Authors: Stephen England
It was a lie, and he could see in the boy’s eyes that they both knew it. The assassin hesitated for a long moment, emotions warring within him, then he drew the boy into a fierce embrace.
Guided as if by a premonition, his hand slipped into the pocket of his assault vest, drawing forth a small password-protected thumb drive and pressing it into Viktor’s palm. “I’ll be back soon, Vitya.
Ne volnuysia
.”
Don’t worry
.
Another lie, but he would see this through to the end.
There were some things a man simply could not walk away from, the death of his brothers being one. That none of his men were related to him mattered not at all—the bonds of battle were far stronger than those of blood.
Korsakov turned away, motioning for Yuri and Misha to follow him. Spread out, they moved down the side of the road toward the abandoned oil field, flitting from cover to cover like wraiths in the dusk.
Fifty meters and the assassin paused, pulling back the charging bolt of the Steyr to chamber a round. The weapon felt cold in his hands, cold as the certainty of what was to come.
8:11 P.M. Eastern Time
The Church of the Holy Trinity
Washington, D.C.
“And that’s
all
you know?” Kranemeyer asked quietly, staring into the eyes of the deputy director. He ignored the singing with an effort, still struggling to process what he had just been told.
“
And in despair, I bowed my head. ‘There is no peace on earth’, I said
.” The children knew not the gravity of which they sang. Nothing of the evil that lurked around them.
Shapiro swallowed hard, nodding. “Haskel’s not in it alone, but he never trusted me.”
The DCS snorted. “I wonder why.”
“There’s someone up higher, I always knew there was. Haskel’s too cocky—has to have someone covering his back. Someone powerful. They ordered Lay’s murder. I didn’t want to be a part of it, you know that, don’t you?”
“Go,” Kranemeyer whispered, his voice devoid of mercy. Of pity. He had heard enough. He thought for a moment of asking
why
—then decided against it. It could be any one of a dozen things: threats, blackmail, money—to name but a few. Or perhaps most likely, a simple lust for power.
"
For hate is strong, and mocks the song of peace on earth, good-will to men!
"
He saw the plea in Shapiro’s eyes and his face hardened. “
Go
.”
“How do you know that I won’t run once I leave this building? That I won’t call the police?”
Kranemeyer nodded toward the white-robed boy in the front of the choir, his cherubic face smiling down upon the darkened sanctuary. “Because you know what will become of him if you do. Do you want him to live his life the son of a traitor? Do you want him to remember you that way?”
Indecision. He saw the father glance up toward his son, agony on his countenance. Then a nod. Shapiro rose, pulling his jacket close around his body as if to shut out the cold. “I’m sorry.”
There was no suitable response, and Kranemeyer made no attempt to offer one.
He remained in his seat, arm over the back of the pew, as Shapiro made his way to the aisle, hurrying toward the vestibule. And still the children sang. “
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: God is not dead, nor doth He sleep; The Wrong shall fail, The Right prevail, With peace on earth, good-will to men.
”
Wrong? Right?
There were times when he could scarce tell the difference. He listened as the strains of the final stanza died away, watched as the priest dismissed the children. Watched as a little boy scampered down from the platform, his eyes searching the darkness for a father that was no longer there.
A father that would never return again.
Rising from the pew, Kranemeyer walked forward, taking a candle from the tray and mounting it. Pulling his Bic from his pocket he touched fire to wick, watching as it blossomed into full flame, casting dark shadows across his face as it flickered.
He glanced up toward the crucifix, his voice rich with irony as he whispered, “Forgive me, Father—for I have sinned…”
8:24 P.M.
The Francis Scott Key Bridge
Washington, D.C.
How many times? How many times had he driven over this very bridge? Shapiro glanced from the sidewalk into the six lanes of traffic spanning the width of the bridge. Traffic unabated even at this hour of the night.
Mute witnesses to his impending death.
He shuddered, the wind tugging at the hem of his coat. Where had he gone wrong?
Wrong?
He had dismissed the very idea as irrelevant during his days in college. All that mattered was
der Wille zur Macht
, as Nietzsche put it. The will to power. Moral absolutes? Archaic rubbish from a bygone era.
God is not dead, nor doth He sleep
.
He forged on, out toward
the central arch, a solitary plodding figure in the glare of the oncoming lights. He thought with regret of the twins, a tear leaving its icy trail down his cheek.
No good-byes. Perhaps it was better that way—they deserved better than the man he had become.
He paused at the edge of the parapet, his body trembling uncontrollably, the wind cutting straight through his thin coat, chilling him to the bone.
Tears running down his face, Shapiro mounted the parapet, feeling a sudden attack of vertigo overcoming him as he stared down into the choppy, ice-cold waters of the Potomac, nearly a hundred feet below. He swayed, the fingers of his left hand digging into the concrete in desperation.
Suicide. It was an unpardonable sin, yet how could it be any more damning than all that he had already done?
The deputy director paused, torn by fear and indecision. He could see the traffic from where he had come, but no one noticed. Or no one cared. It could have been either.
His right hand came up, making the sign of the cross over his chest.
In the name of the Father…and of the Son…and of the Holy Ghost
.
