Apparently it was.
The two attackers wore ski masks. Weird. The men in Pushchino hadn’t worn anything to conceal their identity. It was almost as if they were so certain of their victory that they didn’t care if their faces were seen or recognized. Plus, these masked men had an epicanthal fold at the medial canthus of their eyes. A typically northern Chinese trait. She’d seen several of the attackers at Pushchino way too close for comfort. They’d had higher foreheads, dark hair, with prominent nasal ridges.
No matter, these two almond-eyed men stood between them and the chopper.
Brandt took a step forward. “Move aside.”
But they didn’t. And why should they? It was two guns against two guns. And with the stairwell wall blocking the central aisle, there was no way Lopez and his snazzy helicopter could help out.
Maybe she spoke too soon as the wall rumbled, then cracked. Brandt hurried them away from the splintering plaster. He pushed her and Bunny down, covering them with his back as the wall exploded inward.
Shielding her eyes, Rebecca watched the upper rotors of the helicopter grind through the wall. The chopper was ninety degrees vertical, pushing its blades through the structure. With a pained scream of metal the upper rotor broke off, skipping off the railing and then down the walkway, scattering the two masked men.
“Move!” Brandt yelled. She snatched Bunny’s hand as they sprinted out of the stairwell and onto the second floor concourse. Harvish was close behind, firing at the retreating men.
Wobbling, the chopper righted itself and joined the firefight. The masked men retreated down the stairwell and out of sight. Brandt kept them running forward, clearly not wanting to take any chances. They raced past hair salons and perfume stores.
Finally Brandt pulled them to a stop and circled his arm over his head. Immediately the helicopter tilted back, streaking toward them. Still firing toward the stairwell, the door on the side of the chopper opened. Talli nodded from the copilot seat.
“In,” Brandt ordered Harvish.
The point man crawled into the incredibly tiny hold of the helicopter. He had to lie flat to fit. Without needing a bit of urging, Bunny leaped in after him, cramming herself as far back as she could get.
Brandt helped Rebecca into the hold, but she could only fit half of her thunder thighs.
“Bend at the waist,” he urged, indicating to what seemed like way too small a space at the upper end.
Somehow Rebecca emulated a Cirque du Soleil performer and crammed herself into the cramped space. It wasn’t until Brandt gave her a sad smile that she realized there was no way his wide shoulders were going to fit.
“Sarge, I can stay behind,” Harvish suggested as he tried to shimmy past Bunny.
Brandt shook his head, putting his hand on the hatch door. “Just keep them safe.”
“No!” Rebecca screamed, but the sergeant closed the hatch door, locking it. Her fist beat against the solid metal. “No!”
No, they couldn’t leave him behind. She wouldn’t accept it. She couldn’t.
But the helicopter pulled away from the stone railing and then sped forward. Everyone was thrown back as Lopez seriously put on the gas or whatever you did to a helicopter.
“No,” she sobbed. How could Lopez leave Brandt? How could he?
In the dark Bunny’s hand found hers. The younger woman gave it a squeeze.
“He’ll figure out a way.”
Brave words. Rebecca desperately wanted to believe them, only how exactly could Brandt fulfill them?
* * *
The wind whisked through Brandt’s hair, screaming in his ear. Which only made him wrap his arms tighter around the helicopter’s front wheel strut. His legs bracing against the rear wheel’s struts, his belly tight against the underside of the chopper. But even with this hold he feared that Lopez’s tight bank might dislodge him.
Brandt could feel the heat of the church’s fire as they flew over St. Basil’s toward the Big Moscow River. Their escape nearly complete. The only problem. Another masked man stood at the center of the bridge with an RPG launcher on his shoulder.
Upside down it was a little hard to tell who the fucker was, but he was about blow them out of the sky. Then the man’s body shuddered before he crumpled to the ground, the grenade launcher tumbling away harmlessly.
