As if to pile-drive that infuriating thought home, I heard Mirminsky’s name in my ear.
“Say again about Mirminsky?” I hissed into my mike.
A voice crackled in my ear. “This is Grell. We’re still at the club, but the bastard’s given us the slip. There must be another way out of here, one we weren’t covering.”
“Great. That’s just great,” I fumed. Aparo and I would ream him out later. In private. And at great length.
“This isn’t happening,” Aparo said.
“The heavies must have called it in and told Mirminsky that they’re standing around with their thumbs up their butts and whoever it is they’re waiting for is a no-show,” I told him. “The Sledgehammer realizes he’s burnt and decides to duck out until he can figure things out and regroup.”
“Well we know how rattled Sister Sledge was by the guy who set up the meet. The last thing he’d want is for us to lean on him to get him to reveal who his mystery caller was. He’d be signing his own death warrant whether he told us anything or not.”
Aparo was right. I was more alarmed that the real meet was probably taking place right then and we’d missed it. The only option left for us at the moment was to grab the four guys in the big Escalade for illegal possession of automatic weapons and see if we could squeeze anything out of any of them.
“No one’s coming,” I said into my mike. “Let’s take these clowns and wrap it up.”
Infantino gave the command and we all moved in.
I glimpsed Kubert and Kanigher up ahead, snaking around the containers, big bold letters on their backs, weapons drawn.
I moved out from behind the small office hut in a low crouch and went up their other flank, looking for a better angle on the Russian. Aparo was right behind me.
Kubert was closest to the SUV, about thirty yards away.
He huddled behind a container. He looked back and checked to see that we were all in position. I saw Kanigher nod to him, then I gave him the go signal too.
He leaned out from his cover, holding out his creds. “FBI!” he hollered. “Drop your weapons and put your hands on your head now.”
The two heavies by the car went rigid and took a step back, looking left and right as they scanned their perimeter, pulling their weapons in tighter.
“Drop the guns now!” Kubert yelled out.
The bratki inched back some more, then they seemed to relax and their arms spread out, away from their bodies, with the guns no longer aimed threateningly.
And then Kubert made his mistake.
He leaned out a bit more, exposing more of himself, thinking they were giving themselves up. And that was when a burst of bullets shot out from the Escalade and punched right into him.
***
ABOUT THREE MILES SOUTHWEST of Reilly’s position, in the old docks across the parkway from Owl’s Head Park, Daphne reached Jonny. He was standing by the van with his gun in his hand. She collapsed into his arms.
“Come on, Mrs. Soko, let’s get you inside,” he said as he shepherded her toward the passenger door.
She hung on to him and started to weep. She had forced herself over to him, but now that she was safe, all the bottled-up pain, exhaustion, and fear just flooded out of her. Jonny had to take her entire weight while trying to keep his gun firmly in his grip.
“It’s okay,” he told her. “It’s gonna be okay.”
And as he guided her toward the van’s open door, his eyes caught sight of the ear protectors on the bench, and he smiled.
***
SOKOLOV TWISTED HIS HEAD to see Daphne join Jonny.
He was almost at the SUV. Its headlights were stronger up close, assaulting his eyes as they lit up the silhouettes of the man in the baseball cap and his henchmen from behind.
He’d already slipped the second earplug into his hand, and as surreptitiously as he could, he slipped it into his other ear and jammed it in tight. It wouldn’t provide him full protection, of course. He knew that. But it would dampen the effect a little, giving him a bit of an advantage over those who had no protection.
He kept moving, slowly, waiting for it. Waiting for Jonny to hit the button. Waiting for the tables to be turned. But before he’d even reached the Escalade, the bearded man took two lighting-fast strides up to him and wrenched the gun out of his hand while landing a savage punch across his cheek.
Sokolov faltered, his knees buckling from the force of the blow. Before he could fall, his adversary grabbed hold of his jacket and shoved him toward the open car door.
