The Russian Bride

by Ed Kovacs

  But when Gina rounded the sharp curve, Lily got a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She could see the panic on Gina’s face as her car lurched forward—accelerated—and swerved to miss the roadblock, then hurtled into a heavily wooded arroyo just off the shoulder. The noise of the crash could have been worse. Gina’s car missed hitting trees and nose-dived into hard earth about twenty feet below the road.

  “Chert poberi!” shouted Lily. Damn it all to hell! She then reined in her anger and calmly spoke into her radio: “Three and four, hold the traffic, hold the traffic.” She waved frantically at Dimi. “Park the vehicles on the shoulder, there!”

  As Lily and the thugs raced into the arroyo, Dimi and the other driver parked the Navigator and panel van at the point where Gina’s car had left the roadway, blocking the site from view.

  Lily Bain slid down the slope and was the first to reach the driver’s compartment, where she put on thin white cotton gloves. “The air bags didn’t deploy. And this car is almost new.”

  “This is America. She can sue,” joked one of the thugs.

  “Shut up,” she snapped.

  Gina Bennings, still wearing her seat belt, looked dead to Lily. Her nose was smashed into her head, blood oozed from numerous gashes, and her awkwardly angled neck didn’t look right. But Lily checked her pulse in two places. She eased her cell-phone screen under what was left of Gina’s nostrils and checked for condensation.

  “She’s dead,” said Lily, pulling off her gloves and stuffing them into a back pocket of her jeans. “Quick, let’s go.”

  In seconds the Russians were back in their vehicles and pulled onto Carbon Canyon Road. “Units three and four, release traffic.” Lily lit a cigarette. “All she had to do was step on the brake.”

  “We should have grabbed her at the house,” said the driver, Dimi, who then blew a bubble with his chewing gum.

  “That’s why you’re just the driver. That house has more alarms and CCTV cameras than a bank. We still have plan B.”

  Lily reached behind her to get the white gloves from her back pocket, but there was only one glove, not two.

  Ohooiet’! Holy f*ck! A flash of panic swept over her freckled face. Did she lose a glove at the accident scene? She felt sick in the pit of her stomach, but then quickly balled up the glove into her hand and stuffed it into her front pocket.

  Dimi glanced over at her, but she ignored him. Even if the police found the glove, how could they possibly connect it to her? Lily relaxed and thought about plan B.

  * * *

  Gina Bennings groggily opened her eyes. She was only half there, maybe not even that much. She silently recited the prayer she’d been saying for the last four years, asking to be taken to join her deceased husband and son.

  Then she closed her eyes, and God answered her prayers.

  CHAPTER 7

  Kit awoke at 4:00 A.M. to make sure he’d be in place at Julie Rufo’s apartment building by 7:00. He didn’t use the tunnel and so he picked up his usual tail when he left his apartment. As a defense attaché / assumed spy in an adversary nation, the Russians followed him everywhere. It was only when he used the tunnel in disguise at night that he could leave and enter his residence unnoticed.

  Since he’d never had occasion to ditch his tail before, their guard was down, and he easily lost them at a Metro station. Still, he spent a solid hour of countersurveillance to make sure he wasn’t followed to Rufo’s.

  Kit easily followed her to the Presnensky District, but he dropped back as they neared the embassy complex at Bolshoy Deviatinsky Pereulok No. 8. His shadows were waiting for him, and he didn’t want them to connect him to Rufo. Once again, she had done nothing out of the ordinary during her commute.

  * * *

  As soon as Bennings walked into the embassy’s defense attaché office, he could feel something was wrong. Everyone gave him strange looks. Everyone. Strange look, quick nod, then look away.

  “Major Bennings.” It was Jan, a young secretary. “General Alexander wants to see you immediately.”

  Damn! Does he know about Popov’s bribe attempt? How could he? It wasn’t in the report, but …

  “This way please, Major.” Kit tensed his stomach muscles and followed Jan right into the general’s office. The secretary quietly closed the door as she left.

