18 Minutes

by Ethan Jones

  That’s when the first bullet pierced the truck’s windshield. Maxim was lucky; the bullet missed his head by a couple of inches. He flinched and thought about pulling his pistol. Considering the distance, his wounded arm, and the erratic driving, he doubted firing would do him any good. He shook his head. No, I’m going to win this fight if I keep driving.

  The opposition thought otherwise.

  A couple of rounds lifted sparks off the truck’s grille. Maxim lowered his head, but never let his eyes off the target. More bullets shredded the windshield. Maxim pulled his pistol and used it to clear the remaining pieces of windshield glass.

  The shooting stopped.

  Perhaps they ran out of bullets, or gave up, he thought.

  It was neither.

  Darko had changed tactics. Half of his body appeared through the large roof opening of the SUV. He was swinging a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

  Maxim glanced at the pistol. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stop Darko, not before he pulled the launcher’s trigger and fired the fatal shot.

  So Maxim did the next best thing.

  He pulled hard on the steering wheel. The truck turned to the left.

  The 40mm grenade shot out of the launcher’s mouth at a hundred and twenty-five yards per second, hiding the Lada behind the light gray-blue launch smoke. The projectile screamed through the air toward Maxim.

  He saw it out of the corner of his eye as it slammed into the side of the dump truck. The explosion took out the hopper, detaching it from the rest of the truck. The impact was so powerful that Maxim almost lost control of the truck. It tipped to the side, threatening to roll over.

  Maxim threw his weight to the other side, fighting with the steering wheel, trying to bring the truck’s front left wheel back to the tarmac. He jerked the wheel one way, then the other, until the truck returned to somewhat of a straight line.

  A line toward Darko, who had reloaded his launcher and had aimed it again at Maxim. At the short distance of only seventy yards and closing in quite fast, Maxim doubted Darko would miss. The grenade exploding inside the cab would either kill Maxim on the spot, or severely wound him and cause the truck to roll over.

  So he decided to do it for Darko.

  Maxim leaned onto the wheel, turning it right, then sharply cutting to the left. The dangerous maneuver swung the truck around, lifting one of the back wheels off the runway. Maxim threw the steering wheel in the other direction, then braced for what was coming.

  The truck flipped onto its side. The window’s glass shattered and sharp pieces cut into Maxim’s arms, which he had raised to protect his face and his head.

  Then the truck rolled over.

  Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion, but Maxim knew both the truck and the Lada were going at full speed. The top of the cab caved in slightly, but the hard metal frame remained in place. The crumpled roof brushed against Maxim’s head, and he felt the sharp metal cut into his skin. The crash tried to throw him around like a sock in the dryer, but the seatbelt mostly held him in place.

  The dump truck rolled again onto the other side and slid toward the Lada. Maxim pushed his body as far as he could from the window. The side of the truck scraped against the runway, lifting sparks. A couple of them burned against Maxim’s face.

  Those were the least of his worries.

  The Lada slammed into the truck’s chassis.

  A great explosion came from outside, perhaps three yards away from the mangled cab. Flames tried to lick at the door, so close to Maxim’s face that he felt the heat. A series of smaller explosions followed as the truck slid across the runway a few more feet, and the flames began to chew at the plastic window seal.

  As soon as the truck stopped, Maxim tried to unfasten his seat belt. He pulled hard, but the clip was stuck in the buckle. So he wiggled his body away from the seat, then crawled out of the front window. He stood up, but only for a moment. His knees failed him, and he collapsed onto the tarmac. Maxim lay there for a brief moment, then gathered the strength to climb onto his shaky knees. He turned around and looked at the wreckage. The Lada was engulfed in flames, and black smoke spiraled from the side and the back of the dump truck.

