Ivan, who had holstered his weapon, redrew but not soon enough. A standoff began.
“Everybody drop your weapons… now!” Flynn directed as he maneuvered behind Buscape to utilize him as a shield. “The rest of you, up against the wall!”
The three men remaining at the control panel joined Ivan and the two guards, standing with their backs to the wall.
Ivan refused to budge.
“I said drop your weapons!” Flynn yelled again.
Ivan held fast.
Then Buscape spoke. “It’s OK, son. You can put down your weapon. He’s not going to harm you — or me either.”
Flynn waited until Ivan dropped his gun before responding.
“Listen, Buscape. I already made that mistake once. I’m not leaving Ivan alive this time.”
Buscape then began chuckling to himself, nearly uncontrollably.
“You Americans never cease to amaze me with you brash arrogance.”
Flynn pressed the tip of the rifle deeper into Buscape’s neck.
“ Принеси мне девушки!” Buscape yelled.
A side door swung open and Lexie marched out, gagged with her hands tied behind her back. Even more surprising was the person holding a gun to Lexie’s head.
It was Sydney Sandford.
CHAPTER 59
Gerald Sandford read the text message on his phone. He brushed back a tear that streaked down his face. Seeing Sydney bound enraged him. Her face appeared bruised, her body beaten. If Sandford could stand in front of her kidnappers at the moment, he was certain he would beat them to death.
But he couldn’t. All he could do was meet the demands of her captors. So what if it started a war? What kind of father wouldn’t move heaven and earth for his daughter?
Thirty minutes was all he had left to comply with their demands. Still no word from Osborne.
Seconds dripped by like hours, each one stirring up an ocean of emotions within him. He remembered saying good-bye to Sydney as she embarked on her Peace Corps mission to Russia. No matter how much he tried to protect her, Sandford never could sway her to follow in his footsteps. She wanted to change the world and make a difference in the lives of others. He pleaded with her to pursue that noble mission through politics and embrace the path he blazed for her. And Sydney almost went for it.
When she was nineteen, Sydney took off a year from school to help with her father’s U.S. Senate re-election campaign. The brutal spring primary set Sandford up for a bare-knuckle brawl in the November general election. Heading into the final two weeks before the election, Sandford trailed by eight points in the polls. The poor polling numbers prompted some major donors to decline to contribute further when Sandford needed it most. He even watched several key campaign staff members exit early, fearing the worst.
But if voters hadn’t voted, Sandford assumed there was always ample time to change their minds.
Three days before the election, a scandal broke: Pictures emerged of Jim Dyer in suggestive situations with a prostitute. Making the scandal worse was Dyer’s platform plank of family values. His wife and three children stood by him as he railed against “dirty politics,” denying the incident ever occurred.
The last polling numbers the day before the election showed a swing of fifteen points, giving Sandford an advantage of seven percentage points. Sandford won by twenty percent.
At the celebration party, Sydney began talking with one of her father’s staff members, whose loose lips let out the campaign’s secret: the Dyer incident was set up. Sandford’s staff hired a prostitute to seduce Dyer months earlier but failed. So, this time they left nothing to chance, drugging Dyer and staging the photos. Nothing even happened. But the photos suggested otherwise.
Sydney took the information to her father, who denied any knowledge of it. She begged him to apologize and tell the truth, but he refused. “It’s just politics,” he told her. “It was for the good of the people anyway. He only cares about power, not about helping the people.”
That was when Sandford started to lose his daughter — and when she lost faith in using politics as a way to transform the world. A few years later, she was heading off to Russia to help people there. Sandford never dreamed that would be the last time he saw her again. Yet after thinking she was dead for years, he would do anything to touch her again, to hold his little girl and say he was sorry for all that he’d done. He’d be a different man, a better father.
But none of it would happen until he launched a full-scale missile attack on Russia.
CHAPTER 60
Flynn stared at Lexie as she struggled under Sydney’s tight grip. Reading the situation wasn’t easy. Lexie faced the men Flynn had ordered to line up against the wall. If she tried to signal anything, they just might tip off Sydney. It was up to Flynn to send her a message that would help him squash the sudden quagmire.
“Sydney — so nice of you to join us,” Buscape said, turning to face her as Flynn continued to press the tip of his barrel into the old man’s neck. “I think this is what we call a stand off.”
Flynn tried to hide his emotions. He considered the possibility of acting like he didn’t care about Lexie. And on some level, he didn’t. It was her arrogance that led to this predicament. Yet he needed her. This mission would fail if he didn’t have some help. Despite his urge to blow her off, he couldn’t let Sydney — or anyone else from the Kuklovod — kill Lexie. At this point, he didn’t even care if she made off with the missiles; he just wanted to stop a war from igniting.
Glancing behind him, Flynn noticed Ivan and the operators hadn’t moved. Buscape hardly struggled as he was too weak to overpower Flynn and seemed keenly aware of that fact. But in front of Flynn stood his biggest challenge: Sydney holding Lexie hostage.
Running out of time, Flynn needed to devise a plan quickly. Maybe I can reason with her?
“Sydney, I know your father is worried sick about you,” Flynn began. “Why don’t you put the gun down so you can go home and prevent the loss of innocent life?”
Sydney laughed. “You think that CIA voodoo is going to work on me? I already know what’s in your playbook and I’ve got a plan for everything. So, if you want to try some of your pop psychology on me, be my guest. But if you knew me well enough, you’d know that trying to use my father to connect with me is a big mistake.”
Flynn knew it was a mistake the second he started speaking aloud. But it bought him more time to consider a way out.
“Sydney, what happened to you?” Flynn asked. “You were so idealistic and driven — now you seem jaded, angry… distant.”
“Do you want me to lay on a couch or something? Let me tell you all my deepest desires? Is this how you think this is going to go?” Sydney asked. Her biting sarcasm contradicted the pleasant demeanor that Osborne said she had. Apparently, charm had since escaped her command.
With the Kuklovod tattoo emblazoned on the corner of her neck, Sydney exhibited the opposite of every trait Osborne had attributed to her.
Though Sydney was beautiful, Flynn had to look hard to see it. The high cheekbones and curvaceous figure remained mostly hidden by a tough exterior Sydney worked tirelessly to promote. The idealistic girl that once inhabited her body wasn’t gone and buried yet. Sydney exuded plenty of idealism, but it was muddied by her newfound communist philosophy.