A sigh. Korsakov stared down at his phone. Sometimes there was little choice but to play the game. He looked back to where Yuri stood over the four drugrunners. “Ubei,” he ordered, his voice ringing clearly through the chill air. “Ubei ih vsekh.” Kill them. Kill them all.
He caught a glimpse of it in the rear-view mirror as he climbed into the Suburban, lifeless bodies sprawled on the tarmac. Drug dealers. The scum of the earth…
“I’m surprised there was no one here,” Carol observed, coming up behind Harry at the equipment shed. He looked up from the padlock in his hand.
“I’m not,” he responded. “This is Kansas…around here a lot of people still go to church on Sunday. Honest folk — it’s why there’s no perimeter fence here. No security cameras.”
The tumblers moved beneath the pressure of his lockpick and the padlock sprung open, falling easily into his hand.
There was something about the way he’d said it. “You sound envious.”
He looked back to where she stood, favoring her injured right leg. “I am,” he said slowly. “Always wished I could retire to the Midwest. Always wanted to believe that the world could actually be this simple. No guile, no deception — just take life on its face, live it the way it was meant to be lived.”
“How long do you think you’d last?” she asked, inclining her head to one side. Her blond hair fell across her face, and she brushed it back, revealing a look of skepticism in those blue eyes.
It wasn’t so much the frankness of her question that took him by surprise, but the readiness with which the answer formed in his mind. Not two weeks.
He didn’t respond, swinging open the door to reveal the fifty-gallon drums of aviation fuel stacked inside. “Go find Sammy — I’m going to need his help moving these over to the plane.”
“In nomine Patri, et Fili, et Spiritus Sanctum.” In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Michael Shapiro made the sign of the cross over his chest, bowing his head in prayer. It wasn’t often that he made Mass these days, but today was special, with his little son Marc serving as altar boy.
He felt Marc’s twin sister stir restlessly in the pew beside him and a guilty smile crossed the deputy director’s face. She took after him.
His phone began to buzz within the pocket of his Armani suit and he rose from the pew, catching the look of disapproval on his wife’s face as he left the church.
“Yes?” he asked, answering the phone as he strode toward the doors.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you, Michael.” That voice.
Shapiro stepped outside, a cold, snow-laden breeze cutting through the thin fabric of his dress pants. He was sweating. “What do you want?”
“Complications have arisen. I need you to go back to Langley and remove a sniper rifle from the equipment lockers in the Clandestine Service ready room. A Barrett would be preferable. Make sure you take a couple of magazines of ammunition, as well.”
The deputy director stopped stock-still, unable to answer for a long moment.
“Is there a problem, Michael?”
“That depends,” Shapiro replied, mustering up what was left of his defiance. “What am I do with it?”
“I will call you again in three hours with further instructions. Have it by then.”
A click and he found himself holding a dead phone up to his ear. He stood there for a long moment, listening to the words, the music drifting out of the church behind him. Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep…”
That was what scared him.
Three days. That’s all it had taken to turn his world upside down. “I’ll need some time to run that down,” he heard himself saying.
“How much time?” the woman on the other end of the phone asked.
Carter glanced across the op-center to meet the eyes of Danny Lasker and he looked away. Didn’t know whom he could trust — not anymore. “Twenty-four hours, Marika. Do you remember how to get to my apartment?”
“Of course, Ron,” the FBI agent replied. “How could I forget? Do you still have Maxwell?”
Carter stifled a laugh. Maxwell, named after the lead character of the ‘60s spy show Get Smart, was his cat, a Japanese Bobtail he had brought back from Okinawa when he’d been in Air Force intelligence. “Yeah, Max is getting old, but he’s still with me.”
“Glad to hear it.” Her voice changed, re-focusing. “Twenty-four hours, Ron. Don’t let me down.”
The analyst closed his phone, returning it to its resting place in his shirt pocket. As he did so, the familiar sound of the op-center doors opening struck his ears and he looked up to see Director Shapiro leaving.
What had the Banker been doing here…on a Sunday?
“Alexei Vasiliev,” Han repeated thoughtfully. “I remember him.”
Harry didn’t reply, his eyes focused on the sky before him — concentrating on keeping the Cessna Skylane below 3,000 ASL. “More specifically,” the SEAL continued, “I remember him trying to kill you.”
A shrug. “You can hardly blame Alexei for that — we were trying to take out his principal. He was just doing his job.” Harry smiled. “Six months later we were having lunch in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower and debating religion late into the night. I’ve known worse guys.”
“Leave him out of this, Harry,” Han admonished, a shadow passing across his face. “He’s former KGB — there’s no way you can trust him.”
The New Mexico desert continued to flash past below them, the sinking sun casting long shadows over the foothills. They were going to have to land before nightfall, or face all sorts of questions as to why they hadn’t filed the mandatory IFR flight plan.
“Assuming he’s in a cooperative mood, Alexei will be able to give us the information we need,” Harry replied, looking over at his old team member. “But I had no intention of trusting him…”
Five minutes late. Yuri shifted his body weight in the front seat of the Escalade, checking his watch. The lights of the SUV were out as they sat there, looking out into the river.
They’d already seen two Coast Guard cutters go by in the chill moonlight. No doubt about it, this city was on a war footing. Which is why they didn’t want to stay here any longer than necessary.
“You know,” Yuri announced, looking over at his partner, “sitting here in the dark would look much more natural if you were a hot blonde.”
His companion, a Latvian Yuri knew only as Kalnins, laughed. “This is true, tovarisch. And both of us would be much happier.”
Lights crept down the road toward them and Yuri’s hand moved to the Beretta at his side. He could feel Kalnins tensing in the darkness. A police car was the last thing they needed.
He’d had a bad feeling about this contract from the beginning — not that his opinion had mattered to Korsakov. Success…success had the ability to make men arrogant.
The sedan slowed to a stop across from them and briefly flashed its lights. Yuri returned the signal and left the headlights of the Escalade on as a short man in a trench coat exited the sedan, a suitcase in his right hand. The Russian consulted the picture filling the screen of his smartphone. It was him: Michael Shapiro, Deputy Director(Intelligence)…