Cold Fire

by Dustin Stevens

  “The product is finally ready,” Sergey said. He knew the line was safe, but his brevity lay in the fact that he trusted Pavel would pick up on the insinuation.

  Everything they had worked to establish the previous years, from finding a suitable network to quietly taking it over, was done with the end goal of finding a distribution system for their own goods. A fiery showdown now with one of the preeminent drug-enforcement groups in the world would shatter that all in the course of an hour.

  “So get him on the boat?” Pavel asked.

  “Yes,” Sergey said, fighting to keep his anger at Viktor’s stupidity from exploding at Pavel. “By whatever means necessary. Get up the coast to Tijuana. I’ll have plane tickets at the airport to get you both back here.”

  “Back there? To Russia?” Pavel asked.

  “Yes,” Sergey said. “I think it’s time we all had a little get-together and got some things straightened out. Is that a problem?”

  For the first time in ages, Sergey heard something in Pavel’s voice that seemed to border on hope, happiness even. “Not at all, sir. Looking forward to it.”

  Sergey nodded, it being exactly the response he had expected.

  “And the rest of the men?” Pavel asked.

  “Continue on as planned,” Sergey said. “We can’t completely abandon things on the ground there, not with us being ready to go live so soon. Disappearing right now would set us back months, if not more.”

  He didn’t bother to add that their meeting would not take more than a day or two. Both of them would be traveling back under the pretense of making final business preparations while only Pavel would be returning. Sergey had made the proper arrangements to allow him to take over the North American operations, finally ascending to the post he had earned a hundred times over.

  His nephew, no matter how much Sergey would like to rid himself of the nuisance for good, would be stashed on a much smaller project, somewhere closer to home, where Sergey could keep a thumb on him at all times.

  “Thank you, Mr. Blok,” Pavel said. “We will see you soon.”

  Sergey signed off the call without responding, tossing his phone on the desk and shaking his head at the arrogant foolishness of his nephew. As he did so his gaze lingered on his lunch still sitting on the desk, nearly untouched, the scent permeating the air.

  He had been wrong. There was absolutely no reason to let one of Anya’s pirozhkis go to waste over a nephew throwing a temper tantrum. He pulled the plate back over and dropped his napkin into his lap, picking up right where he’d left off a few minutes before.

  PART IV

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  I respected Diaz both as an agent and a person. She had gone out of her way for me when she didn’t have to, long before it reached a point where her career was about to receive a serious bump for doing so. Because of that, I felt some responsibility to do the right thing by her, but that would have to come in time.

  Right now, I was worried about the situation I had been pulled into, a situation that I was best equipped to handle by going off the grid for a while.

  It had taken a few minutes of back-and-forth for me to persuade Diaz to leave me outside the gate. Her initial reaction was the expected shock, followed by disbelief that I would think of stepping away at such a moment. I didn’t insult her intelligence by trying to pretend I was simply bowing out now that the end seemed so near, but rather told her there were things that I needed to handle on my own.

  It wasn’t the entire truth, not even close, but she seemed to grasp enough to agree, if begrudgingly.

  As a young ensign sailor standing by the front gate gave me a curious stare, I left my weapon in the car, got out, and walked away. With me I took a single shoulder bag containing some necessary paperwork, my wallet, and a toothbrush. I left my overnight bag stowed away in the trunk, not wanting to take the time or hassle of dealing with it. Whatever else I might need, I would pick up along the way.

  The single lane leading into the base was just over a mile long. Walking alone in the middle of the night, I was able to move easily along the edge of the road, free from worry about traffic whizzing by me. I made it out to the major thoroughfare feeding the base just after midnight and flagged a cab a few minutes later.

  Twenty minutes after that, I was standing in the Alamo rental car line at San Diego International Airport. A quarter hour after that I was on the road north.

  Doing the math in my head, I knew that no international flights would be leaving the West Coast for at least five hours. There was no way any of those departing from San Diego would be flying direct to Russia, so my best bet was to hit LA. The drive between them was right around two hours at that time of night, giving me more than enough time. After the nap earlier I was still pretty alert, and the trip ahead would give me ample time to sleep.

  Besides, I had a phone call to make that I didn’t want to risk anybody overhearing. A rental car made for the perfect place to allow that to happen.

  I put the car on my Hawk’s Eye Tours American Express, hoping that if anybody was trolling the system for my name it might slide past them. I had an idea how I would get out of the country undetected, but that wouldn’t help me any on the rental.

  Alamo hooked me up with a brand new Nissan Altima; its odometer registered less than thirty miles total. I racked the seat back as far as it would go and turned the temperature gauge all the way to cold, keeping the fan off as I eased onto the highway. Then I set the cruise control as I headed north.

  One thirty in the morning in southern California meant it was four thirty on the East Coast. Most likely the target of my call was curled up fast asleep, as most of the world would be at such an hour. Despite that, I plugged in the number from memory and put my cell on speakerphone, then dropped it in my lap.

