Mark took another step back, and as he felt the heel of his foot press down on the fallen monitor, he had an idea.
“It’s only a matter of time, Mark. I can hear you breathing. I can feel your fear. Come out now, and I’ll make this easy on you.”
Mark grabbed hold of the monitor, and before he made a sound that gave away his position, he chucked it like a spear into the remaining monitors behind his bed. The collision set off a chain of screeching metal and breaking glass, and it grabbed Oleg’s attention. Mark heard him stalk forward—methodical, not charging like a wild animal this time. In his mind, he had his prey cornered, and he was going in for the kill.
But that wasn’t the case.
As Oleg stomped right past him, Mark wrapped a wire—taken off the monitor he’d chucked—taut between his two hands. Mark heard Oleg’s heavy footsteps as he strode by him, and Mark knew it was now or never. He sprung up from his crouched position, rising right behind the huge man. Oleg may have heard something, might have sensed Mark’s presence behind him, but he wasn’t fast enough.
Mark wrapped the wire around Oleg’s throat and pulled it tight with all his strength. The pressure made Oleg gag, and he started to buck wildly, trying to break free of Mark’s hold. He thrashed and threw his body forward, trying to flip Mark over; Mark, though, held strong, pulling with enough force to prevent being thrown to the floor. He wouldn’t release his hold on Oleg; he refused to die in a Russian hospital.
Oleg drove his body backward, slamming Mark against the wall. Mark’s spine pounded hard against the flat surface, and Oleg continued to drive him back again and again. But each time, his strength diminished; Oleg was fading. Mark could feel the air trying to escape the man’s lungs, could feel his body slacken. Soon, Oleg was stumbling, swinging his arms wildly, hopelessly, at a person he couldn’t reach. A person who was suffocating the life out of him.
Mark dedicated everything he had and tightened the wire’s torque. His wounded shoulder felt like it was ablaze as he increased the pressure to Oleg’s throat. The Russian agent dropped to his knees and tried to gasp for air one last time before he crashed face-first onto the floor. Mark could feel the fight end in an instant, but part of him was afraid that his crafty enemy was playing possum. He continued to pull on the wire, and even when he felt certain Oleg was dead, Mark still held his grip tight. Moments passed, and Oleg didn’t move. Mark suppressed a cathartic scream and then, finally, he slackened his grip on the wire and rolled, breathlessly, off Oleg. He wanted to take a moment to catch his breath, to calm the twisted exhilaration racing through his system, to process the fact that he’d just murdered a man. In self-defense, that was without question, but he still had ended someone’s life.
Mark was thankful he didn’t have time to consider the moral implications of what he’d done. Time wasn’t his ally. People would be checking on Mark soon and possibly looking for Oleg, and he needed to be gone by the time anyone came knocking.
First, Mark needed clothes. Although Oleg was much larger than Mark, he’d have to take what he could get. Mark flipped on the room’s lights and stripped Oleg of his khaki pants, sweater, and boots, and put them all on. Oleg had an extra ammo clip in his pocket, a cell phone, and 6,000 rubles in a money clip. Not much, but it would have to do.
When Mark picked up the gun from the ground, he felt something—a presence in the room, like eyes on him. He turned around, expecting to see another agent, but instead he saw a nurse standing in the doorway. Her eyes were wide, and they darted from Mark, holding a gun, to the nearly nude man passed out on the floor, then back to Mark.
“No, no, no,” Mark said, softly pleading. “It’s not what you—”
Even if she could understand Mark’s English, it wouldn’t have mattered. The nurse screamed in horror and ran out of the room.
“Shit,” Mark muttered.
Hoping he could get out ahead of reinforcements, Mark rushed from the room. It was the wrong move. Jogging down the hall were two FSB agents followed by a hospital security guard. Their guns were already drawn, and they yelled for Mark to drop his weapon. But that wasn’t going to happen. He hadn’t bested Oleg just to wind up right back in confinement. Assuming, of course, that was even an option. He’d just killed one of his enemy’s own, and he was pretty certain they wouldn’t look kindly on that. So, he bucked the agents’ orders, raised his gun, and popped off two shots. Mark fired them high, knowing they would hit the ceiling, but they served their purpose: The agents and the guard dropped to the floor and took cover behind the nurses’ kiosk.