Brandt fought the wind to look to his right. He found Davidson perched within a golden-domed tower on the Kremlin’s wall. How the hell had he gotten in there? More importantly, how the hell was he getting out of there? Scattered police fire from the ground below streaked past them. The scarred man saluted Brandt, seeming resigned to being captured.
Lopez angled toward the gilded tower, although tentatively. As if giving Brandt time to nix the idea. Damn it. Davidson had saved their lives like five times already. Carefully Brandt released one hand and pounded on the helicopter’s belly, twice for yes. Brandt’s hand flew back to grip the strut as Lopez wasted no time, leaning the chopper toward the Kremlin.
Within moments they hovered next to the tower. They took some fire from the guards, but Davidson, more nimble than his injuries should have allowed him, leaped from the window of the dome and onto the chopper’s gun strut. Lean and light, the metal held his weight like it never would have done for Brandt.
The helicopter tilted back to the left, hard, trying to keep the chopper between the two exposed men and the Russian guards down below.
Wobbling, with only one rotor, too heavily loaded and listing nearly horizontal, Brandt’s team flew out and over Moscow’s skyline.
* * *
Aunush’s ankle protested each time she put weight on it, but she ignored its shrill warnings. Then the sniper wrapped his arm around her waist and urged her to lean into him. At first she resisted, but then realized his ruse.
Not having to exaggerate at all, Aunush limped along beside him. After killing the only witnesses to their escape, they had left behind their weapons. All of their weapons. She felt naked as they joined the chaos of the crowd behind the shopping mall.
Russian soldiers shouted conflicting orders and then argued with the local police as the panicked crowd surged back and forth.
Then some overeager soldier shot into the swarm of survivors. The Russians in the crowd, well aware of the State’s human rights track record, rushed the guards, breaking the line.
There truly was a God above. Saying a silent prayer to heaven, Aunush held to the sniper as he allowed them to be swept down a side street and away from the soldiers and police. From there, the crowd dispersed, seeming to melting into the buildings.
They couldn’t risk finding a hideout so close. Once the Russians untangled themselves, they would be thoroughly searching the area. But how far could they get on foot? They needed a vehicle. The sniper was already checking car doors, trying to find an easy mark.
Then a car squealed to a stop beside them. Unarmed, Aunush could only watch as the passenger door swung open.
Nannan sat in the backseat. Had the Watcher really secured a getaway vehicle?
But as two masked men exited the car, waving pistols at them, Aunush knew they could not be that lucky.
The sniper bristled at the men, but they were weaponless and clearly this ambush had been well planned.
With as much pride as one could muster while being kidnapped, Aunush moved with surety into the backseat. Of course, Nannan sat sobbing like a toddler as the sniper slid in beside her.
Even before the door closed on them, Aunush was already plotting how to turn this abduction to their advantage.
And sacrificing Nannan was perhaps at the top of her list.
CHAPTER 14
══════════════════
Undisclosed Location
6:35 a.m. GMT
Aunush sat on the cold steel chair, her wrists and ankles tied to the metal. She’d been left only in her bra and panties. A strange act of modesty given the fact the Chinese henchmen kept threatening to torture her.
And the scene supported their threats. The room had classic torture room gray, rough concrete walls. A bare bulb hung from a frayed electrical wire. The large drain in the center of the room made it easy to clean up any mess they made.
To the side sat a large stainless steel table filled with instruments meant to extract information from their subjects. Some sharp, others dull. All meant to torture.
Aunush supposed this was all meant to intimidate her, soften her for the questioning to come. She also noticed they left her interrogation for last. Through the grimy window she could see across the hall. Her sniper was stripped naked, hanging in a stress position. What the Chinese did not realize was that the sniper routinely did for this entertainment.
In the room next to hers, the drone of high-pitched sounds meant to break down cognition and thought processes beat through the wall. They must have realized that Nannan would have passed out if he’d been put into even a nonstressed position. A backhanded slap would have put him into a coma. Instead, the Chinese choose to break down his resistance with nonphysical torture.
