He decided to lighten the mood. “Though it might not have seemed like it last night, I got into a lot of fights after my mom died.”
Cali smiled and gave him a wink. Then she took a shot at him. “Yeah? You’re right, it didn’t seem like it.”
King laughed. He was glad to receive the jab. Sam would have approved. With that thought he immediately checked his phone that was lying on the table beside him. No notifications. Sam should have checked in by now. As much as he wanted to be in the moment, the thought of Sam in trouble pulled him out of it.
“I’m sorry, it was just a joke,” Cali said as she took her hand away.
“What?” King looked back up at her. When he saw concern on her face, it snapped him back to the conversation. “No, sorry. Believe me, I appreciate a good ribbing. Especially when I deserve it. I was just supposed to hear from someone and haven’t yet. No big deal.”
“Natalie?”
King raised an eyebrow, then remembered he’d mentioned Natalie last night as the girl he’d come to Alaska to forget. “Oh, no. She’s a distant memory.”
A memory he couldn’t shake, but distant nonetheless.
“Good.” That smile again. Flecks of green flared in her hazel eyes.
It wasn’t often that he was with a woman so comfortable in her own skin to forgo makeup, but in Cali’s case, she must have known she didn’t need it.
“Sorry I got so deep so fast,” Cali said. “I’m not one to beat around the bush.”
“No problem,” he said. “I can appreciate that. You need any cream or sugar?”
“How ’bout some of that whiskey?”
King smiled. “You ever met anyone from Kentucky?”
“Not sure really. Why? I say something wrong?”
“A couple of things actually.”
She squinted her eyes at him. “Do tell, Mister Manners.”
“It’s just that if it’s bourbon we’re talking about, we would always call it bourbon. Not whiskey. Because to us there is a difference. And bourbon like George T. Stagg? You don’t go wasting that by mixing it with coffee. Mixing it with anything, for that matter.”
“Well, X, I’m so sorry to have trampled your heritage.”
They both laughed. Then he went back to the kitchen cabinet, opened it, and pulled out a bottle of Canadian whiskey. “Now this stuff? It’s good for mixing.”
“Don’t you lose your Kentucky card for buying a bottle like that?”
King feigned a look of being appalled. “Oh no, darlin’, I didn’t buy this. Whoever was here before me left it behind. And I don’t blame them. But it will work in the coffee.”
“I’m just glad you didn’t tell me that it’s five o’clock somewhere, like every other cliché American would.”
“I’m a lot of things, Cali,” he said as he poured some whiskey into both of their coffee cups, “but cliché isn’t one of them.”
“Yeah?” She took a sip. So did he. “I noticed that. You’re in awfully good shape for no good reason. You ex-military?”
“I am. It’s ingrained in the DNA at this point.”
King was entranced by Cali. She had that certain way about her. The way she drew him in with her eyes and left him hanging with that smile. But as with everything in King’s life, even a moment like this couldn’t sustain his full attention. The more time went by, the more his concern grew for Sam. She wasn’t the type to be late for anything. Especially checking in with him.
King checked his phone once again.
“If there’s something you need to be doing, I can go.”
Before he could respond, a horn blasted from the road. Five long and drawn-out beeps.
“Expecting someone?” Cali said.
“No,” King told her as he stood from the table.
“Sounds like someone’s expecting you.”
Chapter Nine
Moscow, Russia, 8:00 p.m.
As Sam walked over to Zhanna, she motioned for Zhanna to hand over Veronika’s phone. Whoever was listening in on the other end of Veronika’s phone during this transaction gone bad in the hangar, Sam had to learn their identity. Zhanna obliged and Sam checked the phone’s screen. It was an unknown number.
“Veronika!” a man with an American accent shouted.
To hear an American’s voice come from the phone while she was standing around a pile of bodies in a private hangar in Moscow, Russia, was a bit of a shock to Sam’s system. She covered the phone and handed it back to Zhanna. She mouthed to Zhanna to speak in Russian. Zhanna understood. She took the phone and said one sentence in her native tongue. It was enough to help whoever was on the other end of that call to end it immediately.
