by Steve Berry
They were now Spam in a can, sealed tight.
* * *
Cassiopeia waited as long as she could, watching the two black smudges, listening to the sqeak of their soles on the snowy ground as they approached the barn.
She could take one, but probably not both.
So she opted for the smart play.
“Cotton,” she called out. “You’ve got company.”
Both forms halted their advance and turned.
Then one headed her way, the other toward the barn.
Exactly as she’d hoped.
* * *
Malone reacted to Cassiopeia’s warning and dove toward the end of the wood pile, using it for cover toward the door, which burst open.
Gunfire began.
A rapid rat-tat-tat from an automatic rifle.
He hunkered low behind the wood which, thankfully, offered ample protection, rounds whining by, hammering into the outer walls, shredding the logs. The man was firing indiscriminately in the dark, trying to take out anything and everything, which meant they wanted no one left alive.
Including him.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
Zorin heard the hatch slam shut, then the rattle of heavy objects pounding its exterior. He surmised that someone had sealed them below with the wood, but he rushed to the ladder and climbed, confirming his suspicions. He cursed himself for being so careless, but the excitement of the moment had overridden his usually cautious nature.
He eased back down to where Kelly stood and asked, “I’m assuming there’s no other exit?”
Kelly shook his head, but no look of concern filled his comrade’s face. “I have PVV-5A.”
He smiled. Plastic explosives.
Perfect.
Kelly moved toward the shelves where two ice coolers sat, their lids sealed with thick tape. He removed the bindings, and inside lay several bricks of an olive-green material wrapped in thick plastic.
“It’s been here a long time,” Zorin said. “Is it still good?”
“I’ve kept it stored like this since the beginning. I was told the material had a long shelf life, if properly protected. We’re about to find out if that’s right.”
* * *
Cassiopeia stayed behind the tree trunk, realizing that the man headed her way had no idea where she was located. Nothing but thick woods surrounded them, so advantage her. Cotton, on the other hand, was under fire. She could hear the barn being sprayed with rounds. She needed to head that way, but first there was the matter of her own pursuer.
She reached down and found a rock that filled the palm of her right hand. The shadow was twenty meters away, headed toward the trees off to her left. She lobed the rock upward, ahead of the man, and it clattered through the branches, sending some of the accumulated snow drifting down in silent showers.
The gunman did not hesitate.
He opened fire in the direction of the commotion.
Bad move.
She swung around, braced her gun against the tree, and pulled the trigger.
* * *
Zorin climbed the ladder to the exit hatch, carrying one of the green bricks. It had been a long time since he’d last used explosives. One full brick seemed too much, but there was no time to worry about power or effect.
Kelly had found a spool of copper wire and cutters. Thankfully, the cache was stocked with all the right tools. But that had been the whole idea. Everything had to be there, ready to go.
He could find no good place to lodge the brick except just above the final rung, a few centimeters beneath the closed lid. He assumed whoever had trapped them had piled wood atop, making it impossible to shove the hatch upward, but that would not be a problem for the force he was about to deliver.
Volleys of gunfire raged above him.
Odd.
Like back at Kelly’s house. Something was happening in the barn. But it didn’t concern him at the moment, not until he was free of this cage.
Kelly came up the ladder behind him to hand over the exposed ends of two copper wires. He wrapped both around the brick, then inserted the bare metal tips through the plastic covering the explosive. He then relaid the bundle close to the hatch and climbed down, careful not to jostle the wires. Kelly had already snaked them across the shelter to its far side.
“Ease the door shut,” Kelly told him. “As far as you can without hurting the wires.”
He understood the wisdom. The explosion would certainly blast upward, but there would be a downdraft, too, and it was important that the RA-115s stayed protected. Not to mention himself and Kelly. He managed to nearly close the door, which opened outward. The blast would only slam it further shut. But there was still the matter of air compression in the confined space. Kelly had thought of that, too, grabbing two wool blankets and tossing one his way.
For the head and ears.
Not 100 percent protection, but enough.
They retreated beyond the shelves and the table with the five nuclear devices, and huddled in a far corner. The other end of the two copper wires lay before them, as did a six-volt battery.
Touch the exposed ends to the terminals and the charge should be more than enough to ignite the night.
* * *
Malone waited until the firing stopped, lying still behind the woodpile, out of sight of the man in the doorway. That was the problem with bursting in without thought. Somebody else on the inside just might be thinking. Especially after a warning. But this guy had not seemed to mind, choosing to see if he could kill everything quickly.
The firing stopped.
For an instant.
Malone sprang up on his knees, found his target in the dark, and fired three shots, dropping the man to the ground. Quickly, he advanced to the doorway, gun still aimed, kicking away the rifle, then checking for a pulse at the neck.
Dead.
* * *
Cassiopeia heard the shots and saw the man at the barn door collapse to the ground. Apparently, Cotton had been ready for him. A form stepped from the barn, its outline unmistakable.
