The Hydra Protocol Read online

  DEDICATION

  For those who served, and those who still do

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Part I

  Part II

  Part III

  Part IV

  Part V

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by David Wellington

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book would not have been possible without Russ Galen, my agent, and Diana Gill, my editor. I’ve thanked them both often enough that I hope they’re getting the point by now. I would also like to thank the people at HarperCollins who made the last year so much fun, in marketing, in publicity, in library outreach (though we seriously need to release that blooper reel), in getting me to the conventions and public appearances and arranging for me to meet my readers (who definitely deserve some gratitude as well). Specifically I’d like to thank Danielle Bartlett, who worked tirelessly on my behalf even though she’d just had a baby and was a bit busy with other things. It was a great summer—I got to go to San Diego Comic-Con for the first time, among many other highlights—and it wouldn’t have happened without Danielle. I am truly grateful.

  PART I

  RIKORD ISLAND, EASTERN SIBERIA: MARCH 2, 07:14 (VLAT)

  Dust motes hung in the early light streaming down through the archive’s overgrown windows, twisting slowly in the dead air. A card catalog cabinet lay overturned on the cracked linoleum, its contents gutted and spilled onto the floor so the fine handwriting on the cards was bleached to sepia by years of sun exposure. One wall of the main room was lined with stacks of periodicals held together by fraying twine—old party literature from discredited regimes, outdated factbooks and bound analyses from long-dead KGB agents, all marked STATE SECRET, all still forbidden long after the Cold War had ended.

  She stooped down in the dust and picked up a photograph of Brezhnev that had been filed in with the rest. It was just a standard portrait, the kind that might have hung in every office building in Russia forty years ago. Still it had been stamped as secret, with a warning indicating the penalties for unauthorized access. Most likely the librarians here had gotten in the habit of stamping everything that came across their desks.

  The Soviet Union had never had time to come to trust computers. Right up until the end hard copy had been the rule—all secret information must be printed, bound, and filed, even if by 1991 no one wanted it anymore. What she was looking for had to be here, in this old archive building on an uninhabited island on the wrong side of Russia. For years she had tracked down the information, the last piece she needed to complete her mission. Her life’s work, she thought, with a little grim humor.

  So much had been lost when the coup failed and Yeltsin took the reins of the country. In the first flush of liberty the country had gone mad, like a dog chewing at its own paw. KGB installations across the country had been ransacked and set aflame, people who knew vital things had been taken away and quietly killed before they could be debriefed, computers had been smashed, archives razed. Of the seven KGB libraries in Russia that had once housed the information she needed, six had been pulled down and their records burned. This one had survived only because no one remembered it was here. Even the librarians who once worked here had disappeared, some crawling into bottles to drink themselves to death—the traditional suicide method for ex-KGB—some emigrating to breakaway republics or even nearby Japan.

  Here was the last repository of the records the KGB had kept on dissidents, on foreign spies, on people who simply could not be trusted. Here was the institutional memory of a police state.

  Here—

  Here it was.

  One of the twine-bound stacks held theater asset reports, dry technical papers listing every rifle, tank, and canteen the army possessed in a given region. Hidden among them was one marked with the sigil of the Strategic Rocket Forces. It was not only marked secret but sealed with a red band and actual wax. One glance at the title and she knew she’d found it:

  STROGO SEKRETNO/OSOVAR PAPKA

  SYSTEMA PERIMETR PROJEKT 1991

  After so long she could hardly believe she held the report in her hands. The last copy on Earth, and the only piece of paper that could make the world safe again. She placed it inside her coat, close to her heart, and then pulled up her zipper to keep it in place.

  Hurrying to the door she almost missed the sound. A crackling, the sound of someone stepping on broken glass outside. She stopped in the doorway and tried not to breathe. She heard a man speaking, though she could not make out the words. Then someone else laughed in response. It was not a kindly sounding laugh.

  She didn’t know what to do. She’d known they would follow her, that they would chase her to the ends of the world. She’d accepted the risk. But here, in this lonely place where only seabirds lived now, she’d thought she would be safe.

  Evidently not.

  “Will you make us come in, little friend?” someone called out, in Russian. “There is no other exit. You must come this way eventually. And we will not wait for long.”

  She closed her eyes, trying to get an idea of where the voice came from. To the left of the door, she believed. But there were two of them. If they’d been trained by the KGB, one would stand directly before the doorway, the other to the side. If they were Spetsnaz—much worse—they would flank both sides, because they would expect her to come out shooting.

  She was unarmed. She had not even thought to bring a gun to the island. After all, there were no people on it.

  There was no solution except to march forward, into the sunny doorway. Outside, the larch trees that covered most of the island fell away to form what looked like a natural clearing, just large enough for them to land their helicopter. She saw it first, a small late Soviet model that could not be hiding too many men. At least there was that.

  Next she saw the man who had called out to her. He was in front of her and a little to the left. He wore a turtleneck under a well-tailored blazer and had the dead fish eyes of a man who had killed before. He had a knife in his hand, the kind one might use to pry open an oyster. His much larger partner, who wore a denim jacket, was off to the right a little ways, watching her. His hands were in his pockets. Perhaps he wanted her to think he had a gun, but if he did, he would have already shot her.

