Tosatti signaled the other two commandos, then moved.
They charged through the smoke into the dining room. Tosatti surged first into the room, ASh-12.7 in his grip, suppressor jutting out, then moved right. Fitzgerald was half a step behind him, also armed with an ASh-12.7, and he leapt to the left, surrounding the table.
Then Dowling ran in, moving to the man at the corner of the table as Tosatti and Fitzgerald provided cover.
The thirteen remaining guests stared at the three commandos. Several of the women were crying, hysterical with fear.
“Comment?” asked one of the men, his accent unmistakably French.
Dowling stepped in front of the man known to them only as Cloud. But instead of a young man, the one who now cowered before Dowling’s suppressor was much older. He stared blankly at Dowling, his arms raised.
“Where is he?” asked Dowling.
“Who?” he whispered.
“Cloud.”
The man was silent. His hands, raised above his head, trembled in fear.
Fitzgerald moved his wrist to his mouth and triggered commo.
“Bill, we’ve got a situation,” he said.
But before Polk could respond, another explosion shattered the night.
It started beneath the dacha—ten pounds of Semtex, igniting in a ferocious moment that no one had time to flee. The detonation ripped the floor, scorching white-hot fire and heat through the dacha like a grenade through a sand castle. The three commandos, along with the guests, were vaporized before they could even register the white heat as it engulfed them. The glass-and-concrete house shattered in a wild, violent moment. Steel beams went flying as the force of the explosion spread sideways and up, in one horrendous sequence. The dacha burst into a mushroom cloud of flames and heat, white, red, and orange, against the desolate Russian night.
33
MISSION THEATER TARGA
LANGLEY
At CIA headquarters, Polk, Calibrisi, and the rest of the NCS mission team watched as the plasma screen abruptly lit up. A bright orange ball of flames appeared at the center of the screen, then spread out in a concentric wave, overtaking and obliterating everything in frenzied light.
Gasps came from the back of the conference room.
Calibrisi lurched toward the screen.
“Mother of God,” he whispered.
“Johnny!” barked Polk.
But there was no answer.
Polk watched the screen for a few more moments as it billowed in a silent blur of white light, then disappeared into black. A pained look crossed his normally placid demeanor. He shut his eyes for a moment, swallowed, then stepped to the left, in front of the other plasma screen. On it, the red Mercedes was visible from the sky above, the size of a toy Matchbox car.
Polk looked at Calibrisi, then triggered commo: “Saint Petersburg,” said Polk calmly, “you’re live.”
Polk glanced at Calibrisi, who held up his left index finger, signaling Polk to tell the agents an additional piece of information.
Polk hit commo again: “This is an Emergency Priority operation. I repeat, Emergency Priority. Safeties off. Take whatever action is required to get the girl.”
34
ELEKTROSTAL
Cloud read the words and shook his head in disbelief.
119
saint petersburg youre live
“Idioty,” he muttered.
“What is it?” Sascha asked.
“They still don’t know we’re watching.”
He had on black Oliver Peoples sunglasses. Behind the lenses, his eyes were rimmed with red from a lack of sleep. He wore black leather pants, Saint Laurent boots, and a sleeveless green T-shirt. His shoulders and arms were visible. His muscles were sinewy, brown, sensual, muscles that aren’t made by weights or steroids but rather a gift from his lineage. He was extremely thin.
His feet were up on the table. He stared lackadaisically at the screen, reading live transcription of the CIA operation.
120
this is an emergency priority operation
121
i repeat emergency priority
122
safeties off
123
take whatever action is required to get the girl
Most people looking at a Monet in a museum see the subject of the painting: flowers, colors, water. A rare few, other masters, see beyond the visual representation. They see brushstrokes. They see layers beneath the colors that are at the surface. They see empty spaces. Motivation and passion, deceit and laziness. They see the way the painting itself is done, from the very kernel of the idea through the painting’s completion. They understand it in a way only Monet himself could have intended.
Cloud was able to see the Internet in much the same way.
124
roger that bill
125
were moving into position
126
well recon as soon as she exits the theater
127
what about the seals
If the Internet was, for most, a vehicle for connection, information, and entertainment, for Cloud this surface level of interaction was a thin veneer, indeed, even a distraction. A girl might go online to read about her friends on Facebook, to buy a new shirt from J.Crew, to text her boyfriend. Each separate action involved the movement of data—numbers, letters, and symbols—over wire, or glass fiber, or through the air. These numbers, letters, and symbols, traveling at almost impossibly fast speeds, invisible to the human eye, carried, in their precise structure, very specific commands. That shirt, in this size, send to this address. In exchange for sending it to me, take money from this bank account or that credit card. They were commands. At any given moment, the world was being shaped, changed, and lived in an almost infinitely large architecture of precise data commands and responses. It was where the world was lived. The girl saw only that which had been framed and presented. She saw the results of the commands—pictures of her friends on Facebook, photos of blouses on J. Crew, letters on a screen from her boyfriend. What Cloud saw were the textual representations of the commands and their movement. Within, he saw the human beings behind such commands. He looked for the human brushstrokes, for here is where he could find the human frailties and mistakes that enabled him to penetrate.
The pathways of the data, the multilayered connections across public networks—where it moved, how it moved—were, to Cloud, like the brushstrokes upon the canvas. This was where he lived.
128
roger langley this is jacobsson over
129
are you guys ready
130
roger that
131
were in harbor awaiting your recon
132
repeat we are in harbor and good to go over
133
thank you lieutenant
134