  “Please sit down,” said General Alexander, a white-haired man in his late fifties. He wore a shirt and tie, just like all the male attachés in the office. Kit couldn’t read his face as he sat across the big wooden desk from his commander. He’d only worked for the general for a few months and hadn’t yet established any kind of personal connection; their dealings had been brief and very formal.

  “I’m guessing you haven’t checked your e-mail this morning.”

  “No, sir, I was going to do that first thing after I arrived.”

  “And you have some kind of satellite phone?”

  The question surprised Kit. How does the general know I have a sat phone? Oh, hell, there’s trouble coming for sure. Kit felt for the device in his pocket. “Yes, sir.” He pulled it out. “Would you like to see it?” Kit quickly checked the phone. “Sorry, General, looks like the battery is dead. I was so tired last night I went to sleep without charging it. But, sir, my regular cell phone with a Russian SIM card is right here.” He produced the cell phone, which he seldom used. “It’s working. Your office has this number and—”

  “Settle down, you’re not in any trouble. Your sister back in the States has been trying to call your sat phone. She finally called the Red Cross, and they called us. So I guess I’m the one who has to tell you: your mother was killed in a car accident. She apparently couldn’t negotiate a sharp curve and ended up in an embankment. I’m very sorry. Tell me what I can do for you. We can get you on the first thing smoking out of Moscow. You can leave today if you want.”

  Kit sat in stunned silence holding on tightly to the arms of the chair. He hadn’t called home last night. He’d forgotten. One day his mom’s bank accounts were raided, the next day she was dead. What in the hell? And worse, he wasn’t even there to have helped. His head was spinning.

  He simply couldn’t believe it. He had exactly one family member left in the world, his sister, Staci.

  “Major Bennings?”

  “Yes, sir.” It came out automatically, in almost a whisper. Kit realized his eyes had moistened. He squeezed the armrests as hard as he could, then bit down on his tongue till it almost bled. He worked hard to consciously swallow the emotion and keep it from rising to his head.

  General Alexander stood and poured a glass of water from a pitcher on a side table. He handed it to Kit.

  “Thank you, General.” Kit drank deeply from the water as his intellect overrode the emotion, as he’d been trained to do. His mind raced. “Sir, I have a few things to wrap up. I’d like to fly back to Los Angeles tomorrow afternoon, if that can be arranged.”

  “Consider it done.”

  He saluted and managed to walk out without shedding a tear.

  * * *

  The general provided a private office with a phone, and Kit immediately called Staci at home in Chino Hills. She cried for most of an hour, but he held the space of the emotional anchor point, the solid rock of reason to her wailing sorrow. Her fiancé, Blanchard, was a globe-trotting financial adviser currently closing a big deal in Tokyo; he couldn’t get back to Chino Hills for at least a week without blowing his multimillion-dollar deal. But Rick and Maria Carrillo were with Staci. Rick had flown with Kit’s father, Tommy, during the Vietnam War; he had flown with Tommy as an airline copilot, and he had been a founding partner in the aviation company Tommy had started. Rick and Maria had been best friends to Tommy and Gina for decades and were like an uncle and aunt to Kit and Staci. At least Rick and Maria are there.

  Bennings then sent a coded, encrypted message to Herb Sinclair saying he was leaving Moscow due to a personal emergency. Sinclair had the communications of so many embassy employees wired, there was a g
ood chance he already knew about the accident. Either way, it was instructive how when “life” intrudes upon your world—in this case life being death—so much that had been terribly important suddenly becomes meaningless. Like the search for the third mole.

  CHAPTER 8

  “This isn’t plan B, this is plan XYZ,” groused Dimi, the Russian driver, as he popped a chunk of pink bubble gum into his mouth. This time, Dimi sat behind the wheel of a silver Ford Crown Victoria. He began loading tranquilizer darts into a special pistol as lights twinkled in the darkness from homes on the nearby hills.

  “And what difference does it make to you?” quizzed Lily Bain. There was no cutie-pie smile, just a quick, sharp look flashed like a shiv at Dimi. She sat in the front seat and returned her gaze to a tablet computer as a video feed suddenly appeared showing the driveway leading up to the Bennings house in Chino Hills. A blueprint of the home lay on the seat between them.

