Jet (10 page)

“Hey!” he yelled, too surprised for a critical moment to react with anything but an outraged cry. By the time he was moving toward her it was too late, and Jet had popped the clutch and was driving off, trailing exhaust and poorly combusted fuel.

The rearview mirror was cracked, as was the windshield, and she cursed her luck at having commandeered the most decrepit car in Pristina. The engine felt like it was only firing on two of its four cylinders, and her worst expectations were confirmed when she floored the accelerator and felt nothing for her effort but increased vibration and a howl from the hood like a wounded mud cow.

Jet was clearing the airport grounds when she spotted the first police lights behind her. She needed to get off the main road immediately or she’d be dead meat, thanks to French automotive engineering. She turned onto a single-lane frontage road and slammed her palm against the horn as an overloaded lorry bore down on her in a slow-motion game of chicken, only to be rewarded by an anemic quack that would have shamed a sick duck. Jet twisted the wheel at the last possible second and gritted her teeth as the side of the big truck sheared away her side mirror and most of the paint on the driver’s side in a shower of sparks. The truck tore off the old car’s rear bumper as a parting gesture, and then she was beyond it, shaken but unharmed.

The steering wheel began wobbling when she hit fifty miles per hour and the chassis felt like it was going to shake itself apart as she urged the vehicle to higher speed. The police cars continued straight past the frontage road onto which she’d turned, having missed her evasive maneuver, and she felt a moment of hope as she rounded a bend – which quickly dissolved when she had to stand on the brakes in order to avoid slamming into a closed iron gate. An executive jet with its landing gear down roared overhead and settled on the runway with smoking tires, covering the sound of the Peugeot engine’s stutter as she evaluated her next move. Her eyes tracked beyond the gate to the runway, and then she jammed the gear lever into reverse and spun the tires as she backed up and executed a three-point turn.

There was only one direction she could go, and her options were now limited to abandoning the ruined car and going it on foot or retracing her route in the hope that the police were looking for her further along the main road, not behind them. Steam began shooting from the front wheel well and beneath the hood, making her choice for her, and she pulled to the side of the road just as the engine shuddered and died.

Jet forced the door open and covered the ground between the car and a row of low utility buildings in a flash, but not before she saw three police cruisers turn off the main thoroughfare and head in her direction. She ducked behind one of the structures and took in her surroundings, her choices diminishing with each beat of her heart. Her best bet was to run across the grassy field while the buildings blocked the line of sight of the police vehicles and to try to jump the fence that ringed the airport – which would put her right back where she started, but hopefully far enough from the pursuit that the cops wouldn’t think to look for her there. It was a risky strategy, but the only one she saw that might work; so she squared her shoulders and then streaked through the tall grass, counting the seconds in her head as she ran.

The chain-link perimeter fence was farther than she’d thought, and the whoop of a siren from the road told her that she’d been spotted. When she hit the barrier, she scrambled up and over it, praying that the police carried shotguns in their squad cars rather than assault rifles that could easily and accurately cover the distance.

Her shirt caught on a loop of barbed wire at the top and she swore as it ripped the fabric and her skin, and then she was on the runway side of the fence, continuing her race against her pursuers. She reached the first large hangars and slowed, trying to remember the airport layout. She knew there was the old terminal on this end, as well as the central new one she’d just escaped from, and a hotel beyond it, but only a few roads leading off the grounds. Those would be closed with roadblocks, she was sure, if they weren’t already – which left her with the long-shot proposition of making her way around the airport and across miles of flat, plowed fields without being seen.

A blue and white passenger bus rolled by on the tarmac. Seized by an impulse, she sprinted after it and leapt onto its rear bumper, her fingers barely gripping the metal rim of the rear engine hatch for support. The bus rumbled toward the new terminal, the driver apparently unaware of the stowaway, and she dropped to the pavement as it slowed to make a turn toward the mirrored glass building.

