Marcus asked Oleg to come up to the cockpit and help get Jenny into one of the seats in the back. Shaken but eager to assist, Oleg responded immediately.
“They teach you any first aid in the army?” Marcus asked.
“A little.”
“Then take care of my friend. We need to get her home in one piece.”
Oleg nodded and was about to leave when Marcus grabbed him by the arm.
“One more thing,” he said. Marcus motioned for him to come in very close so Morris couldn’t hear them. “She doesn’t know what you just did, and she’s in no shape to hear it now,” he whispered. “Understood?”
Oleg nodded, a bit confused perhaps on how it was possible that Marcus’s partner didn’t know all the details. Nevertheless, while Marcus kept flying the plane, Oleg unbuckled Morris and carefully carried her out, apologizing profusely for the discomfort he was causing her.
Soon they reached a cruising altitude of forty-three thousand feet. They were racing for international airspace at a speed of nearly five hundred knots—about 575 miles per hour. Marcus engaged the autopilot. According to the extraction plan he and Morris had mapped out, they were headed for Helsinki. That was just 893 kilometers away. They’d already been in the air for twelve minutes. They had another fifty to go.
Marcus knew they’d never make it that far.
Defense Minister Mikhail Petrovsky was headed back to the war room when the call came.
He’d only gotten three hours of sleep, but at least he had been in his own bed. As his driver sped along Leninsky Avenue, parallel with the Moskva River, headed toward the center of the city, one of his bodyguards took a secure call from Nikolay Kropatkin, the deputy director of the FSB.
He handed the phone to his boss. “Kropatkin. He says it’s urgent.”
Petrovsky sighed and took another sip of black coffee from his travel mug before taking the call. When everything was urgent, was anything?
“Yes, Nikolay Vladimirovich, I have the revised estimates with me,” he said in exasperation. “Tell the president I will transmit them the moment I get into the office.”
“No, sir, that’s not why I’m calling.”
“Then why?”
“Where are you?”
“Four minutes out. Can it wait?”
“No, it cannot,” Kropatkin said. “Brace yourself, Mikhail Borisovich.”
“Whatever for?”
“The president, sir.”
“What about him?”
“I’m afraid he’s dead.”
“What? That’s impossible.”
“I just got off the phone with the palace. Aleksandr Ivanovich is dead, as is Dmitri Dmitrovich.”
“Both of them?” Petrovsky said, sitting bolt upright in the backseat of the bulletproof sedan, its flashing blue lights—and those of the security cars flanking them—illuminating his face in the stormy darkness. “When? How?”
“It was Oleg Stefanovich—he shot them both at point-blank range,” Kropatkin replied breathlessly. “They were alone in the president’s study. It all happened so quickly. But it appears that he had help. He got to the airport—Domededovo—where someone was waiting with a private plane.”
“Tell me the police stopped him.”
“There was a shoot-out, but Oleg was able to get on board a jet and take off. We were tracking it, but they’ve turned off their transponder, and for the moment we’ve lost it.”
Petrovsky cursed and then ordered the deputy to scramble a dozen MiGs, find the jet, and take it down.
“Right away, sir,” Kropatkin said. “I’ll give you an update when you arrive. But that’s not all.”
“Go on.”
“You need to convene the cabinet. We are about to go to war. The country does not have a president, but we desperately need one. And with all due respect, sir, it should be you.”
96
THE WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM, WASHINGTON, D.C.—29 SEPTEMBER
“We have confirmation, Mr. President.”
Bill McDermott handed Clarke a printout of a text he’d just received from the Magic Palace. The Gulfstream was safely off the ground. The Raven was on it. The Agency’s people had the thumb drive in their possession, and its contents had been electronically uploaded to the CIA’s mainframe computers. Their analysts were already starting to break down the data.
The president nodded approvingly. It was the first piece of good news he’d seen in days. But he was still furious with his NSC team. “Why hasn’t the hotline call with Luganov been set up?” he demanded.
McDermott said he didn’t know what the delay was. Officials in the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon said the problem wasn’t on their end. Their counterparts in Moscow were dragging their feet, and it was not yet clear why.
Marcus unbuckled his seat belt and headed to the cabin.
His first priority was to check on Morris. She’d been hit in the right shoulder, Oleg said, and the wound was quite serious. Oleg was doing his best to patch her up. He’d put her in his own seat, which he had fully reclined. He’d managed to finally stanch the bleeding using every cloth he could find on board, from towels to pillowcases. He’d given her several shots of morphine to manage the pain. Then he’d covered her with a blanket and was now telling her stories of his childhood to distract her from how much trouble she was in.
“Not bad for a government lackey,” Marcus said as he dabbed the perspiration off her face with a washcloth and wiped several strands of hair out of her eyes.
He leaned close to her cheek and whispered, “You’re going to be okay. I’m going to make sure of it.”
Morris tried to smile. It was more of a grimace, but it would do.
Marcus excused himself and went into the restroom. He was no longer wearing the disguise he’d put on at the Ramada. He’d taken that off when he’d changed into the copilot’s uniform. Still, as he looked at his unshaven face in the mirror, he wasn’t happy with what he saw. The disguise was gone. The pain was not.
He was suddenly hit with a wave of despair. He desperately missed Elena. Closing his eyes, he could still see her sitting in Mr. Grantham’s English class back in the sixth grade. They’d only been eleven. They’d gotten married when in their early twenties. Now he was approaching his forties alone. His hair was going gray at the temples. He had crow’s-feet around his bloodshot, exhausted eyes. He had scrapes and bruises all over his body—and for all his morning runs and evenings at the gym, he’d been surprised how quickly he’d been winded tonight.
Then again, this little team had made it farther than he’d really thought possible. It was only by the grace of God, he knew, not by any skill of his own. That said, what was next? Was the Lord really going to bring them this far only to let them be blown out of the sky? He reached into his pocket and pulled out the thumb drive Oleg had given him. He stared at it, wondering what treasures it contained. He hoped this had all been worth it. Only time would tell the full value to the American government, and perhaps to NATO, should the Clarke team choose to share any of the fruit of their classified labors. But the mission had cost more than Marcus had wanted to pay. He wasn’t morally opposed to killing bad guys, especially to protect the people and country he loved. But killing anyone took its toll.
Would it stop the war? He prayed it would. Then again, he knew only too well that if his and Jenny’s involvement with Oleg were discovered, that information alone could trigger a war with Russia anyway. And what if they did die tonight, shot down by an air-to-air missile? It was an ugly thought but a real and rapidly growing possibility, even probability. He wasn’t scared. He knew where he was going when he died. He was pretty sure Jenny was a follower of Christ as well. He would have loved time to talk faith and so many other things with her. But what about Oleg? What would happen to him? Marcus suddenly realized that in everything that had transpired, he’d never thought once about Oleg’s soul. Did the man know the Savior? Had he given his life to Christ? Were his sins forgiven? Had he ever even heard the gospel clearly explained to him?