Jet (18 page)

“That must be it.”

Yulia went first and, when she reached the top of the ladder, shouldered the cement slab overhead aside, shifting it enough to pull herself through the gap, and the men followed. The rain falling from the opening onto their faces was the sweetest sensation imaginable after the claustrophobic foulness of the sewer. Jet was the last out of the hole, and she immediately killed her flashlight and whispered for Yulia to do the same.

“What now?” Jet asked the Ukrainian woman.

Yulia looked at her watch. “We’re to be met by a car. It’s supposed to be here. I coordinated with the guards.”

“One of your people or theirs?”

“Ours.”

“I don’t see anything, do you?”

The group peered through the curtain of rain that was soaking their clothes. Other than a scattering of utility buildings and a few scraggly trees, there was nothing to be seen but a row of bushes stretching along a rural street. Yulia cursed and shook her head. “The prison is pretty far from the city center. We’re on the very outskirts of Moscow, and everything south of us is countryside and farmland. There’s no place we can safely walk to – we’d be picked up once we were spotted.”

“But nobody knows we’re gone yet,” Jet countered. “I’d say trying to put some distance between us and the prison’s better than waiting for them to get wise.”

The men turned to Yulia for guidance. She frowned and took another look down the road. “Which way?”

Jet pointed through the rain at a distant glimmer of light. “Looks like a market or something.”

Yulia followed her gaze. “A filling station.

Taras and Evgeny exchanged a look. “We’re wearing prison clothes. One patrol sees us, and we’re dead,” Evgeny warned.

“Then let’s make sure nobody sees us,” Taras replied. “The sooner we’re out of here, the better.”

Yulia nodded and took off at a run and the rest tailed her through the downpour, the dark outline of the prison behind them, the klaxon barely audible from within its towering walls.

Jet inched closer to Yulia as they surveyed the gas station’s empty pump area. Two attendants sat inside the tiny market on plastic chairs, watching a portable television; the likelihood of any customers arriving in the rain was slim.

“What do you think we should do?” Yulia asked under her breath.

“You and I go in and see if they have anything that can help us. Men won’t be as suspicious of women, so we’ll have a few seconds before they figure it out.”

Yulia fingered her gray prison jumpsuit. “Hard to mistake this.”

“Most people have never seen one, so it won’t register, at least until it’s too late for them. They’ll just see two women soaking wet. All we need to do is get close enough so I can take them out. That won’t be hard. Although truthfully, it’ll be easier if it’s just me. They’d never suspect a threat from a lone female.”

“What do you want me to do, then?” Yulia asked.

“Watch, and once I disable them, come in and help me.”

Yulia looked to Taras, who shrugged. She nodded at Jet. “Okay.”

Jet ran her fingers through her sopping hair, brushing it straight back, and then rose from her crouched position at the corner of the building and jogged through the rain to the glass door.

The attendants looked up in surprise at the ringing of the small bell over the door, just in time to see Jet enter, dripping wet, wiping the water from her face with the back of her arm. A bouncy tune trilled from a radio on a shelf behind the counter, drowned out occasionally by the roar of the crowd on the televised soccer match they were watching. One of the men rose from his seat as she made her way toward them, a puzzled smile in place.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“My car broke down on the road back there,” she said, closing the distance as she spoke.

“Yeah? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. It just died. Could I use your phone, or maybe get a ride so one of you can look at it? I don’t know anything about cars…”

The standing man backed away, his expression revealing that he’d recognized Jet’s prison garb. His hand slid to the small of his back, but Jet was already a blur of motion, her right leg pivoting as she delivered a powerful blow to his midsection with her left foot. The second attendant fell backward in surprise, and his chair collapsed as his partner fell against him. Jet followed with a strategically targeted strike at the falling man’s neck for good measure.

He hit the floor with a grunt and she leaned over him, never taking her eyes off the second attendant. She retrieved the small semiautomatic pistol from the downed man’s waistband and checked the magazine and chamber before pointing it at the pair.

“All right. Cooperate and you’ll live. The black car parked outside. Which one of you has the keys?”

