“Do you think we got away without being seen?” asked Tokarev nervously.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” replied Sam. “Once they realize that we’re no longer at Pasha’s house, they’ll come looking for us.”
Tokarev translated for Pasha, who responded by glumly shaking his head.
“Look out!” yelled Cardinal, as a truck suddenly emerged out of the swirling snow like a polar bear charging straight at them.
Yuri instantly swerved the car back onto his side of the road. With a wide grin on his face, he said, “Not to worry, I saw him coming.”
“Sure you did,” muttered Cardinal.
“Yuri, this isn’t a helicopter,” said Sam, loudly. “Please, please stay on your side of the road from now on.”
“Da, little lady, I will try,” responded Yuri as he leaned forward, trying to see where the road ended and the snow-covered fields began.
In the back, Pasha said something aloud in Russian.
“What did he say?” asked Jen.
Tokarev translated. “Pasha said that his cousin lives nearby and that we should get off this road before we have an accident.”
“Amen to that,” said Jen. “Ask him for directions.”
Suddenly, from behind, the thugs’ black Lada 4x4 slammed hard into the back of their vehicle. Sam and Jen screamed as the minivan spun around in circles on the icy road like a child’s toy.
“Turn into the spin!” yelled Cardinal as Yuri struggled to gain control of the minivan.
To add to their discomfort, the bull-necked thug in the Lada chasing them rolled down his window, thrust his fully automatic Glock 17 pistol out and opened fire. The first burst went wide; however, the second one struck the rear of the minivan, shattering the rear windshield, sending a shower of glass onto the people sitting in the backseat. Jen screamed in terror.
“Get us off the road!” screamed Sam, shielding Pasha as best she could with her body.
Yuri’s eyes widened when he saw a car on the wrong side of the road race out of the snowstorm straight for them. With a prayer on his lips, he gently applied the brakes and turned the wheel hard over. For a second, it looked as if the two vehicles were going to hit head-on, when the minivan’s tires found a piece of clear road and gripped the asphalt, pulling them out of their chaotic spin.
In the blink of an eye, the two cars sped past one another with less than a millimeter to spare. The other driver cursed and shook his fist at Yuri. However, his troubles weren’t over. He barely had time to react to the black Lada coming at him. The astonished driver hit the brakes and turned the wheel hard. A second later, the car slid off the road and into the deep snow covering a farmer’s field.
Letting off another burst, the bull-necked thug swore when he saw his shots strike the road in front of the van. Pulling his frozen hand back inside, he quickly went to change magazines when he saw Yuri’s minivan unexpectedly leave the road. After calling their boss, the two thugs were now on a mission to kill Uvarov and everyone in the minivan. The word on the street was that there was a two-million-dollar payout for the first men to kill them all, and they wanted the money.
“Where are you going?” called Jen, as she held on for dear life in the back of the vehicle as it bounced up and down on the narrow frozen dirt road.
“I’m going to try and lose them in those woods,” said Yuri over his shoulder.
“What woods?” asked Cardinal, trying to see what Yuri was going on about. He was about to say something when, through the snow, he saw a dark line of fir trees about one hundred meters away.
“Can we reach them in time?” asked Sam.
Yuri glanced up at his rearview mirror and winced; the Lada was still coming after them. Worse than that, it was closing in behind them. The engine light flashed on. “I think we have a problem,” glumly said Yuri. “They may have hit the engine.”
Cardinal couldn’t believe their bad luck. He looked over his shoulder at Sam and Jen trying their best to protect the two men in their care. Cardinal knew what he had to do. Flipping the AK’s safety off, he looked over at Yuri. “When I tell you to, I want you to slow down for just a second and then drive this thing like a bat out of hell.”
“Why?” asked Yuri.
“There’s no time to explain,” replied Cardinal firmly. “Now slow down!”
