“So the picture of me that was Photoshopped was actually taken while I was driving.”
“Exactly. It appears to have been taken by a cell-phone camera. It was a side profile of you, as if someone in the passenger seat shot it.”
It took several pained seconds for Tucker’s brain to register what Harper was telling him. He squeezed his eyes shut, her last words echoing in his mind.
. . . a side profile of you, as if someone in the passenger seat shot it . . .
“What was I wearing in the photo? I can’t remember.”
“Uh . . . a military winter suit.”
That was the jacket he wore when he pulled Anya out of the Kazan Kremlin. After that, they fled the city. He pictured that ride.
Bukolov and Utkin had been sitting in the back.
Anya had been up front with him—in the passenger seat.
Tucker whispered, “It’s Anya.”
He closed his eyes, despairing. She must have covertly taken the photo with her cell phone as he drove them out of Kazan, then e-mailed it away before he ditched everyone’s electronics.
He had to recalibrate his entire worldview of events—and brace a hand against the boulder to keep his legs steady.
She had lied about just getting tea in Dimitrovgrad. While loose, she must have made contact with Kharzin’s people, told them where to arrange the Spetsnaz ambush. She must have also covertly followed Tucker, noted he had used that Internet café. Kharzin’s people took advantage of that information to create the doctored photo. It was insurance, a red herring. It had been planted on the Spetsnaz people in case their ambush failed. In that worst-case scenario, Tucker was meant to find the photo, so he would believe the attackers had been tailing them or tracking them all along, so as to throw off suspicion from Anya.
But that was not the worst of it.
Utkin.
He suddenly found it hard to breathe. He felt sucker punched in the gut. He pictured the man bleeding to death on the beach, sacrificing himself to save them, the same people who had falsely accused and condemned him.
Still, you saved us.
And it had never been Utkin. Anya had set him up. The signal generator was hers. The empty pack of cards in Utkin’s bag was hers. She knew Utkin would have a set of cards. It was easy enough to plant that evidence in his duffel.
Harper’s voice blared in his ear, drawing him back to his own skin. “Tucker!”
“I’m here.” He took a deep breath. “It’s Anya. She’s the one working with Kharzin. I should have seen it.”
“There’s no way you could have.”
“Either way, we have to assume she’s been in contact with Kharzin’s people since we touched down in Africa. She was with me when I found Grietje’s Well. She knew the GPS coordinates to this spot. Which means Kharzin has them, too.”
“Then that means you’re likely to have company soon,” Harper said. “What’re you going to do?”
“We’ve found the cave, but not the specimens of LUCA.”
“That doesn’t leave you many options.”
“Just one. Get Bukolov into the cave and let him go to work. While he’s doing that, I’ll get ready for a siege and rig the cave with C-4. If we can’t hold off Felice and her team, I’ll blow it all to hell.”
There was a long silence on her end. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” she finally said. “What about Anya? What are you going to do with her?”
“In the short term, I haven’t decided yet.”
“And the long term?”
He pictured Utkin’s face. “I don’t see her having a long term.”
5:38 P.M.
Tucker knelt by his pack out of sight of the others, slicing two six-foot sections of rope.
He considered how smoothly Anya had duped him. Then again, she had done the same with her superiors at the SVR. All along she’d been a GRU mole planted there or groomed there by Kharzin. It was for that reason she’d been falsifying reports to the SVR—not to protect Bukolov, but to help Kharzin. Even her admission to Tucker that she was an SVR agent was clever: confess to a damning lie, throw yourself on your sword, and claim remorse. Then be a team player, struggling and suffering with everyone else. And then finally, when Utkin’s treachery is revealed, come to his defense with sympathy and rationalization.
My God, Tucker thought.
He stood, stuffed the rope sections into his back pockets, and picked up his AR-15 rifle. He stalked back over to the group, all still gathered at the pond’s edge.
Christopher greeted him with a wave. “I thought you were going back to the Rover to get more supplies.”
Kane trotted over, his tail high, but he must have immediately sensed the black pall around his partner. The flagging tail drooped down. His entire body stiffened up, readying for action.
Anya was too skilled not to get worried. “Tucker, what’s wrong?”
He lifted the rifle and pointed it at her. “Raise your arms above your head. If you so much as twitch a finger, I’ll shoot you.”
“What are you doing?” she replied, feigning confusion, but he noted the microexpression of fury that momentarily flashed.
“Five seconds, Anya.”
“Tucker, you’re scaring me.”
The shock that had initially struck Christopher and Bukolov wore off. They began to voice a similar chorus of confused complaints. He ignored them.
“Three seconds.”
He raised the AR to his shoulder.
Anya pushed her arms high. She looked to Bukolov and Christopher for support, fixing an expression of suffering innocence. “Tell me what is happening.”
“My people deconstructed the photo of the Internet café in Dimitrovgrad. It was you, Anya, from the very beginning. You were the traitor. Not Utkin. He was a just a boy, and you set him up to take the fall.”
The complaints from Christopher and Bukolov died away.
“Tucker, please, I don’t know what—”
“Deny it one more time, Anya. One more time and I’ll put a round in your foot.”
