The Muslim captain appeared to catch on, cuffing the officer, but apologizing for what he was being forced to do.
Galina saw more lights coming on in the houses. People were watching. She hoped there were no “Heroes of Russia” hiding behind those curtains. She doubted many Muslims had been so honored.
“Are you going to kill me, too?” the officer asked.
“We will see. Search him for other weapons,” she told the captain, who quickly found a knife sheathed inside his boot.
“Throw it in the water.”
The captain gave it a good toss, perhaps too enthusiastic, she thought.
“Now get him in the boat and get some rope ready. I want him tied down, and if any of your neighbors come out, tell them to go inside and close their eyes.”
The captain raised both hands and waved at the homes. Lights went out. It seemed they’d all had plenty of practice in not seeing.
Alexandra exited the Macan and walked toward her mother, dragging her blanket. She looked pale in the wan light. Galina was glad to see her. She hadn’t wanted to leave the captain and cop to retrieve Alexandra. The most convincing words can unlock the heaviest chains, though the feckless officer hardly appeared a likely mouthpiece for effective personal propaganda.
“We’re getting on the boat,” she told Alexandra. “You two first,” she ordered the captain and officer.
Once on board, she checked the cabin. A hard bench with a couple of stained cushions. Fish blood, she guessed. “Tie him to that.” She pointed to the bench.
She watched the captain carefully.
“Now take us to sea,” she ordered him. “We’ll see if he ever comes back.”
“Please don’t—”
“Shut up!” she yelled, cutting off the cop’s words.
She bundled Alexandra in her blanket and placed her on a bunk toward the bow.
The captain cast off. She stuck the Glock’s muzzle in the officer’s face.
“Where’s Oleg Dernov?” she demanded.
“He’s coming up the coast.” The officer shook as he spoke. “Maybe thirty kilometers away.”
Fifteen minutes at most.
“Move faster,” she told the captain. “Don’t worry about your wake,” she added, with a glance at the other docked trawlers.
He shoved the throttle forward. The big engine answered. They moved away from the disappearing dock at a rapidly increasing rate.
“Do you have a wife and children?” she asked the captain.
“Not yet.”
She was happy to hear that: no one to cry behind curtains for him — or cooperate with Oleg.
As they neared the opening to the harbor, Oleg’s Maserati barreled into the village. She watched with the captain’s binoculars. As soon as the vehicle rolled to the dock, all the lights in the homes went out.
“Nobody ever sees anything,” the captain whispered to her.
But he does, Galina thought, glassing the dock as Oleg raised his own binoculars. For a second they peered at each other. Then she waved.
She hoped good-bye.
CHAPTER 23
Oleg didn’t budge from the dock, and he held those binoculars on Galina as if he were aiming a weapon. She begged the captain to go faster. He toyed with the throttle. She might have sensed a bit more speed, but not enough to discourage Oleg, of that she was certain. Short of teleporting across the globe, she knew nothing was likely to stop his murderous pursuit of her.
Oleg simply had too much at stake not to kill her. Galina had worked with him long enough to have strong ideas about how to crush his assault on Antarctica and, by extension, the entire planet. But to do that she had to stop running long enough to work on her computer, preferably with the American, Lana Elkins, by her side. Elkins had already displayed daunting skills in tracking down Galina. Now the Russian hacker hoped her American counterpart would prove just as effective in exfiltrating her so the two of them could team up to bring Oleg down — before the deadly flooding and radiation got even worse.
Oleg bolted down the dock toward the nearest house. His sprint caught the captain’s eye, too. “I’m going faster here than I’ve ever gone,” he said before Galina could beg him again for more speed. “But I must be careful. There are old moorings in the water. You can see them at low tide. Maybe not now, when low tide is like high tide. I don’t want to hit them.”
“The last thing we need,” she had to agree.
“That’s him?” the captain asked. “The man who took those pictures of you?”
She nodded.
“Let me see him.”
She handed over the binoculars. He stared at Oleg, who was nearing the door of the house. Galina expected he’d be rooting out one of the captains in the next minute or two to chase them down.
“He’s ruthless, a killer,” she said.
“I understand,” the captain said to her. “I had to do ruthless things to get out of Iran. And those people,” he pointed to the house, “can be ruthless as well. They won’t open their doors.”
“I’m afraid they’ll have to,” Galina replied.
As if to prove her point, Oleg kicked it in. A woman in a headscarf shrank from him as a man marched out of the interior shadows. Oleg held up his ID — and his gun.
Galina refocused the binoculars as the man of the house slowed down and put up his hands. Oleg’s mouth moved and the man eased past the woman and edged out the door. He headed toward the dock, waving for Oleg to come with him. He reminded Galina of a mother bird faking a broken wing to try to lead a predator away from her nestlings.
Oleg followed the man, gun trained on him, to a trawler that looked similar to the captain’s.
“Is his faster than yours?” she asked him.
“About the same. These are not speedboats. But last winter he rebuilt his engine. I’m going to do that this December.”
“So what does that mean, rebuilt his engine?”
“Not much, I hope. Maybe more reliable. But mine’s a good boat,” the captain said, slapping the wheel.
Already black puffs of diesel smoke were belching from the other trawler’s stacks.
Oleg and his captive captain were underway.
Lana thought landing at Pitsunda was like hitting the beach at Normandy. A huge exaggeration, which she recognized, but the captain of the armored boat gunned the engine loudly as they raced down ten-foot waves, surfing them at times, until he ran the nimble vessel right up onto the sand.
Fortunately, they were not met by gunfire. Instead, she heard the staccato command of “Get out-get out-get out” from the SEAL leader, a red-haired man with the unlikely name of Johnny Walker; he’d already been the subject of obvious jibes in Lana’s presence.
But the SEALs took their commander’s words seriously; they moved rapidly onto the sand with their weapons drawn, scanning the beach with their night goggles. Lana, on the other hand, had her eyes on the rough shore break wondering where the Dehler 38 was moored.
The same thought must have occurred to Don because words to that effect passed his lips seconds later.
“The other side of this dune,” replied Johnny Walker Red, as he was known to his men. “That’s where the marina is, and where they’ll be waiting.”
The dune rose about two hundred feet on a steep slope that was crowned with short trees; Lana guessed scrub pine. It looked like a perfect place for a machine gunner to open up on them.
The slog up the dune proved exasperating: two steps up, one step down as the fine white grains gave away quickly under their weight.