by Rick Acker
The two cars pulled up behind the van and everyone got out. The FBI agents immediately went around to Sergei’s trunk and pulled out bulletproof vests, including ones for Ben and Noelle. The unfamiliar body armor felt stiff and heavy to the Corbins, but they were glad to be wearing it.
Ben and Sergei went to talk to LeGrand while Elena and Will checked the house. “I’m Ben Corbin. What’s going on?”
“Mr. Simeon had me build a one-of-a-kind system for his driveway,” LeGrand said, pointing to the metal plate on the driveway. “If you drive over it, it pops a magnetic bug onto the bottom of your car. Here’s the tracker.” He handed Ben a device that looked like a bulky laptop computer with a large antenna protruding from the back. It showed a bright dot moving toward the top of the screen. “It looks like he’s on I-94 heading north. You’re going to have to hurry if you want to catch him. He’ll be off the screen in another couple of minutes.”
Will and Elena emerged from the house and jogged over. “He’s dead,” Elena said, her face drawn.
“Murdered?” asked Sergei.
Will nodded. “Multiple fresh gunshot wounds. I could still smell the cordite in the air. I’d say he’s been dead less than fifteen minutes.”
“If we hurry, we may be able to catch whoever killed him,” said Sergei. “We’ll take my car. It’s faster and it handles better.”
“Won’t he recognize it?” asked Ben.
“You don’t think he also recognizes your car by now?” Sergei replied. “I’m sure they’ve been watching both of us at least since the trial ended. Anyway, we won’t have to get too close to him with this.” He gestured to the tracker in Ben’s hands.
Ben looked down and saw that the dot had grown fainter and was less than two inches from the top of the screen. “Sounds good. Let’s go!”
They all crowded into Sergei’s car and drove off, leaving LeGrand to talk to the police. Ben sat in front with the tracker and Noelle was in the back, sandwiched between Elena and Will.
Sergei drove at breakneck speed down the narrow, tree-lined suburban streets as they tried to keep the bug’s fading signal on the screen. They all held on tight to the armrests and braced themselves as Sergei squealed around corners and roared through quiet neighborhoods. Ben struggled to keep the tracker on his lap, glad they weren’t trying this in his Camry.
After two miles, they reached a four-lane street with few stoplights and little traffic. They all breathed a little easier as Sergei accelerated on the open road and the signal held steady on the monitor.
“I wish Simeon had taken our offer,” Elena said. “We could have protected him.”
“I don’t think he wanted to be protected,” Ben replied, “at least not if it meant the Vainakh Guard would escape with Variant D. I think he planned to trap them by using himself as bait.”
“He may wind up handing us the whole nest,” added Sergei. “I’ll bet the guy with the bug on his car is heading back to their base right now. Even if he isn’t, he’ll lead us to them sooner or later if we put him under surveillance. Simeon’s trap may have worked even better than he intended.”
“Oh, I’ll bet he intended this,” said Ben. “Remember who we’re talking about. In fact, I’ll bet he intended everything except his death, and he was willing to risk that. He saw it coming too. Why else would he give LeGrand a list of numbers to call? He knew he might not be around to make the calls himself.”
The car was silent for several seconds as they each thought of the urbane, potbellied old lawyer. “He showed us how to find the cancer,” said Sergei at last. “Now it’s up to us to remove it.”
Ibrahim drove north, scrupulously obeying every traffic rule. He checked his rearview mirror regularly and took measures to make himself difficult to follow. The last thing he wanted was to get pulled over or tailed now. Just because he had accomplished his mission did not mean he could relax.
After a successful mission, a soldier was tempted to loosen up and maybe get a little sloppy. In fact, a favorite Chechen tactic during the wars with the Russians had been to hit them on the night after they had won a victory. Their guard was generally down and they were often in the midst of a drunken celebration. Ibrahim’s celebration would wait until he could share it with all Muslims, when the corrupt colonial empires of the West and Russia collapsed.