She stared up and must have read his seriousness. She kept her gaze fixed on him, showing no shame, but also no satisfaction. “It was not personal. I took no joy in the bloodshed. I liked Utkin. I truly did, but it was necessary. I was given a duty, and I performed it to the best of my abilities.”
Her words lacked any coldness or disdain, only a calm self-assurance.
“How long until your people get here?” he asked.
“I will not tell you.”
“How are they tracking you?”
She just stared.
“Drop to your knees, then to your belly, hands flat on the rock.”
She complied, moving with surprising grace.
“GUARD,” he ordered Kane.
As the shepherd stalked to her side, Tucker passed his weapon to Christopher. “Keep her covered.”
With her under tight watch, Tucker quickly bound her hands and ankles. He frisked her, removing anything he found, including taking her boots and socks. He examined each item, but he found no electronics or trackers.
He was fairly certain she didn’t have a phone, which meant Kharzin’s people had to have been tracking her. But how? He would have to search through her entire pack, strip the Rover down, too.
Tucker noted Bukolov had wandered a few paces away, his back to them.
Concerned, Tucker crossed to him. He didn’t need the guy falling apart. Bukolov wasn’t the most stable of personalities even on his good days.
“Doc?”
Bukolov glanced to him and away, but not before Tucker noted the tears. “He died thinking I hated him.”
Utkin.
“I was such a fool,” Bukolov said. “How can I forgive myself?”
“Because Utkin would want you to.” He placed a hand on the doctor’s shoulder. “He knew our distrust of him was based on deceit. He saved us because he wouldn’t let that lie define him. We have to honor that.”
Bukolo
v nodded, wiping his eyes. “I will try to do that.”
“Forget Anya. Forget all of it. I’m going to get you inside that cave, and you’re going to find that sample of LUCA. That’s all that matters now.”
“What about Kharzin’s team?”
“Let me worry about them. Concentrate on what you came here to do. The sooner you find LUCA, the sooner we can leave—with any luck, before the enemy arrives. Are you with me, Doc?”
Bukolov straightened, took a deep breath, and nodded firmly. “I am with you.”
Tucker glanced back to Anya, still on her belly, her arms tied behind her back, guarded over by Christopher and Kane.
It was time to turn her betrayal to his advantage.
37
March 21, 6:12 P.M.
Groot Karas Mountains, Namibia
Standing at the edge of the pond, Tucker passed a gun to Bukolov. It was a Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver. Though it only held five rounds, it was a personal favorite: for its size, accuracy, and reliability. All too often, surviving a firefight relied more on the quality of the gun than the quantity of the rounds. He’d rather have five good shots than ten poor ones any day.
“Do you know how to use a gun?” Tucker asked.
Bukolov turned the revolver over in his hands. “Finger squeezes here. Bullets come out there. I think I can manage.” He glanced down to Anya, still on her belly and bound up. “Can I shoot her?”
“Not unless she gets free and charges you. Otherwise, we’re leaving you here to guard her until we get back.”
Christopher stood off to the side. The pair of them were going to return to the Range Rover, where Anya’s pack was still stored. He intended to search both it and the SUV thoroughly. They needed to find her tracking device, and the hunt would go faster with two people.
He stared toward the sky.
They had less than an hour of daylight left.
He crossed and checked Anya’s bindings and knots one final time before leaving.
“You cannot win, Captain Wayne,” Anya said matter-of-factly, as if discussing the weather, in this case a coming storm. “General Kharzin will have many men with him. Elite Spetsnaz.”
“I believe you.”
“You may hold them off for a time, but eventually you will lose. If you surrender, it will go better for you.”
“Somehow I don’t see that ending with anything less than a bullet in my skull.” He gave the ropes around her ankle a snug pull. “Just answer one question.”
Arching her back, she glanced over her shoulder toward him.
“Knowing what you do about LUCA, why would you want Kharzin to have it?”
“It is not my place to question. I know my duty, and I serve.”
Tucker stared at her preternatural calmness, at her steady and simple gaze. It was beginning to unnerve him a little. Here was the true Anya.
“How does Kharzin plan to use it?” he asked.
“I do not know.”
Oddly enough, this he believed.
6:33 P.M.
“Look here,” Christopher said as he knelt on the ground next to Anya’s open pack. He had already dumped the contents out and had been slowly going over them, item by item.
Tucker was performing a similar search upon the Rover, knowing a wireless transmitter could have been planted in a thousand places. As he worked, he felt the growing press of time as the sun sank toward the horizon.
“What did you find?” he asked, shifting over to Christopher.
Kane came sniffing, too.
Christopher passed over what looked like a thick-barreled ballpoint pen. “Twist it open.”
He did, unscrewing it and pulling the two halves apart. Inside, he discovered a cluster of fine wires, a microcircuit board, and a strip of lithium-ion batteries the size of his pinkie nail.
He smiled. Gotcha.
“What about the Range Rover?” Christopher asked. “Do you want me to help you look for any additional transmitters?”
“In the end, they won’t matter. I just need this one in hand.”
“What next then?”
“You head back to the pond. We need to hide any evidence that we’re still here. That means getting you, Bukolov, and Anya down into that cave.”
