Authors: Stephen England
Over New Mexico
“Alexei Vasiliev,” Han repeated thoughtfully.
“I remember him.”
Harry didn’t reply, his eyes focused on the sky before him—concentrating on keeping the Cessna Skylane below 3,000 ASL.
“More specifically,” the SEAL continued, “I remember him trying to kill you.”
A shrug. “You can hardly blame Alexei for that—we
were
trying to take out his principal. He was just doing his job.” Harry smiled. “Six months later we were having lunch in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower and debating religion late into the night. I’ve known worse guys.”
“Leave him out of this, Harry,” Han admonished, a shadow passing across his face. “He’s former KGB—there’s no way you can trust him.”
The New Mexico desert continued to flash past below them, the sinking sun casting long shadows over the foothills. They were going to have to land before nightfall, or face all sorts of questions as to why they hadn’t filed the mandatory IFR flight plan.
“Assuming he’s in a cooperative mood, Alexei will be able to give us the information we need,” Harry replied, looking over at his old team member. “But I had no intention of trusting him…”
8:35 P.M. Eastern Time
Anacostia
Washington, D.C.
Five minutes late. Yuri shifted his body weight in the front seat of the Escalade, checking his watch. The lights of the SUV were out as they sat there, looking out into the river.
They’d already seen two Coast Guard cutters go by in the chill moonlight. No doubt about it, this city was on a war footing. Which is why they didn’t want to stay here any longer than necessary.
“You know,” Yuri announced, looking over at his partner, “sitting here in the dark would look much more natural if you were a hot blonde.”
His companion, a Latvian Yuri knew only as Kalnins, laughed. “This is true
, tovarisch
. And both of us would be much happier.”
Lights crept down the road toward them and Yuri’s hand moved to the Beretta at his side. He could feel Kalnins tensing in the darkness. A police car was the last thing they needed.
He’d had a bad feeling about this contract from the beginning—not that his opinion had mattered to Korsakov. Success…success had the ability to make men arrogant.
The sedan slowed to a stop across from them and briefly flashed its lights. Yuri returned the signal and left the
headlights of the Escalade on as a short man in a trench coat exited the sedan, a suitcase in his right hand. The Russian consulted the picture filling the screen of his smartphone. It was him:
Michael Shapiro, Deputy Director(Intelligence)
…
9:35 P.M. Mountain Time
Motel 6
Cedar Springs, Arizona
Carol was sitting cross-legged on the bed when Harry came back into the motel room, her Dell only inches from her bare feet. “Internet?” he asked. It certainly hadn’t come with the room.
She arched an eyebrow. “The network password is… ‘password’.”
“Welcome to the twenty-first century,” he observed, a wry smile on his face as he placed the briefcase containing the UMP-45 on the top of the dresser.
“Do you think they suspected anything at the airport?”
Harry thought for a moment. They had landed at the small airport outside Cedar Springs just before dusk and left the plane in the keeping of the airport’s two employees, one of whom had driven them into town.
He shook his head. “No. Doesn’t really matter if they did—this is the Navajo Nation.”
A glance into the mirror told him that she hadn’t understood the comment. “I had a friend at college—a schoolteacher coming back for his master’s. Said the Nation was the best place in the States to get your foot in the door of the education system.
If
you lived long enough. Folks around here have never warmed to the thought of calling in the feds.”
There was a long silence between them, then Carol looked up over the screen of her laptop. “You should know that I agree with Han—bringing an outside party into this is only going to complicate matters. You and I both believe that my father knew who was behind the assassination—it’s just a matter of figuring out what he knew.”
“And how do you propose to do that?” Harry asked, staring across the room at her. It was a rhetorical question—they’d been over this ground before. “Even if there
was
a way, it would leave us exposed.”
He paused and she could see the uncertainty in his eyes. As if realizing his vulnerability, he turned away from her and unlocked the briefcase, withdrawing the submachine gun and extending its folding stock. “West Virginia was as secure as it gets—and Korsakov tracked us down there. I still don’t know how.”