Still, he could not resist just a little self-congratulation. He had taken down his target despite setbacks that forced him to abandon his primary plan, despite a state-of-the-art residential security system that took considerable skill to evade, and despite surprisingly tough resistance from the target.
Ibrahim touched the lump and cut on his forehead. The lawyer had fought hard, and he had faced his death with courage. He had proven a worthy—if overmatched—opponent, making Ibrahim’s victory over him all the sweeter.
A police siren went off behind Sergei’s car. He was going about seventy in a thirty-five-mile-an-hour zone and had blown through two red lights, so it was hardly a shock that local law enforcement had taken an interest in him.
“I’ll call and explain the situation,” volunteered Elena.
“Good idea,” said Sergei. “We can’t pull over, and we can’t have that siren behind us while we’re trying to tail this guy.”
Elena called the Evanston Police Department, but the desk sergeant and dispatcher both insisted that none of their units were pursuing a black Mustang Cobra convertible. By the time she ended the call, there were two cars behind them. “I’ll try the Wilmette department,” she yelled over the sirens.
“This is Special Agent Elena Kamenev of the FBI,” she shouted into the phone. “There are two black-and-whites chasing a black Mustang west on Lake. Are they yours?”
“They’re ours,” confirmed the desk sergeant after a brief pause. “Are you in the car?”
“Yes,” said Elena with relief. “I need your officers to turn off their sirens and stop following us. They’re interfering with a federal investigation.”
“Pull over and show them some ID—and explain to them why your investigation requires you to drive through the middle of town like that.”
“We can’t pull over! We’re in the middle of a hot pursuit.”
There was a long pause. “The officers behind you say they don’t see anything in front of you,” the desk sergeant said suspiciously. “What exactly are you pursuing?”
“A car with an electronic bug,” replied Elena, her voice growing hoarse with the effort of shouting over the noise of the chase. “It’s not right in front of us!”
“Look, you’re just going to have to explain all this to the officers at the roadblock.”
“What roadblock?” she asked.
Before the desk sergeant could respond, Sergei slammed on the brakes. The car fishtailed and he fought to control it, bringing it to a halt less than a foot from two squad cars parked sideways on the street. Policemen with drawn guns crouched behind the cars. “Out of the car!” one of them ordered. “Hands on your heads!”
Sergei slammed his fist on the dashboard in frustration. As they got out of the car, Will Conklin yelled, “We’re FBI! Right now a murderer is escaping, and you’re letting it happen!”
“Just keep your hands up,” the policeman ordered. He turned to one of the other officers. “Carl, go check their IDs.”
An officer holstered his gun and ran around the roadblock. “Back left pocket,” Will told him as he approached.
The policeman pulled out Will’s wallet and examined it. “Looks genuine,” he called to the other officers.
“Mine’s in my purse in the backseat,” said Elena. “It’s the black one.”
The officer briefly surveyed the interior of the car, grabbed her purse, and checked her wallet. “This one looks legit too, and they’ve got some kind of computer with an antenna in the front seat. Looks like it might be electronic surveillance gear.” H
e held it up for the others to see. As he did so, Ben saw that the screen was blank. They had lost the signal.
Elbek stood in the back of the old brewery, watching with satisfaction as Squad One loaded their deadly cargo into the white Dodge Caravan that would take them to their destination. Flying was out of the question, of course, as was any form of transportation that might allow security personnel access to their bags. There was still a chance that they might get stopped, but they could minimize it by driving nondescript vehicles that police were likely to ignore.
Their cargo was surprisingly small: one banker box per vehicle. Each box held twenty-five aerosol dispensers—five for each city they would visit. The dispensers were little more than modified spray bottles designed by Dr. Umarov. The team members would each take one or two bottles and walk around their targets, spraying discreetly. Building-ventilation systems and Dr. Umarov’s tiny particles would do the rest.
