The man bobbed his head and said, “I have a very powerful C-4 package that will fit under virtually any vehicle with magnets. The combination of the explosive and the fuel in the car will cause the blast radius to spread thirty meters in every direction.” The man was so excited he looked like he was talking about his children doing well in school. “The blast will break windows up to five hundred meters away. The Americans on the base will think a nuclear weapon went off.”
“And you won’t have a problem being in position to see when he enters the gate with the vehicle?”
“I have already scouted it. It won’t be a problem with a cell phone detonator already attached to the device. Just give me a little notice so I’m not hanging out too long in front of the base.”
Fannie had to smile thinking about the carnage the blast would cause and the confusion it would sow among the American ranks. She hoped she was able to pull it off before they had word that the Russians were crossing the border into Estonia. It could delay action for several hours at the base.
Thinking about all of this made her worried about Anton Severov. He’d be facing the Americans in a few hours, a day at most. This was the confrontation that the world had been waiting to see for the past sixty years.
Walsh froze at the sight of the pistol pointed at him and instinctively raised his hands. When he stood, he stepped away from the FBI agent with the gun and past Tonya Stratford, who was still tending to the wounded man.
Agent Stratford said, “Hold on, Frank, he was helping our wounded.”
“He’s a fugitive. I’ve never lost a prisoner, and this asshole is not going to be the first.”
Walsh was going to answer but saw the rage in the man’s face.
The burly FBI man said, “I’m done having him make fools of us.”
Walsh didn’t wait to see where this was going. He continued to back away with his hands up, then threw himself into the window and felt the glass and wooden frame break away behind him. He tumbled out of the window wondering how far he would fall, then realized he had landed on a fire escape. The landing jarred his head and clanged in his ears. He didn’t even wait for his head to clear as he rolled and found the elevated ladder, which dropped immediately to the ground with him at the end. The jolting stop knocked him onto a small patch of grass, but he wasted no time springing to his feet and racing toward the sidewalk. He heard a shot from the window but didn’t turn around. As he sprinted down the sidewalk, he saw two Chevy Impalas parked at odd angles in the street. He knew who the cars belonged to. He slipped out his pistol and put a bullet in the front passenger tire of each car.
He made a hard right turn and found himself once again running for his life.
31
Derek Walsh cut across two streets and saw a brightly lit gas station and a woman standing next to a VW sedan at the pump. The driver’s door was open, so Walsh bolted directly into the car, turned the key in the ignition, and sped away without a second thought. He was just under the street light when he heard shouting in Russian and then the rear window of the sedan shattered. He looked over his shoulder to see that the middle-aged woman in a long overcoat had a revolver in her hand and was firing at him. What was up with these Russians? He never planned to come to Brooklyn again.
He continued north and skipped the Brooklyn Bridge, instead turning onto the island of Manhattan by way of the Williamsburg Bridge. He turned north a few blocks and then left the car, with the key still in the ignition, near Houston Street. It was too late to go by Thomas Brothers. At least with the revelations about Alena, he now believed Ted Marshall was on the level and could be useful. There was no telling what the FBI thought of him right now. It seemed like Tonya Stratford was on the verge of believing him, but her partner was on the verge of shooting him.
He needed to figure out where to go. Then he had an idea.
Walsh had spent more than an hour sitting on a bench in a park off Houston Street. Only a few people had cut across the park in the time he’d been sitting alone, and that suited him just fine. He was still in shock but starting to accept the fact that he’d been used. He’d been used in the worst possible way. He’d been used against his own government. He felt violated. None of these feelings bothered him, because they kept his mind off Alena. Walsh couldn’t accept that she didn’t have feelings for him. It might have been an assignment, but it morphed into something else. Luckily she would never be able to refute that. He’d already heard on the news that two people had died in a police raid in Brooklyn. He hoped that meant all three of the wounded FBI agents would survive.
Something else that had struck him in the past few hours was the fact that he had been sitting on the sidelines while something like this was cooking. In the marines he felt like he had a purpose. In the financial world he just felt like a tool. He needed a purpose. All marines needed a purpose.
He no longer just wanted to clear his name. It wasn’t about him anymore. It was about stopping this plot and its ultimate goal. He was ready to turn himself in, but maybe he could help the FBI. He felt that Tonya Stratford might be realizing that about now. He had purposely kept his phone turned off in case they had some way to track him he wasn’t aware of. He also wasn’t ready to take any calls.
Finally, when he’d had enough time in the park to clear his head, he started walking toward Bleecker Street. It didn’t take long until he saw several men huddled in front of a doorway. It was the shelter Charlie had taken him to for his one night of decent rest.
Before he even reached the door one of the men turned, and he could see it was his friend. The former Army Ranger waved and said, “I’ve been worried about you.”
“You and me both, brother.”
Anton Severov had barely shut his eyes when he heard shouts and a commotion not far from his cot. He bounced up immediately and saw that flames were rising into the night sky a couple of hundred yards from his position. He slipped on his boots and tunic and, fastening buttons as he went, jogged toward the commotion.
As he approached, several officers were running the same direction he was, while many of the enlisted men were moving away from the flames. He could see three trucks were clearly on fire, and there was a group of about thirty men in front of the trucks chanting something.
Severov recognized a sergeant watching the spectacle and said, “What the hell is going on?”
“It’s the Chechen recruits, sir. Something has them all stirred up. They just keep chanting, ‘God is great.’”
“Has anyone tried to disperse them?”
“No one is sure how much force we can use.”
Severov snatched the AK-47 from the man, stepped forward, and fired a burst into the air. That caught everyone’s attention and spurred several other officers to action. Someone struck one of the Chechens with the butt of a gun and knocked him to the ground. Others started shouting for all of the men to sit down and put their hands on their heads. That opened the way for others to move forward and use fire extinguishers on the burning trucks.
It was some kind of demonstration, or possibly a revolt. Severov realized that if it had gone on longer it might’ve sucked in more of the Chechen recruits and could have ignited into something more serious.
It took a little time for Severov to find Amir. He was looking for his former guide to see if he had anything to do with the revolt. If he established that Amir instigated it, Severov wouldn’t have any issues with shooting the Iranian punk.
He found Amir sitting with the group of young Chechen recruits, with one of the men translating from English to the others. Amir was holding an impromptu class on Islam and the future. Severov held back and listened to see if the man said anything that would incriminate him.