That brought reality back to Xander, and his stomach tightened at the thought of his friends under Dragov’s scrutiny. He glared past Zhanna, down the tunnel. He began to wonder if all bad guys had secret underground lairs. It seemed a little Scooby-Doo of them. He thought for a second that when he got hold of Dragov, that he might try and rip off his mask. Maybe he would find Manning’s face underneath.
“Xander?” Zhanna broke his ridiculous train of thought. “We must go now!”
* * *
Dragov spit out what was left of his chewing tobacco into a paper cup, washed his mouth out with scotch, and motioned for one of his men to remove the gag from Jack Bronson’s mouth. Dragov eyed the man up and down, from his red leather cowboy boots to his bushy gray eyebrows that wired out from under his cognac-colored cowboy hat.
“You look like clown. Like should be in old western movie with John Wayne.”
Jack cleared his throat and extra countrified his twang just for Dragov. “Yeah? Well, you look like forty pounds of shit in a ten-pound sack, you fat son of a bitch.”
If he hurt Dragov’s feelings, Dragov didn’t show it. Jack figured it wasn’t the first time someone had made a crack about the man’s girth. However, he was certain that whoever had done so before him surely didn’t say much else after that. Dragov stared into the wily old cowboy’s eyes as he fingered his pistol on his desk.
Jack couldn’t help himself. “You get the trigger guard on that pistol modified?”
Dragov didn’t respond.
“You know, so’s you could fit your fat finger in there? I’ll teach you how to shoot it if you untie these ropes.”
“You have big mouth, Jack.”
“Yep, and you have a big waistline.” Jack knew he was pushing the envelope, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t going to give Dragov the satisfaction of seeing him scared. He knew that that is exactly what men like Dragov lived for.
“Where is this . . . Xander?” Dragov got straight to the point.
“Who?” Jack played coy.
Dragov wobbled over to Jack and struck him across the face with the butt of his pistol. Jack’s jaw lit up in pain and quite possibly cracked under the blow. Jack raised back up, spit a wad of blood onto Dragov’s crocodile-leather shoe, and looked him in the eye.
“Where is Xander?” Dragov asked again.
“You want the truth?” Jack spoke as blood ran from his mouth, down his chin.
“That would be good place to start.”
“I really don’t know. But I reckon after your bitch dog—Pavlovich—took him and Sam, he got away after murdering the incompetent son of a bitch. Probably just about here now to foil your plans of eatin’ another pastrami sandwich. Hell, knowin’ Xander, he might have even taken a minute to stick his pecker in your daughter’s mouth. She seemed to like him when she was tellin’ him all about her sicko daddy.”
Dragov put a little extra oomph behind the next pistol to the head. Jack dropped to his knees under the blow but managed to keep his wit.
“What? Somethin’ I said?”
Dragov kicked Jack in the crotch, and just as he put the pistol to his head, an alarm sounded and an intense buzzing sound filled the room.
* * *
Zhanna looked back at Xander as soon as she opened the door. “Shit, Father must have rigged this door since last time I am here.”
“Gee, whatever gave you that impression?” Xander sarcastically remarked over the blaring buzz of the alarm.
“I think because of the alarm, boss.” Viktor tried to help.
“Thanks, Captain Obvious.”
Viktor didn’t get it; he just stared back blankly.
If they had an element of surprise, it was now gone. The alarm continued as Zhanna motioned Viktor and Xander to follow. She led them down a hospital-like hallway: white tile floors below their feet, white walls, and white ceiling tile above. Zhanna moved quickly in front of them.
“Where are we going?” Xander called ahead.
“I know a secret way up, but we have to hurry. Father’s men will be on us in seconds. Don’t bother with any of the other doors.”
“Do you know where they are keeping Kyle and Sam?”
“They will be one level up. There are holding cells there,” she said, as if holding cells in someone’s house were perfectly normal.
