The Zoya Chronicles Boxed Set

by Kate Sander

  “I have a funny feeling I’m not getting out of this one, buddy.”

  Leo growled softly.

  “No, it’s true. You need to watch your back in there, alright? I go down, you get out. You got that?”

  He happily panted away and enjoyed the ear scratches. Senka shook her head. She didn’t know who she was trying to convince.

  She sighed, “Alright buddy, let’s get going.” He sprang to his feet. They jogged north in the direction of the compound. She had on her wrist unit. It was equipped with GPS tracking and the target was about three kilometers away.

  “Perfect time of night for a jog, hey buddy?”

  Leo bounded beside her. She always loved being with him. He was so happy to be alive. She wished she would have thought of owning a dog sooner. They had only been together a little over a week but Senka felt as though they were inseparable.

  They jogged through fields and over fences, avoiding the roads. The cold air flooded her lungs. Senka’s mind went to her prison break in The Other Place, running under the Northern Lights to freedom. There were no Northern Lights today and her heart was heavy. She didn’t know why. She usually loved missions and adventure and she trusted herself enough to get out of every situation. Today should be a wonderful day because she and Leo got to do their first legitimate mission together.

  But with a heavy heart she jogged north, Leo padding beside her. She needed to clear her head and get excited, or this wasn’t going to go well. Might just turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  They covered the three kilometers quickly. The terrain was flat and easy and the moon guided them.

  She whistled softly twice and Leo slowed down and crouched. There should be a bit of a ledge coming up, from it she should be able to see the compound. That’s what the satellite imaging showed.

  “Leo, clear the ridge,” she whispered. He took off, the night hiding his body. She crouched and waited. He returned within a few minutes. He wagged his tail happily and started heading back up the hill.

  “Alrighty, I guess that means we’re good.”

  Leo led her to the top of the ridge. She crawled the last of it, slinking to the top on her stomach. Ahead, around five hundred meters away, a massive compound spread out in front of her. It had high walls built of concrete. There were no windows. She unslung her sniper rifle and put the sight to her eye.

  It was heavily guarded with a massive chain link fence surrounding the entire compound, barbed wire curled on top. There were two guards on every gate as well as guards on the doors of the compound. They all carried assault rifles. There were guards on the roof as well.

  She pulled her ear piece out of her pants and put it in, sticking a mic to her throat.

  “Carter I’m in position,” she said quietly. She lay motionless, watching the guards. They were well trained mercenaries. She could tell by the way they held themselves. They were decked out in the same way as the men in Russia had been. Big guns, cargo pants and matching black shirts.

  “What do you see?” he asked.

  “Right now my count is fifteen. Three on the roof, two gates with two each, two doors with two each and two roaming. I’m assuming more on the other side as well.”

  “Sounds like suicide, Sen.”

  She didn’t move, she calmly watched through her sight. “No, not suicide. Just really fucking difficult.”

  “You don’t have to do this. Amanda ordered you to go in, recon, and get out. You could leave now. We could get a team together within a few days. Far as I know Matty is close, somewhere in Germany.”

  Matty was another Zoya in the ZTF. He was fun to work with, but liked to blow absolutely everything up. Thinking about it, Senka decided that Matty would have been ideal for this situation.

  “No, I promised you I would get him, Carter. And I don’t break promises. Besides, I have Leo.”

  “You’re breaking a direct order,” he mumbled.

  “No, not at all. She knows I’m going to go in. It’s assumed. Also I have to go in to recon properly. You’re the one who’s going to break a direct order,” she said. “It’s half past one. I’m going to watch for a few hours. I’ll make my move at four. I want an evac here for four forty-five.”

  When Carter didn’t say anything she chuckled a little, “I should have known you’d have already ordered it.”

  “I know what you are going to do before you do it,” Carter replied.

  “Then you should know that if you come to work drunk again, I will kick the shit out of you.”

  A long silence followed. Senka was happy to wait, she had all the time in the world.

