by Seeley James
I got on the bike and peeled out without waiting for him.
Ten minutes later, I found it. Sylvia failed to describe it in proper detail. It was a mid-century concrete silo with a flat roof. An ideal sniper’s nest. But that didn’t matter, because Stalingrad’s sniper was lying next to me, out cold.
I took up his position and sighted his rifle. It was an SVLK-14 Sumrak, one of the most powerful rifles made and the only model I didn’t have in my collection. I nodded thanks to the unconscious sniper and repositioned myself. Mr. Stalingrad and three of his friends paced impatiently around the van, rubbing their gloved hands for warmth. Inside it, the film crew cowered in the cramped space with a fourth Russian. That left three more Russians unaccounted for.
I searched the grounds for five minutes trying to find the missing men.
I was deep in the search when someone grabbed my ankle and dragged me backward three feet. Spinning over, I scrambled for my pistol before realizing it was Miguel. He crouched below Stalingrad’s visual range with a shit-eating grin. The downside to having an American Indian best friend is that he lives the stereotype. He really can sneak up on you. He does that skinwalker thing, turning himself into a church mouse.
Dhanpal climbed the ladder and rolled onto the roof. “We could only get three of them without open warfare.”
“You guys followed me?”
“Ms. Sabel sent us to help you back in Jurmala,” Dhanpal said. “She figured you’d get in over your head sooner or later. We were the car following you when you bought the bike. We were trying to call you, tell you we were there to help.”
“It’s amazing how far you’ll go to make your girl think you’re a hero.” Miguel punched my shoulder. “Bianca tracked you since you turned your phone off.”
“Had to concentrate.” I picked up the spotter’s field glasses. “Can’t talk and ride a bike at 200 kph.”
“OK.” Miguel shrugged. “Talk or shoot?”
He was asking which task I wanted. No sense in letting Stalingrad know the cavalry had arrived. Or, in this case, the Indians. I waved my phone at him and waited until he got dialed in on the sniper rifle. Dhanpal shimmied back down to the ground for his part.
Watching the Russians through spotter’s binoculars, I called Sylvia.
“Hop out but don’t stand within arm’s reach of the guy.” I hesitated. “He has a lot longer reach than you might think.”
“Most men do.” She got out, holding the phone to her ear. Stalingrad’s attention turned to her. Before he could ask any questions, Miguel put a bullet into the pavement a quarter inch from each of his big toes.
Stalingrad shot a scowl my way. A light cloud of gunsmoke gave away our position.
I waved. “Tell him to line his men up against the wall, or they can die where they stand. That includes the guy in the van.”
Sylvia relayed the message.
Stalingrad looked like he was having open-bowel surgery without a shot of vodka. Miguel put a round through his right shoulder pad. Stuffing and threads flew out. Stalingrad didn’t flinch. He scowled and snapped his fingers. All four of them lined up against the wall. One guy thought we were going to execute him. He trembled like a leaf in an Iowa tornado.
Sylvia and the crew got in the van and left as fast as they dared on the icy road.
Dhanpal collected the Russians’ weapons and gave Stalingrad my most beloved possession: a five-inch statue of Mercury. Stalingrad waved the statue at me. He believed he had what he came for. Which he did—until Popov figured out otherwise. I felt a little bit bad for lying to him. But not my problem. It would give us time to get back to the Sabel jet and out of the Baltics.
Dhanpal tied them up with duct tape while Miguel kept them from wiggling their way out. When we were done, I decided the sniper’s rifle was a good trade for the little statue and slung it over my back for the ride.
In minutes, we were on the road back to Vilnius, about thirty minutes behind Sylvia. Back on my bike, I followed Miguel and Dhanpal in their rented Ford Edge. It was another long ride, and my butt was already sore.
It had been a long day. Halfway through, it was all I could do to stay awake.
The day was gray, visibility low, the landscape monotonous. My eyelids slumped, and my chin drooped. I almost missed the helicopter that flew parallel to the highway for a few hundred yards.
It stayed too far out to identify any markings. It hugged the ground, then rose, tilted forward, and zipped away into the foggy morning.
