She listened for any sound, but heard nothing. Then a voice from inside, barely audible, but distinctive.
“It’s open.”
Reaching down to twist the knob, she took a deep breath. After three years and traveling halfway around the world, the moment of truth had finally arrived.
Jet stepped into the dimly-lit entry foyer and closed the door behind her. David’s voice called to her from the living room.
“Lock it.”
She did as instructed, then turned, moving to where he was waiting for her.
Sunlight filtered through the translucent curtain, framing David’s silhouette as he sat in an easy chair, facing her, holding a Glock. Next to him was a computer screen with two application windows open, grainy images of the front and rear of the building flickering – Rani’s amateur security system, she presumed. She squinted and raised her hand to remove her hat and sunglasses – he motioned with the gun.
“Slowly.”
She took the glasses off, dropping them on the coffee table that sat between them.
“Nice to see you, too,” she said. “Now what?”
“That depends. What brings you to my neck of the woods?”
“I was attacked. I want answers.”
“Well, we have that in common.” He regarded the couch to her right. “Sit down.” Not so much an invitation as an order.
She did as instructed and took in his appearance. His face was pale and drawn, but other than that, he was the same David she’d last seen – a few days before she’d disappeared in a bright flash on the streets of Algiers.
“How did you think to find me through Rani?”
“I went by the safe house. Cops and army everywhere. Figured you’d need a friend.” She shrugged. “Which you do, from where I’m sitting.”
“Ah.”
“How long are you going to point that thing at me like I’m here to kill you?”
“Until I know you aren’t here to kill me.”
“David. Please. If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead. All due respect, you’re no match for me in the field.” She smiled tentatively. “So why don’t we cut the bullshit and you tell me what’s going on?”
The pistol wavered, and he put it on the arm of his chair and sighed, closing his eyes. He’d obviously used up considerable resources just holding it on her.
“You look like shit. How badly wounded are you?” she asked.
“Bad enough. Hit in the stomach. I didn’t need those three feet of intestines anyway, I guess. Rani stitched me back up and says I’ll be good as new, soon.”
“Who did this to you, David?”
He shook his head. “A good question. I have my suspicions.”
“I was in Yemen. Rain’s flat exploded while I was standing outside of it.”
“You were in Yemen? Ah, then that’s how you knew about the safe house,” David said, calculating rapidly.
“Yes.”
“I saw on the news about your adventure on the island. Looks like you took enough scalps to make them think twice about the wisdom of coming after you, though.”
“That’s why I’m here, David. I want to know who’s after me, and why, and how they found out I’m still alive. The only one who knew was you.” She spoke evenly, no inflection, but the accusation hung in the air all the same.
He opened his eyes. “That’s true. And I have an apology to make. I was stupid and sentimental. Careless. I’m sorry. I should have known better…” His voice lost volume as he visibly deflated right in front of her. His last words trailed off, and his head sank onto his chest.
She rose and moved to his side, surreptitiously slipping her palmed knife into the back pocket of her jeans, then put a cool hand on his face.
“You need to rest. I’ll help you to the bedroom. We can talk later.”
He nodded, out of it, and she eased him up, supporting him as they shuffled to the end of the hall and entered the bedroom. She lowered him onto the unmade bed, pushing the IV stand out of the way, and gently unbuttoned his shirt, avoiding dislodging the cannula taped in place in his left arm as she pulled the sleeves off. She hung it across the back of a nearby chair, noticing the bullet hole in the lower section of the fabric, the bloodstain obvious even after someone had tried to wash it out. His eyes opened with a flicker of pain, and she held up the end of the IV tube with raised eyebrows.
He nodded again.
She slipped the line into place and flipped the bag open. David’s eyes closed one last time, and his breathing became deeper. The stitches on the left side of his stomach were ugly, as was the discoloration around them, but his abdomen was only slightly swollen. She caught sight of a syringe and two vials and picked one up, raising it into the dim light so she could read the label. Morphine, half full. No doubt through the IV. That figured.
She returned to the front room and checked the Glock – a 23, she noted by the .40 caliber rounds in the magazine – then slipped the chain lock into place on the front door. Glancing around, she spotted a chair in the tiny dining room, which she quickly wedged under the doorknob.
The windows were the only other point of entry, but after a cursory inspection to ensure that they were all locked, she realized there wasn’t anything more she could do to secure them. She pulled the shades down, darkening the rooms, and after a survey of the refrigerator’s contents to confirm that there was enough nourishment in the flat to last a few days, she returned to the bedroom with the gun and settled into a padded chair in the corner, listening to the sound of David’s steady breathing: only slightly labored, any discomfort eased by the narcotic drip that was helping his body recover from the battering it had endured.
~ ~ ~
When David awoke, it was early evening. Jet raised her head and studied him from her vantage point in the chair.
He tried to get up, with difficulty.
“Do you need help?” she asked.
He nodded. “I want to use the bathroom.”
