by Jack Mars
So much for not killing anyone, he thought dourly. He grabbed up the SMG and turned to head toward the house.
Then he froze.
Over his head, where the iron gate met the stone wall, was a camera angled downward, staring directly at him like an unblinking eye.
“Dammit,” he muttered.
If anyone was watching the feed from inside, they already knew he was there. He couldn’t assume they hadn’t seen him; sneaking in could mean walking into a trap. And with the authorities at the scene of the car wreck, he couldn’t imagine he had much time before there were visitors.
Well, he thought to himself. It’s been a while since I’ve made a big entrance.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Karina was seated on the center cushion of a large, comfortable sofa wrapped in soft brown leather, her slight figure sinking deep into it. The home around her was elegant yet cozy, unpretentious. Above the flat-screen television was a ship in a bottle, and art on the walls, and a fireplace nestled along the southeast of the large living room. It looked as if the place had been staged by a professional decorator to make guests feel invited—which was made all the more bizarre by the fact that she was flanked on either side of the sofa by Secret Service agents with pistols in their laps.
The handcuffs had been taken off, but that was of little comfort considering that across from her, seated in a recliner that matched the sofa, was Aleksandr Kozlovsky. Behind him stood a thick-necked Russian with his hands clasped in front of him. He was not carrying a gun, but an AK-47 leaned against the wall within reach.
Kozlovsky grinned as he noticed her glancing around at the décor. “Do you like it?” he asked in Russian. “The US government owns this place. People like me can opt to stay here if we wish. To be frank, I prefer it… after all those meetings and press conferences, forcing myself to smile. To shake hands. To play nice. It is a relief to return to a place like this and not have to pretend I enjoy being here.”
Karina scowled at the Russian president, saying nothing.
“The truth is,” Kozlovsky continued, “all of those public appearances were carefully scripted and staged, just to afford me the few minutes alone that I needed with him.”
“What do you think these two would say,” Karina gestured to the Secret Service agents on either side of her as she spoke in Russian, “if they knew the truth?”
Kozlovsky laughed. “By all means, tell them. They are good men, loyal to their leader and their country—which is their error. They believe what they were told, that you are a traitor, an enemy of the state. They would not listen to a word you said.” He leaned forward in the recliner and folded his hands. “Now. I do not believe that you had the means to record that meeting. But still you have caused a great deal of trouble. Simply being alive threatens everything we’ve done here. Rest assured, we are going to kill you. How fast that happens depends entirely on you.”
Karina’s hands trembled slightly. She shoved them in her lap, clasping them together to hide it.
“I am going to ask you four questions,” said Kozlovsky. “And I expect complete honesty. Did you record that meeting? If so, where is the recording? Did you send it or share it with anyone? And why?”
Karina again said nothing. She wouldn’t, no matter what they did.
Kozlovsky sighed. “I assumed as much. You will tell me, eventually. We have all night. No one is coming for you. No one knows we are here but our own people. And Vasily here,” he gestured to the Russian standing over his shoulder, “is soon going to start carving your face.”
Karina swallowed the lump in her throat. She didn’t care that her voice sounded tremulous as she said, “Well? What is he waiting for?”
Kozlovsky grinned wide, baring his teeth. “I like you. You are bold. Or at least you think you are. We are waiting for a friend of yours, who should be arriving any moment.”
She frowned. Friend? What friend? The closest contact she had was Veronika’s FIS liaison in Richmond, and she didn’t even know his name.
Kozlovsky looked over his shoulder at Vasily. “Where are they? They should be here by now.”
The big Russian reached for a remote control on the oak coffee table in front of them. He clicked a button to check the feed from outside, but the television’s screen remained dark. Karina squinted; she could just barely make out the outline of the driveway and lawn just beyond the entrance of the gate.
“Lights are off,” Vasily muttered in Russian. “Where are those two—?”
