by Peter Telep
“Sam, Charlie here. Another guy coming out on your end, shit, hold position.”
Fisher was crouched behind some shrubs near a maintenance door. The second agent appeared from the door and shouted something to the other one across the street. Fisher couldn’t quite hear their conversation, but the men were arguing. He pricked up his ears and caught a few snippets: something about one man having to dispose of the body. Damn, they had better not be talking about Nadia.
“Sam, Briggs here. My guy’s out. Gagged and tied. Clock’s ticking now.”
“Roger that. Get up to the balcony outside 301. Plan your entry.”
“On my way.”
By the time Fisher glanced up again, the agent who’d come out to join his comrade was returning to the hotel. The second he passed inside, Fisher darted across the street, ducked behind several parked cars, then glided soundlessly along them, coming up behind the first agent, who was a second away from returning his gaze to his smartphone.
The unsuspecting FSB man had no idea that he was about to take a nap the hard way.
Fisher began by looping his right arm around the man’s neck, making sure the crook of his elbow was beneath the agent’s chin. Next, he placed the hand of that arm on his opposite bicep and then applied his left palm forcefully to the back of the agent’s head, pushing the man’s head and neck into the crook of his flexed arm.
Fisher’s attack didn’t stop there. He applied additional pressure by pinioning the man’s lower body. He did this by swinging his legs to lock around the agent’s and arching his back, just as the man dropped his phone and, as expected, reached up toward Fisher’s head.
The “blood choke” was a strangulation technique that compressed the carotid arteries without compressing the airway. The goal was to create cerebral ischemia and a temporary hypoxic condition in the brain.
A well-applied blood choke should render an opponent unconscious in a matter of seconds. Ironically, the blood choke required little physical strength to perform correctly and was a favorite of those operators who lacked the upper body conditioning for a more traditional stranglehold.
The agent struggled a few seconds more, then went limp in Fisher’s arm. He wouldn’t be unconscious for long.
Fisher got to work, dragging him into the forest behind the cars. He set the man down and checked for a carotid pulse. Good, still there. He bound the man’s wrists behind his back with one of the agent’s bootlaces, then improvised a gag with one of the man’s socks and his belt. He removed the man’s pistol, emptied the chamber, then took the magazine and the two spares the man was carrying and hurled them away, into the woods.
“Third guy’s come back outside, Sam,” said Charlie with an audible tremor in his voice.
“What’s his problem?”
“Don’t know. But he’s looking around for his buddy, shit . . .”
“Sam, you’d better get him before he gets back in the hotel.”
Fisher burst from the forest and went running straight at the man.
As the agent reached into his jacket to draw his not-so-expertly-concealed pistol, Fisher seized the man and tripped him flat onto his back, knocking the wind out of him.
Before the agent had a chance to regain his senses, Fisher spun him around, jerked the man’s arm behind his back and broke it. Snap!
Grimacing over the man’s scream, Fisher put him in a blood choke and had him unconscious in exactly eleven seconds. He dragged the agent behind the parked cars, then checked for a pulse. Perfect.
Once more, he used the agent’s bootlace, belt, and sock to immobilize and gag him. He disarmed the man and shoved his pistol and magazines behind the wheel of the nearest car. His pulse now raging, Fisher charged into the hotel.
“Briggs! I’m heading up the stairwell to the third floor. When I tell you, just shoot out that sliding glass door and move in. I’ll be coming in through the main door.”
“Roger that, but I’ve got IR on the room and something’s wrong,” said Briggs.
“Yeah, he’s right,” cried Charlie. “We got big problems. The BioHarness watches? Two of them have gone dead. Alarm’s been tripped.”
Fisher snorted. “No way, my two guys were good.”
“So was mine,” said Briggs.
“Grim, where are you?” cried Fisher. “Grim?”
Her silence sent him bounding up the stairwell. He reached the third-floor hallway where, at the end, he spotted a maid’s cart knocked aside just outside room 301.
As he ran, Grim finally answered, “Sam, I’m here, back in my room. I’ve been trying to figure out how they got tipped off.”
“Shit! Hotel security cams just went down—like they pulled the plug,” said Charlie. “No power to the system.”
“I’m heading inside the room,” Fisher said. He shot past the maid’s cart and found the door to room 301 hanging half open. He drew his SIG and tensed.
He swept his pistol from corner to corner, searching, assessing, taking inventory.
Faint trace of perfume in the air. TV. Double bed. Footprints on the rug. Many sets. Small electronic unit on the dresser: the BioHarness station. Bathroom. Small suitcases still lying open, clothes inside.
“Room’s clear.” He drew the curtain covering the balcony, then threw the lock and slid open the glass door. Briggs was crouched down and waiting for him.
“What the hell, Sam? How’d we lose them?”
The sound of screeching tires from below stole their attention.
A brown Skoda Yeti with driver and passenger in the front seat came bouncing out of the adjacent lot, turned onto the hotel’s driveway, then roared toward the exit.
“That’s them,” cried Fisher before he vaulted over the railing and plunged toward the SUV.
