Primary Command. Джек Марс

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СКАЧАТЬ must be nice to know so much at such a tender age. He thought of himself in his early twenties. He’d been like that off-brand superhero, the one made out of granite, whose answer to any problem was to put his head down and run through walls. Not a lot going on upstairs.

      He shook his head and looked at the paperwork in his lap. She had given him a ton of useful data. He had satellite imagery of the freighter, including close-ups of the upstairs catwalks and the rooms where the men were thought to be held, and the holds below where the sub was likely hiding.

      Luke had to admit that the sub wasn’t a major priority for him personally, but he knew that others didn’t agree. They wanted that thing destroyed. Okay. If it was possible, and it didn’t jeopardize the men, okay. He would do it.

      Hmmm. What else did he have? A bunch of stuff. Schematics of the freighter. Maps and satellite imagery of the surrounding city streets, the docks, and the long seawall that protected the port from the Black Sea. Long-view maps and imagery of the entire area, with the sprawling beach resort of Sochi just to the north, the wide open water, and the border with Georgia to the south, tantalizingly close.

      So near, and yet so far.

      What else? Assessments of troop strength at the port and nearly facilities—best guesses, really. Assessments of first responder capabilities in metropolitan Sochi—good once upon a time, but underfunded and badly degraded now. Assessments of morale—low across the board. The two apocalyptic Chechen wars and the resulting terrorist attacks on civilian soft targets, combined with the Kursk disaster, had heads rolling among the Russian military brass, and the frontline troops in disarray.

      Luke didn’t doubt it. The shock of September 11, along with repeated setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, bad press at home… it had left a lot of people on this side of the fence feeling the same way. American equipment, training, and personnel were generally tip-top, but people were people, and when things went sideways, it hurt.

      He let the information wash over him.

      Don had promised him more people when he arrived in Turkey, deep cover operatives with local knowledge, fluency in the Russian language, and experience in fast-moving, hard-hitting black ops. Don didn’t say where they were coming from, only that they would be the best available. He had promised Luke methods for both him and Ed, moving separately, to enter Russia undetected. He had promised Luke any materials he wanted, within reason—guns, bombs, cars, airplanes, whatever.

      A picture began to emerge…

      Yeah. He started to imagine the broad outlines of it. In an ideal world… if he got everything he wanted… with the element of surprise… total commitment… and moving at warp speed…

      He could see how this just might work.

* * *

      “They used to call me Monster.”

      Luke stared at Ed. They were the only two awake, sitting in the back seats of the plane. But now Luke was fading. Further up, Trudy was still curled into a ball, and Swann was sprawled out, his long legs crossing the aisle.

      The window shades were down, but Luke could see bits of sunlight peeking in along the bottom edges. Wherever they were in the world, it was morning now.

      Luke had just laid out the mission to Ed, as he was starting to imagine it. He was thinking he might get a little feedback. Did this part seem possible? Was there a gaping hole he was overlooking? What kind of weapons should they carry? What kind of equipment did they need?

      Instead, he got this: “They used to call me Monster.”

      It was all the answer he needed, he supposed. The man was a monster. If it came to it, he would go at this problem with half a plan and a handful of rusty nails.

      “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me,” Luke said.

      Ed shook his head. He was half asleep himself. “Not because of my size. Because I was so evil. I grew up in Crenshaw, in LA. Four kids, I was the oldest. The closest thing to a grocery store in the neighborhood was a place that sold liquor, lottery tickets, and cans of soup and tuna fish. My mom couldn’t keep the lights on sometimes.

      “I said, un-unh. It ain’t gonna be like this. It’s not right we gotta live this way, and I’m gonna fix it. I was out working on the corner at twelve, trying to get that money. I was running with the worst of the worst by fifteen, and I was worse than they were. In and out of juvie. I wasn’t fixing anything.”

      Ed sighed heavily. “Ten of those nights, I could have easily died. People did. I was getting shot at long before I ever saw Iraq, or Afghanistan, or any of these other classified places I supposedly never went.”

      He squinted and shook his head. “I came before a judge when I was seventeen. She told me I could now be tried as an adult. I could see real time in big-boy jail. Or I could get a suspended sentence and join the United States Army. Up to me.”

      He smiled. “What else was I gonna do? I joined. I got to basic, drill sergeant there, name of Brooks, immediately had a hard-on for me. Master Sergeant Nathan Brooks. Didn’t like me, and decided he was gonna break me.”

      “Did he?” Luke said. He had trouble picturing such a thing, but this wasn’t the first time he had heard something along these lines. “Did he break you?”

      Ed laughed. “Oh yeah. He broke me. Then he broke me again. And again. I’ve never been broken so bad in my life. He saw me coming a mile away. Made me his personal project. He said, ‘You think you hard, nigger? You ain’t hard. You ain’t even seen hard yet. But I’m gonna show it to you.’”

      “Was he a white guy?” Luke said.

      Ed shook his head. “Nah. In those days, if a white man called me nigger, I’d have just killed him. He was a down home brother, from South Carolina someplace. I don’t know. He broke me right in half. And when he was done, he put me back together again, a little better than before. Now I was something other people up the line could at least work with, make something out of.”

      He was silent for a moment. The airplane shuddered across a patch of turbulence.

      “I never really found the right way to thank that guy.”

      Luke shrugged. “Well, it’s not over. Send him some flowers. A Hallmark card. I don’t know.”

      Ed smiled, but it was wistful now. “He’s dead. Maybe a year ago. Forty-three years old. He’d already been in the service twenty-five years. He could have retired any time. Apparently, he volunteered for Iraq instead, and they gave it to him. He was on a convoy that got ambushed near Mosul. I don’t know all the details. I saw it in Stars and Stripes. Turns out he was a highly decorated guy. I didn’t know that about him when he was running me into the ground. He never mentioned it.”

      He paused. “And I never told him what he meant to me.”

      “He probably knew,” Luke said.

      “Yeah. He probably did. But I should have said it anyway.”

      Luke didn’t disagree.

      “Where’s your mom?” he said instead.

      Ed shook his head. “Still in Crenshaw. I tried to get her to move out east near me, but she wouldn’t hear of leaving. All her friends are there! So me and my sister chipped in and bought her a little bungalow six blocks away from the old rat hole apartment building where we used to live. A chunk of my pay every month СКАЧАТЬ