Running Scared

by Linda Ladd

  The sun glinted on the river now, burning off the last vestiges of fog. Her pursuers were out in the channel behind her, and their boat was at least an eighteen footer, probably rented from The Landing down by the Van Buren bridge. Two men huddled in the stern; another was in the raised bow, still taking potshots at her. She kept her head down and protected Joey whose terrified cries were barely audible over the roar of the motor.

  When a sandbar rose in the distance, Kate suddenly knew what she had to do. The river channel was treacherous in places but she knew it by heart, every twist and turn, every gravel bar, and more importantly, every underwater snag. Kate sped on, following the main channel until she reached a gravel bar covered with thick bushes and weeping willow trees. Like so many in the Current River, it lay at midstream and she cut to the left of the narrow island, a course that took her out of sight of her pursuers. In a second they'd enter the shallow stretch of river behind her, but that's all she'd need. She veered hard left toward the trees on the bank, well aware of the exact position of the gigantic rootwad hidden just underneath the surface. The tangled roots jammed with logs was the most dangerous place in the entire river, with half a dozen collisions and boat accidents there within the last year.

  By the time the other boat rounded the gravel bar and roared after her, Kate was back at midstream as if she'd been in the channel all along. Gripping the throttle hard, she looked over her shoulder, watching as the bigger boat bore down on the underwater barrier. The boat's hull cleared it easily but the big motor rode deeper and didn't fare so well. The spinning props hit the deadly snag at thirty miles an hour and the boat stopped on a dime, slinging everything and everyone forward with the velocity of pebbles from a slingshot. She watched the man with the gun hit the glittering water ahead of the boat, bouncing head over heels across the surface like a skipped stone just before the boat upended with an awful crash and rending of metal and fiberglass. The disabled craft began to sink, the transom torn off, the motor gone.

  Her whole body sagging with relief, Kate faced forward and held her speed steady, comforting Joey the best she could, trying to control the trembling in her limbs while putting as much distance as possible between herself and the men trying to kill her.

  Three

  DMITRI IVANOVICH KAVUNOV squatted on his haunches at the bottom of Kate Reed's boat ramp. He was an attractive man, especially to the ladies, some indefinable aspect of his scholarly, quiet nature holding innate charm for the women who met him. During summer classes at the small academy on the outskirts of Moscow where he lectured in art appreciation from time to time, young female students were drawn irresistibly to his good looks and intellectual refinement, attention he was well aware of but neither wished for nor encouraged.

  Dmitri was fairly tall at five eleven, trim, fit, comfortable with his easy agility, his athleticism giving him a masculine grace whether walking to class or jogging woodsy campus paths. He wore his dark brown hair cropped short on top but thick and wavy at the nape. The glint of silver at his temples, along with a neatly manicured goatee, lent him the look of the sophisticate he was. His eyes were large, the color of charcoal ashes, but with an uncommon warmth and luminous quality when focused on someone or something he found intriguing.

  At the moment, Dmitri's gaze contained little such warmth as he fixed his attention at center stream where swirling eddies splashed and gurgled in the swift-running, appropriately named Current River. He sorted through the gravel beside him and chose a small, flat rock, which he sent expertly skipping and skimming over the rippling blue-green surface. This rural setting and the Ozark Mountains surrounding it were surprisingly peaceful now that the report of gunshots and roar of outboards had dwindled to a faint whir somewhere upstream.

  The woodsy banks and remoteness of the place was almost primeval in its untouched natural splendor, reminding him of the small river village outside St. Petersburg where he was born almost forty-five years ago. That stream, too, was swift and treacherous, rampant with rapids, and crystal clear to the rock-strewn bottom. His father had taught him to fish in those meandering undercurrents, as his father had taught him. Even his great-grandfather, who'd been a watchmaker in the Moscow shop of the famous jeweler, Peter Carl Fabergé, had enjoyed the pristine water, many years before the Bolshevik revolution.

