by Tom Clancy
Fisher checked his watch. Four hours.
With Qaderi on the move, Fisher didn’t expect to be in Odessa long enough to warrant checking into a hotel, but with four hours to kill, and running on a sleep deficit, he also knew he needed to take advantage of the downtime. After a frustrating iPhone search, he finally located a nearby parking garage. He drove there, took the ticket from the automated kiosk, and found a dark, empty corner of the garage. He switched his iPhone to vibrate, then set the alarm, tucked it under his thigh, and went to sleep.
SOME time later the iPhone buzzed against his leg, and it took him a few moments to realize it was not the alarm but an incoming text-message notification. He checked the screen. It was from Grim:Team plane arriving early—2140 hours.
Fisher checked his watch. Twenty minutes early, he thought.
HE was back at the parking lot outside the LUKOIL warehouse twenty minutes later. Two police cars were sitting in the parking lot, both with the lights flashing. As Fisher drove past, he glanced out his side window and saw four cops standing over a pair of men who lay spread-eagled on their bellies. Two blocks south Fisher turned right, found an empty spot near the curb, and pulled over and doused his headlights. The minutes ticked by, and the cop cars remained in the parking lot. Finally, at 9:20, the two suspects were hauled to their feet, stuffed into the backseat of one of the cars, and driven off. Fisher waited five more minutes, then returned to the lot. He grabbed the SC pistol and his lock-pick set from the Pelican case, got out, and trotted across the street to the alley. The only lights came from the main road, and after twenty feet of walking, these were blotted out by the bushes. Another twenty yards brought him within sight of the warehouse; it, too, was dark, save for a single security light over the rear neon blue door. Fisher stopped and crouched down to watch at the corner of a neighboring building.
Behind him he heard the soft squeal of car brakes. He glanced over his shoulder to see a police car slowing to a halt. Fisher took two quick steps, crabbing around the corner and missing the car’s spotlight by a half second. He pressed himself against the wall. Had he been seen? Ten seconds of silence passed. Then he heard the mechanical chunk of the car’s transmission being engaged. Moments later tires crunched on gravel. Fisher looked around. Down the wall to his left was a stoop leading to a door. Ahead and to his left, the door to the LUKOIL warehouse. Between them, an eight-foot brick wall. Fisher sprinted to it, jumped up, caught the edge with his fingertips, and chinned himself up. He then hooked his right foot and, using his arms for leverage, did a one-leg press until he was standing upright. The ledge was narrow, no more than six inches. Arms extended for balance, he tiptoed to the roofline and hopped up, then lay flat and went still.
Preceded by its headlights, the police car appeared in the alley. It stopped. The horn honked twice, then twice more. After ten seconds the door to the LUKOIL warehouse opened and Ivanov emerged. He waved to the police car, then walked over and leaned his elbows on the driver’s door and started talking to the occupants. Fisher could hear nothing of the conversation, but Ivanov’s body language was relaxed. A friendly check-in by the local police. They chatted for another five minutes, then Ivanov stepped back and gave the car’s roof a friendly pat as it backed down the alley out of sight. Ivanov walked back to the warehouse, opened the door with a key from a ring on his belt, and disappeared inside.
He checked his watch: 9:35. Hansen’s plane would be touching down in five minutes. They would have no bags and a rental car already arranged. How far from the airport to here? Fisher cursed himself for not checking. It couldn’t be more than twenty minutes, he decided, which put their arrival at roughly 10:20.
Fisher hopped back onto the wall, then to the ground, and trotted to the warehouse door. He was about to get out his pick set when he decided to try another approach. He pressed his ear to the door. He heard nothing. Using his fingernail, he scratched at the steel. Waited. Scratched again, this time more loudly.
On the other side of the door he heard a voice grumble something, a curse, then feet clicking on concrete. Fisher stepped left, against the hinge-side wall, and pulled the SC from his waistband. The door opened; Fisher lifted his palm, rested it against the steel. When he saw the crown of Ivanov’s head appear, he gave the door a shove and got a satisfying grunt in return. As Ivanov stumbled backward, Fisher came around the door and gave him a light heel kick to the chest, sending him sprawling. With a thump, Ivanov landed on his butt and stared up at Fisher. Even from ten feet Fisher could smell the alcohol on Ivanov’s breath.