Tucker quickly instructed Christopher on how to get everyone lowered through the vortex.
“I should be back around dusk to join you,” Tucker finished. “Call me by radio if there is any trouble.”
With Christopher headed back, Tucker climbed into the driver’s seat of the Range Rover. Kane clambered into the passenger seat.
He engaged the engine and slowly reversed his way back down the ravine. Once at the bottom, he headed west for ten minutes, continuing their group’s original trajectory, pushing the Rover as hard as he dared, hoping Kharzin was actively monitoring his progress.
He eventually found the perfect terrain.
Three-quarters of a mile from where he’d started, Tucker stopped the vehicle at the mouth of a narrow slot-canyon, much like the one back at the coordinates. He hopped out and entered the narrow ravine. Using his flashlight, he studied the rubble-strewn floor until he discovered a deep fissure in the ground. Peering down, he saw no bottom.
Good enough.
Reaching to his pocket, he pulled out Anya’s pen and dropped it down the crack.
Dig for that, General.
He hurried back to the parked Rover. If there were any more transmitters aboard, he didn’t care. He wanted to draw Kharzin here. He left the keys in the ignition and set to work on the second part of his plan: a surprise welcome for the general’s team.
From the cargo pocket of his pants, he pulled out the waxy block of C-4 explosives that he’d been carrying all day.
Working quickly but cautiously, he sidled under the vehicle on his back and stuffed a half block of the explosive between the muffler and the floorboard. Next, he strung a length of detonation cord to the leaf springs behind the front tire and affixed a chemical detonator.
He crawled back out and surveyed his handiwork.
If anyone tried to move or even sit inside the vehicle, the stress on the tire springs would set off the charge. With any luck, the bomb would take out one or two of Kharzin’s Spetsnaz.
And while the ruse wouldn’t stop Kharzin forever, it should buy Tucker and the others some valuable extra time.
He turned to Kane. “Ready for a little run?”
The tail wag was answer enough.
7:18 P.M.
Setting a hard pace, it took only ten minutes to return to the canyon and up to the pond. He found Christopher waiting for him at the pool’s edge. The sun had already disappeared, but the twilight’s gloaming still allowed decent light.
“Are the other two down safely in the cave?” Tucker asked, huffing heavily. “And the supplies?”
“The doctor went first with his pistol. Then Anya, all trussed up and lowered like a Christmas goose. Doctor Bukolov radioed that he has her well in hand.”
“Then we should get below, too.”
“Before we do that,” Christopher said, “I had a thought. If I call my brothers and—”
“No. I’m not going to involve them here.”
“I do not mean to bring them here. I love my brothers too much for that. I simply mean to ask them to wait for us at last night’s campsite. I can pass on the coordinates. If we make it out of this alive, we’ll still need a way back to civilization, especially if our Rover gets blown up.”
It made sense.
Christopher talked with his brother for two minutes on the satellite phone, then disconnected. “They will be there tomorrow night.”
With the matter settled, they set about getting themselves down into the cave. Christopher disappeared first through the vortex. Next, Tucker lowered Kane, cinching the line through a set of loops in his tactical vest. Tucker went last after reconfiguring the rope ties, so he could pull the rope down after him once inside.
A few moments later,
soaked to the skin, Tucker stood in the cave with the others. Hauling with his shoulders, he reeled the rope down from above.
“What are you doing?” Christopher asked, watching the last of the line tumble down to the floor.
Bukolov stood up from where he sat atop their supplies next to Anya, his pistol still pointed at her head. She was flat on her belly as before.
Tucker had told no one about this last detail of his plan, or they might have balked at coming down here.
“I don’t want to leave any evidence that we were ever up there. And I certainly don’t want to leave behind any clue about how to get down here.”
“But how are we supposed to get out of here?” Bukolov asked.
“According to De Klerk, this was an old Boer bunker.” He pictured the warren of tunnels and cellars back at the Klipkoppie fort. “So I wager there’s more than one way out of this cavern system.”
“You’re wagering with our lives,” Bukolov warned, but he ended it with an unconcerned shrug. “But you are right, the Boer were a crafty bunch.”
“And even if I’m wrong, I have a contingency plan as backup.”
“Which is what?” Christopher asked.
“Let’s worry about that after we search this place.”
Tucker realized one of their team had remained unusually quiet. He stepped over to Anya and dropped to a knee.
Bukolov shuffled his legs a bit. “She had a lot to say while you were all gone. Very sly, this one. Gets in your head. She kept wheedling, pressing, promising, until finally I had to put a sock in it.”
Tucker smiled. In this case, the doctor was speaking literally. He had stuffed a rolled-up sock in Anya’s mouth, gagging her.
Tucker straightened back up. “That’s why you’re a billionaire, Doctor Bukolov. Always using your head.”
Or in this particular case, his foot.
Tucker pointed to her and renewed an order with Kane. “GUARD.”
The shepherd walked over to Anya and lowered his head until his snout was mere inches away, panting. Anya leaned back, her eyes flashing hatefully, finally showing cracks in that calm professional demeanor.
Kill Switch (9780062135285) Page 29