Authors: Russell Blake
The latch yielded to her picks, and she slid the drawer open to find several neat bundles of currency and an array of specialized weapons – switchblades and stilettos, brass knuckles, and a host of other items that would have appeared innocent to a civilian. She selected several and they joined her new passport, and after counting off two small wads of rubles and euros, she closed the drawer and straightened. She’d jettison the other passports once on the road, but she didn’t want to make it easy for Yulia to sound the alarm, and if she’d left them, Anton would have been able to easily identify which document she was using. This way it could have been any of them with some modification, and neither Anton nor Yulia could be certain of her capabilities. A trained operative could alter any one of them given a day and the proper materials, and Yulia had recognized Jet’s skills sufficiently to raise doubts in their minds.
Back at the door she eyed the grounds, listening intently. A distant engine backfired and roared away on one of the far roads, and she waited until it had faded before moving to the weapons room and repeating her lock picking.
Three minutes later she emerged with a Fort-17 pistol of Ukrainian manufacture, a hand grenade, and two spare magazines loaded with military-issue cartridges. She slid the pistol into her waistband at her back and pocketed the magazines and the grenade. She’d been sorely tempted to take one of the submachine guns hanging on the wall but had resisted the impulse in favor of remaining unremarkable – a young woman walking around with a submachine gun would raise eyebrows.
Jet crossed the open ground in a running crouch and was at the perimeter wall in a blink. She didn’t slow as she neared it, instead running harder and propelling herself up the wall two meters. Her fingers locked onto the top and she pulled her body up and over and was on the street beyond, sprinting at top speed, seconds later.
She couldn’t be sure how long it would take for her escape to be noted, but had to assume the worst. If Yulia awoke for any reason before morning and decided to check on Jet, she’d sound the alarm, and Jet had no doubt that she would bring the full weight of the Ukrainian government to bear on capturing her. Best case, Jet had four or five hours. Worst, Yulia was already up and making the calls.
Jet had considered trekking across Ukraine to Romania and reuniting with Matt and Hannah, but that was too dangerous. Even with the ploy of taking all the passports, any but a cursory inspection of her papers would trip her up. That left the unpleasant prospect of making it north to the Russian border and recrossing – ironically safer than remaining in Ukraine now that the Russians believed that the prisoners they had been pursuing were lost to them.
‘Hide in plain sight’ had been one of the operational mantras drilled into her during her training, and going where nobody would expect her to was the best defense she could think of. Now all that remained was to traverse twenty kilometers of flatlands and sneak across the border without drawing the ire of the patrols in the area or stepping on a landmine.
After fifteen minutes of hard running, she arrived at the outskirts of Kharkiv’s eastern reaches. Row upon row of grim housing projects jutted into the night, surrounded by squalid brick homes on postage-stamp lots. She slowed as she entered the residential area, noting the few cars, ancient Soviet models that looked like they’d been abandoned where they’d died, and ducked behind a wall. Headlights flashed from the main road and lit the house next to her for a brief instant. She remained motionless behind the wall as a police cruiser rolled past without slowing. She waited until its brake lights had disappeared around a corner several long blocks up and then busied herself with scouting for something to carry her to the border.
At the fourth house, Jet spotted a suitable conveyance: an old bicycle chained to an iron fence. The bike looked like it was a hundred years old, but she didn’t have the luxury of taking more time, and in this neighborhood, she doubted she’d find anything better. A bicycle had the benefit of being silent and portable, whereas if she tried to steal a car, its engine starting might alert the owner, not to mention pose an easy target for anyone looking for her, and she wanted to minimize her risk, not increase it. She crept to the bike and went to work with her picks, and moments later was pedaling down the road, grimacing at the squeaks and groans from the reluctant wheels.
