by Seeley James
Instead, he pulled his earbuds out and heard the footsteps around him on the sidewalk. A glance in a store window, a twisting look at a passing car, and his instincts raised the alarm. He stepped quickly into a narrow alley and waited with his back to the wall.
A sandy-haired man turned the corner, trying to look casual. Yuri slammed him against the opposite wall with his forearm under the man’s chin.
“Who are you?” Yuri noticed a vague familiarity about the man. He was smaller, more compact than the average American, yet had that distinctly American confidence.
“Name is Brad.” There was no fear in the man’s voice. “We met a while back at the coffee shop up the street.”
Yuri nodded. Spy handler or gay? he’d asked at the time. “Why follow me?”
“You’re an impressive man, Mr. Belenov.”
“Major Belenov.”
Brad shrugged and gave him an arrogant grin. Yuri resisted the urge to knee the man in the balls.
“Some people see the future—and some live in the past.” Brad grabbed Yuri’s wrist and elbow and pushed his arm down. “People who grew up with the internet are different from the older generation.”
Yuri stepped back and folded his arms. He stayed silent.
“Some people see the future and notice your work, Yuri. People in high places with vast resources.”
“I would be honored by their praises—if they spoke in person.”
Brad’s arrogant grin disappeared. He lowered his voice. “Strangelove is stuck in the past.”
“Who?”
Brad half-grinned to let Yuri know he appreciated the denial of the super-secret alias.
“Is there something you want?” Yuri asked.
“Ask yourself if you trust Strangelove.” Brad pulled a phone out of his back pocket and slapped it against Yuri’s chest. “When you’re ready, call 6-1-1 and ask for me.”
Brad turned without another word and walked out of the alley and down the street.
Yuri took the SIM card out of the phone and stuck both in his pocket. It was a classic spy contact. An ambiguous offer with nothing concrete exchanged. Brad might be a cut-out, someone acting as an intermediary for a foreign power. Or he could be a false-flag, sent by Strangelove to test his loyalty. Covert operations like Yuri’s banda were always tested for weak links.
Yuri touched his wound. Just thinking about Strangelove’s stabbing stopped his heart and his breathing. He filled with hate like a propane burner lighting up. Escape plans danced through his mind. There were many options, but one constant remained: no matter how he separated the banda from Russia, Strangelove must die in the end. It would take time, and it wouldn’t be easy, but it would happen.
Yuri dialed Strangelove. It was his duty to report as long as he was still under the old man’s command.
The general answered.
Yuri explained Brad’s contact.
“You were right to call me.” Strangelove was the master of voice control. Nothing in the old man’s voice indicated whether he’d been the one who sent Brad. “Send me the phone.”
“At once, sir.” Yuri would make an electronic copy of the SIM card first.
“No doubt you’re wondering what is going on.” Strangelove sighed as if explaining to a child. “There are factions within the Kremlin. Not unlike your Americans with their right wing and left wing. I will take care of it. Nothing should keep you from your duties.”
“Of course, sir. We are already working on the Mexican—”
“Have you heard of a man named Jacob Stearne?” Strangelove asked.
“Not that I recall, sir.”
“He’s the one who shot Viktor Popov. He thinks this is some kind of game. Use your hackers to track him down. Interrogate him. Kill him. Do this now. Not an hour from now. Right now. He works for Sabel Security. Last seen in Barcelona. Traveling with a woman and another man. Don’t take him lightly. He’s a highly-decorated veteran of the US Army Rangers.”
Strangelove killed the call.
CHAPTER 21
“We have a common enemy.” Olivier leaned back and stretched an arm across the couch.
For the first time in her life, Pia was talking to someone who lived her experience. She had been wrong about his children. They had survived the same horror as she, possibly at the same age. His firm gaze gave way to a small nod. They understood each other in the unspoken language of survivors.
“Why did Popov kill her?”
