Alex tore her eyes away from Dmitri. “Alright,” she said, addressing the group as a whole and ignoring the Belorussians lingering gaze. “Let's pick up the pace; getting this done quickly just got even more important.”
Chapter 9
They found the prison camp an hour later.
The rest of their journey had been uneventful. The grasslands had given way to forests and the team had moved as fast as they dared under the circumstances, darting between the trees in a zig-zagging column to confuse any potential pursuers. No such pursuit appeared, which Alex found a little disconcerting. The soldiers should have been overdue to report by now, and she had expected to run into more trouble as the local forces began searching for the killers. Maybe they had got lucky, but a lifetime of covert operations experience meant that Alex had a hard time believing in luck.
The forests had then given away to more grassy hills, and it was at the top of one of those peaks that the team now found themselves, lying prone in the grass and staring down the slope towards an expanse of farm buildings. A large house was surrounded by a number of barns and out-buildings, and Maxwell pointed down towards one particular building. “That's the one our guy is being held in,” he said in a low voice.
Alex's mouth twisted with unease as she stared down at the farm. The buildings were all in darkness, and there was no sign of any movement. There was a chain-linked fence around the perimeter of the farm and a group of armored vehicles parked by one of the barns, but seemingly nobody on patrol. “I don't like this,” she muttered. “Where are the guards?”
“Maybe they aren't as organized as we thought they were,” Pete suggested, his eyes scanning the scene.
Alex made a doubtful noise. “Let's do this slow and carefully,” she said, pointedly glancing at both Maxwell and Dmitri. “Nobody fires a shot or goes stab-happy unless I say you can; understood?”
Maxwell grimaced, but nodded. Dmitri stared at Alex, but eventually lowered his chin a perceptible fraction of an inch to signal his own agreement. Alex turned back to look at the farm and nodded. “Alright,” she said. “We move down to the fence, cut our way through and make for the prison building; in and out, no nonsense.”
The team stood and moved forward, slipping down the slope like specters in the darkness. Alex swung her rifle from left to right, keeping an eye out for moment but seeing none. She began to have an unpleasant feeling in her gut.
They reached the fence and crouched once more. Pete reached into the supply bag he had been carrying and pulled out a pair of wire cutters. He went to work, trying to make as little noise as possible. The snapping of the wire sounded like thunder in the silence of the night, and Alex winced every time the cutters went to work. She turned to check the perimeter and make sure nobody was sneaking up on them.
Dmitri had disappeared again.
Before Alex could say anything, there was the buzz of electricity. With the sound of a hammer, a massive spotlight ignited, illuminating the team in a blinding, white light. This was followed by another spotlight, and then a third, all pointing at them from different angles. Alex shielded her eyes, unable to see beyond the halos of the bulbs. She heard running feet and the shout of numerous voices in Russian. The sounds of multiple rifles being chambered and made ready to fire brought her heart into her mouth. Pete and Maxwell were both as disoriented as herself, swinging their weapons around blindly in a desperate effort to find a target. This was it, Alex realized. This was the end.
“Throw down your weapons,” a voice called out. It sounded vaguely familiar to Alex, and she squinted in the direction from which it came. “You are completely surrounded,” the voice called again. “Last chance, or we open fire.”
Alex's shoulders sagged a little, the hopelessness of the tactical situation crashing down on her like a ton of bricks. She stood slowly, her free hand outstretched in a gesture of acknowledgment. With a pang of self-loathing, she dropped the rifle from her other hand onto the grass.
“What are you doing?” Maxwell hissed, still swinging his weapon around. “We've got to get out of here.”
“Alex is right,” Pete spoke up. He stood up next to her and followed suit, dropping his weapon and raising his hands. “Unless you want to be pin-holed like a target dummy.”
Maxwell glared at Pete with venom, but after a moment he relented. He stood and joined the others in dropping their weapons. They stood in silence, haloed by the spotlights, waiting for their captor's next move.