Yuri put his foot on the brakes. The minivan slowed down. A second later, Cardinal flung open his door and rolled out onto the snow. He didn’t hear Sam cursing him as he rolled over on his shoulder and came up on his knees. With the AK held out in front of him, he took aim down the road.
In the Lada, the bull-necked thug was growing anxious. He had temporarily lost sight of the minivan in the snow as it blew across the open field. The man known as the Butcher was driving the car and swearing up a storm. If they lost them, both men knew there’d be hell to pay with their short-tempered boss.
“What is the hell that?” asked the Butcher as he leaned forward over the steering wheel, trying to get a better look at a dark object on the road directly in front of them.
“Jesus, it’s a man,” was as far as the bull-necked man got before the front windshield of their Lada exploded inwards. Bullets and shattered glass tore into their bodies, instantly shredding them to bloody pulps.
Cardinal kept his finger on the trigger until the entire thirty-round magazine was empty. He watched as the Lada, its windshield blown away, swerved off the road and come to a sliding halt about thirty meters away. He quickly changed magazines, got up on his feet, and cautiously approached the Lada. Its engine was still running; however, the front of the vehicle had slipped into a ditch hidden under the snow. With his weapon trained on the car, he stepped close. Cardinal looked down into the broken windshield and saw that the passenger was dead with a hole in his head. Unbelievably, the driver, although covered in blood, was still alive.
The driver lifted his head slightly and saw Cardinal standing there. Painfully, he reached down and grabbed hold of the meat cleaver that he had used to end so many of his enemies’ lives. With a loud, bloody cough, he brought the sharp blade up. With a maniacal grin on his face, he defiantly swore at Cardinal.
Cardinal pulled the trigger, firing one round into the man’s head, ending the thug’s miserable life. “Idiots,” muttered Cardinal to himself. He quickly checked the car for any other passengers, turned off the ignition, and threw the keys out into the blowing snow.
It was done.
Cardinal looked back towards the snow-covered treeline and couldn’t see Yuri’s minivan. A cold shiver ran down his spine. He may have finished off the men following them, but he knew that people like them seldom worked alone. There would be more and he wanted to make sure that he was ready for them next time.
Five minutes later, Cardinal found Sam standing in the middle of the road in the blowing snow, with a pissed-off look on her face. “Just what the hell do you think you were doing, mister?”
“It was the first thing that came to mind,” replied Cardinal, stopping in front of her.
“Well, it could have gotten you killed. Did you think about that?”
“No, I suppose I didn’t.”
“No, you didn’t. Don’t do that again!”
“I won’t,” he replied leaning forward for a kiss.
“There’s no time for that. Follow me,” said Sam curtly.
A short while later, they walked inside an old barn that thankfully still had its roof. The minivan’s engine had seized up a dozen or so meters from the barn and had to be pushed inside. Jen sat over by an iron stove that looked like it had been last used during the Russian Revolution. Using pieces of wood littering the floor, Jen soon had a roaring fire going.
“Well, at least we won’t freeze to death,” said Yuri, trying to make light of their situation.
Sam walked over to an old chest, flipped open the lid and rummaged about inside for a minute or two. When she stood up, she held a couple of candles in her hands. She lit them. Their flickering
light lit up the area around the stove.
“Not quite like home, but it’ll have to do,” remarked Jen as she dug out her cell phone. She pursed her lips and shook her head when she saw that they still had no reception.
Pasha and Tokarev sat down on a couple of old crates looking scared and tired. Pasha said to Yuri, “Tell me, does it always go this way for you and your friends?”
Yuri shrugged his shoulders. “It’s been worse.”
“I always thought the KGB would come for me,” remarked Tokarev. “I guess it beats dying of old age.”
“Gentlemen, there’s no need to talk like that,” said Yuri. “Trust me, we’ll all be home tomorrow with a story that you can one day tell your great-grandchildren.”
“Yuri, did you happen to pack any food?” called out Sam, as she dug around in the back of the minivan.
“Da, I bought some cookies and a few cans of coke at the airport,” replied Yuri.