“When the Soviet Union collapsed, the incompetent Yeltsin took over. His grand plans could not defeat the worst of human nature. Russia teetered on the brink of becoming the failed state run by the gangs of oligarchs. Medevtin used the legal system to strip them of their wealth. Now there is a balance in the Russian economy. Because they are the nuclear power, we can all sleep more soundly.”
“Only the living can sleep soundly.” Pia looked at her father. He shrugged.
Tania stood by the picture window. “Hey, where’d y-y-your kids go?”
“The farm is big.” Olivier motioned to a chair.
Tania shook her head. Tania purposely caught Pia’s gaze and gave her a nod, a silent message of concern.
“The oligarchs realized Medevtin could turn on them without notice.” Olivier tilted the wine bottle toward Pia. She nodded. He refreshed her glass. “They became avid investors in offshore businesses—money laundering on an industrial scale. They arranged financing for my company in Luxembourg, Cyprus, and Panama. The debt was consolidated to a company called Santalum. They audit all the day and night. They send the questionable people. Their oversight was too much. So, I took Alan’s advice to refinance. I thought I was free of them. They sent Strangelove.”
“I warned him about Strangelove and sent our agents to help.” Alan reached for the bottle and refilled his glass. “Our people kidnapped the Russian, explained our position that the Jallet family was off limits, and gave him a nasty scar in case he forgot. Our mistake was thinking that was the end of it.”
“Your people went home,” Olivier said. “Strangelove waited the year. I hired the small security team. Strangelove came back. They kidnapped us and took us places. A cold beach far away. He forced me into compromising situations. They took pictures. Kompromat.” Olivier shivered. “When Strangelove finished, Viktor Popov appeared.”
He left the name in the air while they each retreated into their thoughts about facing the horror that Viktor Popov unleashed on him.
“Do you have the documents?” Alan asked.
“In a moment.” Olivier held up a hand and smiled. “Let’s finish Pia’s questions first.”
“What the hell kind of n-n-name is Strangelove?” Tania asked as she crossed the room and looked into the kitchen. “Is he a m-molester or something?”
“It’s from an old movie,” Dad said. “A Cold War satire about nuclear war. If we dropped a nuke on Russia, they had a doomsday device that would light their entire arsenal and destroy the world. Mutually assured destruction. Ironically, within a year of the movie, that premise became the de facto strategy of the Cold War.”
“He keeps kompromat on people as a doomsday device?” Pia asked. “If you come after me, I’ll destroy you.”
Olivier nodded.
She had no desire to know what Strangelove did to Olivier. He wasn’t offering any clues, and if the punctuation was the murder of his wife Bridgette, it must have been horrific.
“Where does Strangelove fit in?” Pia asked. “I thought you said Popov did it.”
“They are two arms of the same body. Strangelove’s GRU is the left arm. Popov’s SVR is the right. The GRU is military. The SVR sends the spy who kills in the night. These two have worked together for decades. This is how they survive the transition from the Union of the Soviets to the Federation Russe.”
“Strangelove abducted you; Popov slit her throat.”
Olivier nodded.
Pia said, “Your children survived the ordeal.”
“Unlike Alan, I
did not have the resources to start my own security firm. In such situations, our top priority is to protect our children.” Olivier nodded at Alan. “I sold the company.”
Pots banged in the kitchen as if a stack had been dropped. The three of them flinched.
“What do they have on Roche?” Pia asked. She craned over the seat but couldn’t see through the doorway. She reached for her purse to keep her pistol close.
Olivier tossed up his hands. “No idea.”
“I’m going to take them down.” Pia stood. “They’ll never be a threat to you again.”
Another strange noise came from the kitchen. Pia drew her weapon and turned.
“It took long years for the wounds to heal for my children and me.” Olivier’s voice was strangely calm. “But I’ve just made the deal that should keep Popov away forever.”
“Like Dad?” Pia rose and, aiming her weapon toward the kitchen, tiptoed around the couch.
Two men in balaclavas pushed Camille into the living room. One held a gun to her head, the other aimed at Pia.
