“My instructor was from there, yes.”
Elayna is several miles away, sitting in the parking lot of her first business appointment. “So what did you do with him?”
“He’s in the morgue.”
“You’ve killed someone trying to help you?” she asks, raising her voice.
“He tried to kill one of our police officers. Fortunately, the firing pin on his gun was filed down.”
She doesn’t respond.
“We’re trying to avoid people getting killed here, Elayna. Why don’t we work together to bring these people in? It would be faster and safer for us all,” McDowd suggests.
“I’m sorry, Agent McDowd,”
“Call me Dan.”
“I’m sorry, Dan, but that’s out of the question. Orders are orders, you know. It’s a matter of pride, you see, taking care of our own mistakes.”
“If the local cops get to you first, they won’t be as cordial. If you come in, we’ll protect you, help you get your job done, and send you back to mother Russia safe and sound.”
“You’re very kind, but I’m afraid I must decline.”
“Suit yourself, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Give me a ring at this number if you change your mind.”
“Goodbye, Agent McDowd.”
“Oh, Elayna, does your other friend know what’s in store for him?”
She hangs up.
Had McDowd been able to see her face, he would have seen her wince from fear of Kreichek hearing what he’d said.
“Well?” Haddad asks.
McDowd shrugs, “She tried not to sound concerned. Something else is going on here. They really don’t want us getting our hands on the team members.”
“What happened?” Kreichek asks.
“They killed Hutnikov.”
He shudders. “Why?”
“Because he was a stupid fuck, that’s why.”
He slumps into his seat, stunned by how wrong everything has suddenly gone. “Now what do we do?”
Her head snaps to him. “We have a job to do, we do it!”
In reality, she’s thinking that Hutnikov is one less thing to worry about. “You must admit, he was a liability.”
“He was my friend.”
“I’m sorry, but he was also an idiot. We leave him on his own for a second and he gets himself killed trying to kill a policeman! He put the entire mission in jeopardy. We’re lucky to still be alive ourselves.” She pulls back the slide of her gun to chamber a round, adding to her point. “Now keep an eye out. I don’t want us to be next. If I’m not out in ten minutes, come in after me.”
Chapter 8
Oak Lane Apartments
Boo answers the door. “Hi, Miss Kate.”
“How you doing, James?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“It was a long day yesterday,” Kate offers in sympathy.
“I know,” he agrees, taking her coat. “I was hoping I’d see you at the service.”
Boo takes her into the living room. It’s hard to miss the framed picture of his Dad adorned by flowers.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t make it, but I stopped by the cemetery latter in the day to pay my respects,” Kate tells him, sitting down. “So, how are you feeling today?”
“Tired, sad and a little relieved it’s over,” Boo sighs. Then suddenly, he perks up. “I wrote a letter to my dad last night, just like you said.”
“Great! It made you feel better, right?”
“Sure did. You want to hear it?”
Kate hesitates. “Only if you want to.”
Boo pulls the pages of white lined paper out of his back pocket. Clearing his throat, Boo starts:
“Dear Dad. I love you and miss you so much. I keep trying to think of the last time we spent together in my head, ‘cause that’s where you are now. I know that more will come to me as time goes by. I was real angry at you for leaving us here, and maybe I still am a little, but that’s just a kid missing his dad talking. I know sometimes we all gotta do things we don’t want to do, but we got to do them for the folks we love. If we don’t do them, somebody else will, and that might mess things up. I remember when I was little, you had to call the police to come to take mama away. I know you didn’t want to, but you had to, and I remember how you cried. I was just a shortie then, but now I know what it was all about, that mama was sick, and she needed help, and that you didn’t know how to give it to her. You did what you had to do, even though it broke your heart.”
“God is talking to me,” Kate thinks, trying but failing to hold back tears.
“I hope I never have to face something like that, Dad, but if I do, I’ll remember how brave you were. I only hope that now, you are with Mama again, happy in heaven together. I hope you don’t mind if I wait a while before I meet up with you.”
“Good,” Kate whispers at the healing humor.
“Please don’t worry about us. I’ve been talking with this nice lady from the school to help me handle things. She told me to write you this letter, which I think is a good idea. I’ll keep writing. Yesterday, I could tell you were looking down on us, I could just feel it. I love you and miss you Dad. I’ll write to you again soon. Love, James.”
She sits looking at the young man across from her with his shy smile and sniffly nose. Dust hangs motionless in the light, seemingly frozen by the silence of the room, and her heart. She can’t feel it beating, or hear it cries and it frightens her. The emotional surge has shut off her feelings, protecting her like a circuit breaker.
“What will Tom or Robbie say in their letter to me? Will they be that forgiving, that understanding? Would they still be able to find the love? Or will they shut down, just like me?”
In her mind, Katrina whispers a warning. “I know how to help you Kate,”
Boo looks for approval, but his smile ebbs looking at her. The tears go untouched on her cheeks, lips unmoved in an empty expression, and the eyes, beautiful, but they too are dead, like those of a doll. It is as if she isn’t there. “What’d you think, Kate?”
