by Steven James
Easy, Pat, don’t lose it!
I saw movement near the doorway, a dark blue parka, and I had an idea. “So you’re saying you’re going to kill a woman, kill a girl, just to watch them suffer? To watch them die?”
“I can’t think of a better reason.”
“Killing men isn’t enough for you? You turn to women and children?”
“Patrick, trust me, the more helpless they are, the more satisfying it is.”
“That was the wrong thing to say, Jake.”
“Really?”
“You’re going to regret threatening Lien-hua and Tessa.”
He grinned. “Am I?”
“Yes,” came a voice from the doorway. “Now, step away from the control board.” I heard the sound of a shell being slammed into the chamber of a shotgun.
Alexei Chekov edged through the doorway, aiming the Remington 870 12-gauge from the gun rack in Sean’s pickup at Jake’s chest.
He must’ve read my email.
He’d come back.
And Alexei Chekov does not take it lightly when people threaten women or children.
103
“Step back,” Alexei repeated to Jake. “I mean it.” Maybe Alexei didn’t typically use guns, but I was glad to see him holding one right now.
Obviously surprised but not appearing intimidated, Jake held up his hands, backed away from the panel.
“So, you enjoy killing women?” Alexei said. “Watching children suffer and squirm?”
The smugness on Jake’s face evaporated. He said nothing.
Keeping the gun on Jake, Alexei called to me, “Who is Valkyrie, Agent Bowers?”
Oh no.
Not good.
Now Jake grinned. “Go on, Pat, tell him the truth. You don’t have any idea who Valkyrie is.”
Alexei eyed me. “Is that true?”
Not Terry. Not Cassandra.
Would Becker have lied while he was dying, his skull crushed?
No. I doubted that.
So, not Becker.
Rusk?
“Well?”
My thoughts tumbled over each other, roaming, curling, turning in quick cycles, flipping through the facts. I could feel it. Everything coming together. The clues, the case, like an intricate puzzle, all clicking into place.
Whoever Valkyrie was he, or she, knew details of this mission, communicated with the Eco-Tech team.
Code names by high-level operatives are rarely chosen indiscriminately. Valkyrie draws from images of death, eternity, beauty, marriage.
Fluent in different languages. Male. He has a specialty in communication technology and hacking.
Yes.
“Agent Bowers?”
To find out what lies at the core of someone’s personality, you need to know more than what he wants… Only when you know what someone most deeply regrets will you know what matters to him most.
What he most deeply regrets…
“Tell him, Pat,” Jake called. I said nothing and Jake went on, “In the car, Patrick had me send that email to his account noting that he knew who Valkyrie was-”
The mind has to deal with guilt somehow. When it’s overwhelming, escaping reality is sometimes the only choice.
“But he made that up. Just to lure you-”
“I was speaking with Agent Bowers,” Alexei said coolly. “I’d like you to be quiet now. Quiet alive or quiet dead. You choose.”
Jake said nothing.
“Agent Bowers, tell-”
But before Alexei could finish his sentence, Jake went for his gun, and then I was yelling for Alexei to Get down! but Jake snatched up his Glock, aimed, Alexei fired the shotgun, the slug hit Jake in the torso, and he jerked to the side, crumpling to the ground.
Even if the magazine of the Remington 870 had a plug, Alexei had at least one shot left before he would need to reload. He turned the barrel toward me. “Who is Valkyrie?”
Careful, Pat. His GRU psych profile noted his “volatile and irregular temperament.”
“Alexei,” I ordered, “put down the shotgun and-”
On the other side of the room I saw Jake rise to his feet and reach for the switch to the pulp grinder.
“Behind you!” I yelled to Alexei.
But it was too late. Jake flipped the switch, the engine sprang to life, the blades of the log grinder began to churn, and the conveyor belt I was cuffed to lurched forward, carrying me toward the spinning blades.
