Something scurried across the platform below her and she heard the squeak of one of Moscow’s notorious sewer rats – a particularly nasty piece of business that could run to the size of a small dog. She waited a few seconds and then continued her descent, easing down until her feet found the cement tunnel floor. She felt around in the bag until she found the night vision goggles and put them on. As her ears adapted to the eerie echoes, she switched on the goggles – an image in green luminescence jumped into her field of vision.
“Remember the plan. They’ll be doing a shift change in thirty minutes. I’ll let you know when the new crew arrives – while they’re changing out the guard, you’ll have three minutes to get in and get out. I’ll be by in sixty seconds to close the manhole,” Alan’s soft voice murmured in her ear. She clicked the ear bud twice to confirm, then fumbled in the sack again until her fingers found the regulator mouthpiece. She put it between her teeth and opened the valve on the attached cylinder, and a blast of blessedly clean air burst from the hose.
They had been in Moscow for three days securing the gear she would need and mounting surveillance, Alan pretending to be a delivery man one day, she a tourist the next. The villa had a round-the-clock security presence, eight men per shift, and they had timed the arrival and departure of the men and were confident that tonight, as with every other night, the graveyard crew would show up at half-past midnight, to be replaced by another shift at eight-thirty.
The giant pipes vibrated underfoot as she crept along the tunnel, following the diagram she’d copied to a split a hundred and fifty yards ahead. When Jet saw the Y junction, she took the right passage until she came to yet another split – this time choosing the left. The texture of the tunnel floor changed, from poured concrete to cobblestones, older, worn by time and slimy from mold. She knew there would be a security grate ahead that she would need to get through, and then another sixty yards and she would be directly under the pump room of the building adjacent to Grigenko’s villa – which according to the map was accessible through the tunnel via centuries-old steps.
Another curious rat approached her – she could easily make out the furry shape with her goggles – and then had a change of heart, about-faced, and raced away from her. As she progressed, counting her paces from the last split, she adjusted the rucksack so that it hung more comfortably on the shoulder strap. Inside it she had everything she’d need to terminate the Russian – including a solution for the two locks she was about to encounter.
She reached the gate and paused, squinting at the oversized padlock. Smiling to herself in spite of the toxic stink surrounding her, she extracted a small aerosol can and squirted half its contents into the lock. Wisps of chemical smoke rose from the old steel mechanism, and three minutes later she snapped it open with the manhole pick.
A sharp blow from her shoulder didn’t move the grate, so she used the pick to pry at it, eventually shifting it and swinging the grill wide. She hesitated before proceeding, debating pulling it closed, then chose to leave it open for a speedy getaway. Up ahead she could make out two sets of crumbling stairs rising into the darkness at the side of the passage. Two sets. Not one, as she’d been expecting.
Counting her steps, she estimated that the first stairs were the ones she was after and she mounted them carefully, stopping when she arrived at an ancient iron door. She tried the corroded handle, but it didn’t budge. Retrieving the solvent again, she emptied the remainder into the lock and waited patiently, then wrenched the handle again. This time it cranked open, and she pulled on it, wincing at the creaking protestation from the oxidized hinges.
Jet stepped into a dank equipment room, oversized pumps positioned in three of the corners – the apartment complex’s water and sewage facility. She carefully unpacked the rucksack and removed a backpack and an FN P90 with a silencer, and then prepared to move. When she spat the regulator from her mouth the odor was still terrible, but she could bear it. She stuffed the rucksack behind one of the pumps, closed the door to the sewer, and crept to the room’s exit, listening intently.
The building had a doorman and an armed security guard, but they would both be in the front, not in the bowels of the service area. Her strategy was simple: get to the roof, rappel down the side, and get into Grigenko’s bedroom on the uppermost of the villa’s three floors. She knew from the Mossad reports that the windows were bulletproof glass, but they were also the sort that opened, and any small window lock would take only moments to crack with one more spray can of her secret formula. Then it would be straightforward. Open window. Shoot Grigenko. Exit the way she’d entered, and be back at her hotel in time to get a few hours of beauty rest before leaving Russia forever.
A simple plan. The best ones always were.
She inched the door open and then flipped off the night vision gear – there was enough dim lighting from an overhead incandescent bulb that she could see with no problem. Down the corridor was another steel door that led to the lobby, she knew. The garbage chute dumped into a large metal bin next to it, and just before the garbage were the service stairs that led up, ultimately to the roof.
Her footsteps were silent on the hall’s cracked tile floor, and she wasted no time at the stairs, taking them two at a time, checking her watch as she did. The guards would change over in four minutes, giving her just enough time to get into position.
Another squirt from her second canister quickly overcame the lock on the rooftop door, and then she was out in the night air, crunching across the metal and gravel surface to the edge, where five stories below sat Grigenko’s villa.
She pulled a length of black rappelling line from her backpack and snapped one end to a steel pipe several yards from the edge, and then pulled up her black sweater and fed the cord through a steel eyelet on the nylon harness she wore underneath it.
At the roof lip, she looked over at Grigenko’s home and waited for the go-ahead from Alan to come over the com line. Her heart rate was normal, breathing even. She was ready.