  “I wasn’t drunk.”

  “Carter, I find it insulting when you try to lie to me. I may not be nearly as smart as Tomo was, but I know the smell of liquor.”

  “Like you’re one to talk,” Carter snapped. “You’re an alcoholic. A high-functioning one, I’ll give you that. You are drunk pretty much constantly.”

  “Never at work,” Senka replied calmly. She was following, watching the roving foot guard, timing the interval. “I’ve never drank before a mission. You’re drifting back to the summer after Mel died, Carter. Drinking at work and shit.”

  “I have a son. He’s most likely dead. What do you want from me? You gave me the bottle!”

  “I wanted you to finish that bottle then fucking leave it,” it was Senka’s turn to get snippy. “You were drinking this morning, Carter. Calling the fucking cops on me? You haven’t had to do that since your drinking days.”

  “So, you’re telling me that your basis in deciding that I’m an active alcoholic again is how well I deal with your cracked and mangled psyche? Well that’s a definite unit of measurement. You assault a cop and it’s my fault. Classic.”

  That stung. Carter knew it would. Senka had known that this conversation was going to be a tough one. She needed Carter to be on the right track before she went in there. She stayed silent.

  The silence killed Carter. Senka’s breathing was rhythmic, relaxing. Almost as if she was sleeping. She was watching the guards move, biding her time.

  “Look, Sen, I’m sorry. You’re right. Of course you’re right. I just had a little pick me up in my coffee this morning.”

  “I know,” she said. Nothing had changed at the compound. “That’s why I brought it up now, not ten hours ago.”

  “Learning about Isaac just brought up a lot of stuff.”

  “I know.” Time ticked away. The conversation, though awkward, was sufficiently wasting time. She was getting chilly but she wouldn’t move. The silences had been longer than she thought. They had wasted hours.

  “It’s just, Melanie and I wanted kids so bad. She would have totally been cool with me having a kid from before. I just wished I had known about him.”

  “Melanie helped you stop drinking before. She’d be pissed if she knew you came to work buzzing.”

  “I know that. Look, I’ll never drink again.”

  “Promise?” Senka asked.

  Another long pause. “Yeah, yeah I promise.”

  Senka was satisfied. She had to move in thirty. She had one more thing to tackle. “Carter, you know it wasn’t your fault, right?”

  “I should have been watching the road,” he said quietly. “I go over it a thousand times in my head every day. I should have been watching the road better. I would have been able to turn the car so my side hit the pole, not hers.”

  “Carter, Tomo told you the stats before. I don’t remember them. She went over it, the physics and everything. No one could have made that turn.”

  “If I had been watching the road…”

  “Carter shut up. You were. You probably glanced away for a second because you guys were probably arguing about getting a cat again. You’re human. It happens.”

  “You would have made the turn.”

  Senka twitched. Her first movement that wasn’t speaking since she lay down in her spot two hours ago. “Carter. I know it’s easy for me to say. But trust me.
You don’t want this. Yeah, I’m fast. So fast that I’m probably the only person on the planet that could have made the turn in that rain. But you’re human. The other seven billion humans on the planet wouldn’t have been able to make the turn. Tomo wouldn’t have made it. No one could have but me. And I don’t count.”

  He stayed silent for a long time.

  “I want to eat a bullet daily,” she said finally. She had the feeling this was her last time for honesty. “I don’t do it, but I want to. I’ve seen too much, I’ve done too much. I’m starting to like killing people. How fucked up is that? It’s the only way I feel alive. Nothing seems important unless I’m on a mission with bullets flying. That’s the only way I feel like a person.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” he sniffed. “That’s why I deal with your drinking and the string of men that come into our apartment. At least then I know you’ll wake up the next morning.”

  Senka sighed. She was such a burden to Carter. To everyone.

  She needed to move soon. She started lining up the first shot. The three on the roof would go first.

