by Jack Carr
“James Reece,” the Russian mafia boss began, almost in disbelief. “I see my source in D.C. has been compromised.”
Even though the specter of the former SEAL had been his constant companion for months, Oliver never imagined that his killer would take the form that appeared before him.
Reece took a moment before responding, his mouth and lungs not accustomed to forming words after not having spoken in the six months since he’d left Medny Island.
“I’d say that’s a safe assumption,” he said. The words were raspy, akin to starting an old car left idle for too long.
Oliver remained silent, his eyes now focused on the evil-looking tomahawk in Reece’s hand.
The elder Russian’s gaze recognized the pelt of the great Siberian brown bear that now adorned the phantom before him.
“And you walked across Siberia to kill us?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Remarkable,” the elder man, said shaking his head. “Before you do, allow me to thank you for putting my son out of his misery. I should have done it myself years ago, but blood, you see. Difficult business.”
“You just allowed Aleksandr to play his sick games on Medny?”
“He was a very highly placed asset in Russian intelligence, and he was family. More of an arrangement of necessity. If transporting a few prisoners to Kamchatka who would have otherwise been executed in the African dirt was the price to pay for controlling a percentage of the diamond and uranium trade, and keeping a source in the Foreign Intelligence Service, then so be it. Sadly, he did have designs on my position, and I fear would have expedited my demise had you not come along.”
Reece shifted his eyes to his new target, the man who had killed his father. The man who had one piece of information Reece needed.
How could this little, balding, frightened, potbellied man have killed Thomas Reece? Don’t underestimate him.
“You have something that belongs to me,” Reece said.
The smaller man’s shaking hand moved to his wrist and removed a stainless steel watch, holding it out toward his judge, jury, and executioner.
Reece stepped forward and took possession of his father’s Rolex. He slid his thumb across its worn face before dropping it into the sheath with his bow.
“Nizar the sniper. Nizar Kattan. The Syrian. Where is he?”
Oliver sensed an opportunity. He might just live through this night if he played his cards right.
“I don’t know.”
“Then you are of no use to me,” Reece responded, raising the tomahawk.
“Wait! Wait! I didn’t say I couldn’t find him. He was part of Andrenov’s network, through General Yedid, both of whom you killed, I believe?”
“Keep talking.”
Oliver acted as though he were deep in thought.
“It will take some doing. He is a freelancer now, but I know his protocols and patterns. I can find him for you, but I can’t do that if I’m dead.”
Reece lowered the ’Hawk. The traitor before him had killed his father using a proxy, stabbing him to death on the streets of Buenos Aires. He’d betrayed his country and helped set up a chemical attack on Odessa, the assassination of the Russian president, and the attempted assassination of the president of the United States. This same traitor just might be the only link to the Syrian sniper who had put a bullet through Reece’s friend as Freddy had thwarted the assassination attempt on the U.S. president. The only reason Freddy was in the path of the assassin’s bullet was Reece. Reece was responsible. Reece needed to find Nizar and put him down. He owed that to Freddy and to Freddy’s wife and children, perhaps even to himself.
His decision made, Reece turned back to Zharkov, a cold breeze picking up and fanning the flames still smoldering in the driveway.
“And what of us then?” Reece asked the elder Russian.
“Yes, what of us?” Zharkov responded. “He killed your father. You killed my son. Very Shakespearian.”
“Only in that it is all a tragedy,” Reece acknowledged.
“By killing my son, you saved my life, Mr. Reece. Allow me to repay the favor. Allow me to offer you safe passage out of Russia.”
Reece looked at the old man quizzically.
“Come, Mr. Reece. How did you expect to get home? Walk back across Siberia and kayak across the strait?”
“The thought had crossed my mind.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“It’s been done before.”
“That it has. As sick as my son was, he had friends in Russian intelligence. Friends who would not take kindly to an American invasion of the motherland, or the killing of one of their senior intelligence officers, Bravta connected or otherwise. If they suspect you are still in Russia, they will find you.”
“So, in exchange for your life you get me out of Russia?”
“Yes. We will use the satellite phone inside to call in another helo. My network will get you to the Black Sea and from there you will board a flight to the Central African Republic. I’m afraid I can’t do much more for you from there. You will have to make contact with the Americans at their embassy in Bangui. You will be on your own at that point, but you will be alive.”
Reece took a moment to take stock of the situation and then slowly nodded.
“I want to discuss something with you privately,” Reece said to the head of Russian organized crime.
“Oliver, go to the house to get the sat phone. Mr. Reece and I have additional business.”
Happy to still be breathing, Oliver said, “Yes, Phakan,” and limped toward the main home.
Reece remained quiet, watching Oliver Grey move up the gravel walkway. Memories of his father raced through his mind: road trips in their old Wagoneer, hikes in the Northern California redwoods, canoeing the boundary waters, fishing the Taylor, and learning to live in harmony with the land out of their trapper’s cabin in Alaska. He thought of the three of them, mother, father, and son, holding hands around the dinner table, saying grace over a meal of wild game.
