Day of Reckoning (Shadow Warriors)

by Stephen England

  He felt the van shudder from the impact of high-velocity rounds and looked over to see Han curled up across from him, the submachine gun across his chest.

  Braced for impact.

  Yuri watched in disbelief as the van raced forward, on a collision course with the Sikorsky. Watched as if in slow-motion as his team members emptied their magazines into the van, its tires exploding, sparks flying from the bare metal.

  He shouted a warning, starting to run toward his men, his voice drowned out by the gunfire.

  He’d barely taken ten steps when the top of the van connected with the tail boom of the Sikorsky.

  The agonizing shriek of metal on metal, audible even over the thunderous roar of the helicopter. The van shuddered from the impact, already decelerating from the friction of rolling on blown tires.

  From his position on the floor, near the pedals, Harry heard the whine of the helicopter’s rotors as they flailed the air in a futile attempt to stay aloft.

  The night exploded in fire.

  Heat and flame washed through the shattered windows of the van, igniting the upholstery. Harry drew himself up, hand searching for the door handle. “Out! Out! Everyone out.”

  Han tossed him the SCAR and one of their backpacks as he jumped from the van, pulling open Carol’s door. “Let’s move it!”

  He looked back toward the flaming wreckage of the S-76 as they ran down the highway, taking in with a pitiless glance the sight of one of the mercenaries writhing in the fire.

  Fortunes of war.

  1:28 A.M.

  East of Los Angeles

  California

  Korsakov checked his phone for what must have been the thirtieth time in as many minutes, each time greeted with the response, No New Messages.

  Where was Yuri? He should have sent a text by now. A text announcing Nichols’ death. That was all that mattered now, revenge for the men he had lost.

  Dig two graves, he thought, remembering the old proverb of the vengeful, but his decision had already been made.

  “Do you have that satellite yet?” he demanded, glancing into the darkened backseat of the SUV as they continued to speed down the freeway.

  “Da,” the boy replied. “Just coming on-line now. Another moment or two.”

  For all of its advances, technology could seem painfully slow. “Is it true that Valentin is dead?” Viktor asked, looking over his laptop. His voice seemed to tremble even as he spoke the name.

  “It is, Vitya,” the assassin responded, letting out a heavy sigh. His employer, the man who had launched them on this godforsaken mission, was dead. With him died any chance of receiving their final payment, a full half of Korsakov’s contract price. And yet he could not help but feel a strange sense of relief.

  “I am glad,” the boy intoned solemnly, and Korsakov found himself in agreement. His old friend had fallen far— to have become the molester of children, the whore of the jihadists. The world was better off with him dead.

  He heard a sharp intake of breath from Viktor and he twisted around in his seat, motioning for Misha to keep driving. “What’s going on?”

  The boy handed him the laptop, pointing wordlessly to the screen, the image live from a Google satellite miles above Yuri’s last known position. Flames bloomed across the image, leaping skyward. A pillar of fire by night.

  Devastation.

  “Can we see what happened?”

  The boy leaned forward, his dark eyes shining as his fingers worked their magic on the keyboard, back-timing the satellite footage almost thirty minutes before beginning to play it forward once again

  Korsakov watched in morbid fascination as the scene unfolded, leaving no doubt in his mind what had happened. No doubt that his men had failed. Perhaps irredeemably this time.

  He watched the helicopter go down, exploding as its rotors hit the target and tore themselves apart. Watched as the fireball engulfed the men he had sent with Yuri.

  Movement. His finger tapped the edge of the screen, a vehicle moving away from the inferno.

  A sedan. Away from the others, from the chaos of the stampeded herd.

  “That’s him,” he whispered, old instincts taking over. “Can we get the license plate?”

  The boy brushed his hair back out of his eyes, excitement written once more on his face. “I can try.”

  6:38 A.M. Eastern Time

  The White House

  Washington, D.C.

