Savage Son (James Reece #3) - Jack Carr Page 0,141
of a Russian oligarch. There is nothing but tundra and wild animals in every direction.”
“James Reece is not going to let me go, Pakhan.”
Oliver diverted his attention back out the windows that overlooked the helipad. Lights from the generators illuminated all sides of the compound. Beyond that was darkness.
Stirring the borscht on the stovetop, Zharkov continued: “Do you know what would have happened had that impact event occurred just four hours later?”
Oliver turned back to his new mentor, his brain searching for an answer.
“Think about it, Oliver. The rotation of the earth would have centered the hit on my very home city of St. Petersburg. In 1908, the capital of the Empire would have been destroyed. I would have never existed. In all likelihood there would have been no Soviet Union. The German army would not have had an eastern front to contend with and would have been able to put all efforts into defeating the Allies in the West. No Cold War. It would be a different world.”
As one of the most powerful men in Russia, Zharkov drew strength from what he considered a sacred place. Oliver was not so sure. He would have much rather been at one of the more opulent dachas on the Black Sea, where the other oligarchs chose to invest their considerable wealth, and where Zharkov’s broods enjoyed the fruits of their father’s labor. But Oliver was not in a position to dictate the schedule to the head of the Brotherhood.
The pleasant smell of the red beetroot soup calmed him. He turned his eyes outward from the epicenter of what had been a fifteen-megaton explosion, out from the heart of bratva power, toward the blackness, wondering what was beyond it.
* * *
Reece had counted nine total: the three in the advance team who had been dropped off two days prior and the three that arrived with Zharkov and Grey. That plus the pilot made nine.
Reece didn’t factor in the odds of one man against nine. He’d faced worse. He only knew he was going to kill them all.
* * *
The explosion threw Oliver to the floor. In a panic he looked to his benefactor, who gripped the stove with a wild excitement in his eyes.
Had the gods returned to Krasnoyarsk Krai?
Two men from Zharkov’s security element immediately entered the room. Ensuring their principal was alive, they took positions away from the windows, holding their AKMs at the two entrances to the room with the senior man shouting into his radio. They wouldn’t dare push the leader of the bratva to the ground, though they all knew that is where he should be.
“Pakhan,” the man who had just been on his radio said as he moved to the side of his boss, “there’s been an explosion at the front of the dacha. It destroyed the truck and killed Grigori, Misha, and Viktor.”
Nikolay Khristenko had been GRU before being lured into the world of organized crime. He had been to the dacha many times with Zharkov and though he did not believe in the superstitions surrounding the area, it had always made him feel uneasy.
“What was it?”
“We don’t know, Pakhan, but we need to move you to a more secure location.”
“Da,” the elder mafioso said, and nodded, though Nikolay suspected he would rather stay and find out if the fireball from the heavens really did come from a supernatural source.
“Pakhan, we have to leave,” a terrified Oliver pleaded as he scampered toward the relative safety of the stove.
Zharkov looked at the former CIA man and to his head of security. He then decided their fate.
* * *
Reece had waited until he had as many of Zharkov’s security personnel in the kill zone as possible before detonating the explosives. He’d emplaced the MON-50 devices two weeks earlier after watching the empty dacha for three days to ensure it was unoccupied. Reece had taken a foreign weapons course years ago and was familiar with the antipersonnel device developed in the former Soviet Union and exported around the world. Its green body was easy to camouflage in the tundra turned soft by the melting snow. It had been set for use against him and his team on Medny Island, where Reece had collected it before beginning his journey westward into the interior. It worked precisely as designed, destroying the Laplander vehicle parked out front and ripping half of Zharkov’s security detail to shreds.
* * *
If one was not going to walk, there was only one way out of Krasnoyarski