“Va Va Vi Vi!”
“What? Say that again!” Sam shouted.
“Va Va Vi Vi! That’s what you wanted right?”
“Artem Kamenev only has the vaccine!” Sam shouted. There was cheering in the background of her phone call. “I trashed the ones on the right. I destroyed the virus! He can’t hurt anyone!”
It was absolutely incredible news. He doubted in the history of mankind that one line in a notebook ever saved so many lives. It was a stroke of luck, but those are the kinds of things you need in the end when dealing with these types of situations. Like everything else in life, you can do everything right and still lose. This time, they were lucky. King could now focus all of his energy on making the man pay for all the lives he’d destroyed, and even the ones he had been about to ruin.
“Sam, I have to go. Make sure you don’t let that man get away. Even if he does only have the vaccine.”
“I’ll do my best. And X?”
“Yeah?”
“Say hello to Kuznetsov for me,” Sam said, “in the way only you know how to say it.”
“Don’t worry, Sam. I’ll send your warmest regards.”
Chapter Fifty
Cali explained to King what he would find once he opened the back door of the police station. There was a mud room of sorts just inside, then a secure door that you could only get through by being buzzed in, unless you had a key. She said they buzzed people in by checking you on camera and then letting you in. Josiah had explained this to her the night he took her there. She said if King could make it through that door, there was a short hallway with offices on both sides, then a door that led to rows of cells, then another secure door that led to the lobby of the jailhouse.
King happily accepted a brief kiss from Cali, but as soon as he opened the door to get out of the Jeep, he forgot she ever existed, at least for the time being. He stepped out into the subzero air, but he didn’t feel it. He decided to leave the empty briefcase in the Jeep. There would be no time for cloak-and-dagger once he made it inside. Cali pulled away in the Jeep behind him to go back to the airplane, but he didn’t hear it. The only thing he took in was the path through the trees that led to one of the most despicable human beings on the planet.
King knew he was walking into a situation where he was completely outnumbered. And entirely outgunned. But he knew it wouldn’t matter. He’d seen the extent of training these men had. Short of a lucky shot, they had no chance. It was the equivalent of putting someone in a boxing ring with the heavyweight champion of the world, when all they’d ever experienced were bar fights. Sure, in one out of a million matches, a bar fighter might land that one magical punch. But the odds were better of hitting the lottery.
To perform these type of missions, you had to have that mentality. That confidence. Some would call it arrogance, but as King himself would explain it, it’s simply the facts. Considering the thousands of hours of training it took to be the type of killer King was, it didn’t leave people room for luck. Not people like these Russian guards whose combat skills were limited to maybe having joined a police force at some point in their lives. King was about to chew through them.
King walked to the edge of the trees. He was only about fifty feet from the back of the police station. The first gift from the gods of war was a guard sitting outside the back door. It was his ticket through the secure door inside. When Cali was telling him about the station, he’d expected there would be someone watching the back door, so this didn’t come as a surprise.
King had on him the AR-15 formerly strapped onto the upper body of a Volkov guard. He also had his Glock in the concealed holster at his back, and his silent killer, the Chris Reeve Sebenza knife in his pocket. In front of him a yellow light hung over the door. Below it, in what looked like fourteen layers of clothing, sat his first victim. There were no security cameras. They must have saved them all for the first room inside the door.
King reached down and picked up a thick piece of a fallen tree branch. Snow was trickling down from the sky, and the quiet was almost deafening. There was a dumpster about ten feet to the guard’s left. King threw the stick as hard as he could. His throw was a little short, but it bounced up and dinged the metal dumpster pretty hard. The guard jumped up, aimed his gun toward the dumpster, and moved in that direction as he shouted something in Russian.
King thumbed open the blade on his knife and moved from the trees. He stalked his prey, running up behind the guard before he ever knew someone was there. He jabbed the blade in the man’s neck three times. The first step in stopping the madman inside was done. When the guard fell to the ground, King removed his ushanka. King knew the warm hat by name because Zhanna had told him about it during a crew’s night out a couple of years ago. King put the ushanka on his head and pulled the ear covers down. He then removed the magazine from the guard’s AR-15 and shoved it in his coat pocket. The last thing he took was a set of keys out of the guard’s pocket.
He pulled the ushanka down as far as he could on his head without impairing his vision as he tried the first key on the door. Nothing. He tried the second key, then the third, but none of them worked. Which made sense, because this man wasn’t an employee of the Barrow Police Department. He was just another Russian thug. That’s when gift number two came to him. The door handle moved down on its own, and the door eased open. When he heard a man inside say something in Russian, King took a step back. He couldn’t kill him inside—it would get caught on camera—he needed the man to move outside.
The man said more words in Russian coupled with what sounded like someone’s name. King figured the guard outside was supposed to knock when he wanted in, and the guard inside would open the door for him. The man who opened the door finally stepped out. King grabbed him by the rifle strap that was looped around his chest and yanked him outside. He dropped his knife in the doorjamb so it wouldn’t close behind him. The guard rose to his feet but was distracted by the bloody mess his comrade had just made over by the dumpster.