The pause is uncomfortable, but before he asks again, she snaps back from the abyss where she’d been.
“That was just beautiful, James,” she says softly, and the smile he knows returns.
Chapter 9
Glenside Bike Shop
Eddy is in the back of his bike shop, preparing to settle a long overdue score. Resentments are like cancer. The longer you let them fester, the more they eat you up inside. He’s been suffering for a long time, enduring the indignity of having to play second fiddle to the ever wonderful Katrina. Not anymore. All night he’s been plotting, fantasizing, of how he will do it. He wants to humiliate her. He wants her to suffer, and above all, he wants her to die. He will be waiting when she gets home, just in time to see her children die…
The door chime announces an arrival to the showroom.
“So early.” He finds an attractive blonde wandering among the rows of bikes.
“Hello, can I help you?” he calls across the room.
The woman jumps, holding her hand to her heart. “Wow! You startled me.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, approaching her.
“Are you Eddy?”
“That’s me.”
She offers her hand. “My name is Elayna. I called yesterday.”
“Oh yes, the Hybrids! I put some aside for you,” he tells her as if they are in short supply.
“I’m sorry I’m early,” she apologizes, following him deep into the maze of wheels and frames.
“No, not at all,” he tells her as they enter the workshop area. “How did you find me, in the yellow pages?”
“No. In the GRU archives,” she says in Russian.
He takes a second to process what he’s just heard. His eyes dart about, looking for anything he can grab as a weapon.
“You are FBI?” he asks.
“Put your hands in your pockets, and turn a
round slowly,” Elayna orders.
Eddy does as he is told. Seeing the silencer, he knows his guess is wrong. She is farther away from him than he thought, holding the gun in a combat stance and aiming right at his head. He doesn’t think she’ll miss.
“I’m from the home office, here to terminate the mission.” Elayna plans to play with this one, like a cat with a mouse, and it won’t be pretty. To her, every one of them is Petre Kurtsin, and every death is a revenge to be savored.
“The bombs, I know where they’ve hidden them. You can take them, they will get a good price.”
Suddenly, off in the distance but inside the building, a woman’s voice calls out, “Eddy? Where are you, honey?”
Both Elayna and Eddy share the same thought, “Shit!”
Neither takes their eyes off the other. Elayna scowls at him to explain.
“My girlfriend.”
Elayna expected variables and wonders where Kreichek is, and how he missed the woman. “Fucking Hutnikov.”
The voice comes closer. “Eddy?”
Eddy sees the scowl on her face turn into a sinister smile.
“Please, let me get rid of her,” Eddy begs in a low voice.
“If you don’t, I will.” Elayna may be a psycho, but she is not without scruples. Collateral damage comes with the territory, but if it can be avoided, her training has taught her to consider the option. The gun goes into her overcoat pocket.
“There you are! Oh, I didn’t know you had a customer.”
The woman enters the room with a bag of food. “Hi, honey.” She glances at Elayna who has a smile for her, admiring the cute woman.
She gives him a kiss. “I got us some bagels.”
“Tell you what, take them to your place. I just have to take this nice lady’s money and lock up,” he says. “We can have breakfast in bed, perhaps a little sushi?”
He says it loudly enough so that Elayna can hear. It shocks his girlfriend, making her turn bright red.
“Eddy!” she scolds him, but shocking her is not his intention. It’s Elayna’s reaction he’s betting on, a natural response to turn away from another’s shame.
It works.
Elayna turns her back, giving him a small window of opportunity to act. In a flowing movement, he scoops up a screwdriver from the workbench, spins and springs at Elayna, going for her neck.
Perhaps it is the distance he has to cross, or the gasp from the girlfriend, or a change in the light, but Elayna senses his coming. She launches herself away from the diving Eddy, at the same time spinning herself around, crashing backward into a rack of bicycles.
Eddy’s screwdriver misses as he tackles her, pushing Elayna into the metal mangle of bikes, causing her searing pain, but it’s the girlfriend who does the screaming.
Elayna is pinned under him, her hands still in her pockets. With his left hand, he pushes her head to the side, pressing it into a wheel and exposing her neck, moments away from driving the tool into her head just behind the ear.
His hand comes up.
She angles the gun barrel up as far as she can manage and squeezes the trigger, not seeing or caring where the rounds go. The first rips into his thigh.
The screwdriver glances off her shoulder and down the back of her neck, but he takes the pain and winds up for another try.
She fires again, this time into his groin. He may be Spetsnaz, but that gets him off of her, allowing Elayna to roll away free.
Getting up, she staggers backward, nearly falling again on bikes. Eddy writhes in pain, curled in a fetal position. Elayna touches her neck. When she brings her hand back, it’s covered in her own blood.
“You FUCK! This is my favorite sweater!”
Eddy’s girlfriend has dropped the bag of food, frozen in fear, eyes and mouth wide open at what she is seeing.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” Elayna raises her gun and drops the poor woman with a single round to her forehead. “So much for being nice, that’ll teach me.”
