Seconds to Midnight

by Philip Donlay

  “Does that sound like anyone we know?” Stephanie said.

  “He’s always been that way. I remember Donovan when he was maybe ten or eleven.” Kristof said the words as if he’d somehow drifted into the past and could picture every detail. “It was summer vacation, and he and I were in Virginia, and it was a really windy day. We’d decided to sneak off to where they were building a neighboring house. Since it was a Sunday, there were no workers around, and Donovan found this big section of cardboard that had been removed from a furnace or a hot water heater or something. The second he saw it, he had this idea, and as he surveyed the site, he explained to me that if we cut handholds into the cardboard, he’d be able to hold on and jump from the top of one of the dirt piles into the howling wind, and fly.”

  “Oh God, I remember this story,” Stephanie said and then put her hand up to her mouth to hide her mirth.

  “In theory, it wasn’t a bad idea.” Kristof grinned. “Though, the fierce gusts kept ripping the cardboard from Donovan’s little hands. Although once we found the ball of heavy twine, all of our engineering problems were solved.”

  As Kristof spoke, Reggie’s and Trevor’s phones vibrated at the same time. They reacted instantly. Weapons drawn, Reggie turned out the lights, plunging the house into darkness. Trevor and Marta bolted for the back door, Kristof following them. Reggie grabbed Lauren and Stephanie, and the three of them raced upstairs to the corner bedroom where Abigail lay sleeping. They eased themselves into her room, Reggie closed the door, and Lauren hurried to her daughter. A quick check told her Abigail was fine, her breathing slow and steady. Lauren gathered her sleeping daughter into her arms without waking her. Reggie eased Lauren away from the bed, making sure she stayed down as they moved past the windows, and motioned for her and Stephanie to sit together against the wall.

  “What’s happening?” Lauren whispered as Reggie knelt near a window and stole a quick look outside.

  “My men discovered an intruder,” Reggie replied as he uncoiled an earpiece, plugged it into a small tactical radio, and listened.

  Lauren sat in the darkness and mentally raced through their options, processing her fight or flight response, until she realized that waking Abigail and plunging her into an unknown situation would only make things worse.

  “There were two of them,” Reggie whispered. “One is down; the other has been apprehended and is being taken to the van for questioning. We’ve swept the area, and we’re all clear. They seem to have been conducting reconnaissance.”

  Lauren felt her fear begin to manifest into something else, something harder. She made no effort to reign in the anger fueled by a mother’s protective fury. She got to her feet and gently tucked the still-sleeping Abigail back into bed, turned, and without waiting for Reggie, marched down the stairs through the darkened house, and into the kitchen. With no hesitation, she snatched a large chef’s knife from the butcher block and barged out the kitchen door into the cold night air.

  The sky still glowed from the undulating tendrils of the Northern Lights, and Lauren spotted Marta and Trevor standing outside the oversized van that served as the command post for Reggie and his team. Not bothering to ask any questions, Lauren shouldered her way past Trevor and slid open the side door and climbed inside. One of Reggie’s men was inside, and he turned and stepped back in surprise as he recognized one of the principals he was protecting. Lauren’s eyes went straight to the man tie-wrapped to a chair. The man had a shaved head, his arms were heavily tattooed, and he was bleeding from the nose and mouth. He looked up at her, unconcerned, until he saw the flash of a knife arc toward his face as Lauren used her fist, weighted by the hilt of the knife, to hit the man just above his eye.

  Stunned, the intruder recoiled as the fresh cut along his eyebrow began to bleed.

  “We’ve got this,” Trevor said. He and Marta moved in, grabbed Lauren’s arms, and held her firmly.

  “Who is this son of a bitch?” Lauren strained against her friends. “How dare he sneak in here and try to harm us! Let me go, I’m going to carve those goddamned tattoos off one by one until he talks.”

  “Have it your way.” Trevor released his grip, as did Marta.

