Critical Play (Michael Cailen Book 3)

by Mel LeBrun

  Michael was flooded with guilt as he thought about the repercussions of her actions. He stepped closer to her as she grabbed some vegetables from the pantry to prepare for dinner.

  “Why did you do that for me?” he asked again.

  “When I was a little girl,” she stepped around him and put the vegetables on the counter and began to chop them as she continued her story. “A man knocked on our door in the middle of the night. My father answered and talked with the man. I could only hear a little of what they were saying. The man was asking for help. My father seemed to know the man but he did not want to help him. He sent the man away.” She moved some chopped onions to a pan and turned on the stove. “A short time later there was another knock at the door. KGB officers and the man who wanted my father's help. They asked my father about the man. My father said he didn't know him. I could hear the man begging my father for his help. He cried out as my father shut the door and as the KGB officers dragged him from the door and shot him dead in the street.” She turned and looked Michael in the eyes. “To this day I don't know what he wanted from my father or how my father could have helped him. But I know my father always regretted not helping him.” She returned her attention back to dinner.

  Michael didn't know what to say and for a long time he said nothing. He was still in shock that she not only covered for him but knew exactly what to say.

  “How did you know I said I was your grandson?” Michael finally asked.

  She simply turned to him and smiled. “I guess we think alike. I didn't know you said that. It was the only thing I could think of.”

  “What if I said something different?” Michael asked. “They would have known you were lying.”

  “I am an old woman. I get confused.”

  “I don't think you get confused about anything,” Michael countered.

  She grinned. “They don't know that.”

  “Irina, they will find out your grandson is dead. When they do, they will be back. And they won't be as pleasant.”

  “Like I said, I get confused.”

  “They're not going to believe that.”

  “Then they can do what they want with me. I have no one in my life. No one to live for. I don't really care anymore. I don't know what kind of trouble you're in or what you wanted with the man across the hall. All I know is he was not a good man and you are a good man. And you needed my help.”

  Michael's heart went out to this woman who had virtually nothing left and yet gave the very last of what she had that was still worth something, her freedom.

  “Irina, I'd like to offer you an alternative.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Chapter 38

  Corvo, Dmitri, Ivan, and Timur were nearing the Alaskan border and stopped to look at a map and decide the best entry point. Ivan laid down in the backseat of the truck, stretching his leg while Corvo, Dmitri, and Timur looked over the map on the hood of the truck.

  Corvo spoke up and pointed to an area of the map that Dmitri and Timur were already well aware of. “This area has the least amount of surveillance,” he announced.

  “We know,” Dmitri replied. “We also know why.”

  “Has the highest population of bears,” Timur dispelled the mystery.

  Corvo looked vexed. “Are all foreign agents aware of our gaps in coverage?” he asked.

  “I can't speak for everyone, but we know that,” Dmitri answered.

  “We can't trek across bear country with Ivan who can barely walk,” Timur said.

  Dmitri and Corvo agreed but didn't see another way. Crossing by foot would be hard enough uninjured and without the bears to worry about. Crossing by vehicle though was almost as difficult if not impossible with the type of surveillance maintained on the border.

  “Could we fly below radar?” Dmitri asked.

  “I'd rather take my chances with the bears,” Corvo retorted.

  “There has to be some way,” Timur insisted.

  “I'll call Tim,” Corvo offered. “Maybe he can give us patrol patterns or something useful.”

  An hour later Corvo had his answer. He gathered Dmitri, Timur, and Ivan around the map again.

  “There's a dirt back road,” Corvo explained. “The area is patrolled with drones. But there is about an hour window when one of the drones has to return to refuel and the other will be too far away to spot us.”

  Corvo pointed to the road on the map and the men studied it.

  “This road is 32 kilometers long. 20 miles,” Dmitri remarked. “An hour doesn't give us much time.”

  “I know,” Corvo agreed.

  “You don't think we can make it?” Ivan asked.

