Renee had seen the Russians leave their SUV in the parking lot and walk with Max into the hotel. She’d thought about calling the police. But Max had specifically forbidden that. He couldn’t have foreseen this circumstance, however. She had to get help somehow. Why hadn’t she gotten Wilkes’s number from Max?
Calm down. Give Max some time. Maybe he had gone here on purpose. Maybe this was part of some plan. He would be okay. He did this for a living. Right?
She needed a weapon. If she went fast and came back here, she could be ready for when Max reappeared.
Five minutes later, Renee walked into a local sporting goods store and scanned the rows for what she needed. Football. Golf. Pool equipment. There.
Hunting and fishing.
The department was back of the store. Renee practically ran there. An overweight man in his early twenties stood behind the counter. He wore a red shirt with the words “Go Dawgs” on the front, a toothpick in his mouth.
“Can I help you, ma’am?”
She tried to act normal. Behind him, rifles and bows lined the wall. Under the glass counter he was leaning on were dozens of models of handguns.
“I need a weapon.”
The man stared back at her. “Mmm. Okay. Well, it appears that you’ve come to the right place.”
“It’s for self-defense. But I prefer not to use a gun.”
The man eyed her. “Right. We’ve got this little sucker over here. Ain’t had nobody interested in it before. But there’s always a first, I guess.”
“What is it?”
“It’s kind of like a paintball gun. But these little plastic balls are made special. They’re filled with some sort of pepper spray mix that stings the eyes something awful. Blinds you for a few seconds and then you just go down until you can wash it out. Never tried it myself, but—”
“I’ll take it.”
The store clerk looked at her. “You alright, miss? You sound like you’re in some trouble.”
“I’m fine. Just in a hurry. Can I pay here?”
“Sure.”
“Do you have flashlights?”
“Yes, ma’am. Right over there.”
“Good. And one more thing… do you have any field hockey sticks?”
She paid and hustled to her car, then drove back to where she had seen the Russians park their SUV. She waited in the parking lot of the Amelia Island Ritz-Carlton for several hours. As the night went on, she drove herself insane wondering if she hadn’t made a mistake. What if he was already gone? What if they had killed him?
All she had to hold on to was the car they had arrived in. She watched it to see if Max would reappear.
Max was once again in the backseat of the Russians’ SUV. They drove south along A1A, back the way they came. It was dark now, and no one spoke. Max could hear the rhythmic thumping of the tires against the slabs of highway.
They turned left off the highway and onto a single-lane road, driving deeper into the darkness. The headlights briefly illuminated a sign for Little Talbot Island State Park. Palms and swampy trees hugged both sides of the road.
Max tried to remain calm, but his mind was racing with what he had just learned. Morozov wasn’t trying to just steal the Fend 100 technology. He was trying to do something far worse. And he was going to blame it on Max somehow. Maybe that’s why he had decided to let him live, when they could have killed him in Key West.
No. It was more than that.
They had misled Max and used him to feed bad information to… who? To Wilkes? To his father? What was the bad information he had given them?
The thumb drive solution? Max had told them of MI-6’s plan to defend against another one of Morozov’s cyberattacks.
But Wilkes and the people at Fend Aerospace weren’t even going to use that now. They had a backup plan in Maria. None of this made any sense…
Max needed to get out of here and warn them. They couldn’t let the Fend 100 get airborne.
He examined his driving companions. Two large Russian men. Ex-special forces, likely. Both armed and deadly. Driving along a deserted street at night. Max would only have one chance. He would have to make it count.
The car came to a halt in a large open parking lot. Max thought he could make out a few other cars there, on the other side of the lot. But it was hard to tell in the darkness.
The Russians were talking to each other, but they were speaking in their native tongue. Max couldn’t understand a word. The one in the backseat kept his weapon out, pointing it at Max. The one in the driver’s seat got out and walked around to Max’s door, opening it. The man sitting next to Max in the backseat started pushing him forward, weapon trained on Max’s back.
Max had been hoping to have an opportunity to take on just one of them at a time during the transition out of the vehicle. But they had obviously done this before. He would wait. Maybe try falling in the sand and…
“This way,” Thug One said, pointing with his silenced pistol.
They marched him along the dunes, parallel to the beach. It was slow going, their feet sinking into the sand. Lots of brush. Crabs scattering as they trudged through.
Waves crashed on his left side. Slow rhythmic bursts of white noise. Max made calculations in his head. They were getting farther from the parking lot. It was now or never. He gave himself about a ten percent chance.
Someone called out from behind them.
“Hey! Excuse me?” came the female voice. “Can you help me out?” A flashlight cut through the night behind them, shining on the sand and illuminating the ground between the Russians and a woman walking towards them.
The men said something to each other in Russian. Max imagined that they were wondering whether Morozov would get mad if they killed her too.
The flashlight changed direction and reflected the body of the woman approaching them. Her white shirt was unbuttoned and wide open, revealing a bright-pink-and-white bikini top and tight jean shorts. Seeing that, one of the Russians whispered something to the other, which was followed by snickering.
The way the light was pointed, her face wasn’t visible. One of the Russians grumbled to Max, “You stay quiet or we shoot you both right here.”
He didn’t reply.
The flashlight moved erratically, shining towards them and then back towards the woman. Both Russians clumsily hid their weapons from the woman behind their legs. If she was looking carefully, she would probably notice.
“I’m so sorry,” the woman said, “I’m lost. Would you gentlemen be able to help me find…” Max recognized the voice.
The light flashed back in their eyes. Max and the two Russians instinctively winced. What they didn’t realize was that the flashlight was connected just under the barrel of Renee’s pepper spray gun.
It had the look and feel of a large plastic 9mm Beretta, but it fired paintball-type rounds, filled with a combination of tear gas and pepper spray.
Renee fired multiple times into both of the Russians’ chests and faces. Quick clicks and pops, and the sound of high-speed plastic pellets bursting into the muscle-bound men.
Renee then turned out the light and ran towards them. She dropped the pepper spray gun and gripped the field hockey stick, which she had been holding under her left armpit.
She headed towards the sound of Russian cries and cursing. Renee had made the field hockey team at Princeton University many years ago for her athleticism and speed. But once there, she had been known for the power of her shot.
Renee’s vision was barely adjusted to the low light level, but it was enough. She bent her knees as she approached, twisted her hips for maximum velocity, and drove the heavy wooden stick forward and up into the head of the first Russian.