“All the more reason to leave Vasiliev out of this.”
“Alexei has connections, connections we need,” he repeated, looking back over his shoulder. “All you need to know is that wherever I need to go, whatever I need to do—I will protect you.”
Whatever I need to do
. There was no bravado there, no pretense—just a simple statement of fact. It sent a chill through her body. Carol ran a hand through her hair, her eyes running down the webpage before her. The CIA dossier on Alexei Mikhailovich Vasiliev.
Date: 2003. An SVR agent in Chechnya taken hostage in the mountains by Muslim guerillas. Vladimir Putin had dispatched Vasiliev to negotiate his release.
His method of “negotiation” had been effective, if reminiscent of Capone’s Chicago in its brutal simplicity. For every body part sent to Grozny, he’d executed two members of the rebel leader’s family, starting with his wife. It hadn’t saved the agent, but it was the last time the Chechens messed with the SVR. “Is this true?” she asked, turning the laptop’s screen toward Harry.
It was a moment before he responded, his face veiled in the shadows of the motel room. She couldn’t see his eyes, and she found herself glad of it. “There’s no Boy Scouts in this business, Carol…”
7:45 A.M. Eastern Time, December 17
th
An apartment
Clarksville, MD
One of the benefits of never calling in sick was that when you actually did it, no one questioned your integrity.
Carter leaned back in his desk chair, interlacing his long fingers behind his head. It had taken him nine hours to access the FBI’s servers. Using his own log-in, it would have taken all of three minutes, but that was like leaving your business card at the scene of a crime.
As it was, when the Bureau eventually realized their list of users had been hacked, the trail would run cold in a maze of Bulgarian servers and IP addresses.
A
meow
, and Maxwell the cat launched himself up onto the desk, pale yellow eyes staring him down.
“Easy, Max,” Carter whispered, a weary smile crossing his face as he swept the bobtailed cat away from the computer keyboard. He’d never forget how Maxwell had knocked over a cup of coffee on his laptop one day, frying the hard drive. Never forget the half-sheepish look on the cat’s face, as though he was emulating his namesake.
Catastrophe averted, the analyst went back to his work, filtering through another layer of security on the Bureau server. Marika had been sure that someone had hacked into their network and compromised the West Virginia op. If she was right, the hacker should have left some sort of a trail…
10:01 A.M.
The safehouse
Culpeper, Virginia
“We’ve got a hit.” Those quietly spoken words were enough to bring Tex Richards instantly awake.
Thomas shook his head. He’d never known the big man to truly be asleep—maybe it was the Apache blood running through his veins. “Where?”
“Arizona,” Thomas replied, tapping the screen of his laptop. “His American Express card was used to rent a Ford Expedition at an agency in Flagstaff—fifteen minutes ago.”
“He’s crossed the continent in less than thirty hours,” the Texan observed. “Somewhere—somehow, he got on a plane.”
“Let’s face it. Our boy’s brilliant.”
Tex’s lips compressed into a thin, bloodless line. “We’ll see about that. Run back over the last twenty-four hours—see if you can track down any incidents at general aviation airfields this side of the Mississippi. Anything abnormal.”
“How soon do we leave?”
“We don’t,” came the terse answer.
Thomas looked up in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“A stern chase is a long chase—something our corpsman used to say in A-stan. We don’t follow Harry, we find someone who knows where he’s going.”
Thomas looked back to see his partner holding up a print-out of the surveillance photo Carter had provided. “Rhoda Stevens…”
9:43 A.M. Mountain Time
I-40 west of Ash Fork
Arizona
There was dead silence in the SUV as he dialed the number, and it wasn’t out of courtesy. Harry knew that much. More like disapproval. And he knew why.
Three rings, then four. Five before it was answered. “Hello?”
“
Kak dela,
Alexei?” How are you?
