by Tim Tigner
Had Katya failed to arm it? Or was this a Jaws scenario?
Achilles sensed them the moment he closed the door. He knew the scent and rhythm of his house, and both were now atypical. A deep inhale detected sweaty clothing tainted by cigarette smoke. It wasn’t until that realization slipped its cold hand around his heart that he realized he was, again, unarmed.
That’s three strikes.
Best practice for home defense was to have a handgun in every living space, preferably secreted with the grip properly positioned for a hasty grab. Achilles knew that, but hadn’t bothered. This was California, not Texas, and he’d been worried about spooking Katya. That was ironic, since the stated reason for her living with him rather than alone was for her security. But relationships were complicated beasts, hoofed with nuance and bridled with compromise. And he’d figured that between the Ruger he made her pack in her purse, and the small arsenal he kept locked in his bedroom, they were covered.
He began mapping out the weapons that were at his immediate disposal, the blades and missiles and blunt objects that populated most rooms disguised as knick-knacks and furnishings. The walnut butcher’s block to his right, full of Swiss knives. The polished-rock bookends just beyond, embracing Katya’s cookbooks. The cast iron skillet sitting atop the stove. The—
A familiar rumble interrupted his mental rehearsal.
The garage door was opening.
Chapter 57
Big & Bigger
Palo Alto, California
THEY CAME from the living room as the garage door groaned. Big men in heavy boots. Men who had to duck and twist to fit through standard doors. Achilles was no lightweight. At six-foot-two he sent the arrow to 220 pounds. But these guys would have to weigh in on livestock scales. Worse still, the fact that they’d been sitting so calmly and quietly spoke to exceptional discipline.
They stopped on the hinged side of the door to the garage. No doubt they planned to grab Katya the instant she stepped inside. That’s when they saw him.
Achilles was already moving. He had a bookend in each hand and their skulls in his sights. From a physics perspective this was as foolish as a quarterback assailing two linebackers. Any football, rugby, or billiard fan watching would expect him to bounce off onto his back, and be crushed in the ensuing scrum.
But combat didn’t work like contact sports.
Games are rigged to oppose equivalent forces, and designed to accommodate repeat performances. Sportsmen seek playoffs and tournaments and season-ticket sales, while rallying fans and courting huge contracts.
Battle, by comparison, is a single-serving proposition dished out to mismatched forces. Combatants seek quick and decisive resolutions through disproportionate advantages.
Funnel some muscle into a section of sharpened steel, and one gladiator could remove another’s head. Add enough speed to an eight-gram piece of copper-jacketed lead, and a girl could drop a 1,000-pound gorilla. Initiate a chain reaction in fissile material, and one maniac could kill a million men. In warfare, you looked for leverage.
Achilles didn’t have a sword or a gun or a bomb, but he knew how to apply superior force. And he knew his opponents’ minds.
When you’re twice the size of an average Joe, you don’t back off or step down. You lean in. You flex your chest and ground your feet and become a wall. It’s part of the big-dog identity, and it happens every time.
These two didn’t reach for their guns. No time. They twisted and braced, their left shoulders coming forward and their right feet going back in a synchronous display of instinctive reaction.
Achilles did the unexpected. He jumped. He sprang like an assailant in a martial arts movie, his legs leading like lances.
Normally that would have been a suicide move.
Normally giving two hostile giants one leg each would be begging for a breaking, turkey wishbone style. Snap, crackle, pop!
But this wasn’t a blunder. It was a gambit.
Achilles wasn’t making a hail-Mary move, he was serving up a distraction. As the giants seized his legs, they exposed their heads. With their arms engaged, and their attention distracted, their noggins were teed up like shiny steel nails on a soft pine board, just begging for a pounding.
Achilles used the same muscles that had once propelled the poles that had pushed the skis that had earned his country Olympic bronze. Muscles that he’d kept conditioned by pulling his body up thousand-foot cliffs. He charged those muscles with the anger and frustration bred by Russian deception and born of recent lies, and he brought the bookends down with unstoppable force, smack in the center of those two big heads.
The crack was sickening, the splash grotesque, and the smell alone enough to make a vulture vomit. But all Achilles felt was relief as his assailants tumbled to the floor.
Achilles knew they were dead before his arms stopped moving, so he relaxed and rolled with it. By the time he’d regained his feet, there was a puddle of blood the length of a pool table on the hardwood floor, and Katya had slammed her car door.
Chapter 58
Two For The Road
Palo Alto, California
“KATYA, DON’T COME IN!” Achilles shouted. “Just hold on a second. I’ll come out to the garage.”
“Okay. Welcome home. Good timing. I’ve got great news! Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Just a sec.”
He wanted to shroud the bodies, and he wanted to do it with something devoid of sentimental value. Almost everything in the house had belonged to his father or stepmother, and now that they were gone everything was a bit sacred. Even the silly stuff.
He found a gray king-size blanket in the hallway linen closet that looked to be fresh from Macy’s shelf, and carried it back to the mess. “Just one more minute.”
There was no way to work without tracking blood around, so he decided to ignore it and mop up later. He relieved the assassins of their weapons, then made them easier to cover.