Alexei trained the shotgun on Jake, but Jake fired again, sending him ducking for cover behind a workbench about three meters from the grinder. I could barely hear the shots over the roar of the motor.
All Jake needed to do was hold Alexei off for a couple minutes. Then I would be dead, backup would be here, and Jake would be the hero-wounded in the line of duty while apprehending an internationally wanted assassin.
As far as I knew, the only way to turn this wood grinder off was the switch beside Jake.
It’s like a giant paper shredder.
And shredders can be jammed.
Hoping to stop the blade, I aimed my Maglite into the spinning blades, threw it in.
For a fraction of a second, the machine stalled, but then, with a sheer, screeching noise, the blades chewed through the flashlight’s aluminum casing and batteries, sending shards of metal flying in every direction. Even four meters away I felt some of them blister across my face.
But it’d worked for a moment I just need something bigger. Something metal.
I scanned the area for something big enough to stop the blade.
The conveyor belt took me closer.
Nothing. Nothing within reach.
Hurry!
Closer now. Every second closer.
Yes!
I pointed to the shotgun that Alexei held and shouted as loudly as I could for him to throw it to me. I doubted he heard the words, but he must’ve understood my gestures because he heaved the shotgun up to me across the aisle that stretched between us.
Time seemed to slow as I rode the conveyor belt toward the blades and watched the shotgun rise through the air, parallel to the ground. I gauged my timing, reached for it, snagged the gun from its flight, swung the stock to my shoulder, and pivoted on my knee toward Jake.
He was eyeing me down the barrel of his Glock I aimed at his face.
Squeezed the trigger.
Dropped him.
Then I spun and faced the shredder again. I raised the shotgun high, targeted the spinning blades, and thrust the barrel into the wood pulp grinder as hard as I could so it wouldn’t get kicked back out.
With a high-pitched cry, the blades fought to power through the metal, but the barrel was too thick. Still, somehow, the machine managed to draw the gun in nearly two feet before jamming completely. The conveyor belt lurched to a stop, a wisp of sour smoke coughed from the grinder’s engine, and though they strained violently to devour the gun barrel, the blades no longer moved.
When I looked toward the control panel, I saw that Alexei was already there. He punched the kill switch, and the engine powered down.
“Nice shot, Agent Bowers.”
“Nice throw.”
He bent over Jake’s body. “I really thought that I… Aha.”
He held up the shattered iPad that Jake had stuffed into his jacket when we were just outside the door. The slug had gone through it, but the iPad must have deflected it enough to strike Jake in a place that allowed him to live long enough to try to kill again.
Sirens. Close. Maybe a mile out, maybe less.
Alexei approached me. “Do you know who Valkyrie is?”
I felt my heart hammering.
He flicked out the bone gun and placed the device’s tip against the bone on the outside of my plastic-cuffed ankle.
“Alexei, think about this-”
“I’ll start with the calcaneus and work my way up. Do you know who Valkyrie is or don’t you?”
“I do.”
He tightened his grip on the bone gun, posit
ioned it carefully against my heel. “Who is Valkyrie?”
“You are.”
Alexei stared at the agent. “What?”
“You’re Valkyrie. You’re the one who killed Tatiana, and when you did, something happened inside of-”
“No.”
“You loved her and when you-”
“No!”
But even as he denied it, images were sliding across Alexei’s mind, images of things he should not have been able to remember, not if he were innocent. The pictures came to him as if they were filtered through a screen, as if he were recalling someone else’s life… attacking Erin Collet on Wednesday night… pressing the remote control detonator and blowing off Kirk Tyler’s head… then leaving to read The Brothers Karamazov… having a conversation with…
Himself.
No!
Yes.
Valkyrie.
The sirens drew closer.
Valkyrie knew about the Tanfoglio in Italy. About Tatiana! He had contacts in Pakistan, first appeared in May, left the money at the dead drop. All of this, Alexei, all of this, because you were Images. Memories. Pain.