She hustled across a patch of scruffy grass, calling out, “You okay?”
“Any more out here?”
“I took the other one out.”
She was ten meters away.
* * *
Zorin held one wire, Kelly the other, the battery lying on the floor between them, blankets wrapping their heads, insulating their ears from what was about to bang through their underground prison. This was what KGB officers lived for, what they spent years being trained to do. Finally, he’d awakened from an agonizing, self-induced trance. For so long he’d blundered around like a drunk, staggering through life, his stomach hollow with loathing and disappointment, but now he’d finally achieved locomotion.
He was moving. Forward.
And nothing would stop him.
He nodded at Kelly.
They touched their wires to the terminals.
Sparks.
* * *
Malone headed toward Cassiopeia, about to tell her that he had Zorin and Kelly sealed tight when the barn exploded.
Everything rushed outward and up, air surging past both him and Cassiopeia, blowing them backward, upended, then crashing them to the ground. His head immediately hurt, all sense of balance gone. He rose and tried to find Cassiopeia. She lay a few feet away. He crawled toward her, forcing his muscles to work. Debris from the barn began to rain down. He seized what final bits of strength remained and thrust his body across hers.
His muscles pained to numbness.
Then reality vanished.
* * *
Zorin removed the blanket from around his head, as did Kelly. The explosion had sent nearly all of the blast upward, the shelter’s door forced shut, clanging hard metal to metal and keeping most of the force away from them. A deep subterranean rumble had rocked the walls, coming in shocks and waves, but it had now subsided. Everything had held. The electricity still worked and the overhead lights burned bright.
They stood.
All five weapons remained on the table and appeared fine.
He moved toward the door and shoved it open. The ladder well was clear, the overhead hatch gone. He listened and heard nothing. The barn above no longer sheltered anything. Snow rained down.
“Get one of the weapons ready to move,” he said to Kelly. “I’ll check above.”
He grabbed a flashlight, found his gun, and climbed to ground level. Only about half the barn remained, the rest scattered out twenty meters in all directions. The weak beam wavered as he jumped on top of the debris. He flicked the light across the ground and saw a body. He rolled the corpse over, seeing three bullet wounds to the chest.
This one died before.
In the gunfire he’d heard.
He washed the light over what was left of the barn and spotted another body. He went close and dropped into a crouch, tossing aside the pieces of old wood. No. Two bodies. One above the other. He rolled the top one over. In the light he saw a face he recognized.
The American. Malone.
Here?
A woman lay beneath him.
Concern swept through him.
How could this be?
“Aleksandr.”
Kelly had emerged from the shelter, a briefcase in hand.
Was the other dead man with Malone? Or against? The gunfire he’d heard earlier seemed to indicate a battle. Was the other one SVR? Possible. No, more probable. His mind was suddenly flooded with doubt, a sense of traps laid and not sprung.
Kelly came close. “Are they American?”
“This one is.”
“How do you know?”
“He was supposed to have died in Siberia. That one over there could be Russian, like at your house.”
“The rental car,” Kelly said. “It’s possible they found us through it. Technology allows that. I simply assumed no one here was watching. You should have told me everything back at my house. I would have done things differently.”
Too late now.
He stood, hearing nothing from the darkness around them. Surely the explosion would have attracted reinforcements.
But nothing.
Maybe these were the only ones.
“It’s ready,” Kelly said, motioning with the case. “The battery will handle things for at least a few days. More than enough time for tomorrow.”
His mind swirled with new possibilities. Contingencies to deal with the Americans that might assure success. Just in case.
Improvise. Think.
“We’re taking all five weapons.”
“They’re heavy, Aleksandr.”
He recalled. About twenty kilos each. “We can manage.”
And they should leave with a change of vehicle. He searched Malone’s pockets and found keys.
“We’ll need the things that are inside our car,” Kelly said.
And he wanted his knapsack. “I’ll get them. Prepare the other weapons. I’ll be back to help carry them up.”
One other thing.
Kelly never had the chance to explain about St. John’s Church, the White House, and what the Tallmadge journal had revealed.
“You need to finish telling me what you started to say downstairs.”
“And you must explain about Siberia and the Americans.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
Malone opened his eyes.
Snow covered his face, more trickling down the opening at his collar. Someone was shaking him, calling his name. He recognized the face. One of the agents from McDonald’s. Cold lay tight around his temples and he struggled with numbed senses, but just feeling anything seemed a good sign considering what he recalled happened.
The barn had exploded, covering both him and Cassiopeia. He was lying next to her, the other agent rousing her awake. He pushed himself up. His head ached, his neck stiff. Everything flashed woozy. His mouth was dry, so he sucked in some of the snow. His breath clouded around him in puffs of distress and relief. He checked his watch. A little after 5:00 A.M. They’d been out a few hours.
“We waited as long as we could,” one of the agents said. “Then we came and found you.”
Cassiopeia sat up and stared at him. “That hurt.”
