Raging Sun (A James Acton Thriller, #16) (James Acton Thrillers)

by J. Robert Kennedy

  Something was shouted at them in Russian.

  He ignored it and kept walking toward the doors.

  The shout repeated behind them, a uniformed officer at the doors stepping in front of them, holding up a hand. Acton turned toward a plainclothes officer marching toward them.

  He put on as innocent of a face as he could manage. “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Russian. Did you want to speak to me?”

  The man held out his hand. “Papers.”

  Acton smiled, reaching into his pocket and producing his passport with his visa, Laura doing the same. “Here you go. We’re here as guests of your government, just for the day.”

  The man said nothing, inspecting the passports and visas then handing them back. “Go. And don’t forget those expire at midnight.”

  “Thank you,” said Acton, smiling and bowing slightly, the man already after the next suspect. The uniformed officer stepped out of their way and they pushed through the main doors and into the crisp afternoon air, the chaos of the lobby repeated outside as more vehicles with sirens arrived.

  They said nothing as they turned right, making their way off the hotel property and to the sidewalk of the main street, their pace brisk though hopefully not suspicious.

  A car skidded to a halt beside them, Acton cursing.

  “Get in!”

  Acton looked and breathed a sigh of relief.

  It was Orlov’s son, Vitaly.

  20

  En route to Sheremetyevo International Airport, Moscow, Russian Federation

  “I’m afraid they got your father.”

  Acton held onto the passenger seat’s headrest as Vitaly Orlov rushed through traffic, putting as much distance as he could between them and the hotel, retracing their route from the airport. It had been a split second decision to get into the car, one hastened by three more police cars wailing past them.

  They needed to get to their plane.

  “Thank you for picking us up, Vitaly, but you shouldn’t be involved,” said Laura. “They don’t know we’re involved, and they don’t know you are either.”

  Vitaly grunted, checking his rearview mirror. “In today’s Russia, you’re guilty of the crimes your family commits. Especially something like this. They’ll track him to you through your visas then they’ll see me picking you up at the airport. There’s cameras everywhere there. It’s only a matter of time.”

  Laura turned to Acton. “Maybe he could come with us?”

  “No!” Vitaly wagged a finger. “My father wanted you to get out of the country with the relics. Trying to sneak me onto your plane could just delay things. Besides, I won’t leave my father behind.” He spun in his seat, his eyes piercing. “Please, when you get out, ask questions about him. It may be the only thing that saves him.”

  Eyes on the road!

  “You can count on it.”

  “Good!”

  He returned his eyes to where they should be as Laura fished out her phone, quickly dialing. “Reggie, it’s Laura. Get clearance to leave now. We’re going to be there in about—”

  Vitaly turned back toward them. “Twenty minutes.” Acton jabbed a finger at the road ahead.

  “—twenty minutes. We need to leave fast.” She hung up. “Let’s hope there’s not a problem at the airport.”

  Acton pressed his lips together. “That plane is registered in our names. If they figure out who we are, they could trace it and force us to the ground.”

  Laura shrugged. “I don’t see as we have much choice.”

  Acton frowned. “Neither do I.”

  21

  Impiana Private Villas Kata Noi, Phuket, Thailand

  CIA Special Agent Dylan Kane moaned, the expert ministrations of his masseuse slowly releasing the tension built up after two weeks outside Mogadishu, most of it spent in a beat up Toyota pickup truck with suspension shot for the better part of twenty years, and on dirt floors, his hosts not believing in chairs or beds.

  Though the intel he had gathered had been worth it.

  One less pirate cell terrorizing innocents, the drone strike he had directed after tracking their leader down, immensely satisfying.

  And now he was enjoying his reward after a week stowed away on a cargo ship.

  Downtime.

  He would love to be back stateside, spending his time with the love of his life, Lee Fang, but it wasn’t in the cards, his handler indicating he needed to stay in the region, ready to deploy at a moment’s notice.

  Which meant no alcohol that couldn’t clear his system in less than three hours.

  Which suited him just fine.

  He still had the nightmares, they would probably never go away, but he no longer felt alone.

  Fang had changed everything.

  He’d sip his Glen Breton Ice, shipped in special for him, enjoy some fine dining—though uncharacteristically alone—and enjoy some pampering from expert hands.

  He had a nasty habit of sleeping with his masseuses, so he had made a special request of the concierge that didn’t involve breast size or willingness to have fun.

  He asked for a grandma.

  And they had delivered.

  When the tiny lady had knocked on his door, her wrinkled visage grinning at him, he had smiled broadly.

  Perfect!

  Though he did have concerns she’d be able to deliver the vigorous massage he needed.

  A few moments of warming up his skin followed by some deep tissue probes that he swore could have broken skin left him yelping and confident she was more than up to the task. As she continued her work, he let his entire body relax, his mind picturing the beautiful Fang, a flash of her on top of him, enjoying each other’s bodies, causing Little Dylan to leap for a moment, wondering if he had been called to active duty.

  “You turn over now.”

  Kane flushed. “Umm, better stick with the back.”