“Lower the lights,” the voice called out again. The spotlights dimmed, and Alex began to see beyond their glare to the soldiers that had them covered. They were indeed completely surrounded, out-numbered and out-gunned by a massive factor. She thought of Dmitri's disappearance just before this ambush and the one thing it could mean. She would kill that traitor if she ever saw him again.
A man stepped forward, his silhouette resolving into shape and color as he came closer. He was an older man, with a thick mustache and wrinkles around the eyes. He wore a smart military uniform with several medals on the chest. A peaked cap with the insignia of the Russian Army rested on his head. Alex watched the man approach in silence, her heart beating faster with every passing moment as she realized his identity.
The man stopped in front of Alex and looked her square in the face. The wrinkles around his eyes creased as he began to smile. “Hello, Alexandria,” he said.
Alex stared back at the last man to see her parents alive. “Hello, Uncle Nikolai,” she replied.
PART FOUR
Double Cross
Chapter 10
The door opened with a squeal of metal that made Alex wince. She raised her head and tried to squint through two swollen, black eyes. The shaft of light from the doorway brought a welcome relief from the perpetual darkness of her cell. She did not know how long she had been tied to the chair, but it was long enough to have been beaten three times by three different soldiers with a brief pause in between. The soldiers had not appeared to speak English, so Alex had the feeling that she was being softened up.
A silhouette loomed in front of her, and a deep voice barked out in Russian. The room was suddenly flooded with light and she winced in pain, her eyes fighting to adjust after so long in the darkness. As her eyesight cleared, she looked up to see Nikolai's face staring down at her. “Not much of a reunion, is it?” she croaked, her dehydrated voice doing little to hide the sarcasm.
Nikolai's face was impassive, but Alex thought that she saw a twinge of regret in his eyes. He reached out with one hand and cradled Alex's face, his fingers gloved in soft leather. “The soldiers are being too harsh,” he said, examining her wounds. “I will speak to them.”
Alex started to laugh, but a pain in her chest turned the laugh into a hacking cough that caused her to double over as far as her restraints would allow. She spat blood onto the floor and looked up at Nikolai with a cynical grin. “So that's the plan, is it?” she asked, swallowing back another mouthful of blood as she spoke. “Your lackeys rough me up for a while before good old Uncle Nikolai arrives with a kind word and the solution to all of my problems.”
Nikolai's eyes flared with anger, and he tightened his grip on Alex's face, causing her to wince in pain. “You stupid child,” he spat. “Why did you have to get yourself involved in this?”
“What happened to my parents?” Alex snapped back, locking eyes with him. The two stared at each-other in silence for a long moment, before he released her and stalked away across the room. Alex watched him with a pained smirk. “Still tight-lipped about what happened, I see,” she remarked.
Nikolai turned his head slightly, regarding her over his shoulder without actually looking at her. “Your parents were good people,” he said, his voice suddenly quiet. “Their deaths were...unfortunate. I have nothing further to say about that.” Then he turned fully to face her, and his eyes were hard and uncompromising. “Why are you in Belarus?” he asked.
Alex pursed her lips. “Private sec
tor work,” she replied, her tone as neutral as possible.
Nikolai smirked. He shook his head a couple of times and took a step closer. “No, myshka,” he said, using the old affectionate term he had given her as a child. “You were always too principled to get into the dirty end of mercenary work. Running protection rackets in the middle of a civil war is not your style.” He lent in closer, his eyes searching her face for any sign of weakness. “Tell me why you're here, and all this will stop,” he said softly.
Alex leveled a disdainful gaze at him, squinting through her two black eyes. “If the fists of your soldiers didn't get me to talk,” she replied quietly, “then a little heart-to-heart from old Uncle Nikolai isn't going to do the trick either.”
