Authors: Stephen England
He read the message a second time. His employer was tossing caution completely to the wind—and it stood a good chance of killing
him
in the process. Still…
“Valentin Andropov is dead,” he announced coolly, bringing his Glock to bear on the pilot. “And you’re going to set us down on that highway.”
12:59 A.M.
CA-210 East
California
Silence. Harry checked his mirrors, easing into the far left lane of the freeway. He caught Carol’s eyes in the rear-view mirror, moments before she looked away.
She hadn’t spoken to him since leaving Pyotr’s body behind in the mansion, the image of the teenager slumped over dead in the chair still haunting his memories.
A sudden roar assaulted his ears, the sound of a helicopter coming in low and fast. The
helicopter
. They hadn’t heard it for nearly a half hour, long enough to dismiss its earlier presence as a fluke.
He looked out the driver’s side window of the panel van just in time to see a large civilian Sikorsky sweep by overhead, its rotor wash shaking the van from side to side. Some fluke.
Chaos. The sound of automobile horns filled the night, a night suddenly glowing red with the glare of brake lights.
Harry swerved, watching as an SUV collided with a small family sedan ahead of him, crumpling the side of the car as if it was made of tin and sending it spinning into the path of another vehicle.
The Sikorsky descending from the sky like a ravenous bird of prey.
He saw the side doors open, armed men materializing in the opening
and saw in that moment Korsakov’s gambit. And a ruthless, desperate gambit it was.
Desperate enough that it just might work.
He caught a glance of Han’s face in the glow of the lights and read his expression clear. More innocents were going to die on this night.
Motioning for one of his men to cover the pilot, Yuri leaped from the open door of the hovering executive helicopter to the hard asphalt of the freeway just below him, followed by the two remaining members of his team.
Dropping to one knee, he extended the folding stock of his AK against his shoulder, his weapon a part of himself as he took cover behind a wrecked Mustang. Scanning for the gray van.
Nichols was out there—with nowhere to go in the midst of the massive traffic pile-up, nowhere to hide. A wolf brought to bay. Never more dangerous.
Kill Nichols. Kill everyone with him
. Korsakov’s new rules of engagement. Chambers was worth nothing to them now.
He could feel someone’s eyes on him, a sixth sense warning him of danger. Turning, the Kalashnikov extended in front of him, he saw a woman not five feet away, pinned against the seat of her Toyota by voluminous airbags.
A sacrificial lamb, to bring the wolf out into the open. The mercenary never hesitated, watching as the fear on her face turned to outright panic. His finger squeezed the trigger, a burst of fire ripping open the night.
Chaos. Death.
Despite being walled in by the Dodge in front of them, the sound of automatic weapons fire from their front gave an unmistakable indication of what was going on. And the screams.
Harry glanced in his mirrors, gauging the distance between himself and the surrounding cars. Very little room—the freeway had been transformed in moments into a seething, panicked mass of humanity and crashed vehicles. A man ran past his door, fleeing for his life.
“I’m not going to sit here and listen to this,” Carol announced suddenly. He looked back to see her pull the Kahr from its holster inside her jacket, reaching for the side door of the van.
He twisted in his seat, seizing her arm. “There’s nothing you can do except get yourself killed. And it is
my
responsibility to protect you.”
Defiance shone from her eyes, the ghost of her father. “That’s all you’ve been doing, isn’t it? And look at the people that have died because of it.”
Another burst of gunfire from their front. There was no time to have this argument. “Get down,” he whispered, turning the steering wheel all the way to the left. Aiming it toward a four-foot gap between an abandoned Grand Cherokee and a Chevy Impala.
He looked over at Han, who was busy checking the magazine of Harry’s UMP-45. “Hold on tight.”
His foot hit the accelerator pedal, jamming it all the way to the floor, tires squealing against the asphalt as the van turned hard, gaining momentum. It slammed into the front bumper of the Impala like a battering ram, tearing it away as though it was made of paper.
Hard right and he broke out into what had been the far left lane of the interstate, the Sikorsky dead ahead, hovering only five, maybe six feet off the roadway.
The death rattle of Kalashnikovs on full-automatic resounded through the night, the windshield disintegrating into a million shards of glass as Harry slid down onto the floor of the van, his arms locking the steering wheel in place.
He felt the van shudder from the impact of high-velocity rounds and looked over to see Han curled up across from him, the submachine gun across his chest.
Braced for impact.
Yuri watched in disbelief as the van raced forward, on a collision course with the Sikorsky. Watched as if in slow-motion as his team members emptied their magazines into the van, its tires exploding, sparks flying from the bare metal.
He shouted a warning, starting to run toward his men, his voice drowned out by the gunfire.
He’d barely taken ten steps when the top of the van connected with the tail boom of the Sikorsky.
The agonizing shriek of metal on metal, audible even over the thunderous roar of the helicopter. The van shuddered from the impact, already decelerating from the friction of rolling on blown tires.
From his position on the floor, near the pedals, Harry heard the whine of the helicopter’s rotors as they flailed the air in a futile attempt to stay aloft.
The night exploded in fire.
Heat and flame washed through the shattered windows of the van, igniting the upholstery. Harry drew himself up, hand searching for the door handle. “Out!
Out!
Everyone out.”
Han tossed him the SCAR and one of their backpacks as he jumped from the van, pulling open Carol’s door. “Let’s move it!”
