Day of Reckoning (Shadow Warriors)

by Stephen England

  Of no further value.

  Holding the Colt in one hand, he reached forward, using his combat knife to slice through the restraints holding Andropov against the chair. “Get up.”

  As he took a step back, the oligarch struggled to his feet, rubbing his wrists to restore circulation. “Well, you’ve done it now, haven’t you?” Andropov asked, a bitter smile playing at his lips.

  “Welcome to the end of the road, Valentin.” The Colt came up in Harry’s hand—the long black suppressor aimed straight at Andropov’s head. “On your knees.”

  “Nyet,” Andropov replied, seeming to summon up some measure of defiance from deep within himself. “If I’m going to die, I’ll die on my feet. And if you’re going to kill me, you’ll have to look me in the eye.”

  Harry traded glances with Vasiliev, shrugging. “Have it your way.”

  His finger took up the slack, the big Colt recoiling back into his hand. Blood and fire…

  Chapter 21

  11:32 P.M.

  The abandoned mansion

  “It’s done,” Harry announced, sweeping back into the kitchen with Vasiliev at his heels. He deposited the thumb drive beside Carol’s computer. “We have our evidence.”

  She didn’t respond, her eyes focused intently on the screen in front of her.

  “Andropov?” He looked up at the sound of Han’s voice to see the former SEAL enter the room from the other side, the SCAR slung over his shoulder.

  “Dead,” Harry replied. “What’s going on?”

  Carol entered a few rapid keystrokes, her eyes widening as a window opened onscreen. “We have a problem. You were ID’d.”

  He looked at the alert indicated by her cursor. It was an all points bulletin—for him—giving the address of the Andropov estate.

  Who are you? Had it been surprise he had seen in the deputy’s eyes…or recognition? Had he seen it and chosen to ignore it, knowing the alternative was the unthinkable? Killing a cop…

  No time to find answers to those questions. Not now. “What’s their ETA?”

  “The nearest car? Eight minutes out.”

  “Pack everything up,” Harry ordered, his words clipped. “We have to be out of here before they seal off the block. Sammy, help Carol move things out to the van. Alexei and I will get our guest ready for transport.”

  He turned, motioning for Vasiliev to follow him as he moved down the long hallway toward the master bathroom, their footsteps thudding against the bare, stripped floor.

  The Coleman was flickering, the flame sending long shadows glancing off the tiled walls as it ran low of fuel. An eerie sight.

  Pyotr’s head came up at the sound of their entrance, his blindfolded eyes endeavoring in vain to seek them out.

  Harry pulled his combat knife from its sheath, slashing through the zip ties that pinned the boy’s legs to the chair.

  “What are you planning to do with him?” Carol’s voice. He looked up to see her standing in the doorway, a haunted look in her eyes.

  “We’ll take him with us—drop him once we’re out of the state. It will take them hours to find him. Now, get ready.”

  “I’ll do it, tovarisch,” Vasiliev interjected. “I can drive around for a few hours and throw the hounds off the scent. It’s past time we were parting company.”

  Harry hesitated for a long moment, glancing from Carol to the Russian. His mind screaming danger. He knew what Vasiliev was planning, knew it as certainly as if the words had been spoken.

  Pyotr is part of the contract.

  Do it, a voice admonished from the dark shadows of his mind. She’ll never be the wiser.

  He didn’t know. Not really. That was what plausible deniability was all about, the ability to redefine the line between truth and deceit.

  To make “truth” what you wanted it to be.

  “No,” he said finally, his throat dry as he spoke the words, staring Vasiliev full in the face. “No, you won’t.”

  The knife still in his hand, he turned his back on the Russian, bending down to cut through the ties securing Pyotr’s wrists to the chair.

  He heard Carol scream a warning, the thunderous report of a pistol battering his eardrums. Warm, viscous liquid spattered against his face and clothing.

  Death walked among them, he realized, thinking for a moment that it was his own. Not this time.

  His ears ringing, Harry rose from behind Pyotr’s corpse, his movements slow—as if in a dream. His eyes fell upon Vasiliev across the room, the pistol still leveled in the Russian’s hand. A faint whisp of hot white smoke curling from the barrel of the Grach.

