Authors: Stephen England
A pair of figures emerged from the door to his left, a woman and a heavyset man leaning on her shoulder.
Stevens
?
They had just reached the bottom step when the laser aimpoint of Tex’s Glock came out of nowhere, centering on the man’s chest. “Stop right there—let me see your hands!”
The Texan’s shout didn’t have the desired effect. The figures separated, the man standing there silhouetted for a moment against the faint glow of the parking lights. His hand coming up.
Gun
.
The realization had barely entered Thomas’s mind before the pistol spat fire, the report shattering the stillness of the cold Virginia night.
Instinct took over, the nightsights of the Beretta centering on target. His finger squeezing the trigger.
The 9mm slug caught the man high in the chest, sending him reeling backward. Thomas fired a second time and he collapsed onto the snowy ground, the gun falling from his fingers.
Threat eliminated
.
Thomas moved forward to the side of the fallen man, kicking the revolver to the side. Out of the way. The woman was sitting back against the rear wheel of the Honda, seemingly in shock. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”
He switched on his flashlight, looking down into the man’s pale face, and his heart nearly stopped.
As if through a dream, he heard Tex’s voice calling out,
“I’m coming in”
—heard himself acknowledge the warning. It seemed surreal.
The director…
He dropped to one knee in the bloody snow, his fingers closing around Lay’s wrist--feeling for a pulse. Ever so faint. They were going to need the one thing they didn’t have. A medevac…
2:39 A.M. Pacific Time
The club
Las Vegas, Nevada
Voices
. The young whore and one of the Russian’s bodyguards—at the door of the VIP. Fear flowed through Nasir’s veins, and he fought against the urge to open his eyes.
He had tried to go to sleep after she left, but it was impossible, his body rigid with tension. The Americans could reason it away however it pleased them, but it was
his
life at stake here.
If she betrayed him…
Nasir felt the leather cushions of the couch shift as she straddled his body, bending forward to kiss him on the forehead. A small hand holding a phone slipped into the pocket of his jeans, and his heart began to beat again.
His eyes flickered open to see her smile.
Beautiful
, Nasir thought, relief flooding over him. He reached up, his hand finding the back of her head, his lips capturing hers.
Life itself was a beautiful thing.
2:45 A.M.
The abandoned mansion
Beverly Hills, California
“Do you have it on your screens?”
Carol paused, Harry’s question still ringing in her ears—a strange feeling of disquiet seizing hold. A premonition of evil.
It had nothing to do with what they were doing. It was a feeling far more primal than that.
Her mind flickered back to the day her mother had lost her battle with cancer. She had known, before the call even reached her at work.
It was the same feeling
.
“Are you there, Carol? Do you have a fix on the phone we gave the subject?”
“Y-yes,” she stammered, shaken. She glanced over to find Han regarding her strangely.
Focus
. “Yes, I have his positioning data on my screen. Working on getting audio from the phone now.”
Smartphones, she thought, trying to banish the misgivings from her heart. The average owner had little to no idea of the power of the device he held in his hand. It was a microphone, a camera, a tracking device, and—when compared to the technology that had existed when she had done her first hack—a supercomputer.
A few keystrokes and she was in, activating the phone’s microphone with a single click of the mouse. Another moment, and the audio went streaming out live over her network, to both Harry and Vasiliev.
It took her a second to recognize the sounds, and then a flush spread across her face.
Vasiliev was the first to react. “Well, at least
someone
gets to enjoy their evening.”
6:17 A.M. Eastern Time
Graves Mill, Virginia
He heard it long before he saw it, standing there in the darkness—a pair of chemlights in his outstretched arms.
The unmarked UH-60 Blackhawk came swirling out of the darkness, descending into the snowy cornfield. Its downwash threw up snow and stubble, buffeting Thomas in the face. He never even flinched.
Numb
. He felt numb, as if he was living a dream. Two figures slid from the open door of the helicopter, the foremost man limping across the uneven ground toward him.