Dhanpal clicked me on the comm link. “Are you a wanted man in Poland too?”
“We crossed into Lithuania ten minutes ago.”
“And nothing bad happened in Lithuania?”
“Not yet.” I thought about it. “That’s where we left the jet. We did a low-key entry into Latvia.”
We drove on in silence for a minute before it hit me. If you’re a Russian in search of military support, Medevtin’s staunchest ally is Belarus. We were only twenty miles from the Belarus border, running parallel. I buzzed them back, but they didn’t pick up.
I came over a small rise in time to see the white smoke trail from the anti-tank rocket heading from the helicopter straight to their car. Miguel had already burned the brakes; the nose of his ride was diving for the pavement. The rocket grazed the left-front fender and exploded two car lengths away. The shock wave blew their car five feet up in the air, spun it three times and dropped it on its side in a roadside marsh.
My bike skidded to a stop, like every other car on the highway. I jumped off and pulled my prized sniper rifle. I sighted the chopper through the scope: a Russian Mil Mi-25 attack helicopter with Belarus markings. It hovered at an altitude of fifty feet to keep him off local radar. It was wheeling its Yak-B Gatling gun into position to finish off my friends. I fired a round into the engine. Nothing happened. Armor. I tried another, watching my ammo because sniper rifles have small mags. The second cracked the pilot’s windscreen and got his attention. The gunship turned toward me. I put a bullet into the rotor hub, a helicopter’s most vulnerable part.
The SVLK’s accuracy was amazing. So was its power. The bullet shattered the critical feathering hinge, causing the pitch links to fly off. The pilot no longer had control of the rotors that gives it lift and direction. He wisely shut down the power before the rotors turned him over and cartwheeled him across southern Lithuania. But his ship immediately became as aerodynamic as a rock. He fell straight to earth.
I ran for Miguel’s crash site. Fuel poured out of the ruptured tank.
Miguel emerged from inside. He stood on the rear door, let out a war-whoop, and started jumping up and down on the edge. I thought he’d gone nuts until the car dropped onto its wheels with a splash in the inch-deep murky bog. As I arrived, he ripped the passenger door off and yanked on Dhanpal’s torso. I lent a hand. With three tugs, we extracted our buddy from the tangled seatbelt and airbag remnants. Miguel stood him on his wobbly legs and checked him out.
Dhanpal took a second to do a systems check before giving us a big smile.
“Wahoo!” Miguel leaned back to shout. “What a ride! We should do that again.”
Mercury came splashing through the weeds. Get on that bike and get moving, dawg. You gotta get to Attu yesterday. All three of you. If you don’t, Pia-Caesar-Sabel is going to die.
I said, Chill. We have a tradition of celebrating when we cheat death. Besides, I’m going to take Sylvia home.
Mercury grabbed me by the shoulders. Will you listen to me for once, dude? Sylvia’s flying commercial. You’re going to Attu.
Behind me, Dhanpal said to Miguel, “Is he OK?”
And Miguel answered him, “He gets messages.”
I said, You’re just jealous of Aphrodite and me. I don’t care what you say, I’m in love with—
Mercury shook me like a rag doll. Are you listening to me? I’m a god, and I’m telling you to go to Attu. Holy Diana, you’re as deaf as the goddamn Ayatollah.
I said, Is this like
the deal with Noah? Go and build—
A bolt of lightning struck the crashed chopper with an earsplitting crack followed by a deafening explosion. Ukko walked out of the fireball heading toward us. He pointed his hammer at me. I instinctively ducked.
I said, Is he like Thor or something?
Mercury said, Regional cousins. Don’t worry about it. Right now, he’s covering your tracks because even he knows how important this is. You. Have. To. Go—
I said, Attu, OK. Why does that sound familiar? Is that like Valhalla?
Mercury said, Look it up.
Behind me, Dhanpal asked, “Is he losing it?”
Miguel answered, “The guy just saved your life. Have faith.”
Mercury’s voice was rushed and angry. Just get your squad moving. You need to leave right now.