  “I’m sorry, Harry,” Vasiliev said, a smile crossing his face. “But the Kremlin was insistent. Father and son.”

  Something snapped. Harry launched himself across the blood-drenched tile floor, the Colt coming out of its holster as he did so. He saw Vasiliev’s finger tighten around the trigger, expected him to fire. Expected Death to come for him as well.

  He hit the Russian at a full run, slamming the older man against the wall of the bathroom— knocking the wind from his body. The Grach clattered to the tiles.

  “He was off-limits,” he hissed, his fingers entwined in Vasiliev’s collar. “He was innocent.”

  “Innocent?” The Russian laughed. “And who decides that? Men. Men just like you and I, Harry…the men who send us out to play God. We’re both of us the same.”

  No. That wasn’t true. He grimaced as if in pain, shoving the muzzle of the Colt into the soft flesh beneath Vasiliev’s chin. “This ends now, Alexei. All the men you’ve killed over the years—no more. It ends tonight.”

  There was a look of resignation in the Russian’s eyes. The weary look of a man at the end of a long journey. No more laughter.

  “Tell Anya that I loved her. You’ll do that, won’t you?” he asked, struggling to breathe, the gun restricting his airflow.

  Anya. The face from the photograph flickered back through Harry’s mind. Vasiliev’s wife, her eyes haunting him. Those eyes full of love. Love for the man before him.

  He paled, taking a step back from Vasiliev, breathing heavily. His voice trembled as he spoke.

  “Leave, Alexei,” he warned, gesturing with the barrel of his pistol. “Leave before I kill you.”

  Vasiliev leaned there against the wall for a long moment, massaging his sore throat, regarding Harry soberly. “Of course, tovarisch. As you wish.”

  Kill him. The impulse came suddenly, without warning and without reason—a premonition of danger entering his soul. Kill him and have done with it.

  It was as if the shroud of the future had been pulled back for but a scant moment. Kill him.

  And yet he found himself incapable of pulling the trigger. He watched the Russian go as if in a haze, smelling the stench of death pervading the room—the presence of a tangible evil.

  The straight-eight sights of his Colt centered on the back of Alexei’s head as he reached the door—the perfect target for a scant moment of time.

  And then he was gone. Harry stood there staring at the empty doorway for a long moment, a strange sense of regret washing over him. A regret that had nothing to do with the murder of Pyotr.

  Pyotr. He turned to see Carol on her knees beside the boy’s broken body, his blood staining her shirt. “You knew,” she whispered, shaking her head as tears rolled down her cheeks. “You knew.”

  It felt as if a knife had gone through his body. A thousand excuses rose to his lips, but they all rang hollow.

  He had made his deal with the devil he knew, and Pyotr had paid the price. It was that simple.

  And none of it mattered in this moment. “We have to go,” he said, reaching down for her wrist.

  She shook off his hand, her fingers stroking Pyotr’s lifeless arm. “You swore that he would come to no harm.”

  Yes. He had. Her hand came up to brush away her tears in an angry gesture, leaving a streak of blood in its wake. “Does this look like ‘no harm’ to you?”

  Siren
s in the distance. The rhythmic thwap-thwap-thwap of an inbound helicopter. They had to be gone, moments of freedom slipping away the longer they lingered. He slipped the Colt back into its holster, reaching down to grasp her shoulder, pulling her roughly to her feet.

  Run…

  11:40 P.M.

  Beverly Hills, California

  Night flying was something that had never appealed to Yuri. Too many memories of operations gone wrong—missions sabotaged by insufficient intelligence or indecisive superiors. He sat just back of the pilot in the Sikorsky S-76 as the helicopter swept over Beverly Hills toward Andropov’s estate, one thousand feet over the housetops.

  Lifeless. It was the first word that came to his mind as the mansion entered his view through the side windows of the executive helicopter. Everything was dark, no flicker of light from the windows. Nothing.

  “Take us around for another pass over the neighborhood,” the man from Leningrad instructed. “Lower this time.”