Jet skirted the town, preferring to take the less conspicuous circuitous route rather than one that would cut her time by half. Once past the spread of buildings, she stuck to back roads, predominantly dirt and shale, through the flat fields that stretched north. She drove herself as hard as her legs would allow, inhaling the clean, honest smell of tilled dirt and condensation. The ghostly landscape of endless flatlands and scattered farmhouse roofs glowed surreally in the moonlight after the fringes of the silent city.
Three hours passed and she finally found herself on the road that skirted the border, an unremarkable strip of gravel running along an imaginary division. She paused at a blue sign alerting travelers that beyond it lay Russian soil and peered into the predawn at a dilapidated chain-link fence, the gaps in it visible even from where she stood, in such disrepair she had difficulty believing it was a national border. After taking the measure of the span, she selected a reasonably large opening and, remembering the still-vivid encounter with the Russian border patrol, shouldered the old bike and carried it through the gap, mentally calculating the distance to the nearest civilization.
Once across, nothing changed; the fields were exactly the same as those on the Ukrainian side. She toted the bicycle across an expanse of tall wheat, on the far side of which she hoped she’d find a road to carry her north. As the sun painted the eastern sky with vivid neon, she arrived at the edge of the farm, and it was with gratitude and determination that she set the bicycle wheels on the hard-packed dirt, her mind flooded with images of Hannah and Matt.
Belgorod, Russia
Jet was just one of hundreds of bicyclists pedaling along the boulevard in Belgorod, making the morning commute under their own power, rain or shine. She stopped outside a café advertising hot beverages and fast Internet, and realized by the growls of protest from her stomach and faint light-headedness that she needed to on-load some calories quickly, having depleted her resources on the hard slog from Ukraine.
A heavyset woman waddled over to her table and took her order. When the woman returned with coffee and a farmhand breakfast so large parts of it hung off the edge of the plate, Jet asked her about computer access and was told that she could rent a station at the rear of the establishment for a few rubles per hour. Jet devoured the breakfast and, after paying the bill, moved to the computer stations and was relieved to find each PC equipped with antiquated but functional headsets.
She checked her blind email account and her heartbeat quickened at the message from Matt. It took her twenty minutes to skim all the articles and links, and when she was done, she sat back, absently eyeing the screen. The man who’d arranged for her extradition looked ordinary enough, yet posed a threat that had almost killed her. That was only one piece of the puzzle that had upended her life, but a critical one. And one that she needed to terminate with prejudice if she was ever to be safe.
Matt’s situation was more complicated – the organization after him had as many heads as a hydra, and they’d never be completely rid of the menace it posed. But over time, the crooked heads of the drug ring operating within the CIA would turn to new enemies, and she hoped that Matt would be forgotten or at least de-prioritized.
“Hope hasn’t worked well so far, has it?” she muttered, and then pushed aside the morose thought. They would get through this, as they had all the rest.
But first she needed to attend to the attorney’s brother. He’d decided to hunt her like an animal to exact revenge? He’d just invited hell on earth into his life, because she wouldn’t stop until he was erased.
She pulled the headphones on, adjusted the microphone, and dialed the Romanian cell phone number Matt had included in his email. Warmth flooded through her when he answered.
“Miss me?” Jet asked.
“More than anything. Where are you?”
She gave him an abridged account of her extradition and escape from prison, and finished with her Ukrainian odyssey. When she was done, he was speechless.
“I…so it’s all about the attorney? That doesn’t make sense. They came after me.” He told her about the shop.
“I overheard the Russians who kidnapped me talking. It sounded to me like they did an information share with your old friends. Tit for tat.”
“That certainly complicates things for us.”
“Yes. The worst part is they now have my prints and photograph on file. I need to think that through, but it means we’re going to have to find someplace pretty remote to go to ground.”
“Fine by me as long as we’re together.”
She swallowed hard. “You always know the right thing to say.”
“Stick with the truth is my motto.” He paused. “What are you going to do?”
“I’ve got to go after Leo.”
“I was afraid you’d say that. I know you too well to try to talk you out of it.”
“You also know why it’s the right move.”
Matt sighed. “How are you going to do it?”