Ukko walked up, crossed his arms, and gave me one mean-ass glare. You have god on your side, and you argue? Move it, or the next bolt is yours.
Life is not going your way when two gods are yelling at you.
Or maybe it is. I’m never sure about these things.
I turned to my companions. “We gotta go.”
Miguel struck out for the bike. Dhanpal reluctantly followed.
I stared at Mercury for a minute. When Ukko raised his hammer, I ran after my pals. A lightning bolt struck the Ford. The fireball singed my back.
We reached the highway shoulder. The three of us stopped and stared at the one-and-a-half seater BMW.
I said, “We need to call a cab.”
Miguel said, “You just shot down an Eastern Bloc bird in a NATO country. You’ll be answering questions until spring. Got time for that Inquisition?”
“We can’t all ride that.”
“You kidding me?” Dhanpal asked. “When I go back to visit the grandparents, I see whole families riding on smaller bikes than this in Mumbai.”
Being small and lithe, he hopped on the gas tank. I got on behind him. Miguel, the size of a redwood, got on the back. Barely.
Awkward isn’t the right word for it. I’ll just skip ahead to the part where we arrived in Vilnius.
Sylvia and her crew were miffed about being relegated to commercial. They grabbed their gear and sneered their way to the waiting limo that Sabel Security’s help desk arranged. All but Sylvia slid inside. The driver held the door for her. She stood there, waiting for an explanation from me.
There were no explanations that made sense. I was going on a mission because an unemployed god, who could be nothing more than a figment of my imagination, told me to. I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around her and tell her how madly I’d fallen in love with her. Her eyes told me she was waiting for me to say that. What her eyes weren’t saying was how she would react. Given our many broken dates—and the fact that I was kicking her off a private jet for reasons I’d refused to explain—I didn’t hold out much hope for our future.
We faced each other, not quite close enough for a kiss.
“Where are you going?” Sylvia asked.
“Somewhere.” I sighed and looked across the apron to the main terminal.
“Are you going to kill people?”
My eyes snapped back to her with too much ferocity. She winced and backed up.
I took a deep breath. “Did we kill anyone in Jurmala?”
She nodded her understanding, but her eyes still avoided mine. “Someone shot down a helicopter. They grounded all the flights for a while. Was that you? Did you kill the people in that helicopter?”
“They fired a missile at Miguel—” my voice rose with my temper “—and were about to finish him off with a four-barrel Gatling gun that fires four thousand rounds a minute. Should I have let them?”
She turned, sniffled back some tears, and got in the limo.
I texted Ms. Sabel. “Don’t worry. I’ll be there.”
CHAPTER 65
Yuri rode through rain all night, stopping only to find a trash bag to keep his backpack dry. He tried but couldn’t listen to his treasured jazz playlists. Betrayal occupied every cycle of thought he had the entire way. Brutus betrayed his uncle Julius Caesar and was pardoned by Mark Antony only to be hunted down by Augustus. He ultimately committed suicide after losing the Battle of Philippi. Hitler betrayed Stalin when he ignored the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and launched Operation Barbarossa. He committed suicide when the Russians poured into Berlin. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg betrayed their country’s nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. The fact that all those traitors died in the end, gave him no solace. His hatred for Roman grew by the mile. Was he so desperate for a lieutenant that he overlooked warning signs? How could Roman have been so stupid?
He arrived in Freetown, Sierra Leone late the next morning. After risking breakfast from a street vendor, he found an ugly motel on the beach. An unfinished apartment building crouched next door, its rotting concrete, and crumbling support beams slowly sinking into the sand.
He had one last anonymous account which he used for the room. He took a shower and a nap.
It was a fitful sleep. When he woke up from dreaming about Alexi’s splash into the Stavanger harbor, he fell back only to see Vasili’s body on a stretcher being pushed beneath Jacob Stearne’s judgmental nose. When that woke him, he closed his eyes again and saw Andrine. The worst ghost of them all. She didn’t judge, she didn’t beg, she just clawed at his wrists without mercy.
He sat up rubbing those wrists.