  Maxim sighed and glanced at the bruises and cuts on his arms. The left-arm wound was the worst one. Even though it was a flesh wound, it was bleeding a lot. Then his eyes went to his wristwatch. He smiled and nodded to himself. The package is gone, but he had that coming. The opposition is eliminated. Sasha is safe, and so is the witness. And all that took way less than eighteen minutes…

  Chapter Nine

  Sheremetyevo International Airport

  Moscow Oblast, Russia

  Maxim drew in an easier breath when he saw a white-and-blue police sedan approach the scene. He wasn’t sure if they were friends or foes, but at this point, it didn’t really matter. He had accomplished his assignment, although far from as expected. However, considering the alternative of Rabinovich’s escaping, stopping the Cessna from taking off was the best available option, and Maxim had taken it.

  He thought about it for a moment, then a wave of angst zipped through his mind. What … what if the banker was never on the plane? Would the AP mercs and the SVR agents have acted the way they did if the plane was empty? He shook his head. I know what I saw. That was Rabinovich. He was in the Cessna. The DNA tests will confirm everything. He looked at the burned wreckage. Yes, forensics can associate any body parts with the banker.

  Maxim then turned his gaze to the other side. An ambulance was going in that direction. Maxim nodded. Yes, Sasha … I hope he doesn’t lose his leg, or part of it. If he can’t run, his career is over. Maxim cursed out loud at the turn of events. This was supposed to be quite easy. He shook his head.

  The police car stopped a few yards away from him. Two police officers stepped outside, guns drawn, and pointed them at Maxim. “Hands up. Up in the air.”

  “I’m unarmed,” Maxim said. “And I work for the FSB.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Get your hands up.”

  Maxim shrugged and obeyed the order. The gestures caused a ripple of pain to shimmer through his upper body. He thought about his agency ID card. It was still in his jacket, which he had thrown by the UAZ right before the shooting had started.

  One of the police officers dashed to Maxim and twisted his arms behind his back.

  Maxim bit his lips as the rough hands of the officer made the wound to his shoulder worse. But the FSB agent wasn’t going to complain about the treatment. He had gone through much worse and could handle a bit of police “love.”

  “Where are your papers?” asked the second police officer, who was still keeping his pistol aligned with Maxim’s head.

  “In my jacket. Should be there, with my partner.” He gestured with his head.

  A second ambulance with its blaring siren was driving along the tarmac and coming toward them.

  “You made a big mess here,” said the first police officer.

  Maxim nodded. “It was necessary. Call my boss, Director Yezhov at FSB HQ. He’ll explain.”

  The police officer gave Maxim a cockeyed glance. “You’re really FSB?”

  “Would I dare you to call if I were bluffing?”

  “No, but—”

  “Just make the call.”

  The officer shrugged and pulled out his phone. “I’m going to call my boss. Don’t move.”

  Maxim shook his head. “I have nowhere to go.”

  A couple of young paramedics jumped out of the ambulance as soon as it stopped behind the police sedan. One of them rolled a gurney, while the other carried a first-aid kit. The paramedic asked the officer to uncuff Maxim, and when the officer refused, the paramedic insisted, claiming the restriction would cause arterial occlusion or nerve damage to the subject. Maxim didn’t think the handcuffs were that tight around his wrists, but he wasn’t about to complain. When the police officer reluctantly removed the handcuffs, the paramedics placed Maxim on the gurney and rolled him to the ambu
lance. The officer stood a couple of steps away from the vehicle, in case Maxim decided to make a run for it.

  When the paramedics began to clean and dress his wounds, Maxim asked, “How’s Sasha?”

  “Who’s that?” said one of the paramedics, the one who had convinced the police officer to allow the medical treatment.

  “My partner. He’s shot in the leg. Another ambulance is there with him…”

  “Let me check,” said the second paramedic and stepped outside.

  He returned a minute later. “They’re stabilizing him and will take him to the hospital.”

  “And his leg?”

  The paramedic shrugged. “We’ll see how it heals. You never know with that sort of wound…”

  Maxim nodded and muttered a brief prayer for Sasha. I hope the bone’s only fractured… He sighed and drew in a deep breath, while the paramedics bandaged his wounds. They were almost finished when the second police officer came to the ambulance. He pointed at his phone, then handed it to Maxim. “It’s your boss…”

  “From the FSB?” Maxim grinned.

