Spivak’s nickname had been easy to figure out. He was a beast.Thephysical specimen in a team of guys in top condition, he bore more than a passing resemblance to Dolph Lundgren, the actor who’d played the Russian foe of Sylvester Stallone in the Rocky movies.
Like Brian, Spivak spoke a handful of Slavic languages. But when Brian had tried to talk to him in Russian, Spivak turned that icy blue gaze on him and told him—in English—that when he wanted to practice he’d find his Ukrainiangrandmother, but in the Teams they spoke “fucking red, white, and blue American.”
Roger that. Brian wasn’t dumb enough to comment on “American.” He knew a setup when he heard one.
Brian’s senses flared and locked in that position as they moved toward their entry point. Christ, it was quiet.Tooquiet. There was an eerie stillness to the air. It was the dead of night, but surely there should be some sound of animals? Birds? Leaves rustling?
The hair at the back of his neck stood on edge. His pulse quickened as he scanned the area in front of him and the shadowy contours of the camp buildings began to take shape.
Even through the lenses of his night-vision goggles, they loomed hauntingly before them like a concrete ghost town, a lifeless, austere relic of bleak Communist Russia. Hundreds of these forced labor camps had sprung up in the Stalin years—four hundred and seventy-six by one count.
God, what must it have been like to be sent here? Jail was bad enough, but being a prisoner in a Siberian gulag took bad to new levels.
Although being imprisoned in Russia probably wasn’t something he should think about right now.
Brian noticed Ruiz kneel down and point to a mark in the ground. How the hell had he seen that at night? It looked to be a partial imprint from the heel of a boot. Maybe this wasn’t as much of a ghost town as it seemed.
His heart pounded a little harder and the finger on the trigger of his AR-15 grew a little more twitchy.
They stopped at a padlocked gate in the rusty fence that surrounded the place. Spivak, the teams’ breacher, came forward and pulled a pair of bolt cutters from his pack. One squeeze and they were in.
It was almost too easy.
Brian was the fifth man through the gate, and he fought the urge to turn back around. There was something about this place that didn’t sit right with him. Was it the spirit of the men who’d lived hopeless lives and died here under the brutal yoke of Communist Russia, or was it something else?
They walked in a wide V with Donovan on point, heading across the yard toward the concrete building about fifty yards ahead of them that intel had identified as the former command headquarters.
Brian was staying close to Senior Chief Baylor as he’d been instructed, when the other man suddenly held up his hand and stopped. The men behind them stopped as well, with the lieutenant commander giving the senior chief a look that was easy to read. “What the hell are we stopping for?”
It was serious enough for Senior Chief Baylor to break the silence. In a low voice he said, “I thought I saw something. A flash in the distance.” He pointed ahead of them to the south.
The men close enough to hear turned to look in the same direction, but Brian felt a shiver across the back of his neck and looked behind him instead.
Shouldn’t the gate have squeaked when they opened it?
He turned around and retraced a few steps, scanning back and forth with his gun as well as his eyes. He released the finger on the trigger long enough to reach out and touch the hinges of the gate. Even with his gloves, he could feel the unmistakable slick of oil.
Someone had been here recently.
What were they missing? If no one had used the road...
He looked down at the ground. All those World War II documentaries he’d watched on TV might just have paid off.
He didn’t realize the others were watching him. “What is it?” Lieutenant Commander Taylor asked.
“This was a mining camp, right? They would have had tunnels.”
Hitler had had miles of them.
The senior chief swore. “I don’t like this,” he said. “Something doesn’t feel right.”
For once the lieutenant commander looked inclined to agree with him. He tried to contact the other squad using the radios, but no one responded. He cursed and then said to Miggy, “Try the phone.”
While Ruiz tried to make contact with the sat phone, Brianwas surprised to see Lieutenant Commander Taylor pull out what looked to be a small personal sat phone. Brian recalled hearing that the LC had come from big money—one of those old families back east. He guessed so.
The lieutenant commander turned it on and tried to make a call, but it didn’t appear to be getting a signal, either. Suddenly he looked at the screen, frowned, and used his thumb to hit a button. Whatever he saw there caused his face to lose color. The intense focus and determination slipped. If a look could say “Oh fuck,” his did.
“We need to get out of here. Now.”