“Hi, Adrik,” Fisher said pleasantly. He raised the SC level with Ivanov’s chest.
Ivanov blinked several times as though waking from a deep sleep, then muttered, “Sam?”
“Yes.”
“Is that you?”
“Yes.” Fisher backed up, snagged the doorknob with his left hand, and swung the door shut. He looked around. The warehouse was divided down the right side by twenty-foot-tall rack shelves filled with boxes and crates. On the left, a glassed-in office occupied the far third of the wall. Closest to Fisher, fifty-five-gallon drums labeled in both Cyrillic and English—cleaning solution, floor stripper, sweeping compound—sat stacked three high.
“Why did you kick me?” Ivanov asked.
“Just my way of saying hello.”
“You’re not still mad, are you, about that thing in Minsk?”
“No, not mad. It just put our relationship in a different light.”
“I’m sorry about that. I am. I had these guys after me—”
“I know. You can make it up to me, though.”
“Stop pointing that gun at me.”
“Are you going to behave?”
“Yes, of course.”
Fisher lowered the gun but didn’t put it away. He extended his left hand to Ivanov and helped him up. “What do you want?” the Russian said.
“You’re going to get some visitors in a little bit. I need you to do a little acting.”
“What kind of visitors?”
“The kind that hurt bad actors.”
“Ah, Sam, don’t—”
“Just play it like I tell you and nothing will happen to you.”
“Can’t I do something else? I have a sister in Karkiv—”
“Shut up, Adrik, and listen. . . .” When Fisher finished explaining what he wanted, he had Ivanov repeat it several times until he was satisfied. “One last thing,” Fisher said. “Friends or not, if you burn me I’ll shoot you dead. Do you believe me?”
“I believe you.”
30
WHILE Ivanov sat in his office and sulked, Fisher found his perch, the second tier of the central rack shelf. He climbed up and rearranged boxes and crates until he had a blind from which he could see the whole warehouse. Aside from a blind spot to the right of the office, and one around the main door, he had clear fields of fire.
He settled down to wait.
NOT bad, the logical part of Fisher’s brain thought twenty minutes later as the warehouse door swung open silently and Ben Hansen stepped through and to the right, SC pistol extended. They’d picked the lock without a sound. Right behind Hansen appeared Gillespie, then Valentina, Noboru, and finally Ames. On flat feet, Ames and Valentina rushed the office and swarmed Ivanov, who was on the floor with a gun to his head before he had a chance to open his mouth. Using hand signals, Hansen ordered Gillespie and the other three to search the warehouse. Once done, they gestured back, all clear, and Hansen called, “Clear. Okay, bring him out.”
Ames frog-marched Ivanov from the office and gave him a too-rough shove, sending him, belly first, to the concrete before Hansen. Ivanov tried to raise himself to the push-up position, but Ames stepped forward and rammed his heel into Ivanov’s butt, shoving him down again. Gillespie and Noboru each shot Ames an irritated glance.
“Enough, Ames,” Hansen ordered. “Leave him be.” Ames offered a smarmy grin. “Just trying to soften him up a bit, boss.”
Hansen ignored
the sarcasm. He knelt before Ivanov and helped him to his knees. “Are you Adrik Ivanov?”
“Yes, I’m Ivanov. Who are you? What do you want?”
“We’re looking for a man,” Hansen said. “An old friend of yours named Sam.”
“I don’t know any Sam.”
“Yes, you do. He’s been here.”
“No one’s been here. I work alone. I came on at six o’clock and haven’t seen anyone since—”
Hansen cut him off: “You owe some people money.” “Hey, no! I paid them two months ago.”
“Maybe so, but the people we’re talking about don’t keep paper records. They prefer computers. Computers can be hacked, records changed. Are you understanding me?”
“No. What are you saying? Computers . . . what computers?”
“Tell us what we want to know or we’re going to make it so you owe a lot of people a lot of money.”
“You can’t do that.”