“One of the articles was about a charity function tomorrow night. In Novorossiysk.”
“I saw that.”
“No point in wasting time, is there?”
“Pretty short notice, though. Hard to do any thorough reconnaissance,” Matt observed.
“It’s a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a cocktail party. There’ll be security, I’m sure. But they won’t be expecting me. I’ve pulled off far harder operations.”
“I know. I just hate that you have to do this.”
Jet didn’t see any point in belaboring it, so remained silent.
“How do you plan to get there? That’s a fair distance, isn’t it?” Matt asked.
“At least seven hundred kilometers. But I’ll find a way.”
“Can I do anything to help?” Matt asked.
“Just keep my baby safe.”
Matt hesitated. “Hannah misses you.”
“Let me talk to her.”
Hannah’s voice came on the line. “Mama!”
“Hi, sweetness. I miss you.”
“Miss you too.”
“I’m coming soon, but in the meantime, you have to behave, okay?”
“Course. When?”
“Three or four days.”
“Oh. Why?” The disappointment was obvious in Hannah’s tone.
“I have some stuff to take care of.”
Hannah brightened. “I had ice cream.”
“You deserve it if you’ve been good. Have you?”
“Yeth.”
“I love you more than anything, Hannah.”
“Love you too.”
“Let me speak to Matt.”
“Okay.”
Even though Hannah’s vocabulary had been expanding, it was difficult to have meaningful conversations with her, and Jet looked forward to the day when they could sit down and really talk. It was so much easier in person.
Jet felt a twinge of guilt. The poor thing had been put through so much in her short life. And yet she was always happy and optimistic, in the way that only children could be, as every day brought new surprises and adventures and opportunities for fun.
“I’m back,” Matt said.
“I’ll be traveling the rest of the day and probably tomorrow. I’ll check in with you when I can.”
“Think I should stay at the inn?”
“I’d change to another town tomorrow. Just send me the location. Are you keeping this phone for a while?”
“No reason not to. It’s clean.”
They finished their discussion and Jet terminated the call, and a dull ache twisted in her chest at the idea of yet more time without the two loves of her life. She pulled up the article on the charity ceremony the following day, looked up the city where it was taking place, and studied the satellite imagery of the marina hosting the event – not a particularly large venue, which could be either positive or negative. There was a main clubhouse, a hotel across the street, and a few restaurants nearby. The main port was situated on the opposite side of the long breakwater, the surroundings bleak and industrial even from the bird’s-eye view. She spent the better part of an hour doing research on bus schedules and documentation requirements, and determined that it would be too risky to fly or take public transportation.
Which left hitching a ride or stealing something.
She cleared the cache and the browsing history and turned the computer off before moving to the counter and paying for her time. When she emerged onto the street, the whine of a cheap motorcycle greeted her from the curb, where a delivery driver was coaxing the reluctant engine to life. An idea struck her and she nodded to the youth, who smiled amenably and returned to his task.
Jet pushed the bicycle to the street and swung her leg over the saddle with a sense of purpose.
She knew what she needed to do. Now it was just a matter of finding the right motorcycle.
She angled her head at the partially cloudy sky and let the sun warm her face, and then looked back at the young man on the bike as he pulled on his helmet. She beamed a genuine smile at him and offered a small wave before calling out over her shoulder as she pedaled away.
“Nice day for a ride.”
Yulia stood in the doorway of Jet’s abandoned room, a look of disbelief in place as early-morning light streamed through the window. She’d really thought the woman would take her up on her offer. But apparently she’d been wrong and now needed to implement damage control.
She did a quick check of the cafeteria and other common areas just to be sure – it was possible she’d awakened and decided to go for a run – but a scan of the path that ringed the compound showed it to be empty.
Yulia hurried to the administrative offices and made her calls, alerting the military and the police that Jet was an enemy of the state and was to be considered armed and dangerous. She was finishing up her last call when Anton stuck his head inside, his expression alarmed.