  “Look. I’ll come with you to AA when I get back. And I’ll actually listen to that shrink they make me see damn near daily at headquarters. Deal?” she said. She started slowing her breathing. The shot was relatively close, well within her range. But she needed three consecutive head shots.

  “Deal,” he replied. “Amanda is asleep in her office. If you’re going to go, go now. Evac forty-six out.”

  Senka breathed out and fired. Head shot. The first man dropped. She quickly worked the bolt action and fired again. The second man on the roof dropped. Bolt action, breathe, fire. The third man dropped. She was far enough away that no one but Leo and Carter heard the muffled shots.

  She worked the bolt action again. She fired two more head shots at the two guards near the closest door. She dropped her sniper rifle and with a low whistle ran fast and hard directly towards the gate, Leo loping easily beside her. She had a two minute window until the roving mercenaries came back towards the gate.

  She was fast. It was four in the morning and the mercenaries were tired. They likely were there more to guard from people escaping instead of people trying to break in. She used it to her advantage.

  She had a silencer attached to her Sig Sauer and she fired two shots on the run towards the gate. The guards went down in a heap. No one had sounded the alarm yet. She stole a key card from one of the guards on the way by and tucked it into her cargo pants. The fence was ten feet high, and lucky for them the gate had no barbed wire on the top.

  She squatted and Leo ran at her, launched himself off her back and he went over the fence, landing easily on the other side. “Cover,” she whispered to him. He crouched and ran straight ahead to the darkness of the door. The two dead guards weren’t going to sound an alarm.

  Senka scaled the fence easily and joined Leo beside the dead guards. She smiled when she saw the ladder a few feet away from the door. At least Carter’s schematics had been accurate so far. Leo bounced happily when she squatted for him to jump on her shoulders.

  “Yah, your fucking favorite,” she grumbled. She quickly climbed the ladder to the roof, a happy eighty pound German Shepard draped across her shoulders and panting noisily in her ear.

  Leo jumped off and cleared the roof while she scaled the last three rungs of the ladder. He pranced towards her and sat happily as both her boots touched the roof.

  “No alarm,” Carter said. “Well done. There should be a large air vent, there, on your right. Looks like it leads directly to a room. None of these rooms are labelled on the schematic so I’m not sure what it’s for.”

  Senka was uneasy about wearing the body cam for the mission, but she couldn’t protect Carter forever. And she had the feeling he would need the video evidence to go back and review at some point.

  She jogged towards the air vent and looked at it.

  “Pretty sure that’s from a fume hood in a lab,” Senka said. “Direct vacuum source to the outside. Should be straight down.”

  She stuck her wrist unit into the air being ejected from the vent. She was careful to keep her face out of the way. The unit beeped and a green light flashed on her wrist.

  “Well guess I won’t die from any chemicals today!” she exclaimed. The tingling in her spine returned in full force as she lowered herself by her fingertips into the vent. It was a black drop. Leo skittered a bit and nuzzled her fingers from the roof, big eyes staring.

  “Stay here,” she said to him, looking up from the black, ominous hole. He licked her fingertips gently. “If I don’t call for you, bail. You got that?” he replied with a high pitched whine and thumped to a sit beyond her view.

  With a deep breath, she dropped into the vent. She didn’t fall long and landed with a crunch. She took a small flashlight off her belt and pressed the button on a side, emitting a small white LED light. She looked down and saw broken glassware around her feet and a clear liquid seeping underneath her boots. She shone the light around and noticed that she was, in fact, in a fume hood. Still holding her breath, she opened the sliding door and hopped out.

  She quickly took off her sweater and laid it overtop the broken glass and leaking chemical. She stuck her head in the fume hood and gave a sharp whistle. A happy Leo launched himself down the fume hood vent. Senka managed to catch the hurling, panting form before he hit the bottom of the fume hood and heaved him onto the ground outside.

  He shook himself and stared at her, tongue out the side of his mouth. Senka smiled at him and patted his head.