  “Twenty miles on a bumpy rugged back road would be one thing,” Corvo explained. “Not easy but doable. However we can't even go near that road until the drone is clear. If we're spotted approaching the area will send up red flags and they will send a chopper.”

  “Considering how far we have to travel in an hour, it is not a lot of time,” Timur agreed.

  “How much time before we can move?” Dmitri asked Corvo.

  Corvo looked at his watch and did a quick calculation. “We have a little less than three hours before the drone refuels. We're about an hour out. So we have a little time.”

  Dmitri nodded. “We should probably rest.”

  A little over an hour later, they were back in the truck headed for the obscure dirt road that would take them across the border. To call it a road would be a stretch. It was barely two tire paths through overgrown foliage alongside a deep river. Corvo actually stopped at the beginning of the road and reconsidered whether they should continue.

  “The road isn't going to get any shorter,” Dmitri said.

  Corvo glanced back at him, uncertainty written all over his face. Seconds later, Corvo stepped on the gas and they were again pressing forward.

  The ride was torture for everyone. In addition to coming harrowingly close to the river at times, the truck's suspension was constantly bottoming out on the endless potholes, branches, rocks, and whatever else they were running over that they couldn't even see. Everyone was feeling woozy and grateful that Jessica wasn't with them.

  If they were going to make it safely out of the drone's range, they needed to travel at least 30 miles an hour. However, attaining let alone maintaining that speed was an impossibility. They barely broke 25 miles an hour, not only because of the deplorable condition of the road, but also because they had to stop twice to remove large debris blocking the road. Corvo tried to make up for lost time but struggled to keep control of the truck at anything faster than 25 miles per hour.

  They were well across the border into Alaska and gratefully nearing the end of the hellish path when Ivan noticed something in the road ahead.

  “What's that?” he asked.

  Corvo was so focused on the road immediately in front he didn't notice there was a vehicle blocking the road a bit farther ahead. He looked up and saw a late model gray SUV parked diagonally in the road. Seeing another vehicle at all would be strange enough but the way it was positioned was even more unusual.

  “I don't know,” Corvo replied.

  Dmitri leaned forward to get a look.

  “Who would be out here?” Timur asked.

  “Stop the truck!” Ivan suddenly shouted, climbing the back of his seat as if by doing so he could force the truck into reverse.

  Corvo slammed on the brakes. “What is it?” he asked, not seeing what Ivan already saw and what Dmitri saw a second later- a rifle across the hood and a person aiming it in their direction.

  When the first bullet hit the truck, though, Corvo reacted. He threw the truck in reverse and floored it. Bullets continued to pepper the truck. He backed into a small break in the trees and turned the truck around, now gunning it for the Canadian side.

  “Whoever that is,” Corvo said, “he's not friendly.”

  “Stop the truck,” Dmitri said.

  “Are you kidding?” Corvo asked. “Someone's shooti
ng at us!”

  “He's pushing us into a trap.”

  “What are you talking about?” Corvo asked without stopping.

  “He never fired at the windows and he didn't disable the vehicle,” Ivan explained.

  Corvo thought about it for a minute and decided it was strange. He stopped the truck though still not fully convinced they were right.

  “Maybe he was just a bad shot,” Corvo suggested.

  “This is one of the tactics we use when we need to capture or kill a specific target and we're outnumbered,” Dmitri said flatly. “We need to get off the road and try to lose them in the woods. Right now, they have the upper hand. We don't have much time.”

  “We're better off taking our chances with a trap than wandering the woods of Alaska,” Corvo countered. He was still not convinced they were even heading for a trap.

  “There was a small town on the map about nineteen kilometers southwest of here. Less than a day's walk,” Dmitri said.

  “Through bear-infested woods,” Corvo sharply reminded him.

  “I'm telling you,” Dmitri said calmly. “If you keep going, you'll head right into a trap.”

  Corvo couldn't believe how things had turned so bad, so quickly. They were almost at the border, almost home free.