  Just knives, then.

  Konyechno, she thought. Okay.

  The man in the blazer came toward her, his knife held low by his thigh. He spoke softly, as if he wanted to persuade her to come quietly, though she knew his orders were to make sure she never left the island. “Did you find it?” he asked. “The thing you came to steal? It will not—”

  He didn’t get to finish his sentence. She moved in fast, sweeping her leg across the back of his calf to bring him off balance. She brought her right arm across her body, protecting her torso while delivering a strong blow to his forearm. It was not enough to knock the knife out of his hand, but it left him unable to strike, his knife arm stretched out to his side. He tried to recover by shifting his footing, but her foot was already behind his leg and she kept him balancing on the other foot. With his free hand he tried to grab for her throat but she twisted away, shooting out her left hand to grab his wrist. She dug her thumb deep into the tendons there and his hand released, dropping the knife.

  He had been trained in fighting, she could tell. He did not panic or try to break free—he knew she had locked his leg. Instead he brought his hands up to punch at her face and her throat. He had the advantage of mass and arm strength and one good blow to her trachea could put her down, but she was faster and managed to take his strike on the s
ide of her head. Her ear burned with pain but she ignored it. She had too much to do, yet.

  She threw her arms around his waist and pushed her head under his armpit. He was already off balance so she threw her own weight backward, letting herself fall onto her posterior. His own weight carried him over her back, head first, and she both heard and felt the moment when his skull struck the ground behind her.

  KGB, she thought. He’d been trained by the KGB.

  She’d been trained by Spetsnaz.

  She threw his dead weight off her back and twisted around, her toes digging into the hard ground. One arm pushed up from the dirt and she was half standing, half crouching and facing the second man.

  He looked surprised.

  “When I was a little girl,” she told him, “I wanted to be Ecaterina Szabo. You know, the gymnast?”

  He seemed to remember then that he’d been sent to kill her. He moved quickly, his hands coming out of his pockets, and both holding knives. As he came closer she saw just how big he was. The moves she’d used on his partner would be useless on such a bear—his inertia would be too great for her to counteract.

  So instead she snatched up the fallen knife from the ground and threw it into his stomach.

  He grunted in pain but kept coming, his eyes wild.

  There was no time to get out of his way, so she didn’t. Just before he fell on her she lanced out with her foot. Her heel struck the pommel of the knife she’d lodged in his belly, driving it in deep until she felt it touch his spine. She rolled to the side as he collapsed on where she’d been, and she scuttled away as he began to scream.

  “I was too tall to be a gymnast.”

  For a second, no more, she let herself breathe. She let herself feel the panic she had suppressed before. Her breath made a little mist in the cold morning air.

  She touched her jacket and felt the paper folder inside it. Made sure it was safe.

  Then she got up and dusted herself off. Went over to their helicopter and found no one else inside. In a few minutes she was airborne, headed for Sakhalin Island. From there she could find her way into Japan, and then on to America. Where the real work would begin.

  SOUTH OF MIAMI, FLORIDA: JUNE 10, 18:16 (EDT)

  Jim Chapel leaned on the prow of the yacht and peered down into the water that foamed and churned beneath him. Ever since he’d been a kid, growing up not far from here, he’d loved the ocean. He knew no more peaceful feeling than looking out over its incredible blue expanse, watching it roll in from the far horizon. What human problem could mean anything measured against that blue infinity? Whatever was waiting for him back in New York, whatever Julia was going to tell him, for the moment, at least, he could put it in the back of his mind, tuck it neatly away and think about—

  Behind him a vast rolling thump of noise shattered the peace, followed quickly by a squeal of feedback and another squeal, less loud but far more human, the sound of a woman screaming. Chapel spun around just as the beat dropped in and the DJ really got the party jumping.

  The yacht was rated for fifty people—it had that many life jackets on board, anyway. Nearly two hundred men and women were crowded onto its main deck, leaping and swaying and throwing their fists in the air as the DJ asked if they were ready to tear it up and burn it down. More squeals and screams came as men in surfer shorts grabbed women and hoisted them up in the air, tossed them into the on-deck pool, poured liquor down their bodies to suck it out of their navels. Chapel had to smile and shake his head as he watched the bacchanalia unfold.

  “Jimmy! Jimmy, goddamnit!” someone shouted, and a man ten years Chapel’s junior came running across the deck. “Jimmy, get away from there; can’t you see you’re in the wrong place? The party’s over heeeere!”

  Chapel laughed and braced himself as Donny Melvin came rushing at him like a linebacker. The younger man barreled into him and wrapped his arms around Chapel’s torso, and for a second Chapel thought Donny was going to pick him up and bodily carry him over to the party. Donny could have done it, too—Chapel had a couple inches of height on Donny, but Donny had nearly twice his mass, and the vast majority of it was muscle.

