Authors: Allan Leverone
“I can’t,” she
answered simply. “Not until I know whether Winston Andrews has been
compromised. If I’m right about him, I can’t trust
him
with this
information, and if that’s the case, I have no idea who above him in the chain
of command
I
can
trust. If he’s been compromised, anyone could be
compromised. If I’m wrong, and the night passes quietly, no Russians show up to
kill us and gain possession of this”—she held up the letter—“then first thing
tomorrow, I’ll tell Winston everything.”
Shane whistled
quietly. “Holy shit,” he said. “So what do we do now?”
“Now we wait. Try
to get some sleep and see if we get any visitors in the night.” Tracie stood
slowly from the bed, wincing as she placed her weight on her injured leg.
Shane said, “I
don’t think there’s any way I can sleep right now, not after this. If you’re
pretty sure we have some time, why don’t we clean and re-bandage that leg wound
of yours? If those guys show up like you think they might—”
“—they will,” she
said dejectedly.
“Okay, well, if
they do, you already said we’re going to have to move fast. Right now you look
like you’re eighty years old.”
“Thanks for the
sweet-talk.”
Shane laughed,
relieved the black mood permeating the room had been lifted, even if only
slightly. “Okay, let me rephrase that. You
look
fantastic, but you’re
moving
like you’re eighty years old.”
“Hmph,” she said.
“I’ll take what I can get, I suppose. But there’s one problem—we don’t have any
bandages.”
“You underestimate
me,” he answered. “I found a twenty-four-hour drugstore as well as a
home-improvement place while I was out. Stuff stays open late around here. In
Bangor everything would have been locked up tight by now. Anyway, I picked up
some Ace Bandages and some first aid cream, in addition to the duct tape you
wanted. Now, get out of those pants and let me check out—uh, I mean, fix—those
legs of yours.”
Tracie smiled and
limped to the bathroom while Shane reached into the paper bag, removing the
first-aid supplies. A moment later the bathroom door creaked open and she
returned, carrying her jeans. A motel towel that at one time had been white and
was now the color of dirty dishwater was wrapped around her slim waist.
She eased onto the
bed, primly covering herself, looking more like a shy young girl than the
kick-ass CIA spook Shane now knew her to be. He wanted to crack a joke but
decided she seemed uncomfortable enough without him making things worse, so he
bit his tongue and began unwrapping the bandage covering her wound. Blood had
seeped into the gauzy material before clotting, more or less, and the bandage
felt stiff, stuck to the wound.
He stepped into
the bathroom and returned a moment later with a washcloth soaked in warm soapy
water. He dampened the soiled bandage, working carefully to remove it. Then he
cleaned around the puncture wound in much the same way he had done last night,
dabbing and probing, doing his best to ignore the lacy pink panties he could
see under the insufficient cover of the towel. Tracie squeezed her eyes shut,
teeth gritted against the pain, muscles tensed.
There was no sign
of infection, and when he had cleaned the injury to his satisfaction, Shane
patted the area dry with a second hand towel. Then he began wrapping the fresh
Ace Bandage around her thigh, trying to make it tight enough to provide support
and prevent the wound from bleeding again, but loose enough for some semblance
of comfort.
He concentrated on
his work, and when he finished, he looked up to find Tracie’s eyes open,
unblinking, staring into his. She eased up off the cheap headboard bolted to
the wall and leaned forward, moving slowly, deliberately, and then they were
kissing, and Shane thought about those pink panties and reached down and pulled
off her towel, throwing it to the floor while she fumbled with his belt buckle
and the snap on his jeans, and then they were together.
32
June 1, 1987
3:30 a.m.
New Haven, Connecticut
Tracie sat perched on a rickety
chair, watching the mostly-empty parking lot through a slit in the drapes while
Shane dozed. He had fallen asleep despite his protestations he wouldn’t be able
to, and now he lay sprawled across the bed, covers tangled around his waist,
snoring lightly.
Tracie wondered if
she should feel guilty for sleeping with him in the middle of this insanity.
