King whipped the door open and took a step out the door. Clouds of steam were puffing from his mouth as the adrenaline hurried his breath.
“Looks like you got what you wanted,” King said. “Hate to tell you, but it’s not going to be what you’re expecting.”
A cold wind blew across King’s bare face. But as Ryker stepped forward and into a fighting stance, the only thing he felt was the burn of anger moving all through him.
Chapter Eleven
Moscow, Russia, 8:30 p.m.
The three men who were chasing after Sam and Zhanna from inside the hangar were at least smart enough to stop at the edge of the building and assess where the two women had gone. There also were bullets flying their way from the opposite side of the parking lot, which Sam had no choice but to assume was friendly fire for them. But really, she had no idea. Clearly what was in the briefcase by her side was of incredible importance, so there could certainly be more than one faction vying for it.
There was a car blocking Sam and Zhanna from the men who had stopped at the side of the hangar. For the moment they were covered. Whoever was behind them had now stopped firing. Sam took the quiet moment to check the briefcase. When she’d accidentally shot the handle, it had broken the lock. She opened the briefcase and inside were four vials full of a mostly clear liquid, two with green tops, two with blue. No instructions or guide was given inside. All of them were marked with a different number, none of which meant anything to Sam. She removed the four vials and handed the two with blue tops to Zhanna.
“We need to split up,” Sam whispered. “If these are as important as they seem, we can’t chance them getting us both and having all the vials. We need to know what is inside them.”
Sam could tell by the worried look on Zhanna’s face that she didn’t like the idea of splitting up. But it only took a second for Zhanna to realize Sam’s logic, and she confirmed the plan with a nod.
Sam stole a glance over the trunk of the car in front of her. She immediately ducked her head back down when one of the men at the corner of the hangar fired at her. Zhanna tucked two of the vials in her pocket, and Sam did the same.
“I’ll cover you until you find a car with keys,” Sam said. Then she pointed at the barbed wire fence on their right. There was a patch of grass beyond it, then the road. “Drive right through the fence there, then switch cars as soon as you can. Call Robert Lucas at CIA headquarters, and he’ll get you in touch with me.”
“I can’t just leave you here,” Zhanna said.
Someone yelled something in Chinese behind them. Though the men had Sam and Zhanna trapped, they were growing impatient.
“You don’t have a choice,” Sam said. “When I start shooting, you start running. There is no other way out.”
Zhanna lifted up and glanced through the window at the men behind them. “I see two. And there were three coming out of the hangar. There is no way you make it out alive.”
Sam rechecked her last magazine, loaded it back into her Glock, then racked the slide. “Just run when I start shooting, and don’t look back.”
Zhanna hung her head. “You and Xander are more alike than you think.”
Sam gave her a wink, then focused on the corner of the hangar. “Go!” She raised up and shot twice, bouncing two bullets off the aluminum siding of the hangar. Zhanna was off and running. Then Sam whipped around and fired at the two men Zhanna said were behind her, then immediately turned to shoot at the hangar again. The men behind her fired, and when she went to turn, shots came from the men hiding behind the hangar wall, busting the glass of the car beside her. Sam pulled the lock up inside the broken window and cracked open the door as she ducked down. She closed the briefcase, shouted as loud as she could, “Don’t shoot! Take the briefcase!” and tossed it out in the parking lot where all the gunmen could see.
Sam crawled inside the Cadillac sedan, did a quick search for keys, but came up empty. She heard a car start in the distance. She prayed it was Zhanna and that her distraction had worked.
“Just take the briefcase!” Sam shouted again as she slid back out of the car.
She had eight rounds left in her magazine and no way out. Then she heard screeching tires. When she looked off to her right, Zhanna was plowing through the fence just as Sam had asked her to. The added bonus of distracting the men hiding behind the hangar wall was the window Sam needed in order to stand a chance. She rounded the back of the Cadillac, away from the men at the hangar who were now firing at Zhanna’s vehicle. The two men who had trapped her on the opposite side were running for the briefcase. Sam raised her gun and fired twice at the man in front. He dropped to the ground, but the man behind her had been running with his gun up to cover him, and he got off three shots before Sam could duck behind the next car in the lot.
Pain exploded in her left shoulder as she spun and dropped to the ground. She’d been hit, but she still had her wits about her. As she lay on the snow-dusted pavement, she could see beneath the car beside her, and she watched the man who’d shot her grab the briefcase. Then, to her surprise, the men who’d given chase inside the hangar and had just been firing at Zhanna in her getaway car, began firing at the man who’d just shot her. There definitely were two different organizations at the airport looking for the briefcase. What the hell did she have in her pocket that so many people not only knew about but were willing to shoot over without question? Could this many people know about the supposed secret virus? Could this have come from Barrow, Alaska?
Sam lay on the cold pavement without moving. Her shoulder was throbbing in pain. The man with the briefcase was still running away, firing behind him at the three men giving chase. For the moment, they had forgotten about her. Ironically, getting shot may have just saved her life.