They carried little else: a change of clothes, some toiletries, small arms and ammunition hidden in the seats, and a five-gallon red plastic jug of gasoline. The gasoline had two purposes. First, it was an emergency supply in case they ran out of fuel somewhere.
The second purpose was more grim. They would do all they could to avoid infecting themselves during their travels, but contracting Variant D was still a significant risk. If one of them began exhibiting symptoms, the others would have to kill him immediately. They would then smash the teeth on the corpse to prevent identification through dental records and burn the remains sufficiently to eliminate fingerprints, scars, tattoos, and facial features. They had to remain anonymous, even in death.
The Wilmette police finally seemed satisfied. They had called the FBI to confirm Will’s and Elena’s identities. Then they’d called their office to confirm Anthony Simeon’s murder. Only then were they willing to release Sergei and his passengers.
The officer in charge didn’t exactly apologize, but he did say, “It’s too bad this happened. We’ll get you onto I-94 and call the state police to let them know what’s going on. Tell us if there’s anything else we can do to help with your manhunt.”
Escorted by police cruisers, Sergei raced for the highway, but no one in his Mustang had any great hope of reacquiring the signal from the bug. The delay at the roadblock had cost them fifteen minutes, which meant their target was now miles—perhaps as many as fifteen to twenty miles—outside of the scanner’s range.
Still, there was nothing to do but try. Sergei turned onto the highway and sped north, weaving in and out of traffic and driving down the shoulder while the rest of them held on tight. Semitrailers traveled the road in long convoys, taking advantage of the light holiday traffic to pick up time on their delivery schedules. Sergei threaded his way among the behemoths, drawing occasional air-horn blasts from angry truckers as he cut in front of them. He hardly noticed, though, as his entire attention was focused on the road ahead. He was going about thirty miles an hour faster than the trucks, so driving through them was like negotiating a moving obstacle course. He brushed the fender of one truck and nearly lost control of the car but managed to muscle it away from the guardrail.
“Whoa! We’re almost on top of him,” said Ben. “He’s practically shooting toward us.”
“What? Let me see,” said Sergei.
“No, no,” Elena called from the backseat. “You drive. I’ll look.” Ben handed the monitor back. “Ben’s right. He must have doubled back.”
Sergei laughed with relief as he slowed to a more reasonable speed. “I’ll bet he’s trying to lose tails. Little does he know. Where is he now?”
Elena looked up from the monitor and watched the southbound lanes across the grassy median. “He just passed us.” She handed the scanner back to Ben and took out her gun. Will did the same. “It’s possible he just spotted us. Drive carefully.”
Sergei smiled. “That’s the only way I know how to drive.” He turned off onto an exit ramp, drove across an overpass, and got back onto the highway heading south. “Ben, get my gun out of the glove compartment. Be ready to hand it to me if anyone starts shooting at us.”
Ben opened the glove compartment and gingerly took out the weapon. It had a matte-finish steel slide and black grips bearing the three rings and arrows of the Beretta logo.
They followed the bugged vehicle at a distance of about a half mile—far enough back so that there was no danger of being seen, but not so far that there was any risk of losing the signal again. The chase took them from I-94 onto I-294, a loop of tollway that swung through Chicago’s western and southern suburbs.
“He just turned off,” Ben said, looking up from the monitor. He scanned the highway signs announcing upcoming exits. “It looks like he took North Avenue.” He glanced down at the tracker again. “He’s heading west.”
Sergei pulled off the highway and turned west on North. He drove into the setting sun—which was at precisely the right position in the sky to make driving nearly impossible. He pulled down the visor and squinted into the glare, hoping he wouldn’t crash. They followed the dot on the tracker through several turns into a commercial and light-industrial area of Elmhurst.
“Okay, he stopped,” Ben said. “He’s straight ahead of us. Maybe five, six hundred yards.”