After all, they had been thrown together by chance, and when this was all
over—assuming they survived; assuming the
president
survived—Shane would
go back to his air traffic control job in Maine and she would return to Langley
for another assignment. She had no idea where that assignment might take her,
but felt pretty certain it would not be Bangor, Maine.
So, yes, she
thought, she probably should feel guilty. But she didn’t. Her life for the last
seven years had consisted of training, work, and more work, most of it
clandestine and dangerous, and over the course of those seven years, she could
count her sexual relationships on the fingers of one hand. And she wouldn’t
need most of her fingers.
Then along came
what at first glance appeared to be a simple job, a piece of cake once she had
escaped East Germany. All she needed to do was babysit an envelope, deliver it
to Washington, and then move on to her next assignment. Somewhere along the
line, though, things had become immeasurably more complicated, and in the
middle of everything, here was this solid, earnest, well-meaning guy who was
gorgeous to look at, self-deprecatingly modest, and who had, oh by the way,
crawled into a burning airplane to save her life.
The attraction she
felt to Shane Rowley was immediate and consuming, and she simply hadn’t been
able to stop herself from coming on to him when he finished bandaging her leg.
She hadn’t planned what happened between them, not exactly, but her injury was
not exactly something she couldn’t have dealt with on her own, either. She had
handled much more severe wounds by herself, out of necessity, and could easily
have waved Shane off when he insisted on cleaning and bandaging her leg.
So maybe what
happened hadn’t quite been spontaneous. Maybe somewhere deep in her
subconscious, Tracie
had
intended to seduce him all along, but either
way he didn’t seem to mind. She smiled, thinking about the frenzied lovemaking
of their initial encounter, and then a slower, more sensual second round just a
few minutes later.
She glanced across
the room at Shane’s sleeping form, and when she looked back out at the parking
lot, the smile froze on her face before turning into a frown of concentration.
A late-model Chevrolet Impala was creeping past the motel office, lights off.
From this distance and in the poor lighting, she couldn’t make out the color,
but the vehicle looked black or dark blue, or maybe green. It wasn’t the car
the Russians had used earlier—she had scanned all of the cars in the Bangor
Tower lot by force of habit even as she had been rescuing Shane, and this
Impala had not been among them—but that didn’t mean anything. They would
undoubtedly have changed cars by now, just as Tracie and Shane had.
She glanced at her
watch. It was 3:45 a.m.
The Impala eased
into a parking space several slots away from their Granada. Its driver killed
the engine. For several long minutes nothing happened. The car’s occupants were
being cautious, eyeing the surrounding environment, alert for any movement or
anything out of the ordinary.
Tracie knew they
couldn’t see her in the darkened room. She waited, tense, her weapon held in
her right hand, her body ready to move.
Finally, both
front doors on the Impala opened at the same time and two men stepped out. The
car’s interior lighting had been disabled. The doors they left ajar. The men
were dressed entirely in dark clothing, identical watch caps covering their heads,
grease paint tamping down any sheen from their white faces.
Tracie’s heart
dropped, and the sadness she had felt earlier returned with a vengeance. Winston
Andrews, her mentor and father figure, had betrayed her.
She forced herself
to push her feelings aside. She needed to focus. She could come back and mourn
her lost relationship with the traitor Winston Andrews later. If she survived.
The two men
outside moved slowly, scanning the parking lot while moving steadily toward the
dummy motel room with the Granada parked nose-in toward the door. Tracie backed
silently away from the window and bent over the bed. She gently shook the
slumbering Shane. “It’s going down,” she whispered. “Stay here and keep quiet.
If things go bad, get to the car and get the hell out of here. Find a police
station and turn yourself in.”
He rubbed the
sleep out of his eyes and nodded once. Tracie crossed the tiny room in a few
steps and slipped into the bathroom. Built into the rear wall was a small
window just large enough for Tracie to wriggle through. She had cut the screen
away earlier and the window stood open for quick access, the cool early-June
night air filling the room with the tang of ocean salt. Tracie stepped onto the
closed toilet cover, braced an arm on either side of the window frame, and
boosted herself through.