“What was it you wanted to discuss, Mr. Reece?” interrupted Zharkov.
* * *
Oliver was nearing the back door to the house. He would make a call on the sat phone before bringing it out to the old man, informing Zharkov’s security forces that an American was holding them hostage and that he should be shot as soon as reinforcements arrived regardless of what Zharkov was about to tell them. The old man was under duress and was being threatened with death by the crazy American.
Yes, that would work. James Reece was just as stupid as his father.
“Grey!” Oliver heard the American call out.
The former CIA man turned and looked back down the slight hill toward the man who moments before had held his life in his hands.
Reece reached into his pocket and pulled out a small oblong box and held it above his head. A wire led from the box to the ground at his feet, angling up toward the dacha.
“I changed my mind.”
Reece depressed the detonator on the last Russian Claymore, sending an electrical charge to the imbedded blasting cap, detonating 700 grams of RDX, which explosively propelled 485 short steel rods at 4,000 feet per second through what had less than a second before been Oliver Grey.
The explosion that sent Grey to the afterlife took the aging mafia boss by surprise. He recovered quickly and looked back to Reece.
“And then there were two,” Zharkov quipped. “He had just outgrown his usefulness.”
Reece chose his next words carefully: “Mr. Zharkov, I have a proposal for you.”
“I am listening.”
“Get me out of Russia. To CAR. I’ll find my way home from there. In the meantime, I want you looking into everything you can find on Nizar Kattan, the Syrian sniper who helped take out President Zubarev last year. You must still have contacts at the SVR. Use them. Get me something actionable.”
“Don’t you have the CIA?”
“Nizar was employed by a Russian through a Syri
an proxy. I think you might have better access.”
“And what do I get out of this little agreement?” asked the Russian, ever the dealmaker.
Reece looked at the tomahawk in his hand.
“In the short term, I won’t skin you alive. Longer term, you will have a back-channel connection to the CIA.”
“Are you offering to spy for me, Mr. Reece?”
“No. I am offering you a way to contact me. I’ll run any request you have up the chain but know that even that access could be extremely valuable to you and your organization.”
“And if I don’t agree?”
“Then there’s my short-term fix,” Reece said, giving the Winkler Sayoc a spin in his palm.
“You Americans are too trusting, Mr. Reece. How do you know I won’t agree and just have you killed when my detail arrives or change my mind a month from now and send hit teams to kill you wherever you are?”
“Because you are a practical man. I killed your son for you, and this alliance will help us both. If you have your men kill me, I have a friend who is even better in the woods than I am. Your son killed his sister. Put her head in a bottle of formaldehyde. He’ll finish you off and, trust me, he won’t be as kind about it as I would be. And, if you betray me later, I found you once in the middle of Siberia. Don’t think I can’t or won’t do it again. I kind of like it out here.”
The elder Zharkov weighed his options.
“I accept your offer, Mr. Reece. My son was a killer. We are hunters. I give you my word that no harm will come to you. I will guarantee your safe passage as far as Africa. From there you are on your own.”
“And, Ivan, if you fuck me, I’ll track you down and kill you in your own kitchen. Not only that, I’ll kill your sons. All of them. I will erase the Zharkov name from existence. Your legacy will be that an American wiped your bloodline from the earth.”
EPILOGUE
“Deep in the forest a call was sounding…”
Jack London, The Call of the Wild
Baltimore, Maryland
REECE WAITED ON A darkened section of street, rain pelting his rented Chevy Tahoe half a block down from the long-term storage facility in Baltimore, Maryland. The engine was on to keep the defroster working but his lights were off. The facility was ringed in barbed wire and security cameras; signs advertised a guard. He observed the entrance for an hour. No one came or went. It was open 24/7 if you had the right keys and an ID. Reece had waited until well after midnight to cut down on the number of people he might encounter. In this part of the city that didn’t necessarily make it safer, but Reece wanted to be alone.
He’d been back in the States for six weeks, debriefing at an off-site CIA annex in Northern Virginia. They needed him close by as they figured out what to do. A team of American mercenaries—well, technically not mercenaries as none of them had accepted payment—had invaded a sovereign country and killed the Russian deputy director of their Foreign Intelligence Service, who just happened to be the son of the head of one of the most powerful organized crime syndicates in Russia. One of these mercenaries had stayed behind and traveled deep into the interior, killing an American defector from the Central Intelligence Agency. Everything was being kept very low-key as the CIA and executive branch figured out how best to play it.
The Associated Press had picked up a story of the slaying of a Russian intelligence official that first appeared in the Moscow daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta and on television from the state-owned news agency Novosti. The mafia-related assassination received little mention from U.S.-based mainstream media, who were all much more concerned with the circus surrounding the upcoming presidential election.
Receiving even less attention was the admission of a red-haired male to a level 2 trauma center in Anchorage with a mysterious piece of shrapnel in his leg. Alaskans were notorious for serious injuries that came as a matter of course as a result of the inherently dangerous professions that drew people to America’s forty-ninth state. The emergency surgery that saved his life was even covered under Tri-Care.