“Got them,” said Sam triumphantly.
Cardinal walked over beside Yuri. “It’s getting dark outside. We’re going to have to ride out the storm until morning. Hopefully, the snow will lift and we can find a home around here with a phone, or it’s going to be a long, cold walk back to Saint Petersburg.”
“If we’re going to be stuck in here, I’m getting back to work,” said Tokarev. He returned with a couple of notebooks and began to read them by candlelight.
Yuri helped himself to a cookie and said to Cardinal. “We can take turns on sentry tonight?”
“It would be the wise thing to do,” replied Cardinal. “We’ll do four-hour shifts. I’ll start. You can follow me and Sam can have the last shift.”
“Da, sounds good,” replied Yuri, taking another cookie.
A couple of hours later, the storm picked up in its intensity. Powerful winds surging down from the north buffeted the aged barn, which creaked and groaned like a banshee every time a gust of wind struck it.
After draping an old woolen blanket over Pasha while he slept sitting up, Jen moved over beside Tokarev and offered him one of the last remaining cookies.
Taking it, he smiled at Jen and set the book he was reading down on his lap. “Miss March, before Pasha decided to get some sleep, he confided in me that we aren’t the first people interested in his father’s old books.”
“Somehow that’s not a surprise. Did he say who else was?”
“Yes. About a year ago, when he was hard up for cash, a man claiming to be making a documentary about the Luna 15 mission approached him. For five thousand dollars, Pasha photocopied his father’s notes and sold them to the man.”
“Does he remember the man’s name?”
Tokarev shook his head. “Unfortunately not. He feels really bad for not telling us earlier.”
“What’s done is done,” said Jen philosophically.
“Miss March, what were you told about Luna 15?”
“Not too much,” replied Jen, “only that the official history is wrong and that it drilled into the Moon’s surface and subsequently returned to Earth with a sample of rock.”
“Do you know what they found when they drilled into the rock?”
“We were told that they found platinum.”
Tokarev placed his hand on his book, looked deep into Jen’s eyes, and said, “I’m sorry, but that cannot be possible. Someone was not being truthful with you. I have gone over the findings sent back to Earth by the probe as it sped through space and it most assuredly did not find platinum.”
“Okay then, what did it find?”
“The sample contained genetic material. I’m not a medical doctor, but after reading these files, I believe that they may have accidentally found a living pathogen up there.”
“My God. No wonder your government tried to destroy it by burning it up in the atmosphere.”
“Exactly,” said Tokarev, nodding his head. “Now, my dear, why would someone want to get their hands on a pathogen that we know absolutely nothing about?”
A sinking feeling in Jen’s stomach told her that they had stumbled across something that could potentially affect every living thing on the planet. “We have to warn the authorities.”
“Let’s not be too hasty. If the weather breaks in the morning and we can get a lift back home, I know a man who works at the university who can read these findings better than I can. I could be wrong, and the last thing we need to do is cause a panic because an old man misread some data that is over forty years old.”
“Right you are,” said Jen as she patted Tokarev’s arm. “You should try and get some sleep. I have a feeling tomorrow is going to be a long day.”
Jen stood up, ran a hand through her hair, and walked over by Sam, who was reassembling her pistol after cleaning it.
“You look like someone just stole your bike,” said Sam to Jen.
Jen sat down and let out a deep sigh. “I wish it were that simple. You know that before I met Ryan my life was boring and safe; now its months of routine paperwork laced with several days of sheer terror.”
“You seem to be doing all right.”
“Yeah, I guess so. Sam, have you ever known something that you wished wasn’t true?”
“Once or twice. Why, what’s on your mind?”
“The end of the world.”
22
Hotel InterContinental Tamanaco
Caracas, Venezuela
At precisely eight o’clock, Mitchell walked into the hotel bar and took a quick glance around the dimly lit room. In the corner, a white-haired man in a tuxedo played the piano while he sang a Billy Joel song from the eighties in Spanish. The lounge wasn’t too busy. It was mainly older couples sitting together, spread throughout the room for a bit of privacy while they enjoyed their drinks.
