Give Us This Day

by Tom Avitabile

  Bridge rolled down the window and yelled in Russian, “Where’s Vitaly Borishenko?”

  “He’s not here,” the man in the coat said. “I am his head of security. We spoke on the phone. Where is the boy?”

  “Borishenko, now, or I drive out of here and we’ll do this all over again. Trust me, you will never find him in time. You know I didn’t get this far without having a plan. Don’t be stupid.”

  Bridge could see the veins popping in the neck of the man in the leather coat as he stood in the harsh headlights of his car. Bridge knew the man wanted to kill him right there for being so insolent. He saw the man turn and walk to the back of the carrier. A few seconds later, ten troops with heavy weapons came out of the back with Vitaly Borishenko in the center of their formation. Seeing this, Bridge got out of the car.

  “Where is my son?”

  “He’s right here.”

  Borishenko squinted and tried to look into Bridge’s car through the windshield.

  “Not there, here!” Bridge held up the phone in his left hand and the plunger in his right.

  Dmitri nodded his head in the direction of the phone to one of the soldiers. He lowered his weapon and cautiously approached Bridge. He carefully took the phone and double-timed it back to Borishenko.

  “Anatoly!” Tears welled up in his eyes. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, Father. Do what he says. Do you see the bomb?”

  “Yes. Yes. Don’t worry, son, this will all be over in a few minutes.”

  “Those are good words, Vitaly. You’ve seen and talked to your son. You see he’s alive but if I release the pressure on this plunger, he dies. So tell your boys, no shooting and no getting in my way or trying to jam the signal. It’s fail-safed, so it’s looking for a break in the signal to detonate. Now where’s Prescott? My finger’s getting tired.”

  Borishenko nodded to Dmitri, who waved to the rear of the armored vehicle.

  From behind the carrier, Prescott was escorted by one of Dmitri’s men. As he approached, Bridge saw that they had listened and he was only in a t-shirt and briefs. “Turn around,” Bridge ordered and, not seeing anything like a gun or knife outlined in the man’s skivvies, he gestured behind him. “In the car.”

  The guard put him in the backseat and rejoined his ranks.

  “When do I get my son?”

  “When I am safe and not followed. Keep the phone. I will call you when I am clear and tell you where he is. I have no interest in harming your boy. Unless you try something cute. Then he dies with me, wherever I am.”

  “Don’t trust this Chechen,” Dmitri said.

  “I have no choice. He has won; all I want is my son back. Let him go.”

  “If you let him go you will never see your son. I am certain.”

  “Don’t listen to him, Vitaly. if I release my hand, you will see him in pieces. Order him to comply.”

  “Dmitri, please!”

  “You are making a mistake . . .”

  “He’s my son! Damn you. And this is how we are going to do it!”

  Bridge got in the car, holding the button high so it could be seen through the windshield. He crossed himself with his left hand to put the car in gear while holding up the plunger. Without taking his eyes off the men in front he said, “Are you okay, Morgan?”

  “They drugged me, but I am good.” That statement made Bridge scrunch his eyebrows.

  Dmitri’s rage boiled over. “You fool, you are letting him go!” He reached for his gun and whipped around to shoot at Bridge when suddenly a dull thwop was heard as his skull exploded. Borishenko jumped back but was splattered with blood and bits of brain. The soldiers all hit the deck as Vitaly’s security guys scrambled him back into the tracked vehicle.

  As Bridge backed out of the square he said under his voice, “Nice shooting, Alisa.”

  Three hundred yards out, Alisa broke down the Paratus-16 sniper rifle and packed it in the case, then stood up and straightened her gown and left the roof of the Hotel Moscow. Once inside, she slid the collapsed rifle in the laundry chute and then pressed the elevator button.

  The door opened to the lobby and a reception was in full swing. She grabbed a glass of champagne off a table and walked through like she was invited. At the doorway, she placed the glass on a waiter’s tray and asked, “Ladies room?”

  He pointed to the right; she went left, to the exit. As the Red Square was blocked, Okhotnyi Ryad was crowded with discontented tourists.

  Outside, Bridge pulled up and she got in. She looked in the back. “Bridge, you didn’t tell him about the clothes?”

  “I was a little busy.”

  She handed him the folded slacks and shirt and socks. “Prescott, here put these on.”

  “We had to make sure you weren’t the leader of this thing and that you wouldn’t pull a weapon on us once you were in the car.”

  “Who are you people? Are you Americans?”

  “Yes. We’re here to take you back to America,” Bridge said.

  “No, you must take me back to Borishenko. Now!”

  “What part of ‘you are going back’ didn’t you get?”

  “Do they know you are American?”

  “Hey, pal, shut up,” Bridge said.

  “You are putting my family in danger!”

  “What are you talking about?” Alisa said.

  “If they think you are working for me, they will kill my wife and kids. They have them. They are holding them.”

  “All right, bullshit story time is over. We’ve seen your wife and kids and they are on your yacht in St. Thomas.”

