“So we have both a sword and a shield,” Rodin realized.

  “Aptly put.” Voronin looked at Neminsky. “Can your Western counterparts develop the same kinds of new fungicides and genetically altered crops?”

  The scientist shrugged. “Certainly. But neither quickly nor easily. Replicating our work would take them several months at the very least, and more probably, well over a year.”

  “A year without sufficient food for man or beast?” Rodin said thoughtfully. “The political, social, and economic effects on the United States would be―”

  “Devastating,” Voronin said. “Tens of millions dead of starvation and disease at a minimum. Perhaps more. And the survivors would inhabit a bankrupted, anarchy-riddled land.”

  All three men smiled, inwardly contemplating the benefits Russia would accrue from crippling its most powerful and dangerous rival. The fall of the old Soviet Union had weakened their country—robbing it of its status as one of the world’s two superpowers. Now, saddled with an aging population in decline and a moribund economy, Russia was, at best, only a second-rate power. Without its enormous oil, gas, and coal reserves, and its massive nuclear arsenal, most dispassionate observers would rank it as just another Third World nation on the brink of an inevitable collapse into geopolitical irrelevance. In one blow, destroying American agriculture could reverse that equation, especially if the rest of the world ultimately found itself reliant on Russian-supplied, disease-resistant crop strains and advanced fungicides.

  Then Rodin frowned. “All of this assumes that these new weapons can somehow be effectively employed without being immediately traced back to us. Given the probable consequences, Russia cannot risk being identified as the culprit. The chances of triggering overwhelming retaliation would be far too high.”

  “And if I can demonstrate this is possible?” Voronin asked coolly.

  “Then I believe President Zhdanov would be quite interested in this project you call―”

  “VELES,” Voronin replied with a predatory smile, giving the president’s man the operational code name he had selected for this effort. Veles was the ancient Slavic god of the earth, the underworld, magic, trickery, and wealth—a counterpart to the old Norse gods Loki and Odin, if they were combined into one deity. Given the devastation he planned to inflict on the Americans and their allies, with the resulting profits—both for Russia, and, equally importantly, for himself personally—the association seemed entirely fitting.

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  near the raven’s nest, southwest of moscow

  later that night

  Under the light of a quarter-moon high overhead, patches of silver light and dark shadow dappled the mile-wide, heavily guarded private forest surrounding Pavel Voronin’s imposing country estate. Staying low, sticking to those shadows wherever possible, and taking infinite pains to avoid making unnecessary noise, Nick Flynn slowly worked his way through the tall trees and dense undergrowth. A few yards ahead, the brush thinned a bit, revealing what appeared to be a trail cut through the woods. It ran southeast, toward the low hill topped by the Russian oligarch’s sprawling, two-story ultramodern villa, which he called the Raven’s Nest.

  Cautiously, Flynn dropped to one knee and glanced over his shoulder to check on the man behind him, a member of his Quartet Directorate action team. Even at close range and using his night vision goggles, he had a hard time making out Tadeusz Kossak as more than a vague shape, almost invisible among the tangle of pine tree trunks, low-hanging branches, ferns, and other underbrush. Like him, the Pole wore camouflage fatigues and a Special Forces–pattern tactical assault vest made with advanced, innovative materials that made him difficult to detect—either visually or with sophisticated thermal sensors.

  Kossak, a veteran of his own country’s Special Troops Command, moved up to join him and flashed an interrogatory signal. Which way now? Should they risk taking that trail?

  Thinking quickly, Flynn considered their options. Moving along the trail would be much faster, but also far too dangerous. Paths through these woods would be focal points for any sensors and patrols. He decided to move parallel to the trail instead, using it as a guide toward Voronin’s dacha while staying in as much cover as possible. One flick of his hand communicated this to Kossak. The other man nodded.

  They went on, threading their way carefully and deliberately between pines and clumps of bushes.

