by Ed Kovacs
“You lying bitch. If it wasn’t for Kit, I’d kill you right now.”
“Please do it!” She grabbed Angel’s hand and brought the tip of the screwdriver to her throat. “Please! I beg you.” Tears streamed down her face. “Because then Popov won’t kill my baby,” she cried.
Buzz grabbed her. “Listen to me! Did you get an inoculation before you came here? A shot somewhere in your body?”
“Yes, they said I had to for the U.S. visa. Right here,” she wiped her eyes, then reached back to touch the area between her shoulder blades.
“Crap, she’s been chipped!”
Angel spun her around and held her tight as he pulled down the back of her blouse.
“They told me there would be a bump for a week or so.”
“There’s a bump, all right. They injected you with a tracking device. This will hurt, so scream if you want,” said Buzz.
Yulana whimpered but didn’t scream as Buzz used his pocketknife to slice open her skin. He used the tip of the knife to pry out a tiny cylindrical device about a half inch long. He dropped it to the floor and crushed it with his boot.
* * *
Kit and Jen were in the common room, firing their suppressed weapons at Russians just outside the rear doorway, and at another group that had broken down the front door and now controlled the reception area.
Since the Russians also used suppressed weapons, it was a strangely quiet gun battle: bursts of soft puffts, followed by sounds of bullets shattering wood, plastic, and plaster and pinging off metal.
The gunfight might have been be a semisilent one, but the only question in Bennings’s mind was how to pull off a retreat, and fast. Jen would have to make a break out into the open, exposed to cross fire from two sides just to get to his position at the entrance to the hallway. As he quickly slid a new magazine into the subgun, he silently berated himself for underestimating Popov’s organizational reach and abilities. Kit had instantly become complacent in the CIA safe house, and as a result, was about to have his ass handed to him. Only hours earlier he’d told Yulana it wouldn’t be easy to defeat the Mafia don—an understatement to say the least—since he was right now fighting for his life and the lives of his friends.
* * *
Dimi, formerly a driver, had replaced Lily as operational leader of Popov’s soldiers. Travkin had made the change after Popov ordered Lily demoted. It was a decision welcomed by the rank and file.
Dimi stood next to a black Yukon talking into a radio.
“We need flash bangs!” a man’s voice pleaded.
“You need a pair of balls!” spat Dimi into his radio. He then gestured for more men to enter the building as he unwrapped a piece of bubble gum. “What are you waiting for, an invitation?” he yelled, and then popped the gum into his mouth. “Get in there!”
* * *
The fight in the common room intensified. A few Russians went down, but more of them streamed into the room.
“Jen, pull back, now!”
Kit laid down covering fire, holding the subgun with one hand and his SIG with the other, firing simultaneously in different directions as Jen fast-crawled toward the hallway. He stood, offering himself as a target, then fired a long burst. Bullets tore in all around him as Jen scrambled past. Once she was clear, he dove into the hallway, sprang to his feet, and reloaded while running for the storage-room door, half expecting to have his legs shot out from beneath him.
As Jen made it to the gray steel door, Kit spun around and fired at Russians who’d appeared at the hallway opening. The Russians ducked for cover, but as he turned to enter the storage room …
… the biggest Russian goon he had ever seen simply exploded through the hallway wall, splintering drywall and showering Kit with paint chips and dust. The goon teetered right next to him, having pulverized the wall between Kit and the reception room.
Bennings wheeled the subgun, but the goon grabbed Kit’s gun hand in a viselike lock. As Kit raised his weak-side hand holding the SIG, the goon grabbed that hand too. The man was incredibly strong and slammed Kit’s body against the wall, then pressed in close. His huge hands clamped harder around Kit’s hands and started moving both gun barrels toward Kit’s head.
The Russian’s plan was easy to fathom; he was going to force Kit to shoot himself with his own guns.
Bennings glanced down the hallway; a couple of thugs had taken aim, waiting for the outcome of the grappling contest he now found himself in with the Russian poster boy for steroid abuse. Sweat broke out on his forehead as he looked his maniacal assailant in the eye; it was like looking into a soul of pure murderous lust. It reminded him of the look on the face of the woman who had broken his sister’s bones.