  The officer wasn’t amused. “Take it before I change my mind…”

  You’re not going to. Maxim decided not to push his luck. He took the phone without another word to the officer, then said, “Yezhov, this is—”

  “Yes, Maxim, now why is the airport turned into a battlefield?”

  “I can explain what—”

  “You’d better have an exceptionally good explanation for the mayhem you’ve caused. What part of ‘discreet’ was unclear?”

  Maxim moved the phone away from his ear as Yezhov’s shouts grew louder. He looked at the paramedic still working on the gauze on Maxim’s left hand and said, “Can you give me a minute? This is important…”

  “And so is this…”

  “Yes, but it can wait.”

  The paramedic shook his head and dropped the rest of the gauze in the first-aid kit. “Fine, if you want to keep bleeding…”

  “Close the doors.”

  The paramedic slammed the ambulance doors as he stepped outside.

  Maxim said, “Director, I had little choice in the matter.” He told Yezhov about the AP security contractors and the SVR agents and how they had opened fire. When he came to the part where he saw the banker at the door of the plane, Yezhov cut Maxim off. “Rabinovich was there, and you saw him?”

  “Yes, of course I did.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Absolutely. Why?”

  “We’ve received a report that the banker never boarded the plane.”

  “And that is accurate?”

  “The source is the SVR.”

  “The same SVR that tried to kill me.”

  Yezhov sighed. “Things really got out of hand there.”

  “If they did, it wasn’t my fault. Perhaps I overreacted, but Rabinovich would have disappeared. I couldn’t let that happen…”

  “Your assignment wasn’t to eliminate him or stop him from escaping, if he was on the plane—”

  “He was on the plane.”

  “As I was saying, your job was to transfer him to the safehouse. The way you’re telling the story, the banker was never in your custody. But you were fired upon, and, instead of calling for backup, you decided to take charge of the situation. In the process, you killed everyone aboard the Cessna and on the ground. Is that a fair summary?”

  Maxim shook his head. “No, it’s not. There was no time for backup. The detainee, my detainee was being whisked away, before my eyes, by the people who were supposed to hand him over. They tried to kill me, and Sasha is badly wounded.”

  “Is he?” Yezhov’s voice rang out without much concern.

  “He is, but you never let me tell the entire story. It’s easy to reflect now, or later, about how things could have gone. But at the time, I only had one moment to react, and I did. The consequences are what they are, but it would have been worse if I sat there and did nothing.”

  “I don’t think so,” Yezhov said in a somber tone. “There will be an inquiry on what happened, your role, and how this entire mess could have been avoided.”

  Maxim bit his lip. He moved the phone away from his mouth and cursed under his breath. He felt the ground sinking underneath his feet. Yezhov and the FSB and SVR superiors would lay the blame on Maxim and Sasha. Since this was Maxim’s assignment, and because of his major role in the gunfight, he would be the fall guy.

  He said, “Sure, I’d welcome an inquiry,” even though he didn’t. “And I’d like the investigators to interview a witness, a woman who was here and saw everything.”

  “What is her name?”

  “I don’t know. I never asked her for her name. But I have a description. She said she worked for the GRU.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s what she said. She had some kind of ID that she showed to one of the AP guys. Then they tried to kill her.”

  He gave Yezhov a description of the blonde woman. Maxim knew it wasn’t much, but he had high hopes that she could be found. That is, if she hadn’t lied about working for the GRU. Or maybe she was somehow related to Rabinovich.

  When Maxim was finished, Yezhov said, “All right, Maxim. Get better now, and we’ll discuss this when you return to the office. Investigators will want to talk to you as soon as you can.”

