by Ross Sidor
“You can’t accompany me. He’ll already be suspicious and paranoid because Yuri’s not here. I can’t walk in with a stranger.”
“I’m not going inside,” Avery assured her, trying to hide his impatience. “I’m going to stay outside and keep an eye on things while you take care of business, okay? Tell him whatever bullshit you need to about Yuri, just get him to talk.”
“I can do that.”
“Are you sure?” Avery pulled over four blocks from the meet site. He put the car in park and turned to face Aleksa. He doubted her readiness to go into a potentially dangerous situation alone. “If you’re not, tell me now.”
The comment had the desired effect. Her expression hardened. “I said I can do it.”
Avery left it at that and got out of the car. Aleksa slipped behind the wheel and watched him walk away. He carried his Glock beneath his windbreaker this time. If they were ambushed again, he wanted to be prepared. If the enemy did send someone else after them, they’d have more guys and guns this time. They only survived last time because the mafiya killers had been expecting Aleksa to be alone, and they made the dangerous assumption that she’d be an easy hit. But now they knew she was accompanied by someone who could put up a fight.
It was 10:25AM, thirty five minutes before the meet. Vasil Romanchuk always took a break at this time, Aleksa had explained, but usually at a different restaurant. He switched locations when meeting with Aleksa and Yuri, because he knew the KGB and security would be familiar with his normal daily routines and patterns, and most personnel at a sensitive facility like the Institute for Power and Nuclear Research would warrant a close watch by the KGB.
Avery first executed a rudimentary surveillance detection run, covering the distance to the meet site and doubling back to cover his tracks. It came up dry, but, by necessity, it had been a rush job, plus he wasn’t familiar with the area to do a proper job of it.
He soon made his way back around to the café. This time, when he walked past, he spotted a fat man fitting the contact’s description sitting at a table alone. Avery crossed the street, called Aleksa on her cell phone, and told her to proceed to the meet with Romanchuk.
A minute later, he spotted Aleksa parking across the street from the café. As she got out of the Volvo and walked down the sidewalk toward the café, Avery’s eyes never rested, taking in every face and vehicle nearby and assessing what they were doing and their threat level. A lot of passing eyes gazed over Aleksa, but Avery easily attributed that to the attention any reasonably attractive woman received from males.
As Aleksa entered the café and sat down across from the fat man—Avery could just barely see them from across the street through the front window of the café—he returned to the Volvo, got behind the wheel, keyed the ignition, and continued watching and waiting, his muscles clenched tight and the hairs on the back of his neck stood out. He didn’t know why he was so on edge, but he trusted his instincts to tell him when something was wrong, and they were screaming at him to grab Aleksa and get the hell away from here.
Barely four minutes later, a police car pulled up near the café and rolled to a stop. Two officers got out and went inside. Nothing unusual, Avery told himself, but he tensed when he saw a second police cruiser drive past. The officer riding shotgun eyed Avery as they passed him. Avery looked straight ahead until the cruiser was gone, then observed it in his rearview corner as it turned the corner.
Aleksa finally emerged from the café at 11:13AM. As she headed for the Volvo, Avery watched closely, expecting police or mafiya to intercept her and throw her into the back of a car. If it was the former, there wouldn’t be much he could do about it other than put distance between himself, and hope that his passport wasn’t flagged so he could get out of Belarus. If it was the latter, he could follow them and possibly even take action. But if he smoked a cop, even a corrupt one, there’d be a nation-wide manhunt for him.
But nothing happened. There was no intercept or ambush.
As Aleksa slid into the passenger seat, Avery became aware of someone watching them, and as he shifted into drive, he locked onto the pudgy face of Vasil Romanchuk as the Belarusian exited the café. Romanchuk watched them, and then looked away when he caught Avery’s glare and continued walking, while his hand pulled a cell phone from his pants pocket.
“How’d it go?” Avery asked, merging into traffic.
“They’re removing the uranium from Sosny today at noon. GlobeEx trucks will be here shortly, and the police will escort them to the airport.”