  It was answered after the third ring, the voice sounding a bit tired, but not groggy.

  “Mr. Tate, what can I do for you?” Pally asked.

  No anger or frustration in his voice, which was a good start. “How do you know I need something done?”

  “Does anybody ever call another person at two thirty in the morning unless they need something?”

  My guess about Pally being on the East Coast was entirely based on Hutch’s new location. The fact that he called it two thirty meant he was somewhere in the Mountain Time Zone, only an hour’s difference from where I was. Odds were he lived nowhere near my home in Montana, but at some time I needed to make it a point to find out.

  Now just wasn’t that time.

  “Actually, I need a couple of favors,” I said, taking a breath and staring out over the steering wheel at the road ahead. The I-5 was a full five lanes wide around me; the Nissan sat comfortably in the middle, its speedometer locked at seventy-five miles an hour. A handful of long-haul truckers dotted the lanes around me, otherwise traffic was almost nonexistent.

  “Aw, hell,” Pally said, emitting a low groan. I hoped it was just him being his normal cantankerous self rather than the sound of a man crawling out of bed, but at the moment it didn’t greatly matter either way. “Let’s hear it.”

  “First things first,” I said. “Can you run the logs on international flights leaving Baja tonight or first thing in the morning? Probably out of Tijuana International, but not necessarily. Might even be a private flight.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Pally said, the sound of bare feet sliding over hardwood floors audible in the background. “And who am I looking for?”

  “Two men,” I replied, remembering everything Manny had told us. “One of them is named Viktor Blok, both spelled with a K. The other is Pavel, last name may or may not be Haney. Could be traveling alone or together.”

  There was no reply for a long moment as Pally went to work. In my mind I could see the array of electronics I’d seen via video conference earlier, imagining his long hair askew, the sleeves of his oversized sweater
shoved back as he worked. The din of a keyboard clattering drifted over the air to me, the only other sound the highway passing beneath my tires.

  “All right,” he said after two full minutes. Any trace of sleep was gone from his voice, it now taking on the familiar detached resonance he always seemed to assume when working a case. “I don’t have either of those names, but I have a Vitaly Gusev and an Andrei Zhobrov leaving on the four a.m. flight to Hong Kong.”

  The names were undeniably Russian, certainly plausible aliases for two known associates of an international cartel to use for travel purposes. Still, assuming that was them would be a dangerous proposition. I knew that at least one target was based in Russia, but I needed them all there. If the other two snuck away by boat, or, even worse, traveled inland, it might be years before they surfaced again.

  “Possible,” I said, letting Pally hear my thoughts, “but not certain.”

  “Au contraire, my analog friend,” Pally said, a scolding tone in his voice. “I didn’t find them by searching manifests. As you know, that takes more than ninety seconds and an act of God to pull off.”

  There was a long pause, and I could tell Pally was putting me on. I motioned with my right hand in the darkness, a circular gesture meant to draw the data out of him, but he didn’t bite. “Okay, Mike, how did you find them?”

  “Thank you,” he replied, letting me hear his satisfaction. “You remember those financials you had me run? I finally tracked it back to an account running out of Vladivostok.”

  “Port town,” I muttered, having seen the name a time or two in my previous life.

  “That’s right,” Pally said. “They ran back to a corporation known as Kolb Enterprises International, the very same company that just purchased said plane tickets.”

  I snorted and shook my head, half pissed at the simplicity of it. “Kolb, as in an anagram of ‘Blok’?”

  “This is Russia we’re talking here. This thing was set up in the late sixties when the place was still reeling from the Cold War. Over there, sending an anonymous envelope of cash once a month grants you carte blanche to do whatever you want the rest of the time.”

  As much as I wanted to disagree with his assessment, I knew he was right. It was the way most of the countries of the world operated, even large chunks of our own if we really wanted to nitpick about it.

  “And would you like to hear the best part?” Pally asked. “The owner is a woman named Anya Merinkova.”

  Folds of skin gathered around my eyes as I squinted, trying to place the name. I had heard a lot of Soviet names and accents in the last few weeks, though that one didn’t seem to ring any bells. “And how is that the best part?”

  “In 1965, Anya Merinkova married none other than Sergey Blok,” Pally said, putting a triumphant flare on the end of the sentence, announcing his victory for all.

  I pursed my lips together and released a low whistle, another enormous piece falling into place.

  Lita had come to my office to tie up Mateo and me both. They were ready to start moving their product and were wiping away all loose ends before getting started.

  “Damn, Pally, that’s good work. Seriously, impressive.”

  “I know,” he replied, not a trace of irony in his tone.

  A hint of a smirk tugged at my face, pulling me back an inch. “Hong Kong, though? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “My guess would be it’s not a final destination; it just happens to be the first flight out of that hellhole this morning. I could check everything moving out of Hong Kong later if you’d like, but let’s be honest, they’re going home.”

  “Right,” I said, nodding in agreement.