Mitchell was dressed casually in khaki slacks with a blue polo shirt. He walked over to the bar and ordered a Scotch on the rocks. After tipping the bartender well, he asked if a young woman with short red hair and green eyes had been in the bar earlier in the day. Before the man could answer, Grace Maxwell slid onto the stool right beside Mitchell and ordered a gin and tonic.
“You’re late,” said Mitchell to Grace.
“A minute, perhaps,” replied Grace. “I wanted to make sure you weren’t followed.”
“And was I?”
“No,” answered Grace as she paid for her drink. Like Mitchell, she was dressed informally. Grace wore a loose-fitting, silver-colored shirt, with long, white pants and comfortable shoes.
“Why don’t we take a table and talk in private?” said Mitchell.
Grace nodded her head. They took a booth in the corner of the lounge.
“Any trouble getting out of the States?” asked Grace.
“None. I suspect the general was able to do the Potomac two-step shuffle for a few hours before they realized that we were gone.”
Grace looked around the bar. “Where’s your sidekick?”
“Over there,” replied Mitchell with a grin on his face as he pointed to a table near the piano player. With Jackson was an Asian woman in her late twenties. By the annoyed look on her face, she was none too happy that Jackson was sitting beside her.
“I see you found my backup,” said Grace.
“You’re not the only person to take precautions. Nate was in the lobby reading a paper. He must have spotted you and followed you and your friend inside the bar.”
“I’ll have to be more observant in the future,” replied Grace before taking a sip of her drink.
“If you don’t mind, Grace, I’d really like it if we got down to business.”
“Very well,” replied Grace as she dug out her phone from her purse. She brought up a picture of an oil rig. “This is the oil rig where McMasters was sighted two days ago. According to my source, he hasn’t left the platform.”
“How would you know? He could have left via a helicopter in the middle of the night, and your source would be none the wiser.”
Grace shook her head. “That’s not possible.”
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“How can you be so sure?”
“Because my source is on the rig, that’s why.”
“I won’t ask how you pulled off that minor miracle.”
“It was too easy. Most of the culinary staff is women. I had her pay off one of the usual women to call in sick. They’re always having issues hiring good people, so my person reported for work and took her place.”
“Where is the rig?”
“It lies a few kilometers offshore.”
“Is it guarded?”
“No more than any other oil rig in Venezuela.”
“I take you have a plan to get us on board?”
“Naturally,” replied Grace, “but I want your assurance that if we find it, I get the Luna 15 probe.”
“You have my word. It’s yours. All I want is McMasters for killing Maria.”
“Very good, then. Meet me at this address in the nearby port of La Guaria,” said Grace as she handed Mitchell a piece of paper. “My boat shoves off at midnight. Don’t be late. I won’t wait for you.”
She quickly finished off her drink, stood up and then walked out of the lounge followed a couple of seconds later by her backup.
Nate sauntered over and slid into the booth. “So what’s up?”
“It looks like we have to go shopping for some new clothes and then catch a cab,” replied Mitchell, looking down at his watch.
“What’s wrong with how I’m dressed?” said Jackson, looking down at his bright-red Hawaiian shirt.
“Nothing, if we were about to go walking through Disneyland; however, where we’re going, you’d stand out like a sore thumb.”
“And just where are we going?”
“Onto an oil rig in the Caribbean.”
“Wonderful. I’m sure this is going to turn out well,” muttered Jackson.
A darkened fishing boat rose and fell with the waves as it made its way towards the massive oil rig on the horizon. The ship’s captain was an elderly man with deep lines on his weathered face. Aside from being a legitimate fisherman, he was known from time to time to do the odd job that wasn’t strictly legal, if the money was right and the chances of being caught were low. As the stakes were high, he had been paid more than triple his usual fee.
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