  “Anytime—I have no problem talking to anyone, anytime.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  Yezhov ended the call, and Maxim sighed. When I thought this mess was over, I find out it has just started…

  Chapter Ten

  Three weeks later

  FSB Headquarters, Lubyanka Building

  Downtown Moscow, Russia

  Maxim flattened the front of his gray jacket and tightened the knot of his black tie. His hands had begun to tremble, and he tried to steady them by holding onto the black briefcase resting on his lap. His left foot tapped almost involuntarily, and he forced himself to stop it. Maxim drew in a deep breath, but didn’t feel his lungs fill.

  He stood up and paced to the end of the hall. He was waiting outside a conference room at one of the corners of the headquarters that he had never wanted to visit. Some people called it “The Dead Wing,” since that’s where careers—and sometimes operatives as well—died, or received grave news. The FSB’s internal inquiry had been completed three days ago. Maxim hadn’t asked around about the results. He knew they weren’t good.

  The FSB forensic team ran the DNA analysis, and it was confirmed that one of the bodies burned beyond recognition in the airplane wreckage belonged to Rabinovich. The owners of MoscOil were furious. They’d wanted to interrogate the banker and extract punishment from him, opportunities that Maxim had taken away. Besides, the entire airport cock-up had cost a total of fifty million dollars in damages, not including the lost revenue from downed airplanes, cancelled flights, and the clean-up expenses.

  The investigators hadn’t been able to locate the woman. There were no records that she worked or had ever worked for the GRU. Whatever ID she had shown to the AP security team was either a forgery or not a GRU agency card. Maxim wasn’t convinced the investigators had looked hard enough. She had no connections to anyone involved in this matter, and, as far as they were concerned, she was there at the wrong time and at the wrong place. Maxim didn’t believe in such things. There was a reason she was there. But what was it?

  The security cameras along the walls of the Jet Solutions building had not provided anything of use. The largest part of the interactions had happened outside the frame of the security cameras’ lenses. And, as expected, not one of the company’s fifty employees, who had been in the building at the time, had seen or heard anything.

  Maxim shook his head and returned to his uncomfortable leather chair. He glanced at the puncture holes the stitches had left on his right hand. The left-arm wound and most of the cuts had healed well, and he considered himself very fortunate. If one of the glass shards had severed a muscle, and he had lo
st the use of a finger—especially the index finger—or the thumb, his career in the FSB would be over.

  He sighed and shook his head. My career might be over as it is.

  He thought of how long this meeting was going to last and about the visit to Sasha at the hospital. He had fared much worse than Maxim. The bullet had fractured the femur of Sasha’s left leg. The surgeons had been able to reset the bone, and the initial recovery was going well. It would be at least a couple more weeks before the doctors could ascertain that Sasha had regained full range of motion. And it wasn’t a safe bet. Physiotherapy was looking promising, but if there was a setback… I hope that doesn’t happen.

  At least Sasha hadn’t been reprimanded, since he had played a limited role in the fighting. When he’d be able to return to the office at full capacity, he would be welcomed back to the fold of the SVR.

  Maxim had been put on restricted duty for the length of the inquiry. Instead of transporting detainees, he was now shuffling paperwork from one FSB department to the other. He had to plow through skull-numbing intelligence reports, which had already been combed through by teams skilled in this type of analysis. He had been sent to a couple of boring training sessions and conferences, but he hadn’t learned anything he couldn’t read out of a good book. Coupled with the embarrassment he had caused to the FSB operatives that had followed him and Sasha as part of a prank, as they were briefly detained and interrogated by the police, Maxim’s situation had gravitated from bad to worse.

  “Maybe the inquiry conclusions won’t be that bad,” he whispered to himself, but he didn’t believe the words that left his mouth.

  He drummed his fingers on his briefcase, then looked at the conference room door, just as it opened. A deeply frowning Yezhov stepped outside and tipped his head, gesturing for Maxim to come inside. When he did, Yezhov motioned toward the man sitting at the head of the square, black table. “This is Director Izhutin from Internal Investigations. He led the inquiry team, and he’ll inform you of the results.”