The target lunged at her, screaming something.
Too fast to get to the knife. She thrust the pistol at him, fired--
"No!" the woman in the shower screamed. Then she slammed into the Selkie and they both went flying. She lost the pistol, hit next to a bench, managed to roll up as Fiorella also got to her feet.
The Selkie kicked away her shoes, ripped her skirt off, grabbed the knife and jerked it from the thigh sheath, gripped the blade in front of her to slash or stab. She glanced at the target--he was down, hit in the leg, it looked like--no threat to her. The Fiorella woman was the danger. She was up, trained, prepared.
The Selkie turned to face her, knife held ready. She would have to hurry. The shots would draw attention.
She had first learned street fighting from her father, who had survived several hand-to-hand encounters. She had trained with half-a-dozen fighters since, including a couple of Filipinos who were experts with a stick or blade. She would cut the woman down, finish the target and run. If she hurried, she could still get free in the confusion.
She moved toward Fiorella--
Michaels felt the bullet hit him--it was a hot ball-peen hammer smashing against the front of his right thigh. He fell. It didn't really hurt, but he couldn't get back to his feet. The shot leg didn't want to work.
In front of him, Toni faced the woman, who had torn off her skirt and pulled a white-bladed knife. The assassin edged toward Toni. It wasn't over. He had to do something--
The gun! She had dropped the gun. Where was it--?
Toni actually felt calmer now. An attacker with a knife--this was something she had dealt with in practice, over and over again. High, low. The most important thing was to control the knife. You couldn't trade a punch for a stab, so you had to take high line and low line, you had to stop the knife arm at two points, high, low, to control it--
The Selkie moved in, keeping her balance. Fiorella stood and watched her, waiting, and she looked as if she knew what she was doing. It didn't matter. She had to finish this and go.
The Selkie feinted with a kick, then lunged--
Back of the arm, back of the arm, where there were fewer vessels to get slashed! Guru's instructions came back, crystal clear, as sharp as the approaching blade: Against an expert, you will get cut. Give him a sparse target.
The kick was a feint, but the slash was also a feint. When Toni threw up her left arm to block, the assassin jerked the knife back. The edge scored a deep line along the outside of Toni's forearm, just above the elbow.
It didn't matter. She wouldn't bleed out from that. Her hand still worked. She shifted her feet, waited--
Fiorella didn't react to the cut, didn't look at it, kept watching the attacker. The Selkie grinned. She was good, but time was running out.
There was a sequence attack, two feints, a shift of the knife to the other hand, then the heart stab between the ribs, followed by the backslash to the throat. It always worked in practice, and she had also killed a man with it in real combat.
The party was over. It was time to do what she did best, then leave.
The Selkie moved--
The attacker came in again, feinted, faked, thrust, then flipped the knife to her other hand as Toni went for the block. Toni would have been impressed watching from elsewhere, but she didn't have time to be impressed now. All the years of practice had to take over, no time to think anymore--!
Toni shifted her stance, passed the fake and did the block and break on the attacker's knife arm. Her right arm stopped the thrust at the wrist--low. Blood flew from the cut on her arm as she slammed the back of her left wrist under the woman's elbow--high.
The arm broke, the knife fell. Toni moved in, went over the wrecked arm and slammed her elbow into the woman's face. Followed her as she stumbled back and hit the lockers, drove a knee into the attacker's belly, then did sapu luar and dropped her to the floor. The attacker hit hard, her head bounced, but she rolled, dove for the knife, caught it in her good hand, came up and cocked the blade for a throw. Her nose was broken and bloody, her eyebrow split--
She knew now she couldn't take Fiorella in a one-on-one, even if her arm hadn't just been broken. One chance. The knife wasn't the best for throwing, but it would back the other woman off if it hit, point or butt. She'd lost, but she could still get away--
The Selkie aimed her elbow at the target, knife held by the blade next to her ear--
Michaels found the white gun, rolled over his bad leg--now it hurt!--and shoved the weapon out in front of him. He yelled to distract the woman about to throw the knife: "Hey!!"
She didn't waver, started to make the throw--
He pulled the trigger.
The recoil twisted the gun from his grip, and the sound was so loud it was like a bomb going off next to him.
A long moment held. Aeons passed. Nobody moved.
The knife flew--but clattered to the floor five feet away.
He'd hit her. Right in the middle of the back. The woman dropped to her knees, tried to reach the wound in her back with one hand, could not. She turned to look at him, her face puzzled more than anything. Then she toppled over onto her side.
Toni ran to where Alex lay. "Alex!?"
"I'm okay, I'm okay, she just got me in the leg."
The sound of approaching and excited voices rolled over them.
"You're hurt," he said.
"Just a cut. Looks worse than it is," she said. "Stay there, I'll get us some towels."