“They hang up,” Zhanna said as she switched back to her broken English.
“Shit.” Sam took the phone and pocketed it for later. She took in the carnage around her and moved over toward the briefcase. Though it didn’t go down like she had hoped, Zhanna was alive, she had a phone that she hoped she could connect to something of importance, and the briefcase lying on the ground just to her left could fully change the entire complexion of the problems at hand. All in all, it was a win.
“Yes, it is shit,” Zhanna said. “But worse shit is coming if we don’t leave now.”
Sam knew Zhanna was right. “Before we get split up, give me your number.” Sam pulled out her phone as Zhanna rattled off some numbers. She pressed call so Zhanna would have her number stored as well. “Why don’t you grab that briefcase and I’ll see if we have any company outside.”
Zhanna gave her a nod, and Sam walked back toward the side door she’d used earlier. On her way, she ejected her mostly empty magazine and replaced it with a full one. It was a good thing she did. Just as she was within a few feet of the door, the pewter handle moved downward. Sam jumped to the spot on the wall where the door was opening toward. She saw the end of a pistol move inside.
Sam grabbed the barrel of the pistol and pushed it to the right as she ducked and shot the man in the knee. She had to go to the floor with him, because there were three more men in military fatigues coming toward her, only about ten feet away.
Military fatigues?
Sam’s mind raced as she hit the ground. Her plan of shooting the man in the knee to keep him alive for questioning was immediately out the window. Now her focus was survival. As she landed face-to-face with the man she’d shot, his eyes were wide with surprise as the two of them bounced off the ground nose to nose, she pulled her gun up and shot him in the stomach.
“Find a back way out!” Sam shouted at Zhanna.
She was able to use the large man as a springboard, digging the right toe of her shoe into his belt and sliding her body along the floor to avoid the shots the men with him fired just before the door slammed shut in their face. Her first instinct was to scramble fast enough to get to the door and lock it. But if she wasn’t quick enough, they’d beat her there and shoot her dead. So she popped up to her feet, ran around the boxes back toward the dead bodies she’d already helped lay to rest, and sprinted over to Zhanna whose back was running around the prop plane.
“This way!” Zhanna shouted.
The door behind Sam exploded inward. A cascade of bullets followed, and the loud bangs echoed through the hangar. Sam jumped the body of the man who’d once held the briefcase, and she surged past the plane. The aluminum was filling with holes from the ammo being expensed behind her. She didn’t have time to worry about the same damage filling her back. She just had to run.
In front of her, a different door silhouetted Zhanna with bright light. It was dark out, but the light shining down on her made her glow. Before Sam could feel any sense of relief, Zhanna was already shooting around the door at the men in military gear. Whoever it was, whether the actual Russian military or some sort of mercenary team, they weren’t commissioned by the American voice Sam had heard coming through Veronika’s phone. This team of gunmen had already been at the hangar waiting, either to intercept this briefcase exchange or to shut it
down. Regardless, Sam and Zhanna were trapped.
Zhanna fired a few more times and then jumped back inside the hangar, swinging the metal door shut as bullets clanked against it.
“How many?” Sam shouted as gunfire continued behind her.
“Two, maybe more!” Zhanna wasn’t rattled yet, but she was on her way there.
The two of them crouched. The prop plane on one side and a thin wall on the other were the only two things keeping them alive. Sam scanned the area around her. On the back wall there were more boxes, and beside them, a pushback tractor. None of it useful. As she scanned back toward the hangar door, she fired a couple of rounds in the direction of the men who were shooting at them from behind the stack of boxes on the other side. If the men outside the door on her right were trained, as long as they were firing they wouldn’t enter the hangar for fear of friendly fire. This was her and Zhanna’s only window.
Sam took the briefcase from Zhanna and moved toward the door. The men on the other side of the hangar finally stopped shooting. They shouted something in Russian. Sam assumed it was some iteration of “Don’t move,” but she couldn’t worry about that.
