“Why are you here?” Vince asked Patrick.
“We really can’t—”
“Someone kidnapped an asset,” Sam interrupted Patrick. “We were already here on assignment, so they put us on it. I’m so glad you’ve heard about the mess at the airport. That is where our asset was taken. Any information you could give us would be unbelievably helpful. And we’ll be out of your hair.”
Sam could tell by the pretend dumbfounded look on his face that he knew exactly what she was talking about. The question was, why was he lying?
“Let-Let me just go back in here and smooth this over with these guys. Then I’ll see what I can find out about your asset.”
“That would be great. Thank you so much!” Sam said. The cheer in her own voice made her stomach turn, but Vince believed it enough to go back inside the apartment.
Sam turned immediately and yanked Patrick in the opposite direction down the hallway. “Who the hell is he, Patrick? Because he is lying through his teeth.”
“I thought the same thing. How could he know about the airport? I never did really like the guy, but I just thought it was because he was an arrogant prick.”
Sam thought for a moment. She needed answers, and fast. This guy was lying about something. She pulled out her phone and dialed Director Lucas. The phone rang several times, then went to voice mail. “Shit!” She then dialed the only other person she thought could find some info on Vince in a relatively short time period: Dbie Johnson. Dbie picked up on the first ring.
“Busy night,” Dbie answered.
“I’m sorry?”
“Oh, nothing. X just called, so I was saying—”
“Is he all right?”
“Just looking for information.”
“Well, I need you to do something for me first,” Sam said.
“I’ll do what I can. What is it?”
“I need anything you can find out about a Vince Huang.”
Dbie laughed. “Yeah, I know. I’m on it.”
“What?”
“You talked to X too?” Dbie said.
“Dbie, what are you saying? I haven’t spoken with anyone.”
“You’re kidding?”
“I don’t have time for whatever this is. There are lives at stake.”
“Shit, you’re serious,” Dbie said, changing her tone. “I swear to God I just got off the phone with X and he asked for information about the same guy.”
“He asked about Vince Huang?”
“Yes, crazy, right?”
“Get the information, I’ll call you back.” Sam ended the call.
“Everything all right?” Patrick said.
“No, your man in there—”
Sam didn’t get a chance to finish. Patrick grabbed her by the shirt, lowered his shoulder into the door beside him, crashing through it and pulling her in with him. The reason he had done so echoed through the hallway: someone had just about shot Sam in the back.
Sam jumped up to her feet. As if knowing that Xander was looking for the same guy wasn’t enough to let her know she couldn’t let Vince get away, now he’d shot at her. The building was about to turn into chaos. Sam could hear people screaming in their apartments. Luckily, no one seemed to be home in the one they’d just crashed into.
“He can’t get away,” Sam said to Patrick. “You go left, I’ll follow directly after them.”
Patrick didn’t argue. He jumped up and filed in behind Sam. Sam poked her head out and nearly lost it. Vince was firing on her one last time before he disappeared into the stairwell.
“Go, go, go!” Sam shouted as she sprinted down the hallway. What might be the key to pulling all of this together was getting away. At the very least, she knew Vince would know how to find Zhanna. If Xander was looking for Vince too, it meant what happened at the airport had to be somehow connected to something Xander had found in Alaska. She raced down the stairs, dodging a few screaming civilians as she went.
Sam would die before she let him get away.
Chapter Forty-Four
Sam jumped the last six steps and skidded to a stop on the tile floor. She pushed through the door that led into the deli. As soon as she cleared it, she was hit hard from behind. As she slid across the floor, she spun into her attacker. It was Vince, and he was already on top of her. As Sam wrapped her legs around him and pulled guard so he couldn’t raise up and hit her, they both heard gunshots outside and whipped their heads toward the door. Shouting followed outside, then more gunshots. It was dark outside, and dark in that room. She hoped Patrick was okay.
