Movement on one of his own video feeds caught his attention. The three Kazan Ansat helicopters had just landed. He watched Voronin and Rodin disembark and head inside, surrounded by the security team that had accompanied them to the scientific facility at Kameshkovo. Maintenance crews were already hurrying across the pad to refuel and check over the grounded helicopters.

  Abruptly, a red-flagged alert message flashed across Annenkov’s screen. “What the hell?” he growled. He leaned forward, scanning the text box blinking on the monitor. His heavy brows furrowed.

  “Sir?” one of his subordinates asked. “Is there a problem?”

  “Only that our brilliant new robot overlord claims it has spotted a significant anomaly at the outer perimeter fence,” Annenkov said with heavy sarcasm. “Again.”

  The artificial intelligence piggybacked onto the Raven Syndicate’s security systems was called POSPETSNA, short for “Pomoshchnik po spetsial’nomu nablyudeniyu,” “Special Surveillance Assistant.” Its assigned mission was to analyze the huge amounts of video and other data gathered by the compound’s dozens of surveillance cameras and motion sensors—acting as a sort of all-seeing eye to spot problems that mere humans might otherwise miss. However, although installed with great fanfare, the AI system was now about as popular with Voronin’s security troops and their commanders as a puritan scold at a bachelor party in a bordello. Initial efforts to allow it to monitor the camera and sensor feeds in real time had led to complete chaos. POSPETSNA had triggered multiple alerts—sending guards rushing wildly from point to point around the estate’s perimeter to respond to perceived incursions—only to cancel those alerts as false alarms just as rapidly.

  Realizing the situation was untenable, but unwilling to scrap the expensive program entirely, Voronin had instead ordered the AI tasked to examine imagery and motion sensor data on a one-hour delay—to enable POSPETSNA to teach itself to operate more efficiently over time. In this instance, it was only allowed to contact the Raven’s Nest senior duty officer, Annenkov, if it detected threats or sensor anomalies that it assessed as extremely serious and for which there had been no sign of any human reaction earlier.

  But while shifting the AI out of real-time mode significantly reduced the number of false alarms it generated, POSPETSNA had not yet issued a single warning that proved worth following up.

  “I wonder what terrible threat we’re facing this time?” the same subordinate asked, not bothering to hide his cynicism. “Maybe a windblown tree branch banging into the perimeter fence? Or perhaps another deadly pile of leaves drifting over a motion sensor?”

  Annenkov snorted. Both sets of natural phenomena had triggered POSPETSNA alerts in the recent past. He shrugged and tapped the text box on his screen. “According to this, our software ‘genius’ claims to have detected something ‘anomalous’ about the feed from Perimeter Camera Twenty-Four.”

  His fingers jabbed ferociously at his own keyboard as he cued up the AI-flagged footage and sent it to his team for their review. It was undoubtedly a waste of their time and energy, but, if nothing else, shooting down yet another POSPETSNA-generated false alarm should provide more ammunition to those who wanted to rip the idiotic software out by its digital roots.

  Still scowling, Annenkov tapped a key to play back the video stream recorded an hour ago. He stared closely at his monitor. The enhanced night vision imagery showed a section of the three-meter-high chain-link fence topped by tight coils of razor wire that would strip the flesh off anyone trying to climb over. Nothing at all seemed wrong or out of place. According to the digital time stamp at the bottom of the screen, seconds passed in a steady procession. Abruptly, from the right of the screen, a gray-brown feathered shape swooped low across the fence, gliding just above the coiled wire and settling onto a tree branch in camera view. Disconcerting yellow eyes shone brightly as a large, rounded head swiveled through almost a complete circle—scanning for nocturnal prey in an eerie simulacrum of the surveillance camera filming it. And then, barely half a minute later, with another fluttering explosion of its wings, the bird darted into the darkness and vanished off the left side of the screen.