"I'm not going anywhere."
She got to her feet. Remembered Rusty. She hurried to where he lay. His eyes were open wide, not blinking. He had a bloody wound in the center of his chest--wasn't breathing--there was no pulse in his neck.
Two of the men from the gym ran in. "He needs help!" she said, pointing at Rusty. She dropped to her knees.
The two men were joined by a third. "We got it, Toni," one of them said. "Go wrap up that cut."
Alex had dragged himself to where the woman lay. He rolled her onto her back. The assassin moaned. She looked at him. Toni moved back toward Alex and the assassin, found a towel, pressed it against the wound in Alex's leg.
"Ow." He looked at Toni. "Thanks." Then he looked back at the woman.
"Son-of-a . . . bitch," the woman said. Her voice was burbly. Probably bleeding into a lung.
Alex said, "Who paid you to kill Steve Day?"
The woman was dying. But she laughed, a bubbly, liquid noise. "Who?"
"Day. Steve Day."
"Don't know the name," she said. "I never . . . forget a . . . target. He's . . . not one of mine."
"You didn't kill Steve Day?" Alex said.
"You deaf? I was hired to . . . do you. I--Genaloni. I did him. And some others. I don't--"
And just like that, she blinked out. Whatever she'd intended to say was chopped off in mid-sentence. There was a final outrush of bubbly air, and she was gone.
Alex and Toni looked at each other. Somebody from Medical ran in. The place seemed filled with people. Toni felt an overwhelming urge to hug Alex. She did.
He let her. And he hugged her back.
Friday, October 8th, 1:02 p.m. Quantico
Bureau Medical had a doctor and several nurses on staff in the main compound, and their own ambulance for anything they couldn't handle on their own. The in-house medic sutured the cut on Toni's arm--it took eighteen stitches inside and out--sprayed it with clear statskin, gave her a tetanus shot, and told her to have the sutures removed in five days.
X-rays of Michaels's leg showed that his bullet wound was a through-and-through. It had hit him slightly to the outside of the right thigh, glanced off the femur without breaking it and exited just under the outer edge of his buttock, all without doing any major damage--except for a couple of holes the size of his little finger's tip. The doctor cleaned and bandaged the wounds, but didn't sew them up; gave him a tetanus shot and a pair of crutches, and advised Michaels to avoid playing soccer for the next couple of weeks. He had his nurs
e give them samples of pain tablets, and told them they would hurt more tomorrow than they did right now. If they wanted to go and spend a couple of hours in the local ER to get a second opinion, that was up to them.
Both Toni and Michaels declined the ER trip.
Instead, they were back in Michaels's office. He sat on the couch, resting on his good hip. Toni stood by the door.
"Something bothering you, Alex?"
"Other than getting shot?"
"Yes."
He said, "I didn't feel particularly heroic in that locker room."
"Excuse me?"
"I should have done more."
"You came to help me. You charged a killer with a gun and you were unarmed. You managed to shoot her after you were wounded. How heroic do you think you need to be? You planning on leaping tall buildings in a single bound?"
He gave her a small smile. "Yeah. Well. Still, it kinda felt like Larry and Curly catch a killer," Michaels said.
She looked blank.
"Two of the Three Stooges," he said. "Hey, Larry! Hey, Moe! Woowoowoowoo!"
"Oh, yeah. My brothers used to watch those old vids. They must be a male thing. I never thought they were funny. Too violent." She smiled at the irony.
"I'm really sorry about your friend, the FBI trainee."
"Yeah."
There was a long pause. Then: "You believe her?" he said. "About Steve Day?"
Toni shrugged. "I don't know. She confessed to Genaloni and 'some others.' Why would she lie about Day?"
"Maybe to screw with our heads," Michaels said.
"We have to consider that. Did you believe her?"
He nodded. "Yeah, I did. I didn't think Day's murder was her style before, and this confirmed it for me."
"At least she won't be coming after you again."
"No. But what that means is, somebody else is responsible for Day."
"Somebody who apparently wanted us to think the mob did it," Toni said.
He nodded. "Remember that business about Genaloni's lieutenant up and disappearing? That they thought the FBI had taken him?"
"Yes."
"I bet whoever swiped his enforcer did it to piss Genaloni off. And whoever it was knew to point the finger at us when he did it."
"Looks like it worked," she said. "If Genaloni thought Net Force was gunning for him, he might have hired somebody to hit back. In his world, any problem can be solved with money or violence."
He shifted his weight slightly. His leg was beginning to throb pretty good. He considered taking one of the pain pills, then decided against it. He needed his mind to be clear more than he needed to be doped up and pain-free.
"So, we're back to square one on Day's killing," she added.
"No. I know who did it."
She looked at him. "Who?"
