Blokhin hit the door with his right shoulder, snapping the security chain and hitting Officer Baumann in the forehead with the edge of the door, and he fell back hitting the wall with his head, trying to get on his feet, but Blokhin closed like a leopard on a baboon, and hit him in the throat with a web-hand strike, compressing his trachea, and sending the cop gasping to the floor, where Blokhin stomped on his Adam’s apple, totally crushing his windpipe. Blokhin rolled the strangling cop butt-high to fish out the Glock from his holster; extracted the fifteen-round magazine to check it; then racked the slide as he walked into the sitting room of the minisuite, picking up a bright throw pillow from an armchair and stepping up to Sergeant Moran, who was lying on the couch in his stocking feet watching a baseball game.
“Who was at the door?” said Moran, not looking away from the TV, as Blokhin shot him from a meter away through the pillow four times in the temple, cheek, and jaw, then turned to an openmouthed Magda sitting at the desk and shot her six times through the now-shredded pillow into her gaping mouth, forehead, and throat, knocking her backward in her chair to the floor amid a welter of pillow stuffing and fabric, floating bits of which settled on and stuck to her bloody cheek. Eleven seconds had elapsed since Blokhin knocked on the door.
Daria Repina walked barefoot into the sitting room in a cloud of steam from the bathroom, wrapped in a hotel bathrobe too big for her, toweling her pixie hair. She stopped short, seeing Blokhin in the room, the queer bloke in the elevator, and her natural combativeness took over. She asked him what he was doing in her suite, and to get the hell out, and who the fuck did he think he was? Blokhin faced her, and quietly said, “Tolko choromu I ne vezot,” Only the black cat, and no luck. Mother of God, thought Repina, only then noticing one of Magda’s bare feet sticking up in the air over the upturned chair, and the blood-smeared face of one of the policemen on the sodden couch, and she knew this man was from Moscow sent by Putin, and she ran to the bedroom, turned to slam the bedroom door and get to the phone, but Blokhin threw her on the bed and hit her massively four times with a knife-hand Spetsnaz Cross: a strike to the right side of her neck, crushing the brachial plexus between the collarbone and the first rib, then across backhand to strike the lower left rib cage, staving in the seventh and eighth ribs, which pierced the lower lobe of her left lung, then up across to the left side of the neck, and back down to fracture the right rib cage, puncturing the right lung, each time forcing a grunt out of Repina, now barely conscious. Her body shook as Blokhin sat her up and wrapped his lobster-claw hands on her chin and slowly twisted her head first one way then the other, listening to the green-stick snap as the C2, C3, and C4 cervical vertebrae separated. Repina flopped back on the mattress, staring sightlessly at Putin’s henchman. Elapsed time: seventeen seconds.
Blokhin had been instructed to destroy the target with maximum unizhenive, maximum humiliation. Moscow wanted Repina to be found in the morning, reduced to a savaged pile of flesh, a demonstration of Russian wrath and a warning to others who dared follow her example. He roughly stripped the bathrobe off her corpse—her skinny body already was a lurid mass of hematomas—and dragged her by one ankle off the bed, her head thumping onto the floor, into the living room, broken neck wobbling, into the middle of the carpet, wrists crossed above her head, and legs kicked out wide, genitals cruelly exposed. He left the other bodies where they were in mute testament to the Kremlin’s wrath. Blokhin scratched a B on Repina’s stomach with the minibar corkscrew (the Cyrillic V for Vympel group of Spetsnaz) for investigators to puzzle over. He did not interfere with either of the women; the massacre tableau was enough, and he took a panoramic photo of the room with his cell phone. Total elapsed time: three minutes. Only the black cat, and no luck.
As he left the room, sliding his balaclava back over his head, he looked at his handiwork: Only one thing missing, he thought. Colonel Dominika Egorova should be lying on the carpet alongside Repina, staring at the ceiling. D’yavol, the Devil. He’d tailed her after her return from meeting the illegal, but had lost her too easily—the isotope device was too weak. Shlykov said she was good on the street, and she was, better than anyone he’d encountered before, but she was a spy, after all. He knew she’d eventually make a mistake, and then Blokhin would crush her, like stepping on a snail in the garden.
BLOKHIN’S KOREAN BARBECUED RIBS
Rinse flanken-style ribs in cold water. In a separate bowl, mix soy sauce, brown sugar, rice wine, sesame oil, black pepper, and cayenne. Combine onion, garlic, pears, and ginger, and process to a smooth purée, then add to the soy mixture. Add toasted sesame seeds and a splash of water to thin. Pour marinade over ribs and toss to cover. Chill overnight, then bring to room temperature and discard marinade. Grill or broil until caramelized. Serve on lettuce leaves with ssamjang paste, pickled peppers, kimchi, cucumber salad, and steamed rice.
11
Pitch and Roll
Director Alexander Larson owned a Georgian row house on P Street NW in DC, but on the weekends he regularly escaped to his late father-in-law’s five-bedroom ranch house near Edgewater, Maryland, on the banks of Pooles Gut, a narrow tidal creek that emptied into the South River below Annapolis, one of the hundreds of tributaries that made up the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Down the sweeping lawn from the house, there was a fixed pier alongside a paved boat-launching ramp. An extended garage behind the house contained two small boats on trailers: one a twenty-five-foot black rigid inflatable boat (RIB) with a center steering console, a Decca radar mounted on an aluminum frame aft, and two 115 hp Mercury outboards, beasts that could push the RIB along at forty knots. The RIB was used by the DCIA’s protective detail and had a waterproof locker just forward of the steering console in which were stored two .223-caliber Colt M4A1 carbines.
The second vessel at the back of the garage was Larson’s pride and joy: a seventeen-foot Lyman Runabout built in 1961, with a restored lapstrake hull, graceful flared bow, and mahogany spray rails and brightwork. The distinctive angled windshield and the jaunty Lyman pennant on the bow marked the Runabout as a classic, but not as much as the 1955 forest-green, teardrop Johnson Seahorse 25 hp outboard, an antique refurbished to flawless working order, and perfect for running the smooth-riding hull ahead of frequent Chesapeake squalls at twenty knots, or slow trolling for striped bass at nine knots. Two Shimano fishing rods were in beckets along the gunwales with expensive Tekota trolling reels. In a seat locker under the aft banquette were two tackle boxes with lures, jigs, and spoons.