L
ooking at Jennifer, I keyed the mike. “Not headed back to the casino?”
“Nope. Apparently, he’s got some time to kill.”
And he’s going to check out the museums on this street.
I clicked off my transmitter and said, “Go get the car ready. I’m not going to kill anyone.”
She looked hard at me for a second, and I repeated, “I’m
not
.”
She stood on tiptoe and kissed me on the forehead, then whispered in my ear, “It’s not worth your sanity. Don’t do it.”
She leaned back and looked into my eyes. “I mean it, Pike. You do and I’m gone.”
I’m never going to live that mistake down. She still thinks I did it on purpose.
I saw Knuckles roll his eyes at the attention and felt like I was a ten-year-old getting scolded by a teacher.
I said, “Get your ass outside.”
After she’d gone, Knuckles said, “I see this whole team-leader-screwing-teammate thing is working out.”
Knuckles had been the first to figure out that Jennifer and I had grown a little closer than simply business partners, and he didn’t like the idea at all. He couldn’t care less what happened in the civilian world, but he was sure the extra baggage of a physical relationship would destroy the chemistry of our team. So far, he’d been proven wrong, so I ignored him and keyed my Bluetooth.
I said, “Retro, give us a description.”
He said, “I don’t think you’re going to miss him. He’s literally about six feet five inches tall, and his arms and legs look like tree trunks. He’s a fucking gorilla.”
Uh-oh.
I said, “Are you serious?”
“Yep.”
“Why didn’t you say something before?”
“Would it have mattered?”
“Yes! Given our half-assed plan, it would have.”
“What is the half-assed plan?”
Knuckles got in position as I relayed what we intended to Retro. Knowing he’d be too far back to effectively engage in the fight, he laughed and said, “Good luck with that.”
I said, “You see Knuckles in play, you’d better close the distance as fast as you can.”
I got a roger, then got an up from Jennifer. I asked if Knuckles was set, and he stated he was, but he didn’t sound as confident of his watch now. I slipped on the two-knuckle rings, not feeling so confident myself.
A minute and a half later, it was showtime.
Knuckles said, “Street’s clear and I see the yeti. Thirty seconds.”
Just inside the stone entrance, hidden by fallen timber, I tensed up. I heard, “Ten seconds, get ready.”
I heard a scuffle and raised my fists expecting to see the man flung through the door. Instead I heard some smacking on the street, like someone repeatedly slapping their thigh. I heard something slam into the stone outside, then heard a gargling noise. I started to run to the entrance when I saw Knuckles jerking the guy inside by a come-along joint lock. He whirled around, using the centrifugal force to roll the beast of a man out of the lock and straight at me.
In stop-motion from the sunlight dancing between the beams of the roof, I saw him coming, a great big bear of a man, his lips already split, his arms swinging out like the limbs of an oak. Knuckles released, squinting at me with one good eye, his left one enlarged and swelling shut. I forgot about the stun plan and went for the knockout.
I met his forward motion with a fist, tagging him once, twice, three times, the carbon fiber snapping his head back. The fourth blow was a haymaker that had enough force behind it to drop a bull. It staggered him back into Knuckles, but incredibly, he was still on his feet.
Knuckles whipped out the cord from his watch and used it as leverage between his hands, cinching down on the man’s carotid arteries, bending him backward with the pressure. I saw the strain on Knuckles’s face as he used all of his strength to sink the cord down into the muscle of the monster’s neck.
The man snarled, snapping his head back and catching Knuckles right in the nose. He followed the blow with two elbows into Knuckles’s short ribs, rendering the watchband-terminator thing useless, the giant gaining enough breathing room to break out. I rolled forward on the balls of my feet and fired two more jabs into his bleeding face, the carbon fiber increasing the damage exponentially. He absorbed the punishment like it was a fly landing on him and returned the punches with one of his own, landing a sloppy right cross on my shoulder that was bone-rattling.
I slammed into the wall from the force, doing my best to raise my hands to protect myself, and he followed with a left into my lower body, punching the wind out of me. I saw another right coming and rolled under it, jabbing him twice in the gut, then snapping an uppercut unopposed into his face. His head popped back and I jammed a knee forward, spearing his groin and throwing him into the stone.
