Just before he got there, the back doors spilled open, and a man with an AK in his hands fell out onto the road. He looked bruised and disoriented.
Mitchell needed a weapon.
Without hesitation, he dove onto the man, knocking the wind out of him. Both men tumbled to the ground. Quickly sitting up, Mitchell slammed his right fist into the stunned thug’s face, breaking his nose. Hauling off again, Mitchell brought his fist straight down on the man’s jaw, breaking it and knocking him out cold. A loud painful grunt escaped the man’s lips as his body went limp. Rolling over, Mitchell grabbed the man’s dropped AK, quickly checked that there was a round in the chamber, and then stood with his weapon at the ready. Edging towards the back of the van, Mitchell flipped the change lever to fully automatic with his thumb, raised the rifle into his shoulder, spun on his heels, and faced towards the open doors just as another thug tried getting out. Mitchell recognized him as the man who had tasered him. White-hot anger instantly raced through him. The thug saw Mitchell standing there and foolishly tried to bring a pistol up, only to be cut down by a quick burst from Mitchell’s weapon. The thug staggered back onto the side of the overturned van and then slid to the ground, dead. Quickly scanning around, Mitchell saw no more movement. Carefully moving over to the open doors, Mitchell cautiously peered inside the darkened van. He saw another one of their attackers lying in an unnatural heap. Mitchell realized that he must have broken his neck upon impact. His eyes searched for Jen. His heart raced when he could not see her. He was about to dive inside the van, when he heard a moan somewhere in the dark.
“Jen, is that you?” called out Mitchell. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I landed on someone,” replied Jen. “What happened?”
“A police car slammed into your van. It’s lying on its side.”
Relived that she was alive, Mitchell was about to crawl in and help Jen out when the sound of sirens filled the air as several police cruisers came to a screeching halt behind Mitchell.
“Drop your weapon and lie down on the ground,” said a commanding voice from one of the police car’s speakers.
Mitchell was still as mad as hell, but he knew better than to turn around with an AK in his hands. Slowly, he lowered the weapon and got down as ordered. Seconds later, he felt his arms pulled behind him as handcuffs were quickly locked in place. Mitchell let out a deep breath and tried to focus his mind as he tried to figure out what was going on. Why had someone gone through so much trouble to try to kidnap Jennifer March twice?
In the dark of an unlit alleyway, David Teplov stood with a handkerchief to his bloodied head, injured during the crash. He had decided that discretion was the better part of valor and had crawled away the instant he heard gunfire. He knew that he had failed once more to get his hands on Jennifer March. With a burning hatred building inside him, Teplov silently watched the police as they hauled Mitchell off the ground and placed him in the back of one of their waiting vehicles.
A former member of the Russian Armed Forces, Teplov had a reputation for obtaining the unobtainable for his clients. Glaring at Mitchell sitting in the back of the police car, he ground his teeth and vowed never again to allow his employers to stop him from killing Mitchell on sight. The man had cost him millions in trained fighters, but more than that, he had severely damaged his reputation. Stepping back, Teplov walked down the darkened alley, dug out his phone, and made a quick call. A few minutes later, a silver-gray Mercedes SUV pulled up. Getting inside, Teplov gave directions to the driver and then sat there silently contemplating his next move. Twice foiled by the same man, Teplov could not afford failure in his line of work. Teplov dug out his phone and made another call.
Nika Romanov answered. “Do you have what we are after?”
“No,” replied Teplov bluntly.
“What do you mean, no?” asked Nika.
“You didn’t tell me that she was going to be with the same American who screwed things up for me in the Philippines,” said Teplov angrily.
The line went silent for a moment.
“So she got away again?” asked Nika, her voice as cold as winter.
“Yes.”
The air went uncomfortably silent again.
Nika broke the silence. “I don’t believe in coincidences. That man has meddled in my affairs twice. I do not care what it takes, but I want him dead. Do not fail me again, Teplov. Kill him and anyone else who gets in your way from now on.”
“Gladly,” said Teplov, relishing the thought of eliminating Mitchell. He vowed to himself that no matter what it took, Mitchell was going to suffer horribly before he died.
10
General O’Reilly walked into the briefing room, holding a thermos of coffee. He was dressed casually in a pair of blue jeans and a warm gray turtleneck sweater. O’Reilly saw Mitchell and Jen sitting there in jeans and a pair of old army sweat tops, looking like they hadn’t slept in days. Taking a seat, O’Reilly poured them both a piping hot cup of coffee and then sat back in his seat while they waited for the others to arrive.
Mitchell’s first call had been to O’Reilly to explain what had happened.
Telling Mitchell to stay where he was while he made a few calls, O’Reilly’s first one was to Polaris’ deputy leader, Luis Ortiz, a former Miami police commissioner, who in turn contacted some old friends with the Charlotte police. Almost right away, Mrs. March was taken into police protection and moved to a safe house in Concord. Once Corrine was safe, a Lear jet was hired to safely bring Mitchell back to New York for a debriefing. At her insistence, Jen tagged along to add anything she could to help put whoever it was behind all of this behind bars.
Ortiz sauntered in with a box of fresh donuts and laid them on the table. When no one moved, he opened the box, grabbed the closest one, and popped it into his mouth. Ortiz had short black hair that was graying at the temples. He was short and stocky, with a permanent smile on his face. Having met O’Reilly when he was serving on a counter-narcotics operation in Latin America, the two had become close friends. When O’Reilly established Polaris, Ortiz was offered the position as his deputy to oversee all of the police training that occurred in the complex and elsewhere.
Everyone sat in silence as O’Reilly’s two best intelligence experts came in and sat down on the opposite side of the table from Jen and Mitchell.
The first was Mike Donaldson, a tall, lanky Texan, who had been an intelligence officer with the US Air Force. He had a full head of white hair and a few extra pounds on his midsection. Donaldson was the senior analyst at the complex. His junior partner was Fahimah Nazaria, a stunningly beautiful Iraqi-American, dressed from head to toe in a conservative dark-blue outfit. Fahimah had graduated from Harvard with honors and followed that up with a graduate degree in Middle Eastern Studies. Recruited straight out of university, Fahimah was the fastest-rising member of the “Office of Dirty Tricks”, General O’Reilly’s planning and intelligence department.
O’Reilly quickly made the round of introductions.
“Ryan, I heard what you told me and what the police passed on to Luis,” said O’Reilly as he sipped his coffee, “but why don’t you tell me in your own words what really happened the other night?”
Mitchell went over the events of the evening from the time he arrived at Jen’s until he was dragged away by some of Charlotte’s finest. Jen added what she could, but she found that Mitchell seemed quite adept at giving these kinds of briefs. She saw that Mitchell had an eye for detail and seemed to be able to recall the events in far greater clarity than she could. O’Reilly sat there quietly while Fahimah and Donaldson respectfully grilled them over the details of the story, trying to find some meaning to the kidnapping attempt.