Avery did another sweep for surveillance—it was becoming an obsessive habit now—and took them back onto Mullovsoye Road. He stopped along the shoulder from a point where they had a clear view of the storage facility, a hundred yards away, across the wide expanse of grass. There was little traffic on the two lane road, but just in case, Avery popped the hood, and got out of the car. He stood over the engine block, pretending to check for problems. Aleksa remained inside. They both stared across the grassy field at the storage site.
Ten minutes later, during which time only three other vehicles had passed them on the road, Avery saw a large, eighteen-wheeler tractor-trailer truck stop in front of the barrier at the guard post. It was escorted by police cars. Even from here, he recognized the colors and design of the GlobeEx Transport logo on the truck’s trailer. The driver climbed down from the cab as the uniformed security officer stepped out of his booth. The driver showed the officer some papers, and the guard consulted a clipboard, flipping pages. Then they parted ways, and the officer raised the barrier and waved the truck through. Another officer signaled with his hands and directed the truck to the storage compound’s loading dock area. The driver turned his truck around and slowly backed the trailer into the dock.
Although confirming what Aleksa had said and what they already suspected, Avery knew there was nothing he could do about what he was seeing. Maybe follow the truck to the airport and witness them load portions of the HEU onto a flight not bound for Mayak. Then he could get the hell out of Belarus and report everything back to Culler and start thinking about how he’d catch up with Cramer again.
He didn’t know what Aleksa was going to do next, and he kept telling himself that it really wasn’t his problem and not to think about it. She seemed intent and capable of taking care of herself, anyway. But the thought still lingered in his mind. He supposed he’d at least offer to help get her out of the country. Culler could pull some strings, if Avery persisted. He knew she’d decline, but at least he’d have done his part to placate his conscience.
Another vehicle approached from the south. It was something big from the sound of it, and the low, steady rumble of the engine intruded upon Avery’s thoughts. Avery stuck his head out from under the open hood and saw a shiny gray SUV approaching, about a quarter mile away in their lane. Sunlight shimmered off the tinted windows. After several seconds, Avery averted his glare back to the storage site across the field. There were a number of figures, men in uniforms, milling about outside the storage site now.
Soon the sound of the oncoming engine picked up from a steady, guttural hum to an aggressive roar, and Avery snapped his head back around with his internal threat detectors lighting up like a fighter pilot’s heads-up display.
The vehicle was a Dartz Kombat, a bulky, wide Russian-made SUV with a V8 Vortec engine capable of doing a hundred plus miles hour. Right now, Avery figured it was topping fifty, and the driver turned the wheel and steered straight for the parked Volvo. Avery started to react, shouted out to Aleksa, when he heard an identical engine coming from behind, the driver gunning it.
Avery’s hand reached beneath his windbreaker and went for the Glock, for all the good that would do. He took a step back just as the oncoming Kombat slammed straight into the Volvo, plowing through the driver side fender, and continued accelerating, pushing the much smaller vehicle off the road and down the slight slope onto the grass. There was the ear splitting shatter and screech of metal grinding against metal.
Before the Volvo flipped over, Avery caught a glimpse behind the cracked windshield of Aleksa rocked forward and caught against her seatbelt while air bags deployed, exploding around her.
Avery squeezed off four shots that bounced off the Kombat’s armor plating. He spun around and faced the second Kombat coming right at him, lining him up between its headlights. Avery fired a couple more rounds, but the Kombat’s bullet-proof windshield easily deflected the 9mm rounds.
Avery sidestepped left, and the driver swerved and adjusted his course, pointing the bumper at him. Avery stood his ground, visualized his next moves in his head, and dived to the right, onto the grass, at the last possible second. He felt the big Kombat whip past. The front left fender missed clipping him and pulverizing his hip by mere inches. Avery smacked against the grass and rolled down the slant of the short hill.
The Kombat came fast around, reacquired him, forty feet away, and the driver hit the gas once more as Avery stumbled back up onto his feet. The Kombat barreled down on him, but this time the driver tapped the brakes within a couple meters and swerved, tapping the bumper into Avery’s thighs doing 30 mph. Avery cried out, and the next thing he was aware of was the sensation of going over the top of the hood and flailing through the sky with the grass and pavement spinning around him at a dizzying rate, and then the ground finally collided hard against his face.
