TWENTY-ONE
PUNTA LAGNO
REGIONE CAMPANIA, ITALY
THAT SAME TIME
The Mercedes E350 Estate pulled off the Via 4 Novembre on the western coast of the Sorrento Peninsula, a few kilometers south of the town that the peninsula drew its name from. A forest of trees screened the villa beyond from the road, the only marker to its presence a large gate 50 meters up the road.
Inside the vehicle, Hilshire activated the Emergency Flashers and then remote opened the rear hatch while Triela and Kara exited from the second row bench seats. They went to the back and each grabbed a large backpack, which they slung over their shoulders. Both girls wore black denim jeans and shirts under black armored leather motorcycle jackets and brown hiking boots. Hilshire wore his usual dark suit.
"Radio check," he said and both girls nodded their earpieces were working. Each then spoke into their microphones and Hilshire verified he could hear them. With that, both girls disappeared into the trees.
Ten meters in they came to a three-meter high concrete wall, the dark grey tone allowing it to blend into the shadows thrown by the thick pines. Loops of razor wire covered the top, held in place by steel supports and all the branches had been cleared a meter back to prevent someone from using them to cross over.
"Do you see any cameras or other sensors?" Triela asked, her eyes roaming across the top of the wall.
"No," Kara replied after her own search. She shrugged out of her backpack and removed a pair of armored tactical gloves that she pulled on and then zipped up her jacket before stepping back ten meters and charging forward.
Kara went into a forward flip, compressing her legs as she landed and using them as springs to launch herself up almost four meters. She flipped upside down at the peak of the jump, coming down hands-first on the top of the wall, her gloves and jackets protecting her hands and arms as she crushed the razor wire. As she landed on the wall, Kara compressed her arms at the elbows and pushed off, performing a back flip and planting her landing, arms high like a gymnast who'd just known she'd won gold.
"I'm over," Kara reported. A moment later her backpack sailed over the wall and Kara trapped it against her chest like a soccer goalie would a ball. She removed a 30m length of high-tensile cord and tied one end to the trunk of a tree before sending the other end over the wall. Though it lay across the crushed razor wire, the cord was a composite of Kevlar and Spectra, making it highly cut-resistant and Triela had no problem scaling the wall and leaping off. Kara recovered the cord and replaced it in her backpack.
"We're heading to the gate," Triela reported and the two headed south, staying within the trees. When they were in visual contact with the gate, Kara pulled out a pair of binoculars, identifying both a wireless security camera and a wireless alarm system. Triela removed a jammer from her own backpack and armed it. Nodding to Kara, she activated it and the two girls rushed the gate. Triela ripped the anchoring mechanism out of the ground and Kara leapt up the wall, knocking the transmission antenna off.
As Triela threw the gate open, Hilshire's Mercedes drove through and Kara dived into the open rear hatch, scrambling into the rear-facing aft seat. Triela pulled the gates closed and quickly followed into the back with Kara.
Hilshire drove rapidly up the private road, knowing that the security forces would quickly respond to the loss of the signals from the security camera and gate alarm system. He reached the front drive and both girls spilled out the back, Triela wielding a Heckler & Koch MP7A1 and Kara her FN P90.
Two men in suits stormed out the door, reaching for the pistols inside their jackets. Triela and Kara reached them first and knocked them out and then charged into the villa, which spread across two floors. The girls split up, Triela staying on the ground floor while Kara headed for the stairs.
At the top of the stairs Kara found herself in an open area with a bedroom to her right and dual bathrooms to her left. From there, she entered a huge granary that extended the rest of the main structure, divided into two sections. The larger housed a living room, beyond a home cinema with stadium seating and a massive projection screen. Kara carefully continued on to the adjoining section, finding an office and then the master suite.
For Triela, the ceiling extended upwards through an open second floor of the grand reception room, a sitting room to the left and a large dining room to the right. She entered the kitchen and surprised two cooks. Using her PDW, she herded them into the walk-in pantry and closed the door, confident that they would not emerge for some time. She continued on across the open-air loggia into the annex building, finding staff quarters and the security office, where Triela surprised the last guard and knocked him unconscious. Kara had meanwhile descended the stairs.
"Did you find him?" Triela asked and Kara shook her head.
"Him" was one Nikolay Andreyevich Bushuyev, formerly a Procurement Officer of the 42nd Motor Rifle Division with the North Caucasus Military District of the Russian Ground Forces and now making a nice living as a broker of weapons, arranging deals between buyers and sellers as opposed to moving the material himself.
"Well Section One swears he's here," Triela noted. They went to the garage and found both his BMW X5 and Mercedes S63. Triela removed a small automatic knife from inside her left shoe and stabbed the front tires of each vehicle to immobilize them. They then started a second search of the villa, looking in the closets and under beds, but still finding nothing.
Finally, they went out to the pool area and in the shed where the supplies were kept, they found Bushuyev huddled on the floor.