  Lauren, too, had seen the fear on the man’s face as she’d threatened to carve him up into little pieces. Leading with the razor-sharp eight-inch blade, she stepped closer and slid the knife between his heaving chest and the already ripped fabric of his shirt. She pulled, parting the fabric, exposing all of his bare skin from the waist up. She studied his tattoos until she found the one she thought she could best use to her advantage. Over his heart was an intricately inked image of an angelic young woman.

  “No,” the intruder muttered and shook his head as he seemingly read Lauren’s intent. Lauren pictured Abigail sleeping upstairs and her rage grew exponentially. She threw another punch and hit the intruder in the same spot, producing more blood and a moan of pain.

  Lauren pressed the edge of the knife against the skin at the top of the woman’s image and began to press. “She’s someone you care about, isn’t she? That’s why you keep her close to your heart. Start talking or I’ll remove this picture and destroy her image while you sit there and scream.”

  “No, please.” The man tried to shrink from the blade. “Stop, please stop. I was sent to watch the house. I was ordered to count how many people, and to report when everyone was asleep.”

  “Who do you report to?” Lauren pressed harder with the knife.

  “I don’t know. A man gave me five hundred pounds, a phone programmed with a single number, and the directions. That’s all I know, please stop.”

  “Is this the phone?” Trevor stepped forward.

  “Yes, that’s the one,” he said, grimacing against the knife pressing his flesh. “There’s only one number.”

  “Call them,” Trevor said to the man as he pulled Lauren’s hand away and produced an ominous curved blade of his own. “Call them, or I let my friend begin again, and then I’ll pick a tattoo to remove, myself.”

  The sight of the second knife unhinged the intruder even more. He panicked and fought furiously to free himself until he felt the point of a blade press against his Adam’s apple and he froze, wide-eyed.

  “I’m going to dial this number,” Marta said. “You tell whoever answers that the house is dark, there are no more than five people inside, and that the perimeter is clear. Is there a code word?”

  The man was rigid, his breathing quick and shallow, his eyes filled with terror as each nervous swallow served to further jab the knife point into the tender skin of his neck. Trevor eased the pressure slightly, and Marta received an immediate nod to confirm her question.

  “What’s the code word?”

  “Archangel.”

  “Interesting,” Marta said as she looked to Trevor, who nodded his approval, and then she hit the send button and put the phone on speaker as it rang.

  “Report,” a gruff voice answered.

  Lauren listened as the prisoner repeated word for word what Marta had ordered him to say.

  “Be ready, we’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” the voice replied.

  Marta switched off the phone and handed it to Trevor, who slid it into his pocket. He produced a square of cloth and doused it with a clear liquid from a plastic bottle.

  “Wait,” Lauren said.

  “What?” Trevor asked.

  Lauren waited until the man’s eyes shifted from Trevor back to her, and she swung a roundhouse punch that connected above his eye for a third straight time, and he cried out in agony.

  Trevor pressed the cloth against the prisoner’s mouth and nose. The man struggled briefly until the chloroform took effect and he went limp.

  Lauren jumped to the ground, and as she walked away, she felt her entire body begin to shake from the adrenaline pumping through her system. As she made her way into the still-darkened house, she placed the knife in the sink and stood for a moment. She knew she’d never been out of control like that in her life�
�and it scared her.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE SUN HAD set in Churchill hours earlier, though with the undulating ribbons from the glowing Northern Lights, it seemed as if twilight had never ended. The Twin Otter had arrived before the Gulfstream and was sitting in the warm hangar when they landed. The Galileo was pushed back into the same hangar, and Donovan was the first to meet the Twin Otter pilots. Paul, the captain, was in his early thirties, intelligent and likeable, as well as tall and muscular. Lonny was younger, a smiling dark-haired woman in her mid-twenties. She was short, a little plump, seemingly full of energy. Working with Rick and Jesse, the two charter pilots made quick work of transferring the equipment from the Gulfstream to the Twin Otter. Paul and Lonny often conferred with each other on the details of the weight and balance, arranging everything to keep the center of gravity where it needed to be. Once everything was loaded, Donovan was pleasantly surprised with how much room was left in the Twin Otter’s cabin.

