Altmann smiled, standing there with her arms folded across her chest. “You’re my partner. If you can’t keep up, just say the word.”
“You know, this could look like a postcard.”
Harry glanced up from the laptop’s screen, from the Korsakov dossier he’d been poring over. Carol was standing beside the kitchen window, staring out at the falling snow.
“Stay away from the windows,” he said, watching her out of the corner of his eye. Small as they were, hardened as they might be — there was no sense in not taking precautions.
There was no response, and for a moment he wondered if she had even heard his words. She took another long sip of her coffee. “A Christmas postcard.”
He rose from his chair and crossed the kitchen to stand behind her. She was right. It did look a lot like a postcard — wet, heavy flakes falling straight down out of a gray sky, coating the mountainside in a heavy blanket. Weighing down the evergreens. “As well it should,” he said, placing a hand on her waist, “with Christmas only ten days away. It is a beautiful sight.”
“It’s hard to think of Christmas, with him gone.” She looked up into his eyes. “I did love him, Harry. I truly did, despite all the years apart.”
She didn’t pull away from his hand. “He knew that,” Harry whispered, his lips only inches away from her ear. He took a deep breath, trying to ignore the emotions roiling within his heart. This wasn’t safe, caring never was. He had to focus on the mission. Say what needed to be said — what she needed to hear. “And he loved you more than life itself.”
Minutes passed before she spoke again, a long, ragged sigh escaping her. “When I was three, he came home for Christmas. Home from where, I don’t know. All I know is he brought me a matryoshka.”
A genuine smile touched his lips. “A wooden nesting doll.”
“Yes,” she replied, watching the steam rise up from the mug of coffee in her hands. “Dolls within dolls, each one smaller than the next. It was the last Christmas present he gave me as a child. The next year, he was just gone.”
There was nothing to say, so Harry didn’t say anything. Sometimes silence was the only effective tactic.
Tactic. He could have cursed himself for thinking of it that way.
“Half a dozen times I nearly threw it away,” Carol continued. “I hated him so much for leaving us. But I could never quite bring myself to it. It was only as I grew older that I realized my father was a lot like the matryoshka. Layers within layers, hardness concealing the man beneath. A man I could forgive — a man I could love.”
Her voice caught and she stopped talking abruptly. Harry just stood there, wanting to say something, but the words felt empty on his lips. It was the price of having spent a lifetime dealing in manipulation and deceit. Soon, you didn’t know how to handle a relationship without manipulation — and you couldn’t care for anyone you were playing.
There was nothing he could say to her that he hadn’t said a thousand times before, working an angle. Nothing.
He stepped back, suddenly aware of her warmth, of his hand on her waist, of their closeness.
“I’m getting worried about Sammy,” he announced, changing the subject as he moved to the window — ignoring his own advice. “He should have been back by now.”
“He is back,” a cold voice announced from the stairs to the bunker. Startled, Harry and Carol turned almost as one.
Samuel Han stood there across the kitchen from them, still dressed in his parka, his snow-encrusted boots dripping onto the wooden floor. His Sig-Sauer was drawn, held loosely to his side. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
On a normal December day, Dulles would have been crowded with holiday travelers. The sight of the lone Gulfstream on the tarmac, surrounded by blacked-out Suburbans, was a reminder that this day was anything but normal.
Following the bombing at Langley, National Terrorism Advisory alerts had gone out across the country, and all civilian air traffic into the District of Columbia had been diverted.
Unfortunately, Vic thought as he pushed open the door of his SUV, the same could not be said for ground traffic. Even with their official status, the trip from Alexandria to Dulles had taken over an hour. With suspects still on the loose, the government had decided to minimize the panic by restricting media access. It was having the opposite effect.
A drug deal gone bad ten blocks from the Capitol earlier in the morning had resulted in three DOAs — and brushfire rumors that it was another terrorist attack.
Klaus Jicha was standing near the stairs of the Gulfstream as Vic and Marika approached.
“Everyone ready?” Jicha asked, looking pointedly at his watch. The HRT leader was a huge man, towering above Vic. A knit cap was pulled down low over his ears to the back of his collar, obscuring what there was of a short, very thick neck. Overall, it gave him the appearance of an immense bulldog.
Altmann nodded, extending a hand. “I’m Agent Altmann, the Special Agent in Charge. We’ll be ready as soon as your men can load up.”
“You’ve had my men sitting on their thumbs for the last forty-five minutes, S-A-C.” Jicha ignored the proffered hand.
“Unexpectedly heavy traffic, Agent Jicha,” she retorted, not backing down an inch. “We’re coordinating with local LEOs to clear the route on the way back out. It’s still going to be a long ride, so I trust your team has packed MREs.”
Vic took a look up at the sky, at the sun beating down on the mounds of dirt-brown snow piled up at the edges of the airport. “Why can’t we go in by air? A couple Blackhawks and we could be there by zero-eleven hundred. It’d give us a much better target window.”
Altmann and Jicha exchanged glances, then the big man cleared his throat. “It’s snowing in West Virginia, Caruso. Nothing’s flying in or out. We go in by road, or we don’t go in at all. Now, let’s get this circus on the road.”
“What are you playing at, Sammy?” Harry demanded, taking a step forward to place himself between Carol and Han.
The Sig-Sauer came up, held rock-steady in the SEAL’s hands. It was about the only thing that was steady, fire blazing in Han’s eyes. “You said you weren’t followed — you promised me you weren’t.”
Harry shook his head, moving another cautious step. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It was just a matter of getting close enough to take the gun…
“I’m talking about Russians — Korsakov and his team.”
“Here?”
“You’ve got that straight,” Han replied. “I found tracks on the northern ridge — two men. They were watching the cabin last night.”
Harry shook his head. “It’s deer season, Sammy, hunters all over these mountains — what makes you think it was Spetsnaz?”
“I followed them.” The pistol was wavering now, perspiration flecking Han’s brow. “I tracked them through the snow to the road and found them by their vehicle. They were packing serious heat — automatic weapons. It looked like a command and control vehicle.”
Harry exchanged glances with Carol. Something had gone horribly wrong. He made a cautious move toward Han, his hand outstretched. “We can work through this, Sammy. We’ve done it before. Just give me the gun — don’t want anybody getting hurt here.”