  “Der’mo,” Annenkov muttered to himself. “Another bloody owl.” The birds were a relatively common nightly sight in the skies over the local woods as they hunted small rodents. Early on in POSPETSNA’s ill-starred career, the AI had mistakenly tagged several of these owls as unmanned aerial vehicles, drones—and then triggered a full-scale alert against a possible air attack. If this were a similar occurrence, he’d be tempted to find whatever piece of computer hardware contained the idiot AI and personally slash through every connecting cable.

  But the flagged video footage kept running. For another minute or so, nothing stirred. And then another big owl glided in from the right, flying low above the knife-sharp wire. It landed on the same branch vacated by the first bird and followed suit, swiveling to look for possible prey. Moments later, it fluttered away and disappeared off to the left. Again, the video kept running, showing nothing onscreen that was unusual.

  Until, an owl suddenly swooped in from right to left across the fence following the exact same trajectory . . . until it too landed on the identical tree branch―

  “Mother of God,” Annenkov snapped, jolting upright in his seat as he finally grasped what he’d been seeing. “That’s the same damned owl! We’ve been watching a loop of footage played over and over. Someone hacked that surveillance camera.”

  He felt a sudden, cold shiver down his spine. Because of the time delay imposed on the POSPETSNA AI’s analysis, the events they were just now seeing had occurred well over sixty minutes ago. This meant the human watcher responsible for that perimeter arc, an officer under his direct command, had somehow completely missed seeing what was happening. Worst of all, Annenkov knew that whoever hacked the security camera had to have been operating inside the Raven’s Nest security perimeter—freely and utterly undetected by any patrols or the compound’s other sensors—for most of those same sixty minutes. That was a recipe for potential disaster.

  He stabbed down on a key control that opened encrypted emergency radio links to all the Raven Syndicate security troops stationed on site. “All units, this is Annenkov. Intruder alert! I repeat, intruder alert! This is not a drill.” More orders followed in rapid succession. The first sent a patrol hurrying toward the section of perimeter fence covered by the surveillance camera that somebody had hacked. The second directed the former Spetsnaz captain commanding Voronin’s bodyguards to immediately rush the oligarch and Kiril Rodin to an armored safe room deep inside the building.

  “Understood, Annenkov,” the bodyguard commander assured him. “We’re moving them now.” Then he warned, “Mr. Voronin isn’t happy about this situation. So whatever shit’s hit the fan had better be real.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know!” Annenkov growled back. He switched frequencies, summoning all personnel—off-shift or not—into action. Some guards would deploy to protect every entrance to the villa itself. The rest, armed to the teeth, would start sweeping the surrounding woods, hunting for the intruders who’d spoofed that camera and then penetrated the Raven’s Nest’s security perimeter.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  outside the perimeter

  that same time

  A wide expanse of cleared ground stretched beyond the security fence. At the far end, it was fringed by another thin patch of woods. A cursory look would have suggested this open, grassy field was as flat and featureless as a pancake. In reality, many shallow dips and hollows and low hummocks offered modest cover and concealment for anyone willing to hug the ground and crawl.

  Close to the far edge of the clearing, Quartet Directorate field agent Laura Van Horn lay prone at the lip of one of those little depressions. There was more cover in the fringe of woods behind her, but she wanted a clear line of sight to the outer perimeter of Voronin’s estate.

  She had a small, hand-held controller on the ground beside her. A faint red light indicated it was on standby, ready to power up at the push of a button. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she scanned the forest behind the line of razor-wire-topped fence. Everything seemed quiet. She glanced down, pulling back the sleeve of her jacket to check her watch. So far, so good. But they were on a tight schedule here. Flynn and Kossak had a limited window of darkness remaining to complete their planned reconnaissance and slip back out of Voronin’s compound without being spotted.

  “Ah . . . shit,” the tall, wiry man to her left murmured.

  Van Horn turned her head. “Trouble?”

