Prologue 1.

The discussion was getting heated, as a man in a black suit sporting a stern trimmed corporate haircut, generic features, and a pair of aviator glasses, moved from slide to slide, frozen in each frame, but every time out of focus, like a blurry apparition. The slides were useless to identify his face.

- Can we get a retinal scan on that? Some facial recognition or something?

- Okay, what the fuck! Why is Larry in this meeting?

Larry reached for a pencil. Willis took a long sip of his coffee. Stogov and Ryabinin stared across the table like predators ready to murder everyone. Ruslan was frantically keying in the meeting notes on the tablet.

- Do you see the quality on this? What is this, 1960? Is this the best projector we got? The best security cameras capturing a picture in 800 by 600 resolution? No wonder you people get treated as non-factors.

- Hans, that's enough of your shit for today.

- I fucking quit. You treat international assassins like circus clowns. They'd bring a horse's head to your doorstep, and you wouldn't know it from a donkey's ass.

- Herr Warzeche, wurden Sie horen, bitte?

- Sie hat mir gesagt, diese Leute sind professionelle Agenten Betrieber operatorenn.

- You can tell McInnery all that, tomorrow. Right now, let's pretend not everyone is on the budget level with America.

Old man McInnery was pleased with himself. Getting not twenty, not thirty, but fifty seven national intelligence agencies working together like this was one of the shrewdest things he'd ever pulled. Surely, he'd work a trick or two in his day, but this... This was impressive. An international operation under a covered civilian front, and none of the UN's diplomatic bullshit, no forced O&M, extended capital. Finally together. No fuck games. Sure, there would be challenges. Getting the Russians, the Ukranians, the Japanese, and the Chinese in one room would have been enough to start a war already, but overall he was pleasantly surprised with the individual professionalism of the agents collected. It looked like most of the players took the game seriously and sent their A-quality people.

Now they could kill some terrorists. Do some real damage. No more rules, just like the bad guys.

Today, though, was a challenging day. It was a day to summarize a challenging month. Everything pointed to the fact that Maniac made his move, but they had nothing.

- "Maniac" made his move, people. This man, guys. We need at least an ID.

All of them had nothing. Nobody had anything.

McInnery knew this, mostly. He knew Maniac to be an operator from his own era, back when they taught a man to chew his way out of a body bag. Such men did not make easy mistakes. But he wanted the team to work together and get used to consolidating data, work out their channels. He'd give them time. He was flying in the next day.

- How do you know it's even him?

- Because we have confessions of a man who hired him. Without anything useful, sadly.

- Arright. Lezz mayke Maniac top priarety.

- And then there's this one.

The man who was running the meeting pointed to a slide with a photograph of a frozen visage of a research base in the midst of an arctic desert. Snow covered mountains in the background dropping into the ocean. A hangar at night, with three projector lights catching a glimpse of a figure firmly clad in a winter suit with a fur lined hood drawn tightly around his head and a mask covering his face, revealing only a smudged strip of two exposed eyes, night vision goggles or something similar, thrown up just above the eyebrow line. Monochromatic in black and green, the picture left much to be desired. It gave no hint for the saboteur's eye color.

- Meet "Kenny".

There was a bit of laughter. Half the room didn't get the joke.

- Who's that one? Related?

- Isn't that a good question. A very different signature, yet a similar level of threat.

- So zere are two of zem nau?

- What do you think? Why hit the R&D complex at the very same time otherwise?

- So Maniac is not working alone?

- Unless that's Maniac.

- Very well could be, but they are two different people. This one's taller, see? If "Kenny" is Maniac, then the one at the airport and the embassy is someone else.

Big point on this being, two different guys, not one guy.

- So now we're working two targets.

- Two confirmed. So far. Could be more.

- With no names, no prints, no DNA or profiles of any kind, other than the fact that they exist and active and a bunch of burnt outside facing fake identifies, which will never be reused.

- Yeah, we're kind of fucked.

There was uneasy laughter.

- Okay, so why are we even here?

The presenter, Adam Weiderud, clicked the projector off, and tapped his hand on a thick binder beside him.

- Because we know what they're going after.

Prologue 2.

They flew in silence for a while. Each of them in their demented heart needed some time to process what happened in the past two hours. Each in their own way.

The young one broke the silence first.

Thanks for teaching me that vertical landing. Man, I did NOT expect that kind of performance. I heard the tale of Jay Zeamer's B-17 in 1943, but damn, taking this fat bastard into a dogfight and actually pulling through...

The An-12 heavy chassis touched down with a thud and a rumble.

Dressed in an unbuttoned UN officer uniform, Kenny was in the co-pilot's seat, but was the one flying the aircraft now, because the man in the pilot's seat was leaning on the window and smoking, his white cotton shirt sleeves rolled up, a soot covered soviet commander watch on his right wrist. Kenny was slowly thawing out, started to become his usual explosive, talkative, abundantly verbose self.

God damn, what a ride! Hey! Seriously, that was incredible.

Maniac adjusted his shades.

- Thanks to you, partly. Was your idea to turn it into a gunboat. Those 152mmB's were a shrewd thing to get. I didn't think we'd need them.

- A pleasure and honor to work with you, master, as always.

Maniac nodded with a hint of a smile.

- You performed adequately.

That was often as good as you could get from the old man.
His eyebrows narrowed a bit, signifying a continued jest to his coldness.

- You're shaping to be a good operator. - he elaborated, sounding more sincere.

They didn't have much time. Whoever sent that wing of interceptors will soon realize they aren't coming back. Without wasting air on words, they simultaneously synced their watches as the plane came to a stop.

The weather was a hospitable 100 Fahrenheit, sunny skies of Cambodia greeted them with promise of a healthy long lasting tan. Kenny sure felt a bit for the ones stuck in the cargo hold.

Now they had to figure out what to do with the hostages. The corpses were a lesser problem.

Scene 1.

Gudermes, Chechnya, 2001.

"Vodka? Cm'on, it won't kill you just becoz you black!"

The Grozny-Gudermes train was three hours late and counting.

Colonel Sorvenitsin was giving everyone hell on earth.

Jules regretted signing up the first day they rode into town. He's had plenty of other gigs ready, but this one paid best.

Inside the 770 tons of aluminum ingots rode 33 tons of cocaine, and it was up to Jules to ensure that the Colonel and the crew escort it safely to its destination, without blowing their asses up on a Soviet made infantry mine, getting gutted by the Romanian Viteazu or the Spetsnaz, or without simply getting fucking lost.

He had a shitty feeling about this.

"Why the fuck not. Give it." - he said to the stone faced sergeant.