  “…live this morning in Los Angeles, where this story is still developing. I’m standing here in front of the estate of Russian billionaire Valentin Andropov. As you can see, the police are keeping us back, but we’re hearing that Mr. Andropov is dead, and unconfirmed reports suggest that he was not the only fatality in what appears to be a mass murder overnight in Beverly Hills.”

  What? Roger Hancock set down his spoon, resting it on the pink flesh of the grapefruit in the bowl before him as he reached for the remote.

  Surely he hadn’t heard that right.

  He turned the volume up all the way, fear gripping his very soul as the camera panned over the house, the mansion he knew so well. A mansion now lit with police floodlights.

  The brunette onscreen continued her report, but she had nothing further to say, nothing that interested the President.

  Valentin was dead? He could have rationalized it, could have convinced himself that it was nothing. Andropov had made enemies over the years, powerful enemies even within the mafiya.

  But it rang hollow within his own heart. The man he had hired to make his problems go away…was now himself dead.

  The door opened, and Agent Hawkins entered. “Ian Cahill to see you, Mr. President.”

  Hancock looked down at his untouched plate, making a mighty effort to compose himself. To stop shaking. Despite the years of their alliance—their friendship, if one wanted to call it that, this was one problem he couldn’t trust Cahill to solve.

  Not when he had gone this far.

  7:59 A.M.

  An apartment

  Washington, D.C.

  There were few things worse than a night without sleep. Kranemeyer wheeled himself over to the window, adjusting the shades to allow the light of the morning sun to come streaming into the apartment.

  He’d never had such problems as a young man, he thought, spinning his wheelchair back around toward the apartment’s kitchen.

  But he was no longer young. Things were no longer so simple. No longer so clear-cut. Black and white had faded to a gray the color of soot—and just as defiling.

  He plucked a small, unmarked vial off the counter, holding it up to the light. It might as well have been filled with water, by the look of it, but it was nothing so harmless.

  Carter had masked his entrance and exit from the labs of Langley’s Directorate of Science & Technology, or “Q Branch” as some of the local wags called it.

  Covered his theft electronically, Kranemeyer thought, a sad smile on his face. The analyst was still in the dark concerning what he had actually helped accomplish, and it was safest that way. For both of them.

  Coftey’s promise of air support only went so far. And he intended to push it to its breaking point.

  He replaced the vial with a sigh and rolled back to the window, looking out upon the city. A city which took men’s souls and fed them into the meatgrinder of others’ ambition. Democrat, Republican, none of that mattered. Perhaps it never had.

  How far are you willing to go? The senator’s question, still ringing in his ears. Kranemeyer glanced at the vial of poison sitting there in the kitchen, reflecting on his own answer, an answer he was as certain of now as when he had uttered it.

  As far as it takes.

  6:58 A.M. Pacific Time

  An oil field

  Tehachapi, California

  Day was coming, the first faint rays of sunlight breaking across a cloud-streaked horizon. Abandoned derricks littered the oil field, standing silhouetted against the dawn like the skeletons of creatures from a time gone by. />
  Carol adjusted the cracked venetian blinds to let in the sun, moving back toward the center of the room. She’d set her laptop on the cheap metal desk that had once been the centerpiece of the office and she moved to boot it up, checking to see how much battery power she had left. Enough to send their signal for help.

  Death and taxes—the two things of which every man was assured…and taxes had brought death to California’s oil industry. A slow, painful death as the state continued to grasp for more and more revenue to stave off its own slide into the abyss. Keynesian economics in their finest hour.

  The oil field that had once employed hundreds now sat desolate, everything worth hauling off long since taken by metal scavengers and other thieves.

  No more running, Harry had said when they had arrived, and she’d found his grim certainty frightening. Perhaps this oil field would bear witness to their own demise.