  “How much under gross weight are we?” Donovan asked Paul as they were finishing.

  “We’re in good shape,” Paul replied. “We’ve probably got close to eight hundred pounds to play with. Why, what did you forget?”

  “I was thinking about a snowmobile,” Donovan said. “If I found one we could borrow, or even buy, would we be able to get it aboard without rearranging everything?”

  “Sure,” Paul said. “It’s Canada. We fly those things around all the time. They usually weigh somewhere around six hundred pounds, the same as three people. We’ve got seats for twenty, and only six passengers. You find it, we’ll load it.”

  Donovan grabbed his hat and briefcase and went straight to the airport office to find Russell, the airport manager he’d met when they landed.

  “Mr. Nash, what can I do for you?” the man, coffee cup in hand, called out from behind his desk.

  “You told me if there was anything I needed, to come see you,” Donovan said. “Well, I need something.”

  “I’ll do what I can to help, but keep in mind we’re in Churchill, Manitoba.”

  “I want to rent, or buy, a snowmobile, something less than six hundred pounds that can be loaded in a Twin Otter.”

  Russell laughed deep from his ample belly and set his cup down on the desk to keep from spilling the contents. “Other than snow, a snowmobile is the next easiest request I can fulfill. I’ve got one I can rent you for a hundred bucks a day.”

  “Throw in fuel for three full days, and you’ve got a deal,” Donovan said.

  “Done,” he said. “If you wreck it, you bought it at ten thousand bucks.”

  “Works for me.” Donovan reached across the desk and the two men shook hands. “Where is this machine, and how do I get it to the hangar?”

  “It’s in our shop, which is the building next door. I’ll have the guys bring it over and help you load it onto the plane.”

  Donovan hurried back outside, put his head down against the cold, and let himself into the side door of the hangar. He pulled off his hat and joined Paul and Michael.

  “That was fast,” Paul said.

  “What was fast?” Michael said. “What did I miss?”

  Donovan caught the sound of a two-stroke engine as it pulled up somewhere in back. A man in a snowsuit came in through a side door and raised a garage door while another guy drove the snowmobile over to the Twin Otter. It was black and yellow, like a giant wasp on skis. It looked new, the engine purred smoothly, and the fiberglass nose cone gleamed with fresh wax.

  “I missed the part where you got us a snowmobile,” Michael said. “I grew up at the beach. Do we have anyone who knows how to drive one of these things without killing people?”

  Donovan turned as Rick raced down the steps of the Galileo, drawn by the sound of the snowmobile. “I bet he does.”

  “We’re about to find out.” Michael stood back to watch this unfold.

  “The extra fuel and the helmets are on their way,” the man on the snowmobile said after he shut down the engine.

  “Rick, can you drive one of these?” Donovan called out to the young man as he approached.

  “Hell, yes,” Rick replied, his eyes running eagerly back and forth over the snowmobile.

  “The five of us can probably lift this through the cargo door right now if you want,” the man said as he dismounted the snowmobile and pulled off his gloves.

  Donovan was surprised at how light the machine actually was. They were easily able to position it where Paul directed, and then Lonny secured it to the floor with heavy nylon straps.

  With everything set at the airport, they’d gotten a lift to the hotel Montero had found. The sea ice on Hudson Bay had formed early and the polar bears were far out to sea by now, prompting Churchill’s tourists to flee south, leaving the one thousand permanent residents to settle in for the winter. All eight members of the expedition had a relaxed dinner, and then as the Eco-Watch group moved to the bar, Paul and Lonny had excused themselves. Jesse, who wasn’t drinking, and then Rick, bowed out next. Montero, Sofya, Donovan, and Michael were left at the bar. There was no one else in the place except for the owner, a sweet woman named Ingrid, who brought the drinks and then moved into the dining room to finish cleaning for the night.

  “I think I’m about done,” Montero announced as she finished the last of her whiskey and stood. “I’m going to see if there’s any way to connect to the Internet or maybe make a phone call. Sofya, shall we? We’ll see both of you at seven o’clock for breakfast.”