Suddenly the screen flickered with light as the motion-sensing flood lamps clicked on. Karina sucked in a breath. Vasily took a step back. The two Secret Service agents leapt to their feet, one of them hissing, “What the hell?!”
On the screen, one of the Russian sat up in the driveway, rubbing his jaw. The other was lying on his back, eyes open, unmoving.
“They’re down!” Vasily shouted. He lurched for the AK-47, but before he got there a window shattered loudly. Karina jumped at the sound, coming from the front of the house. The Secret Service agents bolted for the hall.
Vasily started to follow, but Kozlovsky grabbed his shoulder. “Stay with me!” he ordered. The big Russian brought the rifle to his shoulder and waited. “You!” Kozlovsky glared down at her. “Do not move!”
“Watch your six!” Karina heard one of the agents shout.
“There!”
Two gunshots rang out in quick succession. Someone grunted loudly. Then a yelp of pain. Another window shattered.
Then, silence.
Vasily glanced over his shoulder nervously at Kozlovsky. The Russian president nodded tightly, and then reached into his jacket for a phone.
The big Russian whipped around the corner, aiming the AK down the hall. But it was evident by his expression that he saw nothing.
More glass shattered, this time behind him, coming from the rear of the house. A large stone, big as two fists, sailed through and smacked the floor, cracking a tile. Vasily spun, but not fast enough. Thwip! She heard the suppressed shot at the same time as Vasily’s knee exploded. He shrieked in pain as he crumpled.
A man stepped through the broken glass door at the rear, a silenced pistol in his hand. He kicked at the AK, sending the rifle spinning across the floor and into the kitchen. Vasily grabbed for him, but the man kicked again, this time into the big Russian’s chin.
Then he turned his gun on Kozlovsky.
“Put down the phone,” he ordered in Russian.
A slow grin spread on Kozlovsky’s face as he lowered the phone to the coffee table. “You must be Zero. I’ve heard much about you.”
Zero? Karina looked the man up and down. He can’t be. He certainly didn’t look like the man Veronika had described. He looked rather… ordinary. His dark hair was too long, creeping down his neck and over his ears, going gray at the temples. His eyes were sharp, but the rest of his face appeared tired, and he had a slight paunch pushing just over his belt buckle.
This is my would-be savior? She was beginning to think that maybe her sister had actually lost her mind.
“Tell me,” Kozlovsky said calmly. “Do you think it is wise to point a gun at a sitting president?”
“Not really,” the man replied in Russian. “But if you’ve heard about me, you know I’m not particularly well known for thinking things through.” He reached behind him and pulled a black pistol from his waistband. Without taking his eyes off of Kozlovsky, he held it out to Karina. “You know how to use this?” he asked in English.
“I do.” She did not particularly like guns, but Veronika had insisted that she learn how to shoot. Karina took it, racked the slide to put a round in the chamber, and pointed the gun at the man that called himself Zero.
“Um…” His confused gaze flitted between the president and the gun pointed at him. “I think you misunderstand what’s happening here. This is a rescue.”
“And I have been tricked before,” she said curtly. It was how she got here, after all. The real Zero would not have kn
own how to find her. For all she knew, this was another ploy by the Russians; this “attack” could have been staged to gain her trust, and as soon as she told him what she knew, he would kill her. “If you are Zero, then prove it.”
“Sorry? Prove it?” He scoffed. “Prove it how, exactly?”
Kozlovsky laughed, even as his bodyguard Vasily writhed and whimpered on the floor mere feet away. “This is rich,” he said in Russian. “She does not trust you, does she?”
Karina heard rapid footfalls behind them. She spun toward the sound. Zero did too, but as he turned he dropped to the floor, practically falling to his back with the gun aimed. At nearly the same time, the man in the black shirt rounded from the hall, a gun in his hand and a bandage over his nose.
The man skidded to a stop as he found his gun leveled at President Kozlovsky. Zero fired once from the floor, striking the man in the sternum. The gun fell from his hands as both pressed over his wound and he fell to his knees.