He needed a different topic to occupy his mind. He considered his plans. If Igor and Petr were not in this duplicity with Roman, he owed them a warning at least. Sierra Leone had little internet access outside the high-end hotel district. He walked to a phone store and bought a pair of Africell phones. He made a hotspot for his laptop with one and reserved the other for the call.
The assembly of hijacked computers around the world was still working. A few of them had been compromised, but plenty had survived. He logged on SHaRC’s dark-web server. Several coded posts indicated the others were making progress. Some of the posts were mere minutes ago. He posted his warning that Roman had turned on them. He hesitated for a long time, considering whether to tell them of his harrowing escape. In the end, he decided against it. No need to worry them yet.
He had to act fast to have any chance of survival.
He dialed Viktor Popov and Pia Sabel and put them both in a phone conference.
When they were on the line, he started. “Each of you wants what the other has. I want immunity from both sides.”
Pia spoke first. “Immunity, amnesty, pardons are the prerogative of my government. I have no influence over them. I will speak on your behalf about what you’re attempting to do here. That’s all I can give you.”
Popov coughed. “We come back to subject later. First, I must know, why does Ms. Sabel want kompromat on Roche?”
“Many people in my country believe he intends to destroy democracy,” she said. “The information you possess can answer that.”
Popov scoffed. “You Americans think everything is either democracy or autocracy. You don’t see real world. Become enlightened. It is a struggle between order and chaos. Medevtin brought order to Yeltsin’s chaos. Roche will do same for USA.”
“Democracy is always chaos.” Pia huffed. “It’s a terrible way to run a country—it’s also the best.”
“Yes. Do what you must. Do it without involving me.”
“You are involved, Mr. Popov.” She paused. “Until your country’s oligarchs find out you’ve been siphoning off hundreds of millions from Santalum. If I’m not mistaken, Santalum is their private company where they stash their billions.”
“You talk nonsense like stupid girl.”
“We’re certain Medevtin and his friends are unaware of your personal fund. Pozdeeva left seven hundred microdots in your dacha. My people looked them over. We’ve verified a few of the accounts. In fact, just to test our theory, we took ten million US dollars from account 4929310-N and donated it to the Ukrainian Humanitarian Initiat
ive in your name. They were ecstatic. Check your email.”
Yuri muted his phone to hide his snickering. Then he thought about her chances. Brash as she was, Popov would most likely kill her. Either way, he stood to walk away clean if this went well. In the background, he and Ms. Sabel could hear Popov typing away on his keyboard. No doubt checking to see if he was down ten million.
“We have deal,” Popov said nervously. “We meet in Sevastopol in four hours.”
“In Russian-occupied Crimea?” Ms. Sabel asked. “Not a chance. Neutral territory.”
“I have a plan,” Yuri said. “I’ve devoted thought and resources to this. But I want immunity first.”
“You make proposal,” Popov said. “I promise not to kill your sister.”
Yuri couldn’t speak for a moment. His father told him they’d made it to Istanbul. “You son of a bitch!”
“American curses? You are a failed Russian. You get no immunity. Make your proposal, or you hear her die now.”
Yuri took a deep breath. He would kill Popov and ask for immunity from Popov’s replacement. But that would come later. Sabel had come through for him with Strangelove; there was a small chance she could pull it off against Popov. For Yuri, it was worth everything to take that chance.
“Socotra.” He waited for Sabel and Popov to look it up. “You both arrive and park your airplanes at opposite ends of the airstrip. Come in person. You will be allowed one bodyguard. No weapons. You will walk to the opposing aircraft to be searched by guards from the opposition. You will then walk two kilometers perpendicular to the airstrip, curving toward each other, and make your exchange there.”
“Socotra?” Ms. Sabel asked. “The World Heritage island?”
“The territory of Yemen,” Yuri said. “No military installations. And none allowed.”
“Acceptable,” Popov said. “With one requirement for Ms. Sabel: You must prove there are no copies of microdots.”
“We will be there at the appointed hour. There will be no proof.” She clicked off.
“Suka!” The Russian word for bitch. Popov dropped the call.