She disconnected the IV and supported him as they shuffled to the door. He gave her a pained grimace.
“I can take it from here.”
“It’s not like I haven’t seen the goods before, but okay. Scream if you need anything.”
A few minutes later, the door opened, and he stepped out, still weak.
“How’s it going?” she asked.
“So-so. Rani told me to stay in bed. But it’s not every day that I have company over, so I thought I’d at least greet you…”
“With a forty-caliber welcome mat. Very touching.”
“It’s been a while.”
“Not that long.”
He returned to the bed and slid back onto it with a sigh of relief.
“Can you eat yet?”
“Given the injury, Rani suggested I stick to liquids for the first three days. Nothing too acidic. Vegetable and mild fruit juices blended with some of the protein powder and yogurt he’s got in the fridge.”
“Makes sense. He’s got enough food to sustain a small army in the cupboards, so you’re good.”
David smiled again. “Rani never liked to go hungry.”
“I know. I met him, remember?”
“That’s right. I’m sorry. I’m sort of out of it.”
“I noticed. But, David? We need to talk.”
“I know.”
“Maybe we can start with who attacked me.”
“I wish I knew. I have a suspicion, but that’s all it is.”
“Care to share?”
He reached out and grasped the hanging plastic tube and reconnected the IV.
“Later. I need to do some more thinking…but the ones that came for me spoke Russian. I heard one of them call out for help.”
“Russian?”
“I know. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. But it will.”
“Will?”
He was starting to fade again.
“Can you please change the IV ba
g when it runs dry? Probably in another few hours.”
“What would you do if I wasn’t here?” she asked.
“Rani is coming by after work. He’s supposed to be here by seven this evening to check on me.”
Just then, she heard the front door push open against the chair.
She grabbed the Glock and dashed into the living room, where a quick glimpse at the screen confirmed that Rani was on the stoop. “Coming,” she called, then moved down the hall to the entrance, slipping the gun into the waist of her jeans and pulling her shirt over it. She removed the chair and unlocked the chain.
Rani pushed his way in a few seconds later, a bag of groceries in one hand and his physician’s bag in the other. She wordlessly took the food from him and carried it to the kitchen as he walked to the bedroom.
A few minutes later, he returned.
“How is he?” she asked.
“Healing. There’s a danger of sepsis, and he shouldn’t move any more than necessary for another forty-eight hours, and then slowly. The good news is that he’s in remarkable physical shape.”
“How long will he be on the morphine?”
“He can start easing off it tomorrow. Pain is the worst during the first twenty-four hours following the surgery. From here, it should get more tolerable. But bear in mind, I had to cut part of his guts out.”
“That’s the technical term?”
Rani smiled.
“There isn’t a lot anyone can do for him now, except wait. Time will heal him or kill him. My money is on a recovery.” Rani got a glass of water in the kitchen and then headed to the door. “I’ll be back tomorrow. If he starts presenting with a fever, call me – that could be infection, and we need to keep a close watch on it. Beyond that, try to keep him down and resting.”
“Is there anything else I can do?”
He scowled as he opened the door and stepped out.
“Pray.”
Chapter 16
The next morning, Jet blended breakfast for them both – a combination of bananas, milk and yogurt – and brought the concoction into David’s room. He was still out of it, although his eyes seemed a bit clearer. They sipped their sustenance in silence, and then Jet took the empty glasses back to the kitchen and rejoined him.
“Rani said he would come by again today to take a look at you.”
“I remember.”
“Do you remember where you said you would tell me what the hell is going on?”
“Sort of. That part is a little fuzzier.”
“See if this helps. Someone attacked me on the island where I was living, which nobody knew about except for you. I killed nine of them, but they kept on coming. I figured out pretty quickly that you were the only one who could have told them where I was, so I went to Yemen to find Rain – the only member of the team I thought I had a decent chance of locating. I had just gotten there when he was killed in front of me, but not before leaving the return to base signal. So then I snuck into Israel, only to discover you’d been attacked as well. Does that jog your memory at all?”
David looked at her and nodded.
“I originally thought that it was the terrorist cell Rain had infiltrated that killed him, but now I’m not so sure.”
“Why?”
“Because someone killed the other members of the team within a day of his execution.”
Jet’s eyes widened. “They’re all dead? Everyone?”
“Correct. Someone eliminated a group that doesn’t officially exist, and that only a handful of top brass knew about. I found out about the others as information was coming in about Rain. It looks like it was a coordinated strike carried out by professionals.” David paused, frowning. “I have no idea how they tracked them down. Their locations and identities were secret.”
“Good Lord…”
“Then they came for me. To a safe house that nobody knew about. Loaded for bear. It’s only because I got lucky I was able to escape. The plan was for me to be dead, too. I took a bunch of them out, but two survived. So they know I’m still alive.”
“And you have no idea who these people are?”