“Is he still alive?” Kranemeyer demanded. The DCS made a foreboding figure in the night, leaning heavily on his good leg. His black eyes seemed to take on a demonic aspect in the red glow of the chemlights.
Thomas nodded. “We’ve got him on a table in the trailer—Tex is with him, but it’s not looking good.”
“Have you dressed the wound?” This from the man behind Kranemeyer. It took a moment for Thomas to place his voice, and then he remembered—a surgeon on the staff of the Special Activities Division.
He nodded, turning to lead the way back across the cornfield. “The bullet—my bullet,” he added, as if realizing it for the first time himself, “collapsed his right lung. The occlusive dressing sealed the wound, but the cavity hasn’t expanded yet—not completely.”
The surgeon shook his head. “There’s only going to be so much I can do—we’ll need to prep him for immediate transport to a Level One Trauma Center.”
“That’s not happening.” Both men turned to look at Kranemeyer.
The surgeon took a step forward, his mouth opening in protest. “We’re talking about the life of the DCIA.”
“As am I,” Kranemeyer replied, cold resolution in his voice. “He’s been targeted for assassination—he was driven underground, and he preferred to let people think he was dead or taken hostage rather than face the alternative. And
my
people have risked their lives extracting assets from hostile countries because of it. He’d better have a good reason…or I’ll kill him myself.”
3:49 A.M. Pacific Time
The club
Las Vegas, Nevada
“They’re moving.” Carol’s voice, over his earpiece. Harry’s gaze flickered across the club, toward the VIP.
“Do you have eyes on our subjects, Alexei?”
“Negative.”
A burst of static interference over the connection, and they heard a Russian voice. Clearly himself on the phone. “…don’t care. Find Pyotr and don’t take any of his crap. I want to know where he is every second of the day until this whole thing is over. Stay on him.”
Vasiliev murmured a curse. “That’s Andropov—I recognize his voice.”
“And Pyotr…” Carol left the thought unfinished, but everyone knew what she was thinking.
Harry closed his eyes. Your only safety out in the night was in being able to stay one step ahead of a disintegrating situation. Manipulating it to your will.
Adapt
. That was what made the spy. “Do you still have a visual?”
A moment’s pause, then Carol replied, “Yes.”
“You and Han need to make the snatch.” He could hear her sharp intake of breath, hear the hesitation in her voice when she spoke again.
“I-I don’t know if I can…”
“It isn’t a question of
if
. Alexei and I won’t be able to make it back to California in time. The two of you are going to have to grab him. Right away.”
Silence. Then, “Have you seen Andropov and the Arabs yet?”
“No. You, Alexei?”
“
Nyet
.”
“The tracker is fifty meters away from your position and moving west,” Carol announced. “I’m picking up street noise…there must be another exit from the VIP.”
Harry pushed back his chair, nearly knocking into a dancing couple behind him. A blue strobe hit him full in the face and he ducked his head down, moving down the stairs onto the club floor. “Stay on them—we can’t afford to lose track of them. Alexei, meet me on the street ASAP.”
The rear doors of the dirty gray van opened and Nasir vaulted inside, taking his seat on the bench along the side of the vehicle. It was a work van, used to transport migrant workers around the city, and his nose wrinkled at the smell.
His hand slid into the pocket of his rumpled jeans, feeling for the cellphone.
There
.
Jamal slid in beside him, still chuckling. “Good, wasn’t it, brother?”
Nasir felt himself nod, his sweaty fingers closing around the phone, running along the plastic case as he tried to pry off the back. He closed his eyes as more of the martyrs climbed into the van, forcing himself to focus.
The back of the phone came off with what seemed like an unnaturally loud
snap
, and Nasir’s eyes darted around the darkened interior of the van, certain that someone must have heard it.
Nothing. They were laughing among themselves, backslapping over their prowess of the night.