  “I have to ditch this in the water,” Corvo said. “If it's spotted by the drones, this place will be swarming, not to mention it will link back to me and your prints are all over it.”

  “The town is across the river,” Dmitri said. “We might as well swim across now. Perhaps it will put some distance between us and them.”

  “There was a break in the path just back a little ways. I'll need to gun it in order to get this thing far enough in the water. You guys should get out now,” Corvo suggested.

  Ivan and Timur got out of the truck taking along what supplies they had left. Dmitri insisted on staying with Corvo in case something went wrong. Corvo drove to where the path ran alongside the river. They opened their windows and Corvo punched the gas as he steered straight for the water. The truck splashed into the river spraying a wall of water into the air. The truck sank rapidly. Corvo and Dmitri hurried to get safely to shore where Ivan and Timur were waiting. The water was frigid. In just the few minutes they were in it, their fingers had already begun to feel numb.

  “If we are going to cross this river, we have to hurry,” Dmitri said.

  “Is the stream moving towards the town or away?” Ivan asked.

  “Towards,” Dmitri answered as he began shivering. “So at least we won't get pulled further away. But it doesn't lead to the town. We need to head northwest.”

  “Let's go,” Timur said as he began removing his shoes. “I'll help Ivan. You two look like you might barely make it across on your own strength.”

  Dmitri nodded. He looked at Corvo and the two of them reentered the water after removing their shoes and tying the laces together so they wouldn't get lost in the water. They were halfway across the river when Ivan and Timur could be seen swimming along to meet them.

  If they had continued on the road, they would have indeed entered a trap laid by Osin and Nikanov. On a hunch that Dmitri and his men would still try to cross the border into the States and would likely try to do so through Alaska, they set themselves up with remote drones of their own and monitored the few roads sprawling across Canada that ran through or near the border to the US. They had spotted Corvo's truck carrying Dmitri, Ivan and Timur a day earlier. They monitored their progress with video surveillance and lucked out when they intercepted Corvo's call to Gatti letting them know exactly where they would try to cross the border. Knowing when and where they were headed allowed them to plan their attack.

  Not having the same problems with border crossing that Dmitri and his team had, Osin and Nikanov easily crossed over into the US using the main roads and began backtracking to the road that Dmitri would be taking to illegally cross over. They set the trap and waited.

  Catching Dmitri in the trap was only one possible outcome that Osin and Nikanov planned for. Seeing Corvo with them and overhearing his call to the CIA left them wondering just who Corvo was and why he was involved with Dmitri and his teammates. Though Dmitri, Ivan and Timur were the main targets, they would be happy to also get Corvo if it worked out.

  Osin and Nikanov saw them swimming across the river. Having prepared for that possibility, they grabbed a canoe off the back of their truck and carried it to the water.

  As Dmitri and Corvo stood waiting for Ivan and Timur to reach them shore they saw two men in a canoe heading towards them.

  Corvo cursed. “We'll never outrun them.”

  “There's only two,” Dmitri said surprised.

  “Yeah, well, they're dry and warm,” Corvo said shivering uncontrollably.

  “I agree. It seems unlikely we will be able to outrun them.”

  “I hope you have a plan because I have nothing,” Corvo admitted.

  Ivan and Timur reached shore just then and they helped them out of the water.

  “We have company.” Dmitri nodded towards the canoe.

  Ivan and Timur looked back at it.

  “What's the plan?” Timur asked.

  Dmitri turned to Ivan. “I'm afraid you're slowing us down.”

  OSIN AND Nikanov made it to the other side of the river within mere minutes of Ivan and Timur. Knowing who they were chasing, they moved ahead cautiously. They easily spotted the wet trail left behind by the four men who were no doubt fighting hypothermia by now. Only a few minutes into the chase and they spotted Ivan alone, limping along. With his injury, stealth was an impossibility. He was making so much noise as he walked that he didn't even hear Osin and Nikanov sneak up behind him.

  Nikanov took him down without even a fight. Injured, cold, wet and exhausted Ivan could hardly offer any resistance.