Strangely she wasn’t any more worried about Nannan giving up any information than she was the sniper breaking. Granted Nannan was flabby and a moron, he was still a Watcher of the Word. The thing the Chinese did not understand about Nannan was that he did not fear for his life, he feared for his immortal soul. Judgment Day was not an abstract concept or even one that was that far off. The Disciples believed deeply that each life was judged at its end. And if you were found wanting? There would be no admission to heaven. It was the Sheol, where you were judged by God on how you followed His Word.
Nannan might weep and beg for the sound torture to stop, but break his tenet with God? Never.
Aunush did not need to dig that far to find her will to resist. She simply would not give the Chinese the pleasure of breaking her. Besides, they would not have the time.
Patiently she’d waited through the night in a light meditative trance. In her mind she’d followed the mavokh, the holy labyrinth. She followed it in her mind as it twisted and doubled back upon itself, never finding the center. Not that she wished to. Aunush was not quite ready to come face-to-face with God just yet. If she witnessed His purity, she feared she would lose the ability to do what must be done in His name.
The door creaked open as a Chinese operative walked into the room. His gloved hands were covered in blood. Such a great theatrical touch. He snapped them off, tossing the gloves on the floor where they created a bright red blotch.
Aunush remained silent. Her features neutral.
He walked around her chair, clearly trying to intimidate her.
“Why did you attack the American team?” he asked, his English heavily accented in a distinctly Beijing accent, however she didn’t think he actually grew up in Beijing. There was a flavoring of Min Nan under that cultured accent. Clearly he was trying to hide his rural upbringing.
And just like his accent, the blood was fake as well.
Aunush didn’t answer for the same reason she didn’t ask to speak to anyone in charge despite the long hours waiting. No, she needed the Chinese to come to her.
“Who do you work for?”
Again, she ignored the man’s questions. The Chinese must already know at least some of the pieces to the puzzle. They had risked attacking Americans on Russian soil. They were not fools.
A slap came from nowhere, snapping Aunush’s head to the side.
Oh look, they want to play rough.
Please. This was more like foreplay.
“I asked, who do you work for?” the man demanded as he stalked in front of her. “Why were you in Moscow?”
She bent her head and murmured an offering to the Lord Almighty. Not really to give her strength but to pull the man closer.
He grabbed a curved knife from the table and obliged her. “You will tell me or you will suffer.”
Aunush threw her head forward, slamming her forehead into the man’s. Stunned, he rocked back, but not fast enough. Her wrist bonds, loosened after hours of careful manipulation, came loose as Aunush’s hands flew to his head, snapping it sharply to the right.
The dead man fell to the floor. From his nose a trickle of blood, real blood, emptied down the drain.
She didn’t bother undoing her ankle restraints. It turned out the chair was quite comfortable. Aunush simply sat back down and looked into the small camera.
“Why don’t you send in somebody who can really carry out an interrogation?”
* * *
Rebecca got out of the VW van, their fourth vehicle since ditching the helicopter in the middle of the international business district of Moscow, and unfolded her cramped limbs. Lacking the adrenaline of their harried escape, her muscles rebelled. It hadn’t helped that Rebecca had practically held her breath for the two hours it took for them to get out of Moscow.
Every car that pulled up next alongside them, a possible enemy. Any police car a possible threat. Just the memory of the tense ride made her joints shake. She had to reach out and steady herself on the van. Thank goodness the Russia-Ukrainian border was as porous as it was. They had traveled through the night on a string of bribes.
“Now that was invigorating,” Lopez said, slapping her shoulder.
“Whatever, Ricky.”
“Um, hello?” the corporal said indignantly with far too much energy for a guy who’d just driven seven straight hours. “I just invented indoor helicopter flying. It is going to be all the rage, I’m telling ya.”
Since she didn’t respond Lopez moved on, doing lunges at each step, as the others pulled the gear out of the back. The only two left in the van were Davidson and Bunny. The young woman still slept fitfully on the small cot in the back, her head resting on Davidson’s lap. He gently stroked her hair. It was the only way any of them could get her to settle down. Rebecca hated to rouse her even to board the private plane that Lopez had commissioned.
