Read Online Death Wave by Stephen Coonts - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Stephen Coonts
Tags: Fiction, Suspense, Thrillers, Action & Adventure, Suspense fiction, Espionage, Tsunamis, Technological, Terrorism, Adventure fiction, Undercover operations, Prevention, Terrorism - Prevention, Dean; Charlie (Fictitious character), Canary Islands
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“They often start off as prison tats,” she told him, “but they also get them to mark advancement within the gang, special achievements, punishments, anything like that. It’s a part of the whole culture of the Vory v Zakone , the Russian underworld. Someone who knows the language can actually read a man’s history with the mafiya .”
The second body had tattoos as well.
He frowned. “I’d like to check the third body, too.”
“Give me a hand here,” Masha said. She was already unzipping the body bag.
Awkwardly, Akulinin helped her, peeling the body bag open and sliding it down. He looked at the man’s head and blinked in surprise. “Shit!”
“What’s the matter?”
“What the hell is a Chinese doing here ?”
NSA HEAD QUARTERS
FORT MEADE, MARYLAND
WEDNESDAY, 1010 HOURS EDT
Rubens glanced at his wristwatch, confirming what he already knew. “Damn,” he said. “I have to go. Now .”
“Give our love to the NSC,” Marie told him. “I’ll call you when we regain signal.”
“Do that. I’ll be out of touch while I’m in the meeting, but leave me messages and keep trying.”
“Of course, sir.”
He didn’t like leaving now. He was strongly tempted to delegate the NSC meeting to Gene Lenard, his operations director.
Gene was a good man, well able to be Rubens’ representative—but the position of deputy director of the NSA was, unfortunately, as much political as it was practical. If Rubens personally failed to attend this meeting, the other people present would assume the issues on the agenda were not of high importance to Desk Three or the NSA. Those people included the chairman of the National Security Council, his senior aide, and his longtime political enemy Debra Collins, deputy director of operations at the CIA. If Rubens wasn’t there this morning, he could wake up tomorrow and find that the CIA was in charge of Haystack—and he had eight operators on the ground over there right now, two of them out of touch.
If he left right now , he should be able to make the meeting in time, allowing for traffic on 295 into town and for the security check at the White House.
“While I’m gone, I want a full workup on Lieutenant Colonel Vasilyev. I want to know where his office is, including architectural plans, blueprints, whatever you can find. Does he have a safe in his office? A computer? Find out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I should be back around two, two thirty,” he told her.
Rubens checked out through several security desks, picked up his car in the VIP parking area, and threaded his way out of the maze of lots and gates surrounding the towering central buildings of the NSA’s Fort Meade complex, long known to insiders as the Puzzle Palace. Canine Road swung him right onto 32 West, and he took the almost immediate cloverleaf onto 295 South, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. Traffic was light and he hit the pedal, accelerating swiftly past the slower vehicles. Any touch by police radar would trigger a transponder in the car, one that flagged him as having special clearance.
Charlie Dean and Ilya Akulinin would be okay Ruebens mused. Dean was a longtime veteran of the agency, a former Marine sniper who simply never got flustered, who was always in the game. Rubens ranked him as Desk Three’s best operator. Akulinin was younger and less experienced. He’d come on board with Desk Three just a year and a half ago, during that Russian mafiya affair up in the Arctic, but he was quick, he spoke fluent Russian—it was his first language, after all—and he knew the culture. Both men were smart and resourceful, and they got results.
He was more concerned about Lia DeFrancesca. She, too, was a damned good, experienced operator, and her team in Berlin, her on-site backup, was first rate. But the China Ocean Shipping Company was big and it was dirty, an immense commercial giant that was an arm of the Chinese Navy and the Beijing government. Lia wasn’t simply up against Feng Jiu Zhu in Berlin.
“They often start off as prison tats,” she told him, “but they also get them to mark advancement within the gang, special achievements, punishments, anything like that. It’s a part of the whole culture of the Vory v Zakone , the Russian underworld. Someone who knows the language can actually read a man’s history with the mafiya .”
The second body had tattoos as well.
He frowned. “I’d like to check the third body, too.”
“Give me a hand here,” Masha said. She was already unzipping the body bag.
Awkwardly, Akulinin helped her, peeling the body bag open and sliding it down. He looked at the man’s head and blinked in surprise. “Shit!”
“What’s the matter?”
“What the hell is a Chinese doing here ?”
NSA HEAD QUARTERS
FORT MEADE, MARYLAND
WEDNESDAY, 1010 HOURS EDT
Rubens glanced at his wristwatch, confirming what he already knew. “Damn,” he said. “I have to go. Now .”
“Give our love to the NSC,” Marie told him. “I’ll call you when we regain signal.”
“Do that. I’ll be out of touch while I’m in the meeting, but leave me messages and keep trying.”
“Of course, sir.”
He didn’t like leaving now. He was strongly tempted to delegate the NSC meeting to Gene Lenard, his operations director.
Gene was a good man, well able to be Rubens’ representative—but the position of deputy director of the NSA was, unfortunately, as much political as it was practical. If Rubens personally failed to attend this meeting, the other people present would assume the issues on the agenda were not of high importance to Desk Three or the NSA. Those people included the chairman of the National Security Council, his senior aide, and his longtime political enemy Debra Collins, deputy director of operations at the CIA. If Rubens wasn’t there this morning, he could wake up tomorrow and find that the CIA was in charge of Haystack—and he had eight operators on the ground over there right now, two of them out of touch.
If he left right now , he should be able to make the meeting in time, allowing for traffic on 295 into town and for the security check at the White House.
“While I’m gone, I want a full workup on Lieutenant Colonel Vasilyev. I want to know where his office is, including architectural plans, blueprints, whatever you can find. Does he have a safe in his office? A computer? Find out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I should be back around two, two thirty,” he told her.
Rubens checked out through several security desks, picked up his car in the VIP parking area, and threaded his way out of the maze of lots and gates surrounding the towering central buildings of the NSA’s Fort Meade complex, long known to insiders as the Puzzle Palace. Canine Road swung him right onto 32 West, and he took the almost immediate cloverleaf onto 295 South, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. Traffic was light and he hit the pedal, accelerating swiftly past the slower vehicles. Any touch by police radar would trigger a transponder in the car, one that flagged him as having special clearance.
Charlie Dean and Ilya Akulinin would be okay Ruebens mused. Dean was a longtime veteran of the agency, a former Marine sniper who simply never got flustered, who was always in the game. Rubens ranked him as Desk Three’s best operator. Akulinin was younger and less experienced. He’d come on board with Desk Three just a year and a half ago, during that Russian mafiya affair up in the Arctic, but he was quick, he spoke fluent Russian—it was his first language, after all—and he knew the culture. Both men were smart and resourceful, and they got results.
He was more concerned about Lia DeFrancesca. She, too, was a damned good, experienced operator, and her team in Berlin, her on-site backup, was first rate. But the China Ocean Shipping Company was big and it was dirty, an immense commercial giant that was an arm of the Chinese Navy and the Beijing government. Lia wasn’t simply up against Feng Jiu Zhu in Berlin.
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