Through unfocused, concussed eyes, Sokolov glimpsed the man tuck Yakovlev’s handgun into the back of his belt before raising his free hand to give his henchmen a signal.
In response, the shaved-headed bratok next to him reached into the vehicle and pulled out a fearsome-looking machine gun. And it wasn’t an ordinary machine gun. It had a big cylinder under its barrel, like a fat black flashlight—which Sokolov knew to be a grenade launcher.
Sokolov let out a silent scream as he saw the man aim it at Jonny and Daphne and pull the trigger.
32
Kubert had immediately gone down with what looked like a chunk missing from his left calf. Then gunfire erupted from all around as the other Russians and the SWAT team let loose.
I saw one of the two heavies who’d been standing there get mowed down almost instantly. The other one was firing as he scurried backward to get into the SUV, and red muzzle flashes were also flaring out from the two guys inside. I leaned out and laid down some covering fire while Kanigher darted out into the open to help his fallen partner. He managed to get to him and dragged him to safety as bullets punched the metal container beside him.
We rushed in closer, taking shots at anything that moved. I saw the Escalade’s headlight blink and heard its engine roar to life.
Time to go.
The big SUV lurched backward in a rightward arc as the shooter who was still on the outside was trying to climb inside the now-moving vehicle. He was firing from his hip with one hand and hanging on to something inside the car with the other as he backed up alongside the Escalade, but before he could pull himself in, a round from one of the SWAT snipers found a path into his upper chest, incapacitating him. His body fell half out of the vehicle, one arm still entangled in what had to be the seat belt.
The SUV kept hurtling back toward the far end of the yard, dragging the bratok along the ground until the driver executed a wild 180-degree turn that jettisoned the poor bastard’s body from the vehicle entirely and sent it rolling along the ground. I saw it recede from view, then saw its brake lights flare up as the Russians encountered fire from the SWAT guys who’d been covering that side of the perimeter. White lights took their place as the SUV screamed backward, pulled another 180, and then barreled straight back toward me.
The guy riding shotgun had his window down and was indiscriminately sweeping arcs of automatic fire in the direction of the office hut and the gate—my direction. As I ducked for cover, I glimpsed what must have been a sniper’s round punch through the windshield and take out the passenger, but from what I could see, the sniper had no angle on the driver, nor did anyone else.
We needed to grab one of these dirtbags alive. And so far, three of them were toast.
Which is why I stepped right into the path of the SUV.
***
JONNY’S EYES HADN’T LEFT the bearded Russian for a second. And as he saw him make his move on Sokolov, he muttered one solitary word into the tiny, LED-free Bluetooth headset that was squatting under his mop of hair.
“Go.”
An instant later, he saw the shaved-headed man pull out a weapon and take aim—then a shot ripped through the night and the man’s head just exploded like it had no skull in it, like it was nothing more than a blood-and-brain-matter-filled balloon that had just been pricked, just as some kind of round blew out of his weapon and exploded against a container to Jonny’s left.
Jonny pushed Daphne’s head down as debris rained around th
em. He looked out and caught a glimpse of the shooter, who had slumped to the ground as more shots echoed across the yard.
“Quickly,” he told Daphne as he hustled her into the van, “and put one of these on,” he added, pointing at the ear protectors.
***
KOSCHEY SWUNG AROUND JUST as the shooter next to him collapsed to the ground, the back half of his head missing. His eyes raked the landscape across the clearing from him as he yanked the gun out of his belt and spun Sokolov so he was in front of him, facing the van and shielding him from where the bullet had come from.
“Ukryvat’sya. Sna˘iper,” he barked at the surviving bratok. Take cover. Sniper.
More bullets rained down around him, punching holes into the Escalade’s front wing and grille before shredding one of its tires. The bratok responded with several bursts from his MP-5, pummeling the area facing them with bullets.
Sokolov screamed, “No! Daphne!”
“What, you brought an army with you, you sooka?” Koschey rasped at Sokolov in Russian. “Well, let’s just see how good they are, shall we?”
