“Go,” Sveta shouted.
The girl jammed the gas pedal all the way to the floor.
Sveta jerked back, but quickly pulled forward, nearly jamming her nose into the glass. She saw the animal leap onto the van and rip the driver’s side door off its hinges, throwing it onto the street. It bounced high in front of them—she thought it was going to crash down on the hood of their car—but the girl twisted the wheel to the left. The door crumpled and bounced again, missing them by a few feet, spraying pieces of glass like a showerhead spraying water. They flew past it as Sveta looked back over her shoulder to see a struggling man pulled out by a dark blur and thrown into the air like a discarded toy.
“What was that?” said Sveta.
She turned to face the girl, who hunched over the steering wheel and sped away as though being chased by the devil himself.
“Where’s Drogol?” she asked.
“He’ll find us,” said the girl. “You can’t hide from Drogol.”
Sveta was too pumped with adrenalin to notice the bloodstain on the girl’s coat.
*****
“Chenko,” repeated Hauck. “What’s happening?”
The scar that ran across the left side of his throat came alive with heat. He pressed his palm over it, tried to concentrate, and said again, “What is going on?”
The old man in the kitchen hadn’t moved. He sat drinking tea with the light off watching Hauck. They had spoken only a few words all night. Hauck knew why he was present. The woman with the cigarette stained teeth had sent him. If Hauck didn’t produce Drogol, then the old man would deliver her Hauck’s head packed in ice. Hauck pushed the thought aside.
The man was an old school Soviet named Andrei. His voice was like sandpaper dragged across cement. Hauck understood why he did not like talking. Also, this man was unimpressed by conversation. His years locked away in a Siberian Gulag had seen to that. Hauck didn’t need to glance back toward the kitchen to know that the bulky old man with the shaved head and the broken face was still there, still watching. One hand on his teacup, the other on his pistol.
Crue, Chenko and Bodin down. Another on the run, thought Hauck. The operation was out of control.
He changed channels and spoke again.
“Evgeny, Yuri. I’ve got backup personnel on the way. This is like Ryazan all over again. Evgeny, move into position and cover their approach. Forget Sveta. We’ll deal with her later. Drogol is everything. Yuri, is she still on the grid?”
“Absolutely.”
“Where?”
“Looks like a block and a half away, but moving.”
“Moving where?”
“Away.”
“Evgeny, let her go. Repeat, let her go. She is unimportant now. Yuri, both bugs are live with good signal strength?”
“Absolutely.”
“Excellent. Evgeny, take position to cover the back door. Rodin and Shestapolov should be at the front of the house now. Yuri?”
“They’re there and heading around back.”
“Shestapolov. Pull up short and let Sveta leave. She’s bugged and findable and unimportant just now. We need Drogol. He’s the target. Understand?”
“Understood,” came back Shestapolov’s thick voice.
“Evgeny?”
“In place.”
“Yuri, pull in Leonid and have him trail Sveta. No contact and tell him if she makes him I’ll shoot him myself.”
“Got it.”
Hauck paced back and forth in front of the monitors.
“Shestapolov—you and Rodin move in and take that thing down. Use the Rail Gun if you have to.”
Behind him, he felt cold disdain emanating from the man at the kitchen table. It was as though someone had opened a freezer door.
They had four tiny video cameras posted around Drogol’s neighborhood. Hauck looked at the images from two of them placed side by side on the monitors, and saw Shestapolov and Rodin move in, their high tech weaponry held in front of them like wards.
In the eerie image of the night vision cameras, details sometimes blurred. He leaned forward frowning, his head inches from the screen. There was movement behind him. He heard a chair scraped over linoleum and the brush of a heavy man past a table. He felt the man’s bulk press close behind him to peer over his shoulder at the screen, as though drawn by dark intuition.
Their attention was initially fixed on the back of the house, but the sound of bestial rage and blurred movement caught their eye from a camera on the driveway side. It glowed like a phosphor smear in motion.
“Evgeny, coming around the side of the house. Do you see it?”
“Tracking.”
It was big, much bigger than a man and shot forward like a predator going in for the kill. Even though he was several blocks away, Hauck had to fight the urge to reach for his gun. It was up and moving so fast it left one screen and shot onto the other as quickly as Hauck could turn his head.
“Shestapolov,” shouted Hauck. “To your right.”
Shestapolov and Rodin turned simultaneously, pivoting on their heels and bringing their weapons around. A fury of bright movement was on them before they could fire. Hauck heard a vicious, triumphant snarl that flooded him with fear. Light swirls smeared with something dark spiraled across the screens. A cry from Rodin that sounded like Mother, but must have been something else.
“Evgeny?” called Hauck.
Above the snarls and snapping and howls, he heard the snap of arcing electricity and Shestapolov’s terrified cursing; either Shestapolov or Rodin was down, and the other tried to sprint across the yard, but then the beast was on him, dragging him toward the fence line faster than Hauck could believe.
“Evgeny,” he called again.
“On the move,” came the terse reply.