For the first few seconds, Avery couldn’t even move, and he wondered if he’d broken his back. Then he became gradually conscious of a tingling sensation coursing through his entire body, especially up his back and neck and in his legs, followed by the gradual onset of immense pain. He realized he’d lost the Glock somewhere along the way, and the world around him was blurry and out of focus when he lifted his head up. The nearest Kombat was a hazy, blotchy wash of gray. He heard the low rumbling of the V8s, and then there came the sound of car doors opening and voices speaking Russian.
Avery tried to sit up, but went right back down when the steel-capped toe of a boot struck him in the breastbone. Another foot kicked him in the side of his femur, and more feet continued striking his shoulders and chest. Two men grabbed onto him and hauled him up onto his feet. When they let go, Avery weakly stumbled around, trying to gather his bearings, but then his legs gave out and the pain in the small of his back was overpowering. He toppled back over and hit the ground again.
From where he lay, Avery saw two men opening the passenger door of the demolished Volvo. They peered inside, and one of them said something, sounding surprised that Aleksa was still alive. She wouldn’t be had she been on the driver side of the car when the Kombat hit.
Not that it mattered.
Avery didn’t imagine that either of them would be alive much longer. The Krasnaya Mafiya was a small, close-knit organization, a brotherhood. Having just killed two of them in Minsk the night before, Avery knew he and Aleksa had earned a slow, bloody, and agonizing death. He thought of the things they’d likely do to Aleksa, and that gave him the determination to keep fighting.
The Russians’ attention was fixated on Aleksa now. They pulled her out of the wreck, and one of them punched her in the gut when she stabbed a pen through his friend’s neck.
Avery tried once more to stand up, and was kicked from behind. He fell forward, catching himself on all fours, and another kick to his side knocked him over. Three Russians converged on him, laughing and exchanging vulgarities. They battered him, used his head as a soccer ball until he finally blacked out.
TWENTY-TWO
Minsk; Over the Caspian Sea
“Nick?”
It took a few seconds for Aleksa’s voice to register with Avery as he returned slowly and painfully to consciousness. When he opened his right eye—the left was swollen shut—he saw the expanse of an aircraft hangar, and he felt the smooth, glossy surface of the epoxy floor against his face. It stung badly where his right cheek was split open. When he moved to rub his eye, sensitive to the intensity of the bright lighting overhead, he found his hands restrained behind his back. The steel cuffs were fastened tight, cutting off blood flow to his hands and scraping bone. There was the iron taste of blood in his mouth.
From the dizziness, blurred vision, and the ringing in his ears, he figured he’d suffered a concussion. In addition to which, breathing too deeply sent a sharp, stabbing pain through his side. That worried him. He’d suffered fractured ribs before, and those were always to be taken seriously.
Aleksa’s voice came from somewhere behind him. He tried to respond, to let her know that he was alive, somewhat, but the words became caught in his parched throat and he was seized by a coughing fit instead. There were approaching footsteps and soft-spoken conversation. There was something familiar about one of the voices.
He started to roll over onto his other side, in the direction of the oncoming footsteps. He didn’t move far before the stabbing pain in his side hit him again, a hundred times worse now, agonizing, stopping him in his place and eliciting an involuntary gasp from his lips and confirming his self-diagnosis. Hopefully the rib was just cracked, not broken. At least blood hadn’t come up when he coughed.
Aleksa was likewise slumped on the floor, twenty feet away, and Avery hoped she wasn’t in the same condition he was. He didn’t want to contemplate the things they could have done to her.
“Nick?” she called out again. “Are you okay?”
“I’m alright.” He wanted her to be quiet, so he could focus on the new arrivals, and he didn’t want to appear vulnerable and weak, affected by her, in front of them, whoever they were.
“They drugged us, gave us injections,” Aleksa said. “Ketamine, I think.”