  Flynn carried a compact, Russian-made PP-2000 submachine gun in the low ready position, with the stock lightly pressed against his right shoulder and its short barrel pointed down. Both the weapon and its special 9mm armor-piercing ammunition had been acquired on the international arms black market by Quartet Directorate operatives.

  Besides a 9mm MP-443 Grach pistol holstered on his vest, Kossak had an equipment bag slung across his back, containing the ready-to-assemble components of a powerful Lobaev DXL-5 Havoc sniper rifle chambered for 12.7mm rounds. Fully assembled, the weapon would be more than five feet long. It had also been covertly bought for this mission. Using “sanitized” Russian-made weapons was a necessary precaution since they were operating so deep in hostile territory.

  Contemplating the firepower they were carrying, Flynn felt a tight smile cross his face. He’d done his time as a Boy Scout while growing up in Central Texas, and their motto, “Be Prepared,” was a good one. Tonight’s sneak-and-peek effort to penetrate the security zone around Voronin’s estate was primarily intended to scout workable routes for his full, six-member action team. With better knowledge of the ground in hand, they hoped to assassinate the Russian oligarch the next night. But neither Flynn nor Kossak planned to pass up the chance for an immediate kill shot on Voronin if one presented itself.

  Flynn pushed down a momentary pang of conscience. Killing in the heat of battle was one thing. Going in with the cold-blooded intent to assassinate a specific human target was quite another. But this was the operation he’d chosen. In fact, he reminded himself, this was the operation he’d pushed hard for—even over the objections of some of the Quartet Directorate’s senior heads of station. Because, if there ever were a textbook case of “someone who needed killing,” it was Pavel Voronin. Over the past several years, the mercenary Raven Syndicate headed by the Russian oligarch had spread death and destruction around the world. And twice Voronin had come close—far too close for comfort—to successfully carrying out covert attacks on the United States that would have killed tens of millions of innocents.

  In both cases, Flynn and his team had been lucky enough to stop him, but the cost had been high, and their margin for error frighteningly slim. Given the Raven Syndicate’s vast resources and Voronin’s utter ruthlessness, it was only a matter of time before one of its plans to cripple the U.S. bore lethal fruit, which made playing defense ultimately a sucker’s game.

  Taking the Russian oligarch permanently off the board, Flynn had argued, was the only way for the Quartet Directorate to continue carrying out its long-standing mission—to act decisively against serious threats to the free world. The Directorate, commonly referred to as Four by its members, had been organized by veterans of America’s OSS (the Office of Strategic Services), Britain’s SOE (the Special Operations Executive), and the anti-Nazi resistance movements of Poland, France, Norway, and other allied countries at the outset of the Cold War against the old Soviet Union.

  Even then it was obvious that the West’s official intelligence agencies were increasingly mired in bureaucratic caution and politics, as well as being deeply penetrated by Soviet spies and moles. Unwilling to see the wartime sacrifices they had made for the free world wasted, Four’s founders had created a top-secret private intelligence and covert action force—one able and willing to operate outside the bounds imposed by risk-averse government officials and politicians.

  Over the following decades, Four’s highly trained operatives had waged a clandestine war—fighting in the shadows against the West’s enemies without the sanction or protection of any government. Near-absolute secrecy was the key to their survival and success given the odds they faced. Flynn knew the imperative to maintain that cloak of secrecy had been one of the most serious arguments against his proposal to kill Voronin on his home turf. This far inside Russia, the risks of being caught, interrogated, and either imprisoned or executed were extraordinarily high. Which was why Rule Number One for this operation was to avoid detection at all reasonable costs.

  Just then Flynn caught the faint sounds of movement. Someone was coming up the trail behind them. He froze and then slowly went prone, avoiding the sort of quick, flickering motion that might draw attention, even in darkness. Close behind him, Kossak did the same thing.