“Like I said, the only thing I know for sure is that one of the group that tried to kill me was Russian. Probably all of them because he was speaking it into his radio. Did you get a good look at the men who attacked you?”
“They could have been Russian. All Caucasian.”
“So that fits. But it doesn’t mean that the Russian government is trying to terminate us. A lot of ex-Spetsnaz signed on for mercenary work once the wall came down, and that’s still one of the largest sources of mercenaries in the world.”
“Where does that leave us?”
“I’ve got to get healthy enough to be able to put out feelers to some of my non-Mossad contacts. But I can’t rule out that the team was terminated by someone in the Mossad, either.”
“Why would the agency we all worked for want to terminate everyone?”
“I don’t know. But the cleanest way of ensuring there are no loose ends to embarrass you is to end the project permanently, including all personnel.”
“Did you get a foreshadowing of anything like that?”
“No. But there’s always been an elephant in the room when it comes to the team. Operating hit squads on foreign soil, sometimes of friendly nations…to say that it would be embarrassing is an understatement. It would be disastrous for the current administration as well as the nation. I could think of a lot of people who would sleep better if it all just went away. Do I think Mossad is behind this? No. Is it possible? Anything is in this business. You should know that.” He was tiring again, eyes beginning to droop closed. He forced himself back to consciousness with an effort.
“There’s still the question of how they knew I was alive. How they knew where to find me,” she said softly.
“A month ago my condo was robbed. I hadn’t been there for about a week – I was running an op. Nobody knew about it – nobody – I’d only had it for six months, and I used a cutout ID to rent it. Anyway, my neighbor called the police, and by the time I made it into town, a lot of people had been through it: the crime scene techs, the police, the robbers. I’m thinking that they got the information on you when it was robbed. On the rest of the team, I suspect a mole within the agency…but no information existed anywhere about you being alive, nor about your location, so the robbery is the only answer I can come up with.”
“Why didn’t you try to warn me?”
“It never occurred to me. A few items were stolen – the stereo, some cash, a laptop computer, but there wasn’t anything else missing. The problem is that I wasn’t thinking about you when I was burgled.”
She moved around the bed to stare directly into his eyes.
“What did they find?”
“The postcard you sent. I kept it. It was stupid. Sentimental, I suppose. It was on my refrigerator. My guess is that they took photos of everything – you know how that works – and then somehow cracked the encryption on the laptop. It was military grade, supposedly unbreakable, but who knows?”
“You kept the postcard? But it was blank.”
“I know. And I didn’t have anything operational on the computer. But I think there might have been a few files related to my planning for your untimely demise. That’s the only thing that makes any sense. I’m the only one who knew about you, and I haven’t said a word, so it all leads back to someone staging a robbery and devoting insane levels of resources to finding a dead woman.”
She stared at a point on the wall, a thousand miles away.
“So they can kill her.”
David closed his eyes, exhausted.
“I can only think of one group, one man, who is Russian and would want you dead that badly. But then why eliminate everyone on the team? That’s the puzzle.”
“Who, David? Who are you thinking?”
“Mikhail Grigenko. He’s a Russian oligarch. Worth billions. He’s
basically synonymous with the Russian oil industry, as well as the Russian mob. But he’d have no way of knowing about the team, much less want to have them executed. I could see how he would want you and me, but not everyone…”
“I don’t understand. Why would this Grigenko want to have me executed? What did I ever do to him? I’ve never operated in Russia except for that extraction – the diplomat we rescued from the extremists. What would the mob or some oil billionaire want with me, and why go to these lengths to find me once I was dead? None of it makes any sense.”
“You never know everything about the operations, of course. In this case, one mission in particular is germane and explains everything. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, but you had no need to know.”
She took his hand. His palm was sweating – he needed to rest if he was going to heal. She held her fingers against his brow. At least he wasn’t feverish.
“Tell me what?” she asked.
“The Chechnya sanction. The man you executed at the villa outside of Grozny.”
“The file said he was involved in securing weapons of mass destruction for Al Qaeda. Suitcase nukes and bio weapons, if I recall.”
“That was true. He was. The sanction was approved at the highest levels of the government. There was no mistake…”
David wasn’t telling her everything. He probably never did, knowing him. It was part of the way he was. Compartmentalize. Segregate. Need to know.
She prodded him for the unsaid portion of the story. “And?”
“He was also Grigenko’s twin brother.”
Chapter 17
A Falcon 7 sat near the private jet terminal of Vnukovo 3 airport – more a small office with a waiting area than anything remotely resembling a true terminal. Eight hardened men sat in silence, waiting for the baggage to be loaded, their chiseled faces stony, veterans of the elite Spetsnaz GRU, now part of a private army of specialist mercenaries.
Light snow floated from the gray sky, the sinking sun having failed to warm Moscow that day. A stretch Mercedes limousine pulled to the curb outside the building, and a trim man in an expensive hand-tailored suit got out, the driver holding an umbrella over his head as he opened the door for the passenger.
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