Seeing Tatiana, the look on her face when he raised the pistol, the terror in her eyes, the sound of the shot No!
Yes.
The day Valkyrie was born. The day Tatiana died.
Alexei removed the bone gun from Special Agent Bowers’s calcaneus bone.
“If you leave here”-Bowers’s words were steely and unflinching-“I will find you. I’m going to bring you in.”
“I have no doubt,” Alexei heard himself say softly.
Blue and red lights were flashing, curling, through the blowing snow, flashing through the windows and the still-open door.
He backed away from the conveyor belt, and, as the patrol cars arrived on the property, Alexei pocketed his bone gun and disappeared into the night.
104
Four days later
We did not find Alexei Chekov.
I expected him to use Sean’s truck for his getaway from the sawmill, but he did not.
In the hours, and now days, following his escape, state patrol scoured the lumberyard, the roads surrounding the area, even the ELF tunnels and base.
Nothing.
That night, thinking that Alexei might try to catch a ride in one of the cruisers, I’d had the officers check their trunks before leaving the property. No sign of the assassin.
It was as if he really was a ghost and had stepped out of that sawmill door and slipped right into the invisible fabric of the air.
Alexei Chekov, shirt off, back to the mirror, stared over his wounded left shoulder at his reflection, studying the infected bullet wound beside his scapula.
He had managed to hide in the forest until the officers left the lumberyard, and then made his way down here to South Chicago one borrowed car at a time, and now he was in a motel that charged by the hour. He’d paid for four.
Alexei had purposely left the bullet in his shoulder, purposely left it untreated in order to make his wife’s killer suffer. The day she died he had vowed to do so, and he was a man of his word.
Angry, red, infected lines fingered out from the bullet wound and snaked across his shoulder, down his arm, up onto his neck. Bearing this wound without complaint had also been his own private penance, a self-imposed sentence for slaughtering his beautiful bride.
But it had not been enough.
The memory flashes hadn’t stopped, but each day became more and more frequent: conversations he didn’t know he’d had, travels he’d been unaware of until now, crimes Valkyrie had committed against those whom Alexei never would have harmed.
There were two people inside of him. One who killed because it was his profession, the other who killed because it was his passion.
But this battle was going to end tonight.
Last week when he was in that jail cell in Wisconsin, Alexei had told Agent Bowers, “I have someone to take out my vengeance on; you have only God to blame.”
Tonight he would avenge Tatiana’s murder by putting a bullet in the brain of her killer.
Alexei put on his shirt, dressed for the cold, and then left the motel to find a pawn shop where he could purchase a handgun.
Lien-hua and I arrived at Sean’s house late for supper.
This afternoon’s debriefing with Tait, Torres, Natasha, and Linnaman, the coroner, had gone longer than I’d thought, and when we arrived at the house, Tessa, Sean, and Amber were already seated at the table for the meal.
As Lien-hua hung up her coat, I noticed a small package addressed to me sitting on the table near the front door. The package had a Denver postmark, and I knew immediately what it was-the item I’d had my friend John-Paul send me.
The item I needed for tonight.
Surreptitiously, I slid it into my pocket so Lien-hua wouldn’t see. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen,” I told her. “I need to run to my room for a sec.”
“See you there.”
Alexei arrived at the pawn shop.
“Can I help you?” asked the greasy-haired man behind the counter.
“I believe you can.” Alexei indicated toward the guns propped up in a large glass case on the wall.
“You got a Firearm Owner’s ID card?”
“No. And I’m looking for something you have cartridges for, here in the store.” Alexei pulled out a thick wad of hundreds. “This will be a cash transaction.”
Sean stared into the wok. “It’s called what, again?”
“Tofu,” Tessa said.
“Tofu,” he mumbled.
“Yes.”
Amber slid some of the firm white squares onto his plate.
Sean tentatively prodded at them with his fork. “And it’s… you said it’s curd?”