  Wade Vucovich, their team’s surveillance expert, nodded. He had his head down, intently studying the faintly glowing bar-graph displays on a compact piece of electronic equipment. Combining an electromagnetic signal detector with a frequency-hopping scanner allowed him to monitor a wide band of channels used for tactical communications. “Yeah. The level of radio chatter from inside the compound just spiked through the roof. It’s all highly encrypted, so I can’t get a firm read on what the hell the bad guys are talking about, but I figure it can’t be good.”

  Van Horn frowned and keyed her mike. “Lynx Ears to Eyes One,” she radioed. “See anything?”

  “I’ve got movement near the entry point,” Shannon Cooke replied. Like her, the tough, forceful, ex–U.S. Special Forces operator spoke in perfect, idiomatic Russian, without even a trace of his usual soft Virginia drawl. Although their own radio transmissions were also encrypted, no one on the team wanted to take the risk of being immediately identified as a foreign agent. “I have three goons in sight. And they’re poking around the fence.”

  Not good, Van Horn decided. She switched frequencies to the one allocated to Flynn and Kossak. “Ears to Lynx Prowler. Bad news, guys. You’re busted.”

  “Copy that,” Flynn said a heartbeat later. “Heading toward the alternate extraction point now.”

  Van Horn nodded. Now to find out the hard way if all their careful contingency planning would pay off. She picked up the hand-held controller and tapped a Cyrillic alphabet–inscribed button to power it up. A tiny, green-tinged screen glowed in the darkness, showing the view from a quadcopter-mounted drone. Gently, she tweaked the twin sticks on her controller, maneuvering carefully and watching as the remote camera picture changed in response to her command inputs. “Quick as you can, Prowler,” she told Flynn. “Things are going to get very loud real soon.”

  at the fence, near camera 24

  that same time

  Fyodor Malov held his KORD assault rifle at the ready. Using his night vision gear, the one-time Spetsnaz warrant officer kept watch on the grassy field beyond the perimeter fence. At the same time, the other two Raven Syndicate guards in his patrol moved down the fence line—periodically pausing to tug hard at the metal links. “Anything?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” one of his subordinates called back. “Think this is just another of those AI screwups?”

  Still scanning the expanse of open ground, Malov shrugged his shoulders. “Who the fuck knows?” His voice hardened. “But keep checking, anyway, Sergei. If the stupid machine fouled up, that’s on it. If we miss something, that’s on us. And I sure as hell don’t want any mistakes pinned on us, do you?”

  “No, sir,” the other man said devoutly. The duty security chief, Annenkov, was widely known as a hard case whose preferred approach to discipline was all stick, without a single carrot ever in sight. Sergei moved a meter farther down the fence and again yanked hard at a section of the woven metal mesh. To his amazement, it peeled back in his hands. Wire-cutters had snipped enough strands loose to make an opening that was just big enough for a man to crawl under. “Son of a bitch!” he said in disbelief. “We’ve got a real breach here!”

  At that exact moment, Malov caught a quick flutter of motion out in the open field beyond the fence. Something small was headed toward them across the grass—moving fast at about chest height. Reacting instinctively, he tucked his assault rifle tighter into his shoulder and opened fire, squeezing off two-round bursts in rapid succession.

  He missed.

  The tiny shape jinked left and right, dodging his fire as it zigzagged closer and accelerated.

  Malov’s eyes widened as he suddenly recognized what they were facing. “Drone! Take cover!” he screamed.

  But it was too late.

  With a blinding orange flash, the explosives-carrying quadcopter remotely piloted by Laura Van Horn detonated only meters away. Ball bearings embedded in the explosives sleeted outward at more than a thousand meters per second—shredding the three Raven Syndicate guards and hurling them aside like tattered rag dolls.

  inside the perimeter

  that same time

  Nick Flynn loped through the forest with Kossak close beside him. They were hurrying back toward the perimeter fence, aiming for a section far from their original entry point. Together, they darted between trees and bulled straight through clumps of undergrowth.

