by Tim Tigner
Achilles heard a horrific crunch and watched the shocked eyes grow wide. Then his tormentor toppled backward onto the marble floor, where the crack of his skull resonated like a delayed echo of Foxley’s. As Achilles reached for the kitchen knife he’d use to free his hands, the body began to tremble and quiver beneath its bugged-out eyes.
Ten seconds.
But not really.
While Achilles was still working the knife and absorbed in the assessment of what his knee strike had done, an approaching voice called from the hall.
“You know, I never did a movie star. What do you say we have some fun? Take some pictures? We could even—”
As the speaker came into view, Achilles hopped up onto the counter, and the race was on. Foxley’s Glock was right there where he’d dropped it, beside the sink that had caught the tranquilizer gun.
The Russian rapist’s Gyurza was in a holster on his hip.
In a pure physics equation, the Russian would win. No contest at all. A practiced move. A quick draw. Grab, point, pull. The Gyurza doesn’t even have a safety.
But it wasn’t a pure physics equation.
This scenario packed a powerful surprise for the Russian. Fifty seconds earlier, he’d been joking with a dead man about Boris. Then he’d rounded a corner with sex on his mind and found his friend writhing and gasping and glaring away like a big landed fish.
The stunning surprise bought Achilles a couple of crucial seconds. Only two, but enough for him to grab the Glock’s grip and begin pulling. Like a short kid shooting pool with the cue behind his back, Achilles was guesstimating. But only with the first round. As it drilled the dishwasher door, he recalibrated and put the second into his opponent’s hip, spinning him down and around like a crashing helicopter. The third hit center mass. Not necessarily the heart itself, but close enough as makes no difference.
Chapter 43
What If’s
Seattle, Washington
THE RENDEZVOUS location Wang had selected in case the shit hit the fan was the food court at the Tacoma Mall. Lots of traffic, plenty of exits, and the apathetic attitudes of minimum-wage workers in temporary jobs. A person could sit there from open until close and be seen by ten thousand eyes but never be noticed — if he kept to himself and didn’t light anything on fire.
Wang wasn’t there.
He should have been on his third cup of tea by the time Max dragged his wet ass up to the table. Surely Wang had arrived hours before. He had a car. Max had the whole container truck adventure followed by the wait for an Uber — once he’d made it off the highway and gotten presentable with the aid of a comb and a cap and the gas station restroom’s entire stock of paper towels.
What now?
He couldn’t do anything but wait. He didn’t have a phone number for Wang, and he didn’t know where he lived. All he had was a bank account number and an email address. Both, no doubt, untraceable.
With the immediate danger behind him and his adrenaline spent, Max went for a Venti coffee. He sipped it for ninety minutes with no sign of his partner, then bought a pretzel to calm his stomach.
He imagined Wang getting thumb-screwed at that very moment, locked away in a dark corner of Vulcan Fisher with their head of security. No doubt their security chief was former military. Max pictured a sergeant major with more service stripes on his sleeve than hairs on his head. A man who knew the price of winning a war, and the value of avoiding bad publicity. A man who wouldn’t hesitate to go medieval on a foreign national caught spying, before dumping his corpse in Puget Sound.
Max’s own predicament didn’t feel much better. He might have evaded capture, but he hadn’t avoided torture. He was tortured by worry for Zoya. Why had she pressed the panic button? Had that been an accidental slip of the wrist, or had the worst happened? Not knowing was killing him.
Max couldn’t call Ignaty without his computer’s encrypted VOIP programs. Even if he could, he’d be a fool to do so before learning what happened to Wang. Ignaty would just give him the runaround until he got the results of today’s mission. The last time they’d talked, Ignaty had stressed that President Korovin was eagerly awaiting today’s update on his pet project. Bottom line: Max couldn’t call Ignaty to learn about Zoya before he had a plan to complete his mission.
So he did the only thing he could do. He watched the mindless mall rats wander their maze, and waited for Wang to show.
For the first time since that fateful day that he and Zoya had been diverted from their Sochi vacation, Max had the opportunity to ruminate on the big picture. Operation Sunset still blew his mind. The sheer impact of it. The more he thought about it, the less comfortable he became with the historical role Korovin had thrust on him. As a spy, his job was to bring tactical advantages to his motherland. Despite the stigma, espionage was meaningful, time-honored work. Dangerous, but universal.
Operation Sunset, by contrast, wasn’t directly benefitting Russia. It was waging war. An underhanded, unprovoked, undeclared war. A war that would claim many thousands of civilian lives. Sunset crossed a line.
Max wasn’t sure what he was going to do about that.
Today, it seemed he wasn’t sure about anything.
With nothing else to do, he kept waiting.
He waited while the terrifying What if’s? grew bigger, and the tempting What next’s? grew bolder. He waited while acid ate away his stomach lining and his bowels turned to water. Finally, when he could wait no more, he went to the restroom, and found Wang.
Chapter 44
The Getaway
Hawaii
ACHILLES USED the kitchen knife to free his hands, then took a moment to assess his situation while rubbing his wrists. Yes, he was better off than the guys at his feet, but not by a lot. Korovin literally had an army available. The bodies before him were just the tip of a mighty spear.
