by Ronie Kendig
Lance scooted to the edge of the chair, thumbing his bottom lip as he considered the information.
“Why does he want Aspen?” Austin knelt at the table. “Why her? What does she have to do with anything?”
“Yeah, why her? The hit was pretty deliberate.”
“They didn’t want her,” Lance finally said. “They wanted him.” He pointed to the image of Cardinal.
“Why? Why Cardinal? Because of the yellowcake?”
“I think that just tipped the hat.” Lance eased back in the seat and wished for a Dr Pepper for the millionth time. This was bloody torture to be under this much stress and not have one single can of liquid genius. “Things heated up down here—first with you.”
Austin’s eyes widened. “Me?”
“When you found the yellowcake—what happened?”
“They hunted me down.”
Lance nodded. “Thought so.” He shook his head. “Then we sent Cardinal down here looking for you. Kuhn must’ve mentioned it to his sources. News travels fast when protecting an illegal—and international—operation. No doubt the heat alerted someone—or Tselekova himself. He sent his little minion to do the job.”
“You seriously believe Lina is behind all this?”
“Absolutely.”
“Whatever happened to ‘innocent till proven guilty’?”
“You seriously think you’ll be able to drag her into a U.S. court and fry her there?” Lance snorted. “Russia wouldn’t let you get that close. Remember the spies discovered in 2010? If you’ll remember, they went back to their homeland. Good ol’-fashioned spy swap.”
“She just didn’t seem the type—”
“Then she did her job well.” Lance pointed to the table. “Go on, Hast—”
“Got it!” Smith shot up from the laptop on his lap. “Payne’s wife just received communication.”
Good news. Tell me good news, Smith.
“St. Petersburg.”
“That’s a big city, Lieutenant Smith.”
He grinned. “Yes, sir. Another hour or so and I can get you within a mile of where the e-mail was sent from.”
“Good. Relay that to the pilot. Divert to Pulkovo.”
Smith leapt up and hurried to the front.
It took a lot of political capital to get the clearance necessary to enter Russian airspace—without getting shot down. His stomach churned and threatened to toss the modest airplane meal he’d eaten an hour ago back up the way it’d come.
The dog missing.
Aspen missing.
Cardinal MIA. Vanishing like this…I ought to ring his ruddy neck! This was not the time to go rogue. A lot of questions had been raised about Cardinal’s loyalty and trustworthiness—all thanks to General Payne, who should be halfway to Langley and right into the arms of federal penitentiary guards.
Lance sipped a Dr Pepper and swallowed. He nudged the drink aside.
“You okay, sir?”
In the glass of the oval window, he saw Lieutenant Hastings’s reflection. “No. Nothing is okay. The dog, Aspen—Cardinal! Even my Dr Pepper doesn’t taste right.”
“That’s because it’s a Perrier, sir.”
Snickers sent a heated flush through his cheeks as he glanced at the bottle. Green bottle. He muttered an oath. Ran a hand over his face. “I think I need to retire.” He glared at the others. “Don’t you have work to do?”
“I thought you chipped your spies,” Rocket said from his chair, where he sat with closed eyes.
“That’s the movies, Rocket. If we can track them, so can anyone else.”
Timbrel sucked in a hard breath. “Wait!”
“You okay?” Candyman asked.
“Better than that.” She grinned—and wow, that girl was pretty when she smiled. She brushed bangs from her face. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. I’m stupid. I mean—I’m a handler.”
“Hogan!” Lance snapped. “Calm down and tell me—”
“Talon.” She gulped air. “He’s microchipped and has a tracking device. They tag all MWDs in case something happens and they get separated.”
Lance snapped his fingers at Hastings. “Get on that. Get it tracked.”
The air and space cleared as the others rushed to the table near the back where they went to work on getting them closer to stopping this nightmare.
As he pushed back in his chair, Lance eyed the men of ODA452. Two of them snored loudly, their heads cocked at odd angles against the seats and windows. Watterboy and Candyman were engaged with Timbrel, working to track Talon’s chip. Weariness marked the faces of every last one. If he looked at his own, he was sure it’d show up there, too.
And after eight hours in flight, they were only halfway to Russia. He punched the seat as he sat down. Eight hours. Eight! Half a day. When Lance had given the pilot hay about the length of time, the man warned him that this was a good day. Sometimes, the flight took twenty hours.