The unharmed attendant freed himself and rolled away from his groaning companion. “You’re robbing us?”

“That’s choice A. Choice B is robbing and killing you. Which one depends on whether you cooperate,” she said, her voice flat.

Judging by his expression, the man obviously believed her.

The front door swung open, and Yulia and Taras entered. “Search them,” Jet said. “Keys, money, weapons. Anything we can use.”

Yulia moved to the first attendant and Taras crouched by the second as Jet kept the pistol trained on the men. When they finished searching the Russians, they’d found a small quantity of rubles, a pocketknife, a pack of cheap cigarettes, and two key rings – but neither with a car key on it. Jet glanced at the paltry collection and her eyes narrowed to slits.

“Last chance,” she said softly to the Russians. “Where are the keys to that car?”

“There,” the second attendant said, pointing at a board mounted to the wall. “It’s a repair job.”

“Does it have gas?”

The attendants exchanged a puzzled look. The one who’d pointed nodded. “I…I think so.”

Jet tilted her head to Yulia. “Take them in the back and tie them up. Gag them so they can’t make any noise. You know how to tie a secure knot?”

Yulia frowned. “Of course.”

Jet walked to the board and removed the only key from a hook. “What time does this dump close for the night?”

“In…about an hour.”

“Give me your watch,” Jet ordered, and the man obeyed.

“It’s a cheap piece of junk. Worth nothing,” he said as he tossed it to her.

“Then you won’t miss it.”

Jet walked to the door and flipped the outside lights off, leaving only the one in the market illuminated. Yulia and Taras stood aside as the uninjured attendant helped his partner to his feet, and they followed the pair back into the garage area. Yulia bound them together with a length of greasy nylon cord, and Taras fashioned gags from rags and a roll of heavy tape.

Jet inspected their work and pocketed the gun. “Let’s take whatever food and drink we can comfortably carry and get going. If we head west, we should be well away from Moscow by the time the police catch on.” She’d suggested planting the false idea of driving west so when the attendants were questioned, they gave the police information that would throw them off the scent.

“You think we can make it to Smolensk by dawn?” Yulia asked.

“Let’s hope so.”

They cleaned out the cash register and filled a sack with snack food and beverages while Jet snagged a yellow rubber rain slicker and a worn black windbreaker from a rack in the corner. She donned the slicker and handed Yulia the jacket. Yulia felt in the pocket and retrieved a cell phone with a look of triumph. “This could come in handy,” she said.

When they exited the market, Taras whistled loudly. Evgeny, Vlad, and Mikhail came at a run from the darkness, the rain concealing the sound of their footfalls, and they moved as a group to where the car sat in the gloom.

The vehicle was a geriatric black Volga GAZ-24 sedan that barely accommodated them all, and the engine wheezed like an asthmatic before finally starting. It settled into a stuttering idle and Jet looked to Yulia behind the wheel. “They said it was a repair.”

“Sounds like they never got around to it,” Evgeny said from where the four men were stuffed in the backseat. Yulia had suggested one of the men sitting in the front with them, but Jet had nixed it – two women passing an oncoming police car wouldn’t set off alarms.

Yulia shifted into gear and flipped the headlights on. The engine almost died, but she toed the accelerator and steered for the road, the wipers barely clearing the windshield enough to see.

Once on the road, Yulia pulled the cell from her pocket and eyed the screen. Jet shook her head. “Don’t use it to call your contact unless you want to lead the cops straight to him. The minute those two are found, they’ll trace their calls, and then he’ll have a problem.”

“He’s probably using a disposable,” Yulia countered.

“Probably isn’t the same as definitely. Let’s wait until we can find a pay phone. That’s anonymous.”

“You seem to know an awful lot about this kind of thing,” Taras observed. Jet ignored him.

Yulia considered Jet’s advice and put the phone down. “Then we need to get rid of it, right?”

“Correct. It can be traced.”

“Damn. I thought we’d caught a break.”

Jet took the phone and rolled down the window. “Better safe than sorry,” she said, and tossed it into the night. “What do you think happened to your contact?”

“I don’t know. But I plan to find out.”