“You got that right.”
“What happened?” an agent asked.
He hobbled to his feet and sucked in more cold air, trying to rid the staleness from his lungs. “Zorin did not appreciate being trapped underground. So he blew his way out. You didn’t hear it?”
“We were ten miles away, inside a building.”
“What about the other two we took down?” Cassiopeia asked.
“Both dead,” an agent reported. “We’re still trying to determine how they tracked Zorin.”
Not all that hard, really. As Cassiopeia had surmised earlier, they knew generally about weapons caches, just not the details, especially any booby traps. So they kept watch and got lucky. But they weren’t the problem anymore.
He stared over to where the barn once stood. “We need to take a look at something.”
His adrenaline, sluggish at first, now pricked and prodded him into alertness. He borrowed one of the agent’s flashlights and led the way through the dark, finding the underground entrance from earlier, its cover gone, leaving a neat hole in the ground.
“That metal hatchway kept the explosion directed upward, like a cannon, instead of outward,” he said. “Otherwise we’d be dead.”
It had to be a bomb shelter of some sort, or perhaps a facility built specifically by the KGB. His head still spun, so he stopped a moment and allowed the cobwebs to clear.
“You two keep an eye out up here,” he called out. “And nobody heard the explosion?”
“This is the middle of nowhere. The next farm is several miles away.”
He climbed down into the blackness, hoping for no more booby traps. At the bottom he found a half-open metal door, which he closely examined, determining that nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
He eased the door open and pointed his light inside.
A switch was affixed to the rounded outer wall, a conduit leading up to overhead bulbs. He wondered about flicking it on but decided, what the hell, and did.
The tubes shone bright.
He switched off the flashlight.
Cassiopeia followed him inside.
He was impressed with the array of stored materials. Anything and everything an enterprising spy might need. Inside an ice cooler lay bricks of plastic explosives, which explained how Zorin had managed to free himself. He took inventory of the small arms, rifles, and ammunition along with survival supplies.
But no RA-115s.
A table did stretch down one side of the shelter, its top empty, nothing there to indicate that nuclear weapons had once been here.
“Just great,” he muttered. “He’s gone and we still have no idea if he’s a threat or not.”
Being unable to hear the conversation earlier now became a big problem. He banged his palms against the wall in impotent fury. Anger surged in him like nausea, filling his throat. He’d messed up. Big time. The two agents on site should have been included as backup. But he was trying to keep the information trail contained. The mockery of the shelter seemed evident, and though roomy he still did not like the enclosed feeling. With nothing further to be learned, they climbed back to ground level.
“Is the other car still up there in the road?” he asked one of the agents.
He was told that it was, so he and Cassiopeia broke into a trot, finding it parked in the lane beyond where trees blocked the path. She seemed to know what he was after and they both stared into the rear windows. The nylon bag, there earlier, was gone.
“So they apparently needed a sledgehammer, bolt cutters, and a hasp lock,” she said.
That they did.
The other two agents caught up to them.
“Is our car here?” he asked one of them. “Back near the highway.”
“Didn’t see one.”
Ju
st wonderful.
“He has several hours’ head start,” Cassiopeia said. “So he’s certainly wherever he meant to be by now.”
“Even worse, no one has been looking for him.”
Time to report the bad news.
* * *
Stephanie sat at the small desk inside her hotel room. She’d returned here from the Justice Department, after calling Danny and telling him that he should open a fortune-telling business. He’d just chuckled and said it didn’t take a psychic to read these people. Sleep had proved impossible. Outside, four stories below, amber lights illuminated the hotel’s main entrance, taxis and cars-for-hire coming and going. Light snow had fallen through the night, leaving remnants but little ice. That would hurt later today. Better weather meant more crowds, more distractions, more opportunities for Zorin.
Her phone rang.
“I hope it’s good news,” she said, answering.
“It’s not,” Cotton said.
And she listened to what happened.
“We have cameras all over this city,” she said to him. “I’ll have the footage checked. That car has to appear somewhere.”
“Assuming Zorin is coming into DC. He may be planning an aerial attack from the outside.”
“We have the skies covered better than the ground.”
“I’ll leave that to you. We’re headed back to the White House.”
She ended the call and decided to play out her deal with Fox, dialing Litchfield’s cell phone. The moron answered quickly and she told him that they had nothing and Zorin was still on the loose.
“No proof he has a nuke?” Litchfield asked.
“Afraid not.”
“Fox will want to keep to the schedule.”
“I understand.”
“I’ll be at the White House around ten,” he told her. “If there’s any change let me know and I’ll make sure he acts immediately.”
“You’ll be the first call I make.”
She clicked off the phone, hating herself for even appearing to cooperate. She still planned to quit later today. The thought of working for these people turned her stomach. Hell, Litchfield was bad enough. She could find something else to do somewhere. Maybe she’d follow Cotton and move overseas. That had always carried an appeal to her.