He looked back toward the flaming wreckage of the S-76 as they ran down the highway, taking in with a pitiless glance the sight of one of the mercenaries writhing in the fire.
Fortunes of war.
1:28 A.M.
East of Los Angeles
California
Korsakov checked his phone for what must have been the thirtieth time in as many minutes, each time greeted with the response,
No New Messages
.
Where was Yuri? He should have sent a text by now. A text announcing Nichols’ death. That was all that mattered now, revenge for the men he had lost.
Dig two graves
, he thought, remembering the old proverb of the vengeful, but his decision had already been made.
“Do you have that satellite yet?” he demanded, glancing into the darkened backseat of the SUV as they continued to speed down the freeway.
“
Da
,” the boy replied. “Just coming on-line now. Another moment or two.”
For all of its advances, technology could seem painfully slow. “Is it true that Valentin is dead?” Viktor asked, looking over his laptop. His voice seemed to tremble even as he spoke the name.
“It is, Vitya,” the assassin responded, letting out a heavy sigh. His employer, the man who had launched them on this godforsaken mission, was dead. With him died any chance of receiving their final payment, a full half of Korsakov’s contract price. And yet he could not help but feel a strange sense of relief.
“I am glad,” the boy intoned solemnly, and Korsakov found himself in agreement. His old friend had fallen far— to have become the molester of children, the whore of the jihadists. The world was better off with him dead.
He heard a sharp intake of breath from Viktor and he twisted around in his seat, motioning for Misha to keep driving. “What’s going on?”
The boy handed him the laptop, pointing wordlessly to the screen, the image live from a Google satellite miles above Yuri’s last known position. Flames bloomed across the image, leaping skyward. A pillar of fire by night.
Devastation.
“Can we see what happened?”
The boy leaned forward, his dark eyes shining as his fingers worked their magic on the keyboard, back-timing the satellite footage almost thirty minutes before beginning to play it forward once again
Korsakov watched in morbid fascination as the scene unfolded, leaving no doubt in his mind what had happened. No doubt that his men had failed. Perhaps irredeemably this time.
He watched the helicopter go down, exploding as its rotors hit the target and tore themselves apart. Watched as the fireball engulfed the men he had sent with Yuri.
Movement. His finger tapped the edge of the screen, a vehicle moving away from the inferno.
A sedan. Away from the others, from the chaos of the stampeded herd.
“That’s him,” he whispered, old instincts taking over. “Can we get the license plate?”
The boy brushed his hair back out of his eyes, excitement written once more on his face. “I can try.”
6:38 A.M. Eastern Time
The White House
Washington, D.C.
“…live this morning in Los Angeles, where this story is still developing. I’m standing here in front of the estate of Russian billionaire Valentin Andropov. As you can see, the police are keeping us back, but we’re hearing that Mr. Andropov is dead, and unconfirmed reports suggest that he was not the only fatality in what appears to be a mass murder overnight in Beverly Hills.”
What
? Roger Hancock set down his spoon, resting it on the pink flesh of the grapefruit in the bowl before him as he reached for the remote.
Surely he hadn’t heard that right.
He turned the volume up all the way, fear gripping his very soul as the camera panned over the house, the mansion he knew so well. A mansion now lit with police floodlights.
The brunette onscreen continued her report, but she had nothing further to say, nothing that interested the President.
Valentin was dead? He could have rationalized it, could have convinced himself that it was nothing. Andropov had made enemies over the years, powerful enemies even within the
mafiya
.
But it rang hollow within his own heart. The man he had hired to make his problems go away…was now himself dead.
The door opened, and Agent Hawkins entered. “Ian Cahill to see you, Mr. President.”
Hancock looked down at his untouched plate, making a mighty effort to compose himself. To stop shaking. Despite the years of their alliance—their friendship, if one wanted to call it that, this was one problem he couldn’t trust Cahill to solve.
Not when he had gone this far.
7:59 A.M.
An apartment
Washington, D.C.
There were few things worse than a night without sleep. Kranemeyer wheeled himself over to the window, adjusting the shades to allow the light of the morning sun to come streaming into the apartment.
He’d never had such problems as a young man, he thought, spinning his wheelchair back around toward the apartment’s kitchen.
But he was no longer young. Things were no longer so simple. No longer so clear-cut. Black and white had faded to a gray the color of soot—and just as defiling.
He plucked a small, unmarked vial off the counter, holding it up to the light. It might as well have been filled with water, by the look of it, but it was nothing so harmless.
Carter had masked his entrance and exit from the labs of Langley’s Directorate of Science & Technology, or “Q Branch” as some of the local wags called it.
Covered his theft electronically, Kranemeyer thought, a sad smile on his face. The analyst was still in the dark concerning what he had actually helped accomplish, and it was safest that way. For both of them.
Coftey’s promise of air support only went so far. And he intended to push it to its breaking point.
He replaced the vial with a sigh and rolled back to the window, looking out upon the city.
A city which took men’s souls and fed them into the meatgrinder of others’ ambition. Democrat, Republican, none of that mattered. Perhaps it never had.
How far are you willing to go?
The senator’s question, still ringing in his ears. Kranemeyer glanced at the vial of poison sitting there in the kitchen, reflecting on his own answer, an answer he was as certain of now as when he had uttered it.