Xander followed as she moved them down the hall. It was lit with a dim florescent light. Up in front of them was a door on the left wall. The only door in the middle portion of the hallway. Zhanna and Viktor moved right past it without a glance, but as Xander did the same, he saw something out of the corner of his eye that made him stop dead in his tracks. Every muscle in his body seized. Zhanna looked back over her shoulder and noticed Xander not moving.
“Xander! Xander, we must hurry!”
Xander saw her lips moving but heard nothing. Xander didn’t know it, but his body had temporarily gone into a state of shock. It had done so because his mind couldn’t process what it had just seen. Or thought it had seen. The walls around Xander began to vibrate as a darkness crept up his spine and began to fill in the corners of his eyes. He was passing out.
You would too if you’d just seen your long dead father sitting alone in a room.
Alive.
35
Back to Life, Back to Reality
“Change of plan.” Dragov took the pistol from Jack’s head. With the sound of that alarm, Dragov knew his assumed impenetrable fortress had just been breached. And the way his men had been performing so far on this day, he wasn’t about to chance the fact that they would be able to keep Xander from getting to him. He had underestimated the American up until this point. Dragov wasn’t a man who made the same mistakes twice. Martin King was not going to be happy about this. If Zhanna really was with Xander, helping him, they would have come in through the tunnel. The tunnel that led to the door that tripped the alarm, and the door that led to the hallway that led to the room where Martin was trying to stay safe, and hidden from his own son. Xander may already have found him.
“Melania!” Dragov croaked, the first bit of fear trembling his voice.
“Yes, boss?”
“You and Andre stay with me, we go to car. Send everyone else to bottom floor. Radio men outside to go in through tunnel opening. Xander will be trapped. Mr. King wants him alive, but if he must die, then he must die.”
Melania radioed her instructions to her men. Then the three of them exited toward the car park, leaving Jack where he sat on his knees, on the floor. His mouth was agape and his mind in shock at the words Dragov just spoke. Not only because his once thought long dead friend was apparently alive, but from the way Dragov’s voice trembled when he mentioned Martin King, he was also afraid of him. That could only mean one thing.
* * *
“Dad!” Xander pounded on the door with both fists. His mind was racing, his heart was pounding, and his body ached with astonishment. “DAD!”
His father, far more weathered and far more gray than the last time he’d seen him, dead on the ground almost eleven years ago, was staring off into space, as if he couldn’t hear Xander pounding and screaming.
“Xander! We must go! If we do not move now, we will be trapped! Your friends will be dead!” Zhanna shouted to him.
This time, the mention of his friends in trouble didn’t snap Xander out of anything. No words could have. He continued to pound on the door in front of him, then a front kick, then more pounding. It was as if he were a little child pounding on his bedroom door. It wasn’t making a dent, and his father was now on his feet. From Xander’s adrenaline blurred vision, he didn’t even process that his father—his father!—didn’t look like a prisoner at all. The finely combed hair, the crisp navy-blue suit, the cigar in his hand as he stood from the comfortable brown leather couch—none of it registered. What did register, just as his father turned and looked him in the eye, was the fact that someone from the end of the hall where they had entered from was shooting at him. And if it wasn’t for Viktor ta
ckling Xander to the ground and Zhanna returning fire behind him, Xander would have been shot.
“Boss!” Viktor shouted as he shook Xander. “Boss!”
Xander wasn’t responding, so Viktor reared back and punched Xander in the face. Zhanna continued to shoot to keep men from flooding the hallway. Xander finally snapped back to reality, and his rage-filled eyes met Viktor’s.
Viktor mistook Xander’s rage for being mad at him for hitting him, so he held up his hands as if to say sorry, then looked down the hall behind Xander. Xander pulled his pistol but didn’t look in the direction Viktor was peering. Instead, he shot the man who walked into the hallway behind Zhanna.
They were trapped.
Dad?
Xander shucked Viktor aside and bounced to his feet. He grabbed the handle to the door once more, but this time when he looked in, his father was gone.
Had he really seen him?