  Everything I had just learned jibed perfectly with what I’d been expecting. I knew that my going to Baja with Diaz would be a waste of time, because they weren’t going to be there. They had been one step ahead of us the entire time, and tonight would be no different.

  “All right, you mentioned a couple of favors?” Pally said, already sounding bored, ready for his next task or to be cut loose so he could, presumably, return to bed.

  “Yeah,” I said, shaking away my current train of thought and returning to the conversation. “Can you get me a plane ticket out of LA to Russia this morning?”

  There was a long moment of silence, followed by the low hum of air being sucked in. “Hawk, what are you doing, buddy?”

  For the first time since leaving the jail, I felt the anger rise to the surface. It was a reaction I could ill afford, needing to keep it buried just a little while longer.

  “You know damn well what I’m doing,” I said, just audible. “And I’m trusting you to keep that between us in the meantime.”

  “Of course,” Pally replied. “Of course. It’s just—”

  “I know,” I said, leaving it at that. There were hours of conversation we could both add on the topic, but knew better than to dredge up. Maybe once I tracked down an actual location for him, we could share a lot of the things that had been left unsaid over the years.

  “All right,” he said, the sound of tapping on keys able to be heard again, “looks like the best we can do is a direct to Moscow and then a hop over to Vladivostok.”

  “No,” I replied, once more shaking my head. “Just get me into Moscow. I’ll figure it out from there.”

  “Are you kidding me? Those two are more than five thousand miles apart.”

  I needed to make a stop in Moscow that I didn’t want to mention to Pally. He had already done more than could be expected for me, more than enough to bring some heat on himself should things go sideways later on. The less he knew from this point forward the better.

  “Yeah, that’s fine,” I replied. “And can you put it under my old alias? I’d rather keep my name off things for as long as possible.”

  “Your old alias?” Pally asked. “You mean the one from before?”

  I glanced over at my shoulder bag stowed on the passenger seat. Deep inside it was a passport I had not used in five years, the last stamp in it placed there when I left Panama, the day my family was killed.

  “It’s still good for another six months,” I replied.

  Once more I could hear a heavy sigh, though to his credit he didn’t fight me on it. “You got it, Hawk.”

  “Thanks,” I whispered, loud enough for him to hear me, soft enough for him to know I meant it.

  “You got it,” he repeated. “Anything else?”

  “Just one last thing,” I said. “Did you know?”

  I left the question as vague as possible, though I had a feeling he would know exactly what I was referring to. If he didn’t, that answered my question just as effectively.

  “Did I . . .” he began, his voice trailing away. Once more I could hear a heavy sigh, and when he spoke there was a strain that wasn’t there before. “No, Hawk. To be honest, I still don’t. I suspected, but I never knew.”

  For whatever reason, I believed him. I had no basis to, beyond the fact that he had no reason to help me as much as he just had. The next couple of days would tell me if he was being truthful, if my initial reaction was right.

  If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t much matter anyway.

  “Thanks, Pally,” I said, ending the call.

  I drove in silence a full ten minutes, an overhead sign, white letters on a green background, telling me I had eighty miles to go on toward LA. I used the time to process what I had just learned, using it to fill in ever more of the holes that existed. There were only a couple small gaps remaining, all of which would hopefully be answered in the coming days.

  The second number I had to dig out of the shoulder bag, scribbled down on a scrap of paper buried deep in the bottom of it. The first time I’d heard Lita’s accent I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but had thought I should bring it just in case.

  The line rang a dozen times before it was pic
ked up. There was no answer, just total silence on the other end.

  I counted to five in my head before saying, “Same place, same time,” and hanging up.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Twelve and a half hours in the air plus an eleven-hour time difference put me on the ground in Moscow just shy of a day after leaving. Considering that Pally had been kind enough to arrange a first-class ticket for me, I spent almost the entirety of that time reclined flat on my back, eyes closed. The Lufthansa craft wasn’t quite as spacious as some of the other planes I’d been on, the lie-flat seat pinching my shoulders a bit, but it was still far preferable to a half day crammed into coach.

  The first nine hours of the trip were spent in complete darkness, a near comatose state as my body recovered from the last few days, prepared for what lay ahead. After that my mind raised itself into a state of consciousness enough to allow for activity, the same damn dream sifting in and waking me with a start.

  The last couple of hours I sat with my gaze aimed out the window, trying to plan my next move, making sense of what I already knew.

  Two weeks ago, a woman I had never met walked into my shop and spent an absurd amount of money to get me alone in the woods with her. She fed me a phony story to lead her to a man from my past, whom she executed, and she then tried to kill me. In the time since, more people had died, and the questions piled up thick and furious.

  Sitting and trying to sort the information out in my head, I allowed myself a pass and tried not to focus on my own foolish actions throughout. Lita’s willingness to pay such an absurd amount of money should have been my first tip-off, followed by her demeanor and a hundred things thereafter.

  Five years ago I would have sniffed this thing out before it ever got off the ground. Now I was just lucky to still be breathing, hoping that the next few days would put things right for good.