He felt the exposed battery beneath his fingers, ever so close. Almost there…
The cold night air struck Harry in the face as he burst through the door of the club, descending the steps onto the street. Vasiliev was just a moment behind him, his silver hair glistening in the glow of the streetlight. “Where now,
tovarisch
?”
“He’s northwest of you now—in a vehicle from the sound of it,” Carol interjected. “Two hundred meters and building.”
There was no time for indecision. “Never going to catch them on foot,” he announced, turning to the Russian. “We’ll need your car. I’ll take up pursuit from here.”
“On what?”
“I’ll find something,” Harry shot back, eyeing a blue and silver Harley parked near the curb. “Carol, can you overlay the GPS map with a street grid and send it to my phone?”
She didn’t respond, and for a moment he thought their connection had been broken. “Do you copy?”
When she spoke again, she sounded surprised, uncertain. “He’s gone, Harry.”
5:19 A.M. Pacific Time
Los Angeles, California
Two minutes. The figure on-screen hadn’t moved. Carol’s gaze shifted from the laptop down to the phone in her hand.
“Think he’ll take the bait?” Han asked, rubbing his hands together. It was cold in the back of the panel van, but they couldn’t leave it running.
“Our boy’s a player,” she responded. “I had to work back through his chat and SMS history to figure out which of his four girlfriends was the one you see on-screen.”
Actually, all they could currently see of her was an ankle poking out from beneath the blankets, but that was beside the point.
“And?”
“None of the above.” Carol rolled her eyes. “He’s not just getting it on the side, he’s getting it on the side of the side.”
The former SEAL chuckled. “Had a guy like that in the Teams, a ‘geographic bachelor’, if you will. Never did figure out how he pulled it off.”
“Envious?”
“No, more worried whether his pillow talk would violate opsec. Never did, that I knew. What did you send him?”
“A ‘picture’ from girlfriend #3. They had a fight last week and haven’t made up yet. Which is why she wants to meet.”
When she looked over, Han’s face was serious once more. Pensive, even. As if he was remembering.
Carol looked down at her hands, unsure what to say. There were no words that could ease the hurt of those memories.
Movement on-screen and their target emerged from the tangle of blankets, the cellphone in his fist.
He ran a hand through his hair, a satisfied smile on his face as he apparently looked for his pants.
“You were right, he’s coming out,” Han observed. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a piece of dark cloth. “Put this on.”
“What is it?”
“It’s called a balaclava—they’re worn by skiers,” he replied, pulling one on over his own head. His eyes shone out from the black mask, a face suddenly stripped of its humanity.
Skiers were hardly the most notable end users, Carol thought, sweeping her blond hair up under the stretchy fabric. The world had yet to forget the image of the ski-masked Palestinian terrorist on the Munich balcony in 1973.
The former SEAL bent to one knee by the back door of the van, a riot baton clutched in his gloved right hand.
“Give me the signal.”
Her fingers moved across the laptop’s trackpad, switching screens to the small webcam mounted on the mirror of the utility van. It was nothing fancy, a low-quality camera they’d picked up at Walmart. The image was grainy, but as she watched, the form of Pyotr Andropov entered the range of its lens, walking down the sidewalk toward his car.
Toward them. Perhaps it was the alcohol dulling his senses, but he seemed unperturbed by the darkness—never even noticed that the streetlight above his head had been smashed.
“Almost,” she whispered. “One…two…”
It seemed dark, darker somehow than when he had gone in. Of course it was, Pyotr thought, attempting to shake the fog from his brain. The sun had barely been setting when he entered the frat house. That was it.
He reached into the pocket of his jeans, fumbling for his car keys as he moved toward the royal blue Lamborghini Aventador parked at the curb. He’d had the car for just over six months—a birthday gift from his father.
Footsteps behind him, he started to turn. Something hard struck him in the small of the back, excruciating pain rippling through his body as a metal bar connected with his kidneys.