  “No, that’s not them. Those are imposters paid by someone to play my family. My wife Deidra and my three kids, Molly, Jennifer, and Chet are being held in my home on Grenada. They are under armed guard; if I didn’t go along with them they were going to kill them. You’ve got to take me back, before they think you work for me.”

  “Who? Borishenko?”

  “No, he’s a just customer; the terrorists, they will kill them!”

  Bridge looked at Alisa. She shrugged her shoulders. As they pulled into the American Embassy they hatched a plan.

  .G.

  “You want me to what?” Brooke stood up from her desk, waved her hand at Agent Stover and motioned for him to listen in as she hit the speakerphone button. “Bridge, that could take hours to get approval, from State, Defense, and ultimately, I guess, the boss.”

  “That’s why it’s up to you, Brooke.”

  “Are you sure this is the only way he’ll cooperate?”

  “Prison time, fines, even the death penalty, if it comes to that, doesn’t shake him. It’s all about his family.”

  “Can’t say I blame him,” Brooke said.

  “It’s his only play,” Alisa said.

  “Who’s that?” Brooke raised an eyebrow.

  “That’s Alisa. She’s my local here and saved my life already tonight.”

  “Alisa, I owe you a drink sometime, girl,” Brooke said in Russian.

  “You got a deal,” Alisa answered back in English.

  .G.

  “George, get the chopper back and use the priority billing code to get a skeeter, wet and wild. File a flight plan for Grenada. Gear up for you and me. Pick someone else to be heavy with us,” Brooke ordered.

  “What’s up, boss?”

  “We are about to rescue Prescott’s family.”

  “That’s a little cowboy ain’t it?”

  “It turns out they had him in a wedge. We’ve got about a five-hour window before they find out it wasn’t the Chechens and that Prescott is under our custody . . . and execute his entire family.”

  “Shit.”

  Two hours later the rescue team of three were at forty thousand feet in a government G5. George had just received a PDF of the layout of the Presco
tt Estate on the island of Grenada.

  The State Department was applying a “full nelson” to the neck of the Grenadine government to allow the plane and its occupants to land unmolested and carryout the extraction with or without government troops in assistance. In the end, the negotiations came down to Brooke reading in the US Ambassador to Grenada in Barbados on the national security threat of which Morgan Prescott was the key. The ambassador sent the chargé d’affaires from the in-country US Embassy to personally meet with the president of the tiny island nation while Brooke and her team were in the air. Using his personal friendship and some diplomatic arm twisting, the ambassador secured the landing rights. The operational rights, for Brooke’s team to actually do something in his nation, were sealed upon the promise of two new US Coast Guard cutters to be transferred to his small navy. The leader’s caveat being that his troops would only play a support role and not take part in the extraction or any action connected to it.

  Brooke was fine with that. She and George and Walker, all by themselves, had their shit wired tight enough, and even though they had never deployed as a team before, they had all been involved with extraction from hostile enemies. They would have to hit the ground running and make it up as they went along. “Adapt, innovate, and overcome,” was all Brooke said to the two men she was about to go into battle with.

  The odds leaned in their favor since they had the element of surprise, (Brooke hoped) plus night vision goggles, a JDI drone with high-definition infrared, and a whole goody bag of flash bangs, tear gas, and concussive grenades. The Heckler and Koch MP7 slung under her arm, the HK 416 with George, and the M4 carbine that Walker carried and made him center-mass deadly from twenty-five yards out was what she deemed adequate firepower for the job.

  Brooke was hoping that the opposing force wasn’t going to be the A team. After all, how badass did guards have to be to keep a forty-five-year-old socialite and three teenagers incarcerated?

  Brooke was thinking about how smoothly things were going for a hastily organized extraction op that she would have preferred to have three weeks rather than three hours to prep for. Then, right on cue, Mr. Murphy and his law responded to her observation.

  “South Com on the radio,” the pilot informed her.

  Brooke took the copilot’s headset. “Burrell to South Com.”

  “Burrell, be advised, mechanical trouble delaying your asset from rendezvous oh-two-hundred hours local time.”

  “Crap!” Brooke hit the transmit switch. “Roger that, South Com. We’ll make do. Burrell over and out.”

  “What’s up, boss?” George said.

  “The drone pilot from Southern Command won’t be joining us. The transport plane he was flying out of McDill in is busted. We lost our drone operator.”

  “The thing is in the back. Do you think there’s an instruction manual?” Walters said, hitching his thumb over his shoulder at the large anvil case that held the thirty-thousand-dollar toy.

  “No, Walters, we are going to need all the guns we have going through the door. Can’t spare you to be a drone jockey.”

  The pilot overheard the conversation. “Director Burrell, I can fly it, I think.”

  “It’s not like a G5, Captain . . .”

  “I know, but I bought a Radio Shack drone for my kids and I taught them how to fly it on the weekends, and I think I could handle it.”

  “Okay, why not. Captain, you’ve got the drone. I’ll try and give you a few minutes to get acquainted before we go in.”

  The pilot smiled and the copilot looked over at him and just laughed and shook his head.