There was a moment’s pause, then Vasiliev chuckled. “With half your nation’s hounds out after you, I hardly expected to hear your voice.”
The Russian was good. He hadn’t used his name, nothing for the SIGINT boys at Fort Meade to grab hold of.
“I suppose it would be pointless to ask how you got my private cell number?”
“Hey, you’re a public figure, whether you like it or not.” Harry smiled. “A celebrity.”
A laugh. “So, tell me,
tovarisch
, what is so important that you must rouse me from bed with my wife?”
“Indeed? Please accept my congratulations. I was unaware that you were married again.”
“She’s a beautiful girl, my friend,” Vasiliev replied. “The love of my life.”
Well, he’d heard that line before. Regarding Mrs. Vasiliev #1 and #2. “We need to meet, Alexei. As soon as possible.”
“Why?” the Russian asked, a note of suspicion creeping into his voice. Perhaps he was remembering their
last
meeting.
“You have a security problem. One of your countrymen has brought in—specialists…I need your advice.”
“The same specialists responsible for the Dominion fireworks show?” The bombing in Virginia. Yeah, Vasiliev didn’t miss a beat.
“
Da
, Alexei. The same.”
“Then, if what you say is true…I agree with you,
tovarisch
. We
do
need to meet—perhaps at the bistro on Baker Street for lunch tomorrow? Ten hundred hours?”
Harry looked over at Han before responding. The Asian SEAL inclined his head, then nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Then I will see you there—one more thing.”
“Yes?”
He could hear Vasiliev clearing his throat. “Put a gun to my head again and I
will
kill you. And this time I won’t miss…”
2:52 P.M. Eastern Time
An abandoned apartment complex
Clarksville, MD
The apartment complex had been a casualty of the 2008 collapse of the housing market. Half-completed, it had remained empty ever since. The owners hadn’t been able to raise the money to finance completion—and with Maryland’s real estate plunging through the floor, they hadn’t been able to unload the property either.
It had become a virtual no-man’s land, the habitat of drug addicts and the homeless.
“Target reacquired,” Yuri announced, closing one eye to focus down the scope of the Barrett M98B. Careful.
Slow, shallow breaths. The firing reticle centered on the black man’s temple, holding steady.
A couple hundred meters—just across the street, really. No crosswind. An easy shot.
The sniper rifle was set up well back of the window, resting on a pair of packing crates and stabilized by sandbags. As rock-solid as it got.
He saw the target’s hand move downward, beside his computer, to a phone on the desk. “Ready?”
Kalnins nodded, moving closer to the window on his hands and knees. Bracing himself, the Latvian aimed the laser microphone across the street, focusing on the window of their target’s apartment.
A couple moments’ delay and then the vibrations on the glass of the window came filtering back through the software on Yuri’s laptop, broadcasting once again as human voice.
“This is Carter. Yeah, I’ve been in the system for about seven hours, going over their user profiles. A lot of anomalies. This is going deep, Marika. A lot deeper than either of us thought.”
4:06 P.M. Central Time
The mosque
Dearborn, Michigan
There was a thrill to being only inches away from one of the deadliest nerve agents known to man. A nervous, queasy thrill. Jamal al-Khalidi felt the beads of sweat trickling down his face and wished for a moment that he could wipe them away. The hazardous materials suit shrouding his body made that difficult.
Getting the HAZMAT suit hadn’t been much more difficult than any of the other equipment—with emergency services across the U.S. downsizing from lack of funding, he’d been able to pick one up online, the ad describing it as “gently used”. Americans and their semantics.
He picked up the rotary saw and consulted the schematics strewn over his lab tables one last time. The shell had been disarmed, the explosives rendered inert. The next step was to cut open the casing and extract the paper-thin metal container holding the powdered soman.
Jamal took a deep breath and moved to the table where the huge artillery shell lay, held in position by a pair of clamps.
What was it one of his classmates called it? The moment of truth. He took one final look around, assuring himself that everything was in place.