He was sure that he had, but how could it be? As he processed, or tried to process, his father being in that room alive, he shot the man again at the end of the hall as he raised his gun toward Zhanna from his spot on the ground. They could hear shouts of Russian from both ends of the hall. Xander pushed the thought of his father out of his mind, pulled Viktor to his feet, and motioned for Zhanna to join them. The air around them was thick with the smell of gunpowder and metal. The shouts from either end of the hall had ceased. Xander knew they were ready to strike. He pulled his second pistol, Viktor racked the slide on his shotgun, and Zhanna readied her nine-millimeter.
“Anybody got any miracles?” Xander asked.
Zhanna peered into her magazine to check her bullet count before she shoved it back into her pistol. “Nyet, but have nine chances.”
Just as she pulled back the slide, men came pouring into the hallway from both ends. There was no place to take cover and nowhere to run. Just bullets. And as they rang out inside that hallway, it was deafening. Two men shot first from the secret tunnel entrance, but both missed. Viktor and Xander did not. The man on the left was taken off his feet by the blast of Viktor’s shotgun, and the man on the right lost the top of his head to Xander’s bullet. Zhanna hit the two men who came in from the other side, and as two more entered, Viktor turned and blasted them as well. Xander sprinted back toward the tunnel-side hallway, leaving Zhanna and Viktor to defend the other side. As he approached the door, two more men filled the small space, and two more men lost their heads. Xander’s aim did not falter as he ran. When another man entered, he jump-kicked him, knocked him onto his back, and slammed a bullet through his neck. Blood shot up like a geyser and Xander walked right through it, turned down the tunnel, shot the two men who were standing there waiting, and nailed one more man in the leg who was climbing down from the secret entrance they had come through only moments ago. The man pulled himself back up out of the hole, and the next thing Xander heard was the distinct sound of bouncing metal on concrete.
A grenade.
Xander dove backward through the door into the main hallway, and when he cleared the doorway, he kicked the door to the tunnel shut. Two bullets grazed his body from behind Zhanna and Viktor as they were sprinting toward him. He rolled toward them, shouted, “Get down,” and simultaneously the grenade blew and the door to the hallway flew off its hinges, followed by a searing flame that ran up Xander’s back. He rolled, sure he was on fire, his ears hearing nothing but a loud ring. Everything turned into slow motion. He was lying in front of the blown-off door to the hallway now. Two men jumped down from the manhole. His pistols lay on the floor of the tunnel in front of him, incinerated from the grenade blast, and when he looked to his left, Zhanna and Viktor lay weaponless on the floor. No doubt, they had run out of ammo. When he looked past them, a man in full army fatigues walked toward them with a pistol extended in front of him, just like the two men who had just dropped into the tunnel, guns coming at them from both sides. Their mouths were moving, but Xander could only hear the loud, high-pitched ring that filled his ears. They could have been shouting at him. They could have been shouting at each other, Xander had no idea. He looked back at Zhanna, and her face had gone pale.
The realization of certain death had a way of doing that to you.
The man walking toward them was almost upon them. Xander reached for Rambo but didn’t pull him out of his sheath, in a last-ditch attempt to avoid provoking the three gunmen. The thought of bringing a knife to a gunfight inexplicably crossed Xander’s mind, and either that or the madness of imminent death brought a smirk to his face. He rolled mindlessly out of the open doorway as the two men were about to come to the end of the tunnel. He looked back over Zhanna and Viktor down the hallway at the man with the gun walking toward them. That wiped the smirk right off his face. And just as the thought that they were finished finally crossed his mind, the man’s face blew apart, bursting into a pink mist of brain and blood. A bullet had come through the small window in the door where he saw his father. Immediately following the gunshot there was a loud thud and the door itself flew inward and banged against the wall in the hallway. As the two men rounded the corner from the tunnel and pointed their guns at Xander’s head, Sarah Gilbright walked through the kicked-in doorway and shot both of them dead before they ever had time to notice she was there.
36
And Now...I’m Going to Kill Him!
“Xander, are you okay?”
“Sarah.” It was all he could manage.
