Vision Impossible

  I took two steps in his direction when I felt the cool steel of a gun in the center of my back. “Where you go, pretty girl?” I heard a heavily accented voice say.

  I knew that voice and it made my blood turn to ice. I stood stock-still while I considered my options, and I knew I was definitely out of them when I felt his hand clamp down on my shoulder and spin me around. I stared right into a face I detested. A face without mercy and murderous intent. “Where Grinkov?” Yurik demanded.

  “Dead.”

  “Good,” he said, his free hand moving to the neck of my dress, and I knew he was about to rip it right off me. I closed my eyes and clenched my fists and then an explosion sounded so close to me that it knocked me backward, right out of his grip.

  I fell on the ground, and in a haze, I looked up to see Dutch, standing over Yurik’s dead body, seething with anger while smoke still curled from the barrel of his gun. To add to my surprise, in his other hand he held a familiar small black box and I knew what had taken him so long.

  Dutch’s gaze then swiveled to the soldier I’d taken out, and while I watched, he nodded in approval. I had no time to even thank him for saving me or express how glad I was to see him, because across the lawn we heard one of the other soldiers call out for Yurik.

  In the next instant Dutch had me under the arm and was lifting me to my feet. “Get through the gate!” he ordered, then turned to the unconscious guard and pulled him into the garden shack, shoving him in with all the clutter and barely managing to get the door closed.

  Meanwhile I stood there staring dumbly, not wanting to leave him alone. “What about you?” I asked, seeing my stun gun in the grass and picking it up to tuck it inside my dress.

  When I looked up again, I saw that Dutch wanted to toss Intuit to me, so I held out my hands and caught the device, which was much lighter than expected. He then bent over Yurik and gripped him under the arm. “Get moving!” he said again. “I’ll be right behind you!”

  I bolted through the gate and nearly went down amid the tangle of foliage. Somehow I managed to stay upright and behind me Dutch kept saying, “Go, go, go!” to encourage me, so I kept moving, deeper into the thick tangle, trying to pick my way quickly away from the wall. About fifteen yards into the surrounding forest, I turned back to see Dutch still struggling with Yurik’s body.

  “Why are you bringing him?” I whispered to Dutch. Even from here we could now hear multiple voices calling for the soldiers’ leader.

  “They won’t stop until they find him,” Dutch said, coming up to me and breathing hard. “And if they find out we’ve killed him, they won’t stop until they hunt us down.”

  “We can’t drag him around with us!” I protested. Yurik was at least six-two and two hundred twenty pounds.

  Dutch let go of the dead man and wiped the rain out of his eyes. “We’ll need to hide him.”

  I had an idea and shoved Intuit at him while I told him to wait there. Then I dashed back to the little shack near the wall, being careful to go quietly and keep out of sight, grabbed a shovel and a garden hoe from the ground near the shack, and pulled the iron gate closed behind me.

  I picked my way back to Dutch and he actually smiled.

  Wordlessly I gave him the shovel and started digging frantically at the ground with the hoe. We had to hurry because eventually the men would find the torn ivy and the broken padlock and put two and two together. Not to mention that the guard inside the shack could wake up at any moment, although I doubted he’d come to his senses anytime soon.

  It didn’t take long to bury the guard; much of the ground was covered by leaves and dead foliage, so we only had to dig a shallow grave and push Yurik into it before we started piling the stuff back on top.

  Somewhere along that effort, however, my engagement ring slipped off and Dutch had to practically fight me to leave it and run with him when the gunfire erupted again.

  Picking our way through the wet foliage and following an old path worn into the ground, we were lucky enough to discover a hunting lodge and we rushed inside to crouch down and wait for the pursuit to die down.

  Dutch had taken Yurik’s assault weapon, and while he stood guard, I tried to stay warm by huddling in a corner.

  I was soaked through and the late afternoon was finally turning chilly. My feet were killing me, and I had no idea how I was going to run through miles of forest to the other landing strip.

