OMEGA: A Black Flagged Thriller (The Black Flagged Series Book 5) Read online

  Chapter 2

  Dudhsagar River

  Goa, India

  The skiff plied sluggishly through the water, its electric motor humming steadily. Reznikov lifted his right elbow onto the top edge of the aluminum hull and let his hand slide into the lukewarm water. The seemingly insignificant movement caused the overloaded boat to wobble, prompting him to pull his hand out of the river.

  “Keep your damn hands in the boat,” Zuyev hissed.

  Reznikov turned his head to respond, shifting his body at the same time, once again unbalancing the skiff. He froze in place, firmly gripping both sides. He’d never learned how to swim, and they’d left the project site too quickly to locate the lifejackets. Somehow, it had never occurred to any of his hosts to keep the jackets onboard the boat, the most logical location. That would have made too much sense for these idiots.

  “Quit moving, or you’ll dump us all over the side,” Zuyev whispered forcefully.

  Reznikov considered a retort, but let it go, instead bringing his hands into the boat to retrieve one of the flasks of vodka tucked into his safari vest. He took a secretive pull from the metal container, feeling his nerves steady as the blessed liquid warmed his stomach and worked its magic.

  “Take one more drink and put that away,” said Zuyev. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in the middle of an escape.”

  He’d noticed, all right. It was a little hard to ignore being pummeled out of a hangover-induced coma and dragged through the pitch-black jungle by two overmuscled goons. He still wasn’t sure what was going on. They’d dumped him into a boat and taken off into the darkness without an explanation. Twenty minutes later, nobody had spoken a word until now. Reznikov drained half of the flask with the next swig, holding it above his shoulder for Zuyev. Surprisingly, the mafiya boss took him up on the offer. Not a good sign at all.

  “Things must be pretty bad,” whispered Reznikov.

  “Things could be better,” Zuyev replied, handing the flask back empty.

  Reznikov briefly considered the second flask, letting the thought go. There was no telling how long he might have to stretch his limited vodka supply out here. Plus, Zuyev would likely knock it out of his hand into the river. The skiff continued its slow, steady voyage along the riverbank, staying under the thick tree canopy that hung over the water. Bits and pieces of the clear night sky peeked through the foliage, occasionally exposing the brief flicker of a star or two.

  A few minutes later, he felt the skiff ease into a turn. The pleasant breeze created by the boat’s forward motion died quickly. His face started to bead with perspiration within seconds. He hoped a vehicle with functional air-conditioning awaited them. The prospect of sitting crammed between these sweaty beasts in the backseat of a sweltering car terrified him. Of course, he was assuming they were headed to a vehicle. For all he knew, they planned on hiking to safety. He really hoped that wasn’t the case. It was bad enough sitting still in the sweltering heat. Trudging through a rainforest was another matter altogether. Zuyev whispered something Reznikov couldn’t decipher into his headset.

  “Are we there?” said Reznikov.

  “Shhhh.” A hand gently gripped his shoulder. “Listen.”

  Reznikov kept still. A deep rumble rose above the chirps and squeaks, drowning out the jungle’s ambient noise. He didn’t recognize the sound at first until the steady rumble morphed into the distinct, rhythmic thump of helicopter blades. The skiff’s aluminum hull scraped against the soft bottom of the river, gently stopping the boat.

  Helicopters thundered overhead, their powerful rotor wash shaking the tree canopy with a gale-force wind that dislodged the skiff from the riverbed. The violent disturbance ended as quickly as it started, leaving them adrift and showered with falling leaves. The high-pitched whine of the helicopters’ engines rapidly faded, replaced by the outbound thump of the rotor blades. He never saw the machines, but knew intuitively that they were headed upriver toward the laboratory. And when they didn’t find what they were looking for, they’d be back.

  “Why aren’t we moving?” said Reznikov.

  “Keep quiet,” whispered Zuyev. “We’re making sure they don’t have anyone on the river.”

  “Who exactly are we talking about?”