  The pilot, a young—almost boyish—Russian with an unrecognizable American accent, shook his head. “Can’t do that—FAA regs. A thousand feet over residential neighborhoods. Andropov’s neighbors…well, they all got nearly as much money as he does and a propensity for complaining to go with it.”

  Yuri shook his head at his comrades, leaning forward until his face was only inches away from the pilot’s. “Do I look like a man who cares about your ‘regs’ or his neighbors?”

  He drew back the slide of his Glock deliberately, his eyes never leaving the pilot’s face as the young man’s eyes widened. “Take us down.”

  The pilot nodded wordlessly, easing the helicopter’s nose forward and circling around for another pass, this time at four hundred feet. It was then that Yuri saw it, a faint movement in the faint glow of a streetlight below. A gray panel van…

  He slid his phone open, fingers moving clumsily over the small buttons. Contact made.

  12:03 P.M.

  Beverly Hills, California

  The taillights of a minivan glowed red in front of him and Harry shifted into the right lane, accelerating. He was going too fast—he knew that. Running from something he couldn’t escape.

  Himself.

  One who would fight with monsters must take care that he does not become one. What had he become?

  The answer to that question was a luxury he couldn’t afford. Not now. Innocents died in war, had ever since the dawn of time. Pyotr was collateral damage—nothing more, he thought, his face hardening.

  They had the intel they had sought. And no way to act on it. They needed support, as risky as that was going to be.

  No doubt the bodies of Valentin Andropov and his bodyguards had already been discovered. His son’s would take the police a few more hours, but find him they would.

  And once more the dragnet would be thrown out. “Do you hear that?” Han asked quietly from the van’s front passenger seat.

  He didn’t have to clarify his question. Harry knew exactly what he was talking about. Had known ever since they had left the neighborhood of Andropov’s estate.

  A helicopter. He glanced out the window of the panel van, endeavoring to catch a glimpse of it against the night sky. Waiting for the finger of a police searchlight to reach down, pinpointing them in the midst of the traffic. For red-and-blue lights to appear in his rearview mirror, sirens wailing.

  Nothing. And that brought with it a no less troubling conclusion.

  Korsakov?

  His eyes returned to the road, watching the signs carefully. Two miles. Only a few minutes till he could merge onto the I-10. Lose themselves in the interstate.

  Only a few more minutes…

  12:47 P.M.

  The I-5

  Burbank, California

  A stern chase is a long chase, Korsakov thought, calling back to mind the words of his father, a sailor in the Red Navy. And this one was going to be very long. The speedometer needle of the Suburban held steady at ninety-five miles per hour as the SUV flew down the interstate. They weren’t going to intercept in time.

  “Can you give me any satellite coverage?” he asked, glancing in the overhead mirror.

  He could see Viktor biting his lip, a rough shock of hair fallen over the boy’s face as he worked at the laptop. “I’m working on it—may have to be a commercial sat.”

  That would provide the bare minimum of coverage in the best of times—and provide no help at all at this hour of the night.

  Korsakov looked down at his phone, at the latest message from Yuri, trying to conceal his frustration. The helicopter was running out of fuel, only fifteen minutes away from breaking off the chase.

  He glanced at the GPS read-out again, a plan forming in his mind. It was a desperate shot, but for all his personal differences with Yuri, the man was good.

  The assassin’s thumbs moved over the small keyboard of the phone, hesitating for a moment before finally pressing SEND.

  They had no back-up plan.

  12:51 A.M.

  The helicopter

  “Look, I was told not to ask you any questions, but we’re nearly bingo-fuel here. This is a ten-million dollar chopper and it belongs to Mr. Andropov, not you.”

  Yuri shook his head, ignoring the pilot’s protest as he glanced down at the glowing screen of the phone in his hand. Had Korsakov gone mad?

  He read the message a second time. His employer was tossing caution completely to the wind—and it stood a good chance of killing him in the process. Still…

  “Valentin Andropov is dead,” he announced coolly, bringing his Glock to bear on the pilot. “And you’re going to set us down on that highway.”