“Abort. Something’s not right. They didn’t do a normal shift change.” Alan’s voice sounded strained in her ear.
“Negative. Maybe they’re just a few minutes late. Give it a little time.”
Alan didn’t say anything, and the minutes slowly crawled by with no activity.
And then something caught her eye. On Grigenko’s roof. Movement.
She dropped flat and then peered over the edge for a better look, and found herself staring down the barrel of a sniper rifle with a night scope on it.
She rolled away just as the first slug blew part of the roof lip molding off.
“They’re shooting. I’m aborting. Stand by. I’ll need a pick-up, but I’m not sure where,” she said as she catapulted herself to a run, pausing to unsnap the cord from the pipe as she went by and stuffing it into her backpack. She threw the roof door open and switched off the goggles again, and then took the stairs three at a time.
It would be close. They would need to get out onto the street, get into the lobby, and convince the guard to open the steel service door. By her reckoning that would be just about how long it took her to run down five more flights of stairs.
The germ of an idea hit her as she hit the fourth floor, and she quickly retrieved the rappelling cord and snapped one end to the metal stair handrail and threw herself over, dropping four stories in a matter of six seconds, slowing her descent near the bottom before alighting on the ground floor and severing the cord with a flick of her butterfly knife. She was ducking into the pump room when she heard shouting from the lobby, so her estimation was accurate – she’d gained maybe fifteen seconds on them, no more.
She burst into the chamber and locked the deadbolt, then bolted to the door at the far end and retrieved her rucksack from behind the far pump. She slipped on the goggles again and swung the door to the sewer open, then paused on the other side to jam one end of the manhole pick under the door, wedging it in place. Hopefully that would hold for at least a little while.
It was going to be close, but between the deadbolt and the jammed door she might have enough of an edge now to make it.
Jet ran down the tunnel, grappling in the rucksack for the oxygen as the methane and sulfur smell threatened to overpower her. That would also slow them once they were in the sewer.
The door behind her shuddered and then slammed twice, flying open on the third blow, and then they were in the tunnel coming after her. She had gained at most a hundred-yard lead, but she had something they didn’t: an idea of where she was going. Footfalls sounded from behind her as at least four men raced down the tunnel, but she heard them slow as the air got increasingly foul. She pushed through the old grate, not bothering to close it, and then sprinted, shoes splashing in the noxious puddles that were everywhere. She tried not to think about how much more oxygen she had. However hard it would be on her, it had to be far worse for her pursuers.
Flashlight beams played on the walls behind her, and she ducked into the first intersection, bearing right. Running flat out, she covered the next leg in twenty seconds and took the left tunnel. The sounds from behind her were growing more distant, fading to where she could hardly hear her trackers.
Now the question was, where to exit? There wouldn’t be much time. They’d get the police prowling the streets within minutes once they figured out they’d lost her in the sewers.
She arrived at the steel rungs in the wall where she’d descended and cocked her head. Sound was distorted from the echoes, but their footfalls sounded distant and dim – they’d taken different passageways, which would require backtracking once they realized their error, buying her more time. And there was no way for them to know which passages she’d taken, so it would be trial and error. Now the dilemma was whether to wait for them to show themselves, or risk drawing them to her with the noise of the manhole cover.
Her air supply ran dry, making the decision easier. She had to get out of there. Now.
Jet pulled herself to the top of the ladder and regretted having ditched the steel pick. Desperate, she rammed her shoulder against the heavy iron disk and felt it shift, but only barely. She pushed upwards with all her might, and it lifted a few scant inches. She wedged a hand against it, biceps straining, and inched it to the side, and was greeted by a blast of fresh air as she hoisted herself up and out into the night. She rolled the cover back into place, wincing at the loud grating sound it made, and then sprinted down the street as she tapped her ear bud.
“I’m out. Get me at...outside that Cartier store two blocks from my entry point. I should be there within a few–”
She heard the manhole cover crash behind her, and spun, dropping the P90 into firing position as she pivoted, and then sprayed the street with rounds. A man dropped back into the sewer, his skull split open from a bullet, and she heard a shout as his body fell onto others below him on the access ladder. That would keep them busy for a while. Nobody would want to be the next man to poke his head out if there was a slug waiting for him on the other side. She tore off the night vision goggles and dropped them into her rucksack, then tapped the ear bud again as she ran.
“As I was saying. Pick me up by Cartier. I should be there in two minutes.”
“Are you okay?” Alan’s whispered question tickled her ear.
“No injuries. See you in two.”
“Roger that.”
Sirens howled in the distance, reminding her that she was still racing the clock. It would be close. Very close.
Her mind raced at the implications of the disastrously aborted hit. Grigenko’s men had to have known something was going on. Alan had been right.
Which meant somehow, some way, they’d been tipped off.
She turned a corner and slowed to a walk, then ditched the rucksack into a garbage can half-filled with refuse awaiting collection and adjusted her backpack. Now she was just a nice girl returning from a night of cocktails or a date at her rich boyfriend or sponsor’s apartment.
