steered the maroon Lada Kalina to the roadside and stopped to check her GPS coordinates. She was outside of Grozny, on a minor artery that ran south to Alkahn-Yurt, a quarter mile from the target, and there was no traffic at a little past midnight on a Tuesday. Even so, she didn’t dally, and inched the small vehicle back onto the pavement before pulling onto a side road a hundred yards farther up – a farm access-way, according to her study of the satellite images.
Once out of the city, the surroundings quickly became rural, with large crop fields separating the farmhouses that punctuated the landscape. It was a quiet region where neighbors kept to themselves and didn’t poke their noses into the business of others. Everyone would be asleep by now in the nearby homes, few as they were, as tomorrow would bring another twelve-hour stint in the fields, commencing at daybreak.
She killed the headlights and engine, and exited the hatchback, moving to the rear compartment to secure her backpack and weapons. As was her custom, she had loosened the interior bulb and the brake lights so they wouldn’t alert anyone to her presence – particularly valuable if she had to run dark once the operation was over and she was making her getaway.
The PP-19 Bizon submachine gun she pulled from the duffle in the back was a Russian weapon, as was the compact PSS pistol, capable of delivering six shots in nearly complete silence; one of the true feats of Soviet ingenuity – the Mossad had gotten their hands on three almost a decade before to reverse engineer for their own purposes. One of the pilfered weapons had been sacrificed to Jet for this mission. The PSS used a special cartridge with an internal piston that blocked the escape of the explosive gasses that made noise; it was as close to a silent killing firearm ever developed.
A complement of throwing knives, as well as her main blade, were of Russian paratrooper stock. All of her clothes, weapons and ammunition had been sourced in Moscow, so in the event she was captured or killed, the trail would end in Russia – standard procedure for this kind of assignment. The night vision goggles she slid on were the only non-Russian device – a consumer type readily available anywhere online, so foreign manufacture signified nothing.
Jet slid her arms through the backpack straps and then hoisted the Bizon before taking off at a trot into the brush. She knew all about the motion detectors on the outside of the compound and was carrying countermeasures that would neutralize them. Beyond that, this was a straightforward sanction – the target was verified at the location as of this evening, the security detail had been watched for weeks and its schedule was well understood, and nobody at the site was expecting anything. She had performed dozens like it – rescue operations, assassinations, diversionary missions. The essentials were always the same. Get in and out with a minimum of fuss, achieve the objective, and live to fight another day.
Unlike many of her peers, she didn’t work with a team unless it was absolutely necessary. In this case, she had argued convincingly that she could easily handle the operation on her own. Her control officer had disliked the idea, but ultimately acquiesced. Given her track record, what Jet wanted, she generally got.
She had been operational now for four and a half years, which was forever in her specialized niche of intelligence work.
Intelligence work . That was a nice way of saying government-sponsored murder and mayhem. Be that as it may, she was the very best at her job and had become a whispered legend in the Mossad. Even during her training, after being recruited from the army following her mandatory stint, she had been a standout. One of the instructors had confided in her at the end that she had easily been the most adept student he’d ever trained – a natural, with uncanny talents.
That hadn’t surprised her. She’d discovered while in
Once out of the city, the surroundings quickly became rural, with large crop fields separating the farmhouses that punctuated the landscape. It was a quiet region where neighbors kept to themselves and didn’t poke their noses into the business of others. Everyone would be asleep by now in the nearby homes, few as they were, as tomorrow would bring another twelve-hour stint in the fields, commencing at daybreak.
She killed the headlights and engine, and exited the hatchback, moving to the rear compartment to secure her backpack and weapons. As was her custom, she had loosened the interior bulb and the brake lights so they wouldn’t alert anyone to her presence – particularly valuable if she had to run dark once the operation was over and she was making her getaway.
The PP-19 Bizon submachine gun she pulled from the duffle in the back was a Russian weapon, as was the compact PSS pistol, capable of delivering six shots in nearly complete silence; one of the true feats of Soviet ingenuity – the Mossad had gotten their hands on three almost a decade before to reverse engineer for their own purposes. One of the pilfered weapons had been sacrificed to Jet for this mission. The PSS used a special cartridge with an internal piston that blocked the escape of the explosive gasses that made noise; it was as close to a silent killing firearm ever developed.
A complement of throwing knives, as well as her main blade, were of Russian paratrooper stock. All of her clothes, weapons and ammunition had been sourced in Moscow, so in the event she was captured or killed, the trail would end in Russia – standard procedure for this kind of assignment. The night vision goggles she slid on were the only non-Russian device – a consumer type readily available anywhere online, so foreign manufacture signified nothing.
Jet slid her arms through the backpack straps and then hoisted the Bizon before taking off at a trot into the brush. She knew all about the motion detectors on the outside of the compound and was carrying countermeasures that would neutralize them. Beyond that, this was a straightforward sanction – the target was verified at the location as of this evening, the security detail had been watched for weeks and its schedule was well understood, and nobody at the site was expecting anything. She had performed dozens like it – rescue operations, assassinations, diversionary missions. The essentials were always the same. Get in and out with a minimum of fuss, achieve the objective, and live to fight another day.
Unlike many of her peers, she didn’t work with a team unless it was absolutely necessary. In this case, she had argued convincingly that she could easily handle the operation on her own. Her control officer had disliked the idea, but ultimately acquiesced. Given her track record, what Jet wanted, she generally got.
She had been operational now for four and a half years, which was forever in her specialized niche of intelligence work.
Intelligence work . That was a nice way of saying government-sponsored murder and mayhem. Be that as it may, she was the very best at her job and had become a whispered legend in the Mossad. Even during her training, after being recruited from the army following her mandatory stint, she had been a standout. One of the instructors had confided in her at the end that she had easily been the most adept student he’d ever trained – a natural, with uncanny talents.
That hadn’t surprised her. She’d discovered while in
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