“Hey. What are you doing out here?” a worker screamed at her over the sound of jet turbines whining at the gates. She waved at the ground crewman who’d called out to her and jogged along the building’s base, ignoring him. From what she knew of the motivation level of most of the locals, it would be days before he bothered doing much besides shrugging and returning to shirking.

She reached the corner of the building and calculated the distance over open ground she’d need to cover to get to the far end of the runway and then cut across. The control tower rose into the sky nearby, and from where she stood, she didn’t think anyone could see her from it.

That would be critical if she was to make it across the runways without being detected – which appeared to be her only viable choice. From this angle, the view from the road was blocked by the terminal, and the police were now on the road, hopefully leaving nobody watching the tarmac.

Her decision made, she bolted from the cover of the structure and ran toward the runway. She was nearly to the first strip when the sound of an approaching jet greeted her and an Airbus A320 touched down only meters from her position. Her hands flew to her ears as the deafening roar of the jets reversing assailed her, and then she was on the high-density concrete, crossing before any more arrivals threatened to flatten her.

She made it across the first runway, and her feet pounded the hard dirt between it and the second runway, the grass matted flat. She leapt over a storm drain and landed on the second strip, running as hard as she could, now committed to her course. Completely exposed on the runway, there was now no turning back, nowhere to hide, and she’d soon know whether her gambit had been successful.

Jet paused at the far fence, breathing heavily from the marathon, and eyed the field beyond the chain-link fence. She could see farmhouses in the distance, easily several long kilometers away, with nothing between them and the airport but brown earth. Her only hope was that she’d be traversing an area where nobody would think to look, the absence of roads in that direction her tenuous advantage.

Resigned to a hard slog, she wrapped her fingers around the wire and pulled herself up, her feet fighting for toeholds as she mounted the fence. This time she successfully avoided the worst of the barbed wire and dropped to the spongy ground on the other side without incident.

Jet was halfway across the field, loping with measured strides, when she heard the heavy thumping of rotor blades from behind her. She dared a look over her shoulder and her heart sank at the sight of a police helicopter closing on her position, the downdraft throwing up a cloud of dust. There was still a good kilometer of distance to cover, and she could see that she’d never make it. When a metallic voice boomed from above her, she already had her hands in the air.

“Freeze or we’ll shoot.”

Jet obeyed and waited as the helicopter landed twenty meters away. The cabin door opened and a man in civilian clothes, followed by two uniformed police officers with their guns drawn, trotted over. When the civilian was only footsteps away from her, he stopped, a small smile on his face, and nodded.

“A fair attempt, but one doomed to failure,” Rudolf said in Russian, and then switched to accented English. “Now that the adult supervision is here, the fun and games are over.”

She gave no indication she’d understood, and the Russian didn’t seem to care. He turned to the officers and barked an order, and they moved toward her, one with cuffs in hand, the other stopping just out of reach, his pistol trained on her head.

Langley, Virginia

The hallways of the CIA headquarters were quiet before working hours officially began, the night shift preparing to leave as a cleaning crew with the highest security clearance in the country mopped the polished marble floor outside a string of conference rooms. Inside the only lit one, six men sat around an oval table, the smell of rich coffee thick in the air and a box of doughnuts sitting in the center of the table, untouched.

The oldest of the men, clad in an immaculate Brooks Brothers suit, his dark hair still thick but graying at the temples, sat back in his chair, one foot absently swinging a Ferragamo loafer as he addressed the group. He pointed to a map of the Ukraine projected onto a screen on the wall beside him.

“Our cruise-ship gambit failed to stoke the outrage we were hoping for, so that was a failure,” he said, his voice evenly modulated. “While it mustered some international outcry, I think we can agree that it was too little, too late to have any meaningful impact.” He stared hard at a balding man with horn-rimmed glasses to his left. “Jerald? You have an update on our backup plan?”