King stepped forward and Thai kicked the man in the knee. His leg crumpled and he moaned in pain. King followed that with a knee to his chin and his head whipped back unconscious. King was never happy about killing people who were just doing their job, but he couldn’t let them keep him from doing his. He crouched down beside the man and wrenched his neck in a way that he would never come back to life. A sound like breaking a neck is one a man never gets used to. But it was necessary.
He turned and walked over to the door. He pulled his knife from the doorjamb, hung his head down low, and walked inside. The white florescent lights above him were bright—a stark contrast to the darkness he was about to bring to every man inside.
Chapter Fifty-One
King didn’t look up at the cameras in the holding room inside the police station. He just stared forward at the secured door. He knew they could see him.
A man’s voice speaking Russian came over the speaker. In King’s mind, the man had asked if he was ready for a shift change already. So he nodded his head and gave a thumbs-up. It was all he had.
When the door buzzed, King slid his hand to the small of his back. He still had the AR-15 strapped around his torso, but he knew he could be more accurate inside with the Glock.
As the buzz sound continued, he closed his eyes and tried to picture what awaited him on the other side. Cali had said it was a hallway of offices, before another secured door. No one in the entire station mattered to King except Kuznetsov. It didn’t matter if there were ten men in front of him when he opened the door; he had to find Kuznetsov and eliminate him first—even if someone else had the drop on him and it cost him his life. Kuznetsov could not live to do this again.
Before King grabbed the door handle, he removed the glove on his shooting hand. He was going to have to be at his absolute best, and the glove would only slow his feel for the trigger. He reached for the door handle, pulled down, then pulled the door toward him. He raised his gun as he stepped through. As it did every time
he was in these life-and-death situations, everything began to move in slow motion.
The man walking toward him was in military fatigues. His eyes widened when he noticed King bringing up a gun, but it was too late. King shot once, and the bullet hit somewhere around the left eye. Through a pink mist, King searched for Kuznetsov’s wild white hair and wide nose. Instead, his eyes found two more men, both of them reaching for their guns. It was too late for the man on the left; King squeezed twice and both landed somewhere in the chest. King calculated in a millisecond that there was a chance the other man could get his shot off first, so he dove through the doorway of the office beside him. He heard four loud bangs as he crouched down low. Then he leaned out into the hallway and shot the man, sending bullets into his leg, then somewhere around his neck. The next man appeared about five feet behind the guard he’d just shot. King had heard the door buzz through the gunfire. He shot twice, but both his bullets hit the wall just beyond the man’s head. The guard’s gun was up and returning fire. King fell back into the office onto his back.
The guard stopped firing and shouted in Russian. More men were coming. King rolled over, staying as low as he could until his head and arms were outside the doorway. He shot two times, and before the man could jump inside the office on his right, King had hit him. The door leading into the cell portion of the jailhouse shut. King wasn’t overly worried that they would try to usher Kuznetsov out the front door into one of the SUVs. King still had the tracking chip on Kuznetsov, but he didn’t want to take this show on the road. He wanted to end it right now. Instead of walking down the hall, he moved back inside the office and lifted the only window in the small room.
The door buzzed again out in the hallway—an alarm of sorts letting King know someone else was coming. He put one leg out the window, then the other, and dropped down to the ground below. As soon as his feet landed, he sprinted for the front of the police station. He slid his Glock back inside his holster as he ran, then spun the AR-15 so he was holding it in his hands. When he got to the edge of the front corner of the station, he stopped. He peeked around the corner and watched as two men came running out the front. He had no idea what was going on inside the jailhouse, but he was sure someone had told them to go secure the perimeter before bringing Kuznetsov out.
King let the AR-15 hang from his shoulder by the strap as he shot his hand in his pocket. The guard was running fast for the corner, but he managed to pull the knife and open the blade. King put his back against the wall and bent his knees to steady himself. He pulled his arm up about chin high, and as soon as the man rounded the corner, King leaned in with an elbow to the jaw that knocked the man completely off his feet. Almost as soon as the guard’s back hit the ground, King slammed the knife into his neck so he couldn’t scream. He closed the blade of his knife and placed it in his pocket. Then he pulled his Glock once again. He had five shots left.
He took another look around the corner. This time he noticed a camera in the eave of the roof, right beside the floodlight. It was decision time. If he sat back and waited, he was sure Kuznetsov would eventually come out. This would make Kuznetsov an easy target. The problem with waiting was that someone could easily come up King’s back side and end the good run he was on.
The risk wasn’t worth the consequences. He’d rather move on his own terms. And that’s exactly what he did.
Chapter Fifty-Two
King glanced over his shoulder one last time. He was glad he did. Through a squint King could see someone’s head poking out of the window he’d jumped from earlier. He decided it was best to have a larger magazine to shoot with going into the unknown, so he swapped the Glock for the AR-15. It was time to move.
He surged around the corner and right up to the glass door that led to the end of his mission. His gun was ready, so he was able to shoot the guard standing in front of the door with two squeezes. He continued to fire even though the man had dropped to the ground. He was laying cover for himself. Not ideal, but it was all he had.
