him the ability to work and travel in and out of Russia. And his real one – his birth one, which was hidden from all except family and friends. For all Russia knew, he had died with Amiina, Laila and Timur and like them was now nothing but scattered ash beneath the Katyr-Yurt soil.
There would always be some record, perhaps buried in one of the Ministry of Security Service’s databases, but for a science bureaucrat like Millinov, Khamid would be of pure Russian origin and anything else would be hidden from his superficial analysis. He doubted anyone would know of his links to the obliterated town, his destroyed family or why he would have such a volcanic hatred.
‘Zezag, I will take my tea now.’ The small boy’s face half appeared from behind the door. Khamid smiled again; this time the boy’s lips curled a fraction.
His original plan had been to use his physics expertise to create some sort of dirty bomb and detonate it outside the Kremlin, or at least as close as he could get to a large military base. He was glad he hadn’t gone through with it. Time has a way of cooling hot blood. If he had killed a single innocent while blowing a hole in the corrupt beast, he would be no better than the president who ordered the release of the vacuum bombs over Katyr-Yurt. Besides, it may also have caused another crackdown on his people – they were stoic, but they couldn’t endure much more.
But what he could not do, would not do, was allow a great power to fall into the hands of people who had proved that they could not properly manage such a responsibility. Using his scientific network, he had managed to get a message to a colleague in Turkey, who had passed it on to the NATO base in Incirlik, and then on to the Pentagon.
They would help – of course they would. He wasn’t vain enough to think they valued him, but they would come for the power cell. And if the Americans turned out to be no better than the Russians? He groaned and rubbed his spine on the back of the chair, trying to relieve the itching tingle. The boy smiled a little wider at his antics. Khamid shrugged.
‘We all have to trust someone, sometime, right?’
Khamid’s small cell phone pinged quickly three times. Three : his heart pounded in his throat – they’d found him!
***
The night-black hunters moved silently through the village. With their single-lens night-vision goggles and exoskeletal armor, they resembled a horde of alien creatures, hunting for prey in the dark.
From time to time they stopped to listen to the instructions that flowed directly into their small earpieces, or simply to pause to examine their surroundings. Members of the Spetsnaz Vympel death squads, this group were the Wolverines – a creature from the weasel family, known for its frightening ferocity and strength. The name suited these men perfectly.
The Wolverines were the most feared of all, simply because of who led them – a brutal assassin renowned for stopping at nothing in the pursuit of his objective – Uli Borshov. The black-bearded giant stood well over six and a half feet tall, and weighed two hundred and eighty pounds. The man was a psychopath, but a useful one, let loose by the Russian Federal Security Services on jobs that needed doing by any means.
The area around the town and surrounding forest was alive with standard Russian military forces. But they would keep their distance once they realized Spetsnaz GRU were in the area. More so if it were the Vympel, rumored to think nothing of putting a bullet into the brain of any overenthusiastic soldier who got in their way.
At a signal the men darted forward another hundred feet and melted back into the shadows. Their goal was simple: find a man – just one, but one important enough to have a mission launched in person by the president.
Care had to be taken. The people of Chechnya hated everyone and everything of Russian origin, and Russia had given them good reason. As long as the mainly Muslim