Sergei pulled over and parked partway down the long entranceway to an industrial park. Everyone shaded their eyes and scanned the neighborhood in front of them. Sergei reached across Ben and took a small pair of binoculars out of the glove compartment. “The warehouse and the brewery look like the most likely candidates,” he said after examining the scene for a few seconds. He took a deep breath. “It looks like this is it.”
“What do we do now?” asked Noelle.
“We call in the cavalry,” answered Will, who was already dialing the Elmhurst police. Elena was looking for Agent Gomez’s home number.
“And we wait,” added Sergei as he put the binoculars down and retrieved his gun from Ben. “Once they’ve got the area cordoned off and their SWAT units in place, we’ll work with the officer in charge to plan strategy.”
As they talked, a white minivan drove past the parked Mustang. Because of the glare from the setting sun, no one noticed that the driver of the minivan was staring at them as he passed. They also didn’t notice when the van took a corner just a little too fast a block behind them.
Elbek frowned as he saw the Caravan drive back into the brewery parking lot. Something must be wrong. “Why are you back here?” he asked as soon as the driver’s door opened.
“The Russian detective is here,” the man said frantically. “I saw his car as I drove out. He’s watching us with binoculars.”
Rage filled Elbek, but he refused to let it cloud his mind. “Is he alone?”
“There were others in the car with him, but I didn’t see anyone else nearby.”
The sentries hadn’t reported anything suspicious, which probably meant that the detective and his friends were alone, at least for the moment. The vans and other vehicles obviously couldn’t continue to leave while they were being watched. They also could not simply wait for the watchers to leave, particularly now that one of the vans had driven past them—and likely alerted them that they had been discovered. Something had to be done immediately. He turned to his aide, Yunus. “Go get Ibrahim. I have another problem for him to eliminate.”
The sun had almost set. Long shadows streaked the landscape, providing excellent natural camouflage. A chill wind blew through the grassy field as Ibrahim crept toward the car. He carried a pair of rocket-propelled grenades and a grenade launcher in place of his sniper rifle. A grenade explosion surely would attract more attention than rifle shots, but he had no choice. He needed to kill everyone in the car, and he needed to do it quickly. An RPG, though less elegant than a bullet, was the only practical solution.
He stopped about a hundred yards from the car and lay flat, listening and watching. He heard no sound except
the deep-throated idling of the Mustang’s engine. The car’s occupants appeared to be either focused on the buildings in front of them or talking among themselves. Apparently, no one was watching the empty fields on either side of the road.
The grenade launcher was a five-foot-long tube with a pistol grip and trigger about a third of the way from the end that attached to the grenade. Ibrahim slipped the launcher from its sling on his back and took an RPG out of a pouch slung over his shoulder. He attached the RPG to the launcher, got up on one knee, shouldered the launcher, and took careful aim at the car.
“How much longer until the police get here?” Noelle asked nervously.
“They said half an hour or so, and it’s been twenty-five minutes,” replied Elena. “It takes some time to put together a squad big enough to surround a building full of armed men.”
“Yeah, and I’d rather they do this right than do it fast,” added Sergei. “This could get very bad very quickly if they go in with too few cops or without the right equipment.”
“Can you tell how many of them there are?” asked Ben.
“Not really,” said Sergei. “There are five or six of them loading some SUVs and minivans, but—hold on.” He squinted through the binoculars again. All the activity outside the brewery had ceased. “That’s weird. They’re all gone. It’s almost like . . .”
“Like they know we’re watching them,” Ben said.
“Yeah,” said Sergei. He removed the binoculars from his eyes and scanned the fields around the car. The wind kept the tall grass in constant motion, making it difficult to see anything moving through it. The long, early-evening shadows also didn’t help.
An object in the grass off to the left caught his attention. It seemed like a lump of dirt, but he couldn’t be quite sure. He looked through the binoculars—and saw a man suddenly rise to a kneeling position and shoulder a grenade launcher.