18
IT was just Fisher’s luck that Bab had sold the EMP grenades she’d stolen from the old dead drop. A carefully tossed grenade would’ve rendered the Skoda’s engine useless. Game over. There was no way the Snow Maiden and her partner could’ve escaped with Nadia on foot.
Additionally, Fisher could’ve put Briggs to work with his sniper’s rifle in an attempt to take out a rear tire or two, but the rifle was slung around his back and he doubted Briggs could get it on target in time. They had their sidearms, but taking wild potshots would’ve been much too dangerous with Nadia inside the SUV—and they had to assume she was.
These were, admittedly, all afterthoughts that struck Fisher while he was in the air, realizing that, holy shit, landing on top of the SUV was going to hurt.
Knowing how to move through the impact was half the battle won. They taught you that in jumper school—how to land without breaking your legs. Your feet struck first, then you threw yourself sideways to distribute the shock along five points of contact: the balls of your feet, the calf, the thigh, the hip, and the side of your back.
Still, the years had not been kind to Fisher’s knees, and he was not prepared for another operation on a torn ACL, no. He could take the pain; hell, he embraced the pain, but an impact that might send him rolling off the top of the Skoda to crash to the asphalt had quickly become a very real and breath-robbing possibility.
His boots made impact first, creating a sizable dent in the roof, and then, as the SUV’s momentum threatened to send him flying backward, he threw himself forward, onto his chest, reaching out for the roof racks on either side. His right hand latched on first, and that was good, since the driver cut the wheel hard left, leaving the hotel’s driveway for Lenina Street. Fisher was wrenched sideways before hooking his boot onto the rack and pulling himself back up.
The first gunshot blasted through the rooftop about two inches away from his arm. In fact, as he shifted away, his jacket sleeve got caught on the ragged edge of the bullet hole.
Incredible. The shot had been fired from the passenger, and judging from the size of the hole, it was probably from a .40-caliber handgun. That someone had been reckless enough to discharge a weapon inside a closed vehicle with the win
dows rolled up was nearly as insane as what he was doing. Between the deafening crack and the heavy firing gases and smoke, not to mention the lead and traces of mercury in the air from the primer, the occupants inside would soon choke on their own foolishness.
But that didn’t stop them. Two more rounds punched through, and at the same time, voices sounded in the subdermal:
“I’ve got an idea to cut them off,” cried Briggs.
“What’s going on?” cried Charlie. “I’m black over here.”
“Charlie, get into the cams along Lenina Street,” Grim said. “I’m heading after them.”
Fisher sensed the next few rounds were coming before they did, so he dove for the left side, latching onto the rack with both hands, then slid himself to the side as the roof came alive with more gunfire, the lunatic inside firing one, two, three more shots.
The driver’s side window came down, and smoke began pouring out as the man at the wheel was screaming that he couldn’t hear anything now and that he couldn’t see and that she was insane and “don’t fire that weapon in closed quarters!” The rear windows opened, and more smoke began to trail.
Without warning and before Fisher could even look up to brace himself, they plowed right into a white sedan in front of them, the other driver reflexively hitting his brakes and slowing them down, his horn wailing.
Fisher released one hand and tried to reach into his holster to grab his SIG.
But just then, the driver rolled the wheel hard, trying to get around the other car and nearly throwing Fisher off the roof. He was forced to hang on with both hands now—no chance to reach for the pistol. The sedan with its shattered bumper hanging half off finally drifted away to the side, the driver, a homely woman wearing a hotel maid’s uniform, waving her fist and screaming at them.
Up ahead, the Y-shaped streetlights stretched away for miles along the coast. The road itself was divided by a tall stone median lined with shrubs or fencing, and it blurred by at a dizzying rate.
A thought took hold.
Fisher pulled himself up toward the driver’s side door, preparing to make another quick reach for his pistol with his slightly weaker hand. He planned to thrust his hand down through the driver’s side window to shoot the man.
However, he sensed a vibration from the right side of the car, thought it might be the window lowering. As he turned, he spotted a woman coming up from the passenger’s side, bringing a pistol to bear on him. She was striking, with soft, pale skin and haunting eyes. Her long hair whipped like shimmering black flames, and for just a half second they locked gazes—
Before Fisher swung himself around and booted the pistol away as she fired, the round going high.
So this was Major Viktoria Kolosov of the GRU, the infamous Snow Maiden.
Black leather jacket. Full-sized handgun. Teeth bared.
As her hand came back down, Fisher reached into his holster and drew the SIG, but in that second he already knew he was too late. She had the advantage.
Her face would be the last thing he saw in this world, not his daughter, not a memory of something beautiful like her birth or something drawn from the early years of his marriage. No, it’d be this bitch whose lips protruded in a smirk.
But then the Snow Maiden was slipping backward away from the roof rack, her grip ripped free—
Because the driver had cut the wheel hard left to get around a slower-moving taxi ahead.
Fisher now clung to the rack for dear life himself, his body swinging around as, for just a second, he caught a glimpse of the Snow Maiden over the side. She’d reached up and snatched the windowsill at the last second and now struggled to pull herself up with one hand, her back now parallel with the road.