Chapter Twelve
Barrow, Alaska, 9:30 a.m.
”Ryker!” Cali shouted. She was still on her ass where he had shoved her to the ground. “Just leave him alone! He did nothing to you!”
Cali’s shouts fell on deaf ears. King watched Ryker take two steps forward. While he didn’t know what kind of boxer Ryker had been, King could tell by Ryker’s personality that he was used to being the aggressor. And the sheriff had told him that Ryker hit like a truck, which King could attest to after being punched by him in the face. So he was used to overpowering and stalking his opponents. It was also clear from last night at the bar that Ryker’s right hand was his power punch. That’s why when King took a couple of steps of his own, he began to circle to Ryker’s left, moving away from his best punch.
What Ryker had yet to understand was that there was no way he could win this fight. Not because he wasn’t a better boxer than King, but because he was merely a boxer. He had only three, maybe four tools to work with, at best. Immediately after King’s parents were murdered, when King was just fifteen years old, he became obsessed with learning every skill that could be useful if he ever got the chance to find who’d taken his family from him. He had studied all forms of combat. Boxing—so he was good with his hands. Muay Thai—so he could also strike with elbows, knees, and kicks. And Brazilian Jiu Jitsu—so if he met his match on his feet, he could always take the fight to the ground. Ryker fighting against King was like a golfer only having one club for the entire course. No matter how good he was with that one club, he wasn’t going to fare well against someone with a full bag.
On top of that, someone trained in the way King had been trained—both throughout his childhood, then even more refined in the Navy SEALs and Special Operations—also had fight and combat IQ. This could help him calculate far beyond the one-on-one fight at hand. What that meant for King in this particular instance was that one of his best fighting tools—Brazilian Jiu Jitsu—was off the table to be used as a weapon. As he continued to circle to Ryker’s left, he took one last glance at the two trucks shining their headlights behind Ryker. The four men with Ryker had now exited the warmth of their vehicles. The reason that meant no Jiu Jitsu was because when fighting multiple assailants,
the last thing a person would ever want to do is get caught at any time on the ground. Movement and agility were the keys to fighting more than one man; if someone is on the ground, they have neither.
“Circling away from my power hand?” Ryker said. “That ain’t gonna help you.”
Ryker was clearly dumb, and telling your opponent your strength was just plain arrogant. But King had made the mistake of being complacent in fights before; that wasn’t going to happen now.
“I told you,” King said. “This isn’t going to go how you are expecting.”
“Please stop this!” Cali had gotten back up to her feet. She was still worried about King getting hurt. She, too, was in for a surprise. “Ryker! If you hurt him, you’re going to jail!”
“He already put me in jail, Cali. So shut your mouth. It’s time for him to pay.”
Ryker charged forward like a bull. A lot of times in this situation, King might take the time to toy with someone as cocky, yet overmatched, as Ryker. Teach him a little lesson in humility, as King himself was often taught early on in his combat training. But it was cold as hell outside, and there were four other full-grown men he was also going to have to contend with.
“No!” Cali shouted.
When Ryker made it into striking range, he threw his bread-and-butter power right hand, and King jerked back to his right in time to miss getting hit, and simultaneously threw a left Thai kick right to Ryker’s stomach. It landed with the power of a baseball bat. Ryker grunted as the air left his lungs, and dropped to his knees. As soon as King’s left foot returned to the ground after the kick, he twisted his hips like a bottle cap and brought the same leg around—the top of his foot connecting with Ryker’s forehead. The lights went out, and Ryker’s unconscious body landed in a thud on his back.
As King squared up to the four men standing in front of their two jacked-up pickup trucks, he glanced over at Cali and found her mouth gaped open in surprise. If the four men were surprised, they didn’t show it. The first one moved in without hesitation.
“Watch out!” Cali shouted.
This guy was a round fella, wearing a double-x puffy coat and sporting lunch boxes for fists. The first of those fists came at King with about half the speed of Ryker’s big punch. This guy was no Golden Gloves champion. King weaved left and tripped the big guy. He went down like a boulder off a cliff. King took two quick steps to round himself to the man’s head and soccer kicked him into unconsciousness.
Unlike the movies, the rest of the men didn’t line up one by one ready to get taken out. The next two came at him at the same time, but they weren’t what King was worried about. It was the last man who moved around to the bed of his truck that got his attention. If he was going for a bat, or a knife, or even a tire iron, King would be okay. But if it was a gun, things were going to go sideways.
Chapter Thirteen
Moscow, Russia, 8:30 p.m.
Sam lay motionless on the ground. The cold was starting to really work its way in from the ground below her. The commotion of the gunmen chasing the man who’d picked up the briefcase had moved about twenty yards and several cars in the parking lot away. She tried to look for them without moving her head, but couldn’t see them. The shooting had just stopped, so they must have run him down. The next thing they were going to do was open the briefcase. As soon as they found it was empty, they were going to double back for her. This was probably her only chance to get away.