He shoved Sokolov closer to the car, then with one hand tight around Sokolov’s neck, he reached in and pulled out another MP-5 machine pistol. Then he yelled out, “My dolzhny ikh avtomobil’, speshite ikh”—We need their car, rush them—to the heavy on the other side of the crippled Escalade.
And using Sokolov as a human shield, he started to advance toward the van, firing at Daphne and Jonny while scanning the surroundings for the sniper’s likely position.
***
JONNY WAS PUSHING DAPHNE into the van when a few rounds raked the windshield, punching spiderwebbed holes through it and blowing the headrest into smithereens inches from her head.
Daphne screamed out and Jonny pulled her right back as he pivoted his head and raised his gun.
The sight sent a bolt of terror through him. The Russians were advancing across the empty lot toward them, with the one on the left, the bearded man, pushing Sokolov in front of him.
“What are you doing?” he rasped into his headset. “Take them out.”
Three shots snapped out from his right, and he saw the Russian heavy drop to the ground. But the other one was still coming, moving fast and unloading his weapon their way, shielded by Sokolov.
Jonny pushed Daphne into the van and clambered in behind her. Another round punched through the windshield as he struggled to get into the driver’s seat. In the manic frenzy of the moment, he lost sight of the ear protectors, and just then, his only thought was to get them both the hell out of there.
“Stay down,” he told her, breathless, aiming his gun out the window at the approaching Russians but not daring to fire so as not to hit Sokolov.
“What about Leo?” Daphne protested. “We can’t leave him.”
“We don’t have a choice. They’ll kill us. They’ll kill us all,” he blurted back as the engine groaned to life.
“If you can’t get the shot, pull out,” he yelled into his headset as he swung his gaze up to the top of the oil tank. He knew that his buddy Jachin, up in his vantage point, was having trouble getting a clear shot at the Russian. He also knew that if he pulled out of there, he’d be abandoning Jachin, leaving him to fend off the Russian who was still moving in, unimpeded, firing away, like a cybernetic creature from a sci-fi movie with only one directive.
He had no choice. Sokolov had been clear.
You do whatever you have to do to keep her safe.
He threw the van into reverse and hit the gas.
***
THE BIG SUV WAS screaming straight at me.
I anchored my feet, took aim, and emptied a clip into the front wheel well before throwing myself to the ground and rolling out of its way.
I must have shredded the tire because the car veered off its path and rammed the securing stanchion of one of the huge cranes. I watched as it flipped up onto two wheels before slamming into the base of a second crane. There was no fireball, just the smell of cordite and burnt rubber and that strange, intangible heaviness to the air that only death can bring.
The echoes quickly died away and everything fell silent.
I saw a couple of SWAT guys moving toward the crashed Escalade, their guns leveled at what was left of it. I stood up and brushed myself off, then set off to join them. They reached it before I did, and a moment later, one of them turned to me and said, “He’s alive.”
I nodded, then looked across the yard. Kubert was still on the ground but sitting up, one hand pulling on his belt, which Kanigher had already tightened just above his knee. Other SWAT guys were at the body of the shooter Kanigher had taken down. The guy didn’t look like he was getting up again. Neither did the mangled body of the bratki who’d been dragged a hundred yards by the big car. His limbs were sticking out of his torso like someone had given up halfway through drawing a spider.
Aparo was walking toward me shaking his head. I was going to get yet another lecture on the dangers of my impulsive nature.
Didn’t matter. My mind was elsewhere.
It was with Leo Sokolov and his wife, wondering where they were at this moment and what was happening to them.
It was also with the bastard who was pulling the strings with such ease that we had no idea who he was, what he wanted, or what his next move would be.
***
KOSCHEY PUSHED SOKOLOV HARDER as he saw the van pulling away, but he knew it was a losing gambit. He had a sniper to deal with and couldn’t waste bullets on trying to disable the van. Besides, he had what he had come for. Sokolov wasn’t going anywhere.