  Listening to the computer whirr, she moved back to the window, catching sight of him out near the car, his tall form moving swiftly through the semi-darkness. Assessing his tactical environment. He hadn’t spoken a word to her since they had arrived, hadn’t spoken a word beyond necessity since the death of Pyotr.

  You swore that he would come to no harm—does this look like ‘no harm’ to you? She would never forget the way his face had looked in that moment—pale, drawn…as if she had struck him. In a way, she had.

  And then that man had disappeared—replaced by the man who had dragged her out of that house and placed her forcibly in the panel van as the police closed in. The man who had driven into a hail of gunfire to protect her, and the lives of others on the freeway.

  The man outside.

  In the end, was he truly responsible for the murder or Pyotr…or was she?

  Who had set them on that course?

  You want to find the man behind your father’s murder? This is the most linear path. She could still see the look on Vasiliev’s face as he had uttered those damning words.

  The door to the office trailer opened and he was there, his blue eyes fixed on her face. The way she was standing, he had to know she had been watching him.

  “I have the connection established,” Carol said finally, breaking the awkward silence between them. “You can upload your message any time you’re ready.”

  She drew the jacket tighter around her body as she moved toward the desk, covering up the bloodstains on her blouse. Pyotr’s blood.

  She could feel him behind her, his hands coming up to rest tentatively on her shoulders. “How are you holding up?”

  “I’ll be fine.” She was lying, and they both knew it. His hand slipped down, encircling her waist—drawing her close. A comforting presence, despite everything that had gone before.

  “No one is ever fine,” he whispered. “Not after seeing that. And I deserve every bit of the blame.”

  “No.” She found the words came out more sharply than she had intended, anger and remorse warring within her heart. “I do.”

  The images of Pyotr’s shattered corpse flickered back across her mind and she buried her face in his chest, guilt washing over her, her body wracked with silent sobs. I do…

  1:04 P.M. Eastern Time

  The trailer

  Graves Mill, Virginia

  The sound of a car engine roused Thomas from his seat at the table, taking his Beretta 92 with him as he moved toward the front of the double-wide.

  “It’s your boss,” Rhoda Stevens announced, giving him a disapproving glance at the sight of his sidearm. What the relationship between her and Lay was—or had been, he would probably never know. But she was taking the DCIA’s condition personally. And his role in the affair.

  “Gotcha,” he retorted, peering through the blinds to see Kranemeyer emerging from the black Suburban, his trench coat flapping in the breeze as he advanced on the house.

  The Dark Lord.

  Thomas moved to the door, throwing back the bolt just as the DCS reached it.

  “Have you established any contact with Nichols?” his boss demanded, not bothering with a greeting. The look on Kranemeyer’s face told him something was wrong.

  A shake of the head. “I checked the sites this morning, all of them. No signal. What’s happened?”

  “He’s popped back up on the radar,” came the terse reply. “A local LEO placed him at that mass shooting in California.”

  “That Russian?” No way. He’d seen the reports on the morning news. A veritable bloodbath. Someone had gone after a key player of the mafiya, eliminating his entire security team and executing him with a bullet to the head. The media had reported the story with their typical glee, mingling blood and gore with their viewers’ raisin bran. Harry?

  “Yes,” Kranemeyer responded, pushing past him into the trailer. “That’s the way it’s being reported. He’s running out of room to run, out of places to hide. Run the sites again.”

  Thomas led the way back into the living room, firing up his Macbook on the table. “How’s David?” Kranemeyer asked as the webpage loaded, regarding Thomas with hooded eyes.

  “Doctor says he’s stabilizing. A full recovery is weeks away, if ever.”

  Silence. Thomas loaded the web forums, checking briefly through the new threads. Looking for the code, the signal that would indicate Harry had been there.

  Nothing. The second site was the same. Two down, three to go.

  He scrolled up to Favorites, selecting Ebay and running a search. And there it was…a new listing, only two hours old. A first edition copy of Ayn Rand’s massive tome Atlas Shrugged, its cover a blood-red sun glaring down tracks of glistening steel.