La illaha illa Allah
, he breathed, whispering the essence of his creed. It might be the last time he said it in this life, before he repeated the words of praise and homage to Mounkir and Nakir.
Muhammad rasul Allah
…
A noise broke upon his reverie and his eyes flew open. Tarik Abdul Muhammad stood just within the formerly airtight door of the lab, arms folded easily across his chest. He was dressed in his street clothes.
“Ignore me,” he announced. “I am only here to observe.”
“B-but, shaikh,” Jamal stammered, “there is only one suit—if the saw pierces the metal containing the soman…it will be your death.”
The eyes of a prophet stared back at him. Calm, mesmerizing. Unrelenting. “Allah will guide your hands…”
6:13 P.M.
St. Louis, Missouri
The Mississippi. The Father of Waters, as it had once been called. It was a magnificent river. Korsakov dialed the number from memory, standing by the side of the Suburban.
“Are you sure?” he asked, turning back to Viktor. The boy nodded. They’d pulled off the road after his discovery, and now they stood in an alley overlooking the river.
Four rings and the phone picked up. “Yes?” a voice asked in clear, if accented, English.
“We have a problem,” Korsakov announced without greeting or preamble. They didn’t have time.
“I could tell that much from CNN.” There was sarcasm in the tones. “I brought you into this country because I trusted you to do the job, Sergei. Was my trust misplaced?”
The assassin took a deep breath. “
Nyet
. The contract will be finished as we agreed, but there is something you need to know.”
“And that would be?”
“As we speak, the target is within thirty miles of you. It is only safe to assume that the CIA officer is still with her. You may be in danger.”
A curse. “What do they know?”
Neither of them had the answer to that question. “Where are you now?”
Korsakov glanced over at Viktor. He could be signing their death warrant. “We’re in the city of St. Louis.”
“I will send my Gulfstream for you—be at the airport in five hours.”
“
Spasiba bolshoi, tovarisch
.” Thank you very much.
And it was done.
7:53 P.M. Eastern Time
The abandoned apartments
Clarksville, MD
It was the first target. He was sure of it. Short, stocky, his deep tan hinting at his Mediterranean background. There was a military bearing to his gait as he walked across the street in the pale glow of the streetlights.
Yuri adjusted the magnification ring, enhancing the zoom as his reticule centered on the man’s face, watching him exhale, steam billowing into the cold night.
Caruso paused at the door of the apartment complex, unsure whether to go on in or not. Marika’s contact was Agency. His favorite people.
As it turned out, he didn’t have long to wait. Altmann materialized out of the twilight, a heavy jacket shrouding her lithe figure, a Ravens baseball cap pulled low over her eyes. “What are you waiting for, Vic? An engraved invitation?”
“They’re inside. Are you in position?”
“Almost,” the man called Kalnins whispered, pulling himself onto the top of the concrete wall that ran around the back of the apartment complex. He dropped down on the other side, unslinging the Uzi from around his neck.
From his position he could cover the maintenance exit from the building, as well as the fire escape. With a smooth practiced motion, the Latvian extended the weapon’s folding sheetmetal stock, bracing it against his shoulder.
“Ready.”
Four flights of stairs—the two FBI agents took them quickly, with Marika in the lead.
“I feel naked without my sidearm,” she grumbled, turning for the final flight. Caruso suppressed a smile. That was the way it was when you’d been in the field as long as Altmann. Things like wearing a gun…a badge—they were more than second nature. They were a part of you.
It had been six years since her feet had last touched these steps. Not that long in the great scheme of things, but it felt like an eternity.
She’d needed his help back then as well, maybe one of the reasons nothing had ever happened between them. She didn’t like
needing
people.
At the door, Marika paused before knocking, as if checking the apartment number. She knew it by heart.
Footsteps at the knock, a moment’s pause and then the bolt slid back, the door opening by little more than a crack.
Carter’s face. “Come in, come in.” The analyst beckoned nervously and they both followed him into the apartment.