Pia’s muzzle flicked from one to the other.
“You son of a bitch,” Alan hissed.
“Hand me the pistols.” Olivier reached out a hand.
A shadow flitted behind the gunmen.
“OK,” Pia said, “everyone stay calm.”
Pia raised her pistol and turned slowly toward Olivier. “I’m handing it over in three, two.”
After announcing the countdown, the assassins relaxed an infinitesimal but crucial amount. Before she said one, Tania darted the first gunman from behind. Pia darted Olivier. A split-second later, Tania nailed the second man. Pia darted Camille as a precaution.
“I’m taking h-h-high ground, cover me.” Tania grabbed a rifle off one of the thugs and was out the door in a dead run.
Pia took a pair of binoculars from Olivier’s bookshelf and stuffed them into her shocked father’s hands. “Be Tania’s spotter. GO. NOW.”
When the reality struck him, he ran outside, following Tania up the slope toward a shed above the farm buildings. Bullets raked their footsteps and splintered bark off the trees nearby.
Pia dropped her magazine of darts and loaded regular bullets. Outside, she rounded the corner, squatting low, and found a man in body armor aiming at Tania. She fired. He dove, rolled, and returned fire. He aimed high, expecting her to be standing. She fired three more rounds. He dropped.
There was silence.
Another gunman, also wearing body armor, stepped around the edge of the barn and aimed. Pia could see his eyes at the end of his barrel. She dove left. He fired. A chip of grass and dirt flew up near her toes.
Pia rolled behind a retaining wall and scrambled five yards to the left. Jumping to her feet, she saw the barn-man running toward her. He swung his rifle up to shoot her before she had her pistol leveled. For a second, she saw the inside of the barrel. She expected to see the bullet emerge from the dark depths of its interior. Instead, the rifle and the man holding it fell sideways with a shout of pain.
“Only got his armor,” Tania said over their comm link. “The first guy is crabbing around behind Jallet’s Land Rover. Can’t tell if you wounded him. He’s going for the side entrance. There’s another guy—”
A burst of automatic gunfire crackled across the pastoral valley. The bricks in front of Pia sent up shards and dust. Looking around, she could find no solid cover. She scrambled back to the house and ran into the foyer.
She stood in a dark space. Everything in front of her was silhouetted against the living room’s picture window. To her right were the dining room and kitchen, a parlor to her left and a hallway connecting the living and dining areas. Like many ancient homes, this one had been remodeled many times by many generations and was now a rabbit warren of rooms and halls.
A man’s silhouette stepped into view in the living room. Pia fired and rolled and popped up to fire again. Her adversary fired three times. Splinters of wood exploded from a cabinet near her face. She ran right, jumped over chairs, slid across the dining room table, and fired into the foyer. Blood oozed from his unarmored shoulder. He drew back and shouted a curse in Russian.
Pia followed the sound of the wounded man’s footsteps creaking down the farmhouse hallway. She kicked off her shoes and tiptoed to the pantry. She reached around the door frame and fired blindly into the hall. She heard a groan, and a body hit the floor.
In her last training session at the operations center, the instructor spent three hours on how things sound when they drop to the ground. The sound of an unconscious body falling was very different from someone going to ground intentionally. Without a brain to control it, a body would collapse in a heap, making single percussive note. A conscious body would fall with two or more notes as the person braced his fall with a knee or a butt or an elbow.
Pia had just heard a triple percussive thud: butt, elbow, back. Her prey was faking it.
She spun in place and fired through the plaster walls.
She heard her enemy scramble out of the hall into a different room.
Pia’s biggest concern was the children’s safety. If Strangelove showed up, Olivier and his children would pay a heavy price for failing. As pissed as she was at the traitorous Frenchman, she understood his last statement: he was protecting his family. Which left her no choice. She had to subdue these thugs and get the Jallets to safety.
Outside, Tania’s rifle cracked the silence. On the comm link, she said, “I nailed a guy outside, but there’s another coming in the back door.”
