Net Force--Kill Chain, Jerome Preisler [early readers TXT] 📗

Net Force: Kill Chain

A Novella

Series Created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik

Written by Jerome Preisler

Author’s Note

These events occur between Net Force: Attack Protocol and Net Force: Threat Point (coming November 2021).

For Alice Bean Andrenyak,

Master Maine Guide

and

Alison Faye Johnson and

Doug Grad, who helped make Bryan, Bryan.

About the Author

Jerome Preisler is the prolific author of almost forty books of fiction and narrative nonfiction, including all eight novels in the New York Times bestselling Tom Clancy’s Power Plays series.

His latest book is Attack Protocol, the second novel in a relaunch of the New York Times bestselling Net Force series cocreated by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik.

Forthcoming November 2021 is his next Net Force novel, Threat Point.

Jerome lives in New York City and coastal Maine.

Colors are the deeds of light, the deeds and sufferings.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The object of all sciences is to coordinate our experiences and bring them into a logical system.

—Albert Einstein

Contents

Part One: Hard Links

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Part Two: Dem Bones

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Part One:

Hard Links

Prologue

Siberian Federal District, Russia

2007

The black 4X4 Lada Niva rocked in a strong blast of wind as it labored through the eastern steppes above the Chernavka River. Hunched over the steering wheel, Krupin flipped on his high beams and squinted into the blowing snow. But the Lada’s brights were no match for the near-whiteout conditions. He could barely see the road; its shoulders were soft and indistinct where they existed at all.

Swearing under his breath, Krupin flicked a glance up at the rearview mirror. Behind him, a slight girl of ten sat bracketed by her tensely paired guardians. With her white hair, pale skin—the palest he had ever seen—and equally pale blue eyes, she almost seemed like a fairy-tale character to him. But while far from on ordinary child, she was very much flesh and blood.

Krupin frowned and peered back out the windshield. It was hazardous traveling these hills on the clearest of days and pure madness in a snowstorm. With luck this would be a fast-moving squall of the sort that often struck the Chernavka hills. But if it kept up for long, the road would become impassable. With the fir-clad mountain slopes crowding him on the left and a sheer drop into the valley to his right, he saw nowhere to pull over and wait things out.

Still, orders were orders, and Krupin thought he could avoid that predicament by reaching his destination before sundown. His odometer told him he had already traveled fifty kilometers from Krasnoyarsk, which put him more than halfway to the secret city known only as Uzhur-95...assuming his route information proved accurate.

He was being admittedly optimistic. Part of a large network of ZATO sites spread across the Russian Federation, the secret city did not appear on public maps and road signs or exist in unclassified records. To anyone sending mail to the isolated people within its walls, it was only a zip code attached to the nearest seat of government. In this case it was Uzhur, a farming town and rail hub to the east.

A mailbox, many called it. And with good reason. Residents had no available addresses beyond the postal code, and even the numeral following its name was simply a rough distance in kilometers from Uzhur proper.

Or so it is said, Krupin mused. In their glory days, the suspicious KGB apparatchiks had often randomly changed a ZATO’s numeric value—even its full name—on official maps to confound imagined spies and infiltrators. Things had stayed much the same after the Soviet tent collapsed. No less than their predecessors, the current administrators were conditioned to run in circles like downtrodden old circus bears. For them, paranoia was an inherited reflex.

Thus, Uzhur-95 was once Uzhur-76, which was also the secret city known as Krasnoyarsk-30. The various alternating labels would confound anyone who tried to find it...including Krupin himself as he attempted to carry out orders and make his special delivery for the Lubyanka FSB.

What was the punchline to the stale old barroom joke?

In Russia, map reads you, he recalled.

He downshifted into first gear as the road turned sharply left. Its cranky transmission knocking hard, the Lada kicked, jolted and lurched toward the snow-covered shoulder. Krupin cut back into his lane and spat more curses through his teeth, directing them at his vehicle, his government, and the weather, in order.

“I’m sorry about the bumpy ride, kitten,” he said after the diatribe. With the wind blowing outside, he practically needed to shout. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Natasha Mori squeezed the little Cheburashka doll in her coat pocket, her fingers digging into its soft, hand-sewn fabric. Neither his nervous driving nor the storm outside bothered her at all. She had been through many fierce Russian gales. Dreadful blizzards that tore the rooftops off village homes and brought avalanches rolling down from the hills in great, raging clouds of whiteness.

No, she did not fear the weather.

Her destination was another matter.

She had been assured it was a far better place than the state-run orphanage where she had lived for over two years. A place of marvelous learning and experience, where a chosen few students would learn to be of special and honored service to the Motherland. But while she’d hated every moment at the detdom, she was mindful that it was only a short distance from the village of her birth. Where she had last seen Papa.

She would never believe the whispers about him. He would not have abandoned her without a word of goodbye. Deep in her heart, she knew Papa would return someday. And she desperately wanted to be there to throw her arms around his neck and hug him close.

She felt her hand trembling around the doll now and slowly relaxed her grip. Focused on the road ahead, Krupin probably wouldn’t sense her trepidation. But Natasha thought the old woman to her