“Target has stopped,” the pilot reported. “It pulled off the road and disappeared into a stand of trees.”
“Point me.”
“From the clearing, make it zero five zero. Use caution; we’re blind.”
“Roger.”
Tanner ran on.
He reached a tree line beyond which he could see a clearing. He dropped to his belly and crawled forward. The truck sat near the far edge of the clearing. The driver’s seat was empty. To the truck’s right was a cabin with a lean-to porch. Patchy moss clung to the roof; smoke trickled from a stone chimney.
Tanner raised the M4 to his shoulder and stepped into the clearing. Swiveling, scanning for movement, he crossed the clearing to the truck and peeked in the back. It was empty. He stepped onto the passenger-side running boards, peered through the window. Nothing.
The cabin door creaked open. Tanner ducked behind the front wheel. A figure emerged from the doorway, trotted down the front steps, and started toward the truck. It was Trpkova.
Tanner laid the M4’s site over Trpkova’s chest and rose up.
Trpkova saw him, froze.
“Don’t move,” Tanner said.
Trpkova met his eyes for a moment, then swiveled his head and glanced back at the cabin.
“Don’t do it,” Tanner whispered. “You won’t make—”
Trpkova spun and started sprinting for the steps.
“Stop!” Tanner shouted.
As Trpkova’s foot touched the first step, Tanner fired. Trpkova lurched sideways, hesitated, then staggered forward. Tanner fired again. Trpkova crumpled.
From inside the cabin a voice called, “Risto? Risto … what’s happening? Answer me!” Tanner heard shuffling sounds. Something crashed to the floor. A voice began muttering. “Where are you … where are you …”
M4 held at the ready-low, Briggs walked forward. He knelt to check Trpkova’s pulse; there was none. Briggs mounted the porch steps, stepped to the left of the door, and peeked around the corner.
Sitting in a cane wheelchair by the fireplace was an old man. His white hair, what little remained of it, sprouted at wild angles from his wrinkled pate. A mat of beard lay against his chest. His legs and feet were draped in a red woolen blanket.
Tanner eased the door the rest of the way open. To his right was a kitchen counter made of rough planks. Stacks of canned food lined the shelves above it. In the center of the room was a rickety, handmade trestle table littered with plates of half-eaten food. Flies hovered and buzzed. A rat scurried along the baseboard and disappeared into a hole.
Lying in the middle of the table was Trpkova’s black briefcase. Tanner started toward it.
“Who are you?” the old man barked. He glared at Tanner through slitted eyes. “What are you doing here?”
Tanner could think of nothing to say. His eyes drifted to the walls. For the first time he realized that every inch of the wood was plastered with yellowed newspaper clippings and what looked to be journal pages covered in a tight scrawl.
“Answer me!” the old man barked. “Where’s my grandson?”
Grandson? Tanner thought, confused. He looked at the man. He did a quick mental calculation. My god, could it be? It was possible.
“You killed him, didn’t you?” the man said. “You killed Risto.”
“Anton Svetic …,” Tanner whispered.
“What?”
“You’re Anton Svetic.”
“Yes, dammit, I’m Anton. Who are you? Where’s Risto? Risto!”
“I’m sorry,” Tanner said.
“You killed him.”
“I didn’t have a choice. I—”
“Get out! Go away!” Anton Svetic began weeping. He dropped his head into his hands. His shoulders started shaking.
Tanner felt the room spinning around him. As though in a trance, he let his eyes wander. He remembered the briefcase, walked to it. As he touched the lid, Svetic’s head snapped up.
“Don’t touch that! That’s not yours! It belongs to me.”
Tanner shook his head. “You should have left it alone.”
Tanner laid the M4 on the table. Using both thumbs, he slid open the case’s latches.
“I told you to leave that alone!” Svetic roared.
In his peripheral vision Tanner saw the red blanket sliding from Svetic’s legs. He glanced up. Draped across Svetic’s lap was a sawed-off shotgun. He lifted it in his bony hands and began swiveling it toward Tanner.
“Damn you, leave that alone!”
Tanner measured the distance to Svetic and instantly knew he wouldn’t be able to cross the gap in time. He looked left; the door was too far. He snatched the M4 off the table, jerked it to his shoulder. Svetic was moving surprisingly fast now, bringing the shotgun level with Tanner’s chest.
“Don’t!” Tanner shouted.
Hand trembling, Svetic reached up and jerked back the shotgun’s hammers.
“Put it down, put it down!”
Svetic kept turning, the shotgun’s black-mouthed barrels rising …
Tanner fired.
52
Tanner’s aim had been true, and for that he was both grateful and saddened — grateful that Anton Svetic had not suffered; sad that he’d let it happen at all. Had he not let down his guard, he might have been able to reach Svetic in time.
Tanner found both canisters of Kestrel still in their case, sealed and undamaged.
Lining the walls of the cabin were thousands upon thousands of journal pages and newspaper clippings. Svetic, whom Tanner would later learn was ninety-eight years old, had meticulously documented his life following WWI, as well as the madness that had slowly enveloped him.
Exploited and betrayed and carved up like so much slaughterhouse beef by the allies in both world wars, abandoned by Russia when the wall came down, and left to the savagery of Serbs by an uncaring modern world, the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina were owed retribution, Svetic had decided.
How exactly he’d planned to use Kestrel, the journals never said. Tanner suspected the awful reality of what Kestrel was and the devastation it might cause had never occurred to Svetic’s shattered psyche. Kestrel had become his Holy Grail, the panacea that would make the world right again, and he’d charged his grandson, the last of the Svetic family, with finding it and brining it home.
After leaving the Aurasin, Cahil and Susanna were taken to Mali Losinj, where they were transferred to a helicopter and flown to Rijeka’s main hospital. Aside from shattering Cahil’s collarbone and rupturing the surrounding muscles, Trpkova’s bullet had done surprisingly little damage. Three days after entering the hospital, Cahil was released.
Susanna’s wound was grave. By the time she reached Rijeka she had lost over half her blood volume and slipped into a coma. The AK’s bullet had entered her lower abdomen and then tumbled, slicing into her bladder, stomach, and colon before blasting out her lower back. Four days after surgery, she regained consciousness. The first person she saw was her father, Gillman Vetsch, sitting at her bedside.
Of the 836 passengers and crew aboard the Aurasina, twenty-two lost their lives.
Surprising no one, Sylvia Albrecht kept her word about making sure Kestrel was destroyed, taking her case straight to the president, who signed the order as she stood beside his desk.
Led by an Army colonel, the head of the Infectious Disease Containment Area, Tanner, Cahil, Joe McBride, Collin Oliver, and Jonathan Root walked into the control booth. A lone technician sat at a horseshoe-shaped bank of controls before a triple-paned Plexiglas window. As the door closed behind them, Tanner heard a hiss as the room was sealed and negatively pressurized. Chilled air began blowing through stainless-steel grates set into the floors. The air was thick with the tang of chlorine and disinfectant.