With his bullets slamming into the walls inside, and the chaos of the glass door shattering, King moved immediately to his left so he was in front of the window. The curtain was pulled back, and he saw exactly what he was hoping to see: Dmitry Kuznetsov’s face. His face was glaring worriedly through the square window on the other side of the secured door that led further inside the jailhouse. King raised his gun, but before he could shoot, he saw something move out of the corner of his left eye. He instantly dropped to the ground, and bullets crashed through the window where his head had just been. He Army-crawled forward with his elbows, his gun still fixed in his hands. Through the busted front door, King could see a man was crouched behind a desk. When the guard raised up, King shot him dead.
King popped up to his feet and jumped sideways to put his back against the wall. Again it crossed his mind that these men had no business guarding anyone. In this situation, Kuznetsov’s loss was King’s gain. He showed the barrel of his gun through the front door. As the bullets came, he spun back to his right and aimed through the window. The man was a sitting duck, shooting where King was and not where he was going to be. King took three shots: two hit him, and he was down. He scanned the rest of the lobby, and no one else was there. King was in perfect position. Kuznetsov would have to come through him to get to a vehicle. Before King went inside, though, his mind did a perimeter check. One of the two guards who had come through the front door a moment ago and gone around the opposite side of the station had yet to return. And at least one more man was sticking his head out the window. King needed to locate them before he moved inside. The second he walked through that front door, his back would be exposed. So he bypassed it and went back to the side of the station he’d just come from.
King didn’t take time to have a look first; he didn’t want to give anyone a chance to see him. This was where the AR-15 came in handy. He walked right around the corner, already firing before he saw the man running toward him. With a small correction in aim, he sprayed the man in the torso. When he dropped dead, a man at the far end of the station came into view. Before King could shoot, the guard ducked back behind the dumpster. King made a mental note not to forget about that man.
He backpedaled to the front again. No one had come running. King figured by that point he must have devastatingly thinned the herd. He ditched the AR once again for his Glock as he opened the shattered front door. There were three dead men inside and a woman he assumed was Elaine. Josiah had said her name, days ago it seemed, when she patched the president’s call to him in King’s living room.
Kuznetsov’s face was no longer in the door’s small square window. King walked up to it and found a small hallway like the one he’d been in earlier. The only stretch of the jailhouse he hadn’t seen now were the cells. They were right in the middle, according to Cali. And since the hall was empty, he figured that was where Kuznetsov had moved to.
King opened the door and quickly checked the offices. All four of them were empty. There was one more door separating him and the cells. It didn’t have a window, so he would have to go in blind. The only other thing that he hoped to see when he opened the door, besides Kuznetsov cowering in a corner, was Josiah. If he wasn’t in one of the cells, more than likely he was dead.
King was worried about the other guard he’d seen at the back of the jailhouse. He would’ve had time to come in through the back door. It was likely he wouldn’t be able to get through the doors because no one was manning the buzzers, but King couldn’t be too careful. He ducked inside one of the offices and grabbed a rolling chair. He opened the door without moving in front of it. No one made a sound at first. Then he heard Josiah shout.
“He’s got a gun!”
King shoved the rolling chair around the door and through the doorway. Gunshots echoed through the enclosed space. They were almost deafening, but they weren’t aimed at the door; the bullets instead were hitting the chair King had tossed inside. King’s sense of slow motion returned. He stepped arou
nd the door and saw Josiah standing in front and to the right of Kuznetsov. Kuznetsov was firing the gun from behind Josiah with his left hand. That’s when Josiah made the move that saved his own life, diving to the ground and leaving Kuznetsov exposed. By the time Kuznetsov’s eyes found King’s, King had already shot him twice in the chest.
Kuznetsov slid down the wall onto his ass. He dropped his gun and clutched his chest. King couldn’t savor the moment, however, because he heard the door to the lobby open behind him. He turned and shot the three remaining rounds in his magazine. The poor guard never even saw it coming.
“Holy shit, you did it,” Josiah said. “You fucking maniac. You did it!”
King ignored Josiah’s shouts, holstered his gun, and walked over to Kuznetsov. King hadn’t made it in time to see his evil actually leave the earth—Kuznetsov was already dead. His long stare into nothing would forever be burned into King’s memory. King had killed a lot of people in his time as a soldier and special operator, but none was more satisfying than this one. Kuznetsov had already single-handedly killed a couple hundred people. But it was the possible millions of lives saved that made it so fulfilling for King.
King stood over the dead monster of a man and took a long, deep breath. It was finally over. With the vials of the virus and the vaccine safe in his possession, and the only man on earth who could recreate it lying dead in front of him, King’s work in that frozen hellhole was done.
And he couldn’t have been happier about that.
Epilogue
Four Days Later
The Cayman Islands
Another warm breeze blew across the pool area at the boutique resort in the Cayman Islands. The palm trees swayed, the ocean waves crashed, and Alexander King hadn’t been as happy as he was in that moment, in years. Over by the tiki hut, a steel drum band waxed melodically, the singer saying something about tropical drinks melting in your hand. King set down his book and watched Sam as she laughed with Cali at the swim-up bar in the pool. He almost felt whole. The only thing that was missing was his closest friend, Kyle Hamilton.
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