Grabbing first one and then the other, he pulled the assassins out straight like springboard divers and then lined them up side-by-side atop the coagulating puddle. Satisfied, he flopped their arms back down by their sides.
“What’s that slapping sound?”
If ever a question deserved an oblique answer, that was it. “Housekeeping. Almost done.”
He swooshed the blanket up and let it settle over them. It immediately started turning a telltale red, but the amorphous mass was far less disturbing than what preceded. How could he explain it in a way that wouldn’t frighten Katya? His friends back at Langley would nod their approval and ask for a beer if he told it to them straight, but he expected a stronger reaction from a mathematics professor.
Glancing down, Achilles found his own appearance to be amazingly unremarkable from the ankles up. All the blood spatter had been directed away.
Slipping off his shoes, he tried to lighten his own mood and facial expression with a silent homage to Chevy Chase. Yes, dear. I hit a water buffalo on the way home, and I just couldn’t bring myself to leave it there.
He opened the garage door to find Katya braced and poised on the other side of her Ford, with her Ruger pointing straight at him.
His heart filled with love and pride. She was so composed. So resilient. And she’d come so far.
Katya had completed her Ph.D. in mathematics at Moscow State University, and was now doing post-doc work at Stanford. After spending her whole life in academia, she’d been swept up in a very violent conspiracy that eventually made her the target of assassins. Rather than running away and cowering in a corner, Katya had actively embraced the investigation for the experience of it. That beautiful, brilliant woman had a core of iron.
In the aftermath of their adventure, Achilles had bought her a handgun and taught her to use it. They’d looked at the Glock 19 and 42, the Kahr CW9, and the Sig Sauer P238, but she found the Ruger LC9 to be the most comfortable — once he finally got one into her hand. That took a few trips to a dealer who specialized in armin
g women, and the purchase of a designer concealed-carry purse.
As she lowered her Ruger, he said, “Sorry about that.”
Katya’s shoulders slumped and her face softened and she began walking toward him. “Are you okay? Welcome home! I wasn’t expecting you, but I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve got good news.”
Achilles wanted to run to her and pick her up in his arms and smother her with passionate kisses as a prelude to things to come. Things too long in coming. He thought he’d lost her forever after waking up on that island. As painful as that had been, he now realized it had been a gift. Now he knew for certain how much he truly loved her. And reflection in that context had given him a new perspective. He wouldn’t try to replace Colin. He’d pick up where Colin had left off.
But not now.
Before focusing on the future, he had to ensure that they’d both have one. So he didn’t rush forth and embrace her. He didn’t press his lips to hers or pull her body close. He remained in the doorway, blocking her path. “Before we get to that, there’s something I need to tell you.”
Her face darkened as she approached. “Okay.”
“You remember that time we left a black Escalade in long-term parking at SFO?” It was a rhetorical question. Of course she did. The Cadillac had contained a couple of corpses.
A wave of dread crossed Katya’s face as she stopped before him and nodded with wide eyes.
“I’ve got a similar situation.” He used his head to motion toward the bodies now blocked from her view by the door.
Her eyes went even wider, and silent tears started flowing.
Achilles reached out and pulled her into his arms. As he buried his nose in her honey-blonde hair, he was reminded of the last woman he’d hugged and the problems still ahead.
The team lying at his feet were a speed bump, not a finish line. He still had a long way to go. Correction, they had a long way to go. Whatever he did, he couldn’t leave Katya alone.
He picked her up and carried her to the living room couch, far from the disturbing view.
“Is this related to the assignment Senator Collins gave you on behalf of President Silver?”
Katya had helped him uncover Korovin’s earlier plot to kill Silver, so she was familiar with Achilles’ very special, very sensitive relationship with the American president. But Achilles hadn’t told her the details of his mission. All she knew was that Collins had given him a highly classified assignment, a mission that would take him off the grid for a month or so.
Katya hadn’t pressed for details, and she hadn’t even seemed surprised by the news. She understood him and seemed to appreciate his value. “Yes. It’s related to my assignment. And I’m going to tell you all about it. Everything. But not here. Not now. We need to leave right away.”
Chapter 59
Connecting The Dots
Palo Alto, California
ACHILLES’ SHOULDER WAS WET, but Katya’s tears had stopped flowing by the time she looked up. “Where are we going? For how long?” Her voice was returning to normal. The analytical math professor was re-emerging.
Achilles kept his hands on her shoulders. “It could be a while. Probably a month, maybe more. Throw your essentials in your purse. I’ve got a backpack for any must-haves that won’t fit. I’ll grab our passports and deal with the, um, mess I made.”
“Are we going far?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Achilles, you’re not making sense.”
He supposed he wasn’t. You couldn’t play fast-and-loose with logic around a Stanford mathematics professor.
He pulled Foxley’s phone from his back pocket and powered it on. Explaining who Zoya was and how he happened to be tracking her using a dead American assassin’s equipment wasn’t just a long story, it was a minefield. They didn’t have time to navigate it now. Achilles didn’t know what protocols the Russians now rotting on his floor had put in place, or what back-up might be nearby and waiting.