Staci. Staci’s favorite martial art was aikido. She was so good at avoiding his attacks when they sparred together, he used to bust up laughing. He could almost hear her voice say, “Merge with the momentum of the attacker rather than resisting, then redirect the force.”
Aikido while pinned to a wall? Why not? thought Kit, so he instantly relaxed the resistance in his arms, allowing the goon’s force to point the gun barrels at his head. But this change in physical dynamic was a feint, and Kit then pivoted his strong wrists sharply, causing the gun barrels to change direction, as he pulled both triggers.
Rounds shattered the front teeth of the goon, then tore into his brain. Bennings squeezed his eyes closed against a spray of spittle and tooth chips and blood as he shoved off from the giant, then he hosed the hallway with suppressing fire. The storage door opened behind Kit; Jen had come looking for him.
Russian thugs returned fire, but most of their rounds only found the body of the giant who swayed unsteadily, still on his feet even though he was already dead.
Jen grabbed Kit by his upper arm, pulled him into the storage room, and slammed closed the gray steel door just as rounds impacted on the other side. She tripped the door lock.
Bennings was dripping with sweat and breathing heavily. “Damn, we’re getting our asses kicked,” he said.
“I dunno, looked to me like you nailed that big guy.”
“Close enough for government work,” said Kit, who weakly managed a wink.
Jen started up the ladder.
“I left them a special surprise,” she called down. “So get your butt up here, quick.”
Bennings didn’t need to be asked twice. He hurried up the escape ladder into a dim attic space. Faint light filtered in from a hatch that led to the flat roof. He retracted the ladder and pulled up the ceiling panels, closing them and erasing evidence of their escape route.
He clambered onto the roof, and Jen helped him close and lock the hatch. Buzz, Angel, and Yulana, barely visible in the first light of dawn a hundred yards ahead of them on the roof, were running in a low crouch. The exterior walls of the structure came up four feet higher than roof level, keeping them out of sight of anyone on the ground as long as they stayed low.
He and Jen exchanged a look, then took off running.
* * *
Dimi hustled into the safe house, where his men were busy searching the place. He moved toward the gray steel door and watched as some men used pry bars on the door. He was about to say something when other men ran up with sledgehammers and went to work.
Just then, the Russian who was taken prisoner from the morgue parking lot was brought to him, still in handcuffs.
“Dimi! Get me out of these cuffs.”
Dimi glanced down at the handcuffs. There was no warmth in his voice when he asked, “What did you tell the Americans?”
“Nothing! What could I tell them? I don’t know anything!”
“Everybody knows something.” Dimi turned to another thug. “Put him in the Yukon.”
Dimi turned to look as the gray steel door gave way. Men charged in to find … an empty storage room. “Dimi!” one of them called.
Dimi hurried into the room and cursed. “Look for false walls, trapdoors! Everywhere! Quickly! This is taking too much time!” He lo
oked to the ceiling and fired a burst into the ceiling tiles. “Check up there too! Hurry!”
Dimi crossed back into the hallway and grabbed a man. “There’s an empty business next door. Take most of the men and check,” said Dimi. The man ran off, ordering others to follow him.
Dimi scanned the common room and saw a large laptop sitting on the coffee table. He reached for it.
* * *
Kit and Jen made it to the opposite end of the roof of the L-shaped shopping center. Running in a crouch for a long distance can make one remember forgotten muscles, and the remembrance isn’t a particularly fond one. Kit looked over the edge of the wall and saw that Buzz, Angel, and Yulana had already dropped down on a rope ladder and were getting into the white van parked just below.
Jen looked at her watch. “Boom.”
Just then, a tremendous explosion ripped the dawn. They felt the building shake under them.
“You rigged the Semtex left behind by the CIA?” asked Kit.
She nodded grimly. “I didn’t like the way they woke us up,” said Jen, and it didn’t sound like she was joking.