Vince struggled inside Sam’s guard. He tried to buck upward to free himself, but she held on tight with her arms and legs wrapped around him.
“Who are you?” Sam grunted.
Vince answered by lifting her all the way up until he was standing. He was going to slam her on her back if she didn’t let go. When he started his motion downward, she released him and pushed herself back. Two feet of separation had him reaching for his gun. Sam rushed forward and dove at his legs. Vince kicked them back and sprawled away from her. He clearly had Jiu Jitsu training. He landed on top of her and was forcing his hips down as he wrapped his arm around her neck. She was in a bad position, but at least she wasn’t staring down the barrel of his gun.
There was only so long she was going to be able to keep him from getting the best of her. Jiu Jitsu is a great equalizer if strength is unmatched. It gave a woman a fighting chance against a man twice her size. But when Jiu Jitsu skills are equal, the stronger of the two would eventually win. Unless he got tired.
Sam shot her hand in between his arm and her neck, giving her a chance to fight the choke he was attempting. She felt the stitches in her shoulder rip apart. His squeeze was powerful. He was stronger than his wiry frame suggested. She did the only thing she could do and reached for his groin. She grabbed enough of it that her squeeze weakened his hold, and he let out a moan of pain.
Finally, he was forced to let go. They both separated. He threw a quick right hand that Sam was able to slip, but the left hook that followed hit her right in the kidney. Pain flooded her system, and she couldn’t defend against the overhand right he followed with, which smacked her in the forehead. She saw purple stars as she felt her ass hit the floor. She was disoriented, but she could still see that he was coming for her. She tried to get up, but she couldn’t. Her brain wasn’t firing fast enough to tell her arms what she wanted them to. She was in trouble.
The next thing she knew, there was a massive crash at the deli’s front door, then a large shadow flashed through the room. Sam thought she might have been hallucinating until she heard a grunt, and Vince’s figure disappeared in front of her. She shook her head to clear the cobwebs, and when her wits finally returned, she saw the grizzly bear she’d been hoping for on top of Vince. Patrick was beating him to death.
Sam ran over and tried to pull Patrick back by his shoulders, but it was like trying to pull a truck that was in park. He only rocked back slightly, but she couldn’t budge him. She could see by some of the yellow streetlight flooding in through the cracks in the boarded windows that Vince was limp beneath him.
“Patrick, stop! Don’t kill him! We need information!”
She tried to pull at him again, but he was in a raged trance. Finally, she circled around and slapped him hard in the face. “Patrick, stop!” Then she shoved him, and he finally fell back. “I need him to tell me where Zhanna is!”
Patrick shook his head and stood up. They both looked down at Vince. He wasn’t moving. Sam pushed Patrick aside and knelt beside Vince. “Vince! Wake up.” She shook him a little. “Wake up!” She stood back up, and when she looked at Patrick, he began pacing and nervously running his fingers through his hair.
“I’m sorry. I-I saw him hit you—”
Finally, Vince coughed up blood and moaned a desperate sigh. Patrick stopped pacing, and the look on his face was of great relief. He was more calm this time.
“Sam, I’m sorry. I just—when I
saw him hit you, I lost it!”
Completely out of character, Sam rushed over and wrapped her arms around him. The grizzly bear gave her a bear hug.
“Thank you.”
There was little doubt in Sam’s mind that she would have died if Patrick hadn’t been there. Patrick just kept squeezing. Finally, Sam came to her senses and wiggled out from his arms. “Now you just have to learn to control yourself. Christ, you’re like an animal.”
Patrick shrugged.
Sam pointed toward the door. “What about those two?”
“They weren’t very good shots.”
“We need to go. Can you go get your car and pull over here? We can put him in the back.”
As Patrick was walking out the door, Sam’s phone began to vibrate in her pocket. She was in no danger from Vince. He still had no idea where he was.
“Hello?” When Sam answered, she could hear a loud engine. Sounded like the propellers of a plane.