“You think there will be roadblocks?” Mikhail asked from behind them.

Yulia shook her head. “Not yet. It will take a while before they realize we’ve escaped. Probably not till morning, if we’re lucky. By then we could be anywhere.” Yulia frowned as they passed a darkened factory. “The jail’s on the southern outskirts of Moscow. We should be clear of the city limits within a few kilometers, and then there are plenty of roads south.”

“You don’t think they’ll be expecting you to try to make it back to the Ukraine?” Jet asked. “The Smolensk ruse will only play out so long.”

“Possibly, but remember that they’re going to be pretty disorganized, at least at first. Everyone involved will be trying to cover their ass so they don’t get blamed. And from what we saw, there are going to be plenty of injured or dead. I doubt a manhunt for a few escapees is going to be a top priority, at least not in the first twenty-four hours. My contact said the same thing.”

“The contact who didn’t show up,” Jet reminded her softly.

“Which I’m not happy about,” Yulia snapped.

A warning light blinked on the dashboard. Yulia eyed it and when she looked to Jet, her lips were a thin line. “Temperature’s in the red.”

“Figures. Turn off as soon as you can and let’s find something else.”

Yulia nodded. “That occurred to me. I don’t suppose you know how to hot-wire a car?”

Jet managed a small smile. “I might.” She pointed to an approaching sign for an industrial supply warehouse. “That place might have a van. We can drive it until morning and then steal something else.”

“They’ll notice if one is missing. And this piece of junk will establish a link between us and the theft,” Evgeny warned.

“Which is why we won’t leave it there. We’ll follow whatever we steal until this thing dies.”

Yulia pulled off the road just as a second warning light illuminated. “Which won’t be long now. The lights are about the only thing working.”

Jet looked into the night at the outline of a large warehouse and spotted a collection of trucks parked near the loading dock.

“Then we better make this quick.”

Manbij, Syria

Simon shifted in the backseat of the car when, after hours of driving, it rolled to a stop and the engine shut off. The gunman on his right slid out of the vehicle and barked an order at him. Simon tried to oblige, though the sweat-drenched sack over his head made it difficult, and his captors eventually figured out the problem and helped him from the car.

The man behind him pulled the sack off unceremoniously and Simon blinked at the sudden near-blinding light from an array of overhead fluorescent lamps. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out that he was inside an industrial building, a warehouse of some sort, and he took note of the numerous ISIS gunmen lounging around with AK-47s, some sitting on wooden crates, others leaning against larger objects hidden by tarps.

The leader of the kidnapping squad stepped away from the car and motioned to Simon. “Come. This way.”

Simon blotted away sweat from his forehead and accompanied the man to the rear of the space, where four gunmen stood, weapons at the ready. The leader told them to stand aside and they did, watching Simon as though he was going to try to lunge at them as he walked by.

When he passed through the doorway, a blast of chill air instantly dried the remaining perspiration on his face. He inhaled with barely disguised relief and eyed the room’s occupant. An ISIS commander, his rank obvious from the gray in his beard and the reasonably clean uniform he wore, nodded in greeting and approached from where he’d been sitting in an overstuffed reclining chair, watching television.

“Welcome. I am sorry for the elaborate precautions, but as you might have guessed, we take our security seriously,” the man said. “I am Zarif. Come, have tea, and let us discuss your needs.”

Simon joined him at a circular table, where a tea set was waiting. The kidnapping leader and Zarif sat in chairs, which surprised Simon until he realized that they were observing Western custom on his behalf. He lowered himself onto a wooden bench seat, facing Zarif.

The ISIS commander poured steaming cups for them all. They sipped appreciatively, and then Zarif put his cup down and leaned forward.

“Word reached me that you are seeking specialized goods,” he said.

“Yes. Russian antiaircraft missiles. Shoulder fired. Recent vintage.”

Zarif appeared perplexed. “The American version is vastly superior. Far lower failure rate and more accurate.”

“I’m sure that’s true, but I am merely a middleman. The customer was quite specific. I’m afraid a substitution isn’t possible.” Simon took another taste of his tea. “I have traveled a long way. Do you have any?”