  Boots crunched across the dried pine needles littering the trail, accompanied by the faint squelch of a radio and a murmured exchange in Russian. “Pyatyy patrul’ priblizhayetsya k oranzhevomu markeru. Net kontaktov. Patrol Five is coming up to orange marker. No contacts.”

  “Ponyatno, Pyatyy’. Understood, Five.”

  Flynn pressed his face to the ground to hide the betraying gleam of his eyes as two Raven Syndicate guards ambled by no more than a few yards away. Breathing shallowly, he waited until the sounds faded away in the distance and silence descended again across the nearby woods. Cautiously, he lifted his head. They needed to press on. This late in the spring, nights were relatively short, and he and Kossak had a lot of ground to scout before the rising sun robbed them of the cover of darkness. He shifted to get back to his feet . . . and then froze again at the warning touch of Kossak’s gloved hand on his leg.

  Just in time.

  A third Russian, moving far more quietly than his two comrades, came ghosting up the trail they were paralleling—with a KORD 7.62mm assault rifle up and at the ready. Flynn narrowed his eyes. This man was acting as a rearguard for the first patrol, sweeping up from behind to catch any unwary intruders who might have been fooled into believing they’d just been missed. Good tactics, he thought dispassionately. And a useful reminder that the Raven Syndicate troops guarding Voronin’s estate weren’t just cannon fodder. That fit the available intel, which suggested the oligarch recruited heavily from Russia’s Spetsnaz, its special forces units.

  He and Kossak lay motionless, waiting until this Russian, too, vanished ahead of them among the trees and undergrowth. Then Flynn curled back toward the Pole and signaled a change of course. Now that they knew for sure the nearby trail was a patrol route, staying so close to it was a bad bet. Kossak nodded in agreement.

  Together, they low crawled off to their left, heading deeper into the woods. Several dozen yards farther on, they came face to face with a dense hedge of thorn bushes and other brush extending across their line of travel for as far as they could see in the darkness under the trees. Coils of razor wire were laced into this natural barrier, rendering it virtually impassable. For a long moment, both men studied the obstacle.

  At length, Kossak edged even more to the left, pointing out what appeared to be a narrow opening near the base of this interwoven wall of thorns and wire. Tunnel-like, it led deeper into the brush, apparently heading roughly in the direction they wanted to go. It could be a trail broken through the surrounding vegetation by rabbits or foxes, Flynn theorized. Worming their way along it without getting snagged by the overhanging brambles and branches would be challenging, but it should be doable.

  That was mighty convenient. Then he frowned. Maybe too convenient.

  Before Kossak could wriggle forward, Flynn stopped him. Carefully, he scanned the surface of the trail through his goggles, looking closely for any signs that the soil had been disturbed by something other than paws. His jaw tightened. Not more than a foot or two down the path, a patch of earth in the center seemed slightly mounded, rising a fraction of an inch higher than the ground to either side.

  Flynn reached into one of the pockets of his tactical vest and pulled out a thin, extendible, stainless-steel prod. Gingerly, he probed the earth ahead and stopped the instant he felt the tip of the prod contact a solid object buried just a couple of inches down. Well, shit, he thought, it was a damned good thing Mama Flynn’s dark-haired boy was paranoid after all. If he had to guess, that was some variant of the Russian PMN antipersonnel mine, containing enough high explosives to rip a man to shreds. The old military adage, “the easy way is always mined,” was dead accurate in this case—with the emphasis on dead. A small animal wouldn’t have the weight to trigger the mine. A man would. Gently, he retracted the prod and stowed it away.

  Then he tapped Kossak on the shoulder and used the hand signals for “danger” and “mine.” The other man’s eyes widened slightly. “I’m beginning to think visitors are not welcome here, Nick,” the Pole murmured in a barely perceptible tone.

  “Seems so,” Flynn agreed quietly.