“Soybean curd,” Tessa answered. “You’ll like it. Trust me.”
“Soybean curd.”
“It’s really not that bad,” I assured him. From across the table Lien-hua gave me a wry smile.
Margaret had wanted me to rest for a few days, Tessa didn’t mind missing a little school, and Amber needed family around, so it’d been an easy decision to stay at Sean and Amber’s place for the week. Additionally, with all of the follow-up on the cases, it hadn’t been hard to get Margaret to sign off on letting Lien-hua stay in the area for a few extra days as well.
Obviously, Sean and Amber had a rocky road in front of them, but I figured if their marriage could survive everything that had happened last week, they might just be able to make things work after all.
“Mmm, not bad,” Sean said, referring to the tofu. “It’s kind of tasteless, but that’s better than I expected.” He offered Tessa a friendly wink.
“Hey,” he said to me, “I’ve got something for you.” He reached under the table. “The description you gave me of the tree wasn’t perfect, but…” He produced my. 357 SIG P229, retrieved from the snowbank near the Chippewa River, cleaned, just like new.
“Oh yes.” This morning when he’d offered to go look for it, I hadn’t thought he was serious, and when I realized he was, I hadn’t thought there was any chance he’d find it.
“You’re amazing.” I took the gun from him.
And it was happy to be home in my hands.
Alexei made his decision.
A Rossi 351. 38 special. “Good choice.” The clerk unlocked the cabinet to get the gun. “Simple. Small. Perfect for concealed carry. Reliable.”
Reliable wasn’t really the issue since Alexei was only going to use it to fire one bullet, but he decided he didn’t need to mention that.
While the clerk pocketed his money, Alexei left for the motel, carrying the gun, the holster that came with it, and the cartridges, which only came by the box.
We’d put a moratorium on watching the news.
Listening to the ways that America and Iran were spinning the incidents of last week, watching the atmospheric rises and falls of the volatile stock market, hearing the political analysts drone on, was just too m
uch.
Honestly, being here, isolated in the winter wonderland of northern Wisconsin, it felt like we were in another world.
And I wasn’t sure I really wanted to go back to the old one.
After supper, when I was on my way to talk to Tessa to show her what was in the package from Denver, Sean called me aside.
“Listen,” he said, “I’m driving over to Green Bay tomorrow-Tessa said she’d be glad to stay with Amber.” They’d been taking turns making sure Amber wasn’t left alone. It was part of the deal for us bringing her home from the hospital.
“Green Bay?”
“I’ve decided to tell him-to tell her son-the truth.”
I still wasn’t following. “Her son?”
“Nancy Everson. She had a twenty-two-year-old son when she died. I’m gonna tell him the truth about that night-that I’d been drinking, that I lost control of the car, and that’s the reason his mother is dead.”
“Sean, I’m really not sure you need to do that. There are statutes that-”
“Yeah, he could press charges. I know. I’ve thought about that. But he deserves to know the truth. It matters. I need to do it. Resolve this thing. It’s as simple as that.”
I realized that whatever the outcome of my brother’s meeting with the man in Green Bay tomorrow, I was proud of him right now for choosing to entrust his future to the truth.
Yes, I was proud of my brother.
And for the first time I could ever remember, I told him so.
Right after my brief conversation with Sean, I headed down the hall and knocked on Tessa’s door.
“Yeah, come on in.”
I went in, closed the door behind me. Tessa was lying on the bed, writing in her journal, her teddy bear, Francesca, nestled up beside her.
“I have something to show you, Raven,” I said.
Curious, she scooted forward, sat on the edge of the bed, and I held up the box containing the ring.
“What!” Her eyes were wide. “Can I see it?”
I gave her the box.
“It finally arrived this morning. I’m about to go ask her right now.”
Tessa opened the ring box and let out a long, slow breath. “You did good.” She admired it longer than I thought she would. “You did real good.”