A hand wrapped itself around his throat, gloved fingers closing over his mouth before the scream forming on his lips could even be uttered.
His head slammed against the hood of his car, his mind still struggling to process the situation as the hand on his throat tightened, slowly choking off the oxygen supply to his brain.
Zip ties bit into the flesh of his wrists as his arms were pinioned behind him. He heard a woman speaking in the background as things began to grow dark, her voice hushed as if she was speaking into a phone. “We have the package. On our way now.”
And darkness closed around him…
7:03 A.M.
A convention center
Las Vegas, Nevada
The building had once been a popular convention center, but now it was nothing but empty space, the mammoth room feeling like a cavern. The first glow of the early morning sun trickled down from the skylights high above, giving an eerie aspect to the scene.
The recession had hurt everyone in Vegas—but most of the major players had managed to weather the storm, even if the price of survival for some of them had been getting in bed with the Russian
mafiya
. For convention centers like this one, they hadn’t stood a chance.
Nasir could feel the hair on the back of his neck prickle as he surveyed the weapons laid out on the tables in the center of the room. His gaze flickered over the row of Kalashnikov rifles, their magazines stacked beside them. Seven magazines to a gun—each man of the assault team would be carrying over two hundred rounds into battle with him.
A frightening amount of firepower. To assault
what
?
He glanced over toward Tarik Abdul Muhammad as if hoping to find his answer there. As if he were trusted enough to be told.
The tall Pakistani was standing there in conversation with Andropov, beside a pair of rocket-propelled grenade launchers—maybe fifteen meters off. The Russian seemed to be doing most of the talking.
“…they’re not going to deploy with everything they have. Not at first. But it will be enough. You can intercept their reaction force…
here
. Hit them with RPGs and automatic weapons. Pin them down. Overwhelm the system.”
“I have set up an ambush before, Valentin,” Tarik interjected, lifting his eyes to meet Nasir’s. As if he had
felt
his gaze. Their stare only lasted a moment before Nasir looked away, but it left him trembling as if in the grip of a fever.
He fingered the dismantled cellphone in the pocket of his jeans. If he was found out…
There was no time to think of that. Not now. It would only paralyze him. Render him incapable of acting. He had to place the call.
Movement behind him, and he turned to find his older brother standing there, a smile on his unshaven face. “I can’t tell you what this means to me, Nasir, that you are here with us. With
me
.”
Jamal reached out, warmth in his dark eyes, drawing him close into his embrace. “You don’t know how it frightened me—that I might have lost my brother to this apostate land. But this…this is how it should be, brothers together at the end. In the cause of God.”
And he felt as if a knife was being stabbed into his own heart—the reality of the betrayal that must come.
“
Insh’allah
.”
10:22 A.M. Eastern Time
Graves Mill, Virginia
The CIA surgeon looked exhausted as he came out of the bedroom. He stripped off his surgical gloves and threw them in the trash, not even looking at Kranemeyer or Thomas.
With a heavy sigh, he turned on the kitchen faucet full blast, splashing cold water over his face before turning to face them.
“What’s your verdict?”
A shrug. “I’ve inserted an endotracheal tube—he’s breathing, though still with difficulty. He’s lucid, you can go talk to him if you want, but I don’t want you to tire him. Things are still very delicate.” He cast a pointed look at Thomas. “We’re very lucky that the second bullet smashed his collarbone instead of going into the lung along with the first. I don’t think I could have patched two holes.”
Kranemeyer rose, pushing back his chair. “I’ll go speak to him.”
“One moment, Director. How soon can we talk about moving him to a real hospital?”
“I don’t know,” the DCS replied. “Why?”
“I can only leave the ET tube in for a few days, at the outside. Longer than that, there’s a high chance for infection. For pneumonia. Or both. Given his weakness, the wounds he apparently sustained in the assassination attempt, his body won’t be able to fight it off.”
Those dark eyes flashed. “I fully realize what’s at stake here.”