  To make matters worse, while I was looking at Dutch, I saw his posture stiffen. He turned silently to me and made a motion with two fingers pointing to his eyes; then he held up those same two fingers and pointed out to the right of the shack.

  At least two of the soldiers had followed our trail. I felt my breath quicken. My radar was screaming at me that Dutch mustn’t fire his weapon, as it would alert all the others hunting for us and they’d corner us in the shack and kill us; I was sure of it. Dutch pointed to my hand and made his fingers into a gun. I shook my head. I’d left my pistol somewhere back in Vasilii’s garden. I showed him my stun gun and he frowned.

  He then reached into his holster and took out Des Vries’s Beretta, holding it out to me. I shook my head again vigorously, and pointed to my temple. “No shoot!” I mouthed, then cupped my ear and made a motion with my hand to indicate the others would hear.

  Dutch looked at me grimly, then removed the strap of the assault weapon and laid it softly on the floor. He inched his way over to me and thrust the gun in my hand. Leaning in to whisper in my ear, he said, “I’ll take care of it. You stay here.”

  I shook my head again—I didn’t want him to leave me—but he had already turned away to retrieve the assault weapon and move to the open window on the other side of the shack. Carefully, he crept out of it and left me alone.

  I took deep breaths while I huddled in the shadows, holding the gun close and waiting in the dark for something to happen. The steady drone of the rain outside prevented me from hearing the soldiers’ approach, but it wasn’t long before I saw the beam of a flashlight wave across the door to the shack. I was out of the glare of the light, but that didn’t keep me from trying to push back deeper into the shadows.

  Again my heart thundered in my chest and I tried to steady the Beretta in my hands, but the weapon was much heavier than I was used to and my hands were slick with moisture. I figured I’d have one shot in the darkened shack, and then, even if I missed, I’d have to get up and bolt out the same window Dutch had gone through.

  I wondered where he was, and what was keeping him, and the beam kept getting closer and closer to the door. Someone was coming right for me.

  In the next instant, the beam went out and its absence stunned me. What’d happened? Had Dutch attacked him? Did he move off in another direction? Had he dropped the flashlight?

  I was shaking with fear, waiting tensely for something to happen, so when it did, I was caught off guard. A dark figure appeared in the doorway, moving stealthily in. The breath caught in my throat and I raised the gun unsteadily. I wanted to pull that trigger, I swear, but something made me pause, and in the second that I hesitated, the lone figure was tackled to the ground by someone else.

  It was too dark to see who had tackled whom, but I had to assume Dutch had attacked one of the soldiers and they were now each involved in the fight of their lives. I trained the gun on them as they rolled around, trying through the din to pick out Dutch from the other man, but it was impossible.

  And then I saw one of them gain the advantage and straddle the other. A hand rose up and I could see the outline of a knife in the tiny trickle of light from outside. With a hard thrust I saw the knife come down, and I cried out. I was positive Dutch hadn’t been wearing a knife.

  The man on the floor gave a grunt of pain and lay still, and I was so horrified by the scene that I simply crouched there, my eyes welling with tears.

  The man who’d won pushed away from the figure on the ground, wiped his blade clean, and stuck it into his belt before turning to face me. I didn’t kno
w how he knew I was there, but it seemed his eyes were better than mine, and maybe he’d heard my cry.

  I pointed my gun at him again, but my vision was blurred by the tears. “Dutch?” I whispered hoarsely, knowing it wasn’t him.

  “No,” he said, and there was something about that voice. . . .

  “Abigail, it’s me,” he said right before a shadow burst through the doorway and tackled him to the ground!

  Alarmed, I jumped to my feet and ran over to the two figures wrestling there. “Stop!” I cried, seeing who the new assailant was. “Stop it! Dutch, please stop!”

  Somehow I got the two of them apart, but not before Dutch split open Maks’s lip.

  For his part Maks kicked Dutch and swore at him in Russian. Dutch spat back a similar expletive and they nearly went at it again, but I forced myself between the two and insisted they calm down. When I was sure they weren’t going to pummel each other, I turned to Maks and demanded, “What are you doing here?”