Nikolai's face darkened. He took a step back and straightened his posture, brushing down the creases in his uniform jacket with both hands. “Very well,” he said, turning to the door. He barked out an order in Russian and two soldiers stepped into the room. Nikolai turned back to Alex. “In that case, we will have to try different methods,” he continued. “For now, you can join your friend in the cells.” He nodded to the two soldiers, who walked around behind Alex. One of them held her arms as the second untied her from the chair and then retied her arms behind her back. Then they hooked her under the shoulders and dragged her out of the seat, causing Alex to grunt in pain. Nikolai stepped forward until he was mere inches from Alex's face. “You will talk, myshka,” he said, his tone soft but dangerous. “You will talk, or you will die.”
Chapter 11
Maxwell was one cell over when Alex was thrown into the prison. The guard slammed the door shut and locked it, pocketing the keys with a sneer directed at both prisoners. Then he turned and walked back across the room to take a seat at a small table with another guard. They settled into low conversation, a bottle of vodka open in front of them.
Maxwell shuffled across the floor to the adjoining bars between his and Alex's cells. His own face was blackened with bruises and his nose had been broken. He smiled, revealing a couple of missing teeth. “Hell of a reception party,” he said, his voice strained with pain. He glanced at Alex's own injuries and concern flickered across his face. “You okay?” he asked.
Alex nodded, turning and spitting blood onto the cell floor. “Nothing that a cold beer and a week in Vegas couldn't fix,” she replied, lifting her hand to her mouth and observing the blood on her lips.
Maxwell chuckled, although the laugh descended into a hacking cough. “I've gotta admit, lady,” he said once he had recovered. “You know how to handle a tough situation.”
“Yeah, well,” Alex replied, rolling her shoulders to relieve the tension in her neck. The hours stuck in that chair had left her a mass of pulled tendons. “Contrary to your evident belief,” she continued, glancing up at the American, “we don't fall apart under tough conditions just because we have a different set of reproductive arrangements.”
Maxwell grunted. He turned and lent against the bars of the cell, his back to Alex. “My experience says different,” he replied. Alex could not see his face, but his tone had become distant, as if his mind was in a different time and place. “Doesn't matter if they gave birth to you or gave birth to your child; they disappear when times get tough.” Then he seemed to hesitate, and glanced back over his shoulder at Alex. “I may be tarring too many with the same brush,” he conceded.
Alex climbed to her feet and brushed the dirt off her clothes. “Well, we can save the gender equality seminar until we get home,” she said, glancing around the cell and the area beyond the bars. “Right now, we need to find a way out of here.”
Maxwell was about to say something else when the sound of a chair being pushed back made both of them look up. One of the guards had stumbled up from the chair and was making his way towards the cells. He was stumbling as he walked, evidently quite intoxicated. He leered at Alex through the cell bars and slurred something in Russian.
Alex raised an eyebrow in an unimpressed fashion. “Thanks, comrade,” she said with a dry tone. “But you're not my type.”
The guard's face darkened. He had not understood what she had said, but he had evidently got the gist. He banged his fist angrily on the bars and shouted something at her.
“He's a sore loser,” Maxwell observed.
Alex grunted. “Well, maybe we can use that to our advantage,” she said in a low voice. She gave the guard the most pitying look she could manage and, in a slow and deliberate manner, spat onto the floor in front of him.
That was obviously enough. The guard stepped forward with rage on his face and fumbled the keys into the lock, almost too drunk to work the mechanism. He managed to unlock the door and pushed it open, before stepping into the cell and drawing back his fist as he moved.
Alex leapt forward before he could take another step. She swung out with her fist and made contact just below the nose. The blow was so hard that the guard completely lost his balance, stumbling backwards through the open cell door. Alex followed him through, reaching out for the closest thing she could use as a weapon. Her hands found a discarded steel tube propped up against the wall, evidently a cell bar that had been replaced. She brought it up over her head and swung it down onto the guard's scalp, the impact of metal-on-bone ringing like an off-key musical instrument. The guard dropped to the floor like a sack of bricks and lay motionless.
The other guard had been roused from a drunken half-slumber by the commotion. It only took him a couple of moments through his drunken haze to realize what was happening and reach for his rifle.