“We can. And we will. You got a visit tonight from an old friend,” Hansen repeated. “Tell us what he wanted.”
Fisher knew Hansen was bluffing; he knew nothing. Still, the authority in his voice left little room for doubt.
Ivanov shrugged and spread his arms in bewilderment.
Hansen pointed at Valentina and said, “Make the call. Let’s start him out at three hundred thousand rubles. What is that, about ten thousand dollars?” He looked at his companions for confirmation.
Noboru nodded and said, “Yeah, ten thousand, more or less.”
Valentina got out her cell phone and started punching numbers.
Ivanov cried, “Yes, okay, fine. He was here.” “When?” Hansen asked.
“About an hour ago.”
“What did he want?”
“He was hurt. Something wrong with his ribs. He said he needed someplace to sleep. . . .” Ivanov’s voice trailed off. He sighed with just the right amount of solemnity.
Attaboy, Fisher thought.
“Go on,” Hansen said.
“I gave him the keys to my apartment.”
Hansen spent the next five minutes firing questions at Ivanov—was Fisher armed, did he have a car, was he alone?—until seemingly satisfied that he’d wrung the Russian dry of information.
“You can forget about this visit,” Hansen told him.
“Believe me, I will. What about—”
“If you cross us, I’ll make the call. You’ll have every Russian mobster in Odessa looking for you. Understand?”
“I understand.”
Hansen nodded to the others, and they began heading toward the door. Hansen went last, taking a moment to help Ivanov to his feet. “Stay off the phone, too.”
“Yes . . . yes . . .”
Hansen headed for the door.
Come on, Adrik.
“Hey, you’re Hansen, aren’t you?”
Hansen turned back. At the door, the others did as well.
“What?” Hansen said with some edge in his voice. “What did you say?”
“He told me to give you a message.”
“What?”
Ivanov glanced toward the others. “In private.”
Ames barked, “That’s crap! What the hell is this? Hansen—”
“Quiet.” Then to Ivanov: “Tell me.”
Ivanov shook his head. “He told me, only you. Listen, I’ve known Sam a long time, and, to be honest, he scares me a lot more than you scare me.”
Ames chuckled. “Well, dummy, in about fifteen minutes good old Sam is going to be dead or tied up in our trunk. If you got an ounce of brains, you’ll—”
Hansen interrupted. “Everyone outside.” Ames started to protest, but Hansen shot him a glance. Fisher couldn’t see his face, but clearly it worked. Ames snapped his mouth shut and filed out with the others. The door banged shut.
“What’s the message?” Hansen asked.
From the rack, Fisher fired once, sticking a dart in the side of Ivanov’s neck. Even as he fell, Fisher adjusted his aim to Hansen. To his credit, Hansen exercised the better part of valor, discreetly raising his hands above his head.
Without looking around Hansen said evenly, “Hey, Fisher.”
“HI, Ben,” Fisher replied.
“I guess this is what you’d call a rookie mistake.”
“Mistakes are mistakes. They happen. How you handle them is what counts.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. What are we doing? What’s this about?”
“Carefully, pull out your SC and lay it on the floor.”
Hansen did so and was about to slide it away with his foot when Fisher stopped him. “Too noisy, Ben. Nice try, though. Interlace your fingers and place them on your head. Take ten steps forward.”
Hansen didn’t move.
“I won’t ask again. I’ll just dart you and this will turn ugly before it’s started.” Hansen paced forward the ordered number of steps. “Now turn and face the office.” Hansen complied. “On your knees, ankles crossed.”
Once Hansen was in position, Fisher climbed down the rack ladder and came up behind Hansen, stopping ten feet away. Hansen turned his head and said over his shoulder, “You’ve been a pain in my ass, you know.”
“Sorry about that. It was necessary.”
“Is that what you want to talk about? That there are extenuating circumstances? That you didn’t really kill Lambert?”
“No, I killed Lambert. He asked me to.”
“Bull. You’ve been jerking us around for weeks—you, Grimsdóttir, and Moreau—but as far as I’m concerned, you’re a run-of-the-mill murderer.”
“You sound angry, Ben.”