“Sam, it’s X. You all right? I just talked to Dbie again, and she said you were asking about Vince Huang too?”
“I’m okay. Vince, however, isn’t doing so well.”
“You have him?” King’s voice was filled with excitement.
“I do. Where are you?”
“Hang on, Sam.” King’s voice went muffled, but she could still hear him. “Turn around, we don’t need to go. We’ve got him.” Then he came back to the phone. “Damn, I’m glad I called. I was getting ready to fly to a town just south of here to try to find him. What the hell is he doing in Moscow, and who the hell is he?”
“Both good questions. Haven’t made it that far with him yet. It’s been a bit of a fight.”
“What about Zhanna?”
“Nothing yet. Vince is regaining consciousness. I’ll torture it out of him if I have to.”
“So you think he knows where she is?” The propeller sound surrounding King’s voice had lessened.
“I have no idea. What do you know about him? What’s going on in Barrow?”
“I have Kuznetsov.”
Sam smiled. Of course he did.
“And I have the last of the virus and vaccine that was left here. Kuznetsov claims that Director Lucas personally met with him and brought him on to find a cure for the virus for the US government.”
Sam actually laughed. “Did you let him live?”
“I did, because I don’t know what to believe.” King’s voice returned to normal as the propellers shut down. “Kuznetsov said the day he was at the World Health Conference, Nigel Warshaw brokered a meeting with Director Lucas. Said he met with him right there and that they paid him a bunch of money to create a vaccine for this virus that no one knows about.”
“And you couldn’t ask Director Lucas about it, because of course he would say he wasn’t involved,” Sam said knowingly.
“Right,” King said. “Because if the US government was involved, President Gibbons wouldn’t have sent us in. So either Lucas is involved without the president knowing, or Kuznetsov is full of shit. But I still don’t have an answer.”
“Where does Vince Huang fit in?”
Right then, Patrick came busting through the door. “We gotta go. Sirens are blaring.”
Sam nodded and walked to the door. Patrick picked Vince up and slung him over his shoulder. When Sam stepped out into the cold, she, too, could hear the sirens. There were two dead bodies lying in the street, and some people were gathered around to watch.
King answered her question as Sam moved toward Patrick’s running sedan. “Kuznetsov said Vince was his liaison between Kuznetsov and the US government. Said he was the guy taking the samples out of the lab each time the small Alaskan towns were getting sick. The timing lined up—”
“That’s why you thought Kuznetsov might be telling the truth,” Sam said. “I get it. But Vince is here in Moscow with me. So what now?”
“It at least shows that Barrow is connected to Moscow,” King said. “It’s who’s really moving the chess pieces that we don’t know. I asked the president to find out on the low if Director Lucas was in Seattle when Kuznetsov says the meeting between them happened. That will help us scratch Lucas off the list. Then, the only other common denominator is—”
“Nigel Warshaw,” Sam finished his sentence. She got in the car and watched Patrick stuff a still dazed Vince Huang in the back seat.
“Exactly—”
“Hold on, X. Dbie is calling. I’ll patch her in.”
Sam answered the call and hit the button to merge them together. “Dbie, you are on with me and X. Tell us what you’ve got.”
“A lot actually,” Dbie said.
“Fire away,” King said.
“Want me to start with Nigel Warshaw? Or Vince Huang?”
Both Sam and King said “Warshaw” at the same time. Patrick got in the car and sped out of the apartment complex’s parking lot. The police couldn’t have been more than a few blocks away.
“Okay,” Dbie said, clearing her throat, “the reason it took me so long to get info on Warshaw was because I had to find a back way into his bank accounts. There are a lot of rumors on the dark web, and the internet, for that matter, about him investing in vaccine companies and so forth, but all of the holding companies I found of his were all dead ends. So I thought going straight to the money was the fastest route.”
“We don’t have a lot of time here, Dbie. Can you keep it short?”
