by Seeley James
Yuri sent the command to the remote computer to erase its malware and turned off both phones.
“Blyad!” He shouted into the lonely mist. He dialed his father’s phone, his mind racing with questions about his sister. No answer. He hurled it against the wall and jumped up and down on the pieces.
The noise he made masked the approaching boots. He looked up in utter shock when three men burst into his room and pounded him to the floor. He stopped resisting when a rifle pressed against his nose.
“You’re beaten, Yuri.” A fourth man entered the room.
Yuri managed a strained glance over his shoulder to see the familiar voice.
Brad.
The camo-clad gunmen picked him up and shoved him in a chair. They duct-taped his arms and legs. The leader leaned into his visual range and looked him over.
“We’re not here to hurt you, Mr. Belenov. You’re in good hands. We only have you taped up because you keep running away. So, we good?”
Yuri nodded. One of the men ripped the tape off his mouth.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“You don’t need to know—and you don’t get to ask.” Brad picked up Yuri’s second phone and waved it. “Where did you set up the meeting?”
Yuri frowned. The fact that his captors didn’t know had implications about who they were. They were definitely American. It showed in their military tactics and discipline.
Brad slapped him. “I said, we’re not here to hurt you—but we will if you don’t cooperate. So just be a good boy and answer my questions.”
Yuri tried to stare the man down. Brad shrugged and nodded at one of his men. A pair of industrial side cutters crimped down on the last joint of his little finger.
“One knuckle for every hesitation. One finger for every lie. You can count, so do the math on how many chances you get before jerking off becomes a memory. One more time, where did you set the meeting?”
The side cutters pressured his finger and drew blood.
He started nodding involuntarily. “Socotra.”
“What the fuck’s that?”
“An island in the Arabian Sea.”
Brad turned his back on Yuri and pulled a satellite phone from his pocket. Yuri could only hear the local side. “Yeah, won’t work. Too close to Russia, forty thousand inhabitants, witnesses coming out your asshole. I need something of equal distance for both of ’em, preferably on American soil. Whatcha got?”
There was a long pause.
“Yeah, I like that one. How long for them to get there with no funny business? Ten hours. Perfect.” The man clicked off his sat phone and turned back to Yuri.
He handed Yuri the second Africell phone. “Call both of them back, give them this updated location.” He held his phone up with latitude and longitude displayed. “Abandoned base; nearest human inhabitants are two hundred miles away; runway is big enough for small jets and C-130s, but that’s it. They’re allowed one aircraft each. Anything looks out of place, they all die. This deal goes down clean. Both of them walk away unharmed. Got it?”
They sliced the tape off his right hand.
He took the phone and dialed the numbers. He delivered the instructions. After a few sharp and angry questions, Popov and Sabel were pissed but agreed to the change. Yuri handed the phone back.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Brad showed a sick smile. He nodded to someone behind Yuri.
A man stepped around and jabbed a needle into Yuri’s arm. His lights went out.
CHAPTER 66
Standing in the open cargo bay of a Russian Antonov An-12, Pia held her arms up and let the Russian soldier wand her coat. Nothing metal. The soldier pointed down the road a hundred yards where Tania waited. Pia pulled up her fur-lined hood and shoved her gloved hands into her pockets and turned into the icy gray mists.
Her long strides caught her up quickly.
“Any word from Jacob?” Pia asked.
“No Sabel Satellite coverage out here.” Tania held up her phone to prove her point. “Besides, no one’s heard from him since he declared war on Belarus. That was yesterday. Maybe he’s dead.”
“Don’t joke like that.” Pia walked in silence for fifty yards. “He said, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be there.’ Where is ‘there’? We didn’t have the meeting set up at that point. And then we changed it.”
“It’s charming that you have faith in that guy.” Tania shrugged. “I’ll just point out—one more time—that one of your two most trusted agents is with you, right here and now.”