She takes her coat off to see how bad he got her; the adrenaline is still taking the edge off the pain. “Shit.” With one hand, she feels the wound, finding it to be more of a gouge than a puncture, and it seems to have missed any big pipelines. Now relieved, her attention turns back to Eddy, trying to crawl away. She crouches down in front of him to head him off.
“Where do you think you’re going you selfish prick? You see what you made me do?” His agony prevents him from uttering any more than a moan, his teary eyes bulging as if they will pop out of his head.
“You’ll bleed out in a few minutes, and right now I’d like nothing more than to watch those last miserable moments, but I’ve got a few more stops left.”
The door chimes again. Elayna aims the gun, but seeing Kreichek, she brings it back to Eddy’s head. After their eyes meet, she ends his misery.
Chapter 10
Along PA Route 263
McDowd and Haddad head back to the Naval Air Station with a whole lot of nothing, no tangible leads, and a growing collection of stiffs, none of whom are the people they need.
“This really sucks,” McDowd sighs.
“If it’s any consolation, these people have gone to great pains for the past twenty or so years to avoid being found,” Haddad says.
“Yeah, but everyone trips up eventually, right?”
Haddad shoots him a glance. He’s about to say something snarky when he catches a glimpse of a tall white spire through the brilliant foliage. “Hey, look!”
McDowd follows his finger and sees the cathedral. “That matches the Iranian’s description.”
“Got that artist’s drawing?”
McDowd holds it up.
They pull into the ornate entrance to the campus and follow the signs for deliveries, leading them to what looks like an administration building. Before long, they’re in the human resources office, talking with the director. After the proper introductions, McDowd hands her the sketch. “Ever seen this person before?”
“Why, that’s Stanly. Our greenskeeper.”
The two men look at each other and smile.
Chapter 11
Willow Grove N.A.S.
Bob surveys the circus he’s put together, and it isn’t pretty. The hangar is abuzz with an assortment of suit and tie agents, scruffy-looking SOCOM types and heavily armed SWAT team members dressed in black, looking at maps, working the phones and laptops. Rollaway blackboards have the pictures of dead people, as well as the video still taken of Elayna and the boys. It’s impressive looking, but it all adds up to a big fat zero.
Bob’s phone gets a text. “Wheels down WGNAS.” It is from the last asset he can put into play, the one he hoped to avoid.
“Edwards!” He shouts across the cavernous space.
He jogs over to his boss. “What’s up?”
“Lets take a walk.”
They head in the direction of the partially opened hangar door, away from the rest of the mob.
“I’ve been holding a little something back from you the past couple days. It was need to know. I was hoping we’d have this mess wrapped up by now, so I didn’t want to unnecessarily concern folks, but we’re beyond that now,” Bob tells him.
The noise of a taxiing prop aircraft becomes louder as they near the door. Two black C-130 prop planes, bristling with antenna, head in their direction. They have no markings on them.
“I called them in this morning. They’re NEST.”
Edwards swallows hard.
Chapter 12
The Warehouse, Kensington, Philadelphia
Stani isn’t entirely surprised when Kate walks through the door of the empty warehouse, even though she is a half hour early.
Kate nonchalantly checks the gun behind her back, a round already chambered. “How quickly the things we are given can be taken away, into the past as the present appears, never to be held again.”
She smiles as she approaches Stani.
r /> “Dosbindonya, Katrina Svetlana,” he calls a little too cheerily.
“Good morning, comrade Major,” she replies, sticking to English.
“Any problems?” he asks.
Kate shakes her head. “None whatsoever. Why do you ask?”
He tries to get a read as to whether she’s run into Eddy. He doesn’t get one, which makes him tense. “Either she has, Eddy is dead, and she suspects I had something to do with it, or he’s planning on taking her out later,” Stani calculates. “I’ll call him to find out. However, she is here, by herself. Does that not speak to her loyalty? Perhaps Eddy just wants to settle an old score. I never doubted her…”
“Are any of the others here?” she asks, looking around.
“No, not until later,” he says, gesturing her to follow him.
He takes her past empty storage shelves to a stairwell. The cool damp air has the scent of moldy concrete and something else…death.
Stani flips on a light switch before they descend. Crumpled in the corner is a body, covered with a tarp. She can tell by the feet. She stops as the hair on the back of her neck tingles. Stani sees her taking notice. “A former business partner. He wanted out of our relationship.”
She hasn’t dealt with this kind of shit for a long time, and it’s unnerving. “Is that how you got the limp?”
“No. That’s a different story. He was a good man. I wanted to spare him the misery of what is to come.”
They enter the weapons room. He flips on the overhead light, illuminating their tools. Body armor, automatic rifles with various sights, radio equipment, handguns, grenades, plastic explosives, timers, anti-armor weapons, medical supplies, everything the well-outfitted commando unit would desire.
“What is to come, Stani?” Kate asks.
“These,” he says, opening yet another large wall safe.
Dramatically, he pulls the double doors open. He lugs out two large metal suitcases and lifts them up onto a sturdy metal table in the center of the room. Kate doesn’t remember feeling this level of anxiety before. She had hoped it would never come to this. She feels a strong impulse to run.
Stani steps back and chuckles. “You never did get used to these things.”