  “I followed your map,” he said, wiping his lip with his hand while glaring hard at my fiancé.

  I remembered then how I’d found the map with my note to Dutch in Maks’s pocket after he’d killed Mandy. “Why did you kill Mandy?” I demanded next.

  Maks looked at me incredulously. “I didn’t kill her,” he said frankly. “Rick did.”

  It was Dutch’s turn to look surprised. “I didn’t kill her!”

  “Liar!” Maks barked. “I went to your room and found her there, hanging from the door.”

  “Listen,” Dutch said, leaning in to get in his face. “I didn’t kill Mandy. The last time I saw her alive was last night right after dinner, when I left her alive in the room to find another place to sleep.”

  “You stayed in another room?” I asked, quite puzzled by the order of the events leading up to Mandy’s death.

  “Yeah.”

  “But she gave you the message to meet me in the garden this morning at six thirty, right?”

  “What message?” he asked, and now I knew why he hadn’t shown up.

  I ignored his question and turned back to Maks. “If you didn’t kill her, how did you get the map?”

  Maks folded his arms across his chest defensively. “I thought you ladies were acting very suspicious, and then you called Rick ‘Dutch,’ and I knew something wasn’t right, so I went to her room to demand she tell me what was going on, and I found her hanging there with the map still clutched in her hand. I took it and left the room, locking it behind me so that no one would discover her body until I had a chance to tell Vasilii about it. That was what I was trying to tell you when I got hit with the dart. I wanted to convince you that you were trying to protect a killer.”

  “He’s not a killer,” I said. “He’s my fiancé.”

  Maks’s eyes were large with surprise. “You and Rick are engaged?”

  “No,” I told him, handing Dutch the gun lest my next bit of news require him to use it to control Grinkov. “And this isn’t Rick Des Vries, Maks.”

  Maks’s gaze went back and forth between us, and I knew he was struggling to understand. “Meet Assistant Special Agent in Charge Dutch Rivers of the United States FBI,” I said, watching his reaction closely.

  Maks surprised me when he stepped back and visibly relaxed. “Oh, thank God,” he said. “I was worried the disk would fall into the wrong hands tonight.”

  It was our turn to look surprised. “Wait, what?”

  Maks smiled. “You’re not the only ones playing for the good guys,” he said. “I was recruited by the CSIS ten years ago to run countersurveillance on organized crime here in Canada.”

  “You’re a spy?” I gasped.

  Maks actually laughed. “Yes, Abigail, or is your name perhaps something more exotic?”

  I shook my head. “No. It’s Abigail. Although everyone calls me Abby.”

  Maks smiled. Reaching out to take my hand, he lifted it to his lips and kissed it. “Well then, thank you, Abby, for saving my life earlier. That would have been a most excruciating death had you not given me the antidote in time.”

  Dutch snaked a protective arm around my middle, pulling me out of Maks’s grip, and held me close while he pushed the tip of the gun into Maks’s chest. “As interested in this little tea party as I am, Grinkov, I think we need to get the hell out of here.”

  Maks sneered at Dutch. It was clear these two weren’t going to get together for hockey night if we ever made it out of here. “I’ve sent Eddington on ahead to the plane,” he said. “He’s gone to alert my pilot. We should make our way to the airstrip.”

  I tried to orient our position in relation to the airstrip. It had to be at least three miles through thick forest. In my current getup I’d never make it. I looked down at my feet, cursing my choice of foot attire for the hundredth time, and Dutch seemed to notice my predicament.

  “Wait here,” he said, handing me the gun and glaring meaningfully at Maks as if to say, “She knows how to use that,” before leaving the shack.

  He was back just a minute or two later with a pair of boots and a fatigue jacket. “Where’d you get that?” I asked.

  Dutch stepped over the dead soldier on the floor. “The other guy was small,” he said, handing me the jacket and boots.

  I made a face but quickly donned the jacket and peeled my swollen and blistered feet out of the pumps, shoving them into the boots. They were several sizes too big, but I’d make them work.