She glanced around once more, but there were too many car tires in her line of sight to tell if the men were coming back. She was just going to have to move and hope. Sam pushed up to her knees but had no time to raise her gun before the shadowy figure in front of her kicked her in the chest, knocking her onto her back. The lights from the building showed a man pointing a gun at her. Dead to rights.
“Where are the vials?” The man spoke with a thick Russian accent.
Sam sat up. “They’re in my pocket. You can have them. Just please don’t kill me.”
“Who sent you?” the man said.
Sam had to think fast. “No one. I am just a hired gun for Veronika. But I couldn’t protect her. She’s . . .” Sam trailed off for effect. She thought of all the things she could have told the man, but acting as extra security for Veronika left her the least exposed.
“Hand over vials. Slowly.”
As Sam rose to her feet, she looked past the man holding the gun on her and saw the two others in the distance, just beginning to turn her way. If she wanted to make it out of there alive, now was her chance. And she had to make a sacrifice.
Sam pulled the two vials from her front pocket.
“Slow,” the man reiterated.
Sam did exactly as he asked. She moved in slow motion as she extended the vials toward him. His eyes were fixed on them, not her. She located her gun just under the car on her right. The man began to reach for the vials, and that’s when Sam tossed them off to her left.
As the two glass vials dropped toward the concrete, Sam fired a right kick that smacked the man’s hand hard enough to dislodge the gun. The man staggered back in confusion. He was too worried about the vials breaking on the pavement to recover fast enough to defend himself. Sam stepped forward and push-kicked him in the stomach as hard as she could. It moved him back about three feet. She hoped it was enough.
As soon as her foot planted after the kick, she dove under the car, sliding her hand over the grip on her Glock. The man recovered, started forward, but it was too late. Sam squeezed the trigger twice, and down he went.
A man shouted in Russian out in front of her. Sam popped up from behind the car, and the two men were running right for her—completely exposed. She squeezed the trigger until the slide locked back. Fortunately, she was the only one left standing. Sacrificing the vials was the only way she would have been able to survive that encounter. It was exactly why she gave Zhanna the other two. And it had paid off.
Sam tucked her gun in her coat pocket, walked over to the man’s gun she’d dislodged, and pocketed it as well. Then she went back to the man in uniform. He was one of the three men in uniform who had run at her from inside the hangar. She rummaged through his pockets but found only a set of keys. Her early read on the men in uniform was that they were there to make sure Veronika got the vials safely. She was thinking they were government men sent to escort her to wherever Veronika was going with the vials. When they heard the commotion Sam had created inside the hangar, they’d gone in to help.
The real question mark was the two men in suits who’d also been waiting there. They were obviously not affiliated with the military men, therefore the reason they were dead. But when one of them had shouted earlier, in Chinese, it seemed to sync with the image of the men getting off the jet with the vials. It was all so strange. Russians, Chinese, vials they were willing to die for. There was a lot to put together, and it was beginning to feel like more of a Rubik’s Cube.
Sam stayed low and weaved her way around the cars to see if she could find some identification on one of those men. First, she stopped at the man she’d shot first who had been running behind the man who picked up the briefcase a moment ago and shot Sam in the shoulder. The light fixed to the building was shining on his body like a spotlight. His pockets were all empty. Whoever these suited men were, they were professionals. They probably kept their credentials locked in the glove box of their vehicle. And she had to find this vehicle before she left. She desperately needed to know who these men were. It would be key in finding out just who the players were in all of this madness about a virus.
She had so many questions, but she had to move on.
She bypassed the other two uniformed men she had shot, and went directly over to the man they’d killed for the briefcase. When she rolled the dead man over, her shoulder reminded her that there was a bullet there. Her adrenaline must have been wearing off. She could feel the wet blood running cold down her arm. She went through the man’s pockets. The only thing she found was another set of keys. Maybe t
his was how she could get some important information.
Her head shot up and her eyes searched the road when she heard the rumbling of an engine. There were two sets of headlights moving along the road, and they were moving fast. They were definitely coming for her. She hit the lock button on the keypad a couple of times, and a horn honked. She ran in the direction of the sound. Unfortunately, it was also in the direction of the vehicles whose tires were squealing as they turned into the airport entrance and busted through the wood plank board barrier.
She hit the lock button again, and this time when she heard the honk, she saw the caution lights flash. It was an SUV about thirty yards in front of her. The two racing vehicles were already in the parking lot. There was no time to escape with the car before they were on her, so before the vehicles turned down her lane, she bolted over to the row of cars the SUV was parked in and ducked behind the first car there. The two vehicles knew exactly where they were going. They roared past her, heading right for the hangar where the briefcase deal had gone sour. Sam scurried behind the row of cars and moved over to the driver’s side of the dead men’s SUV. She unlocked the door, and just as she was sliding inside, she heard sirens in the distance.
The walls were closing in.
Chapter Fourteen
Alexander King Thriller Series: Books 1-3 Page 29