  With the Russians alerted to their presence, stealth was out in favor of speed, quick reflexes, and camouflage. At a distance and in the dark, their tactical gear and clothing might be mistaken for that worn by the Raven Syndicate patrols they’d observed on the way in. Given a bit of luck anyway, Flynn thought. But he kept a tight grip on his Russian-made submachine gun, remembering a caution from one of his Air Force Special Operations tactics instructors long before he’d been recruited into the Quartet Directorate. “Luck is nice,” the veteran NCO had told him dryly. “Superior firepower is more reliable.”

  Suddenly, a couple of hundred yards away, an orange ball of fire lit up the surrounding woods and night sky with an echoing WHAMM.

  “At least Laura’s having fun,” Kossak said matter-of-factly with a quick, fleeting grin. The Pole’s bright white teeth contrasted sharply with the blotches of tan, green, and black camouflage paint streaking his face.

  “She does love a good explosion,” Flynn agreed with a tight smile of his own. He detected an abrupt blur of motion off among the trees and shadows on their right flank. Men were moving there, coming fast in this direction. He spun to the side and dropped to one knee with his weapon up and ready. “Action right!” he snapped.

  Kossak dove for cover—just as another three-man Raven Syndicate patrol group loomed up out of the darkness. Without hesitating, Flynn flipped the submachine gun’s fire mode selector to full auto and opened up at point-blank range. The PP-2000 hammered back against his shoulder as he swept its muzzle across the knot of stupefied enemy troops, burning through most of a forty-four-round box magazine in seconds. Hit repeatedly by 9mm armor-piercing rounds, the guards folded over and tumbled to the ground, already dead or dying.

  Flynn breathed out raggedly, feeling the adrenaline still flooding his system. That had been way too close. Then he swore under his breath as whistles blew shrilly in the woods somewhere behind them.

  The two Quartet Directorate agents scrambled back to their feet and hurried onward. While on the move, Flynn dropped out his mostly empty magazine and slid another into place, shaking his head in frustration. So much for what was supposed to have been a nice, quiet, and above all, undetected, scouting mission. Instead, this had quickly turned into a deadly combination of a pell-mell race and an all-out pitched battle.

  Through the trees ahead, Flynn caught a glimpse of moonlight glinting off metal. That had to be the razor wire–topped fence, he realized. And it was only about fifty yards away. Maybe they were going to make it after all.

  But then he skidded to a stop as Kossak suddenly held out a clenched fist, signaling danger. They both threw themselves prone again.

  Swiftly, Flynn eyeballed the situation through his night vision goggles. He grimaced. There were more Raven Syndicate guards by the fence, already settling into firing positions behind the cover of trees growing just inside the perimeter.

  He gritted his teeth. They were boxed in—with enemies on the alert ahead and more closing in from behind. This screwed-up situation was starting to resemble the Alamo or Thermopylae much too closely for his comfort. Heroic last stands looked great in the movies, but they sucked in real life. Which meant it was time for more fireworks. “Eyes Two, this is Prowler,” he whispered over his radio. “We’re in position at the alternate extraction point, but it’s blocked.”

  Through his headset, he heard the voice of another member of his Quartet Directorate action team, Cole Hynes. “I see ’em, sir,” the former soldier said. “Keep your heads down. Way down. I got this.”

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  outside the perimeter

  that same time

  Cole Hynes lay prone in the grassy field roughly thirty yards outside the security fence surrounding Voronin’s estate. Carefully, he turned to ready a piece of gear that looked oddly like a carry-on-sized suitcase with a small, blunt-nosed rocket attached to the front. The rocket was attached to a length of gray nylon tubing coiled inside the case—a flexible tube stuffed full of connected fragmentation grenades to make an explosive line charge.

  This variant of the U.S. military’s antipersonnel obstacle breaching system was initially designed for deployment by a two-man team. The standard two-case device was utilized to blow a path through minefields and other barriers several feet wide and up to fifty yards long. Since that was far more capability than they needed for this mission, Hynes had modified it for his own solo use by cutting the length of the line charge in half and using grenades and a miniature booster rocket manufactured in Russia.