Black Flagged Redux

Chapter 1





8:05 PM

Foothills of Kurchatov

Republic of Kazakhstan





Anatoly Reznikov stared at the fading ribbon of cerulean blue sky over the darkened steppe. He sat in the back of a cheap Russian four-door sedan, likely rented at the airport in Semipalatinsk (Semey), where he would soon board a privately chartered aircraft. From there he would fly unescorted to an airport in western Russia. Generous prepayments ensured that he could walk straight from the plane to a four-wheel drive vehicle, with no questions or hassle. Of course, this had all supposedly been arranged for him by his new partners, while he worked on their product at the laboratory. Reznikov didn't expect them to honor the final terms of the contract, so he had made his own arrangements.

The driver was still headed vaguely in the right direction, but Anatoly knew the man had taken a subtle turn down a dead end spur, which might have gone unnoticed in the dark, especially if he hadn't been paying close attention to every single action, facial expression…even word, uttered by his partners, as the project neared completion. It also helped that he could understand what they were saying, a fact he had kept secret from everyone, especially his new "partners."

Over the past few weeks, he had overheard some interesting conversations about "covering their tracks" and "getting rid of any links." The phrases had churned his stomach and made it nearly impossible for him to focus on the transfer of his product to the delivery devices. He had expected to be killed at any moment, either in the lab or his room, and the suspense had nearly crippled him as he played scenario after scenario in his head, trying to determine if they had realized that either of his assistants could complete the final steps of the project without his help.

He had become a nervous wreck during those weeks, plagued by stomach problems, unexplained sweating episodes, and numerous other symptoms of severe paranoia. All of that suddenly vanished when they announced that he would be transported to the airport as agreed. His "friend" Ahmad spoke right in front of him to a rough-looking man Reznikov had never seen at the lab complex: "Get rid of him."

As soon as the words were spoken, Anatoly felt calm, almost relieved. He found himself looking forward to the ride. Finally, he could get on with the plan he had set in motion nearly three years earlier, when he first tried to contact these traitorous jackals.

He wished there had been some way to keep the final product out of their hands, but this crew didn't mess around and there had been no opportunity to sabotage the project while keeping what he needed. He wouldn't get the second part of his payment, but it didn't matter. He had exactly what he had set out to obtain sitting in two innocuous, specially designed, thermos-sized coolers, snuggled into the backpack sitting next to him.

The car continued for another minute and then slowed to a stop.

"I think we took a wrong turn. I need to look at the map to try and make sense of these dirt roads. This is the middle of nowhere," the driver said in broken Russian.

The driver opened the door and walked forward, unfolding a map. The front passenger joined him, and they flattened the map on the hood, examining it with a flashlight for a few seconds. Suddenly, the interior roof lamp bathed the car in a dingy orange light and the man in the rear passenger seat next to Anatoly started to exit the vehicle. He exchanged a few words in Arabic with the men huddled around the map and stuck his head back in the car.

"It's an old Russian map. They need your help reading it," Ahmad said.

"No problem," he said.

Reznikov opened the door to join the three Al Qaeda operatives, who were staring quizzically at a map that had given them no problems on previous occasions. As he approached, the new passenger pointed to an odd cluster of hills to the southwest.

"We're trying to figure out where we are. Can you see if those hills break apart in the middle? If they do, I know exactly where we are. You might have to walk down the road a bit," he said and went back to the map.

"Sure," Anatoly said and continued walking.

As he reached a point alongside the three men, he drew a compact GSh-18 pistol from a large flapped pocket on his dark brown overcoat and fired two 9mm hollow point bullets into each of their heads. He started with Ahmad, who faced him on the other side of the hood, and rapidly dispatched the remaining two extremists, before they had even straightened their bodies in response to the deafening noise.

In the reflected light of the car's high beams, he watched the mystery passenger's body slide down the side of the car, taking the blood and brain matter-stained map with him. Ahmad and the driver lay on the road next to the car. In the dusty illumination of the dropped flashlight, he watched Ahmad's left foot twitch erratically, until it slowed and stopped.

Satisfied that the men were dead, he returned to the car and opened the trunk. Inside, he found exactly what he had expected. A cardboard box filled with spray bottles of cleaning solvent and assorted rags. Like Reznikov, his "partners" had no intention of returning a blood-stained car to the rental agency at the Semey Airport. He took the cleaning supplies and grabbed the flashlight from the side of the road. He'd start with the larger brain pieces.