“Zero,” he hissed painfully.
The alleged Zero turned to face her. “Your choices are stay here, or come with me,” he said quickly. “Any minute now, we’re going to have more guests. Now can we please get out of here?”
“He’s here!” Kozlovsky barked in Russian. “Zero is here!”
They both spun again. The Russian president had grabbed the phone and was shouting into it. Karina acted without thinking; she aimed the black pistol and fired once. The shot came within two inches of hitting Kozlovsky in the head—but instead it struck the phone, sending it spinning out of the president’s hand.
Along with two of his fingers.
Kozlovsky stared at his trembling, bleeding, three-fingered hand for a long moment. Then the screaming began.
Karina nearly dropped the weapon, simultaneously shocked and mortified by what she’d done. She’d never fired at anything living before; this was clearly a day of many firsts.
“Time to go.” Zero grabbed her arm and pulled her to the kitchen. “Garage?”
“Um… that way!” Karina shook herself from her stupor and pointed down the hall, past the bathroom, where she had been brought into the house. “Wait, keys!” She grabbed the ring from the granite countertop and tossed them to Zero.
They pushed out into the three-car garage, occupied by two SUVs and a town car. Zero pressed the fob and the lights of an SUV flashed. He reached for the large white button on the wall to open the garage bay when Karina pointed the gun at him once more.
“Come on,” he groaned, “not this again.”
“How did you find me here?” She needed to know she could trust him before she got in a car with him.
Zero grunted irritably. Then he took a deep breath and spouted, rapid-fire: “Your sister contacted me. I knew her as Sanders when we worked together a while back. Her name is Veronika. Yours is Karina. At least those are the names she gave me. I went to the theater to find you, but you were already gone. Friends of theirs picked me up to bring me here. Their car is crashed about a mile and a half from here, but only one of them is dead. The cavalry is coming, so we need to leave right fucking now. Okay? Is that good enough for you?”
She nodded once. “Yes. Let’s go.” She rounded the SUV and got in the passenger side. Zero smacked the button and the garage door began to roll up slowly. He slid in behind the wheel, pushed the key in the ignition—and then winced at the sudden bright lights that nearly blinded them.
“We’re too late,” Karina murmured. The headlights of at least four vehicles, maybe more, raced up the driveway toward them. She’d waited too long, delayed them unnecessarily.
“Not yet we’re not.” Zero twisted the key and the engine roared to life. “Put your seatbelt on.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Zero smashed down on the accelerator and the SUV lurched forward, the RPMs leaping nearly to six thousand as they took off from the garage bay like a shot. The interpreter frantically pulled her seatbelt across her chest.
We could have been clear of here if she’d just listened to me, he thought irritably. He clicked on the high beams as he played chicken with the oncoming cars.
“What are you doing?!” Karina shrieked beside him.
“Hang on.” The oncoming vehicles weren’t as reckless as he was; they veered to the right to avoid hitting them. Zero jerked the wheel to the left and drove onto the lawn, the tires tearing up the manicured grass. He swerved left and right to avoid the cherry blossom trees dotting the landscape.
“Wall!” Karina pointed ahead of them. “Wall!”
“Yeah, I see it!” He spun the wheel again, the back end of the SUV scraping against stone as they turned and raced parallel to the wall, toward the rear of the property.
“Where are we going?” she cried.
“Finding another way out. There must be a second gate, another exit.”
“And if there’s not?” she asked.
“Well, that’s just poor planning on their part…”
Shots rang out behind them as the cars pursued them. Bullets smacked into their bumper. The rear windshield splintered, but held. Bullet-resistant glass. Good to know. Zero spun the wheel again, flying past the guest house, but he didn’t see another gate. “Dammit.” He shifted his weight to try to pull the SMG out from beneath him, but the strap around his shoulder and neck was tangled in his seat belt. “Get the gun, the machine gun.”