  Together they slithered back from the hedge of thorns. Putting some distance between themselves and that newly discovered land mine seemed sensible while they considered their next move. Using their wire-cutters could be a possibility, Flynn thought, although the work would be painfully slow and exhausting.

  Closer study of the barrier, however, foreclosed even that option. There, tied in among the tangle of thorns and razor wire, they could make out the leads for what were likely to be other sensors and alarms of some kind.

  Flynn shook his head in disbelief. They’d suspected that the defenses around Voronin’s country estate were tight. But this was a level of security beyond anything they’d originally envisioned. He sat back for a moment on his haunches. Dangerous as it was, the only practical way to get closer to Voronin’s villa would involve paralleling those forest trails so regularly patrolled by Raven Syndicate guards.

  Abruptly, three helicopters flew over them, racing just above the treetops—howling past with an earsplitting clatter of whirling rotor blades. Pine branches overhead whipped back and forth in a sudden frenzied dance, tugged and torn by the powerful down blast.

  Flynn breathed out. Those helicopters were heading straight for the low rise at the center of this fenced-in estate. And he was pretty sure that they were the same three birds they’d seen departing several hours ago—not long before he and Kossak began this difficult attempt to scout Voronin’s lair.

  If so, the chances were good that the Russian oligarch was returning from wherever he’d flown. Which meant he and Kossak might really be able to take him out this same night. Assuming, of course, that they could somehow thread their way safely through this intricate and deadly web of sensors, wire, mines, and roving patrols. There were a hell of a lot of “ifs” in there, Flynn reminded himself. And even more when he considered their need for a solid escape plan in all the resulting confusion if they did manage to nail Voronin. After all, neither he nor Tadeusz Kossak was the suicidal type.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  raven’s nest security control center

  that same time

  Constructed to Pavel Voronin’s own exacting design, the above-ground elements of his large modernist dacha testified to his enormous wealth and power. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out across a spacious lawn and a helicopter landing pad. At the far edge of sight off to the west, beyond the dark expanse of his private forest, moonlight gleamed on the Moskva River. Inside the brightly lit mansion, expensive furnishings from the most exclusive designers filled nearly every room, along with original paintings and sculptures by Kandinsky, Rothko, and other renowned abstract artists. And at the dacha’s center, a spacious, glass-roofed atrium held a heated swimming pool and sauna.

  Below ground, everything was far more utilitarian. Down a long concrete corridor twenty meters below the surface, the estate’s security control center occupied a medium-sized chamber protected by an armored, vault-style door. Under cool, blue-tinted overhead lights, desks topped by monitors and computer consoles were arranged in a half-circle around a workstation set aside for the senior Raven Syndicate officer on duty. Half a dozen personnel, veterans of the GRU or Russia’s internal security service, the FSB, operated the computer consoles. Each monitored the camera feeds and motion sensor readouts from specific, sixty-degree arcs around the compound’s outer perimeter.

  The senior officer, a former GRU major named Vladimir Annenkov, kept his own jaundiced eye on the watchers. By its very nature, guard duty was monotonous. That was especially true for the men assigned to watch video screens in this air-conditioned artificial environment. At least the troops patrolling the woods and exterior of the dacha were in the natural world—fully immersed in everything their own senses of sight, hearing, and even smell were telling them about the local environment. They could react instantly to the faintest crack of a dead branch or to the slightest hint of movement when everything should otherwise be still. But the men under his immediate supervision had no such stimulus as they paged repetitively through the various digital images and graphs transmitted by the multitude of cameras and sensors sited in their designated sectors. Under these conditions, it would be all too easy for one or more of them to “zone out”—seeing only what they expected to see on their different feeds.

  Annenkov’s mouth turned down in a scowl. Others inside the Syndicate, including Voronin himself, knew this tendency. That was why they’d recently installed a brand-new piece of advanced software to backstop the fallible human observers watching the estate’s perimeter. Too bad the enormously expensive and highly sophisticated program was an absolute piece of crap, he thought dourly.