  As they approached the estate, they did a final comms check. From the map George downloaded on the plane, they chose what looked like a blind spot in case anyone at all was watching the security system that Prescott had detailed to Bridge, who’d marked up the map and layout.

  The moment came when Brooke had to make the call. Go or no go. She ran through the same mental checklist one more time. Her last check was to look up and ensure that the moon had not risen yet. “We ready?”

  She got two clicks each over the comms. “Okay, we all get to go home tonight. Let’s go.”

  That was what she always said, even back in her FBI days when she served with HRT. Only difference being, the hostage rescue team had ten times more assets and local LEOs with guns for support, not Grenadian troops waiting and watching to see who killed whom.

  .G.

  Five identical black GMC Yukons exited the box-shaped American Embassy onto Bolshoy Devyatinskiy Per. They passed the row of tightly spaced, large, beautiful concrete flower boxes that were in full bloom. Their true beauty being that they could stop a large truck from penetrating the perimeter. One by one the vehicles peeled off from the convoy at each cross-street.

  Three of the Yukons headed to the Domodedovo Airport, one went to the Kazanski train station and the other headed out to the country. Each was driven by a State Department driver and had a Diplomatic Security officer in the shotgun seat, with an actual shotgun standing up, its barrel secured to the dashboard. In the back of each of the five vehicles were three people, two men and a woman. State Department employees all. The automotive shell game was to thwart any of Borishenko’s men or their pals in the government from trying to disrupt the extradition of Prescott to the US.

  A few minutes later, a cleaning van also pulled out of the driveway and rocked onto the same street, heading to the smaller Sheremetyevo Airport. Bridge, Alisa, Prescott, and one other man were sitting on overturned buckets in the back of the windowless van.

  “Who’s the driver? Can he be trusted?” Prescott said.

  “Meet Vasily.” Bridge gestured towards the driver’s seat.

  “Very nice to be meeting you,” Vasily said in a heavy accent as he tipped his Moscow policeman’s hat.

  The other man in the van was the chargé d’affaires of the embassy, who would invoke diplomatic immunity for his three guests and get them onto an Air Canada flight with direct nonstop service to JFK.

  The tickets were secured from the Canadian Embassy and the names John, Mary, and Jack Smith used as ID. The embassy staff quickly made up black diplomatic passports for the trio to ensure they would fly through the airport and onto the plane without being harassed.

  Bridge took out a cell phone, dialed, and waited for the other end to pick up. “Vitaly. Your son is sleeping on the first bench from the main entrance to Sokolniki Park.” He tossed the phone out the window.

  The van pulled up to the service gate at the end of the runway. Vasily got out and spoke with the guard. A moment later he returned as the gate opened and he drove down the access road to the tarmac alongside the Air Canada jet at the terminal.

  As they stepped up the service stairs outside the jet way, Prescott asked, “How did you get that Russian cop to help us like that?”

  “Yankee ingenuity!”

  In the gangway, a State Department employee met them and handed their tickets and passports to the chargé d’affaires. He, in turn, distributed them to Bridge and the rest. Then he showed his ID to the gate agent and asked to speak with the captain.

  In short order, the captain had his official government form filled out, and within six minutes of their arrival through the back gate of Sheremetyevo Airport, they were in their first class seats aboard the Airbus 320 with the maple leaf on the tail.

  Bridge and Prescott were sitting together and Alisa was in the same row, right across the aisle. The flight attendants were closing the cabin door when suddenly a shout from the jetway caused the stewardess to open it again. A man, out of breath and carrying a briefcase, stepped onto the plane. The door closed behind him.

  The man nodded to the crewmember and she gestured for him to sit. He took the empty seat next to Alisa.

  The plane pushed back from the gate and Bridge pulled an Aeroflot magazine out of the pocket on the bulk
head wall. Morgan Prescott crossed his arms and leaned his head against the window, closing his eyes.

  Chapter 30

  Rock Group

  5 days until the attack

  Waterloo High School’s geology club was ecstatic as Mr. Herns, the earth science teacher and his club of six future geologists, piled into the van. They were headed for an historic first this Monday morning. The “first” was the first true seismic event that had been recorded so close to their school. It was the also the first since they’d gotten the grant to buy a Guralp seismic monitor. Mr. Herns had lobbied the school board hard for the purchase because he saw it as an excellent opportunity to hone the skills of these students in monitoring and analyzing tectonic activity. The nearby event it recorded over the weekend had the added bonus of the epicenter being in an abandoned quarry. That meant the possibility of years of exposed, oxygenated rock being shaken off and a new peel of earth revealed. If that happened, it could be a treasure trove of geologic purity.

  Susan Wackner, a sophomore in the group, got permission for her boyfriend, Brendon, the quarterback of the football team, to tag along, as they did everything together.

  “So why are we going here again?” Brendon asked from the rear seat, his arm around Susan.

  “We may have had a mini-earthquake in the old quarry early Sunday morning or it might be nothing more than a landslide . . .” Mr. Herns said to the rearview mirror.