Citadel Of Fear. Don Pendleton

his massive, multiscreened console. Rong leaned back from his own console as he watched the men disappear into the woods with their prisoner. “Got to be the same guys as last week. Got to be.”

      “No doubt,” Kun agreed.

      “Yeah, no doubt.” Pyle kept his hands on the joysticks of the second drone. Drone 2 flew at a height where its rotors could not be heard and, in what was left of the gloom, not seen. Neither the Russians nor their opponents knew about Drone 2.

      Pyle zoomed the camera to maximum but despite its sophistication and power, at this height the resolution was not great and the men were moving under the trees. “Listen, it’s going to be light in minutes and they’ll be able to see Drone 2 with optics. I can’t get a good picture of these guys without going low enough to let them shoot at us.” He was keenly aware of the fact that he had lost Drone 1.

      “We were supposed to kick these guys’ asses. Our asses got handed to us.” Rong chewed his lip unhappily. “The Magistrate is not going to be amused.”

      The three men contemplated the Magistrate’s possible ire; two with fear and one in personal disappointment. All three men were in their twenties and from Silicon Valley, Seoul and Hong Kong. Each man had run the computer world high-tech gamut from software engineer to hacker to gamer and game designer. They were some of the best cybernetic experts in the business, sought after by top-end, high-tech companies worldwide.

      They had been lured, and then very handsomely remunerated, into become experts in the rapidly advancing field of high-tech mercenaries. A private army specializing in unconventional warfare and crime, including cyber crime prevention, which they found boring, and cyber crime commitment, which was proactive, fun, far more profitable and had perks two of the trio had never even dreamed about.

      These men were the advantage most criminals or opponents in low-intensity conflicts did not have and could not afford. Most modern militaries had men like them, but nowhere near as good, and had much less exciting toys. However, Junior Pyle was right and all three men knew it. They had gotten their asses handed to them.

      Kun smiled. The Korean was dressed immaculately in a retro, light blue suit. A 007 aficionado would have recognized it as Sean Connery’s gray, tropical-weight suit from the film Dr. No, and Kun had styled his hair to match right down to a tousled spit curl. Hardly anything Kun owned besides his high-tech equipment was not custom made and straight out of a James Bond movie. He found himself amused. “These guys are real, genuine, badasses.”

      “Speaking of badasses…” Rong looked and dressed like a skateboarder. His hair was at that hedgehog look of an Asian male who had a missed a lot of haircuts but not yet grown it long enough so that it would fall over into a shag. It was a look he assiduously cultivated and had currently dyed orange. “They took Propenko, alive.”

      Junior Pyle dressed as though he thought he was still in college or wanted to be the lead singer of an Emo band or both with the tattoos, piercings and black hair, black T-shirts and black jeans to match.

      Pyle and Rong were certifiable, card-carrying computer geeks and Kun was a certifiable sociopath. But the three young men were all at the pinnacle of their fields and their power and, having dropped out of their civilian fields, had become urban legends. Pyle was very unhappy. “Does this mean the Russian mafia is going to kill us?”

      “No.” Rong sighed. “But Propenko probably will. He looked straight into my camera before he went across the border and told me not to mess this up.”

      Propenko had no idea who the three cyber warriors were or even where they were, but Propenko was a trained investigator and a very violent man. The team had chosen him for this mission and they had not picked him out of a hat.

      Rong’s and Pyle’s grommets tightened at the idea of a displeased Magistrate and the big Russian filled with thoughts of revenge.

      Kun contemplated the Walther PPK in his shoulder holster happily. He still hadn’t gotten around to shooting anybody with it yet. As with the best of sociopaths, Kun genuinely wasn’t afraid of anything or anybody, but he did have certain goals and objectives that he wished to achieve. He was a realist in these matters, and being on the wrong side of Propenko qualified as a genuine obstacle and not one to be taken lightly. “Money makes Propenko come. Money makes him go away.”

      “Unless he goes surly Russian on us,” Pyle countered.

      “Well…” Kun smiled again. Pyle was blissfully unaware of the fact that Kun disliked him intensely and intended to skin him alive. “They have our drone.”

      Rong regained his good humor. “So how do you want to play it?”

      All three men were genuine geniuses. All three men knew that Kun was the one who could think outside the box. Both in cyber warfare and in the outside world, which neither Rong nor Pyle functioned all that well in.

      Kun contemplated. He liked Rong. Rong, like Pyle, was equally unaware that, because Kun liked him, he intended to kidnap Rong, shackle Rong, encase Rong in latex and do unspeakable things to him. Kun was already secretly interviewing replacements for both his partners in cyber space.

      Kun returned to the matters at hand. They had several options. “The copter is programmed to return to its launch point if it loses contact. We have to assume these assholes know this. We will need to move. However, I do not believe they have the tech to open her up and read her programming on them at the moment. They will need to go to a safe house first.”

      Pyle’s equipment peeped and a window popped up on one of his screens. Data started rapidly scrolling south. “Polish state security channels are lighting up. I think these guys actually made the call themselves.”

      “Interesting,” Kun mused. “They were ambushed outside Kaliningrad—and they do not know how—and it is they who have called the state police. They will want to get out of Poland without flying across it, and they certainly will not want to fly east. I think they’ll head straight north. It’s a short shot across international waters into Sweden. They’ll have something cozy set up there.”

      Rong grinned. “Sweet.”

      Kun considered the equipment he had personally installed in Drone 1. “Let’s play a game.”

      Pyle actually raised his hand as if he were in school. “What about the Magistrate? Who’s gonna tell him?”

      “The Magistrate has been watching our feed the entire time and listening to our conversation.”

      Rong and Pyle collectively dropped their jaws.

      “I will speak with him later and give him a full debriefing.” Unlike his compatriots, Kun was not afraid of the Magistrate. Kun loved the Magistrate as his personal god.

      Kun rose and walked to the end of the Game Room. He opened the door and looked down the steps at a pair of security men smoking and watching the sunrise. Kun lit himself an unfiltered Turkish cigarette and watched the sun rise for a moment, as well. From the outside, the Game Room appeared to be a standard container vessel. The Game Room currently sat mounted on the trailer of a Russian Kamaz tractor-truck. “Hey, guys?”

      The two Russian gangsters turned.

      Kun nodded at the sun rising over Kaliningrad. “Let’s get back into Russia.”

      * * *

       Kalmar, Sweden

      “NIKITA PROPENKO.” Aaron Kurtzman made an impressed noise over the link. “You landed yourself a real, genuine, Russian badass.”

      McCarter sat in the master bedroom of the safe house with a laptop and satellite rig. “Right. Viking Group.” McCarter allowed himself a little smugness. “We know.”

      “Right. But do you know what he did before he went private?”

      “Spetsnaz?” McCarter proposed. “He’s a tough son of a bitch, I’ll give him that. The only thing he wasn’t immune to was Cal’s charms.”

      “Who