  “Someone with military-grade helicopters at their disposal,” said Zuyev.

  “And you somehow knew about this?” Reznikov asked.

  “Someone knew about it. My orders were to get you out of there.”

  “Where do we go from here?”

  “We have two vehicles hidden further downriver. GPS indicates we’re about ten minutes away.”

  A distant buzz penetrated the forest, echoing from the opposite side of the river. The buzz repeated, followed by the staccato sound of small-arms fire.

  “Let’s go,” said Zuyev.

  The skiff lurched forward, turning in a lazy circle to point in a direction Reznikov assumed was downriver. He honestly couldn’t tell for sure. It was a moonless night, and the dense jungle swallowed everything around them. Without night vision, which they had conveniently neglected to provide him, he was effectively blind and completely dependent on his hosts, no doubt by design.

  A fierce battle raged a few miles behind them as they continued downriver. The trees on the opposite side of the river lit up once from a sizable explosion. The gunfire had started to slacken by the time he felt the boat slow again. He hoped they had finally arrived at the vehicles. The soldiers in the helicopters had to be moments away from discovering that he had recently escaped. Reznikov had zero doubt that he was the primary objective of the raid, and once they discovered he was missing, they would start scouring the area.

  “We need to get off the river,” he said. “They probably spotted us with their thermal gear on the way in. They probably thought we were fishermen. I guarantee they won’t make that mistake again.”

  “Take another drink and calm down,” replied Zuyev. “We’re almost there.”

  He didn’t need another drink. He needed to get the fuck off this river before the helicopters returned. Ignoring Zuyev’s comment, he lowered his head, resting it against his knees for the rest of the short transit.

  “We’re here,” stated Zuyev.

  Reznikov raised his head as they glided silently under a low-hanging branch that scraped the top of his head. When the skiff stopped, the man seated on the raised bench in front of him swung his legs over the side and splashed down in the water, holding the skiff steady.

  “Over the side, Anatoly,” said Zuyev, yanking him up by the back collar of his vest. “We don’t have any time to waste.”

  Reznikov inched his way onto the empty bench behind him, careful not to fall overboard. Logically, he knew the water wasn’t deep, but his lack of swimming ability kept him from making any sudden moves. Without warning, Zuyev pulled him over the side, dropping him in the shallow water. A moment of panic struck when he hit the water, quickly dissolving when his rear side came to rest on the bottom of the river.

  “Quit splashing around like a fucking baby. You’re in a foot of water,” Zuyev snapped, eliciting muffled laughter from the other two men.

  Reznikov struggled to his feet, now soaked from top to bottom thanks to that ass, Zuyev. When all of this business was finished, he would kill Zuyev. The man had treated him like shit since the Bratva rescued him from the hands of his American captors. Two long years moving from one third world shithole to another, “staying off the radar,” as Zuyev was fond of saying.

  After a few close calls with a relentless assassination team in South America, Zuyev brought him by ship to the west coast of India, where he’d spent the past year working in an isolated P4 biosafety laboratory built specifically for him. The Bratva had undoubtedly spent a fortune on the lab, both in terms of money and time, and all they had to show for it right now was a cooler full of virus samples and the genius who created them.

  He could expect Zuyev to be in a particularly vicious mood after this, the brunt o
f which would be taken out on him. Yes. He’d make sure Zuyev died a miserable death, preferably at the hands of one of the viruses he paid Reznikov to create. He appreciated a sense of irony.

  Reznikov slogged forward through the water, following the dark forms in front of him toward what he assumed was the riverbank. Zuyev and one of the other men manhandled him up the steep, five-foot bank, pushing him into the thick, untamed forest. He started to think they’d made a mistake when the foliage cleared, dumping them on a hard-packed dirt trail.

  “Not much furth—” started Zuyev, his words replaced by a sickening gurgle.