That explained the foggy haze clouding his thoughts and his dulled senses, Avery thought. He didn’t mind if they beat the shit out of him, but toxic impurities coursing through his blood, further hindering his body’s functional capacity and recovery, was particularly odious to him.
He started to say something, but the sudden roar of very near jet engines drowned out all sound. The noise receded as the aircraft lifted off, and when it was gone, he sensed a presence hovering over him.
“Avery, you stupid fuck, is that you?”
When he opened his eye again, he stared up at a pair of hiking boots and khaki pants belonging to Robert Cramer. Standing a few feet behind Cramer, Avery recognized the second man by his shaved head and spider tattoo. The man stared straight at Avery with dark, penetrating eyes, trying to look menacing and instill fear, and doing a good job of it. Avery stared right back at him for several seconds before passing his gaze onto Cramer. The man looked like he’d aged fifteen years since the last time Avery had spoken to him, four years ago in Afghanistan.
“Shit, Avery, if I knew that was you I would have told them to take it easy on you. When I heard they picked someone up at Sosny, I assumed you were just another one of this cunt’s reporter friends. God, I hate reporters. Still, you got off lucky. Better than that fat fuck Romanchuk.”
He paused, as if waiting for Avery to speak, but Avery gave him nothing.
Avery considered his options, none of them good. He could play dumb and act surprised to find Cramer alive and well and in the middle of a nuclear smuggling pipeline. He could try to spare Aleksa and insist that she knew nothing, was unwittingly dragged into this, and say he was only using her to gain access to Yuri Dzubenko.
But there was no point in doubting Cramer’s intelligence. Plus, Avery didn’t know what, if anything, Aleksa had already told them, and he didn’t feel like getting the shit beaten out of him again if he was caught in a lie. The best thing he could do was to keep quiet and volunteer nothing. However it played out, he knew this wasn’t going to end well. He just hoped they made it quick for Aleksa.
“Last I heard from my sources in Tajikistan the mission was over and you were heading home,” Cramer said.
Sources, Avery thought. “So how did you manage to pin Dagar on me?”
“That was just a happy coincidence, really. Bad luck for you, thou
gh. He’s always been my agent, my eyes and ears over there. I had no idea the Agency would send you. But it’s a small world, and lucky for me, a mutual friend set you up with him. The Agency’s long believed that Dagar was their asset, and I figured they’d turn to him, but he was mine the whole time.” Cramer shook his head, genuinely pitying Avery for his current circumstances. “You really should have gone home.”
“And what the hell are you doing here, Bob?” Avery glanced back at the man standing behind Cramer. “And what are you doing with that piece of shit?”
Cramer swung his foot back and kicked Avery hard in the side. Avery wasn’t expecting it, making it that much worse. He coughed and gagged as he gasped for air, the pain in his chest amplified. Cramer patiently waited for him to settle down before he resumed.
“Listen to me closely. I’m not going to repeat myself. You know how this works, so I’m not going to waste time making threats, trying to instill the fear of God into you. I need to know everything you’ve told Culler. It is Matt who sent you, isn’t it? There’s nobody else at Langley that would be stupid enough to go to you, and he’s still heading up GRS last time I checked.” He meant CIA’s Global Response Staff.
“Yeah, I know what you’re thinking,” Cramer said, reading Avery’s eyes. “You’re dead anyway, and in the meantime you can take another beating. Sure, but how about before these guys finally end you, I turn them loose on that bitch over there and let you watch? You’re right, Avery, however this goes, you are a dead man, but you can still spare her an extremely vicious, violently pornographic ordeal.”
Avery felt Aleksa’s eyes on him, becoming more terrified by the minute, but he couldn’t bear to look at her. He didn’t want her to make him weak. He shut his eyes and tried to clear his head.
“Don’t even think about lying to me. We recovered the USB from her. That gives me a pretty good idea of what you two already know and what you can piece together. Unfortunately for you, Avery, I also know you were at Ayni a couple nights ago. I’m even pretty certain you had something to do with the missing arms convoy, but I don’t really give a shit about that right now. So, again, what have you told Langley?”