The woman had only spoken one word since the viscous attack on Moscow. “Slovenia.”
No one had known what she meant at the time. And honestly Rebecca didn’t know much more after an extensive search on the Internet. About all she could gather was that the architect, Nikolay, had retired shortly after the renovations to St. Basil’s Cathedral. Then she found some tiny Slovenian newspaper article from the seventies regarding a famous architect purchasing a remote chalet. She could only assume it was Nikolay, although an Alps cabin seemed a strange retirement choice for such a devout Russian Orthodox parishioner. There wasn’t a Russian Orthodox church for a hundred miles. Actually, there wasn’t much for a hundred miles in the tiny alpine village he had selected as his last home.
Leaning over, Rebecca fished out her laptop and fired it back up. Even with the backup battery she was nearly out of juice. They better have some form of plug on the plane or forget any more research.
“So you think he took the fragments he found at St. Basil’s to Slovenia?” Brandt asked over her shoulder, making her jump.
She tried to cover her reaction with a few callisthenic moves. “It would make sense.”
Brandt nodded. “And Slovenia borders Croatia, which is where we caught up with Amed. I don’t think that is any coincidence.”
Of course the sergeant didn’t. He didn’t think running into an old friend at a coffee shop was a coincidence. While she didn’t find out much regarding Nikolay, she did find some interesting facts about the country he chose. It appeared he was looking farther back than synagogues in his choice.
“It turns out that a Jewish population predates the Slavic settling of the area,” Rebecca explained.
“You’re kidding,” Brandt said as he shook out his wrist. It appeared to be sore from his stunt on the helicopter. Rebecca wanted to smack him for making her think she’d lost him…again. It was one thing to be married to another woman and quite another to be in the Russian secret police’s hands.
“Nope,” Rebecca said, acting as if the last few jarring hours hadn’t h
appened. “Plus, Slovenia has one of the oldest caches of prehistoric remains as well. They found them hidden high up in a cave near Nikolay’s chalet.”
“Lot of history then,” he commented, wincing as he extended his wrist back.
Lopez trotted up. “They’ve got the plane fueled. I’m just going to do the preflight check, boss.”
Brandt grunted his approval and then looked to the sleeping Bunny. “Think it’s just shock or something worse?”
Funny how “shock” became something to be shrugged off. Maybe funny wasn’t the right word, Rebecca thought as she looked to the young woman’s shallow breaths.
* * *
“What type of shock is the question, I think,” Rebecca answered.
Brandt regretted asking the question as soon as it was out of his mouth. Bunny had just lost her mentor. Rebecca had lost hers last year. On the surface the two seemed so very different, yet they truly were very similar. He hadn’t noticed it, but Rebecca certainly did. The sympathy she felt for Bunny shone in her eyes.
Rebecca had described losing Lochum like losing a really cranky stepfather. He bugged the crap out of you, but still left a hole in your heart when he was gone. With tears glistening in her eyes, he wanted to reach out to Rebecca so, so badly. He wanted to comfort her, yet he knew any comfort he might try to give would only backfire. Better for him to hold in his feelings and let it sting his heart rather than hurt Rebecca’s anymore.
“Can’t we get her to an American consulate or something?” Rebecca asked, going back to her laptop. “I researched it, and the embassy is just across town.”
Noting that she didn’t ask the same for herself, Brandt was reminded of Rebecca’s resilience. But her brash optimism sometimes blinded her to the situation on the ground.
“Not with the Chinese after us as well,” Brandt reminded her.
Rebecca frowned. “I can’t be sure those were Chinese features.”
“Perhaps not,” Brandt said. “But I can be sure those were QSZ-92s in their hands. Chinese military issue.”
“They’re after us for the Rinderpest?” Rebecca said more as a confirmation than a question. It seemed she was starting to accept the fact that now they had two enemies. The Disciples of Moshe and now a Chinese military intelligence squad. Their day couldn’t get much better than that.
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