“Damn right I’m angry. You’ve run us ragged. Five of us, and we never even came close.”
“You came close. More times than you know. You almost had me in Hammerstein.”
“No, I didn’t. You pushed me into a split-second, no-win scenario, and you knew I’d hesitate.” He chuckled. “You know what gets me? I don’t even know how you . . .” Hansen turned his head back forward and his voice trailed off.
Even as Fisher was doing it, taking that natural step forward to catch the tail end of Hansen’s words, alarms went off in his head. Mistake. Hansen had started the conversation, built some animosity, then injected some amiability and piqued Fisher’s curiosity with the trailing sentence.
A well-laid trap, Fisher thought, as Hansen levered himself upright and spun on his heel, instantly cutting the distance between them by seven feet. Fisher brought the SC pistol up, but the motion of Hansen’s lead arm, coming toward him in a flat, backhanded arc, told Fisher it was too late. The shot would go wide. The knife Hansen surely had concealed in his fist, its blade tucked against his inner forearm, was a half second from his throat. Fisher resisted the impulse to backpedal or duck. It would be what Hansen expected, and Fisher couldn’t afford to find himself in a protracted, noisy wrestling match with the young Splinter Cell. It was a fight he couldn’t win, especially when the rest of the team rushed back in to investigate the commotion.
Instead, Fisher took a quick sliding step forward, his right hand coming up to block Hansen’s knife arm, while his left hand, formed into a fist with his thumb extended, shot forward and plunged into the nerve bundle in Hansen’s armpit. Hansen’s eyes went wide with pain. His momentum faltered. Fisher clamped down on Hansen’s knife wrist, then spun on his heel, around Hansen’s back, using the momentum to pull Hansen around and off balance. He slid his left hand down, joined it with his right on Hansen’s wrist, then pulled it toward him, torquing the wrist joint at the same time. Fisher could feel the bones and ligaments beneath Hansen’s skin twisting, stretching. . . . Hansen gasped in pain. The knife clattered to the floor. Fisher kept moving, however, using his own momentum to keep Hansen stumbling forward until he spun once more, this time changing direction, swinging Hansen’s arm back over his head, while side kicking his feet out from under him. He landed with a thud, back flat on the concrete. Fisher dropped his weight, jamming his knee into Hansen’s
solar plexus. All the air exploded from Hansen’s mouth. His face went red as he tried to suck air.
Fisher reached behind him and grabbed Hansen’s knife. Even before seeing it, he knew the feel of its haft, its balance. . . . It was Fisher’s own Fairbairn Sykes World War II-era commando dagger. A gift from an old family friend, the FS had for years been Fisher’s lucky charm. After Lambert, he’d been forced to leave it behind.
Now Fisher laid the FS’s blade across Hansen’s throat. “This is my knife, Ben. Why do you have my knife?”
Hansen was still gasping for air. Fisher waited until finally Hansen wheezed out, “Grimsdóttir.”
“Grim gave you this?”
“Thought it . . . thought it would bring . . . luck.” Fisher smiled at this. “How’s it working for you so far?”
Hansen took a deep breath. “Keep it.”
“I’m going to get off you. Lie there. Don’t move.
Once you’ve got your breath back, I want you to do me a favor. After that, we call ‘time in.’ Deal?”
Hansen nodded.
“Your word on it,” Fisher pushed.
Hansen nodded again. It took another thirty seconds before he fully recovered. “Jesus, what the hell did you do to me?”
“I’ll take that as a rhetorical question. Are you ready to hear the favor?”
“Yeah.”
“Call Grimsdóttir. Ask her about Karlheinz van der Putten.”
“The guy that gave us the Vianden tip? Ames’s contact?”
“That’s him. Make the call.”
Hansen fished his cell phone from his pocket and hit speed dial. A few moments later he said, “It’s Hansen. Yeah, I’m with him. . . . I’m supposed to ask you about van der Putten.” Hansen was silent for a full minute as Grim spoke. Finally he said, “This is on the level? No more games? Okay, got it. I’ll hear him out.” Hansen disconnected and looked at Fisher. “She’s says you’re going to answer all my questions.”
“As best I can.”