EndWar

At the same time, the terrorists had struck a motor pool at Fort Bragg and a dozen other facilities all over the globe, including a few more Euro military bases, a refinery in Venezuela, and even a Japanese whaler.

The group had gone silent after their leader, who dubbed himself “Green Vox,” had been killed when his plane was destroyed by Spetsnaz forces late last year.

Oh, the man portraying Green Vox was dead. But the impassioned true believer who was next in line had simply assumed his place and his identity.

Green Vox was the ultimate terrorist.

You could never kill him.

There was always another one.

Vatz and Rakken had watched the bastard on one of the base’s big screens, standing there in some undisclosed and heavily wooded location, wearing his green balaclava, shaking his gloved fist, and crying out in English but with a thick, German accent: “I am Green Vox. I am alive! I have returned! We are the Green Brigade Transnational. Today marks our return. We will not stop until the warmongers and tyrants raping our dear Gaia and threatening to scorch her from above are wiped out. We call for all free-minded citizens to join us in curing our green mother globe of this disease that will eventually kill us all.”

Soldiers in the room began to throw paper cups and balled-up napkins at the screen, cursing and shouting at the terrorist.

Vatz drifted back to a chair in one corner, collapsed into the seat.

Rakken sat next to him. “I’m still in shock.”

“You? I lose my entire team in Moscow and come home to this. Just who the hell did I piss off up there?”

“Piss off? You escaped death twice. Go play the lottery. We could both use the money.”

“Marc, I should’ve died in Moscow.”

“The survivor guilt is natural, man. You didn’t die there. And you didn’t die here. So that makes me believe you still have a lot of work to do.”

“So it’s fate?”

“I don’t know.”

Vatz sighed loudly in frustration. “I need to work this out, go for a run, do some boxing, something…”

“I hear you. And I don’t know if I believe in fate, but I believe in faith. I got faith in you, faith in me. We’ll get past this, move on. That’s it, man.”

Vatz nodded, took a deep breath, closed his eyes.

And there, in the darkness of his mind, stood Colonel Pavel Doletskaya, wearing a crooked grin. Beside him, materializing from the shadows, came the hooded Green Vox, who folded his arms across his chest.

SIX

They had given him the drugs.

They had spent hours questioning him.

They had grabbed him, shaken him, pummeled him, threatened to kill his wife.

And still, Colonel Pavel Doletskaya would tell them nothing.

Even he could not believe how long he’d held out. Surely, the drugs should have loosened his tongue.

Or maybe they had.

Maybe he’d already told them everything and had simply forgotten his betrayal of the Motherland.

The thought sent chills fanning across his shoulders.

He sat in the corner of his cell, elbows pressing against the painful confines of the straitjacket. He stared up at an energy-efficient fluorescent lightbulb glowing dimly from its socket.

That’s what it was all about. Energy.

No changing that. And here he was. The end of his journey, perhaps. Major Dennison’s people had shoved him into one of the JSF’s submarines, a rather impressive little boat, and had secretly ferried him to Cuba. He’d managed to overhear something about the decoy flight being shot down but nothing more. He’d lost track of time; oddly, that bothered him more than anything. He’d spent his entire professional life chained to the clock, and now he was free of those shackles, only to have them replaced by a prison cell.

He nearly grinned over that irony as he glanced reflexively at his wrist, covered by the straitjacket. Some men had given up the watch, in favor of their phones, but not him.

General Sergei Izotov wore a watch as well, a watch that told him that Doletskaya was still a threat. The chip in Doletskaya’s head had been their only way to silence him. Once the Americans had deactivated it, they had detached him from the system. Even if it took years, the Americans would try to extract intelligence from Doletskaya, one tooth at a time. Yes, Izotov knew that the Americans would keep Doletskaya alive, perhaps even use him as a negotiating tool, but Izotov and Kapalkin would not bargain.

This was his life now. He should resign himself to it.

But how does a warrior do that?

He didn’t know. For now he turned his back on the present and looked to the past, the glorious past, if only to make himself feel better.