  “Ahh, you excited, huh? Grandma good but I no do that. I good woman.”

  Kane smiled. “I have no doubt. Just thinking of my girlfriend.”

  “Ahh, good looking man like you must have good looking woman.”

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “She good to you?”

  “The best.”

  “Then why you not marry her?”

  Kane chuckled. “We just started dating.” He pictured Fang in a wedding dress, and oddly enough, it didn’t scare him.”

  “Don’t let good woman get away. They hard to find.”

  “Don’t I know it.” His special issue watch pulsed with a small electrical current discretely indicating he had a secure message. He glanced over his shoulder at the little old lady. “I think I’m going to go call her. You’ve got me all loosened up now.”

  She nodded, stepping off the footstool she had been pushing around for the past hour, almost disappearing from sight. Kane swung off the table, wrapping a towel around himself, thankful things hadn’t risen to full mast. He grabbed his wallet from the nightstand and pulled out a generous tip, the massage itself already billed to the room.

  She bowed. “You treat her right.”

  Kane smiled. “I will.”

  The towel suddenly slipped loose, exposing her to all his glory. He spun around, shielding himself.

  She smacked his ass then headed for the door, laughing. “Very good looking man. Very lucky girl.”

  Kane shook his head, smiling, then dropped on the bed when the door clicked shut behind her. He pressed the buttons on the watch in a coded sequence and a message scrolled across the display, it actually projected onto the glass of what appeared to be a perfectly normal Tag Heuer Monaco.

  With about thirty grand in upgrades.

  Urgent. Contact CL now.

  His eyebrows rose. CL was his best friend from high school, Chris Leroux, now an Analyst Supervisor at the CIA. Kane had been the jock, Leroux the geek, and things hadn’t really changed much. Leroux had tutored him through high school, helping him get into college, a college he left to join the military. Leroux�
��s beautiful mind had been recruited into the CIA, neither knowing what the other did until a chance encounter in the cafeteria, a friendship reestablished.

  And if Leroux was contacting him, and claiming it was urgent, it must indeed be.

  He grabbed his phone, launching the secure encryption app then dialed. His friend answered almost immediately. “Hey, buddy, it’s Dylan. What’s up?”

  “I thought you should know the Russians have just issued arrest warrants for Professor Acton and Professor Palmer.”

  22

  Five minutes from Sheremetyevo International Airport, Moscow, Russian Federation

  Acton’s phone vibrated in his hand, startling him. His heart was already slamming hard as they raced toward the airport, their young driver just having told them they were about five minutes away. In the distance, planes could be seen landing and taking off, though a recent phone call from Laura to their pilot had gone unanswered.

  Not a good sign.

  Yet they had no choice but to press on.

  The call display indicated a blocked number, but in a crisis, he had learned to always answer unless it might give away his position.

  He answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, doc, it’s Dylan.”

  Acton breathed a sigh of relief at the sound of his former student’s voice. Kane had come to him in a moment of crisis years ago as he debated whether to finish his post-secondary education or join the military to fight the terrorists who threatened the country he loved. Acton had been a sounding board for his thoughts, and in the end, supported Kane’s decision to enlist.

  Then never heard from him for years until the young man had shown up after a lecture, bursting into tears, spilling the pain and heartache of a mission gone bad, and a life filled with killing and lying, to the one person he felt he could trust with his secrets.

  It had been a cathartic moment for both of them.

  And Kane had saved their asses on multiple occasions since.

  And if he was calling now, it meant their asses needed saving.

  “Dylan, please tell me you’ve got good news. We’re in the middle of something and we could really use some good news.”

  “Sorry, doc, no such luck. The Russians have just issued arrest warrants for you and your wife.”

  “Christ!” He glanced at Laura, the concern on her face clear as she squeezed his hand. “They’ve issued arrest warrants for us.”

  Vitaly jerked the wheel to the right, abruptly heading away from the airport.

  Probably a wise move.

  “Where are you now?” asked Kane.

  “We were heading for the airport.”

  “Don’t bother. You won’t get ten feet. I want you to hang up, turn off every phone and electronic device you’ve got for exactly ten minutes. Then turn on only your phone. I’ll call you with instructions. Understood?”

  “Yes, got it. Thanks, Dylan.”

  “No problem. Talk to you in ten.”

  The call ended and Acton checked the time then leaned between the seats. “Find some place out of sight to park for about ten minutes, and turn off any phones or pagers.”

  Vitaly grunted, handing him a phone from the passenger seat. “I know a place.”

  Acton leaned back, turning off his phone, Laura already doing the same.

  “What’s going on?”

  “The Russians have already issued arrest warrants for us despite not knowing we were involved until twenty minutes ago, so they’re taking this seriously.”

  “How did Dylan find out?”

  “He didn’t say, but if he knows, then the CIA must know, which means this is big.” He squeezed his wife’s hand. “I think we’re in deep shit.”

  She closed her eyes, squeezing back. “Why does this keep happening to us?”

  “Because I’m an idiot. I should have just left the relics in the hallway.”