It was a couple of moments too many.
Alex leapt across the table and took the second guard to the ground, his frame still sprawled in the wooden chair. She pinned him at the chest with one leg and reached up for the rifle that still lay on the table. Grabbing it, she spun it around in her hands and brought the stock of the weapon down on the guard's face repeatedly, the metal crunching into his features again and again, until finally he lay still and unmoving on the stone floor.
Alex stood, breathing heavily. Her chest ached terribly, as if someone had pushed needles into her skin between the ribs. She took a moment to collect herself before walking over and taking the keys from the other guard's hand. Then she walked over to Maxwell's cell and opened the door. “And you think women are weak-willed?” she asked, glancing back at the downed guards.
Maxwell smirked as he stepped through the cell door. “I think I'm having a change of heart,” he said.
Chapter 12
They took a minute to grab rifles from the two fallen men and then snuck out into the corridor, watching all directions for further trouble. It was dark and silent inside the compound, and Alex thanked their luck for the lack of spectators. She imagined many of the soldiers were probably just as deep into vodka bottles as their inept guards had been. “We make our way outside and head across country,” she whispered to Maxwell as they crept. “We find transport and hightail it for the extraction point.”
“What about Gavel and Dmitri?” Maxwell asked, keeping his eyes trained down the corridor behind them as they moved slowly along the wall.
“Dmitri must be in on this,” replied Alex, the Belorussians face etched with the clarity of hatred into her memory. “He disappeared just before we got captured, so he must have tipped them off that we were coming.”
“And Pete?” Maxwell asked.
Alex hesitated. “He must be in a cell around here somewhere,” she said. “If we find him, we get him out; we don't have the time or manpower to go over every inch of this-”
She broke off her sentence as footsteps approached a turn in the corridor ahead. They both spread themselves across the corridor to allow for clear lines of fire, Alex pressed into the wall whilst Maxwell crouched across from her.
Pete Gavel rounded the corner cautiously, a weapon pointed at them. He faltered as he saw them, his eyes full of surprise. Then he glanced over his shoulder and lowered his rifle, putting a finger to
his lips. “Come on,” he whispered. “We don't have much time.”
“Where the hell were you?” whispered Alex as they fell into line behind him.
Pete glanced back over his shoulder. “They had me in isolation,” he replied in a low voice. They inched along the corridor towards a far door; Alex could see from a small window set into the door frame that the outside world lay beyond. “They were worried about putting us all together in case we coordinated stories,” Pete continued.
“Then why did they put me and Alex together?” whispered Maxwell, who was still checking behind them for anyone trying to creep up on them.
“Beats me,” Pete replied with a shrug. “Maybe they got too drunk to bother.”
They reached the door, and Pete opened it cautiously. “All clear,” he said, before stepping out into the courtyard beyond. Alex and Maxwell followed, each taking deep lungfuls of fresh air. The night was cool and quiet, the wind rushing through trees just beyond the compound's perimeter. There was nobody in sight. An empty guard post stood at the far end of the courtyard, a truck looming silently next to it. “Let's go,” Pete whispered, starting towards the truck.
“Wait!” Alex hissed, reaching out to Pete's shoulder. “We came here to do a job for British intelligence and we need to finish it.” She glanced around. “The guards all think we're in custody; they won't be expecting us to be trying to bust out their prisoner. We've retaken the element of surprise.”
Pete gave her a long gaze. Then he sighed, his shoulders dropping a few inches. “This was your chance to escape,” he said, far louder than stealth required. “We could have been out of here, and my cover would have been intact for future needs.” Then, to Alex's astonishment, he swung his weapon back around to point at them. “However,” he said, a smile spreading across his face. “A confession of wrong-doing works just as well.” He lifted his chin an inch and shouted over Alex's head. “Doesn't it, Nikolai?”
Eastern Shadows: Alex Thorne Book One (Alex Thorne Action Spy Adventures 1) Page 4