"The Russian. Plekhanov."
She thought about it for a second. "How did you come to that?"
He said, "It was part of his plan all along, to give Net Force something else to look at while he pulled off his power grab. The attacks on Day, our listening posts, all the rascals he threw in our paths all over the world. He wanted us busy, so we wouldn't notice what he was doing. It all makes a kind of warped sense."
"I don't know, Alex. It's possible, but--"
"It's him. I know it. He was willing to crash systems that caused deaths. It's not that big a leap to hiring a shooter. We were looking in the wrong direction--right where Plekhanov wanted us to look. He's smart."
Toni looked at him. "Assume you're right. How do we prove it? If his computer skills are as good as Jay says they are, we can't get into his files. Without some record, all we have is some very circumstantial evidence, and not much of that."
"Plekhanov could open the files for us. He has the key."
"He has no reason to do that--even if we had him, which we don't."
"We'll have to figure out the right way to ask. After we collect him."
She shook her head again. "Uplevels won't go for it, Alex. Walt Carver is too much a political animal to risk it. And even if he wanted to, he couldn't convince the Foreign Covert Operations Committee or the CIA to go along. FCOC has been burned too many times with this kind of thing. They haven't greenlighted anything military in two years that doesn't have the locals willing to go along, or at least look the other way--like the operation in Ukraine."
"This man had Steve Day murdered. And is responsible for the deaths of others. He's about to rig an election that will make him legally untouchable. And we can't get him because of some bureaucratic crap?"
"I know how you feel, but we'll be wasting our time to even ask," she said.
"Fine. So we won't ask," he said.
She stared at him. "Alex . . ."
"There is a difference between the law and justice. The only way this guy skates is over my dead body. We never had this conversation, Toni. You don't know anything about this."
She shook her head. "Oh, no, you don't. You don't get rid of me that easy. You want to do something stupid, I'm going to make sure you do it right. I'm in."
"You don't have to do this."
"Steve Day was my boss, too. I want his killer to pay for it."
Neither of them spoke for what seemed like a long time. Then Michaels said, "We'd better get John Howard in here."
"You think he'll go along?"
"We won't tell him, either. He works for me. If anything happens, it's my head that will roll. What he doesn't know won't hurt him."
"You think that's fair?"
"It protects him. He gets what he thinks is a legitimate order, he's covered."
"Your decision."
"Yes. About time I made a couple of decisions that do something."
Saturday, October 9th, 5:00 a.m. In the air over Hudson Bay
"All right, Sergeant Know-It-All, let's hear it."
Howard knew the plan--he had devised it--but it never hurt to burn it into long-term memory. Another pass to spot any errors.
Julio Fernandez grinned and affected his recruit-to-drillmaster voice: "Sir, Colonel Howard, sir!" More quietly, he said, "Chechnya is landlocked, bounded by Ingushetia on the west, Russia on the north, Dagestan on the east and Georgia on the south. The western border of the country is about three hundred kilometers east of the Black Sea, give or take. The capital and largest city is Grozny, of which the colonel will see detailed CIA maps of the surface streets in his flatscreen file, when and if he cares to look.
"The population is largely Chechen or Russian, that is to say--"
"Skip the geopolitical history, Sergeant. Let's get to strategy and tactics, please."
"As the colonel wishes." He grinned, relaxed. "Our two vintage UH-1H Hueys are scheduled to be off-loaded at 1900 hours from jet transport at Vladikavkaz, in North Ossetia, a favor for which the locals hope to obtain certain reciprocal courtesies from the U.S. Since we want friends in that area, such courtesies will no doubt eventually be extended.
"Once on the ground and operational, we will have to violate about fifteen kilometers of Ingushetian airspace to reach Chechnya. Our command post will be outside Urus-Martan, which is another twenty-five klicks inside Chechnya. All in all, we're talking about flying over forty kilometers of unfriendly territory.
"Of course, both countries have radar and something of an air force; however, at treetop level in the dark, it is unlikely that anybody but a few goats will even notice our choppers' overflight. It should be a milk run, if a bit crowded.
"We have a truck waiting in Grozny, which our four-trooper collection-team squad will reach from Urus-Martan upon the two Russian motor scooters we'll bring with us on the black copters. Vespa knockoffs, I believe. They aren't very fast, but it's only a dozen kilometers from Urus-Martan to Grozny, and they'll be coming back in a truck. Pretty good trade, actually, leaving the two scooters for one murdering Russian. The locals come out way ahead."
Howard made the keep-it-rolling sign.
"We arrive, all things going well, at about 2
200 hours, set up our tactical base in an old dairy farm owned by our friends the spooks. The spooks don't know we'll be using the place, as per our DTNS-policy on this mission."
Howard frowned. A new acronym. "DTNS?"
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