“Yes. Warshaw wired two multimillion-dollar amounts to the same hospital in China. Both through a couple of different Cayman and Swedish accounts. The hospital he sent the money to specializes in viruses, among other things.”
“So it’s Warshaw?” King said.
“Certainly sounds that way,” Sam said. Patrick jerked the car around a few turns, then pulled to a stop under a dark bridge. “X, you think the money he wired to China was to build the virus? Then everything in Barrow was done for the vaccine?”
“Makes sense with Warshaw’s narrative to the media,” King said. “He’s been preaching mandatory vaccinations for years.”
Sam got out of the car. “And you think this was his way of making sure he set the precedent? Created a virus so deadly and so contagious that it forced the government’s hand to mandate?”
“The pieces certainly fit. Anything out of Vince yet?”
“Just about to find out,” Sam said. “Dbie, what did you find on him?”
“He was former FBI. Had a falling out and they let him go. Killed someone who didn’t give him information or something. It’s a muddy case that was classified. That was several years ago. Hasn’t been employed on record since.”
King spoke up. “There’s his motive to work on something like this. It fits what we are finding. Warshaw probably sought him out to pose as a CIA agent to Kuznetsov. He could play the part because he’d actually been a federal agent.”
“So does that mean you think Kuznetsov is innocent in all of this?” Sam said.
“Every part of his story lines up,” King said. “Looks like Warshaw pulled one over on him. Made him believe it really was Director Lucas that he met with, and that it was the US government that wanted the vaccine.”
Patrick had already pulled Vince out the back of the car and was questioning him.
“I’ve got to go,” Sam said. “I’ll have an update on Vince in a few. X, can you call Lucas and have him corroborate what we’ve found? Then he can send a team to go get Warshaw before he slips away?”
“On it. Then I’m getting the hell out of this frozen tundra.”
“Meet you on the beach?” Sam said.
“Ooh, ooh. Take me!” Dbie chimed in.
“Meet you both there. Sam, you bring Zhanna, will you?”
“Working on that right now.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Washington, DC, 7:05 p.m.
President Gibbons put down his fork and pushed the plate away. He had only taken one bite. The ribeye was delicious, but he didn’t have the stomach for it. His stomac
h was too busy tying up in knots waiting for Director Lucas to get back to him. If Warshaw made it out of the country, it could be a real problem running him down. Not to mention how hard it would be to stop anyone from bringing the virus to the continental US. So much was riding on this that he couldn’t even sit still.
As soon as he stood from the table in the Oval Office, the phone on his desk rang. He practically sprinted over to it. “Yes?”
“Mr. President,” his secretary said. His shoulders slumped because Director Lucas would have called the direct line.
“Yes, Allison?”
“It’s General Davis on the line for you.”
He perked back up. He’d tasked the general with finding out where Director Lucas was on August 3 of last year like King had asked him to do.
“Put him through.”
Since he’d gotten off the phone with King, Director Lucas hadn’t called Gibbons back. He couldn’t keep his mind from wandering down the path that if Lucas was involved, maybe he was taking this time to leave the country too. Maybe he said he didn’t find Warshaw at the airport because he was covering for him. If idle hands are the devil’s tools, then an idle mind is the devil’s playground. And Gibbons’s thoughts were definitely on Satan’s seesaw.
“Mr. President?”
“Yes, General, what did you find?” President Gibbons held his breath.
“We combed through the CIA travel log and the key card logs at Langley. Director Lucas was in his office until almost eight o’clock the night of August 3.”
“You’re certain of this?”
“Yes, sir. His security badge logged him in that morning and out that evening. And we went back and double-checked the video footage there too. He was there. No way he was in Seattle, Washington.”
The president let out a sigh of relief. He had enough people coming after him and lying to him. The last thing he needed was the director of the CIA being one of them.
“Thank you, General. This was a tremendous help.”
“No problem, sir.”
Alexander King Thriller Series: Books 1-3 Page 41