his voice low and hushed.

“We lost him.”

“How is that even possible?”

“He must suspect we have him on satellite thermal, because he moved in among the animals—sheep, I suspect—and entered a barn-like structure. He must be on all fours, because we cannot identify which heat signature is his.”

“Are you telling me you can’t tell the difference between a man and a bunch of sheep?” Dempsey said through clenched teeth.

“Dude, he’s telling you straight,” Munn interjected. “It just looks like a bunch of yellow-orange blobs huddled together.”

“Ridiculous,” Dempsey murmured and couldn’t help but think how he’d gone from being a kitted-up Tier One SEAL, fast-roping with his unit out of Stealth Hawks behind enemy lines, to this . . . a dude stalking sheep in a petting zoo.

In the distance, sirens began to wail.

“There’s a police cruiser en route to the Ferry House Pub,” Wang reported, his voice all business.

“Time to wrap this up, Alpha,” Baldwin said. “You have five minutes to eliminate the target, or I’m terminating the op.”

Yeah, yeah, easy for you to say over your tea and biscuits, Dempsey thought as he grudgingly acknowledged Baldwin’s order with a double-click of his tongue.

He advanced silently and methodically toward the animal pen where the Russian operative was hiding. The perimeter was kept by a sturdy four-foot-tall slat-and-wire fence with two swing gates. Inside, the turf had been grazed down to bare dirt. A simple, twenty-foot-long windowless shelter with a flat metal roof occupied the south end of the pen. With his pistol trained on the building, he eased along the fence until the opening of the shelter—wide enough to permit free and easy movement in and out by the animals—came into view. The inside of the shelter was pitch black, but he could make out greyish blobs moving just inside the opening.

A second later, the smell hit him and one of the animals let out a throaty, prolonged bleat.

Yep, definitely sheep.

If this were Afghanistan, the tactical solution would be simple—toss a grenade in the barn and hose down everything that came out. But this wasn’t the ’Stan. In central London, lobbing grenades and shooting anything, even a bunch of sheep, was off the table. Which meant he had no choice but to go in after his target. And he could predict how that would play out. The minute he entered the barn, commotion would ensue. The animals would bleat and shit and scuttle, and while he milled about trying to find a crouching human in the chaos, his adversary would plink him with an easy headshot.

Dempsey cursed to himself, trying to decide what to do.

“What is the problem, Alpha?” Baldwin said, his tone more annoyed than concerned.

“He’s trying to figure out how to get the sheep out of the barn without discharging his weapon,” Munn answered for Dempsey.

“Ah yes, do be careful not to kill any sheep, John,” Baldwin said. “This needs to look like a mugging gone bad, not a shoot-out.”

Dempsey clenched his jaw in irritation and stood there motionless, sighting over his Sig at the entrance. For the first time in his long and decorated career, he was experiencing tactical paralysis . . .

Tactical paralysis in a petting zoo, he thought. God, what have I become?

He crept back to a position with a perpendicular firing angle on the enclosure. The side walls didn’t have any windows, just a series of drilled ventilation holes that would be virtually impossible to sight and fire through.

I need a distraction, he decided.

He scanned the ground until he found a rock the size of his fist. He knelt and picked it up.

“Fuck it,” he murmured, looking at the rock, and then lobbed it in a high arc at the shelter.

The rock hit the metal roof dead center with a loud, metallic clang that echoed through the park. Terrified sheep poured out of the enclosure in a wooly, stinky stampede—bleating, stomping, and defecating en masse. At the same time, Dempsey jumped the perimeter fence and charged forward in a low crouch. A sheep screamed to his left. The animal’s cry was so uncannily human that he reflexively swiveled and sighted before dismissing the threat.

He pivoted back toward the enclosure and felt the shift he’d been waiting for—into the combat slipstream where all anxiety, uncertainty, and doubt evaporated. His mind and body unified into a state of hyperawareness and fluidity. With his weapon up in a two-handed grip and index finger tension on the trigger, he closed on the doorway. Then something happened he did not expect . . .

The sheep recoalesced into a compact herd and charged back toward the enclosure—apparently collectively deciding it was safer back inside than out here with him. On instinct, he went with them. Ducking as low as possible, he grabbed a fistful of wool on the back of a fat ewe and went in behind her like she was his blocking fullback. As he broke the plane of the doorway, he pulled the sheep tight to his chest, dug in his heels, and revectored her momentum radially. As they rotated in place, he scanned over her back for anything human-shaped in the shadows.

