Chapter 17 #5
Outside the door of the apartment, Nikitin held out his hand and Dmitri placed the infrared scanner in it. Nikitin switched it on, then looked, frowning, at the screen. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing.
He walked quickly down the hallway, aiming the scanner and found two people behind the doors and the walls of the apartments. One two doors down to the right and the other behind the door of the last apartment to the left.
The heat signatures were small. Women or very small men. Housewives or cleaning ladies, most likely.
He walked back fast to the apartment where Chloe was. Nothing.
The door was featureless, obviously a sliding door operated by a keypad to the right. The door was impenetrable to infrared. So were the walls to either side of the door.
Shit! This Mike Keillor was very security-conscious. Nikitin met Dmitri’s eyes. He indicated the next apartment over and Dmitri nodded.
They moved to the next door in complete silence. Dmitri had been well-trained. Nikitin didn’t have to give orders.
He aimed the infrared at the door of the apartment right next to where Mason was staying. Wood, no barrier at all to infrared.
He walked the length of the corridor corresponding to the apartment and saw no heat signatures at all. Perfect. Whoever owned this place was out, probably at work. If they were out shopping, they’d regret it because Nikitin would shoot to kill if they returned.
His weapons were beyond traceable reach of US law enforcement authorities. The security cameras were down. If he had to kill, they’d never trace it back to him. They were being very careful, but even if they left some DNA behind, neither he nor Dmitri would be in their system.
Nikitin eyed the lock. It was pickable, but it would take time. He nodded to Dmitri and stepped back. The shot was barely audible standing right next to the gun. It sounded like a can of beer being opened.
With a slight push of the door, they entered. Nikitin immediately turned right, aiming his scanner at the walls while Dmitri went from room to room, weapon up.
By the time Dmitri came back giving the all-clear hand signal, Nikitin had found Chloe, sitting in a room directly next to this apartment’s living room. He studied the scanner’s monitor.
A slight figure sitting on a chair, hand curled around something hot, the only other heat source what looked like a microwave, cooling rapidly.
She was sitting drinking tea or coffee. Perfect.
On October 23, 2002, Nikitin had been a young lieutenant in the elite Vityaz counter-terrorism unit under the FSB.
He’d been seconded to Moscow from Grozny for a three month course in NBC terrorism when the call came in at 9:20 pm.
Fifty terrorists had taken over 900 people hostage during the presentation of a popular musical.
The terrorists were armed to the teeth and wore explosive vests.
A few hostages who had been backstage escaped out the back and briefed the special forces who were staged around the theater.
The terrorists moved among the hostages, essentially walking bombs.
It was impossible to storm the theater—the casualties would be horrific. Unsustainable for a government elected on an anti-terrorism ticket.
Negotiations sputtered into a stalemate that lasted four days. At 5 am on the 26th, Russian forces streamed fentanyl, a powerful anesthetic, into the theater, knocking out hostages and hostage-takers alike.
Fentanyl was 100 times stronger than morphine and could fell a bear in five seconds. One small human female was going to be a snap.
Nikitin placed the infrared scanner on the floor, turned the monitor up and took a high speed drill out of his backpack.
He had to act quickly. If the Mason woman left the kitchen to go into a room with no common wall, his only other alternative was to break through the wall immediately, but that would give her time to call 911.
No, he needed her unconscious, right now.
He knelt next to the join between wall and floor and applied the drill. It emitted a soft whine which made him frown. It was minor, but noticeable in a quiet room.
He looked up at Dmitri and mouthed shum. Noise. Dmitri nodded and a few moments later loud rock music came from the living room. Perfect. It blocked the noise of the drill.
The drill was small but powerful. It bit through the apartment wall, through the insulation and sheetrock and, finally, through the wall on the other side. He immediately switched off the drill.
Nikitin kept his eye on the monitor. The woman was still sitting in her chair. Her thermal signature was the same, but the cup’s temperature had dropped.
Nikitin fit one end of a small rubber tube over the spout of the canister and threaded the other end carefully through the hole on this side of the wall and the other side. He stopped when he gauged that the tube exited one centimeter from the hole.
It was a calculated risk. Nothing indicated that this Mason woman was an operator.
She was a civilian, an American civilian and was as dumb to the surrounding perils as a rock.
It was highly unlikely she would notice a tiny piece of flesh-colored rubber and very soon she would be knocked unconscious.
Nikitin fit a gas mask over his face, tossing Dmitri his. Once they’d checked that they worked, Nikitin flipped a lever, picked the scanner up and stood.
At first nothing happened. Then, the flame-colored woman on the other side of the wall sat up straighter, lifting her head. Weaponized fentanyl was odorless, but it was possible there was a slight hiss as it filled the small room.
The woman stood up and for a horrible moment, Nikitin thought the fentanyl wasn’t working. She lurched suddenly, hands braced on the table, then slid bonelessly to the floor.
Phase two, complete.
Nikitin packed everything away, while Dmitri placed small charges along an imaginary rectangle a meter and a half high and two meters wide.
When he finished, Dmitri then turned the music to its highest setting and they exited the room, waiting to the side of the living room door while Dmitri pushed the detonator.
The explosion was audible, but less loud than the music. Nikitin and Dmitri rushed to the wall dividing the two apartments, the gas masks protecting them from the drywall dust.
They put their shoulders to the wall and ripped and punched their way into the other apartment. Nikitin bent, handed Dmitri his backpack and pulled the unconscious woman up and over his shoulder.
A quick glance at the front door showed that there was another keypad, which doubtless was linked to some kind of signal to the owner that the front door had been breached.
No problem. They exited through the hole blown in the wall and out through the front door of the apartment owned by less paranoid people.
Their luck held. The elevator took them down to the garage level. Nikitin stood in the shadows while Dmitri went to get the SUV. While waiting, Nikitin checked the security cameras. Out, every single one.
Dmitri rolled down the ramp, turned around and backed up to Nikitin.
He placed the Mason woman down in the back, checking her eyes and pulse.
She was completely unconscious. Fentanyl was a dangerous substance.
Nikitin hadn’t dosed it and didn’t even know what the lethal dose was.
At the Moscow siege, 170 people had died from the gas.
Chloe Mason was definitely going to die, but not before he got his thumb drive back. And no one was going to trade something valuable in for a cadaver.
He put plastic restraints around her wrists and ankles. Then he pulled out a syringe and plunged it into her thigh. M 5050, an antidote. She had to be able to walk in about half an hour.
He climbed into the passenger seat, dialed in the GPS coordinates into the navigator system and signed Dmitri to drive off.
Phase Three complete, ready for Phase Four.