  Donny had always been a big guy. He and Chapel had gone through Ranger school together and bonded over the fact they’d both grown up in Florida. Back then, Donny had constantly complained that the life of a soldier interfered with his ability to lift weights and that he was running to flab. That had regularly elicited nothing but groans from the other grunts, who wanted to bitch about how heavy their packs were—some of them suggested Donny could carry their packs for them. When Chapel went off to Afghanistan, Donny had gone to Iraq. Flabby or not, after one particularly nasty firefight in Fallujah, Donny had ended up carrying two wounded soldiers off the battlefield, one under each arm. He’d gotten a medal for that.

  Since his discharge Donny had clearly returned to working out almost full-time. Nor was he particularly modest about his body. He wore nothing but a pair of white-rimmed sunglasses, some floral print board shorts, and a neon pink pair of flip-flops. One of his massive biceps had been tattooed with a banner reading 75 RANGER RGT, while his other arm had been decorated with a multicolored banner showing he’d fought in the war on terror. Neither of those tattoos was regulation, though now that Donny was a civilian again, he was allowed to do with his skin as he pleased.

  “How many times did I invite you down for a cruise, and you always said no? I don’t know how you did it, but you picked the perfect time to say yes. There is some serious action over there,” Donny told Chapel as he released him from the bear hug. “I’m talking talent, Jimmy. Normally, I call one of these boat rides, I’m looking at five or six girls I would do bad things for. Today there’s at least a dozen. At least come take a look, huh?”

  “Maybe just for a look,” Chapel told Donny.

  “I promise, your redhead girlfriend will not mind if you look,” Donny told him, smiling. “And anything else that happens, well, we are in international waters.”

  “That doesn’t give me a get-out-of-monogamy-free card. And stop calling me Jimmy. Only my elementary school teachers and my mother ever called me that.”

  “Sure thing, Jimbo,” Donny said, grabbing Chapel’s arm and pulling him back toward the deck.

  Chapel couldn’t help but grin. Donny Melvin deserved a little fun after what he’d done in Iraq. If he was a little raucous about it, where was the harm?

  Back on the deck a group of girls in bikinis shouted and squealed as Donny burst into their midst. One of them threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek. She had a plastic cup of beer in one hand and she spilled half of it down Donny’s back by accident, but Donny just whooped at the icy touch and hugged the girl. “This is Sheila,” he shouted over the thumping music. “She’s a student at—what school was it?”

  “Shelly!” she shouted back.

  “What?” Donny asked her.

  “My name is Shelly!” she shouted. “Shelly!”

  “Seriously?” Donny spun her around and squatted to take a look at the tattoo that rode just above the top of her bikini bottom. “Oh, man! King James, meet Shelly,” he said. “You can recognize her by the butterfly back here.”

  Shelly spun around with a mock scowl on her face, which prompted Donny to get a shoulder under her stomach and lift her up into the air. She screamed and giggled and spilled the rest of her beer as he carried her through the crowd toward the open air bar. Dancers and drinkers alike moved out of his way, some of them raising cups in salute as he barged through their midst. This was, after all, Donny’s party. And Donny’s boat.

  Donny had not exactly signed up with the army for the GI bill. His father owned half the orange trees in Florida. One day Donny was going to have to learn how to take care of orange trees himself. But clearly that day was not today.

  “Shots!” Donny shouted, and a hundred people all around him shouted it back. The two bartenders grabbed for bottles with both hands and started lining up waxed paper shot glasse
s on the marble top of the bar, which was already strewn with empty cups and discarded pieces of swimwear. Donny laid Shelly down on her back across the bar, and one of the bartenders poured a good measure of liquor right into her open mouth. Two other girls had already come rushing up to hang on Donny’s arms. It didn’t seem to be slowing him down any.

  “Who’s your friend?” one of them asked, a blonde with elaborately plucked eyebrows. She gave Chapel a look that might have melted him on the spot if he was ten years younger. It threatened to melt him anyway, old as he was.

  “A fellow soldier, I think,” another woman said, from Chapel’s right. She had a slight accent he couldn’t place, and when he turned to look at her, he saw she wasn’t like any of the bikini-clad coeds surrounding Donny. “He has the bearing. And the quiet that hides behind the eyes. Yes?”

  The woman was significantly older than the coeds. Early thirties, Chapel thought. Short dark hair surrounded vaguely Asian features and instead of the orangish tan of the girls, her skin was a rich, warm shade that looked like it actually came from spending time in the sun. Shelly and the blonde and all the others were beautiful, in a sort of mass-produced girl-next-door kind of way, but this newcomer was striking, the kind of woman you would take a second look at wherever you saw her. She wasn’t wearing a bikini, either—instead she had on a short sundress that tied at the back of her neck. The dress gave just the subtlest sense of the athletic body underneath and somehow seemed more scandalous than a bikini would, since it left so much to the imagination.

  “He’s got soldier hair,” the blonde said, reaching around Donny to run her fingers across the stubble on the back of Chapel’s neck. “I love that feeling! It tickles,” she said, laughing.

  It did more for Chapel than just tickle. Still, he found himself turning to look at the older woman. He found he wanted to look at her very much. Nothing more, of course, not with Julia waiting back in New York. But like Donny had said, there was no harm in looking.