As the barrel of the pistol faced away from the guard, he lurched forward toward Carrie. He grabbed her wrist with his right hand, and he threw a blow with his left fist. Carrie jerked her head and the guard’s fist struck her shoulder. She leaned back toward the wall, putting enough distance between her and the guard for a swift kick. Her boot slammed against the guard’s right arm. His hand lost its tight grip.
Carrie spun her hand quickly toward the guard’s face. The pistol whipped across his face. He fell back for a moment, then his bloody face popped up again as both his arms went for Carrie’s throat. She rammed her pistol into his chest and pulled the trigger. A single bullet pierced his lungs and the guard’s body collapsed backwards, blood gurgling out of his mouth.
Carrie pointed her pistol toward the door, expecting footsteps and more guards arriving at any second. A minute or so went by and there was no sound, not even faint police sirens or car honks from outside.
She found the handcuffs’ keys and freed her left arm. The skin around the wrist was slashed and she was bleeding from two deep wounds. She closed the door, then looked around for anything to stop the bleeding. She wrapped the white tablecloth around her wrist. Her blood turned it crimson in seconds but she kept her hand tight over her wrist.
Carrie checked on the guards. They were both dead, as she had expected, but her training required her to make sure they were no longer a threat. She stripped them of their cellphones and their wallets, finding credit cards, rubles, and a few euros, as well as two sets of car keys. She took the money and a pistol, but left behind their bulky newer model AKs. She felt a hint of sadness leaving behind two perfectly good assault rifles, since she knew they would come in handy, but not while she was slithering through the streets of Moscow looking for Justin.
She opened the door carefully and took a quick peek from behind her pistol sight. The hall was empty. She tiptoed to the next room, which turned out to be a kitchen, and it was also empty. She checked the bathroom and the next two rooms, staying away from the windows at all times. There were no other guards.
Carrie killed all the lights in the small house. She reached the barred kitchen window overlooking a tree-filled front yard covered in deep snow. It was dark but she was able to make out the flickering light of a building resembling a warehouse about half a mile away. She looked to the left, and through the trees noticed moving lights, perhaps a mile or so away, drifting through the thin haze. A highway. A highway to where? Her eyes found a white Mercedes-Benz van with no windows parked further away to the right. They probably carried me in there. But for how long?
She walked to the other rooms and observed her surroundings. The house was at the edge of a field, its backyard butting up against a small forest. The silhouettes of a couple of other houses stood in semi-darkness a few blocks away. There was no movement along that side of the house, in the backyard, or at the edge of the forest.
Carrie returned to the kitchen, flicked on the lights, and cleaned her wounds in the sink. The water was cold and trickled slowly from the rusty fixture. Carrie wondered if she was going to get an infection simply by using the water. She found a clean towel and wrapped it tight over her wrist and forearm to stop the blood flow.
She took a knife from one of kitchen cabinet drawers and cut two long strips from the white tablecloth of the kitchen table, and then another large piece. She placed the makeshift gauze over her wound and fastened it in place by tying it with the strips. Finally, she sliced away the blood-soaked sleeve of her black sweater.
Carrie glanced at one of the cellphones. It was a newer model iPhone. The menus were in Russian but the icons were the usual ones and it was not very difficult to navigate through the settings. She found a GPS application and with a few taps she learned her location. The small house was near the Moscow Ring Road, in the northeast part of the city. She studied the map for a few moments and determined the best route to reach the CIS’s safe house that had been set up for worst-case scenarios. It was an apartment on the other side of town, by Yugo-Zapadnaya metro station — the last station on the Sokolnicheskaya line — in a run-of-the-mill complex. Carrie had memorized its exact address and the key combination to access the building and the apartment unit.
She scrolled through the numbers stored in the iPhone and in the other cellphone and memorized two she thought might be important — two numbers the guards had called many times in the last few hours and from which they had also received a dozen or so calls. Then she picked up her pistol but left the phones behind. They might have tracking hardware or software, and Carrie had neither the tools nor the time to clean them up. She had gathered enough intelligence from the cellphones. She gave the kitchen a last sweeping glance and stepped outside into the Russian winter.
The wind assaulted her face and Carrie shivered while tightening her coat around her waist. She had not thought to take a pair of gloves from the guards. They would be too bulky, and she needed her right-hand fingers to keep a firm grip around the pistol and allow her to squeeze the small trigger.
She glanced at the van. It had to be empty, since anyone waiting inside would have rushed to the house at the first sound of a gunshot and she had not seen anyone lying in wait. But with her survival on the line she could not afford to be careless.
Carrie did a quick sweep of the van but found no one inside or around it. She searched the glove compartment and found another pistol, the same MP-443 model as the ones she had pried from the dead guard’s hands. Carrie pocketed the pistol’s magazine, then turned around. She left the van behind and started to march through the snow-packed road. She could have driven the van at least a part of her way, but she was not sure if there were any GPS trackers hidden somewhere in the vehicle. Carrie was going to use public transportation — buses or the metro — to reach the safe house.
Chapter Twenty-three
At about the same time that Carrie was getting rid of her guards, Justin was still handcuffed to his bed. His body was incapacitated for all intents and purposes but his mind was working as if the circumstances around him were completely normal; in fact even better, given the urgency of his situation. Justin had long ago found out he worked much better under pressure, the adrenaline pumping through his body, energizing his mind and setting it in overdrive. The plan he was devising relied more on the reactions of the guards than on his actions.
“Guards, hey, guards,” Justin called in a loud voice.
No one replied.
The room was empty — he had seen both guards leave and close the door — but he assumed at least one of them was stationed outside.
“Guards, Oleg, I need the washroom,” Justin shouted even louder than the first time.
No answer.
He wondered if both guards were warming up inside a car or a truck. Justin was shivering and his teeth were chattering because of the cold. His arms were covered with goose bumps and he was still shirtless.
“Hey, guards, guards, guar—”
The door was thrown open and Oleg stepped inside. A half-smoked cigarette hung from the left corner of his mouth. “What is it, loser?” he asked in English.
“I… I need to take a leak,” Justin asked in a pleading voice, trying to appear as weak and as beaten as possible. If Oleg considered him a small threat he would be more likely to remove his handcuffs and escort him to the bathroom.
“Huh?”
“I need the washroom.”
“Why? You piss yourself here.”
Justin looked away from Oleg and feigned embarrassment. “Please, leave me some dignity.”