Mark had to think fast. Behind him was a dead end, nothing but a window looking out onto Moscow’s skyline at night. But judging by the perspective, it dawned on Mark that he wasn’t that far off the ground. Maybe just a few floors up.
One of the agents craned his head around the kiosk, but before he could say anything, Mark fired another shot. He then rushed to the end of the hall and looked down—it was a straight shot to the ground, and while a fall from that height likely wouldn’t kill him, it would definitely break some of his bones. Possibly many. That would throw a serious wrench in his escape plans. But, there was good news: Off to the right side—just visible from Mark’s perspective—was the hospital’s entrance, and at the entrance was a canopy that covered the lobby’s front doors. It was a narrow space, but if Mark could hit that canopy, he just might make the drop without shattering both his legs.
It was worth a shot if only because it was the only shot he had.
Mark raced back into his room, firing off another warning round in case the agents had any ideas. They didn’t, but the security guard did.
He yelled something in Russian, then turned from around the gurney he’d ducked behind and opened fire. Mark dove back into his room, hearing a bullet ricochet off the door frame. He slammed the door shut and fired three shots into the window, shattering the glass and clearing the way for his escape.
And then he hesitated. He was about to jump out a window, and the ground below wasn’t that close. He assumed he’d land without injury—or at least serious injury—but Mark knew it was a serious—and potentially painful—risk.
The agents were coming, though. He could hear them running toward his room, yelling at the security guard—reprimanding him for his stupidity, Mark bet—as they approached. There was no time to let fear get the best of him.
Mark ran to the window and looked down; he was directly above the canopy, which looked about a million miles away.
Sarah, Mark thought. Our baby.
He climbed over the ledge and closed his eyes. Right when the agents and the guard entered the room, he dropped.
The fall was over in the blink of an eye. Mark crashed onto the canopy, landing on his feet and then collapsing into a roll as his legs buckled beneath him. It was a clumsy roll; the momentum of his fall carried him faster than he could control, nearly throwing him over the side of the canvas platform. But Mark stopped himself just in time, gripping the roof’s edge.
Mark took a quick moment to kiss the canopy, then he released his grip and dropped to the ground below. And just like that, for the first time in weeks, he was free. No guards were hovering around him, no cameras were monitoring every move he made. He was free.
Or so he thought.
The sound of a gun cocking clicked behind him. It was a sound Mark was getting used to hearing.
“Turn around, slowly, with your hands up,” a voice said.
But Mark wasn’t about to go back to following orders, and he wasn’t going to even entertain the prospect of being dragged back to the Triumph Palace. Mark turned—that part he obeyed. But he turned with his gun held in front of his chest; he was ready to shoot or get shot, anything other than surrender.
But he hesitated, and he was relieved that he did. Because standing behind him was a person he never thought he’d see again:
Alice.
16
Or Ania. Whatever her name was. Mark never dreamed he’d see her again
, yet there she was, standing right in front of him with a gun trained on his face.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Mark said, maintaining his gun’s steady aim on her belly.
“Listen, we don’t have a lot of time, so you need to put your gun down and listen,” Ania said, putting on her American “Alice” accent.
“Listen to you? Listen to you?” Mark growled. “No—no, I don’t think so. You listen to me when I say I want you to get away from me—right now.”
Ania twisted her head to look back at the hospital’s entrance. Mark followed her line of sight and saw that a crowd was starting to gather. He and Ania were tucked away in a dark corner far enough away to go unnoticed, but Mark couldn’t stay there forever. He had to run.
“You have no money, no identification, and you don’t speak the language. How long do you think you’ll last?” Ania asked.
“I’ll take my chances,” Mark said, backing away. “Now get away from me. You stabbed me in the back once, I won’t let you do it again.”