Karina reached over the center console as Zero spun the wheel again, circling back around toward the front of the house. The pursuers were still behind them, but if he could get out of the gate, he might have a chance to elude them. The interpreter tugged on the gun, which pulled on the strap, which pulled Zero’s neck to an awkward angle.
“Jeez, careful! Just unclip it from the strap!”
“Oh. Right.” Karina unfastened the gun and handed it to him.
“Thanks.” The SUV spun around to the front of the house and back toward the driveway. Two of the vehicles were waiting for them. “Get down!”
Karina ducked low as bullets pounded the grille, the windshield, the door. Zero winced with each impact, but the glass held.
“Hold onto something!” He straightened the car and pushed the pedal to the floor as they hurtled toward the iron gate.
“Wait, don’t—”
The SUV hit the iron gate at fifty-five miles an hour. The front end crumpled; the rear end came off the ground for a moment, and then crashed back down. Both Zero and Karina keeled forward violently as the airbags exploded in their faces.
The gate barely budged.
A slight moan escaped Zero’s lips as he pushed himself upright in the seat again. His vision was blurry, his head pounded, and there was a ringing in his ears. He glanced over at Karina, slumped over the dashboard with blood eking from one nostril and white powder from the deflated airbag all over her face.
“Hey,” he said weakly. “You okay?”
She winced as she looked over at him. “Why… in the hell… did you think that would work?”
He didn’t really have an answer for that—well, he did, but the moment was not the right time to say because I’m Zero, and things like that usually work out for me. He glanced in the rearview mirror. Four cars surrounded them in a semicircle not ten yards behind the SUV, engines idling, doors open, the silhouettes of suited men taking cover behind them.
“There’s nowhere to go!” a male voice shouted. “Come out with your hands on your head!”
“What are we going to do?” the interpreter screeched.
“For starters, we’re going to stop shouting in my ear.” Zero glanced around. The SMG had tumbled to the floor between his feet when they’d hit the gate. He reached for it. “Secondly, we’re going to stay as still and silent as possible.”
She gaped at him. “They’re federal agents, not snakes…”
“Just please stay still and silent.” He pressed the button to roll down the window. Thankfully, it still worked, or at least got about halfway before the bent door frame stopped i
t. “Still and silent.”
Karina gulped, but did as he asked. Behind them, the agents continued shouting the usual rhetoric: “Come out with your hands on your head!” “You’re surrounded!” “There’s nowhere to go!” “Get out of the car, now!”
They know we’re armed. There was no other reason for the agents to act so cautiously, for them to be taking cover, biding their time. But eventually they’d make a move and come for them. Just don’t move.
“Do you have a plan?” Karina whispered.
“Yes,” he whispered back. “I mean, sort of. When I say go, make a run for the wall and jump it.”
“That’s your plan?!”
“Stay still!”
“‘Make a run for it’? You have got to be the most inept, useless, ineffectual—”
Click! The floodlights went out and Karina fell silent as they were thrust into darkness. Even the agents behind them ceased their shouting, unsure of what to do now that they couldn’t see a thing.
Come on. Come get us.
He watched in the rearview mirror, taking care not to move his head and activate the lights again, and saw several silhouettes creeping forward, pistols at the ready.
Just a little further.
“They’re coming,” Karina whispered hoarsely.
“No kidding. Stay still.”
One of the agents came around the rear of the SUV, walking heel to toe, gun aloft—
Click! The floodlights suddenly came to life again with the agent’s movement, bright and powerful and near-blinding. In the same instant, Zero leaned out of the driver’s side window and pulled the trigger on the SMG.
Karina let out a small shriek as a fusillade of bullets sprayed out like a thousand snare drum rolls. Zero waved the gun back and forth, hitting cars and asphalt and, by the yelps and shouts, a few people.
“Go!” he hissed to her.
She shoved the door open and tumbled out. Zero pushed his door open as well as he fired another burst. The banana clip in the SMG was a higher yield than usual, but he’d be out soon.