He slapped both hands down and away, grabbing my shoulder and tossing me to the ground like I was a child. My skull hit rock and I saw stars, wondering where the hell Knuckles was. I shook my head and saw him moving forward, hands held high, bobbing and weaving. I pulled myself up, doing the same. I saw a shadow, and realized that Retro had finally entered. Even with that, I wasn’t sure it was enough.
The bear said something in a language I didn’t understand, then spit on the ground. He raised his hands into a fighting stance, and I glanced at Knuckles with an unspoken question.
Let him go?
Knuckles blew snot-filled blood out of his nose and shook his head. We advanced forward slowly, backing the guy up.
Man, he is fucking huge.
He was taller than six five, and not like a basketball player. He looked like a normal-sized athlete that had been magnified times three, with a rustic face and ham-hock fists.
He glanced back quickly, then scooped his hand onto the ground. He picked up a broken brick and hurled it at Knuckles. When Knuckles ducked the giant took off running, hitting the cracked stone steps at the back of the room. He scrambled up them, reaching the little outdoor ledge. I followed suit, but knew I’d lost him. He’d be over the wall and away before I could stop him. He turned to kick at my head and I saw a flash of brown streak toward him.
I ducked backward from the kick as a dog the size of a German shepherd sank his teeth into the man’s hamstring. He screamed and I went back into attack mode, launching up the steps and trying to grab his legs to bring him to the ground.
The dog started worrying the meat, snatching his head left and right like a shark, and the giant screamed again. He turned and kicked with his good leg, striking the beast right between the eyes and breaking the hold. The dog yelped, falling back, and the man seized the initiative, scrambling up the old stone wall of the garden.
I managed to grab his ankle just as the canine got back into the fight, chomping for more leg meat but getting only his pants. The asshole mule-kicked my head, and I let go. The dog didn’t. His pants ripped straight down the middle as he escaped over the wall, now running with one leg clothed and the other naked from the beltline down.
The dog went to his lair in the corner of the ledge and began ripping his prize to shreds, flinging his head side to side in a frenzy.
I leaned against a wall and let out a breath. I gingerly touched my face, checking for damage. It didn’t feel like anything had been broken, but with adrenaline, you never knew.
I saw Knuckles doing the same thing and said, “Man, that ninja watchband is the damn heat. I can’t wait to get one of my own.”
He stopped probing his jaw and said, “That was your idea of punching? We’d have been better off throwing Twinkies at him.”
I keyed my Bluetooth and said, “Koko, don’t worry about exfil.”
She came back with a strident voice. “You killed him? You killed the target?”
Knuckles started laughing, then keyed his mike. “No, Koko. Calm down. If anyone was close to death, it was your fearless commando team.”
The dog kept ripping up the pant leg, swinging his head back and forth and causing something to fly out from a pocket, the object falling down from the wolf lair to our level. I went over to it and found a small wallet, like travelers use for business cards. I pulled one out, seeing Cyrillic lettering on one side. I turned it over, finding English.
Knuckles said, “What is it? Who’s he working for?”
I held up the card for him to see. “He’s Russian. He’s a diplomat for the Russian embassy here.”
Y
uri saw Dmitri’s expression cloud over and understood the phone call wasn’t going to be good news. Watching him hang up, his face drained of color, Yuri knew he was afraid to state what had occurred.
Initially, Dmitri had been giddy with his accomplishment of the car-hack mission. After executing the previous hacking operation, Yuri had opted to remain with Vlad, leaving Dmitri in charge. After all, the mission profile was the same, down to the location. In effect, the first one had been a rehearsal for Dmitri, and Yuri knew the greater threat was the head of the FSB misreading something that had occurred. Being near him was more critical.
Yuri had relayed the success from the initial phone call, and Vlad had demanded an in-person debriefing, wanting more information on the team of Americans.
When Dmitri had entered the small office of the casino, he’d gone through the same gamut of emotions that Yuri had upon recognizing Vlad. Obsequious, he’d begun the debrief in a halting, jerky manner, clearly intimidated. Yuri had made one attempt at helping his man, interrupting a response with his own feedback.
Turning his black eyes on him, Vlad had said, “I’m sorry, were you on the road watching the car, or were you sitting in here with me?”
“Here, sir.”
“Then what makes you think I wish to hear what you
believe
has happened?”
Yuri sat back after that, not saying a word, watching Dmitri stumble through the reporting as Vlad dissected the operation.
“How do you know they are dead?”