Sam looked back at Zhanna as she placed her hand on the door handle. “When I show the briefcase, I need you to shout in Russian that we surrender and tell them to take the briefcase. Tell them to spare us and take what they came for.”
Zhanna didn’t protest or ask questions. She knew Sam was baiting them. Sam cracked the door open and shoved the briefcase out into the cold air. Zhanna shouted in Russian, a man shouted back, and Zhanna followed with something else that even in Russian sounded like Zhanna was pleading with them. The men shouted once again behind them from the other side of the hangar, but Sam was focused forward out the door, waiting for one of the men to make a move for the briefcase.
Sam reached her hand back and whispered, “Your gun!” Zhanna handed the gun to Sam, and Sam tossed it out the door toward the briefcase. Zhanna shouted something else to the men. Everything went still. Sam raised her Glock in front of her. She could hear the squeak of shoes on the polished floor behind them. The men on the other side of the boxes inside the hangar were coming her way. Zhanna pleaded again, but the men were closing in behind them. They were going to have to make a move whether it was the right time or not.
Then, finally, outside the crack in the door, a hand reached out and grabbed for the briefcase. Sam squeezed the trigger and shot the handle. As the man jerked his hand back, she shoved the door open with her foot and put two in the man’s chest, then dove out from behind the open door. As her left side hit the pavement, she shot three more times, hitting the second man twice. As he dropped to the ground, gunfire erupted from inside the hangar, and Zhanna came diving to the ground behind her. Sam jumped up, picked up the briefcase and Zhanna’s gun, and handed the gun to her like a relay sprinter passing the baton, and both of them were off and running.
They rounded the front of the hangar and darted right, toward the parking lot. Sam had no idea what she might find there, but there was no alternative. The airport was encapsulated by a barbed wire fence. Their only way out was through the main gate. Sam glanced over her shoulder, and three men came tripping out the side door. She fired two defensive shots when her Glock locked back. Zhanna picked up Sam’s slack by firing a few of her own as Sam exchanged the empty magazine for a fresh one and racked the slide. It was her last spare.
Sam and Zhanna raced around the corner of the building as bullets came flying their way. Sam was barely able to dive behind a van before the first of another string of gunfire was able to hit her, coming from somewhere in the parking lot in front of her. Zhanna made it behind the van unscathed as well, but now the two of them were trapped once again.
As gunshots rang out on the other side of the van and sirens blared in the distance, three men were about to round the corner behind them, leaving them nowhere to run. With their asses on the ground and backs to the van, Sam watched as Zhanna loaded a fresh magazine into her Sig Sauer. All they had left was twenty-four bullets and a prayer.
Sam sucked in a breath of cold Russian air as she set the briefcase down beside her. As the chaos swirled all around them, she desperately tried to control her own breathing. There was no need for conversation, no time either. But she found comfort when she glanced over and Zhanna looked her in the eyes. She saw in Zhanna what she felt deep in her own gut, that she wasn’t afraid to fight. The two of them raised their weapons and waited for their enemies.
It didn’t take long.
Chapter Ten
Barrow, Alaska, 9:00 a.m.
King set down his coffee and rose from the table. There was a shout from outside his door, but he couldn’t make out the words. Only that it was a man’s voice. He walked over to the window and raised the blinds.
“Oh Christ, not again,” Cali said beside him.
King was looking at a man about ten feet from his door whose arms were raised out from his sides. King couldn’t tell who it was by looking, but he knew immediately that it was Ryker after Cali’s remark. There were two trucks pulled in behind him, a couple of men in each truck.
“Come on out, boy! I’ve got a housewarming gift for you!” Ryker shouted.
Cali let go of the blinds and walked over to her coat. “Just let me handle this asshole. The biggest problem with living in the middle of nowhere is that there is nothing to do. This dummy fights out of boredom.”