  We then made sure no other soldiers were nearby and left the shack. Dutch had his map and the compass, and he used his penlight to help navigate us through the woods. While we trudged through the thick forest, something kept niggling at the edge of my thoughts.

  “Maks?” I said finally when I couldn’t keep the bothersome thought to myself anymore.

  “Yes?”

  “Why did you attack me in the parking garage and steal my wallet?”

  In front of me, Maks came to a halt. I stopped too and he turned to look at me. “I didn’t,” he said simply.

  Dutch had come up short too. “What’re you talking about?” he asked me.

  “I found my wallet and my stun gun in the pocket of Grinkov’s luggage,” I said. “That’s how I knew it’d been him who attacked me in the garage.”

  “No,” Maks said, an odd look in his eyes. “As I told you the day you were attacked, we found you already unconscious. I did not strike you or take your personal items.”

  “But I found them in your luggage,” I insisted. I was totally confused, so I focused on his energy, and sure enough I could see he was being somewhat truthful, but there was that small hint of bluff in his answer, which caused me not to completely trust him.

  I looked to Dutch to gauge his reaction. He had his poker face up, but I could tell he was alarmed and the air had suddenly filled with tension. “Did you know that Abby was nearly strangled to death in Des Vries’s offices?” he asked Maks.

  Maks’s expression turned from veiled to angry. “When?”

  “The day you met with Dutch and Boklovich and insisted that I not come along,” I said.

  “Which left her vulnerable and alone at Des Vries’s office,” Dutch said, his eyes narrowing while he looked at Maks with renewed scrutiny.

  Grinkov’s posture stiffened. “I’ve been doing nothing but trying to keep her safe, Agent Rivers. Why would I wish her dead?”

  “Good question,” Dutch said, the muzzle of the gun back up and trained right at Maks. “And one I’d like answered when we land back in Toronto. For now, how about you walk right in front of me, huh, Maks?”

  Something unreadable passed between the two men. Finally, however, Maks moved up closer to Dutch, but not before volunteering his knife, and that one gesture really bothered me. I mean, why would a guy that meant to do me harm give up a weapon I was sure Dutch didn’t know he had in the first place?

  Something else that bothered me was that the thief who’d stolen the drone and Intuit had clearly been at the party—the darts were evidence
of that—but I still had no idea who it’d been and I felt like after all of that, we’d partly failed in our mission.

  We walked on in silence for the duration of our march, and by the time we emerged from the forest at the far end of the landing strip, my legs were covered in scratches and my feet were stinging fiercely from walking sockless in boots that were way too big for me.

  Still, I had on the jacket and the boots were better than the pumps, so I figured we had only one more big obstacle to overcome—getting to the plane and off the ground without incident—and we’d be home free.

  As long as Dutch kept that gun trained on Maks, I knew he’d be forced to take us somewhere safe, like Victoria or Vancouver.

  And I could have wept with relief when I spotted Maks’s plane amid a short row of other small jets, but just as quickly my heart sank when I took in the military vehicle parked in the middle of the runway. The three of us crept close to the edge of the field to take a better look, and saw three men positioned at the top of the jeep manning a very big gun pointed right at the planes.

  The message was clear—no one was getting off the ground without a fight.

  And that presented Dutch and me with another terrible dilemma: He wouldn’t be able to take on all three soldiers and their guns by himself, and I certainly wasn’t in much of a position to help him. I mean, I now knew how to handle a gun, but I wasn’t the best at killing people, as my time in the shack when the soldier had entered had already proved.

  We needed Maks’s help, and to get it, we’d have to trust him. Dutch sighed heavily and turned to me. “Your call, Edgar.”

  I knew exactly what he was thinking. I checked my radar and it suggested we’d face some sort of danger once we gained the plane. There was treachery in the ether, I was sure of it. The only other option was to turn tail and make our way back through the wilderness to the other airstrip, where we could alert the CIA that we’d been compromised, but that was nearly all the way on the other side of the island, and it was getting dark out and still raining a little.