  Rearden steel.

  Despite the gravity of the moment, Thomas found himself smiling. It was Harry who had given him his copy, the outgrowth of a long ago conversation. And the inspiration behind this code.

  “It’s here,” he breathed, mousing over the description until he found it, down near the bottom. A list of pages torn or missing from the book.

  As Kranemeyer watched, he grabbed a sheet of notepaper and began jotting down the numbers in sequence.

  “It’s GPS coordinates,” Thomas announced, realizing the import of his statement almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

  Harry was in California, after all.

  “And this is a call for help.”

  1:39 P.M.

  The Russell Office Building

  Washington, D.C.

  “You said you would call me when it was done.” Roy Coftey frowned as he descended the marble staircase into the rotunda of what had been known as the Old Senate Office Building. He switched the phone to his right hand, checking his watch.

  “Something’s come up,” the voice on the other end of the phone announced. “I need the use of your plane. A brief flight out to LAX. Two passengers out. Indeterminate on the return trip.”

  The senator shook his head, making an effort not to use the man’s name. Not over the phone. “Do we need to meet?”

  “Negative. This is unconnected to our other business. Your Lear is on the ground at Dulles, right?”

  “Yes, but…everything’s grounded.” Coftey stopped short, lowering his voice as one of his staffers came hustling down the stairs after him. “I told you I would have your back, but there’s only so far anyone can protect you. And if I’m going to get that jet off the ground, I will need an airtight cover story.”

  “You’ll have it. I want my people wheels-up by 1600.”

  11:02 A.M. Pacific Time

  The oil field

  California

  And his message had not gone unseen. A smile touched Harry’s lips for a fleeting moment as his eyes fell upon the top bid: $1186. The number of pages in the first edition of Rand’s magnum opus.

  The countersign.

  “Everything ready?” Han asked, entering the office trailer from the back. He was buttoning his faded black windbreaker over the tactical vest beneath it, the SCAR cradled in the crook of his arm.

  Harry c
hecked the file protocols Carol had set up one last time. Everything was in place. If a password wasn’t entered every twelve hours, what little information they had on Tarik Abdul Muhammad and his Christmas Day terror attack would go streaming out through cyberspace to the FBI, CIA, DHS, and a round dozen of the other members of the alphabet soup that was D.C. bureaucracy.

  “Time to hang out our shingle,” he nodded, grabbing up his UMP-45. They were running low on ammunition, almost too low for what was to come.

  If waiting had been an option, he would have waited. The cavalry was coming.

  But Korsakov had to be taken out of the equation now. And the only way to lure the wolf into the trap was to bait it…with themselves.

  Chapter 22

  4:03 P.M. Eastern Time

  Washington, D.C.

  Airborne. Kranemeyer read the text message off the screen of his phone, marveling at the brevity. The Texan was as taciturn as ever.

  He leaned back against the seat of the Suburban, gazing out the window at the setting sun, rays of light flickering out from behind snow-laden clouds the color of slate.

  Valentin Andropov’s nineteen-year-old son had been found dead in a house across the street from his estate. Executed with a single bullet to the head—just like his father.

  According to the early reports Kranemeyer had seen, the murder weapon had differed between the two, but that didn’t really matter. Nor did it matter that Nichols was supposed to be acting under Lay’s orders, sketchy as they had been.

  They might have swept anything else under the rug—made it go away—but this…this was more difficult.

  The son had been an American citizen. And Nichols was now well beyond redemption.

  Something to consider when he reflected on his own plans. Kranemeyer flipped open the folder beside him, the printed sheet therein containing Shapiro’s evening itinerary.

  The Church of the Holy Trinity.

  He’d never been a very pious man himself—the morality of what he was about to do gave him no pause.

  It wasn’t his decision…not really. It was his target’s—a decision that had been made when Shapiro decided to betray his country.