Collateral (Tier One #6)

Parking Garage

Public Emergency Hospital

Odessa, Ukraine

“Fuck,” Dempsey said, drawing out the word, as the Iskander missile streaked away into the blue.

He squeezed the ascender’s trigger and hoisted himself the last three feet up to the top of the concrete wall, lifted his Sig MCX rifle over the edge, and blindly hosed down the upper deck of the parking structure, emptying his magazine.

“Dude, what the hell are you doing?” Munn said, snugging up beside him.

“Trying to win,” he growled, swapping for a fresh magazine.

“There could be people up there!”

“Then they need to duck,” he snapped. “Cover me; I’m going in.”

Overhead, the collective buzz of four-dozen PIXIE microdrones caused him to glance up. The swarm moved fast, faster than he thought it was even capable of flying, toward the target.

“I hold one Russian standing at a launch console on the opposite side of the transport vehicle,” Wang said on the comms channel. “He’s obviously trying to program another missile to fire. I’m going to dive-bomb his ass.”

“Check,” Dempsey said, and with a grunt, hoisted himself up and over the wall.

He landed with a thud on the concrete deck, dropping into a kneeling firing stance. He scanned over his weapon for shooters while Munn squeezed off three short bursts of covering fire above his head. Seeing no immediate threats, Dempsey unclipped the ascender from his kit and tossed it aside with a metallic clank. Seventy-five feet ahead, the Astrolog missile transport taunted him, with its second and final missile raised into the launch position. The driver’s side was facing the hospital wall. Dempsey sighted, scanning for human legs to shoot in the gaps between the four pairs of oversized tires spaced along the length of the truck.

Must be standing behind a tire . . .

Munn plunked down beside him and let out an old-man grunt, while the PIXIE swarm arced over the top of the missile launcher and disappeared to harass the Russian operator.

“Go now!” Wang said in his ear. “He’s still trying to enter the launch instructions.”

Dempsey took off at a full sprint, not waiting for Munn. For a split second, he debated whether to round the front or rear of the Astrolog, but instinctively defaulted to his golden rule: When in doubt, go left. As he crossed half the distance to the target, he yanked a frag grenade from his kit, pulled the pin, and sidearm pitched it low and hard. The grenade flew true, splitting the gap between the truck’s second and third axles, where it skidded across the concrete and disappeared under the truck’s chassis. Dempsey arced wide—using the Astrolog as a shield—while dropping into a combat crouch and bringing his weapon up. The grenade detonated a heartbeat later with a loud crack.

“You wounded him,” Wang said in his ear as he picked up speed and closed on the rear bumper. “But he’s still on his feet. Hurry!”

Dempsey flicked the fire selector switch to full auto and rounded the back of the Astrolog in a deep crouch. A figure stood hunched at the launch control panel in the middle of a cloud of swarming microdrones. The Zeta was typing on a flip-down keyboard with his left hand, while holding a pistol in his right, arm extended and aiming at Dempsey. A single round whizzed over Dempsey’s head, but he didn’t hear the shot over the roar of his own weapon as he unloaded half his magazine into the Russian.

The Zeta’s body spasmed as fifteen rounds of 5.56 pummeled his torso. He crumpled a millisecond later—like a puppet whose strings had just been cut—landing on his back staring upward with his legs folded awkwardly underneath. The hand holding the pistol went limp, and it clattered onto the concrete. Dempsey advanced, his muzzle pointing center mass at the fallen operator, while he scanned for a “last laugh” present the Russian might have rigged to blow—a suicide vest or grenade. Seeing neither threat, Dempsey moved closer until he was looking down at the man.

He immediately recognized the dying operator as the Zeta from Kiev.

The Russian coughed, his breath wet and raspy, as dark blood leaked in twin rivulets from the corners of his grinning mouth.

“I win,” Dempsey said, lowering his rifle decisively. “De oppresso liber, motherfucker.’

“Good job, Yankee,” the Russian said through a gurgle, and with the last remaining life in his body, gave Dempsey a wobbly thumbs-up.

Munn appeared around the front end of the Astrolog, sighting over his rifle, just as the Zeta’s hand dropped lifelessly to the ground.

“Hooyah,” Munn said, looking from the dead Zeta to Dempsey. “Got ’im.”

Dempsey nodded at Munn and immediately turned his attention to the launch control panel on the side of the truck. “Wang, the interface is in Russian,” Dempsey said, his heart rate picking up as he scanned the LCD panel for something that looked like a countdown timer. “I don’t recognize most of the words. What am I looking for? Is there an override I need to activate?”

“Hold . . .” Wang said as the PIXIE swarm coalesced above Dempsey’s head.

The next voice Dempsey heard belonged to Buz; the command came hard and punctuated: “Don’t touch anything.”

“Where’s the countdown timer?” Dempsey snapped. “How much time do I have?”

“This ain’t an episode of Looney Tunes or Mission: Impossible,” Buz said, and Dempsey could practically hear the old spook chuckling at his expense. “There’s no countdown timer. He just didn’t get a chance to finish entering the launch commands.”

Dempsey exhaled with relief. Then, rolling his eyes, he said, “Fine, then walk me through how to reset the damn thing and lower the missile.”

Over the next several minutes, with the combined knowledge and efforts of Buz, Baldwin, and Wang, the team safed the missile and launcher, with the PIXIE swarm serving as their eyes and Dempsey acting as their hands. Just as they secured missile number two, Director Casey reported that an SM-3 antiballistic missile launched from the USS Donald Cook had intercepted and destroyed the first Iskander missile before it reached Mariupol.

Munn clapped Dempsey on the shoulder. “We did it, dude! We fucking stopped Zeta.”

“No, we stopped this asshole, but we haven’t stopped Zeta,” Dempsey said, looking up at an F-35 streaking by overhead. “These operators are the weapons. They’re interchangeable. Arkady Zhukov is the real threat. Zeta isn’t dead until he is. That’s up to Grimes and Martin now.”