They chanced a peek over the top of the facade wall and saw that the entire end of the shopping center that held the safe house had been demolished; smoke and dust rose, rubble rained down.
Fifteen or twenty Russians had been knocked to the ground just outside the blast area. Anyone who’d been inside was now south of the frost line.
“We could take out a few more of those bastards,” said Jen, hoisting her MP7.
“Every cop in the county will be here in minutes. Let’s go. Popov wins this round.”
CHAPTER 24
Louis Kraminski, the bearded, seventy-two-year-old longtime manager of Wheels Up Aviation at Chino Airport, ate breakfast at Flo’s Airport Café every working day of his life. Flo’s was kind of a classic Southern California greasy spoon; if Louis didn’t feel like Salisbury steak, he’d get the huevos rancheros. A lifelong aviation nut, he’d arrive like clockwork at 6:45 A.M., and at 7:30 he’d leave Flo’s and make his way through a security gate to get onto the airport proper and open the doors for business.
Over six hundred aircraft were based at Chino, which is a somewhat historic, general-aviation reliever airport serving private, business, and corporate tenants. Wheels Up owned and maintained six executive jets. A collection of other aircraft owned by the Bennings and Carrillo families were flown less frequently. The business model was simple: corporate or private clients would call to book a jet to their chosen destination. Wheels Up provided the jet and arranged for a pilot and any additional crew to staff the plane. Business had been good.
But now … the airport gossip had been so thick, what with the FBI and sheriff’s and army investigators nosing around after the murders of the Carrillos and the disappearance of Staci Bennings, that Louis felt almost sick to his stomach. The Carrillos and Bennings and Wheels Up Aviation had been his family for more than twenty-five years, since his wife had passed away from breast cancer at age forty-five. But today he wasn’t at all sure what to do, especially if Staci Bennings didn’t return soon.
Louis trudged out of Flo’s at 7:33. As he crossed the asphalt parking lot toward his pickup, a horn honked. A man with a gray-haired buzz cut waved at him and stopped his white van just feet away. “Louis!” said Buzz Van Wyke from behind the wheel, smiling, like he was greeting an old friend.
“Morning,” said Louis taking a step toward the van. Lots of clients remembered Louis, but it wasn’t always so easy to remember all of the clients.
The driver lowered his voice. “I’ve got a message for you from Kit.”
Louis registered surprise, then shuffled up to the van, a bit wary. “And who would you be?”
“He’s a good friend, Louis,” said Kit crouched down behind Buzz. Kit and Louis could see each other through a small space between the driver’s seat and the window.
“Kit, are you okay?” asked Louis, excitedly stepping closer to the van.
“I’m fine.”
“I’m so sorry about what happened to your mom and sister, Rick and Maria.…”
“We’ll all get through this. Don’t worry.”
“The police, the feds searched the facility, like we’re some kind of criminals. They come every day. They’re watching the company. Probably there now.”
“Just ignore them. But right now, I need your help,” said Kit.
“Name it.”
“You know the business as well as anyone. Open every day and run things as best you can.”
“Okay.”
“As soon as Julio comes in this morning, have him gas up the twin Cessna and tow it over to Dave Tallichet‘s old hangar. Tell him to put it inside, that Mike Matthews is going to borrow it to fly to Cable Airport. You got it?”
“Got it.”
“Sorry to ask you to lie to Julio, but you can’t let him or anyone else know you saw me and that I’m taking the plane. Okay?”
“Okay. But Kit, what about Staci?” pleaded Louis. Louis had been looking after Staci like he would his own daughter for the last several years. “Kit, I’m so worried about her I can’t sleep.”
“She’s alive. And I’m going to find her. I promise you that.”
* * *
“There’s the old man,” said CID Agent Flood, watching through binoculars as Louis Kraminski unlocked the doors to Wheels Up Aviation. Flood polished off the last of a maple donut, then found a paper napkin in the messy rented sedan.