  God, how he had missed it and everything Russian during all the early years when he'd lived in the United States, but now that the Communist regime was dead he traveled freely back and forth, often visiting his brothers and sisters in the North, but more often than not acting as courier between his Moscow boss, Ilie Kafelnikov, and Ilie's American business partner, Vince Saracino. Dmitri didn't enjoy working for Saracino but he respected Kafelnikov enough to put his personal feelings aside. They went back a long way, he and Ilie, to the time when Ilie recruited a young, impressionable Dmitri into the KGB. Now Kafelnikov had turned to a darker path and reigned as the most powerful crime boss in Moscow. Two years ago when he'd asked Dmitri to gather a few good men to act as bodyguards for his daughter, Anna, when she married Vince Saracino and moved to America, Dmitri had agreed out of loyalty and respect.

  Still, he missed his homeland and wished he was there now, fly-fishing waist deep in that icy stream, listening to the whispering currents and warm summer breezes. Instead, here he sat, deep in the boondocks of Missouri, bogged down with this dirty business he had gradually come to despise. He would not remain with Kafelnikov's daughter much longer; he'd had enough of Vince Saracino and his uncontrollable rages.

  Behind him he heard Michael Reed scream with pain as Misha tried to force him to talk. Reed must be a complete and utter fool to have crossed Vince the way he had; Dmitri had not trusted Reed when he'd first met the man a year ago in St. Louis. But Dmitri never would have suspected him to be stupid enough to do anything this self-destructive. Vince wanted Reed stone-cold dead, as an example if nothing else, but Reed's woman's unexpected flight was complicating what should have been an easy contract hit for Dmitri and his team.

  Now Reed was interfering with Dmitri's personal schedule as well, which was even more annoying. Dmitri had first refused Vince's demand to take out Reed, instead wishing to return to Russia to teach and run the small antique shop he owned there, but Vince Saracino had pulled out a trump card, one he knew Dmitri could never resist—a genuine, mint-condition Fabergé egg. Even though it was not the most beautiful of the priceless masterpieces wrought by Fabergé, the miniature gold charm the jeweler had fashioned to hide inside it was intact. More importantly it was one of the lesser-known imperial eggs commissioned by Czar Nicholas himself. Kavunov had hungered for it since Saracino had obtained the prize off the Russian black market while in Moscow courting Anna. Saracino had dangled the gilded, diamond-and ruby-encrusted masterpiece in front of Dmitri's coveting eyes as enticement to take on the contract hit, and Dmitri could not bring himself to refuse that bait.

  To his never-ending pride, Dmitri already had three Fabergé creations, exquisite watch fobs designed to decorate the chains of old-fashioned pocket watches. Two of these ornaments his great-grandfather had passed down as heirlooms within the Kavunov family. The other one, of considerably lesser value because of a crack in the lacquer, he'd managed to purchase in Rome five years ago. His true pride and joy was the lapis lazuli pair of cuff links set with a circle of tiny diamonds.

  Behind him, under the covered boat pavilion, Reed screamed like a pig under the butcher's blade. Dmitri frowned, glancing behind him at Misha and their prisoner. Misha's long, lanky blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail, held low on his neck with a rubber band. Dmitri thought the boy looked like a damn fool sissy, especially now with one of his ears pierced. He could not understand what young men were thinking these days, adorning themselves as vainly as harlots. At the moment, Misha's face was stretched tight with fury, his teeth clenched, his left cheek and jawline bloodred and blistered from the boiling water the Reed woman had flung at him. The burns would worsen, the pain becoming more ex
cruciating later. Misha had been careless and was paying the price.

  Dmitri shook his head, irritation flooding him again. It was completely daylight now. If anyone else ventured into their midst he'd have no choice but to kill them, too, and that's the last thing he wanted to do. He was tired of killing people, though he'd made it his livelihood for some time now and had become quite adept at quick, quiet assassinations. To prevent their discovery at the river behind Reed's cabin, he'd already ordered the chain strung across the gravel road that led customers from the log house down to the riverside bait shop. The woman's black Ford Explorer had been hidden in the woods until he could catch her and get the hell out of there.

