Fire selector all the way down. Full automatic. He pressed his cheek against the stock, his finger curling around the trigger.
Now! Fire rippled from the barrel as he squeezed the trigger, a thrill flooding through his body. Power.
He lowered the weapon, gazing out to forty yards where the Pakistanis had placed a bucket of ice.
Shattered now, water pouring onto the snow. Jamal threw a fist into the air, his excitement overwhelming him. Yes, yes! Death to the unbelievers.
There were days when normalcy was unsettling. Days when nothing added up. Marika Altmann leaned back in her desk chair, staring at the report that had just come across her screen.
She nearly hadn’t come into work, nearly convinced herself that she should run. But she knew the power of what she was attempting to evade.
She had, after all, spent most of her adult life using the resources of the Bureau to track down people on the run. Her safety, if there was any to be found, was in keeping things routine. Staying under the radar, as unlikely as it was that she would be able to do so. Yet there had been nothing.
Two unfamiliar faces stared back at her from the screen. Both identified as CIA personnel. Both implicated in the previous night’s shooting.
Her own name was nowhere to be seen. Marika reached for the cup of coffee sitting on the desk of her cubicle and, finding it empty, threw it in the trash. Something was wrong, she could feel it.
She closed her eyes and suddenly all she could see was Caruso’s body, lying there in a congealing pool of his own blood.
Very wrong…
When the phone rang, Kranemeyer knew who it was, and exactly why they were calling.
“Do you know what the penalty is for obstructing a federal investigation, Kranemeyer?” Shapiro’s voice, injected with a little more testosterone than usual.
“Am I to assume that you have the statute in front of you?” the DCS asked. Baiting the deputy director was a dangerous game, but this was one game he hadn’t started.
“A copy of the information we provided to the FBI just crossed my desk. Incomplete information,” Shapiro added, his voice trembling as he continued. “And you went over my head to demand that Haskel restrict access to this information to a select task force from his counterterrorism division. Why? Why would you do something like this?”
“Are you quite done?” Kranemeyer asked, an icy calm pervading his tones. “We withheld from the Bureau nothing that would impede their investigation.”
“What are you trying to say? I saw the report, all of the redactions from the dossier for Richards and Parker — page after page completely blacked out. I saw it!”
It was hard to resist the urge to laugh, the irony of using the bureaucrats’ system against them was so rich. Hoist by their own petard. “I took what steps were necessary to protect on-going Agency operations, steps that you should have had the forethought to take. We gave the Bureau everything they need to pursue their investigation, and you may have just outed two of my best officers. If you’re wrong about this — any of this, there will be hell to pay.”
“Is that supposed to be a threat?” Bluster now, classic Shapiro — but it was no longer amusing.
Kranemeyer waited perhaps thirty seconds before responding. “I don’t deal in threats, Shapiro, you should know that by now. I was just telling your fortune. Take it however you wish.”
He ended the call without warning, replacing the phone in its cradle on his desk. The DCS sat there for a moment, staring at the opposite wall.
Loyalty meant nothing in the Beltway…to the point that the politicos didn’t even understand how to cope when they encountered it.
He reached into his shirt pocket and extracted a small, old-style pager. A single line of red text scrolling across the screen at the top. THE PACKAGE IS READY FOR PICKUP.
Without further hesitation, Kranemeyer rose, balancing himself against the desk as he found his feet. There was always that one moment of uncertainty with the prosthesis.
No, the power players of Washington didn’t begin to understand that loyalty, the bond forged between men who had faced battle together. Didn’t know what to make of it. It would be their undoing.
He would see to that.
Chapter 15
The “clinic,” if one wanted to dignify it by that name, was a small, windowless set of rooms on the third floor of the consulate, a building distinguished from the rest of the neighborhood by its brick façade on three sides.
“This was our effort at self-sufficiency during the Cold War,” Vasiliev explained, following Harry into the room. “We couldn’t risk our people visiting an American doctor, so we stretched the budget for whatever equipment and personnel we could accommodate. Even so, most of our personnel went into the city for the superior medical care of a hospital. Still do, actually. Our staff doesn’t see many patients.”
“You’re not exactly filling me with confidence here, Alexei.” Harry’s eyes swept the clinic, taking everything in. Just the one exit, an essentially bare room except for the dentist’s chair and his supplies on a table near the far wall. A pane of one-way glass filled one half of the western wall, presumably another room and begging the question of what else the room might be used for.
It was as close to a controllable environment as he was going to get.
The Russian spread his hands. “What did you expect, tovarisch, Johns Hopkins? We make the best of what we have…what is that expression — any port in a storm?”
Harry turned to Carol as Vasiliev left the room, putting his hand lightly on her shoulder. “Are you sure you can go through with this?”
She managed a half-smile, determination creeping into her features. “I don’t really have any other choice, do I? If they are able to keep tracking us…”
Her voice trailed off, but it didn’t matter. She was right.
Vasiliev reappeared with a younger Russian in tow. “Dr. Petrov, our dentist-in-residence. He’s the son of our naval attache and went to dental school here in the States, if that’s any comfort to you.”
The dentist flushed, responding with a somewhat shame-faced greeting. His English was very good, with just a trace of accent. “We will need to use a sedative, ma’am. Our goal is to remove the tracker without rendering it inoperative. It will require a delicate touch.”
“Do what you have to do,” Carol replied, looking him in the eye.
“Then let’s leave him alone, shall we?” Vasiliev suggested. “We can observe from the other side of that window.”
Harry turned to the former KGB officer. “And if there’s a problem?”
“We can be in here within twenty-five seconds.”
“They’re at the consulate?” Andropov demanded, sweeping into the room with his bodyguards flanking him. He’d been gone for most of the afternoon, out of contact. But he had obviously received Korsakov’s voicemail.
Viktor looked up from the computer perched precariously in his lap. “Da. They arrived…thirty minutes ago, yes?” He looked to Korsakov for confirmation.