She dropped to the
ground noiselessly, the long wooden motel building shielding her from sight of
the parking lot. Three steps and she had arrived at the back end of the structure.
Less than thirty seconds had elapsed since she had moved away from the picture
window. She peeked around the corner. Sixty feet away, shrouded in shadow, the
two Russians had arrived at the front of the dummy motel room. One of the men
was bent over the doorknob working on the lock, while the other man stood
facing outward, keeping watch.
The lock was cheap
and Tracie knew if the Russian had any experience at lock-picking—and there was
no doubt he did—the two men would be into the room in a matter of seconds. She
had to hurry.
A string of
ornamental shrubs, brownish-yellow and dying, lined the rear of the parking
lot, forming a barrier between the motel property and the trash-strewn alley
behind it. Tracie ducked down below the tops of the shrubs and raced behind
them, using them for cover, limping only slightly. She disappeared into the
darkness at the rear of the dummy room, then made her way back along the side
until she reached the corner. She bent down, hands on her knees, and worked to quiet
her breathing.
A couple of
seconds later, she heard a muffled grunt of satisfaction and eased her head
around the corner just in time to see the lock-picker begin easing the door
open. He worked slowly, clearly concerned a squeaky hinge might awaken the
occupants.
She waited
patiently, just out of sight, as the two men stood in the doorway. The first
man faced into the room, unmoving, door partly open, and she became concerned
she had not done a good enough job of disguising the blankets on the bed to
look like sleeping people. Then she realized the Russian was letting his eyes
adjust to the darkness in the room before proceeding. It made sense. It was
what she would have done.
At last the first
man disappeared inside, while the second man maintained his position at the
door, facing outward with his back to the room. He held his silenced weapon
against the side of his leg. The gun would be invisible should a car happen to
drive into the lot, but Tracie could see it clearly, its black matte finish
muted by the dirty light.
Within seconds,
the assassin inside the room would discover they had been duped. She had to
make her move before that happened or she would lose the advantage of surprise.
Still she waited. She would get an opportunity soon. The Russian hit team was
being sloppy, careless because their intel had come directly from their
high-ranking CIA connection. They were confident their targets would not
suspect a thing, that the doomed man and woman would feel safe and secure
inside their anonymous New Haven motel room.
Instead of
maintaining an active scan, the Russian at the door stared impassively into
space, bored, occasionally glancing left and then right. The third time he
looked toward the motel office, Tracie acted.
She broke from the
cover of the motel building, moving silently but quickly. Before the guard
could react, Tracie grabbed his gun with one hand. She used her other to place
her own gun against his head, nestling the barrel in the soft tissue between
the skull and the jawbone. She pushed hard. “Don’t move,” she said softly.
The man didn’t
move.
Tracie ripped the
Russian’s weapon out of his hand. He would have a backup, probably in an ankle
holster, but she didn’t have time to worry about that. “Move into the room as
quietly as you can,” she whispered.
The man pivoted
slowly and eased into the room, Tracie right on his heels. The first Russian
had arrived at the bed and stood next to it, his back to the doorway. The
lookout cleared his throat and the first Russian froze for just a second and
then whirled, sensing a problem.
He wasn’t quick
enough. Tracie trained the lookout’s gun on the assassin’s chest, her hand
unwavering, her Beretta still pressed against the first man’s head.
“Drop your
weapon,” she said quietly. “Do it now or you die, and so does your friend. I
won’t say it again.”
For a long moment
nothing happened, as if the Russian was calculating his odds of survival should
he try to shoot his way out of the room. Tracie let him do it. He would
inevitably come to the same conclusion she had—that he was out of options.
A moment later,
the gun dropped with a muffled thud to the thinly carpeted floor. “Now kick it
over to me,” she said, and he did, undisguised malice in his hooded eyes. The
gun skidded to a stop a couple of feet to her left. For now she ignored it. She
didn’t have a free hand to hold the third gun, and it was far enough away from
either of her captives that they would not be able to make a play for it
without catching a bullet in the head.