Kraminski’s cell phone and the company phone lines and e-mails were being monitored, without a court order, thanks to Flood’s buddy in the NSA. The same cyber-spook had taps on other phone lines, including Detectives Bobby Chan’s and Ron Franklin’s. And minutes earlier, the contents of Chan’s work computer had been e-mailed to the CID agents. Agent Bates was right now examining Chan’s case files.
Bates looked up from his laptop as other Wheels Up employees followed Louis inside. Bates sniffed. “You know what it smells like in here?”
“Donuts?”
“No. Ass.”
“Well, that would be your ass, not mine,” said Flood.
“So what do you think about this aviation connection? Maybe Wheels Up was ferrying dope for the Russian mob and they had a falling out?”
“Makes sense to me. The Russians got screwed over, so they decided to kill everyone connected to the company. That’s how Russians operate.”
“So what’s with Bennings and the Russian chick from Moscow?”
Flood shrugged. “Maybe she works for a different mob.”
Bates nodded as he checked his computer. “Your NSA pal just sent me an audio file. From the tap on the Bennings house.”
“But no one’s in the house,” said Flood.
“Answering machine, remember? Somebody left a message.”
Flood and Bates had already conducted an extensive illegal search of the home in Chino Hills. Bates opened the file and played it once, then turned the volume up all the way and replayed it. The voice was just barely audible: “Las Vegas, south of the Rio and Palms, third-floor apartment or hotel. A dump. Help, Las Vegas…”
The two agents looked at each other. “Could that be Bennings’s sister?” asked Flood.
Bates reached for his cell phone and punched in a number.
* * *
A small convoy of AT&T utility trucks and repair vehicles snaked their way on a dirt track toward the blast site in Wyoming north of Interstate 80.
The lead pickup truck was driven by the crew’s foreman, Chuck McNair, and he skidded his vehicle to a stop when he saw the seventy-five-foot-diameter depression in the ground.
McNair put on his hard hat and walked to the edge of the depression. Soon other men joined him.
“Damn, what do you make of this?” asked McNair to no one in particular.
“Somethin’ like a sinkhole,” said a worker.
“Sinkhole?” said Danny Jones, a lanky technician with a mocking tone. “I didn’t work
as an EOD guy in Iraq, but that looks to me like something blew up underground. Like some bomb was buried and they blew it.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” asked the worker.
“Hell, how do I know?” asked Jones. “The Taliban? I mean, crap, take a look. The main northern fiber-optic communications cable is toast. Who would do that except terrorists?”
“Okay, just everybody settle down. We don’t know that a bomb went off.” McNair started to take cell-phone snaps of the depression, then quickly sent them onward over his phone.
* * *
The 1969 Cessna 401A holding five occupants taxied within one hundred yards of CID agents Flood and Bates, who sat parked outside a steel hangar at Chino Airport. The army investigators had no idea Kit Bennings was the plane’s pilot. No flight plan had been filed and the transponder was switched off. Bennings had even refused to tell his team where they were going and why. Three and a half hours later, the Cessna touched down at Moriarty Municipal Airport outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
* * *
The Albuquerque safe house was a vacation rental near Kirtland Air Force Base that had been hastily arranged by Kit over the Internet during the flight in. Two Nissan Pathfinders, rented using a phony name but a working credit card, sat parked in the driveway.
By about two in the afternoon, Kit, Buzz, Angel, Jen, and Yulana had stashed what little gear they had left and reconvened in the living room. They all looked exhausted.
“Okay, we’re here in Albuquerque, but why are we here, since Popov and Travkin are in Los Angeles?” asked Jen.
“Because Sandia is here, right, boss?” asked Angel.
“Popov has yet to explain what he wants Kit to do.” Buzz chewed on his pipe, thinking, then looked to Yulana.
She shrugged. “I don’t know why we’re here, either, but the mountains are beautiful.”
“So I guess it’s unanimous,” said Buzz. “Why did we come here?”
Before Kit could answer, his phone rang, startling him.
“That’s not your sterile phone ringing. Do you have another phone?” asked Jen.
“That’s my satellite phone.” He checked the incoming number … Staci! “It’s Staci’s sat phone calling.”