A fat finger jutted into view before the monitor. One of the back windows of the house was glowing. Smears of furious light bled into the night. A quick, sharp blast rocked the speakers and Hauck stepped back against the immovable figure of his watcher. The man snorted and pushed him away, but bent over suddenly as he did so as though in pain. Hauck ignored him and stared at the monitor. Flames and sparks shot out the windows, turning the house into a fireworks display.
“Yuri, shut down the grid.”
“Already in play.”
“Evgeny, can you see it?”
“It’s gone. Lost it.”
“Get back to the house. Throw the bodies inside if you can and then disappear.”
The sudden pressure in the middle of his back caused Hauck to reach for his gun, but the man behind him was quicker and slapped him on the back of the head, knocking him forward.
“You do not move.”
Hauck felt the impact of a fist between his shoulder blades. He fell onto a monitor, gasping, grabbing it to keep from falling. It was difficult to breathe; it felt like his back was broken. His gun was yanked away from him so hard the Velcro adhered holster was ripped away with it.
“You are finished now. You have lost him. She has no need of you for nothing anymore.”
A fit of coughing racked Hauck’s chest as he turned over and rested on one elbow, facing the man. He wiped away blood from his split lip and stared.
“You do need something from me, still,” he said, rising painfully.
“Tell me little spy—what do I need from you?”
Suddenly, the man doubled over in pain. Hauck leaned back on the desk full of monitors to catch his breath and watched him struggle. Choking noises and moaning as the man pressed his hand to his side. When he fell over, he hit the ground like a piano dropped from the ceiling.
“Hauck,” came Evgeny’s voice.
Hauck leaned down, retrieving his gun and that of the big man.
“I’ll tell you what I have that you still need,” he whispered near the writhing man’s ear. “I have the antidote for the poison in those tea bags.”
“Hauck,” repeated Evgeny more urgently.
“Here,” said Hauck.
“What caused the explosion?”
“I don’t know.”
“Go back to the van and get Yuri out of there,” said Hauck.
He looked down at the man on the floor and stomped down on his head with his boot heel.
“Yuri?” he said into the mic.
“Here.”
“What about Leonid?”
“He’s keeping close behind Sveta, but out of sight.”
“Good.”
Things had gone horribly wrong, but Sveta survived. His confidence in her was not misplaced. That was what counted. He had other plans in play now. Plans within plans. Drogol would find her and then he would find and kill Drogol.
“You want him to stay back or bring her in?”
Hauck laughed.
“Tell him to stay back. She’d kill him before he got his gun out of his holster.”
The connection with Yuri went dead when the beast slammed into Yuri’s van.
Chapter Three
“What did you mean about him not being able to control the beast? And who is ‘him’?” asked Sveta.
No answer.
“Are you all right?”
The car weaved back and forth. They were slowing down. The young woman’s face looked pale and when she turned to answer Sveta, her eyes wouldn’t stay focused. She let go of the wheel and toppled over onto Sveta’s shoulder. The car began to slow more quickly.
A sudden, panicked instinct caused Sveta to turn and look behind them. Although they were several blocks away from where the beast knocked over the van, she thought she saw something racing after them down the middle of the street.
“Wake up,” she said frantically.
The woman didn’t answer.
“Shit.”
The thing chasing them grew impossibly larger as it came bounding down the street straight at their car. Sveta pushed the young woman’s limp form over against the driver’s side door and scrambled across the shift lever to sit on her lap. The steering wheel was too close, and for a moment she struggled to find its release lever. She wanted desperately to turn around again and see how close the beast was, but fought to keep her cool and her nerves steady.
Her feeling of vulnerability grew as she maneuvered to release the steering wheel lever. An image of the beast knocking over the van flashed in her mind just as the lever clicked and she slammed the steering wheel up to its highest position. She settled onto the woman’s lap, kicked her right leg to one side and found the gas pedal. As she slammed it, she risked a glance at the rearview mirror.
What she saw caused her to press her full weight downward on the gas pedal.
They flew past an intersection, ignoring the red light. A brown Ford almost crashed into the passenger side door, but a squeal of brakes and a spin sideways prevented them from being t-boned. The speedometer read 45 miles per hour as Sveta’s head moved from side to side looking for cross-street traffic or police cruisers. A glance at the rearview mirror showed that the beast was gaining. It was all darkness with two glints of silver for eyes.
A sign just ahead pointed the way to the I-75 ramp. The woman beneath her coughed and spasmed and her leg jerked, knocking Sveta’s foot off the pedal. The wheel spun wildly left as Sveta tried to get her foot back onto the gas. The car swerved and slowed, and, without even looking at the rearview mirror, Sveta knew that whatever chased them was gaining.
She wrestled herself to the right as she got control of the wheel and shoved the woman’s leg toward the door. Frantically, she slid her foot around and got it caught beneath the gas pedal. A stray glance in the mirror caused her to frantically slide her foot out again and slam it down on the accelerator. The thing behind her swiped at the car and she heard the sound of claws scraping down the trunk edge.
