Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist Aftermath by Peter Telep Read Free Book Online Page A

double tap that kicked him
     back into the old subway’s crumbling wall.
    The knife attack on Boris was quieter than the gun and gave her enough time to shoot
     Oleg before he realized what was happening. Besides, she liked variety when it came
     to killing. Blade, pistol, weak arm, strong arm. Also, a combination knife/gun attack
     was riskier than just shooting both of them in the back of the head. There was no
     sport in that.
    She leaned over, wiping the bloody blade on Oleg’s chest and thankful she had remembered
     her gloves, always a good idea when you planned to murder your partners. Was she insane?
     Of course not. This was an important operation with career advancement at stake, too
     important to share credit, so now the extra baggage was gone. Never mind the investigation
     into their deaths. There would be none. She would ensure that, too.
    The Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravleniye, or GRU, the motherland’s foreign military
     intelligence agency, was headed by Sergei Izotov, who’d called upon any SVR operatives
     in the immediate area. They were to capture Igor Kasperov’s twenty-year-old daughter,
     Nadia, after the girl had made the fatal mistake of posting a status update to her
     VK page, saying good-bye to Moscow. She was, the SVR had assumed, rushing to the airport
     to link up with her father.
    While a domestic job like this ordinarily belonged to the FSB, the Snow Maiden, Boris,
     and Oleg had been heading out to their airport themselves to catch a plane to Poland
     when they’d picked up the daughter’s limousine. Nadia and her four bodyguards had
     either spotted the tail or been tipped off.
    The Snow Maiden had enjoyed taking out both tires on the limo and forcing them off
     the road, but it seemed the bodyguards had already planned an alternate escape route
     and had reached it in the crippled limo. They took Nadia on foot into the “third basement”
     of Moscow State University, entering Metro-2, the informal name for the secret underground
     metro system that paralleled the public Moscow Metro. The Snow Maiden wondered if
     Kasperov and his people were also privy to the Yastreb Complex, that highly classified
     subterranean fortress beneath Red Square. These were all part of an interconnected
     system supposedly built during Stalin’s reign and code-named D-6 by the KGB. The tunnels,
     subway, and secure bunkers provided a fast and secure means of evacuation for leadership
     through concealed entryways and into protective quarters beneath the city, helping
     to maintain national command authority during wartime. The trains themselves were
     safeguarded by electronic surveillance and a small garrison of troops. Nadia’s bodyguards
     seemed to know about that, too, and they were escorting her down a series of abandoned
     access tunnels that ran adjacent to the tracks and well out of sight and earshot of
     that garrison. This section lacked any security and was, in effect, a dilapidated
     maze leading toward the VIP terminal at Vnukovo Airport.
    The Snow Maiden sprinted off and turned left into the first arching entranceway, spotting
     the shifting lights in the distance. The bodyguards had improvised on the fly, using
     the flashlight apps on their smartphones to lead the way. The Snow Maiden did likewise.
     She grimaced as the musty scent grew thicker and the cobwebs wafting down from the
     ceiling blew across her face. The concrete walls were scarred by rust and mold, and
     the floors alternated between dirt-covered concrete and what felt like mushy earth.
    One of the bodyguards broke off at a T-shaped intersection, turning right while the
     rest of the group went left. He knew exactly what he was doing, thinking he’d ambush
     her from behind as she was forced to go after the others.
    She ran straight up to the intersection, dropped to her stomach, then shifted the
     pistol to her weak hand and peered around the corner, her cheek just off the floor.
    His light shone on her. She