  To his left, a dark shape swiftly but silently materialized from the forest, instantly closing the distance to the mafiya guard directly in front of him. A crack broke the silence, a brief flash illuminating the suppressed pistol pressed against the guard’s head. The man dropped to the trail at Reznikov’s feet, landing with a heavy thump. He had no idea where the third security guy had gone.

  Now he was truly fucked. Zuyev and two former Russian Spetsnaz taken down in the blink of an eye? A helicopter raid at three thirty in the morning? He was dealing with professionals, which meant one thing—a secure prison cell for the rest of his life.

  “All clear,” said a Russian voice behind him. “Start the truck.”

  The man put a gloved hand on his shoulder, causing him to flinch.

  “Dr. Reznikov, we need to move immediately. It’s not safe here,” the dark figure said in Russian.

  No kidding.

  Grigor was missing, and he didn’t need the half-witted mafiya guard deciding to kill him rather than let him fall into enemy hands.

  “There’s a third man in my group. He was first on the trail,” whispered Reznikov. “I don’t see him.”

  A car engine roared in the near distance.

  “That’s him starting the SUV. Grigor has been on our payroll for a while now.”

  Grigor was one of the ex-GRU Spetsnaz that had freed him from the CIA prison in Vermont. The Bratva had extended his contract, assigning him a job as one of Reznikov’s primary bodyguards. The gruff asshole had followed him around like a shadow for close to three years, apparently waiting to sell him to the highest bidder. Was there no end to the double-crossing with these people?

  “Where are we going?” asked Reznikov, resigned to his current fate with his new captors.

  “Anywhere but here,” said the man, pushing a piece of gear with straps into his hand. “Hold these up to your face for now; we’ll get them strapped on later.”

  Reznikov raised the device in front of his head, placing the two green-glowing eyepieces to his face. The darkness transformed into a monochromatic green picture, revealing the true nature of his rescue. The man that had given him the goggles was dressed in military camouflage and armed with a suppressed shortbarreled AK-74. He wore a heavily laden tactical vest rigged with communications gear and bulging magazine pouches; night-vision goggles were strapped to his bearded face.

  The absence of a helmet led Reznikov to believe the man was not part of the raid against the laboratory. Those soldiers would be covered head to toe in body armor. This guy looked like he had geared up for an extended jungle operation. He wasn’t sure if this was a good or bad sign. The fact that they hadn’t put a bullet in his head was a decent enough start.

  He turned to face the second, similarly outfitted commando, who scanned the trail behind them with his rifle. Valery Zuyev lay at Reznikov’s feet, blood pumping from the back of his neck onto the hardened mud. Zuyev’s lifeless eyes stared past him, fixed skyward. Reznikov spit on his face.

  “We need to go,” said the commando, picking up the temperature-controlled specimen cooler dropped by Zuyev.

  “Who are you? What is this?”

  “You’ve been liberated, Dr. Reznikov. But if we’re not on the road moving south within the next thirty seconds, that may well change. I don’t hear any more shooting from the lab. It’s only a matter of time before they realize you’re gone.”

  “Liberated by whom?”

  “People with deep pockets,” the commando replied, nudging him forward. “That’s all I know—or care to know.

  “Be careful with that cooler,” said Reznikov, remaining fixed in place.

  “The cooler was our primary objective,” said the commando. “I suggest you start moving. If you slow us down too much, I’ll have to leave you behind like Zuyev. Risk versus reward. The faster you move, the less risk.”

  Reznikov shook his head. Sold like cattle to the highest bidder. He could figure it all out later, after finishing off his second flask.

  Chapter 3

  FSB Headquarters

  Lubyanka Square, Moscow

  Alexei Kaparov strained to view the live camera feed displayed on the operation center’s main projection screen. An impenetrable crowd of senior agents and high-ranking bureaucrats gathered in a tight semicircle around the display wall, essentially blocking most of his view. Only a cattle prod at its highest setting could open a space between these piranhas.