  “Your friends left you,” Osin observed. “Left you to your fate while they went on without you.”

  “You know nothing,” Ivan spat.

  “I know you are here and they are not,” Osin replied.

  Ivan looked away from him and refused to respond.

  “Tell me where they are headed and how Special Agent Lance Corvo is involved and maybe I won't take you back to Russia to live out your days in a bottomless pit.”

  “You'll kill me?” Ivan asked.

  “It would be better than where you're going,” Nikanov reasoned.

  Ivan shook his head. “No. I have another offer.”

  “And what is that?” Osin asked.

  “Put down your weapons and you won't be killed,” Ivan said.

  Osin and Nikanov’s first reaction was to laugh but with the confidence Ivan displayed they feared perhaps they had missed something. When they glanced around them they realized they had. While they were chasing down Ivan, they hadn't noticed Dmitri, Timur and Corvo closing in on them. Ivan was purposefully making as much noise as he could while he walked to mask the sounds of Dmitri, Timur, and Corvo. Osin and Nikanov were so focused on Ivan, they didn't notice what was happening around them.

  Outsmarted and outgunned, Osin and Nikanov raised their hands in surrender. Dmitri and Timur relieved them of their guns while Corvo stood guard. Shivering and bordering on hypothermia, the men needed to quickly find shelter and start a fire which became their next priority after tying up Osin and Nikanov.

  But a fire would be visible to passing drones. It would take time to send someone to investigate, if it was even warranted. They would be long gone before that happened and unlike an abandoned vehicle, there wouldn't be any fingerprints or license plates left behind to identify them.

  With most of their wet clothing removed and hanging from overhead branches to dry, Dmitri, Ivan, Timur, and Corvo hovered close to the fire. Dmitri made Nikanov give up his coat and pants to Ivan, who was the most vulnerable of all of them while Osin had to forego his socks and shoes. Sitting on a large log by the fire dressed in dry clothes, Ivan was the warmest.

  “Why did you let the polic
emen live?” Osin's voice bellowed over the sound of the roaring fire.

  Dmitri broke his gaze from the fire to look Osin in the eyes. He looked back at the fire as he answered, “Because they were innocent.”

  “What do you care about innocence?” Nikanov scoffed.

  “Shut up!” Ivan shouted.

  “Ivan, calm down,” Dmitri scolded him.

  “They don't care that we're innocent!” Ivan said angrily. “Does anyone care that we're innocent?”

  “If you were in their shoes, would you care?” Timur asked Ivan, knowing Ivan would have done just as he was commanded without question.

  Dmitri and Timur had enough experience in this line of work to know that sometimes things weren't always as they appear. Ivan, unfortunately, was getting a hard lesson in that at an early age.

  “It would have been easier for you if you had killed them,” Osin said after everyone had calmed down.

  All eyes were on Dmitri, who seemed pensively fixated on the dancing flames. It almost seemed as though he hadn't heard Osin's remark until he finally spoke.

  “I refuse to let the actions of others change who I am as a person,” Dmitri said, never taking his eyes off the fire. “No matter what despicable things are done to you. You choose who you are. You can choose to use those things as an excuse to act despicable yourself or you can choose to rise above it and be true to your real self.” Dmitri looked at Ivan and then Timur before turning to Osin and Nikanov. “I have never killed an innocent person, even to save myself. And I never will.”

  “What do you call selling a nuclear weapon to terrorists?” Nikanov retorted.

  “We were set up!” Ivan angrily shouted, unable to restrain himself.

  Timur stepped closer and touched Ivan's shoulder to calm him down.

  “You too have your doubts about our guilt,” Dmitri surmised. “Or else you would have simply killed us in the truck.”

  “We wanted to question your CIA friend,” Osin answered.

  “He's FBI,” Dmitri quickly corrected him. “You know that.”

  “FBI who calls in to the CIA for tactical support,” Nikanov added.

  “Knowing people in the CIA, still doesn't make him CIA,” Dmitri said.