Curses exploded from the back.
On his feet, Lance searched for the upset.
“Is it her? Can you verify it?”
Lance rushed to the back. “What’s going on?”
“Sat imaging, sir. We piggybacked a satellite. I started checking locations connected to insurgents. After a few back-channel searches—”
“What’d you find?” Lance thought his head might explode.
“Aspen.” Smith blinked. Looked at the screen. “At least…it looks like her. She appears to be running down a street. There’s a black car. Four men.” He dragged his finger along the screen. “Chasing her.”
Austin swung around. Face red. Eyes enraged. He threw a punch. Crack! Lance felt the world tumble.
“If she dies, you die!” Austin screamed.
Weapons snapped up. Hastings. Smith. ODA452. All aimed at Austin.
The man’s chest heaved. “I swear—if she dies because of this, because of your agent—” He hauled in a breath, face tormented. “I swear I’ll kill you.”
“Why don’t you stop wasting your energy on hate and venom, Mr. Courtland, and get to work helping us find your sister.”
But the man’s words…the rage…Lance could relate. And shared the fears that drove them. With eight hours—hours!—between them and Aspen…
Were they already too late?
BEAUTIFUL
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” He looked from the cherub to his mother’s sweaty, glowing face.
“Yes, she is.”
He heard something in his mother’s voice and looked up. Red circled her eyes. “What? Why are you crying? She’s beautiful and healthy!” But that wasn’t the best. “And he doesn’t know!”
Her brown eyes locked onto his. “But he will.” Her chin trembled. “He always does.” A sob punched its way out, and she clutched the newborn to her face, kissing her.
He watched them. His mother and new baby sister. Knew his mother was right. The colonel found out everything. He always did. Somehow. Someway. He just did. “We have to hide her.”
“Give her up?” Panic clanked through his mother’s words. “I can’t! No, I can’t.”
Nikol stood, feeling every bit the eight-year-old he was. “We must. Just as we hid that you were pregnant.”
“That’s not the same, Nikol. He doesn’t like me in his life, so it’s easy to stay away. But you see what he’s done with you.”
“It’s different.” It hurt his heart to even think it. “I’m a boy. He won’t want her.”
Mother cried again. Slowly, she settled in the bed with his baby sister cuddled in her arms. Then she lifted her head. Lips slightly apart. Light settled in her eyes. She smiled.
“What?”
“There’s a family…my brother knows a missionary family in Brno.” She smiled through a still-wet face. “They’re American.”
“He’d never think to look there.”
Forty-Two
Amazing the way a million things can happen in a microsecond. Cardinal noticed the blue eyes peering
at him from over a headstone.
Kalyna’s gleam, the thirst for him to hurt, that poured out of her eyes.
The way the weapon dipped.
Tiny explosion.
The report of her weapon registered a fraction too late.
Fire lit down his arm. Flung his arm back.
In the second it took him to recover, Cardinal lunged. Straight into one of the men who stepped into his path. Their collision barreled right into Kalyna. The second guy tripped trying to get out of the way.
As Cardinal went down, he saw a dark gray blur. Braced himself. Crack! Stars sprinkled across his vision, compliments of the gravestone he’d hit. He lifted but didn’t release the guy. Flipped the man over. Cold-cocked him.
“Get up,” Kalyna shouted. “I’ll shoot if you try anything.”
Cardinal fishtailed and scissored his legs, gauging where she stood, and ripped her feet out from under her. The gun flipped from her hand. She landed with a thud.
He dove for the weapon. Saw the second guy charging. Cardinal rolled, lifting the weapon and bringing it to bear. He fired, and the guy took one, center mass. Red bloomed over his blue shirt like a dark sun.
Cardinal came up. His mind registered Kalyna’s movement, reaching for something. Threat. Quickly, he realigned. Fired again. This time winging Kalyna’s firing arm.
The other man stopped, one hand clutching his chest, the other raised in surrender.
Cardinal pointed the gun at the man. “Khod’by ot otelya.” Would the guy walk away as Cardinal ordered? Would he make this as easy as it could be?
The man shook his head. Muttered something about not being willing to die but then stumbled away. Down the path.
“Don’t make any sudden moves,” Cardinal said in Russian.
Kalyna shot him a look, holding her arm. Blood dribbled down it. “You shot my arm.”