And Korovin wasn’t even Achilles’ chief concern.
According to the late Agent Foxley, President Silver believed that Achilles had sold out, taken a payoff from the Russian president in exchange for vital information. Unfortunately, that was understandable, given what Achilles now knew.
Achilles had disappeared shortly after learning Silver’s plan. He’d vanished. Gone black. Then Lukin had been assassinated. The next data point Silver had was of Achilles living it up on a private island with a beautiful Russian movie star.
Now Foxley would fail to report in. He’d be presumed dead, and Achilles would take the blame.
Minutes from now, the presidents of two powerful nations would each realize they had a personal problem. A problem best quashed by killing Achilles. God only knew the covert resources they’d call on to hunt him down.
He had to get moving.
Granger had once told him, “When you’re on the run, confound and confuse.” That sounded like a good game plan.
Achilles began by tossing the dead men’s weapons, papers, and electronics into a backpack. He’d inspect them at a later time in another place. Meanwhile he noted that each corpse had the expected phone, and one also wore an amulet similar to Zoya’s. The sight of it confirmed Achilles’ assumption and gave him an idea.
He unclasped the amulet from around Zoya’s neck, and removed its back using an eyeglass screwdriver found in a kitchen drawer. Inside was a tiny circuit board and a relatively large battery. Setting that assembly aside, he removed his shoes and searched the soles. Foxley’s GPS pellet wasn’t in the heel, as expected, but rather under the edge of the left arch, where less pressure would be applied. About the size of a BB, it had been so expertly installed that it was tough to find even when he knew what he was looking for.
Achilles seated the pellet in Zoya’s amulet where the battery had been, and returned it to her neck. He wasn’t sure what this insurance policy would ultimately accomplish, but if nothing else, it fit the confound-and-confuse pattern.
He used surplus zip ties to bind Zoya’s arms and ankles. She’d be going with him.
Since they’d be
using the Coast Guard boat, Achilles stripped the unbloodied Russian, and changed into his stolen uniform.
Time for more confounding.
He hoisted the disrobed Russian onto his shoulder and headed for the jungle. Knowing that half the world’s covert intelligence assets were about to come after him was nothing if not motivating.
Even with the extra two hundred pounds, Achilles reached the concealed crevasse in just three minutes. Ten minutes after that he had both Russkies stashed where they’d never be found.
Zoya felt weightless after the brutes. He laid her down on the aft deck next to Foxley and a pile of anchor chain. The vessel was the one he’d seen from atop Nuikaohao. Its bulbous orange hull ringed a modest cabin, but boasted big engines, lots of lights, and a powerful radio. The Russians had undoubtedly stripped the boat of tracking devices after stealing it, but Achilles was going to treat it like a hot potato nonetheless.
A quick cleanup of the house was all that remained. Just enough to add confusion. The bullet holes were inconclusive, but the blood told a definitive story. He’d pondered the problem of expunging it while hauling the corpses to their final resting place. He didn’t have time for anything fancy, and burning the house seemed too extreme. Deciding that delaying any forensic findings would be good enough, he doused the dirty zones with the kitchen faucet sprayer, and sopped everything up with bath towels. Then he emptied a gallon of bleach on top of what remained and left it to dry. Three minutes total.
Besides his clothes, Achilles had only stuffed two items into the backpack he was bringing to the boat along with the big bag of blood-soaked towels. The first was a bottle of ammonia. The second was his wedding picture, still in its silver frame.
He paused near the edge of the dock and pulled out the captured cell phones. Although he’d like to mine them for data, he didn’t have the pass codes and he couldn’t risk taking them with him. Not with GPS. Besides, anything interesting in them should also be in Zoya’s head.
After calculating the right distance from the waves, he dragged a shallow ditch with his heel and dropped the phones into the sand. When the tide came in, a few hours from now, it would simultaneously short out the phones and bury them, confusing the timeline and adding to the mystery. This simple little move might even postpone Korovin’s pursuit.
Achilles checked his watch. Twenty-four minutes from extinguishing the Russians to igniting the outboard motors. Thirty more minutes to Kauai. Could Korovin react in under an hour? Would he have men waiting on the Big Island? Achilles had no idea. Regardless, once he hit Kauai, another race would begin.
Meanwhile, he’d leverage the Coast Guard boat’s autopilot function. It was time he had a talk with his wife.
Chapter 45
Daggers & Buttons
The Kremlin
IGNATY PLOWED past the guards and into Korovin’s office without a sideways glance. One had to flaunt their power on occasion to keep it fresh in people’s minds. Plus Kremlin staffers tended to get a bit full of themselves. Ignaty liked to remind them that working close to the sun doesn’t make you a star.
Korovin looked up from a paper report. His paranoia regarding electronic communications of all sorts translated into lots of reading — and a personal micro shredder the size of a refrigerator. The president made use of it before meeting Ignaty's eye.
Once the shredding sound abated, Ignaty said, “There’s good news and bad from Hawaii. Bad news is we’ve had a glitch. Zoya hit her panic button. The crew responded as planned, but never reported back. Once they went black, I scrambled a second crew from California. They just reported that the island is deserted. Everybody has disappeared: Achilles, Zoya, and both of my men.”