Two inches of wet snow covered the ground. Flurries swirled in the air. They walked down an empty road lined with barren foundations. The original wooden houses that once stood on them had been left to the elements and disintegrated seventy years ago. They trudged on.
Pia’s gut twisted into a knot. She was about to meet the man responsible for recently killing 365 Americans and the murder of her parents. Jacob had told her he felt cold and calm just before engaging in battles. Most people feel hot and scared when facing danger. For the first time, she felt icy. The rising adrenaline in her veins gave her chills. Whether she lived or died today no longer mattered. Only that she got to look in Popov’s eyes and let him feel her rage.
Tania looked around. “I gotta say it again—I don’t like the location change.”
The ground-hugging fog obscured everything in front of them, but they could see vertically fairly well. In the near distance, snow-covered peaks rose into iron clouds. Closer to shore, more fog rolled in as if they were on the set of a horror movie.
“We’re a thousand miles from North America,” Pia said, “and five hundred miles from any sizable city. Popov didn’t have any more time than we did, and we have some advantages here.”
“What the hell is this place, anyway?” Tania asked.
“The site of the only WWII invasion to capture American soil.” Pia gave her a glance. “Twenty-nine hundred Japanese invaded and held it for nearly a year. Fifteen thousand Americans descended on them and took it back in a vicious two-week battle. The Coast Guard kept a base here but packed it up in 2010.”
“Well, thank you, Ms. History Major.”
“You know what the worst part is?” Pia asked. “Only twenty-eight Japanese soldiers survived. The invasion was supposed to give them an air base they could use to disrupt American naval operations. They never built the base or resupplied the garrison because the Americans island-hopped in the South Pacific instead of directly attacking Japan. Colonel Yamasaki and his battalion were sacrificed at the whim of political powers far away. Their deaths were meaningless in the end.”
“The inherent problem with war.”
Her people had cleared Popov and one bodyguard but allowed them a golf cart because the old Russian’s leg wasn’t up to the walk. Eventually, they could make out the golf cart. As they came closer, they could see Popov, a crutch under his arm, thirty feet to the side of the cart. The big man from Jurmala stood next to him with a shredded shoulder pad on his overcoat. Both wore Ushanka hats with the ear flaps down.
Pia and Tania stopped twenty feet away.
“Hand over book.” Popov’s voice crackled with age.
Pia shook her head. “Where are my files?”
“In cart. Box too heavy for man with bad leg.”
Tania started for the golf cart. The big Russian trotted up to her and grabbed her.
“Until you fulfill your part of bargain, no deals.” Popov wagged his finger. “Where is book?”
“Nearby.” Pia watched Tania and the big man return. “I have trust issues.”
“What do you want?”
“Why did you kill my parents?” She waited until he started to speak before cutting him off with a wave of her hand. “I know, you didn’t do it. You got Roche and Hunter to do it. Why?”
He leaned on his crutch and appraised her, head to foot. “I am not therapist. Get help from qualified person.”
“You need those microdots.” She closed the distance b
etween them. “Answer me.”
“You have no understanding.” Popov scowled. “I save world from greatest depression ever. Your father invent new eco-friendly power storage. Sound great to tree-huggers but destroy industry that produce $400 billion of business every day.”
“Democracy harnesses free enterprise. It would have worked out in free markets.”
“No. Democracy is chaos. In 1927, John Deere company invent gasoline-powered combine. It changed farm economics overnight.” Popov snapped his fingers. “One man takes care of land that once support five, ten families. In two years, depression around whole world. Human suffering go on for ten years. Millions starving, homeless, destitute. You see? Democracy, free enterprise, free market—all chaos. We chose orderly transition. Keep coal job, keep oil job, keep natural gas job; many millions of people work, take care of families. Your father would not listen. Stupid.”
“Solar, wind, and nuclear provide better, higher-paying engineering jobs.”
“Does not matter. Your mother and father are still dead. You lose. Where is package?”