“Sam, Charlie here. Got you on the cams. Those two are Travkin and the Snow Maiden. Can’t see anyone else inside, which makes me think this car could be a diversion and they’re moving the girl out with another team.”
Bullshit. That couldn’t be the case. Fisher needed to know—and he needed to know now.
He pulled himself up and leaned over the side to catch a glimpse of the SUV’s rear seat and cargo hold. There she was, young Nadia, bound and gagged and lying across the backseat. “The package is here, Charlie,” he grunted into his SVT. “I’m looking right at her.”
The thundering roar of a diesel engine came from behind, and as the road curved slightly to the right, brilliant headlights appeared.
Shots cracked from within that glare, and the rounds pinged off the passenger’s side door, forcing the Snow Maiden back inside. Fisher was ready to reach around once more to shoot Travkin, but those headlights and the wailing racket enveloped him. He glanced over his shoulder.
A huge tri-axle dump truck from the construction site next door to the hotel raced by them in the right lane, and though his eyes were tearing from the wind in his face, Fisher still caught sight of the driver: Briggs.
That he’d commandeered the truck was an impressive display of quick thinking. That he could actually drive one and was prying every bit of speed out of the engine was an even more welcome surprise.
The dump truck raced by, billowing thick smoke from twin exhaust pipes rising from either side of the cab. Piles of broken concrete and dirt jutted from the open-box bed, with sand and pebbles whipping across the SUV.
Briggs cut in front of them, heading straight toward an intersection where the light had just turned red.
Charlie screamed.
Car horns wailed.
Briggs plowed right into the intersection, driving a taxi and a pickup truck off to the side of the road, one truck missing a T-bone with his cab by barely a meter.
Travkin had no choice but to follow Briggs’s line through the gauntlet as two more cars approached.
Up ahead now, the dump truck’s hydraulic lift system slowly raised the bed, and the rear door flipped open.
Now Fisher grinned as hundreds of pounds of concrete and dirt began splaying across both lanes of the road, dust clouds rising, the cacophony of cracking and booming cement sounding like artillery fire in the night.
Travkin didn’t react in time. He drove straight toward a chunk of concrete as wide as the SUV itself, turning only at the last second. The Skoda took flight.
And Fisher was no longer smiling.
They came crashing down, with Fisher’s arms straining against the bumps as his entire body was lifted twice from the roof. Was it over? No, they kept on, only to rumble across several more pieces of stone.
It was all Fisher could do to maintain his grip, and then, after another hard blow to the front wheels, the SUV was once more in the air, floating hopelessly like a bloated, wingless bird.
Fisher glanced up.
And lost his breath.
They were heading straight for the concrete median, the wall standing at least two meters, the gray bricks speeding up at them. A head-on collision was inevitable, impact in two seconds . . .
Fisher released his grip on the rack, allowing himself to slide off the roof. He struck the grass and dirt with his shoulder and hip. The dreaded crunch of a broken collarbone never came as he followed through with a roll to further dissipate the shock.
Before he could look up at the SUV, it hit the wall with an explosive boom echoed quickly by the higher pitched tinkling of flying glass and the hissing of spewing steam and fluids. Two more pops resounded—the air bags deploying.
The sea breeze whipped the dust clouds over the Skoda, shielding it from view for a moment as Fisher scrambled to his feet.
Out ahead, Briggs had pulled the dump truck to the side of the road and was leaping down from the cab.
“Sam, it’s Grim. I’m two minutes away!”
“Hold back,” Fisher cried, just as gunfire sent him crashing back down into the dirt and rolling toward the wall for cover.
“Sam, local police are on the way,” reported Charlie.
“How long?”
“It’s Russia. Don’t know. Maybe an extra minute?”
“Great. Briggs, hold fire now. Nadia’s still in there!”
“Roger, but she’s firing at me!”
“Keep her busy. I’m moving up.”
With his SIG in one hand, Fisher burst from cover and fired two rounds at the wall beside the SUV.
The pistol was a double action/single action, so the first trigger pull was tougher, ten pounds to be precise, while the second and all subsequent pulls was less than half that and with a much shorter reset.
His third and fourth shots forced Travkin back toward the SUV, where he opened up the rear door and sought cover behind it. Fisher saw that the agent’s head was cut, his nose bleeding. He was probably still fatigued, too. Good.
Travkin peered out and squeezed off at least four more shots, two hitting the wall near Fisher, the others striking the dirt behind him.
Fisher squeezed his trigger in reply, but the round failed to feed, damn it. That cheap ammo was coming back to haunt them, as Briggs had predicted. Fisher dropped to his gut, ejected the mag, and wrenched back the slide, tipping the pistol to allow the jammed round to fall out.
At the same time a hailstorm of fire came in from the other side of the SUV, this probably from the Snow Maiden, who seemed hell-bent on emptying her magazines, the salvos coming thick and fast.
Fisher slammed home his own magazine, then racked the slide, chambering a fresh round.
Back on his feet, crouched over and advancing along the wall, he fired two more shots before the next one jammed again. Garbage ammo and shit aftermarket magazine!
He holstered the pistol and reached for his backup—but it was gone, slipped free while he’d been fighting to hang on to the SUV.
