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“We’ve found the back door,” Pete said, his voice in Ethan’s ear. “Two sentries. They’re down. And that code you were given worked, too.”
What a world it was when the president of Russia gave a former US president’s husband the key code to his country’s nuclear bunker. Not a single Westerner had ever penetrated Yamantau. Now they were planning an infiltration using only a map Sergey had drawn from memory on a legal pad and sent as a photo over text message. “We’re pulling back. Rendezvous at your location.”
Pete and Welby chirped back affirmatives. Ethan tapped Blake on the shoulder, and the two of them silently peeled away from the overhang, slinking back through the foliage. They climbed the loose trail up and around, ascending two hundred meters and moving to the east side of the mountain through a steep ravine, then ran down the gully, clearing fallen branches like hurdles. Fallen leaves in blood orange and amber and honeyed whiskey absorbed their footfalls and quieted their run.
Yamantau Mountain was ablaze with color, a riot of autumn come early at this latitude cascading from the peak. The Urals curved south, twisting and writhing like a living creature. From the helo, it had looked like a golden dragon lay along the spine of Russia, scales of burgundy and gold and flecks of umber sprayed across the tawny, sun-dappled skin. Fitting, in a way, for the country’s nuclear bunker.
He and Blake scaled the east side of the mountain on a ridgeline, running low and fast up the spine and weaving between the trunks of Siberian spruce and larch. Their helo waited on the pad a hundred feet down the slope, engines hot and ready for evac.
Ahead, squatting outside the bunker door Sergey had guided them to, were Welby, Pete, and Kilaqqi.
He’d tried to keep Kilaqqi from joining their mission. “My helo means I’m coming with you” was hard to fight.
So he’d given Kilaqqi a rifle and asked if he knew how to use it. Kilaqqi had dropped the magazine, checked it, reloaded, chambered a round, and cleared it, all in ten seconds.
Of course a Russian shaman knew how to handle a rifle. This was Russia, after all.
“Everyone ready? Everyone remember the plan?” Nods all around. “We move quickly, we move quietly. In and out.” More nods. “Let’s go.”
The bunker door swung open into a black void. An electric breaker hung on the left, but Ethan ignored it. He took two steps in and pulled on his NVGs. A flick of the switch turned the void to shades of green illuminated by the low-powered light racked onto his rifle.
Lime shifted to pine and muted emerald and a deep serpentine jade, nearly black, down in the depths. The darkness seemed to pulse, throb, quiver. He swept left and right, clearing the corners. “Clear.” The rest of his team followed, silent on their feet.
The president's entrance to Yamantau didn’t waste time with the complex’s mundane operations. Sergey had drawn them a simple map, an almost-straight shot to where they needed to go: from the bunker door, a steep ramp would take them down into the center of the mountain complex. When the ramp leveled off at a four-way intersection, the left would take them to the presidential quarters—to be used in case of nuclear attack—and the right would take them to the bowels of the bunker: operations rooms and communications hubs, most long dead, and old conference rooms with ancient Soviet military tech.
But dead ahead down the dark path would lead them to the nuclear command bunker.
Down they went, their movements silent. All he heard was his own breathing, the air moving in and out of his lungs, the thumping of his own heart. It sped up as they moved, the descent unnatural, ethereal, eldritch. They were almost a mile under the mountain. The temperature dropped, and a chill crawled up Ethan’s arms, circled his neck like a noose, and fell down his back, sighing past his ear.
Somewhere in the dark, water dripped, Mother Nature pushing through the massive tons of concrete that built the complex. The drops were as loud as gunshots in the empty tunnel. He took another breath, steadying himself.
Finally the slope leveled out, and Ethan pressed against the damp concrete wall with Blake behind him. Welby took point on the other side, Pete stacking with him. Kilaqqi came up behind Blake, so silently Ethan almost forgot he was there.
Ethan and Welby spun out into the corridor and knelt, clearing the black hallways down the four-way intersection. They swept left and right, searching through the emerald-tinted darkness.
Nothing. Whoever had taken over Yamantau didn’t care to break into the presidential bunker.
That was fine by Ethan. He pressed his throat mic and mouthed, barely moving his vocal cords, “Forward another fifty yards.”
Nods in the darkness, his team’s NVGs wagging like insect antennae. He pivoted and crept along, heel to toe, heel to toe, weapon up, eyes sighting down the barrel.
“Ethan,” a voice breathed, so close he felt air whisper across his neck. He flung himself sideways, crashing into the wall, and whirled, rifle up. His crash rustled up and down the concrete hallway, an echo like leaves scraping over cracked pavement.
Kilaqqi stared back at him through his own borrowed NVGs.
“Fuck,” Ethan whispered. His heart was about to explode. “What?”
“When we get to the bunker. Allow me a moment before we enter.”
Ethan frowned. “Why?”
“I can be of assistance.”
Not good enough. “How?”
Kilaqqi’s hand brushed his arm. Fireworks bloomed beneath his skin, a rush of lightning like sparklers going off in his veins. “Trust me.”
He wanted to say no. He’d wanted to leave Kilaqqi in Norilsk, not take him on this mission. He wanted to have more intel, know what they were walking into,whothey were walking into. He didn’twant to be in the bowels of Russia, trying to save a desperate Sergey from a possible second coup.