“Sir, the car went over the cliff. It fell five hundred feet then exploded on impact. There’s no way anyone inside could have survived the fall.”
Vlad leaned back, his face catching the light, and Yuri saw the lethal impatience etched into his visage.
Vlad said, “I understand the physics of the mission. Yes, someone would have died had they been in the car. But
were
they inside? How do you know if you didn’t check the wreckage?”
Yuri had leaned in, struggling to come up with some way to deflect the interrogation, when Dmitri’s phone had vibrated. He’d exhaled, sagging in his chair, glad for the reprieve, then watched Dmitri’s face. Yuri knew whatever was being said, it wasn’t going to impress Vlad.
Dmitri hung up and fixated on Yuri as if he wanted to talk to him in private, but knew he couldn’t say that out loud. He wanted to brief his commander, and have his commander brief Control. As was supposed to happen. Especially now that Control had turned out to be the head of the FSB, and a man who’d earned the name Impaler the hard way.
Yuri said, “What is it?”
“That was Mishka. He was just attacked.”
Confused, knowing Mishka’s size, Yuri had trouble understanding who on earth would attempt to rob the giant. He said, “Attacked by a gang?”
Vlad interrupted, much quicker on the uptake. “Attacked by the Americans.”
It was a statement, not a question, but Dmitri nodded nonetheless as if he was answering. He relayed what Mishka had told him, with the damning information that one of the attackers was the man they’d driven off the cliff.
“So, not only is your target alive, but he had the presence of mind after the near death in the car wreck to understand he’d been attacked, then institute a comprehensive surveillance mission, complete with an ambush. Figuring all of this out while hanging from the side of a cliff.”
Yuri said, “It might be luck. He may not—”
Vlad waved a hand, cutting him off. “Don’t be stupid.” He pointed at Dmitri. “Call the desk and see if anyone has come in since you arrived.”
While Dmitri was on the house phone, Vlad said, “They followed him here. Watched him split up, then set up an ambush for the other man. This isn’t some counterintelligence team from America like I had thought. They’re hunters. Something different from the usual American floundering.”
He thought a moment in silence. Yuri said not a word. He pulled open a laptop and went to a Russian webpage showing a moving map with Cyrillic lettering. Satisfied, he closed it at the same time Dmitri hung up.
“Nobody has entered the casino since I arrived.”
“That means they’re either outside waiting on you to leave—along with whomever they can associate with you—or they focused solely on Mishka after you entered here. Go downstairs and check the outdoor video feed. See what you can find.”
After he’d left, Vlad said, “Akinbo is on the road to Haskovo, so he made the bus. At least we got our clean break. You need to get your men out of here immediately. Get to Istanbul. Unfortunately, you’ll be doing some work there now.”
“Sir, Turkish MIT are—”
“I don’t give a shit about their intelligence agency. We have a critical meeting in two days and I cannot have this American team on the loose. They need to be dealt with.”
“Sir, you gave Akinbo clean equipment. They have no way of knowing where he went. Right?”
“Yes, they don’t have Akinbo now, but the Americans found him some way. He’s clean today, but every minute that idiot is out on his own is another chance to give away his location. He’ll do something stupid. I promise.”
Dmitri came back with three grainy black-and-white images, one showing a Caucasian male sitting next to a black man, the other two photos showing individual head shots of each. “Sir, these are the only persons of interest. Everyone else in range of the front door has children or did not remain in view longer than thirty seconds. According to security, these two have been out front since about the time I arrived.”
Vlad said, “Still there?”
“No. They left while I was downstairs watching.”
Not wanting to believe how horribly wrong the events had gone, Yuri grasped at false implications. “So they can’t be waiting on Dmitri. They can’t be surveillance.”
Vlad said, “Or they got a phone call saying the ambush had failed and we were now alerted to their presence.” He turned and faced Yuri head-on. “Tell me, outside of Akinbo, how many black men have you seen in Bulgaria?”
Yuri struggled for an answer, then gave the correct one. “None.”
Vlad tapped his hand with the photo for a few seconds, then said, “He’s American. They both are.”
Yuri shut down, reverting back to what he knew: blind obedience. “What are my orders?”
“Just as I said. Get out of here immediately. Contact me when you’re in Istanbul. I’ll outfit you there with clean equipment.”
“What do you intend to do?”
“Give them what they want. Show them Akinbo. Only you’ll be waiting instead of him.”