"Что вы хотите?" he asked after Triela had dragged him out and plopped him a wrought iron chair with plush cushions.
"Sei italiano?" Hilshire asked and Bushuyev just stared at him.
"Dammit. You don't happen to speak Russian, do you Kara?" Hilshire asked rhetorically.
"Мало," she replied and stepped forward. "Меня зовут Кара, и у меня есть несколько вопросов."
"Я не могу вам помочь," Bushuyev replied.
Hilshire looked to Kara.
"I told him my name was Kara and I said I had some questions for him."
"And?"
"He said he couldn't help me…" She turned to face him. "But I know you can," she noted, staying with Italian. "I'd prefer you do so without me having to hurt you beforehand."
"You are a very pretty girl, Kara, but you are also very young," Bushuyev noted, now speaking Italian as well. "And I am trained to accept a not insignificant modicum of discomfort," he said with a smile.
Kara went to one of the folding recliners next to the pool and proceeded to twist and bend the aluminum tubes into a roughly knotted shape before heaving it ten meters across the terrace.
"I know who you are now," Nikolay said, nodding his head sagely. "The PRF has said you were running young girls against them, but I assumed it was the talk of those who imbibed too much vino over dinner. I also hear that your girls tend to leave bodies in their wake."
"If we wanted you dead, Nikolay Bushuyev, your lungs would be full of either your own blood or pool water by now," Hillshire said.
"I am sorry, Mr. Government Man," Bushuyev replied, now speaking Italian, as well. "I am a retired Russian businessman enjoying the warmer and drier climate Venice offers this time of year compared to back home in Moscow."
"Nikolay Bushuyev, we know you broker weapons deals," Hilshire said, taking a chair across from him. "You know what happened in Venice?" he asked.
"Да. Terrible."
"Through forensics we identified the warhead as coming from an SS-N-27 cruise missile. You'd know it as the 3M-54E Klub anti-ship missile," Hilshire noted.
"Only the Indian Navy operates that type," Bushuyev noted. "It was designed as for their new frigates in an anti-ship role."
"We think it came via the Middle East via ship," Hilshire stated.
"Ship you say?" Bushuyev asked as he rubbed his chin.
"Spill," Kara demanded.
"Almaz-Antey, the builders of the Klub, have been marketing a covert attack system called "Klub-K" composed of four missiles and a transporter-erector concealed inside a standard 40 foot intermodal container."
"Four?" Hilshire asked. "Have they sold any of them?"
"Not to my knowledge, though I have heard countries like Iran and Venezuela have expressed strong interest," Bushuyev replied.
"But this Almaz-Antey company could have built one?"
"I guess," Bushuyev said. "You must understand that cruise missiles are a bit rich for most of my client's tastes and wallets. So I'm not as plugged in as you seem to think I am."
"Well thank you for your assistance, Nikolay Bushuyev," Hilshire noted. He turned to his cyborg. "Triela," he said and the blonde girl nodded her head.
Bushuyev's face took on a terrified expression. "Wait! I thought you said you did not want me dead!"
"And I don't. But I don't want you calling anyone for a bit."
Triela ripped a pool towel into strips and tied Bushuyev to his chair and then followed after her Hilshire and Kara.
"I didn't know you spoke Russian," Hilshire noted to Kara as they drove back up the peninsula to the Autostrade.
"I really don't. Petrushka and Olga taught me some phrases," Kara noted.
"You could always go with the programming option," Hilshire suggested.
When Angelica was created, she already spoke Italian at a fifth year primary school level. During the time she spent undergoing her surgeries and as part of her training, Angelica received additional instruction to bring her to a seventh year level. Rico, Henrietta, Beatrice, Elsa, Silvia and Chiara were also Italian nationals and spoke the language well.
When Hilshire found Triela, she spoke Arabic. However, with the long covalence and conversion period necessary due to her injuries and need to perform a deep wipe of her memories, there was time to teach her to read and write Italian.
As the last Generation One cyborg, Claes came to the Agency from Sweden and had no knowledge of Italian. With the cybernetic augmentation process streamlined, it became necessary to develop a way to quickly teach her to be able to communicate in Italian. While the doctors could imprint the vocabulary and grammar rules on the girl's brains as they did with basic weapons information, this resulted in very stilted speaking more akin to machine translation output.
In consultation with linguistic experts, an "immersive" language-training program was developed similar to those used by various European Foreign Ministries to train their diplomatic staffs in a foreign language. Between that and the imprinting, Claes achieved a secondary school level of fluency in the language within weeks of first waking up. This process came in handy with the Second Generation girls, a number of who came from countries other than Italy.
"I think five languages are enough for now," Kara replied and Hilshire nodded his head.
Kara natively spoke French and Japanese, spoke English quite well and her visits to Chile with her father provided her with an average understanding of Spanish. She received the standard Italian training, though Michele added his own lessons to improve her comprehension and abilities, as well as keeping her conversant in French, English and Japanese.