  Thanks to Misha's bungling, they didn't have much time left, should have been long gone while it was still dark and foggy. He hoped Yuri and the others caught the girl and baby quickly and brought them back. He had no doubt they would. They were all well trained and hand-chosen by Kafelnikov to ensure his daughter's safety, something Anna sure as hell needed now that she was married to a psycho like Vince Saracino. Yuri was the best operative of Dmitri's team, and Dmitri trusted the veteran of the Soviet-Afghanistan war implicitly. Kafelnikov's other picks for Anna's team were former Moscow police officers, corrupted by American dollars and the privilege of living in the United States. Both were so obsessed and delighted with the rich Western lifestyle, he doubted they'd ever again set foot on Russian soil.

  The third time Misha caused Mike to scream for mercy, Dmitri grimaced and stood up. His older sister's boy was dear to him, but he was still a hotheaded punk. Marina had been worried about her son, for good reason, and Dmitri agreed to take him in hand after the boy had shot and killed one of Russia's hottest young hockey stars because the player wouldn't agree to go on the take for Kafelnikov. Unfortunately, he did it in plain view at a busy intersection on Gorky Street.

  Kafelnikov had recruited too many young Russian thugs to wreak havoc on their own people. They were a joke, a violent, savage bunch of losers with not an iota of the finesse Dmitri and Kafelnikov had acquired in the KGB. They were reckless, and though Dmitri loved his nephew dearly, Misha was probably the worst of the lot. But under Dmitri's tutelage he would learn. Somehow Dmitri had to teach him restraint and instill in him at least a modicum of honor. Misha had a cruel streak, seemed to enjoy the suffering of others, while Dmitri did not. To him, such a lifestyle had been a necessity, an evil required to serve his beloved Mother Russia. He'd accomplished his missions exceedingly well, but now that he performed for money alone, the job had become distasteful. His only consolation was that the people he hit were unsavory characters at best, mostly deserving of death at his hands.

  His nephew had the American lawyer bound with silver duct tape under some kind of roofed pavilion that Dmitri assumed was to shelter boats during the winter months. Andre had managed to wound Reed in the shoulder and subdue him, while Misha totally screwed up getting the girl and the baby up at the house. Now the boy was embarrassed he'd let her escape in the course of his first mission with his uncle, and in so doing, complicated Dmitri's carefully laid plans and put them all in danger of discovery. It should have been an in-and-out procedure, simple, clean, leaving both the man and woman dead in an apparent robbery. Now Misha was soothing his wounded pride, and the painful scalding he'd received, by torturing their one captive. Indeed, Marina's boy had a lot to learn. But he was only eighteen; wisdom would come to him in time.

  At the moment, Misha was stomping down brutally on Reed's injured shoulder, which was little more than a flesh wound, a mere slice of the biceps. Reed was squealing again, shrilly, like a terrified woman, and Dmitri called out, ordering his nephew to stop in a burst of Russian that readily revealed his impatience. Misha obeyed instantly as he did with all of Dmitri's commands, but Reed kept groaning and rolling his head from side to side. The lawyer knew enough about Dmitri and his handpicked team to know he was a dead man.

  A shout floated off the water and Dmitri turned quickly, hoping his men had managed to return with the girl. Instead he caught sight of Yuri jogging along the rocky riverbank; Andre and Nikolai were behind him, one supporting the other as they struggled along. When Yuri reached him he spoke rapid-fire in their own tongue.

  “The bitch tricked us, Dmitri. Led us straight into some kind of hidden snag that tore off the motor. Sank us and dislocated Nikolai's shoulder."

  Dmitri cursed inwardly, irritated beyond belief. Though Andre and Nikolai were good men, he and Yuri should've come alone. The two of them could have done the man and woman silently and efficiently and been halfway back to St. Louis by now.

  “See to Nikolai, Misha. You know what to do. Yuri, get another boat in the water."

  Both men scurried to do his bidding. Dmitri stared down at Michael Reed, lying prone and moaning on the ground at his feet. The man was weak, had no backbone, a begging, writhing worm. “Yeller,” as they used to say in the old American westerns he enjoyed during his early days in the United States.

