“Insh’allah.”
“And then there will be one final task for you.”
“…you’ll be the second person over the wall. The dogs will be your concern.”
Alexei chuckled, squinting down the bull barrel of the Ruger Mark II semiautomatic in his hands. “If I should miss, tovarisch…they will be your concern soon enough.”
“Then don’t miss,” Harry retorted, giving the Russian a baleful glare.
Han cleared his throat. “Are you sure you don’t need me on the assault team?”
A nod from Harry. “Korsakov is still out there — hasn’t done anything more than feint toward our bait at the safehouse. If he comes back…”
He lowered his voice, glancing toward the kitchen, where Carol sat with her back to them. Pulling together the last remnants of the botnet. “Her safety is of the utmost importance. If everything goes sideways, take her and run.”
It was a strategic decision, but the accompanying risks…
“Body armor?” Vasiliev asked, shrugging as he screwed a suppressor into the threaded end of the Ruger’s long barrel.
“Depends on how much time they have to react — more than likely by the time we’re done.”
The Russian smiled, tapping his forehead as if to indicate the aimpoint. “Then we’ll plan accordingly.”
Find a way. Perhaps Andropov had taken that too literally, Korsakov thought, doubt surging back to the fore. The same doubts that had been plaguing him ever since he and Viktor had boarded the oligarch’s private Sikorsky S-76 in Los Angeles for the helicopter flight to San Francisco. He forced a smile to his face as he made his way down the corridor toward the spa’s sauna room, toward the man standing at the door.
Standing guard.
“Good evening.”
“You can’t go in there,” came the brusque rejoinder, a hand reaching out to grab Korsakov’s arm as he brushed by.
First mistake.
His fingers closed around the guard’s arm like the teeth of a vise, catching him off-balance and pulling him forward till his head smashed into the drywall.
The man reeled backward, an arm up to defend his face as he fumbled inside his jacket. Korsakov glimpsed the leather straps of a shoulder holster — light glinting on the blued steel of a gunbarrel and he lashed out, his booted foot connecting with the man’s groin.
A strangled cry of agony echoed off the walls, the half-drawn pistol clattering to the tile.
Last mistake, Korsakov thought — pivoting as the edge of his hand came down on the man’s neck, hard against the bone.
The guard crumpled, sagging into Korsakov’s arms as the assassin lowered him to the floor. The “fight”, if one wanted to call it that, had lasted a scant forty-five seconds. Someone needed better security.
Retrieving the pistol with a gloved hand, Korsakov pushed open the door to the sauna, steam billowing in his face as he entered.
Droplets of water condensed on his face as he moved forward, making out the figure of a middle-aged man reclining on a wooden bench near the far corner of the room, arms folded across his naked chest. The target.
Alone.
If the rich and powerful had a weakness, it was that they valued their privacy. Solitude. Aside from the obvious benefits, it made Korsakov’s job much easier.
“Who are you?” the man demanded, reaching for his towel as the assassin approached.
Too late. Much too late. Korsakov was on him as he rose to his feet, one hand closing around the man’s throat — forcing him against the wall of the sauna.
“Dmitri Vournikov, I presume?” Korsakov sneered, staring down into the Russian consul’s bulging eyes.
A frightened nod, but the older man made no attempt to resist. Surrender, survival, those were the watchwords of the bureaucrat. “What do you want with me?”
The words came out as a squeak.
Korsakov stared into the man’s eyes for an eternity of a moment, watching him begin to gasp for breath — the awareness of his own impending death spreading across his face.
“Valentin sends his regards,” he announced, allowing Vournikov to fall back against the bench, massaging his bruised vocal chords.
Korsakov stalked back to the center of the small room, drawing the bodyguard’s SR-1 Gyurza from his pocket and ejecting the magazine. Fully loaded. “You know Valentin Andropov, do you not?”
Another nod.
“Good. Then you have some idea what I am capable of — and what I will do if you lie to me.”
“Da, da.”
“Who is really in charge at your consulate?”
No Internet. No cellphone. No PDA. It had been a couple of decades since Carter had been so disconnected. He’d been given a computer when he first arrived in isolation at Camp Peary, an aging Dell loaded with a copy of Fallout 3. That had lasted all of two days — until his FBI wardens realized that he had reconfigured it to access the Internet through a vulnerability in the Farm’s secure network…
And that was the end of his computer. In its place, someone with a bad sense of humor had supplied a few issues of Dog Fancy.
He wasn’t a dog person. Never had been.
Maxwell…Carter shook his head, staring at the featureless wall of his “room”. Prison, more like it. No one had been able to tell him whether his cat had survived the carnage at his apartment. The FBI wasn’t particularly communicative.
The door opened and one of the CIA personnel entered. A tall, lanky man with a full head of silver hair, Carter knew him only as “Frank”. He looked about as old as time itself, unsmiling mud-brown eyes shining out from a leathery face.
“You have a call,” he announced, dispensing with the pleasantries and handing a small disposable cellphone to Carter without another word of explanation.
“This is Carter. Hello?”
“Listen to me carefully, Ron.” Kranemeyer’s voice, full of all the usual intensity. And something else. “I need you to do something for me.”
Carter cast a glance toward the CIA man standing there by the door, arms folded across his chest. “We’re not secure, boss.”
“Frank? You can trust him. In fact, you’re going to have to. I need you on-line and Frank is going to get you secure access.”
“What about the FBI?”
Silence. Then, “We don’t have another alternative. You’ll just have to work around them.”
Yeah. That sounded easy.
“She’ll be there,” Vasiliev observed, sliding a loaded magazine into the butt of his Grach. “You’re prepared for that, aren’t you?”
Harry finished securing the clasps of his body armor, pulling his shirt on over it. It wasn’t heavy enough to stop a rifle bullet, but he’d have to make the most of it. Speed vs. armor, a trade-off as old as war itself. “Who do you mean?”
“Andropov’s mistress,” the Russian replied, glancing toward the kitchen. The fluorescent glare of a tripod-mounted construction light illuminated the scene, casting strange shadows against the bare white walls. “If we allow our assault to be slowed…”
His implication was clear. And he was right. There were only the two of them — they had to maintain the element of surprise if they were to remain alive.