Xander got to his feet, and they walked toward each other with purpose. Xander wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her against his chest.
“Sarah, I’m sorry about Tuscany—”
“Don’t.” She pulled back and looked into his eyes. “You’ve been through a lot, Xander, and—”
“It’s no excuse. I should have been certain before I accused you of anything.”
Xander’s emotions were swirling. He felt such affection for her in that moment. It could have been all that was happening around him—his father, his friends in danger, death, even embarrassment for the way he had treated her. The fact that she had once again saved his ass. It could have been any of those things causing him to swell with emotion at the sight of her, the touch of her. But it also could be that he’d managed to develop feelings for her.
“How did you get here?” he asked.
Sarah pulled out her cell phone. “I’ll explain later.” Then she spoke into the phone. “Marv? Yes, Xander is okay . . . Sam?” Sarah looked to Xander.
Sam. Kyle. Shit!
Xander turned to Zhanna. “Can you take me to where they might be?”
Zhanna nodded and started down the hallway. Viktor followed her like a little puppy.
Sarah went back to the phone. “We aren’t sure, but we’re looking. Marv. . .” Sarah paused and gave Xander a weary look. “Dragov fled by car. Martin King was with him.”
Xander felt like Mike Tyson had just punched him in the gut.
“I was able to put a tracker on three of the cars. You should be able to monitor them. We will find Sam and company while you find out where they are going. I have a feeling Xander is going to want to know exactly where they are headed.”
Sarah clicked off the phone. “I’m sorry.”
“You knew my father was alive?” A rush of anger flooded his face.
“No! No. Not until we landed here in Moscow. Xander, Mary Hartsfield is now the acting director of the CIA. They took Manning into custody just a little while ago. They promised to go easy if he gave up Dragov. But . . .”
“But what, Sarah?”
“But it was your father he flipped on. Dragov hasn’t been in charge for a long time now. I’m so sorry.”
A man’s voice startled them all from the end of the hallway. “Jesus H. Christ. If y’all ain’t a sight for sore eyes.”
Sarah turned on a dime, whipping her gun in the direction of the voice. “Jack?”
“I’ll be dammed. Xander King, in the flesh. Last I heard, you dropped backward out of a cargo plane. Oh, to be you
ng again.”
Xander dropped the thoughts of his father. It was all too much to comprehend at the moment. He needed to focus on what he did understand: getting his friends to safety and getting Dragov. In that order. “Sam and Kyle?”
“Last I saw ‘em, they was okay. Your pilot is here too. Brave son of a bitch. Thought that was where I was goin’, but this place is like a friggin’ hotel.”
“Were they in a cell?” Zhanna asked.
“Yep.”
“Then they are up one floor. We must hurry before my father gets away. If he leaves Moscow, we’ll never find him.”
“He won’t make it out of Moscow,” Xander assured her. She gave him an unsure look.
Viktor noticed her doubting him and couldn’t help himself. “Viktor doesn’t know much, but I believe boss when he say Dragov won’t make it.”
“Thanks, Viktor.” Xander put his arm around Sarah’s waist and nudged her in Zhanna, Jack, and Viktor’s direction.
“Follow me,” Zhanna said, turning toward the hallway exit, stepping over a mini pile of dead Russian thugs as she went.
Jack was right, Dragov’s compound was very much like a hotel. They took what resembled an emergency stairwell up to the floor above them. When the five of them walked into the hall, it was more like the Overlook Hotel in the movie The Shining. It seemed just as empty too. Zhanna walked ahead out into the hallway that was filled with crown molding and tacky hotel carpeting. Xander half expected to see the twin ghost girls waiting for them at the other end. To the right of the hall there looked to be a large ballroom. Zhanna walked right past it and all the way to a single closed door at the end of the hallway.
“Jack Torrance isn’t going to be in there, is he?” Xander asked Zhanna. She didn’t get the movie reference.
“I LOVED that movie.” Sarah got it.
Zhanna tried the door, but of course it was locked.
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