Bright lights suddenly flooded the car from the passenger side window and Sveta hung onto the steering wheel as though it were a lifeline. Truck tires squealed and the hiss of pneumatic brakes sounded like an air horn. She heard an impact somewhere near the back of the trunk, saw the beast thrown up and away as she swerved without slowing down to avoid a pothole big as a car tire. The woman groaned beneath her while Sveta squirmed to stay in control of the vehicle. She jammed her foot on the gas pedal as she cursed all four cylinder cars everywhere.
The freeway entrance came into view on the right. Sveta heard a siren blare somewhere in the distance. She turned the car so hard it lifted on two wheels as she hit the ramp. It fell back down with a jolting crash and she fell to one side, her foot sliding off the gas pedal. Panicked, she looked back quickly in the rear view mirror and saw nothing behind them but pavement littered with trash. She found the gas pedal again with the ball of her foot and pressed down hard until they merged onto southbound I-75.
She kept to the seventy mile an hour speed limit to avoid attracting attention, but her heart was still pounding fifteen minutes later when she saw first a Ford plant and then a giant truck stop just off the West Road exit. With a flick of her wrist the blinker flashed and she looked in the rearview mirror as she got on the freeway.
The exit looped around carrying her over a bridge that took them eastbound. The truck stop loomed like Hollywood, and she followed the long drive in to park at the far edge of the giant lot. It was better than a rest stop, with decent lighting and not too many cars. A ridge of tractor trailers hid her parking spot from plain view and any security cameras that would be monitored in the main office. All she saw over the top of the trucks was the giant revolving sign proclaiming “Good Eatin’s, Hot Showers, and Soft Beds.”
She parked parallel to the tractor trailers to keep an open straight away in front of her. The car idled like a lullaby and Sveta switched off the headlights. Time to think. Time to get the woman beneath her into the passenger seat or the trunk. Alive or dead, she had to go somewhere.
Every specialist planned for the moment when things went bad, the moment when they were cut loose of support on foreign ground. The objectives for those scenarios involved staying alive until they could be reunited with their team, or staying alive until their team rescued them. But the longer an agent spent in the field, the more they realized the unspoken necessity of planning for the possibility that their own team would turn on them. Spymasters like Hauck planned both ways, too. How to rescue separated agents, and how to deal with agents who, like Sveta, went rogue.
First things first. Move the woman. Then plan.
Sveta scanned the parking lot, saw nothing of concern, then opened the door, keeping the engine on and idling. The air was brisk and smelled of diesel. Truck engines purred and sent hot exhaust up their shiny vertical pipes, as drivers too cheap to sleep in the motel slept in their cabs. No one else moved about, but truckers had two-way radios, so she’d have to be quick. She slid her feet out and onto the ground, her pistol held loosely behind her back. The dome light didn’t come on and Sveta was grateful she’d earlier told the woman to remove it.
“Hey,” she said.
The woman didn’t respond. Sveta shook her shoulder. Nothing. She removed a glove and checked for a pulse. Faint, but there. With a practiced hand, Sveta went through the woman’s coat and shirt pockets, retrieved bundles of paper and threw them on the passenger seat. A purse lay on the floor, a cell phone next to it.
It hit Sveta right then. She was wearing a transponder somewhere in her assault gear. Not much time at all if she wanted to live through the night. She shoved her pistol into its holster and went to work.
Another quick check round the parking lot, and then she popped the trunk, went around back of the car, and looked inside. She found a plastic crate filled with jumper cables, a first aid kit, a can of Fix-A-Flat, and a blanket. Boxes filled with books, and two plastic bags of washer and brake fluid. She grabbed the blanket, went back and threw it in between the seats.
A clock was ticking in her head.
Hu
rry, hurry, hurry. Hauck and Evgeny and others would be on the way. She had a ten, maybe fifteen minute head start but she should figure only five and get back out on the road. And she was certain they knew exactly where she was.
Moving more quickly now, she opened the front passenger side door, bent down and reached over, grabbed the woman by the armpits and hauled back until she had her butt on the passenger side seat. Her legs didn’t want to cooperate. Sveta tried folding them up and over the shift lever but it didn’t work. If she couldn’t get her over in another two minutes she would leave her on the ground and hit the road. But she tried a different approach and it saved the woman’s life. She lowered the seat back, slid the girl up a bit and then managed to get her legs over and feet resting on the passenger side floor.
Sveta’s first thought was to pull the seat back into place, but she changed tactics and left it right where it was. With the blanket pulled over her and her head angled just right, the woman looked like she’d pulled the seat down herself and was resting. She looked so normal that Sveta thought she knew her.
Almost.
Sveta got back into the car. She couldn’t be seen doing what she had to next.
Every piece of equipment that came from the team had to go, including the gun. She hesitated a moment, then removed her bulletproof vest, her communications systems, ammunition belt, her knife and the rest and slid her pistol under the pile.
Every team member was bugged. They all knew that. It was the easiest way to rescue each other and they all knew where their bugs were. But Sveta reckoned that Hauck would have tagged another bug in her things, in case she wanted to drop off the grid. So everything given to her by Hauck had to go. Reluctantly, she took off her ankle sheath and knife, wrapped cords around them, and laid them on top of the pile.
“Very nice, very organized,” said a rough voice.
Not good.
Tainted Blood Page 2