Pia moved toward the kitchen but stopped in the middle of the large pantry.
An eerie silence made Pia keenly aware of the wooden floors squeaking beneath her step. The guy could find her the same way she had found him. She stopped and listened. Silence strained her ears. Her heartbeat became the loudest noise in the room.
Then she heard it. A floorboard creaked on the other side of the archway leading to the kitchen. She looked around the room. Flour, canned soups, boxes of staples lined the shelves. Fresh spices and vegetables hung in baskets from the ceiling. A wine cooler at the end of the room gave her the advantage she needed. Its glass front reflected the soldier. He was looking the other way.
Tania’s voice whispered in her earbud. “You h-h-have two guys in the building. I’m coming in the f-f-front door. Don’t sh-sh-shoot me.”
Before she could talk herself out of it, Pia bolted four steps, slamming her body into the pantry wall, and fired three shots into the kitchen.
The soldier had stepped out of range. Luck or instinct, it didn’t matter; her shots missed. They were now an arm’s length from each other, separated by plaster.
Pia remembered a trick Jacob taught her: when ammo’s cheap, take cheap shots. She pushed her pistol around the corner and fired three shots blind. Nothing. No exclamation of pain. No thud of collapse. Only the tinkling of broken glass.
Pia was up against a professional who anticipated her moves.
“I’m i-in,” Tania whispered. “Where are y-y-you?”
Pia could hear the man breathing on the other side of the wall.
He jumped forward, into the space directly in front of her, his rifle inches from her face. Instinctively, she dropped to a crouch, leaving his muzzle over her head. She exploded upward, her shoulder shoving his rifle toward the ceiling as it unleashed a three-round burst. The heel of her hand extended her momentum into his lower jaw. His head bounced off an oak cabinet.
Any other man would’ve had a mild concussion. This man pushed her to the floor with his rifle stock and raised it to pound down on her head.
Pia rolled and kicked. All those years working out for soccer paid off. Her powerful leg hammered his knee, bending it backward. His rifle butt slammed into the floor next to her shoulder. He raised it back up to his shoulder. She kicked again but missed, her foot slamming the wall.
She rolled away and brought her pistol up a split-second ahead of him. She fired her last round. It bounced off his
body armor. The stun effect gave her a second to jump up. She drove off her back foot, twisting her core, and unleashed a powerful elbow to the side of his head. He crumpled behind the kitchen’s work island.
She felt her pack for ammo and found only the dart magazine. She slammed it in and aimed.
Two rounds splintered the wood next to her, fired by the last man. She dropped, crawled around the island, grabbed the Russian’s rifle as he twitched in concussed agony, and aimed.
Her last adversary had ducked out of sight.
She rose slowly to look over the work island. Bullets buzzed her ear. She dropped back.
“Stay d-d-down,” Tania’s voice on the comm link. “Make a n-n-noise, keep his focus.”
The last man’s footsteps creaked the floorboards on her right side as he approached. Pia darted the concussed Russian next to her and readied her pistol for her approaching enemy.
Instead of appearing where she expected, his rifle reached over the top and brushed her head. With her back to it, there was nothing she could do. She jumped forward to get out of the way. A three-round burst blistered her ears.
She stood, aiming at the figure stretched across the granite counter and wondered why she hadn’t felt any bullets hit her back.
Tania stepped in from the hall, her muzzle still smoking. “You g-g-good, sister?”
Pia wrapped her friend in a big hug. “Good. You?”
Tania didn’t answer. She pulled an earpiece out of the dead Russian’s ear and listened to voices for a second. Her face drained. She pushed Pia out of the room. “Russians a-a-are like ants: you f-f-find one, you’re gonna find a whole b-b-bunch more real quick.”
“What do you mean?”
“They have b-b-backup coming. We gotta get o-o-out of here now. N-N-NOW.”
“We have to take the Jalllets with us.”
“What?” Tania screeched. “Are y-y-you insane?”