She stared at him. He stared back, unrepentant.
The desire to punch him in the face nearly got the better of her.
“Here’s how it’s going down.” Pia stepped to him and towered over him. “Tania is going to verify that what you brought are the originals. Then, I’ll give you what you want.”
“No. We leave box when—”
“I siphoned off another ten million and give it to a charity in Monaco. You need what I have more than I need your offering.” She grabbed his lapel and shook him as her voice rose to a shout. “Take it or leave it.”
Popov scowled and snapped his fingers at his guard. The big guy waved an arm at Tania like an usher.
Tania trotted over to the cart, inspected the box and contents. Then she stepped clear, set the box in the snow, and faced south. She made an odd sweeping gesture, like an aircraft director on a carrier, with her knees bent and her arms gesturing to the ground at her right. She held her pose for several seconds, then rose, picked up the box, and headed back.
“What is meaning of this?” Popov pointed a shaky finger at Tania.
Pia stayed silent.
A small black dot appeared out of the pewter sky and grew larger as it approached. A drone, half the size of a Predator, flew a nearly silent circle around them. It released a small parachute, banked its wings, then headed back into the pea-soup sky.
“This is against rules.” Popov turned his bony finger to Pia.
She shrugged.
Tania ran for the package floating to the ground fifty yards away. The big Russian ran after her. He clubbed her with a meaty fist, sending her sprawling across the snow. He picked up the package, returned, and handed it to Popov.
“Such a gentleman.” Pia glared at the guard.
The big man stared blankly.
“Are these originals?” Popov asked.
“You don’t need to worry about copies,” Pia said.
“I think you lie.” Popov snapped his fingers.
His guard reached into his pocket and retrieved a Russian Grach, the standard Russian Army sidearm. He aimed at Pia’s head.
“We have drone too,” Popov said.
He turned and started limping on his crutch toward the golf cart.
Pia stared straight into the pistol’s barrel and realized that this time she didn’t have a backup plan.
His thumb flicked the safety off. She watched his finger slide inside the trigger guard. It located the proper pressure point and began to tighten. She looked into the Russian’s eyes. He had the same distant, stress-free stare Jacob had when the pressure mounted.
Every fiber in her body tensed.
Pia said, “My drone has a thirty-millimeter chain gun and instructions to kill you if I fall to the ground for any reason.”
“Too bad he speaks no English,” Popov called over his shoulder.
Without warning, the padding on the Russian’s left shoulder exploded. Stuffing and threads shredded outward in slow motion. The bang of a very loud weapon reached her ears in the next instant. He ducked and wheeled to his left, leading with his pistol. He relaxed and raised the barrel skyward, letting the weapon dangle by the trigger guard. He let out what Pia assumed was a Russian curse.
Pia followed his gaze to find Jacob, dirt and snow falling from his shoulders, sighting down a large, long-barreled rifle. To the left and right, Dhanpal and Miguel also rose from the ground, forming a triangle around them.
Dhanpal marched Viktor Popov back to face Pia.
“This is not agreement.” Popov squinted with an angry face.
Jacob disarmed the large Russian and handed Pia the smuggled weapon.
She familiarized herself with the pistol, checked the action, the chamber, the safety.
Tania came at a full run, jumped in the air, and landed both feet in the guard’s back. He fell face first on the ground. In anger, he spun around but checked himself at the sight of Jacob’s rifle. Jacob walked up close, the barrel aimed straight at the guard’s head. The man conceded defeat with raised palms and gave Tania an apologetic nod.
“Get the book.” Pia nodded to Dhanpal.
He took the book and checked Popov for weapons. He gave Pia an all-clear sign, then backed away.
Popov’s eyes darted left and right, looking, hoping, praying for a way out.
Pia stared at the old man and wondered how many of his victims had looked in every direction for salvation before he killed them. How many had begged for their lives? Had he given them time? Hatred multiplied in her stomach and rose with the taste of bile in her throat. She wanted to pull the trigger and avenge the hundreds of innocent lives he had destroyed in his career of evil.