  Laura lifted his hand and clasped it to her chest. “You’re not an idiot, you’re a man who always does what’s right. And getting these relics back to the Japanese and possibly preventing a war that could kill a lot of people is the right thing to do.”

  He smiled, leaning in and giving her a peck on the tip of her nose. “You married the wrong man.”

  She smiled, returning the peck. “Only if I wanted a boring life.”

  He grinned. “No risk of that, apparently.”

  Vitaly jerked the wheel to the right and they quickly found themselves in an aboveground parking structure.

  Acton checked his watch.

  “Now we wait.”

  23

  Optima Apartments Avtozavodskaya, Moscow, Russian Federation

  Viktor Zorkin sipped on his Russian Standard Vodka from a chilled tumbler. He sighed, the gentle numbing effect enough to take the edge off his septuagenarian bones that had seen far better days.

  A jabbing pain shot from his knee up his thigh, as if to rebel against his self-medicating. He gasped, reaching for it, but with his nearly prone position on the couch, he gave up.

  I should have died years ago.

  Life as a KGB agent had been exciting, dangerous, glamorous even. Life as a retired servant of the old regime, one who showed no love of the new, wasn’t so great.

  Fortunately, he had money stashed away from his years spent spying on the West, though none of it was here. Here he lived on his government pension, using the extra money to buy a finer bottle of vodka or keep the heat a little higher, but he mostly saved it for a rainy day.

  You don’t have that many days left, rainy or otherwise, you old dog!

  He frowned as he flipped through the channels, finally settling on Russian Idol out of morbid curiosity, reality television the embodiment of Western civilization’s decline, its infliction on its former enemy a fitting last gasp of revenge.

  My homeland is a disgrace.

  At least when he served there was an ideology behind the actions that made sense at the time. Communism, Marxism, were better solutions than capitalism—at least that’s how they felt back then. Now the ideology was lost, it merely gangsters and hooligans on ego trips running the show.

  What kind of world leader prances around with his shirt off all the time?

  He flipped the channel, a hockey game just starting.

  And who honestly believes that their country’s president scored seven goals against NHL players without it being rigged?

  It was laughable, yet the proletariat ate it up, so used to being fed a steady diet of pro-Kremlin nonsense by a state-controlled media, they were complacent with the misconception they were being given the independent truth.

  It was like the old days, only worse.

  Now the people were naïve enough to think they had a free press, which gave them the false sense of security that the so-called free press would tell them the truth.

  Not in Russia.

  Not anymore.

  He placed his glass on the cracked tile floor, tapping his Beretta sitting within reach in case some moron decided to try and rob the old man in apartment 603.

  I wish they would.

  At least then there’d be some action. The last time he had felt his heart pump for anything other than a difficult bowel movement was when he had helped his old nemesis Alex West with the suitcase bombs.

  I should pay them a visit.

  He kept in semi-regular contact with West, the rekindled relationship with his old flame and their daughter he hadn’t known existed, apparently going quite well. It would be nice to see a familiar face, and the Black Forest in Germany was beautiful this time of year.

  I wonder if they’ve been overrun as well.

  That was one thing about living in Russia—you’d never have to worry about being overrun by refugees. Political correctness had no place here, and it could never be used to destroy a civilization. He felt bad for the West. He had grown to respect it and even enjoy its trappings, but after the Cold War ended, things had begun to head south. He wasn’t sure why. It could have b
een the lack of a unifying force that a common enemy brought, though he wasn’t so sure.

  And he frankly didn’t care.

  The world could go to hell as far as he was concerned.

  He had served his country. Had served it well. He had been respected once, feared even, and now he had been abandoned by a “grateful” nation, his only means of survival the money he had stolen in the event his country one day betrayed him.

  They never had, not in the sense he had assumed they would, yet here he lay, an old, decrepit man, alone in a rundown apartment in a rundown neighborhood, counting the days until blissful death removed him from the world’s great equation.

  Too bad I’m an atheist.

  His phone vibrated on the tile and he reached down as Moscow Dynamo scored, causing at least an extra strong beat to slam in his chest. He fumbled around for a few seconds before finally gripping the phone.

  “Da?”

  “Go secure.”

  His eyebrows rose slightly and he entered a code on the phone as he struggled to an upright position. “Secure. Who is this?”

  “This is Dylan Kane. Do you rem—”

  “Of course I remember you, I’m old but not senile. You’re the young American spy who helped me save the world.”

  “Better check that memory. I don’t seem to recall it going down that way.”

  Zorkin chuckled. “You have your version, I have the Soviet version.”

  Kane laughed. “Listen, there’s no time for chit-chat. I’ve got a problem and I need your help.”

  Zorkin’s heart started to beat faster, the pain in his knee seeming to recede. “What is it?”

  “Two friends of mine are wanted by your government. They’re innocent, caught up apparently in this Japanese mess. Are you in Moscow?”

  “Da.”

  “Can you help?”

  “What do you need?”

  “I need them taken safely out of the country.”

  Zorkin smiled.

  Action!

  “I will see what I can do. But remember, I’m an old man now with few contacts.”