  “Stand guard,” she said. Leo immediately stood and ran to the door. He’d let her know if anyone was coming. This gave Senka some time to look around.

  She was in a world-class laboratory. There were computers directly behind her. In front of her were huge vats of chemicals, unlabeled. Machinery and equipment had been pushed against the walls to make room for the huge tubs of chemicals. There were empty animal cages lining the walls.

  “Before you get too far, give me a second to find the proper video feed,” Carter said in her ear.

  “Then I’ll stay in the lab,” she said, walking around the vats. She was curious as to what they were.

  “I’ve hacked in to their security feed. I’m just looping the last two hours of video. Should give you enough time to get in and get out. But it means that I won’t be able to use the video cameras to help you out. I’ll just be able to watch your personal camera.”

  Senka shrugged, “Old school is fine.” Her flashlight highlighted a table behind the vats. She made her way carefully to the table, gun held in front.

  “Where’s Isaac?” she asked Carter as she picked her way through the lab.

  “They don’t have a lot of security cameras,” Carter’s voice rumbled in her ear. “Just five or six. Isaac isn’t on any of them.”

  “Probably want deniability if anyone ever got in here,” Senka said quietly. “Plus I think they got cocky. That was a pretty easy perimeter to get into. They probably didn’t think anyone had them on their radar.”

  Senka stopped in front of the table. On it were thousands of little Ziploc bags. “You getting this?” she asked, reaching for a bag.

  “Clear as day,” Carter said. He was tense, she could hear it in his voice.

  She picked up a baggie. Inside were ten little pink pills with no markings or anything distinguishable.

  “What do you think they are?” she asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  Senka grabbed a few of the packages and put them into her right pants’ pocket. She joined Leo, who was patiently sitting facing the only door.

  “Any chance you can unlock the doors in the compound?” she asked. The little light was glowing red. Senka took out of her sweater the key card that she had stolen and tapped it to the lock. It stayed red.

  Carter paused for a long time, “It’s weird Sen. They are all already unlocked?”

  Senka pulled the door. The red light remained o
n but she heard the clink of the lock and the door slid open inwards.

  “Oh this is very bad,” she said to Carter.

  “Bail. Evac is,” she heard him typing away at his computer. “Evac was turned around. That wasn’t my order,” his voice was rising with panic. “Sen I’ll fix it I swear.”

  “Well I guess the only way to go is forward then,” she said calmly. Carter was typing so fast it was annoying in her ear. “Any ideas which way?”

  “The schematics aren’t right,” Carter said, almost frantically, “It’s like they have been scrambled. My guess is that straight is to the kitchens, left is to the gym and right is to the unknown.”

  “Right it is then.”

  “Sen I’m so sorry. I don’t know who gave the order for evac to turn around. Must be a communication line down.” Carter was frantic. She needed to get him under control.

  “Carter I know,” she started having a suspicion in her gut, but she couldn’t voice it right now. “This isn’t the same as Tomo, and I never blamed you for that anyway.’

  “I messed up,” Carter said.

  “We all did. You tried to call off the airstrike, communication broke down. Life is rife with communication break-downs.” She stepped through the door and swept her gun and flashlight. The hallways were concrete and dark, lit only by yellow lights spaced far apart. There were no windows. There was a hallway straight ahead and one to the left and right. She turned right. Leo took point.

  “I was drunk that day, Sen,” Carter said quietly. “The day Tomo died. I came to work still drunk from the night before. I killed her.”

  Senka sighed. She wasn’t supposed to be dealing with an emotional partner and people trying to kill her at the same time. It was a lot to focus on.

  “I know,” she said quietly. They were walking swiftly through the dark hall. “We all knew. You were going through shit. But Tomo didn’t die because you were drunk. She died because the radios cut out at that moment. Nothing more, nothing less. A freak ten second communication error killed her.”

  When Carter didn’t say anything, Senka continued, “Carter you’re the best handler in the ZTF. You didn’t even make a mistake. It was beyond your control which is why it’s bothering you.”