A wave of regret washed over King as he watched Cali hurry into her boots and her coat. He was kicking himself for ever setting foot in that bar, giving this moron outside a chance to cause him trouble. All of this was the last thing he needed. Sam would both laugh and be furious with him if she were there. She’d predicted that a woman in a bar could bring the entire country down if King were enticed. All he could do now was his best to make sure this little side problem didn’t become a much larger one. However, that was the reason for the regret. He’d already seen Ryker push Cali once. If he put his hands on her again, there would be no staying out of it. It just wasn’t in King’s nature.
“Just let him go away, Cali,” King said.
“You don’t know Ryker,” she said as she pulled her beanie down over her ears. “His ego is so big, he won’t stop until it’s satisfied. And right now he thinks you’re the reason he got arrested last night.”
“Arrested?” King said.
“Yeah, after the bar cleared out, some of those Russian guys took offense to Ryker getting them kicked out. They went at it in subzero temperatures. Smarts weren’t exactly involved. Anyway, I know Ryker, he has to have someone to blame it on.”
“And the new guy makes for a good scapegoat.”
“You got it. I’ll get rid of him, but I’m not sure he’ll back off.”
“I don’t want any trouble. I’m just here to do my job and earn a little money.”
Cali raised her eyebrow as she studied him. “You aren’t here running from the law, are you? Is that why you’re so worried about causing trouble?”
King didn’t answer. He’d much rather have her believe he was a criminal than have her get any ideas about why he was really there. The silence was getting awkward. Finally, horns blowing and Ryker calling King out again broke the intense moment.
“Just stay inside, okay?” Cali said. “I don’t need you getting busted up again. You’re too pretty for it.”
This was a new experience for King, and a hard one to swallow. Watching a woman walk out the door to defend him was as backward as it could get for a Southern gentleman. Especially one who was used to doing the fighting. But he knew, if there was any way she could get Ryker to leave without an incident, that was by far the best scenario. Even if it bought King only a day.
Cali opened the door and walked out. King grabbed his coat from the hook and threw it on as he walked over to the window. Cali hadn’t shut the door all the way, so King was able to hear their conversation.
“What the hell are you doing here? You’re not into
this guy, are you?” Ryker said. His voice was animated.
“What I do is none of your business.” Cali got right in Ryker’s face. She was a spitfire. “Never has been, never will be. Now why don’t you and your redneck friends just get the hell out of here. Don’t any of you have jobs?”
Ryker turned his attention from Cali to the house. “She’s fighting your battles again, bro,” he called out. “What kind of pansy are you?”
All King could do was shake his head. In his experience, most guys like Ryker who actually knew how to fight weren’t always trying to get into them. But sometimes, when the good old days pass a guy like him by, it becomes the only thing he is known for. It was clear to King that fighting was Ryker’s identity, and it was the only one he had. And King had a terrible feeling Ryker wasn’t going to leave until he got a fight.
“Just don’t touch her,” King said under his breath as he watched through the window.
Outside in the twilight, Ryker tried to step around Cali, but she shuffled over and got in his way.
“This doesn’t concern you anymore, Cali. Move, or I’ll move you!”
On reflex, King’s fists clenched.
“You have no beef with him, Ryker.” Cali was trying to reason with him, but you can’t reason with stupid. “It’s not his fault you got arrested. It’s your fault you’re just a punch-drunk loser who lives in the past.”
King winced. Her approach, while well intended, was only going to provoke a guy like Ryker.
“Come on out! Fight like a man!”
Ryker tried to step around Cali again, and again she moved. This was humiliating for King, but he had to keep the big picture in mind. And this douchebag had nothing to do with what was important.
“Just go, Ryker!”
“Look, Cali, either move, or I’ll move you! I’m not playing!”
King zipped up his coat and slid into his boots. This was happening. He glanced up at the trucks behind Ryker to confirm that there were only four other men. His breaths were quickening as he watched. And just as he thought, Cali didn’t back down. Ryker moved, and she moved right in front of him. Ryker wrapped both his hands around Cali’s shoulders, picked her up, and tossed her about three feet down to the ground. She landed on her ass in the dusting of snow, and her momentum carried her backward hard enough that she smacked the back of her head on the ground.
Alexander King Thriller Series: Books 1-3 Page 28