  12:59 A.M.

  CA-210 East

  California

  Silence. Harry checked his mirrors, easing into the far left lane of the freeway. He caught Carol’s eyes in the rearview mirror, moments before she looked away.

  She hadn’t spoken to him since leaving Pyotr’s body behind in the mansion, the image of the teenager slumped over dead in the chair still haunting his memories.

  A sudden roar assaulted his ears, the sound of a helicopter coming in low and fast. The helicopter. They hadn’t heard it for nearly a half hour, long enough to dismiss its earlier presence as a fluke.

  He looked out the driver’s side window of the panel van just in time to see a large civilian Sikorsky sweep by overhead, its rotor wash shaking the van from side to side. Some fluke.

  Chaos. The sound of automobile horns filled the night, a night suddenly glowing red with the glare of brake lights.

  Harry swerved, watching as an SUV collided with a small family sedan ahead of him, crumpling the side of the car as if it was made of tin and sending it spinning into the path of another vehicle.

  The Sikorsky descending from the sky like a ravenous bird of prey.

  He saw the side doors open, armed men materializing in the opening and saw in that moment Korsakov’s gambit. And a ruthless, desperate gambit it was.

  Desperate enough that it just might work.

  He caught a glance of Han’s face in the glow of the lights and read his expression clear. More innocents were going to die on this night.

  Motioning for one of his men to cover the pilot, Yuri leaped from the open door of the hovering executive helicopter to the hard asphalt of the freeway just below him, followed by the two remaining members of his team.

  Dropping to one knee, he extended the folding stock of his AK against his shoulder, his weapon a part of himself as he took cover behind a wrecked Mustang. Scanning for the gray van.

  Nichols was out there—with nowhere to go in the midst of the massive traffic pile-up, nowhere to hide. A wolf brought to bay. Never more dangerous.

  Kill Nichols. Kill everyone with him. Korsakov’s new rules of engagement. Chambers was worth nothing to them now.

  He could feel someone’s eyes on him, a sixth sense warning him of danger. Turning, the Kalashnikov extended in front of him, he saw a woman not five feet away, pinned against the
seat of her Toyota by voluminous airbags.

  A sacrificial lamb, to bring the wolf out into the open. The mercenary never hesitated, watching as the fear on her face turned to outright panic. His finger squeezed the trigger, a burst of fire ripping open the night.

  Chaos. Death.

  Despite being walled in by the Dodge in front of them, the sound of automatic weapons fire from their front gave an unmistakable indication of what was going on. And the screams.

  Harry glanced in his mirrors, gauging the distance between himself and the surrounding cars. Very little room—the freeway had been transformed in moments into a seething, panicked mass of humanity and crashed vehicles. A man ran past his door, fleeing for his life.

  “I’m not going to sit here and listen to this,” Carol announced suddenly. He looked back to see her pull the Kahr from its holster inside her jacket, reaching for the side door of the van.

  He twisted in his seat, seizing her arm. “There’s nothing you can do except get yourself killed. And it is my responsibility to protect you.”

  Defiance shone from her eyes, the ghost of her father. “That’s all you’ve been doing, isn’t it? And look at the people that have died because of it.”

  Another burst of gunfire from their front. There was no time to have this argument. “Get down,” he whispered, turning the steering wheel all the way to the left. Aiming it toward a four-foot gap between an abandoned Grand Cherokee and a Chevy Impala.

  He looked over at Han, who was busy checking the magazine of Harry’s UMP-45. “Hold on tight.”

  His foot hit the accelerator pedal, jamming it all the way to the floor, tires squealing against the asphalt as the van turned hard, gaining momentum. It slammed into the front bumper of the Impala like a battering ram, tearing it away as though it was made of paper.

  Hard right and he broke out into what had been the far left lane of the interstate, the Sikorsky dead ahead, hovering only five, maybe six feet off the roadway.

  The death rattle of Kalashnikovs on full-automatic resounded through the night, the windshield disintegrating into a million shards of glass as Harry slid down onto the floor of the van, his arms locking the steering wheel in place.