  The Crown Vic sat parked next to the white panel van on a deserted turnout. Ten more thugs sat crammed into the van.

  “Why not wait until the old couple leaves?” asked Dimi.

  “Because Viktor wanted it done fifteen minutes ago. Would you like me to call him for you and express your concerns?”

  Dimi looked at Lily. He wasn’t intimidated by her and certainly wasn’t squeamish about killing, he just liked to kill smart. He disagreed with almost every tactical decision Lily Bain made, but he had to tread lightly, since she occasionally slept with the boss and had Popov’s confidence. For now.

  Suddenly, a disembodied voice crackled over the two-way radios. “Phone line is cut, alarms and CCTV are hacked and down. All cell-phone signals are jammed within a quarter mile.”

  “Okay, let’s go,” said Lily into her radio.

  The van moved out first, with lights out, and arrived at the target within one minute. The armed ten-man team crept up the Bennings’s driveway, where a Mercedes and an Audi sat parked, and assumed their prearranged positions around the house. The hilly nature of the subdivision ensured that no neighbors lived too close or had a direct line of sight, especially at night, to the front of the house.

  Dimi pulled the Crown Vic into the driveway. With its antennae, the Ford sedan looked like an unmarked police car. Lily wore a pantsuit, Dimi a sport jacket as they crossed to the front door and rang the bell. Dimi remembered to spit out the gum, and then he smoothed down his jacket.

  * * *

  Ricardo “Rick” Carrillo, an athletic man of sixty-two with gray hair and a mustache to match, moved to the front door as the bell gently chimed. When he reached for the doorknob, he noticed the alarm system was down. Rick stopped short of opening the door and instead turned in Staci’s direction. “Staci, did you turn off the alarm?”

  Staci looked up from her chair in the living room. “No.”

  Rick punched in the code to turn on the alarm, but nothing happened. “It’s not working.”

  “It was working this morning,” said Staci.

  “Are you expecting someone?”

  “Maybe it’s flowers. From Kit or Blanchard, or—”

  “Flowers at this hour?”

  Rick was already plenty upset, but he was also a cautious man. He knew very well that Gina Bennings had driven through the S turns on Carbon Canyon Road hundreds, no, thousands of times. He was having a hard time accepting his old friend’s death.

  Rick looked out the front door peephole and saw a man and woman standing there. To Rick they looked young, both well under thirty.

  “Staci, check the CCTV cameras,” he said, just loudly enough for her to hear. She quickly got up and crossed to her late father’s office.

  There was nothing flimsy about the Bennings home; it was solid construction, and the thick, hardwood front door provided a substantial buffer between occupants and the occasional traveling salesman. Hence there was an intercom, and Rick engaged it.

  “Can I help you?”

  “San Bernardino County Sheriff’s detectives,” said Lily, using the intercom as she and Dimi held up fake, but authentic-looking police IDs and badges.

  “Homicide?”

  “Yes, we’re here about Mrs. Bennings,” said Lily.

  “Does Captain Clark, the homicide commander, know you’re here?” asked Rick, who quickly squinted through the peephole to see their response.

  Dimi stared back blankly; Lily’s eyes rolled up for a split second before she answered.

  “Sir, our investigation uncovered some troubling information. You’re welcome to accompany us to the station, or we can talk here,” said Lily.

  “So Clark approved this visit at this late hour?”

  “Sir, I’m now in charge of the investigation. We’re here to ask questions, not answer them.”

  “Hold on, I’m not dressed,” said Rick into the intercom. He then quickly moved away from the door as Staci emerged from the office.

  “The cameras aren’t working, either,” said Staci.

  “If they’re cops, I’m Kermit the Frog!”

  “What?!”

  “Imposters, pretending to be police.” Rick pulled out his cell phone. “No signal!”

  “What’s going on?” asked Staci, alarmed.

  “Are the guns still kept in your dad’s old office?”

  * * *

  Dimi couldn’t help but smirk. He might just be the driver, but he was ten times smarter than Lily. Her plan B was already unraveling. She should have only cut landline and cell-phone service and kept the alarms and cameras working until the front door was opened. Dimi was a former Spetsnaz, Russian Special Forces, operator and knew exactly what should be done.