Up ahead at the pedestrian promenade she saw the glow of the red Cartier signs. She was just crossing the street when she heard a revving engine race towards her, and the Porsche pulled alongside her.
“Hop in,” Alan said.
She shrugged the backpack off and tossed it into the small rear area behind the passenger seat and then climbed into the low-slung seat. She was just slamming the door closed when a police car with lights and sirens blaring came screeching around the corner a block behind them, heading straight toward them. Alan glanced at her and jammed the stick shift into gear and floored it, and the powerful sports car launched forward into the Moscow night.
Chapter 22
“We were blown. They were expecting something.” Jet’s voice was calm, without inflection, as they weaved through the empty streets, the police cruiser in hot pursuit.
“I got that,” Alan said, twisting the wheel and sending the little coupe dizzily around a sharp corner, the back end losing traction for a moment before Alan righted it with a goose of the throttle. The rear wheels gripped and the car jolted forward, accelerating like a runaway elevator, the momentum pinning them both back into their seats.
“Might want to fasten your seatbelt,” Alan commented, eyes darting to the rearview mirror, tracking the police car.
“Why, is that a law here?” She smiled and secured it with a click. “I’m just going to have to unbuckle if I need to shoot them to pieces. Waste of energy, the buckling part.”
“Probably best if you don’t start a firefight in downtown Moscow. Not really low profile.”
“Then you better pick up the pace and sharpen your driving chops, because I have a feeling you’re going to have more where they came from pretty soon – and you can’t outrun a radio.”
“Good point. Grab the GPS down by your feet and pull up a map. You can play navigator.”
She powered the little device on, then punched the buttons until a map of the area came up. She studied it briefly and then nodded. “Two blocks up, make a right. Go one block, make a left.”
“Right, then left. Gotcha. Where are you taking us?”
“To the nearest Metro station. There’s no way they have a description of us, just the car. So we ditch it and disappear into the Metro. Split up. Rendezvous later. By the way, next time you’re going to steal a car for an operation, pick a different color than red. Just a tip.”
“Works for me.” He gunned the engine and they flew over cobblestones before he made the right. They were steadily pulling away from the police car, which was now three blocks back. “Besides, I always wanted to put a Porsche through its paces – and this was the only one I could find.”
“When we get onto the main street after the left, go up three blocks and then drop me off at the station. Dump the car wherever. Worst case, meet me at the Metropol Hotel in an hour.”
“Done. Use that water to rinse off your shoes once you’re on the sidewalk – the smell’s a giveaway.” He motioned to a liter bottle in the back.
“Will do.”
Once he had twisted through the streets, following her directions, he pulled to the curb and she leapt out of the car fifty yards from the Metro entrance. He tossed her the backpack and water and tore off again. She sat down on a concrete planter and washed the sewer residue on her shoes away before proceeding to the station, standing calmly on the long escalator carrying her twenty stories below the surface. The air became warmer, tinged with the distinctive smell of subways everywhere in the world, and soon she was standing on a platform waiting for the next train, which she could hear clattering somewhere down the darkened tunnel.
A police officer stepped onto the platform and studied the small crowd of people waiting for the subway, their faces mostly drawn and tired, defeated, ready to go home after a long night’s partying. Some teenagers laughed boisterously from the far end of the platform, and one of them yelled at his companion, then stopped abruptly when he saw the cop. The group quieted as he focused his attention on them and everyone suddenly lost interest in crea
ting a disturbance.
The train pulled into the station with a clatter and the doors opened. Everyone on the platform waited for the few travelers to get off, and then they boarded the half-empty cars, grabbing seats where they could. Many smelled like alcohol – she guessed that at least half of her fellow travelers were in some state of substantial inebriation, and some were barely conscious.
The policeman got onto the next car from hers and took a seat. Whatever he was doing, it wasn’t looking for her, and she relaxed. She was just one of many millions in the huge metropolis, and didn’t stand out in any way.
Except for the ear bud.
Shit. She’d forgotten about it. Fortunately her hair covered her ears, but it was sloppy tradecraft and she mentally kicked herself. She removed it with a tug and dropped it into her pocket – she might need it later to communicate with Alan.
The train rumbled forward and soon they were whistling through the tunnel to the next station. She’d studied the route map before choosing that line, and only had to ride a few stops before she would disembark and loop back around to get to the Metropol, which wasn’t far from Grigenko’s villa.
The night had been a disaster. Somehow the Russian had been tipped. That meant that she had a huge problem – there was no telling what else Grigenko knew, and worse yet, she’d lost the element of surprise. Without it the odds of success dropped to the single digits.
So her worries had just gotten worse. What should have been a straightforward penetration and termination had turned into a chase across Moscow, and that now involved the police. And one dead guard. Which would mean a murder charge if she was caught.
Spending time as a guest of the Russian penal system wasn’t on her bucket list of ways to live out her life, so she would need to be careful – more careful than she’d been up until then. And she needed to figure out how they had tumbled to her plan. That was the priority. Without that information, there was no way to mount another attempt.
Jet 03: Vengeance Page 14