Panic Switch полностью

“Goodbye, Mr. President, and thank you for seeing me.”

“Anytime, Mr. Vice President. Please stay in touch. And come back soon.”

Pacino nodded solemnly as Vostov opened the door. Pacino was immediately surrounded by the Secret Service men and Vostov’s SBP security guards. Within twenty minutes, the vice president was strapped into a leather seat in the presidential office of Air Force Two as the 747 climbed out of Moscow and headed westward back to Washington.

Major Grigory Arkov, a GRU sniper assigned to President Vostov’s SBP security detail, tried to fall asleep next to the redheaded call girl he’d invited to sleep over. But as it had been for the last two weeks, the insomnia held him in its grip, leaving him staring at the ceiling, thinking and remembering.

Arkov was — or more accurately, had been — a loyal and committed GRU officer with excellent prospects for advancement. He’d been assigned for the last year to the platoon of snipers who took the high ground around any speech to be given by the president, their mission to shoot any threat to the president. During that year, the platoon had only experienced one incident requiring deadly force: a man from a crowd who had broken through the throng of Vostov supporters during a presidential speech in St. Petersburg. As the man was raising his gun to shoot Vostov, two sniper bullets hit the would-be assassin and killed him instantly. One bullet had been from Arkov’s rifle, the second from one of the other platoon members. They’d never been told whose bullet had been the kill shot, since one had gone wide and hit the gunman’s shoulder, but the other round pierced the man’s heart. Arkov maintained that it was his bullet that had been the heart shot, but it was an ongoing good-natured argument.

After the killing of the gunman threatening Vostov, Arkov had been told he would be promoted to lieutenant colonel early as a reward for his skillful protection of the president.

But then two weeks ago, Arkov’s younger brother Anatoliy, a GRU cadet, had been killed in a training accident. Anatoliy had gone down in a fiery helicopter crash and the human remains were burned beyond recognition and comingled. There was a memorial service, but no caskets, since there were no bodies. A large urn that contained the combined ashes of the cadets and helicopter pilots was all that remained, and it was consigned to a grave honoring the men who had died.

But that had turned out to be a lie, as the FSB officer, Roza Elizaveta, had told him in the bar where she’d found him drinking to try to bury his grief. She’d told him the hard truth that there had been no helicopter crash, but that Anatoliy had been a crisis actor in the GUM department store terrorist incident, playing the role of a terrorist, and had been deliberately killed by the SBP. Of course, Arkov hadn’t believed her. But she’d convinced him to take her to his apartment, where she showed him the helmet-cam footage from all the SBP troops who’d invaded the boutique and shot the terrorists. From multiple cameras and multiple angles, he saw the hood removed from the corpse of his brother Anatoliy. The SBP invading men had used lethal force, despite the “terrorists” acting under orders of the GRU, and Cadet Anatoliy Arkov had been gunned down, taking two bullets, one to his chest and one to his head. Elizaveta told him that the SBP troops had orders to shoot to kill, and that it had been no mistake, but part of their operation order, so that none of the actors playing terrorists could ever tell the real story. That Vostov had used the cadets to cover up a staged and fake terrorist plot as a way to liquidate his own wife.

Then Elizaveta had pointed out the obvious. As one of Vostov’s trusted snipers, Arkov had a unique opportunity to avenge the death of his brother at the hands of the president. It had an elegant simplicity. As a sniper, at Vostov’s next public speaking engagement, Arkov would be stationed in position where he could shoot anyone threatening the president, but he would also be in a position to shoot the president himself. One shot, and Vostov would lie in a pool of his own blood.

He’d looked into the eyes of the pretty FSB officer and asked what her motivation was. She said she had her own sad story of Vostov’s betrayal and was part of a cell of people dedicated to assassinating Vostov.

“You know that one second after I shoot Vostov,” he’d said, “either I’ll be shot or taken for interrogation. They’ll ask how I came to know about the GUM department store plot. They’ll torture me until they get me to tell them about you.”

“Are you ready to die for what you believe in, Grigory?” she’d asked. “For vengeance for what Vostov did to your brother?”

“Yes,” he’d said simply. “I’d rather they kill me on the spot. But being interrogated and tortured? I don’t want that. I won’t take the chance.”

She’d pressed a card into his hand. “This is a dentist’s business card,” he said, confused.