  Mercifully, he’d been ushered into the darkened, overcrowded room several minutes after the Alpha Group Spetsnaz team had gone to work on the suspected bioweapons laboratory site. The FSB higher-ups obviously didn’t want him and the rest of the B team to see the special operations team’s insertion. Thank the world for small miracles. He really didn’t care at all to watch the operation unfold. Unwatchable shaky green images, heavy breathing, and gunfire didn’t interest him in the least. The end result was all that really mattered, especially in this case.

  Killing Reznikov would close a dark chapter in Russia’s history, a chapter the government had rewritten several times over the past decade, the most creative revision foisted on the Russian people and the international community several months ago. He had to give them credit. They must have dusted off the best Communist-era propagandists to pull it off.

  Instead of continuing to blame the astonishingly tragic situation in Monchegorsk on some kind of separatist uprising, which nobody believed from the outset, the government took the unprecedented step of admitting that the city’s population had been deliberately infected with a bioweapon created at the Vektor Institute State Research Center for Virology and Biotechnology. With a caveat, of course.

  That faux caveat being that Russian authorities were completely unaware that a rogue group of scientists had secretly restarted Biopreparat’s banned bioweapons research and development program until it was too late to stop the tragedy. Of course, as soon as Russian Federation authorities discovered the illegal and clearly unauthorized program, they did what any responsible government would do under the circumstances. They destroyed it. History was rewritten, and with the United States government’s complicit silence, the story was bought hook, line and sinker, for the good of everyone, especially Kaparov.

  Prior to the historical rewrite, he’d found it increasingly difficult as the head of the Bioweapons and Chemical Threat Assessment Directorate to pretend that the number one threat to Russian Federation security didn’t exist. He couldn’t wait to hear the Alpha team’s final confirmation that Reznikov was dead. A late night drink—or five—could be in order.

  “I’m beginning to suspect the raid is a bust,” said a vaguely familiar voice to his right.

  Kaparov turned to face Maxim Greshnev, Chief Counter-Terrorism Director for the FSB, one of the last people he would have expected to find watching the operation with the rest of the riffraff.

  “Good morning, Director,” said Kaparov, instantly disappointed with himself for the robotic underling response.

  “Nothing good about it,” said Greshnev. “They’ve been through every building except for the one they managed to blow up and they still haven’t located Reznikov. Take a guess what building went sky high?”

  “The laboratory?”

  “Of course,” said Greshnev. “Because why the fuck would we be interested in a full inventory of Reznikov’s work?”

  “Look on the bri
ght side, maybe they blew him up with the lab,” said Kaparov.

  Greshnev chuckled, a rare show of visible emotion from the man. “We could only be so lucky,” he said, shaking his head.

  Kaparov decided to ask a question he suspected would not be met with a straight answer. It wasn’t every day that you had the ear of one of the most powerful men in the FSB.

  “How reliable was the source?”

  “We received a onetime anonymous tip,” Greshnev replied.

  “You get what you pay for,” Kaparov commented.

  Greshnev stifled a laugh. “Apparently the laboratory is located in western Goa.”

  “India?”

  “The warm beaches of Goa attract Russian tourists year-round,” said Greshnev. “Hundreds of thousands of tourists and a few thousand permanent residents. They call the area between Arambol and Morjim beaches ‘Little Russia.’”

  “No doubt the Solntsevskaya Bratva is well represented,” said Kaparov, understanding the connection.

  “It’s a small outpost for the Bratva, completely off our radar until now.”

  “And we’re sure he was there?”

  “It was impossible to get anyone too close to the compound without tipping our hand, but relatively easy to ascertain that a sophisticated, medical-grade laboratory had been built in the middle of the jungle. It fit the profile, so here we are.”

  He considered Greshnev’s revelation. Unless the director had lied about the anonymous nature of the tip, the information couldn’t possibly have originated from a source inside the jungle compound. A guard assigned to the laboratory would have attached a significant price tag to their sudden shift in loyalties. Nobody took a risk like this without a sizable financial incentive, and the Russian government wasn’t exactly known for handing out generous bounties to informants. Something didn’t make sense.