With the science teacher still in front of him and shielding him from the sniper, Koschey took cover behind a stack of containers and caught his breath. He was in the shade, away from any light. It would make the sniper’s job harder, unless the shooter had a night-vision scope. He pushed Sokolov to the ground, gave him a stern, warning finger wag, then threw himself down into a crawl position himself. He set down the MP-5 and pulled out his handgun. He snapped in a round, then gave himself no more than two seconds to steady his mind before rolling out into the open, the gun locked in a two-handed grip.
His eyes scanned the outline of the massive oil-storage tanks as he ran his gun sight right and left, panning across the top edge of the most likely drum, looking for the smallest tell.
He spotted it. A lumpy shape that seemed extraneous to the clean structure underneath it, rising off it.
Koschey locked his sight on it and loosed his remaining six rounds in quick succession. A fresh clip was in the Glock before the last shell casing from the previous one had hit the ground, but he didn’t need to draw from it as he saw the lump flinch up with an audible grunt, then watched as the dark silhouette rolled sideways and dropped off the edge of the drum, falling more than a hundred feet before bouncing off a metal ledge and hitting the asphalt with a dull thud.
Koschey waited a moment to make sure no other threats were in store, then he got up and pulled Sokolov to his feet. He looked around, a scowl darkening his already-tenebrous stare. The Escalade was out of action due to its burst tire, and they were in the middle of nowhere. Which made him vulnerable.
Koschey didn’t do vulnerable.
He herded Sokolov across the yard to where the sniper had fallen. He knew the man had to be dead, if not from his bullets, then from the fall. Which he was. He was lying in a crumpled heap, on his front, his head a mess of blood, hair, and green streaks. Koschey rolled him over using his foot, for a better look. The man was Asian—Korean, Koschey thought—and young, somewhere in his twenties. One side of his skull had been caved in by the fall, and his face was a mess of blood-slicked hair. His upper torso had taken at least three bullets.
He looked at Sokolov, who was staring at the young man with dread.
“Friend of yours?” Koschey asked.
Sokolov shook his head. “No. A friend of a friend.”
Koschey nodded, thinking it through for a moment. Then he rifled through the dead
sniper’s pockets and found a set of keys.
The ring included car keys. For a Toyota.
Koschey glanced around. On the ground, a couple of yards away, was the sniper’s rifle. Koschey recognized it as a Dakota T-76 Longbow. A solid weapon. He picked it up, gave it a cursory check, then turned to Sokolov.
“Davaite,” he ordered him. Let’s go.
They walked away from the sniper, heading out of the yard, the way the van had left. They found the lime-green Toyota Supra sheltering in the dark behind the farthest oil drum.
Koschey hit the key fob. The lock bleeped open.
“Time to go home, comrade Shislenko,” he told Sokolov as he gestured for him to climb in. “You’ve been sorely missed.”
33
Jonny peered into his side-view mirror as the big storage tanks faded into the night. No one was following.
Not the maniac Russian. But not Jachin, either. Which didn’t bode well.
If his buddy had made it out, he’d be somewhere behind him already. The streets were dark and deserted, and Jonny knew he’d have seen his car’s lights, even in the distance. But there were no lights, and the phone link to Jachin had also gone dead.
He wondered whether Jachin was still alive, whether or not he’d be calling Jonny at any moment to tell him he’d picked off the Russian and was bringing Sokolov back.
For the fifth time that minute, he glanced at his cell phone. It stayed dark. And deep down, something told him he wasn’t going to get that call.
He wanted to go back, to try to help him. But he couldn’t do that. Not with Daphne.
A wave of vengeful rage crashed against his heart as he kept his foot on the gas, wrangling as much pace as he could from the old van and missing his souped-up Mitsubishi. Why he’d ever agreed to use his teacher’s lousy old van, he didn’t know. He couldn’t wait to dump it once he’d dropped Daphne off. More than dump it. Feed it to a crusher, maybe, or just torch the damn thing to hell.