Terminal Run

He had made the transition from Russian admiral to war crimes prisoner, and then from war-crimes prisoner to military consultant. Rafael brought him into a company named da Vinci Consulting, a firm attempting an ambitious operation to sink crude oil carriers leaving the oil terminals of Saudi Arabia. The operation would benefit the Hindu Republic of India’s dictator Nipun, but Nipun had demanded a demonstration. It had been Novskoyy’s idea to attack the cruise ship that had been chartered by the U.S. Navy and would leave Port Norfolk escorted by heavy warships, because if they could down a cruise ship among that security, they could certainly sink the unarmed unsuspecting oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. Nipun had agreed, but ironically the methods they planned to employ in the Middle East would not work against the American fleet. Somehow they had to sink the cruise ship, under escort from an invincible fleet of American warships, and he and Rafael had suffered a dark night when they realized that the task was impossible. Falling back on his navy background, Novskoyy had called for an advanced Ukrainian Severodvinsk nuclear submarine, and soon the mission was accomplished and India paid up. Novskoyy performed the Saudi tanker operation, earning da Vinci billions, and Rafael made him a full partner. Another transition was required of him as he was called to change from brilliant military consultant to absurdly rich businessman, one wealthy enough to buy a Caribbean island and retire.

It was not until later that he learned that one of the survivors of the cruise ship venture had been the same man who had threatened to beat him in the Arctic shelter, the captain of the submarine that had ruined the voyage of the Kaliningrad, who had become an admiral and taken command of the U.S. Navy, the bastard named Pacino. Novskoyy had felt a momentary blackness in his mind when he read the man would survive, and he fantasized about sneaking into his hospital room and strangling the bastard. He called up a research clip of the younger man, who now seemed so much older, the former admiral wearing the haunted sunken face of a mental patient. Novskoyy still toyed with the idea of hunting him down and killing him, but business had kept him busy since the Saudi operation.

Despite the billions they’d made from India, Rafael had feared American retaliation for the sinking of the cruise ship. Rafael transferred their money to numbered accounts, then divested the executives of da Vinci Maritime, each of them meeting their separate deaths in arranged accidents. After the entire staff had been liquidated, Rafael had set up an operation to simulate their own deaths, paying two men an absurd amount of money to have surgery to alter their appearances to look like Novskoyy and Rafael. When the first Falcon crashed, he and Rafael had changed their names. Alexi Novskoyy was gone forever and Victor Krivak had taken his place. Rafael became Sergio, still insisting on forsaking a last name.

Sergio, or Rafael, or whatever his real name was, remained a mystery. The man had been born an American but had lived in Europe his whole life, building his corporation until it was a global maritime concern and a consulting organization specializing in intelligence gathering through electronic means. There remained so much about the brilliant entrepreneur that Krivak had yet to learn, but he was a patient man.

They had gone deep underground, evading Interpol and the FBI. Now that the manhunt was derailed by their supposed deaths, Sergio felt comfortable enough to set up a new consulting organization. The new company was named United Electrics, a retro title that would gather little interest. They had a respectable-sized staff of electronics wizards, who, armed with the system codes, had penetrated deeper, to the command-and-control systems’ very core. The information warfare operation had been intense but was paying off, and soon the

American Navy had been transformed into a puppet. Krivak could direct her ships like so many toys. If only they had been able to construct such a system fifteen years before, but then, the Americans only began to rely heavily on digital command and-control more recently. Krivak tried to tell himself that the penetration operation was his revenge for Kaliningrad, but he knew that he longed for more. What he truly wanted was to see the face of Pacino as he strangled the life out of the destroyer of his dreams.