Stefan’s last words rang inside her head. It does nothing but bring you grief and hatred and violence. Love can conquer everything. Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King changed the world without hurting people. You can do this. Leave it all behind and join me.”
“You live good life.” Popov’s defiant tone angered her. “You grew up rich, successful. Nothing to whine about. No reason to pull trigger.”
Pia felt herself squeezing off the first shot as if someone else were pulling the trigger. Neither intentional or unintentional, it was more of a reaction with no regrets.
She hadn’t aimed properly. The bullet passed through his left forearm. “That’s for Flight 1028.”
She aimed her second shot. It hit his right femur as planned. “That’s for Tatyana Sochneva.”
His crutch came out from under his arm. He snatched at the handle, caught it, and kept his weight on it. With his other hand, he grabbed at the bleeding hole in his leg. He looked up at her with pathetic tears streaming down his face.
“Do you remember her? She’s the daughter of Olesya Sochneva.” Pia fired the third round into his left femur. “That’s for Olesya.”
Popov’s knees collapsed against each other, propping him up in horrific pain. His lips trembled. He tried to form words.
She watched him and waited. When he said nothing, she fired the fourth round into his abdomen, off-center to prevent hitting the spine. She didn’t want him to lose feeling in his legs before he died. Popov crumpled at the waist, still propped up by his odd tripod of two dysfunctional legs and a crutch. “That’s for Bridgette Jallet.”
“Please.” He gasped. “Mercy.”
She shot him in the heart. “That’s for Sandra Velocitane—Mom.”
Popov fell to the ground, landing on his back. He groaned. He looked at his chest and saw the blood pumping out.
She stepped closer and leaned over, looking into his fading eyes. “This is for Lloyd Aston, my first dad.”
She shot him in the right eye.
Popov died.
“This is for Alan Sabel, my second dad.” She shot him in the left eye.
She stood for a full minute, staring silently at the gore. The gun dangled by her side. Then she said, “And
this is for fucking with American democracy.”
She emptied the magazine in his carcass.
CHAPTER 67
Mr. Stalingrad stared at me with wide eyes and a face drained of color. He began shaking his head back and forth. Thankfully, he was man enough not to shit himself. His anxiety was understandable, but pretty far down my list of things to worry about. Ms. Sabel’s sanity was right up there at the top. I raised my palms and tried to calm him. I wasn’t getting anywhere because he didn’t speak English. I turned him over to Miguel, who speaks French, and stepped quietly to Ms. Sabel.
I put an arm around her shoulders. She leaned into me.
“Want to talk about it?” I asked.
“No.”
“OK.” Hell, I’m no therapist.
The cold breeze picked up a notch and stung my ears. Watching her stare at Popov’s carcass made me ache inside. I knew something she didn’t: a cold-blooded killing haunts you for a long time. Even when you have a good reason, and the guy deserved it, you always know you had the option to take him in and let the rule of law run its course. Right now, there was nothing I could do or say to make it better. She was staring at him and thinking something dark and sinister about herself. My best course of action was to change the subject, keep her mind intact until we could get back to civilization and get some treatment from a real psychoanalyst.
I said, “I never heard your mom’s name before.”
“I’ve never said it out loud before.”
“Sandra Velocitane sounds like a nice name. I’ll bet she was—”
“Stop.” She twisted out of my embrace. “I want to revel in this moment.”
Mercury stood on the opposite side of me. Hoo-doggy, that’s some sick shit right there, homie. She could turn evil from here. You need to pull her out of it. I don’t want another Caligula on my hands.
I said, Are you saying you turned Caligula evil?
Mercury said, Those were my drinking days, OK? I thought we were just messing around, but it got dark and sick real fast. I am not going there again, bro. Work on her.
We stared at Popov for a long time. After a couple minutes, she reached out and took my hand.