“I told you I could get you out,” Ania said, following Mark. “I told you that, and I meant it.”
Mark stopped. “In the restaurant—that was you?”
“There’s a lot you don’t know, a lot you don’t understand,” Ania said, her face softening. “Come with me—I can get you home. You know I’m the only chance you have.”
Mark studied her while keeping one eye on the crowd forming around the hospital’s entrance. Time was running out, and Mark knew that Ania was right. He had no plan. Running. That’s all he had, and that wasn’t a plan. That was a verb. And even if he did run, it wouldn’t be long before a search party came after him. Dogs. Checkpoints. Armed officers. Whoever was behind this whole plot Mark was trapped in the middle of wouldn’t let him escape so easily. They’d find him, and they’d kill him. At least Ania was offering him a chance. He thought she was full of shit, but if by some miracle she was telling the truth—well, it beat certain death, which is what he’d find trying to make it on his own.
“Mark, I’m leaving,” Ania warned. “Come with me, now or never.”
Ania lowered her gun, and Mark inhaled a deep breath.
“One condition,” he said.
Ania’s lips tightened as she suppressed her agitation. “We really have to get moving.”
“Take me to the U.S. embassy.”
“The what?!” Ania erupted. “Are you insane?”
“If you want me to trust you,” Mark coolly said, “then you’ll take me there.”
“They’ll kill you, Mark. You’re a traitor. They. Will. Kill you.”
“The embassy,” he insisted
“Okay,” Ania begrudgingly acquiesced. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
* * *
Ania’s car—a boxy, rusted sedan—was parked in a loading zone around the side of the hospital’s curved façade. They entered the car wordlessly, and both of them did their best to close their door without making a sound. It was superstitious in a way, like a catcher not talking to his pitcher in the middle of a no-hitter. Only the stakes here were a little higher. They didn’t want to act confident that they’d gotten away because even as Ania turned over the engine, they weren’t out of the woods just yet. Quietly, Ania told Mark exactly that, but he didn’t believe her.
He changed his mind, though, when bullets started ricocheting off the sedan’s body.
“This shit again?!” Fueled by the memories of the shootout on Sadovaya Street, Mark plunged his head below the dashboard. He wanted to dig a hole down there, somehow, and never come out. But that wasn’t going to happen. Ania buried the gas pedal and peeled away, throwing Mark out of his cubbyhole and back against the car’s seat.
“Good idea to waste time arguing about going to the embassy!” Ania yelled as she rocketed the car onto a busy street, whipping the vehicle around the cars that were in her way.
“Really?!” Mark shot back. “This whole thing is on me? You’re really going to make a case of that?”
Ania didn’t offer anything in response. She played no small role in framing Mark as a Russian spy, and she knew how her past actions directly contributed to his current predicament. As she struggled to think of something thoughtful to say in her defense, she was saved by the bell—the bell, in this case, being a bullet that drilled the driver’s-side mirror.
“Go, go, go!” Mark yelled, but his urging for Ania to continue what she was already doing only succeeded in turning her already sour expression darker.
“What do you think I’ve been doing?!” she said as she whipped the car around a clunky station wagon and threaded the needle between two other cars before jumping across two lanes of traffic. It was a nice maneuver, but whoever was in pursuit wasn’t so easily shaken. Mark heard the hollow sound of metal being pierced—the trunk, he assumed, as it was barraged by a trio of bullets. Daring to catch a glimpse of whoever was trying to kill him this time, Mark poked his head above the seat. Visibility was low in the night’s darkness, and the sheen pouring off the many headlights only obscured Mark’s vision further. But then he saw it: a black sedan jackknifing through traffic, hot in pursuit.
“Damn it,” Mark snarled as he ducked his head back down. He pulled his gun out from the back of his pants. “They’re gaining on us.”
“And what do you think you’re going to do?” Ania asked, her words punctuated by another series of bullets penetrating the car.
“I’m going to shoot back,” Mark replied.
Mark opened his window and angled himself out. Their pursuers were directly behind them and getting close.