Closing his eyes, he released his grip on the parapet, his dress shoes slipping from the ice-slick concrete, a scream of panic escaping his lips. Falling into the darkness below.
The abyss.
5:35 P.M. Pacific Time
The oilfield
California
He had given consideration to climbing one of the derricks to get a better view of the surrounding territory, but rejected that idea rather quickly.
Beyond height, a derrick offered none of the other necessities that a sniper required—most importantly, the ability to move readily after firing a single shot. It might have worked well in the movies…but not in real life.
Harry moved into position behind a deserted forklift, its yellow paint chipped and rusting. He and Sammy had traded weapons, leaving him with the SCAR.
He raised the weapon to his shoulder, adjusting his eye to the night-vision scope and using it to scan the surrounding terrain. The oilfield’s perimeter fence was down in any number of places—pushed down by vagrants in the years since the field’s abandonment.
Too many avenues of attack. And they had scarcely eighty rounds of ammunition among the three of them—everything else having been abandoned in the van the preceding night, rounds left to cook off as the vehicle went up in flames.
He swung the SCAR’s barrel in a slow one-hundred-eighty degree arc, scoping out the perimeter. Back and forth.
Just a few yards away from his position, the aging metal of a pumpjack groaned in the breeze—the giant “horse head” box gently nodding.
There
. Movement…or was it his imagination? He stopped, aiming the rifle toward the base of a derrick near the remains of the fence to the southwest.
Nothing immediately apparent. He took a deep breath to steady the gun, inhaling the grease he had smeared across his face and neck to darken his skin against the night.
A man’s head appeared cautiously, almost furtively, around the corner of the derrick.
Target sighted
. Harry reached up, toggling his mike once, then twice. Alerting Han.
A body followed the head, moving forward in a crouch. A weapon held at the ready.
Harry watched as the figure sprinted from his cover toward the next derrick. Waiting, his cross-hairs still trained on the spot from which the man had emerged.
A second head appeared, and it all became perfectly clear. Bound and overwatch. One man providing cover as the other one advanced.
And there could be more. Watch and wait.
Arrogance
. That summed up the expression, the look on Roger Hancock’s face in the pictures taken by Andropov’s team. The man who had ordered her father’s murder.
All of this, only to find that their perpetrator was beyond reach. The realization was bitter.
Carol clicked to advance to the next picture, glancing toward the door that led into the outer office of the trailer. The Kahr lay at her fingertips.
Wait for us
, he had said.
Don’t come out until I come for you
.
Neither one of them had dared to speak of the other possibility. That he might never come.
It was just the two of them. The foremost man had an earpiece, but there was no indication that either of them were using comms.
Time to end this. The cross-hairs centered on the second man’s chest just as he began to move. The big rifle recoiled into Harry’s shoulder as he fired, the report echoing across the oilfield.
He fired three shots, pulling the trigger as fast as he could reacquire his sight picture. The man reeled backward, his broken body crumpling into the short grass.
And then the night erupted in fire, incoming rounds hammering the forklift. From the wrong direction.
He’d been played.
5:41 P.M.
It was…everything. Viktor shook his head, tracing his fingers over the numbers displayed on-screen. The encryption on the thumb drive had been somewhat less than formidable.
He would have to talk to Korsakov about that when he returned, the boy thought absently.
The series of figures added up to 2.3 million dollars in US currency, deposited in over ten separate offshore accounts. It didn’t represent even half the buying power that it would have three years before…but it was still an overwhelming fortune.
Why?
The boy thought, staring at the screen of his laptop. Why had Korsakov given him this?
It was access to everything in the assassin’s accounts—all of it. He could withdraw at will, have the money wired anywhere in the world. All by himself, without Korsakov.
Without Korsakov
. A cold fear began to gnaw at the boy’s heart, his hands trembling. And he knew. His friend wasn’t coming back. His breath began to come shallow and fast, the all-too familiar onset of a panic attack.
Gunshots off to the north penetrated the haze surrounding him, and he fought against the urge to hide. With trembling fingers, he jerked the Glock from its holster at his waist, feeling its reassuring bulk in his hand.
More gunfire. He forced his breathing to slow, blinking back tears. All the money in the world meant nothing—not without a friend. Not without the man who had saved his life.
Viktor reached for the door, stumbling out into the darkness of the night. He had to reach him.
8:44 P.M. Eastern Time
Georgetown, Washington D.C.
Christmas lights, flashing through the tinted windows of the SUV. Even with the alert levels raised and the threat of another terror attack hanging over the East Coast, people had carried on with their holiday decorations.
Years before, Kranemeyer would have attributed it to the American spirit, defiant in the face of intimidation.
Now it struck him more as the ambivalent apathy of those still asleep.
Someone inside the government is working with the terrorists, and they’re trying to make it look like Nichols is behind it
.
Haskel. It made sense now, Kranemeyer thought, remembering Carter’s words. He should have seen it, even then.
They were given access
.
Was this the secret that had so nearly cost Lay his life? If so, why? What was Haskel’s angle…what did he stand to gain?
Questions without answers. The throwaway phone in Kranemeyer’s breast pocket buzzed with an incoming text and he pulled it out with a gloved hand, reading the message off the screen. Thomas.
Approx forty minutes out from last known location. Will apprise when we have the package
.