  Heaving out a heavy, put-upon sigh, Dmitri pulled out the 9 mm Beretta he wore in a shoulder holster underneath his black nylon Nike windsuit. It felt good in his hand, a constant companion for at least twenty years. More comforting than any wife. His own thoughts struck him as pathetic: What man would consider his weapon more valuable than the company of a good woman? But he'd needed or wanted very few women since he'd lost Alina. He'd mourned her with deep, abiding anguish for many years, only until recently when he'd been plagued inexplicably by a loneliness and need for female companionship that cut almost as deep.

  “You're a very stupid man,” he said to Reed, hunkering down and speaking conversationally. His English was flawless, and he prided himself that few could tell he was not a natural-born American. In the early days in the KGB he'd been stationed at the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., where he'd worked undercover as a diplomat and mastered the slang, the popular music, the pop culture, until he'd fit in like any other man on the street.

  “Your wife got away with the kid, Reed. You've caused me a hell of a lot more trouble than you're worth."

  “Please, Kavunov, please, just listen, listen. This is all a mistake. I can make things right. Give me the chance, I swear to God I can."

  “Time's up, Mike. Tell me where she's gone, or you die, right here, right now.” Dmitri did not intend to waste any more time, could not. Reed had been aboard Vince's outfit long enough to know that. He placed the barrel of the Beretta flush against Reed's flaring nostril and watched the man's eyes bulge and grow wild. “Tell me where your wife's gone."

  Reed was still hesitating, playing hero. Dmitri wondered briefly if the lawyer actually had the guts to give up his own life to save his woman. Dmitri would bet he did not. Few men he'd encountered had enough gumption when it came right down to it. He wondered how he'd react himself with a gun barrel jammed into his nose but knew the answer very well. He would have died for Alina, if he'd been given the chance. Overcome with despair at the news of her death, he'd come close to hanging himself in his apartment in Washington, just as she had done inside her cold, dank cell in Lubyanka Prison. Michael Reed, on the other hand, only had a second or two to make up his mind. As Dmitri had expected, Reed shut his eyes and revealed his true character by gasping out words of betrayal.

  “You'll never find her without me.... I can show you the way. She'll go to the police if we don't stop her. The sheriff down here's a friend of hers.... Oh, God, please, Kavunov, don't kill me, I can help you...."

  “What lies upriver from here? A town where she can get help?"

  “No, no, it's all wilderness upriver from here, government land. Nobody's allowed to live out there. Everything's downriver at Van Buren. She won't find anyone who can help her but there's a cabin ... one she takes care of for some people ... you know, through the winter. That's the only place she could go.... It's well hidden so you'll never find it without me showing you how to get there. I'm telling you Kate knows this river and the woods like nobody else. Her grandf
ather taught her to hunt and stalk deer, shoot guns and all that stuff. She'll get away if you don't let me help you, please, please."

  Reed's wife shared Dmitri's mother's name, Katya, and some of her strength as well. Kavunov already admired this woman named Kate, more than this sniveling piece of garbage ready to betray her. Misha had known of her accomplishments, shown them pictures of her when she'd won a medal in the Olympic marathon in an unbelievable show of courage. She was a beautiful woman, Nordic blond, obviously strong-willed, and at the moment showing herself more than resourceful. She was extraordinary, all right; she'd proven it without a doubt, but what Reed pointed out was the truth. The surrounding forests were thick and impenetrable even here near this cabin and fishing camp. Dmitri knew how to track her but he didn't know the area well enough to find her first, and it was only a matter of time before the authorities would come snooping around to check out the gunfire echoing downriver. He didn't have time to waste in beating the bushes.

  A guttural scream shattered the stillness of the dawn, and he glanced down to the riverbank where Misha held Nikolai down with one foot while trying to jerk his arm back into the socket. Misha was laughing while poor Nikolai yelled Russian curses and rolled around like a wolf in a trap. He was a weight lifter, bulked up and corded with muscle, as was his partner, Andre, both hardened from a decade policing the dingy streets of Moscow's worst districts. They wanted to be called Nick and Andy now, were saving their money for white Ford Rangers and big-screen television sets.

  Dmitri returned his attention to Reed. At the moment, he must think only about the job at hand. Vince Saracino had offered Dmitri a masterpiece over which the art world would drool if he would teach Mike Reed a very hard lesson, and teach it Dmitri would.