“No,” the surgeon shot back, his gaze unwavering. “I don’t think you do, so let me make it abundantly clear. If Director Lay contracts pneumonia, he will die. It’s no more complicated than that.”
The DCIA was a wreck, bloody bandages swathing his upper chest. “You look worse than the devil, David.”
Lay coughed, managing the faintest of smiles. “That…must be an improvement,” he whispered, motioning Kranemeyer closer to the bed. “Nichols?”
Kranemeyer hesitated, casting a glance toward the open door of the bedroom. “He has your daughter, David. Took her out of Langley at gunpoint the morning you were—well, the morning we all
thought
you died. The Bureau believes he was involved.”
The director closed his eyes, a look of pain crossing his features as he shook his head. “No…orders.
My
orders.”
“Who did this?” Kranemeyer demanded, easing himself into a chair by the bed. Stress brought on the pain from his leg, and it was throbbing now—a memory of a limb that no longer existed. “Who is targeting you, David?”
Fear
. It took him a moment to place the emotion on Lay’s face, but it was fear—and Kranemeyer found that more frightening than anything else. The DCIA had been running ops since the Cold War. If he was afraid…
He reached out a feeble hand, seizing Kranemeyer’s wrist. “Ask Rhoda to come in.”
Reluctantly, Kranemeyer moved toward the door, calling out for Stevens. The Jamaican woman appeared almost at once, slipping past him to stand beside the bed.
Rhoda Stevens
. Kranemeyer could still remember standing there beside her casket, embracing her sister. Their grief that day. Had she known then—that it was all a charade?
“The key,” Lay motioned. “Give him the key.”
He could feel her eyes on him, eyes full of skepticism. Distrust. “Are you sure, David?”
A nod. Without another word, Rhoda turned to leave the room, beckoning for Kranemeyer to follow her across the narrow hall of the mobile home.
“It’s been a long time, Barney,” she observed, pushing open the door to her bedroom.
“Not my fault, Rhoda.” He stood in the doorway, watching as she opened one of the drawers of her dresser, sorting through folded running shorts. “I attended your funeral.”
“My sister told me.” She seemed amused by the thought, and he found that it nettled him.
“Why?”
“Circumstances…at the time it was best for me to simply disappear. Just like it is for David now. It’s something I learned a long time ago—people’s search for you ends at the grave. But you’re not going to let him do that, are you?”
“He’s the DCIA,” Kranemeyer responded. “This goes with the territory. Do you have something for me?”
She straightened, laying a small key on the top of the dresser. “This.”
The metal face of the key was stamped
Alibek-376A5
. As he reached out to take it, her eyes flashed a warning. “This is only the beginning.”
8:28 A.M. Pacific Time
Andropov estate
Beverly Hills, California
Korsakov was quite sure the pool table in the billiard room of Andropov’s mansion had never been put to such unorthodox use.
Pool balls cleared away, Yuri had a rude wooden frame laid out on the table and was affixing plastic explosives around the outside edge to form a breaching charge.
“It’s good to have you back with us,
tovarisch
,” Korsakov said as he entered the room, Viktor at his side. It was only half a lie. He might have difficulty getting along with his second-in-command, but having him at the other end of the country was a headache he was glad to have over and done with. “How soon will your charges be ready?”
“Thirty minutes,” was the reply. “What’s the plan?”
Korsakov motioned for Viktor to hand him the laptop, and he opened it up on the pool table in front of Yuri.
“You and Kalnins will enter the building behind the target structure and make your way to the roof to provide overwatch and cut off any escape. I will accompany the entry team into the house, using your breaching charge on the front door.”
The ex-
Spetsnaz
sergeant gave him a grudging nod. “It should work, but I was there in West Virginia. Let’s not underestimate this man again. We’ll go in under the cover of darkness, I assume?”
“No,” Korsakov replied. So often the answer to the complex problem was to do the unthinkable. Take your opponent off-guard. “We strike at noon.”