As the screen came to life, a map formed around a blinking red dot. It was moving at highway speed. Zoya had crossed the Bay Bridge out of the city and was headed north on I-80 through Berkley. Had she stolen a car? Hitchhiked? Or had someone picked her up? Either of the first two were fine with him. The third would complicate things, and might spell the end.
He pointed to the red dot. “We need to catch up with that.”
Katya frowned. “What is it?”
“Did you happen to see the Russian film Wayward Days?”
“Afraid I missed that one.”
“The red dot represents one of its stars, Zoya Zolotova. She’s the only link I have to information of great geopolitical importance. Information that might also save my life.”
Katya blinked a couple of times. “I didn’t see that answer coming. But knowing you I’m only shocked, not completely bewildered. I do know Zoya Zolotova from other performances. She was also a sex symbol, if memory serves.”
Achilles nodded noncommittally. He wasn’t about to go there. Not now, anyway. “I’ll tell you everything — once we’re moving. It’s not safe for us to stay here any longer. Grab your essentials while I clean up. I’m going to have to go outside to find their car, so keep your gun handy until I return.” He tapped his pockets to make sure he had the guns of both assassins. He was learning.
Achilles gave Katya a hug and ran back to the mess. He pulled the blanket back and emptied the pockets of both Russians into his backpack, keeping only their rental car keys at hand. A Chevy Tahoe, color black — according to the keychain.
Satisfied with his salvage, he headed for the front door.
A big black bag in the entryway stopped him short and spiked his adrenaline.
It was the kind of briefcase that loaded from the top so you could carry larger, heavier loads. Textbooks or legal binders or reams of advertising materials. He shouted back to Katya. “Did you arm the alarm when you left for yoga?”
“Of course. I always do. Just like you asked me — many times.”
The palm scanner on the wall above the briefcase was completely black. Normally there was a green LED in the bottom corner. He pressed his palm against it. That should have brought the display to life, but nothing happened. Not a thing. The scanner was as dormant as the picture frame it resembled. They’d cut the power to it, but not to the house. The lights were working and the refrigerator was humming away. The microwave clock hadn’t been blinking.
He tried opening the briefcase, but found it locked. He grabbed the handle, tested the briefcase’s weight, and found it unexpectedly heavy. A good fifty pounds. He pulled a paperclip from his back pocket, straightened part and then kinked the end by pressing it against the lock housing. The basic briefcase locks only took a few seconds each before their clasps thwacked back in quick succession.
He flipped the lids open and peered inside. A top shelf held some basic tools, screwdrivers, tape, and knives. He lifted it slowly, checking for resistance and wires. The main compartment was brimming with rolls of thick copper wire. Three across, the rolls ran end-to-end. A bit puzzling to put it mildly until he saw the switch built into the side of the briefcase. A simple on-off toggle. “Holy guacamole!”
Chapter 60
Critical Condition
Palo Alto, California
BY THE TIME Achilles had loaded the dead bodies, bloody blanket, and black briefcase into the back of the rental car, Zoya’s red dot had cleared the Bay Area. By the time he’d scrubbed the floor, set out the trash, and emptied his safe of the things they’d need, Zoya’s red dot was on the I-5 heading north.
Interstate 5 was the main West Coast highway, stretching all the way from Mexico to Canada. It passed through every major city in California, Oregon, and Washington — except for San Francisco, which it only passed near.
Katya slid into the Tahoe’s passenger seat and looked at the screen. She’d been ready long before he had, but for obvious reasons had chosen not to wait in their commandeered car. “Do you know where Zoya’s
headed?”
“I’m surprised she’s in a car at all. I would have thought she’d go straight to the consulate in San Francisco. That’s where we were, San Francisco.”
“Well maybe that’s exactly why she didn’t go there.”
Achilles turned north on Highway 101. “Maybe, but that doesn’t help.”
“Are you sure? Wouldn’t the same logic send her to the next closest consulate?”
“That’s in L.A. She’s headed north.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Look at the dot.”
“No, I mean about the consulate. There isn’t one in L.A. But we do have one in Seattle.”
One point for Katya. “Huh. That’s gotta be at least a ten-hour drive.”
Katya had her phone out. “Google says twelve. She could drive through the night, and be there when they open in the morning. Meanwhile, if it weren’t for the tracker you’d be tearing apart San Francisco.”
“God, you’re smart.”
“We could fly and leapfrog her.”
Achilles pondered that approach for a second. “That’s risky. If we’re wrong, we’ll lose a lot of time overshooting her. See if you can find a flight out of Sacramento. Either to Seattle or better yet Portland. If she’s still racing north by the time we reach Sacramento, we’ll fly.”
Katya used her thumbs while Achilles burned rubber. “The best I can find gets us into Portland at 8:30 a.m.”
“That’s too late. Did you try Alaskan and Southwest?”
“Yep.”
“Give the Sacramento Executive Airport a call. Tell them you’ve got two people desperate to be in Portland by 4:00 a.m. Maybe they can arrange to charter a plane. If they can, use your Kate Yates alias for the reservation.”
Katya got right on it. By the time they reached the I-5, she’d completed her third call. “We’re good to go.”