In a not-so-random visit, the White House log indicated that the day the mercenaries departed for Russia, the director of Central Intelligence made an unscheduled 3:00 a.m. visit to the president’s residence. A meeting took place in the Situation Room, a meeting in which only two people were present. It lasted thirty minutes. The next hour, an Ohio-class special operations capable SSGN submarine was diverted from a national tasking off North Korea and positioned off the coast of Russia. Because of the sensitivities that enshroud the subsurface fleet, this move went unnoticed and unreported by military and intelligence watchdogs.
In the weeks since Reece’s return, prominent D.C. lobbyist Grant Larue had mysteriously gone missing at the same time the president’s chief of staff, Reginald Pyne, had resigned, citing personal reasons. Journalists and conspiracy theorists had yet to connect the two events.
True to his word, Ivan Zharkov had used his illicit network to deposit Reece on a dusty airstrip in the Central African Republic. The CIA chief of station in Bangui was more than a little surprised when an American who looked like a homeless mountain man appeared at the front gate. Calls were made, bona fides were confirmed, and Reece found himself on a secure video teleconference with Vic Rodriguez. To the director of Clandestine Services’ agitated and probing inquisition, Reece simply answered, “Just get me home, Vic.”
Police sirens stirred Reece from his reverie, the blue and red flashing lights screaming by on the way to yet another call. Reece turned on the lights and put his SUV in drive, approaching the front gate and waving to the guard who manned the facility from behind a horizontal sliding barrier.
The guard hit a button and the iron gate rolled out of the way, allowing Reece to inch forward.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for container 1855. I haven’t been here in years. Can you tell me where it is?”
“Name?”
“Thomas Reece.”
The guard scrolled through a database, confirming that Thomas Reece had a container in the storage facility and that he was fully paid up. Finding everything in order, he asked for Reece’s ID.
Reece pushed the ID through the open window of his vehicle, intentionally holding his finger over the first name.
The guard yawned, consulted a map, and drew a circle on it before handing it to Reece and pointing into the labyrinth. “Take your first right and then the next left. It’ll be about halfway down.”
“Thank you,” Reece said.
The lone guard nodded and went back to a night of monitoring security cameras, drinking lukewarm coffee, and eating stale donuts left over from the day shift.
Reece drove slowly past row upon row of storage units until he found himself parked outside number 1855.
When his mother had passed away, the last of his family’s belongings had been sent to Katie’s father. The Buraneks were listed as the next of kin after Reece. Because Reece was believed to be dead, three boxes had eventually been shipped from his mother’s nursing home closet to Dr. Buranek, who ultimately sent them to Katie to give to Reece.
Katie had been none too pleased when Reece turned up at the U.S. embassy in the Central African Republic six months after she had seen him off. When he had not returned, both Raife and Jonathan had paid her a visit. They had been smart enough to call ahead so Katie wouldn’t think they were arriving to give her the news that Reece was dead. She’d lived that nightmare once before.
Reece thought he would be welcomed back with open arms but found, much to his dismay, that Katie was pissed. Though the making up had been worth it, they decided that Reece should have his own place as he was debriefed at Langley and figured out his next move. Rodriguez wanted him full-time at the Agency, but Reece needed time. Time to figure out this next chapter in life; his next mission. Purpose.
Reece had waited until he was alone to unpack the boxes of memories from the nursing home. As he worked his way through old family photos and mementos fro
m happier times, he’d come across a cigar box containing some military photographs from Vietnam, his dad’s DD214, the paperwork everyone who has served in uniform since 1950 has received upon discharge from active duty, and an envelope containing a key. An address was printed on the envelope, the address of the storage facility.
Reece stood in the pouring rain outside the storage container and rubbed the key in his hand. The journey that had started with the death of his father in a back alley of Buenos Aires was finally over. The miles logged and bodies stacked since that pivotal moment had chiseled Reece into the warrior he was today. Why, as he stood in the rain looking down at the key, did he not feel a sense of closure? The man behind his father’s death and the killing of Freddy Strain was now in the ground, just fertilizer for the Siberian tundra. The traitor’s death begot life.
Looking right and left for threats, Reece carefully inspected the corners of the roll-up door with a handheld light, then checked the area around the lock before kneeling down to work the brass key into the old Master lock. It took some maneuvering to get it in and twist it, the mechanism fouled with years of grime and dust. True to form, it clicked open and Reece slid it from its post.
What secrets are you hiding? Reece wondered.
He could have used his Agency contacts to look into who was paying the monthly fees, but Reece didn’t want to alert the most powerful spy agency in the world that one of their former case officers who died under mysterious circumstances had a storage unit set up to outlive him. Reece wanted to see what was inside first.
He pocketed the lock and key and pulled up on the door. As with the lock, it took a bit of work to get it up to knee level, at which point Reece squatted down and pushed it up. Darkness.
Reece retrieved the light from his pocket. Out of habit he held it in his left hand, his right remaining free to go to the gun if need be. The light moved slowly from left to right, revealing an empty shelving unit on the left and a tarp over what appeared to be a vehicle.