  “They’re suspicious. They won’t open the door,” whispered Dimi.

  “Yes they will.”

  “You didn’t answer his questions about this Captain Clark person.”

  “He’s getting dressed, then—”

  “He’s finding out the phones don’t work and he’s getting a gun, is what he’s probably doing,” said Dimi, no longer whispering. “If he starts shooting, the whole neighborhood will hear.” He spoke into his radio, “Remember, do not shoot the girl. Go, go, go!”

  Before Lily could react to her authority being usurped, Dimi unholstered a sound-suppressed KRISS Super V, a compact .45 caliber subgun, from a special shoulder rig, and then emptied the magazine into the door-lock mechanism. The gun was quiet, the sound of wood splintering and rounds hitting metal door hardware less so, but the nearest neighbor was a hundred yards away. One kick from Dimi, and the big door gave way. He charged into the house with Lily following.

  * * *

  Staci held a 9mm Beretta 92F, the same type of sidearm she had carried in Iraq, and scrambled toward the kitchen, shouting, “Maria!”

  Rick’s short, silver-haired, slender wife, Maria, appeared in the kitchen doorway and was then immediately riddled with suppressed rounds from behind. Her face a mask of confused shock, she dropped to the floor a bloody mess. A black form appeared in the doorway behind Maria, and Staci put three rounds into the man, the booming reports of her weapon echoing throughout the house like a cannon.

  She heard more people moving in the kitchen, but then gunfire erupted from behind her.

  Rick stood in the office doorway, firing a shotgun. The man and woman—the fake cops—dove to the ground and scrambled behind furniture.

  Someone will hear this; help will come, thought Staci as her world went into slow motion. Two more men charged through the front door. She sighted her weapon and started firing, not stopping until the slide locked back, the magazine empty. Both men went down hard, with blood leaking all over the parquet floor.

  The blond woman stood and fired several times, hitting Rick Carrillo. He fell back onto the white office door, then slid to the floor, blood streaking the wood.

  Staci heard a pop, and a piercing sting burrowed into her chest. The man in the sport jacket had fired it, but she turned to the blonde; since she was out of ammunition, Staci threw the Beretta at her he
ad. The blonde charged her, and Staci, who had studied Brazilian jiujitsu for years, feinted, then delivered a spinning back kick to the face of the blonde, knocking her down.

  As more men crowded into the room, Staci turned to face the man who’d shot her. But her legs wobbled, her vision blurred, and she fell … right into the arms of Dimi, the driver.

  CHAPTER 9

  They got him just outside Barrikadnaya Metro station near the embassy. Two college-age females distracted him, pretending to be lost, when a third lady hit him with a blackjack.

  Kit Bennings woke up chained to a solid wooden chair in some kind of cold warehouse. Waves of pain shot through his head, seemingly timed to the constant dripping of water from a leaking pipe onto a dirty cement floor.

  As he struggled to focus, he saw it wasn’t a warehouse at all, but a meat locker. Slabs of beef hung from hooks that slid on overhead rails. And it was not just cold, it was very cold. Bennings fought not to shiver, since six big strong irritated men stood around watching him. One of them moved off into another room.

  “Can you write your names down for me?” asked Kit in Russian, grinning, as he studied their faces. “Because I’m going to kill every last one of you.”

  “Don’t be so cocky,” said Viktor Popov, stepping into the meat locker. “Or they’ll turn you into shashlik.”

  He hadn’t started putting it all together until he left the embassy. Popov’s people had hacked his mom’s bank accounts to create financial panic within the family. But when Popov had made the generous money-for-marriage approach, Kit had rebuffed him. So then they killed Gina as a message that he’d better reconsider. He understood that all of this had nothing to do with his secret counterintelligence work with Sinclair, because the intelligence agencies would never kill a family member of an opponent. But the Russian mob had no such gentlemanly compunctions. They often killed family members of their adversaries—that’s exactly what had happened long ago to Popov’s twin daughters. But what was it that the former KGB general, now a Mafia don, really wanted from him? Just to marry his niece Yulana? No way; there was something else.