A crack of gunfire exploded inside the metal structure, three deafening bangs along with three brilliant muzzle flashes from the back right corner. His sheep-shield bleated and shuddered—a fat wooly bullet cushion—as it took all three of the rounds. Dempsey returned fire, two rounds of his own into the corner, but the Russian was already rolling right and the slugs punched two holes harmlessly in the wall. Dempsey’s ovine bodyguard suddenly became dead weight as the sheep’s legs buckled. Its decision to die in that instant was unfortunate for Dempsey, because the Russian squeezed off another round. This one hit Dempsey center mass, square between his pecs. Instead of the familiar impact jab he was accustomed to when taking a round in Kevlar, he felt a sharp rippling tension across the breadth of his chest and then nothing.

The bullet had gone through his vest like a knife through butter.

Motherfucker, he thought as he returned fire at the Russian shadow. I knew this shit was too good to be true.

He scrambled right in the chaos—the gunfire having sent the sheep into blind pandemonium. Any second now, his breath would grow wet and raspy as his chest filled with blood. His blood pressure would drop, his arms would grow impossibly heavy, and his legs would turn to jelly. But none of those things happened. Was it possible that Baldwin’s vest full of magic slime had actually friggin’ worked?

Still strong and in the fight, Dempsey grabbed a fleeing ewe—smaller than the last—and ducked down behind her. Instead of firing over her back, he sighted around her ass. Muzzle flashes lit up the inside of the shelter as the Russian emptied his magazine. Multiple rounds slammed into Dempsey’s sheep, and it sprayed the side of his face with shit pellets. He returned fire, aiming just below the muzzle flashes.

Crack, crack, crack . . .

A human-shaped shadow dropped, hitting the dirt with a thud.

Dempsey released his grip on his second sheep, and the ewe collapsed beside him. He shifted from a crouch to a tactical knee, his Sig trained on his target, with whom he was finally alone in the barn. The Russian groaned and wheezed as he made a futile belly crawl toward the pistol he’d dropped, now a meter away.

“Stop,” Dempsey said in Russian, surprised how the word came to him automatically. He’d been taking lessons from Buz—who claimed Dempsey had the worst language skills of anyone he’d ever taught. This was the first time the language had come to him without trying.

The Russian stopped and strained a backward look at him.

Dempsey pressed to his feet and walked over to the man, keeping a proper standoff in case the Russian operator wasn’t quite as wounded as he was letting on. The two men locked eyes, victor and vanquished.

The spy said something to him, but the only word he caught was “Zhukov.” It didn’t matter, though, because he knew his enemy well enough to infer the question. Dempsey was hunting Zetas—the Russian Federation’s most secret and lethal black ops task force—taking them out one by one until he’d worked his way to the top.

“No, Zhukov didn’t send me,” Dempsey said, answering in English this time. “Shane Smith did.”

Confusion washed over the other man’s face, the murdered Ember Director’s name clearly unknown to him. Dempsey wasn’t surprised; only one Zeta had survived the horrific attack ordered by Russian spymaster Arkady Zhukov on Ember’s secret compound in Virginia three months ago. Apparently, this dude wasn’t that guy.

“De oppresso liber, comrade,” he said and squeezed the trigger, completing the mission and ending the life of yet another Zeta.

“Well, that certainly didn’t go as planned,” Baldwin said in his ear as the last wisp of smoke from Dempsey’s muzzle faded into the ether.

Where there had been only one siren wailing before, now a chorus screamed in the night.

“What do you want me to do with the body?” Dempsey asked.

“Leave it,” Baldwin said through a defeated sigh. “And you can explain to the DNI why you violated the OPORD.”

“Roger that,” he said, holstering his weapon as he ducked out of the barn.

“Exfil north,” Grimes said in his ear. “I’ll pick you up in the Asda superstore parking lot.”

“Check.”

“Hurry, they’re coming,” she said.

“I know,” he said, a surge of fresh adrenaline helping get his sluggish legs moving. As he ran, thoughts of the next mission began to take shape. “Hey, Omega?”

“What is it, Alpha?” Baldwin answered, still irritated.

A malign smile curled Dempsey’s lips.

“I’m ready for the next target.”