So was he here, or not? Was he waiting for me to get up so he could take aim?
I listened for footsteps, for the scuff of shoes on dirt or gravel.
Nothing.
After two minutes, the spotlights went off and everything was black.
No shot was fired. No crack of twigs. Just the ambient noise of the forest: the rustle of leaves in the wind, the distant chirruping of a nocturnal bird, the skittering of a ground squirrel or a chipmunk.
The vent pipe was roughly a hundred feet from me. Would she hear me if I spoke into it?
Then I realized what a mistake that would be. If Zhukov was hiding in the house, monitoring Alexa over a remote connection, then whatever she heard he’d hear too.
Of course, if he was in the house, it was only a matter of time before he saw me.
So I had to take him out first.
Holster the weapon? Or keep it handy? I needed both hands. Jamming it into the holster, I rolled and spun into a crouch. Sprang to my feet.
And started toward the house.
97.
But I didn’t run.
I didn’t want to trip another wire. As I walked, I looked around for fence posts, stakes, anything a wire might be strung around.
Maybe I was walking right into a trap. Maybe he was waiting for me in the dark with a high-powered rifle.
Around to the side, past a set of wooden bulkhead doors, the wooden frame rotting, the paint blistering and peeling. No padlock.
Enter the basement? No. Maybe it wasn’t a basement but a root cellar: dirt floor, accessible only from the outside, no internal door to the upstairs.
On this side of the house was a door, behind a screen with a large hole in it. But I kept going around to the front. Past an oval of bare earth where cars probably parked and turned around. No vehicles there, though. None in the front of the house either.
He couldn’t be inside, or I’d be dead by now.
But what if Zhukov had simply abandoned the farmhouse? After all, he knew from Navrozov’s cutout that he was being actively hunted. Why stay here? Leave his victim in the ground, let her die.
A path had been worn across a scrubby lawn to the front door, though how recently it was impossible to say. I detected no movement in any of the windows, so I pulled open the screen door and tried the front door.
It came right open.
Someone had been here very recently.
98.
The smell of food that had been cooked not long ago: maybe sausage or eggs, something fried in grease.
A small entryway, low ceilings, a musty odor under the cooking grease. Cigarettes too, though fainter here, as if he smoked in another part of the house. I moved stealthily, the SIG in a two-handed grip, pivoted abruptly to my left, weapon pointed, ready to fire. Then to my right.
Nothing. The floorboards creaked.
Now I faced a choice. There were three ways to go. A doorway on my right led to a small front room. On my left was a steep staircase, the wooden treads worn and bowed. Straight ahead was another doorway, which I guessed led to a kitchen and the back of the house.
The stairwell was a potential hiding place. I listened closely, heard nothing.
I pivoted again, tracing an arc right to left. Then I lunged toward the dark stairwell.
I said, “Freeze.”
No response.
And then I heard a voice.
Not from upstairs, though. From the back of the house. A woman’s voice, muffled, indistinct, its cadence irregular, the tone rising and falling.
A TV had been left on.
I stepped through the threshold, searching the dim corners, my body a coiled spring. My finger caressed the trigger. I scanned the room, slicing with the pistol left to right, then toward the corners.
The kitchen was windowless, carved out of an interior space, an afterthought. The floor was dark red linoleum, a swirly white pattern running through it, the tiles chipped and cracked. An old white GE stove, vintage 1940 or so. A Formica counter edged with a metal band. A white porcelain sink with two separate spouts, one for hot water and one for cold. It was stacked high with plates and bowls that were crusted with food. An empty box of Jimmy Dean breakfast sausages lay discarded in the middle of a tin-topped kitchen table.
I heard the woman’s voice again, much clearer now, coming from the next room. From the back of the house.
Not from a TV.
The voice was Alexa’s.
99.
Amped with adrenaline, I burst into the adjoining room, gun extended.
“-Bastard!” she was saying. “You goddamned bastard!”
Then her tone changed abruptly, her voice wheedling, high-pitched. “Please, oh God, please let me out of here, please oh God please oh God what do you goddamn want? I can’t stand it I can’t stand it please oh God.”
And I saw that Alexa wasn’t in here.
Her voice was coming from computer speakers. A black Dell computer on a long wooden workbench that ran the length of one wall. In the monitor I saw that same strange close-up of Alexa’s face, with a greenish cast, that I’d seen in the streaming video.
But she looked so bad I almost didn’t recognize her. Her face was gaunt, her eyes swollen to slits, deep purple hollows beneath them. She was speaking out of one side of her mouth, as if she’d had a stroke. Her face shone with sweat. Her eyes were wild, unfocused.
In front of the monitor was a keyboard. To the left of it was a small, cheap-looking microphone on a little plastic tripod. Like something you’d find in a discount bin at RadioShack.
For an instant Alexa seemed to be looking at me, but then her eyes meandered somewhere else. She fell silent, then started whimpering, all her words rushing together. I could make out only “please” and “God” and “out of here.”
I spoke into the microphone: “Alexa?”
But she went on, uninterrupted. On the stem of the microphone was a little black on/off switch. I slid it down to ON. Said, “Alexa?” again. This time she stopped. Her mouth came open. She began to sob.
“Alexa?” I said. “It’s Nick.”
“Who-who is this?”
“It’s Nick Heller. You’re going to be okay. I’m at the house. Right nearby. Listen, Alexa, help is coming, but I need you to stay quiet and keep calm, all right? Can you do that for me? Just for a little while. You’re going to be okay. I promise.”
For a second I thought I saw a flash of light in the backyard coming through the window.
“Nick? Where are you? Oh my God, where are you?”
The light again. A car’s headlights. I heard the rumble of a car’s engine, then a door slamming.
Zhukov was here. It could be no one else.
But I couldn’t see him. He’d parked on the side of the house that had no windows.
“Nick, answer me! Get me out of here please oh God get me out of here, Nick!” She started screaming.
“You’re going to be okay, Alexa. You’re going to be okay.”
Finally she seemed be listening. “Don’t leave me here,” she moaned.
“He’s back,” I whispered. “Can you hear me?”
She stared up, her lips parted, and as she nodded she began sobbing again.
“Everything will be fine,” I said. “Really. As long as you don’t say a word. Okay? Not a word.”
I gripped the SIG in both hands.
But what if it wasn’t Zhukov who’d just arrived? What if it was the police? It was far too soon for the FBI’s SWAT team. They were driving, since getting a helicopter there and loading it and all that, would take even more time, and would also deprive them of the heavy armaments.
Zhukov, if it was him, would enter the house through the front door, as I had. The worn path told me that. Yet he wouldn’t expect anyone to be here. That would give me a temporary advantage. If I positioned myself correctly I might be able to get a jump on him.
Heart thudding now. Time had slowed. I went into that strange calm place I so often did when faced with grave danger: senses heightened, reactions quickened.