“The first mission to extract her was a disaster—a CIA special operator died, while another was severely wounded. After that, she and the boy were moved to a location very much like this one—far east Russia, on the Sea of Japan. Complete with mountains and a temperate rainforest. She and her son are ensconced in a remote mountain mansion. It’s the vacation home of an oligarch. She’s being forced to complete her work to set up the upcoming attack from there.”

“So we’re here to do a practice run for the extraction of the chemist and her son,” Mock said. “And the clock is ticking down to the attack.”

Xavier nodded. “There’s only one road to the mansion. It’s in the mountains about thirty miles from the sea, and about a hundred and fifty miles northeast of Vladivostok in the heart of Primorsky Krai. Very isolated, as there are only small villages along the coast. There’s absolutely no communication in or out. Signal blockers have dampened all communications from the mansion. There is no landline or cable. No internet. Nothing.”

“So how does she do her work? How does the Kremlin keep track of her progress?”

“Twice a week, an armored SUV drives from Vladivostok or one of the villages on the coast to the lake. We believe the purpose is to deliver hard drives for data transfer. There’s another vehicle that delivers food once a week. We initially hoped to be able to infiltrate the food delivery, but intelligence suggests we’d never get past the guard at the gate without the proper password, which changes daily.”

“So shoot the guard,” one of the SEALs said.

“It’s believed there’s a helicopter at the ready to remove the chemist if there’s any indication the guard has been incapacitated. The chemist has been warned that if they were forced to do another emergency extraction, this time they would leave her son behind with a chemical bomb that would explode when SEALs breached the building.”

“Okay. So we leave the guard alone.”

“And here I thought you were just fucking with us with the no-comms shit,” Flyte said.

“I wish.”

“So we were going to run scenarios here to plan the op,” Phelps said. “Figure out how to do the impossible.”

Audrey rose from her seat next to George and stretched. They used small red lanterns to light the room, making it impossible to see the red marks on her neck, but he knew they were there. Her voice had a slight rasp as she said, “I don’t understand. What you’ve described is part of military operations—not a training exercise. Why didn’t you just submit your plan to the park under that regulation? Ops don’t fall under environmental review. You could have left me out of it and the lodge would have been yours to use.”