Page 123 of Spymaster

With that, Harvath activated two IR strobe lights and tossed them as far as he could in the direction of each advancing group of soldiers.

Harvath, Ashby, Palmer, and Staelin then took turns trying to hold them off. They were all on their last rifle magazines.

•••

Barton had the RIB moving as fast as it would go. Approaching the shoreline of the campground, they could see muzzle flashes in all directions. It was absolute bedlam.

Then, through the chaos, they pinpointed the strobes. There were at least fifty Russian soldiers advancing on the team’s position.

Barton swung the boat to the side and slowed so that Jasinski could strafe the Russians.

“Light them up!” he yelled.

For a moment, she paused. But before he could repeat the command, she opened up with the Mark 48 and swung it back and forth, cutting down every Russian in sight and littering the woods near the beach with their dead bodies.

Back behind the stone foundation, Harvath and the team hunkered down as the heavy rounds from the machine gun crackled all around them.

When Jasinski had run the weapon dry, Barton came back over the radio and told the team to keep their heads down—they were reloading and about to make another pass. Seconds later, the Mark 48 lit up the woods again.

When Barton came back over the radio, he said, “On the beach in twenty seconds.”

Transitioning to his pistol, Harvath looked at the team and said, “Time to go.”

Staelin transitioned to his pistol as well and helped get Tretyakov to his feet and down to the shoreline.

There was sporadic gunfire, as more Russians came through the woods, but Sloane and Chase handled it, dispatching several more soldiers.

By the time they got to the water, Barton was already there.

Loading Tretyakov, Harvath climbed in, followed by Staelin. Chase and Sloane helped push the RIB off the shore, and then hopped in and joined the rest of the team.

As Barton punched the throttle, Staelin began applying pressure to Tretyakov’s wounds. Harvath offered to take over on the Mark 48, but Jasinski waved him off. Going hot, she lit up the Kaliningrad shoreline one last time as the RIB disappeared into the darkness toward the freedom of Poland.

CHAPTER 74

GOVERNORSISLAND, LAKEWINNIPESAUKEE, NEWHAMPSHIRE

FOUR DAYS LATER

Artur Kopec was still stunned. He didn’t know how Lydia Ryan had done it, but the missile upgrade kits were gone, off the market.

When he asked her about it, she had simply shrugged and said, “We found a workaround.” That was it. She hadn’t offered any further explanation.

He had asked his man Wójcik to query his source, but Kushner didn’t know what had happened either. His source had been as vague as Ryan.

To her credit, though, Ryan had kept her word and had arranged a final visit for him with Reed Carlton. The old spymaster was a shadow of his former self. He had lost weight and had aggressively aged.

Due to the combination of severe dementia, and medications for comfort, Carlton was really out of it. So much so that Kopec wasn’t sure if his old colleague even recognized him. He had come expecting to spend the entire day together, but instead decided to leave before lunch and catch an earlier flight back to D.C.

He wasn’t surprised that the visit had been supervised. Because of all the national security issues, Ryan had made it a condition. What did surprise him was who had done the supervising.

Scot Harvath was Carlton’s protégé and heir apparent. Kopec had met the operative only a handful of times and had always liked him. He felt as if they had a bond. Though he was younger, he understood the great game and what was at stake.

In fact, Harvath had spent a portion of their time together confiding in Kopec. Ryan, it turned out, had not been very forthcoming at all. Carlton’s rapid memory loss had crippled their organization. There was all sorts of information about spies and double agents that had been lost.

Unlike Ryan, Harvath wasn’t hopeful that the material would turn up in some yet-to-be-discovered journal somewhere in the man’s personal effects.

The most devastating thing, Harvath shared, was that in addition to Matterhorn, there were two more high-level spies feeding the Russians disinformation whose identities would be taken to the grave with Carlton. It was a massive blow to NATO’s anti-Russia efforts.

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