Jerald, the top of his head shiny from a veneer of sweat, nodded briskly. “Yes, Larry. As you know, the international press has broken the story about U.S. involvement in paying for the mercenaries who were instrumental in overthrowing the Ukrainian government.”

A whippet-thin man across from Jerald frowned and tossed his pen onto the table. “That’s meaningless. We’ve ensured that the story never got picked up here. So the average American never heard about it.”

“It might be unimportant domestically, but it’s been disastrous for us in the international arena. We’ve lost considerable support in Europe due to the sanctions we jammed down their throat – those are killing France and Germany, who are taking the brunt of the fallout. Now, with it looking like we orchestrated a coup to plug in our puppets so we can park nukes on Russia’s border, our requests for cooperation from our allies are increasingly being stonewalled.” He paused. “The phone call between State and the ambassador, discussing who to support in the new Ukrainian administration, didn’t do us any favors. Nor does having half the cabinet represent obviously American interests – I mean, Christ, Biden’s son appointed to the board of one of the largest natural gas companies in the country, no less – it’s hard to argue we weren’t behind it when the new gang has our flag all over it.”

The man waved away the comment. “That wasn’t our call, and you know it. But your point is taken. We’re battling a headwind. That’s our job.”

“The Syria thing isn’t helping. Millions of refugees pouring into Europe, and we’re being blamed.”

Jerald cleared his throat. “No plan goes perfectly. We all know that, and we knew the risks going in. We’re not here to point fingers, we’re here to decide what to do next.” Jerald looked around the room. “And we just got a piece of bad news. The Ukrainian team we’ve been sponsoring went dark almost a week ago.”

“The ones in Russia?”

“Correct. We got word that they’ve been charged with terrorism. Damn fools got caught trying to buy a truck full of missiles.”

Larry shook his head. “So they’re off the board.” He took a long sip of coffee and stared at the doughnut box like it was a coiled snake.

“Looks that way.”

“So much for our idea about the airliner.”

“I wouldn’t give up on it quite so fast,” Jerald said. “We’re working on a contingency plan.”

“Now would be the time to share,” Larry said as he reached for the box.

Jerald nodded and told the group what he had put into motion. When he was finished, Larry managed a smile – a rarity for him, especially when a situation was running against them – and took another bite of the glazed doughnut he’d selected. “That could work. God knows there are enough missiles floating around there.”

“That’s why I thought of it.”

Larry finished the pastry and wiped his hands on a paper napkin before standing. “All right. I’ve got a meeting this morning with POTUS, to brief him on the latest developments. I’ll give him the sanitized version where everything’s going perfectly.”

The men chuckled and exchanged knowing glances. “Probably best not to bore him with minutiae.”

Larry reached for his coffee cup and nodded. “No. He’s got bigger fish to fry.”

The meeting broke up, and Larry made his way to his office. As the head of the Russian desk, he was also in charge of the surrounding nations and worked with the Department of Defense intelligence service to further their aims. The Ukrainian mess had been harebrained from the start, and he’d said as much, but nobody had wanted to hear it. How anyone with knowledge of the region could believe that Russia would allow nukes there was beyond him, much less following a coup that was right out of the CIA playbook from South and Central America and the Middle East, of late.

A career man who’d been recruited into the agency out of university, Larry had been with the CIA for twenty-nine years and had survived some dark periods. But the latest series of misadventures, the sabre-rattling that ignored that the country was dead broke and twenty trillion in debt to the same nations it was threatening, worried him. There were very practical concerns with an apparatus that had to borrow a trillion a year to pay its bills and had lenders that were now uninterested in buying any more of its debt – and, in fact, were actively selling it. One of the biggest of which was paying the salaries of its military in the event of any significant conflict.

Larry’s secretary wasn’t in yet, and he checked the wall clock as he made his way past her desk into his office. He routinely called his meetings hours before anyone would be on duty, to have quiet time to think. Once phones started ringing and the overnight reports began appearing, he was in reaction mode, and that was of no use in cases like Ukraine.