  “Goodnight,” Donovan said as both women went off in the direction of their rooms. The remoteness of being in Churchill seemed a little like being at the edge of the world. It was a sensation Donovan always enjoyed.

  Michael took a drink of his beer and then spent a moment studying the label before he asked, “Did something happen between you and William? Montero seems to think there was some sort of a disagreement. I told her to leave it alone and that I’d ask.”

  “The conversation with William was not what I expected. In no uncertain terms, he told me he was in a better position to deal with the Russians and to back off. I told him I could never sit idle and ignore a threat to the people I care about. I told him everything would be fine. Then he asked me if everything I’d done in the past had turned out fine, and then we hung up.”

  “Ouch,” Michael said. “There has to be something else going on then, something we don’t know about. That just doesn’t sound like William.”

  “I don’t have the answers.” Donovan shrugged.

  “We have plausible deniability,” Michael said. “If we find anything that points farther up the Russian food chain than the people we’ve encountered already, we pause, walk away, and then maybe put Reggie and his SAS guys on the hunt, or even your friend Kristof and his Archangel group. You and I are someplace far away if anything happens. We’re loyal to William, and we still get the situation remedied. Did I mention this plan works better if we’re on a beach, someplace warm?”

  Donovan felt a warning shiver start in the pit of his stomach and push up his spine until his brain felt the jolt. There was no way Michael, who had only met him twice, was supposed to have any idea that Kristof was Archangel.

  “From the look on your face, I’m assuming you must be wondering how I know for a fact that your friend Kristof is Archangel?” Michael said, a superior look etched on his face as he laced his fingers together and put them behind his head and smiled. “I’m more than just a pretty face around here; I figured things out after Budapest. It took me all of about ten minutes on the computer to trace down some of the equipment Kristof had provided. It was all stolen from various military installations, and according to an investigative report on BBC, Russia and other former Soviet satellite countries have a terrible time with their own soldiers selling military equipment to arms dealers. The largest and most feared being the organization run by a person called Archangel. Or as we know him, Kristof, and his beautiful and very lethal daughter, Marta.”

 
“I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Donovan laughed out loud for the first time in what seemed like days. “Your imagination is certainly a source of constant amusement. I met Kristof years ago when I was in Africa. He’s a nice guy, a terrible poker player, and I can’t believe he could be this Archangel character. And really, Marta, do you think she’s part of this arms business as well?”

  “That’s the interesting part.” Michael leaned in as if someone could overhear. “With Kristof sick, Marta might actually be Archangel. After all, it is a family business. You saw her in a firefight.

  I mean, who would you pick first to be on your team, Montero or Marta?”

  “I’d pick you.” Donovan slapped his friend on the shoulder. “Then I’d let your imagination run wild and we’d win, hands down, regardless of whoever else was on the team.”

  “I think I’d pick Montero,” Michael said, still locked in his mental picture. “Based only on her advanced skills of cunning and pure guile. Plus, she’s just so damn mysterious. I mean you and I, we’re both an open book, but Montero is practically an enigma. Has she ever told you the reason why she hates her first name so much? It’s Veronica; it’s a nice name.”

  “I was named after my aunt, who turned out to be a major bitch, so I decided I didn’t care for the name,” Montero said, standing directly behind Michael.

  Michael ducked in surprise at the sound of her voice.

  “That was a short phone call,” Donovan said, having watched her enter the room. “Did you get through?”

  “No such luck; either the lines are all tied up or the storm is causing problems. The Internet is down as well. What did I miss?”

  “How long were you standing there, listening?” Michael asked.

  “Long enough to hear that Kristof is Archangel and you were setting up your fantasy army. Is that like fantasy football?”

  Michael turned and smiled sheepishly and kicked out a chair for her to join them. “I was just explaining to Donovan that his friend Kristof is actually the criminal Archangel. Have you ever heard of him? Anyway, I think that’s why Marta is so good in a firefight, it’s a family business requirement, right? Though as you no doubt overheard, I’d choose you to be on my team before Marta. I want that out there for the record.”