He fired off three quick shots, and the car swerved and twisted when Mark’s bullets blasted its exterior. It was satisfying to give whoever was after them a taste of their own medicine, so when the car righted itself, Mark shot at it again. The enemy sedan jerked to its right, colliding with an SUV that’d been driving alongside it. The car spun out of control and another car, one that’d been driving behind the sedan, smashed into it midspin. Whoever was chasing Mark and Ania careened out of control; Mark had effectively taken them off the playing field.
He shot Ania a smile that hardly captured a modicum of how proud he was of himself.
“Don’t get cocky,” Ania warned, unimpressed. “There’ll be more.”
“Great,” Mark said, putting the gun to his side as he pulled out the phone he’d taken off Oleg. “Another cheery forecast.”
Ania’s gaze practically burned a hole right through Mark. “Where did you get that?” she asked. “And what do you think you’re going to do with it?”
“Order a pizza,” Mark snapped as he studied the foreign keypad. It was an ancient model flip phone, not entirely surprising considering it had been Oleg’s. “What do you care?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Ania said. “Maybe I’m concerned about you making a stupid phone call to your wife, which will undoubtedly be traced.”
“I’m calling Sarah, and you’re just going to have to deal with it.”
“I don’t care about your wife, I care about you getting us caught.”
Mark started punching Sarah’s cell phone number into the phone. At least that’s what he hoped he was doing. “I haven’t spoken to my wife—my pregnant wife, in weeks. I need to talk to her. I need to warn her.”
Ania shot him a dark look. “Have you figured out what’ll happen to her once word gets out that you broke free?”
Mark countered Ania’s stern expression with one of his own. One that said she couldn’t stop him from reaching out to his wife even if she tried. “I don’t know exactly what’ll happen to her, but I know it won’t be good. That’s why I need to do whatever I can to get her to safety,” he said.
Ania exhaled sharply and yanked the phone out of Mark’s hands. “You’re doing it all wrong,” she said as she keyed in a series of numbers. “I had Sarah’s cell memorized for work.”
Ania tossed the phone to Mark and then turned her attention back to the road. “J
ust hit the button with the little green phone on it, and make your call fast. When you’re done, toss it out the window.”
Mark took a moment before he finished dialing to catch his breath. He felt like an uncertain teen checking his hair in the rearview mirror before picking up his date. He knew Sarah would be by his side, always. But what did she make of everything that’d happened? What had they told her about him? She wouldn’t buy it, Mark was confident in that; but maybe everything she was fed—from intelligence agents, from know-nothing talking heads—would be enough to make her look at him in a new way. Maybe it would be enough to reconsider what she made of him.
For his own sanity, Mark had to shove those thoughts out of his mind. He gripped the phone tight, ready to make the call. Outside his window, the lights of Moscow at night raced by in a haze. At once, Mark felt drunk, exhausted, and disoriented. This, as Sarah would say, had been a day. Or was it days? Mark had no idea how long he’d been in the hospital—how much time separated him from when he’d been shot, smashed in a car wreck, and beaten up by Oleg—but it wasn’t enough for him to recuperate. He had healed well enough; he could function, but the damage he’d suffered was still with him, and it would be for a long time. For now though, pain would have to be a motivator. Pain would have to be what helped keep him going, not what broke him down. There’d be no rest and relaxation, there’d be no pause. Mark could collapse when his feet were firmly planted back on American soil.
Mark turned his attention back to the clunky cell phone. He punched the key as instructed by Ania and began to pray that Sarah picked up.
“Come on, come on,” he murmured, phone to his ear. “Pick up, Sarah, please pick up.”
The phone rang. Three times, then four. Mark panicked. Leaving a message, he supposed, would get the job done. He’d be able to convey the essential information—that he was innocent, that he was free, that he was coming home—he needed to tell Sarah, but that wasn’t enough. He wanted to hear her voice; he needed to. Her voice would get him through whatever else was ahead, whatever separated him from his wife and unborn child.
The Throwaway Page 14