“Didn’t you have a tracker on Zoya?”
“It went black.”
“Satellites?”
“We didn’t use them. In retrospect, that was shortsighted. I didn’t think we’d need it for an op on an island that’s smaller than Gorky Park, and I didn’t want to draw attention. The Americans monitor our satellite movements.”
“What’s the assumption?”
“Achilles figured it out and escaped.”
“Does the White House know?”
Ignaty was pleased to be able to answer that question, if only partially. Miss Muffet had called him back just three hours after he’d hung up on her, asking for forgiveness — and a bonus. She had spine, that one, and he admired her for it. He’d agreed to include an extra $10,000 in the next payment.
“That’s not clear, Mr. President. Our mole only transmits once a day at best, so we won’t know today’s thinking until tomorrow at the earliest. The last we heard, our plan had worked. The combination of Achilles having gone black and Lukin being killed convinced the Oval Office that he had sold out.”
Korovin rose and began to pace. “Last I heard, Achilles fell for the ruse. How’d he figure it out? How’d he escape? You think he had help?”
Ignaty took a chair, hoping to calm his boss down. “He couldn’t have summoned help. Besides Zoya’s panic button and the two-way pager she used to send and receive coded messages, there was no communication equipment on the island. That was a big point of contention with Max, who wanted to be able to call or at least write, but I convinced him that Achilles was bound to conduct a thorough search in a moment of doubt. We eventually agreed that any communication or surveillance equipment would compromise the mission and Zoya’s safety.”
Korovin stopped pacing and stared out his window for a good twenty seconds. “So he set a trap. He set off Zoya’s panic button, and ambushed the response team. You obviously underestimated this guy. How are you going to fix it?”
Ignaty put on a confident grin. “Like wolves hunting wildebeest. We’re going to isolate him, and then spook him into an ambush of our own.”
“I want details.”
Ignaty told him.
Korovin accepted the plan with a stone face. “Have the island returned to its original state. I don’t want any physical evidence to support Achilles’ story, if he gets a chance to tell it.”
“Already done.”
Apparently satisfied, Korovin changed gears. “What about Sunset?”
Ignaty didn’t sugarcoat it. “Max seems to be struggling with Vulcan Fisher’s security.”
“We always knew that would be the tough nut. You assured me he’d find a way to crack it.”
“He will.”
“Zoya’s disappearance can’t be helping his focus. How’s he reacting?”
“He doesn’t know.”
“I thought he had a replica of the panic button?”
“We haven’t spoken since it went off.”
Korovin’s face contracted. “That’s surprising. I’d have thought he’d call immediately. What are you going to tell him when he does?”
“I’ll tell him it was a false alarm. A slip of the wrist. I’ll tell him how my guys went running and nearly blew the mission to protect her, but found her unharmed and apologetic.”
“Will he buy it?”
“I’m sure he’ll have his doubts, but there’s nothing he can do with them.”
Korovin grabbed a Japanese kaiken from his display cabinet and began toying with the blade. “Will he remain focused on the job?”
Ignaty took the president’s fidgeting as a good sign. It signaled the shift to tactical thinking that accompanied his acceptance of the facts at hand. “I’ll keep the pressure on. Dangle some carrot, wave some stick.”
“What if she turns up dead? Or doesn’t turn up at all?”
“We just need to make sure he completes Sunset before that happens.”
“He’ll be … very angry.”
“She may well be alive. No sense upsetting him unnecessarily. He’s a pro, he’ll understand that. May I move on to the good news?”
Korovin smiled with the right half of his mouth, then gestured with the dagger. Proceed.
“Zoya got a transmission off before she hit the panic button.”
&nbs
p; “Mission accomplished? She got the assassination plan?”
“Not entirely, but I think she learned enough. Tell me, Mr. President, have you been sneaking out at night?”
Chapter 46
Trial & Error
Seattle, Washington
WANG HAD CONSIDERED walking away from his “extracurricular activity” a dozen times in the past few hours. The Brit — or Israeli, or East European, or whoever Max really was — had just upped the risk exponentially. Vulcan Fisher had already been a fortress. Now the drawbridge was raised and the archers were on the walls.
But Wang didn’t walk away.
He needed the money.
As Max turned from the urinal, Wang studied his face. Expressions were best read up close during unguarded moments. Max was far from unguarded, but as moments went, this was the least guarded he was likely to get. A certain amount of relaxation was required to get things flowing.
“Where have you been?” Max asked, using the mixed tone of a parent speaking to a found child.
“That’s my question,” Wang replied. “Last I saw, you’d been flagged by the guard. Then the alarm went off. Then you showed up three hours late looking like someone who’d put up a fight, and lost.”
“You think I cut a deal?”
“Fear the wolf in front, and the tiger behind.”
“Is that some ancient way of saying you think they caught me and put the screws on?”
“That was one of several working hypotheses. After watching you drink coffee for an hour, I became convinced that you were alone — as far as you knew. After two hours, I determined that you weren’t being watched.”