“I missed.” Cardinal gave a slight nod to the man, telling him to keep going. As the distance grew, he shifted most of his attention to Kalyna.
“He has the girl,” Kalyna said.
He would not, even though she was his sister, give her the benefit of seeing him squirm. “You delivered her to him.” Disappointment churned through his veins. “How could you do this? Work for him?”
“Why not?” Defiant, she jutted her chin and raised her head. “You left me. My mother abandoned me.”
“She gave you a life!” Cardinal growled. “Sacrificed everything for you.”
“Sacrificed? A life? I was poor and the adopted child of a missionary family. Tell me, dear brother, do you know how shunned I was—raised by Christians, abandoned by my family?” She looked every bit like their mother. “He came to me, has given me everything.”
Fury smothered him. “You foolish girl! He is the reason our mother lays there.” Cardinal pointed to the grave. “He killed her!”
“You lie!”
“To you, never.” His chest ached with the lies the colonel had fed her. Poisoned her with. And she’d bought right into them.
“I wanted nothing more than to know my family. You came to me, time and again. But never told me. Then—when I needed you most, you vanished. Never came back.”
“I had to! He discovered you existed—that’s why he killed Mama.”
“No, it’s not true. He’s a good man.”
“Only when compared to the devil!” He yanked up his shirt and bared his back to her. “Do these look like the marks a good man would give his son? To teach him to be strong?” He shoved down the shirt and looked back at her.
Fear quivered through her young, beautiful face. She could only be in her midtwenties. So impressionable. Had she really become what their father was? The spawn of the underworld? He could not believe it of her. She had always been sweet. Her nature gentle.
“She is my mother?” Kalyna looked to the grave marker.
“Yes.” He held out his hands then motioned to her arm and took a step closer. “Once she discovered she carried his child again, she had to hide from the colonel. He’d beaten her bloody once before over an unwanted baby.” He inched closer, slowly reaching for the lightweight jacket she wore.
She tensed, suspicious.
“Easy, just going to bind your arm.” When she didn’t object, he tore off a section of her jacket. Tore that into two strips. Tucked one in his pocket. Held the other as he lifted her arm. “She was so excited when you were born. I was so scared for her, for you. What I went through, I didn’t want anyone else to endure.” He wrapped, talking quietly, pleased with the way she hung on the words. Hungry, so very hungry for a connection. He understood. It was incredible to think this beautiful, vibrant girl was his little sister.
“She spent two months with you, making sure you grew strong and healthy before she could bring herself to release you to the Christians.” He nodded to the cathedral over the hill. “This is where they met, where she delivered you to their safekeeping. It was the only place we thought the colonel would not think to look for you.”
A sad smile shivered across her lips. “You were right.”
He saw it. The uncertainty. The fear. Perhaps even the confirmation that what he’d told her gave credence to something she suspected. Time was short. The colonel had Aspen. “Where is he keeping her?”
Kalyna’s expressive eyes came to his. “You care for this American?”
Cardinal felt his gaze start to dip but forced it to stay on her. “Very much.”
“Do you love her?”
His heart thudded. “Yes, I think I do.”
She gave him a weird look.
Feeling stupid, he shrugged. “It’s never happened before. And it’s happened fast this time. But yes…she means everything to me.”
The sadness slid away. Tears pooling in her eyes blinked away. “Vy prikhodili k nyeiǐ, no ne dlya menya?”
You would come for her but not for me? Dimples bounced in and out of her chin. Her accusation slashed his heart.
“No. It’s not—”
“Tikho, Nikol!” She touched a finger to her lips, reinforcing her “quiet” command.
Not too far away, tires screeched.
She half smiled. “See? He always knows, yes?”
“Kalyna, come with me. Please. I could not find you.”
“But you found her. When you love someone, you never give up.”
“I did not give up!”
More squalling. This time closer.
“Kalyna, listen to me, sestra…”
“Sister.” She nodded but fought tears and a grieved smile. “It is too late.”
“Kalyna—I do love you. For your protection, I stopped coming. Sent money.”
“Money?” Eyes blazed in outrage. “I wanted family! But you did not want me.” She reached around to her back, her expression going hard. Her actions practiced. She produced another handgun. “If you want to live, you should run. Now.”
“Kalyna, please!” His gaze darted to the black car barreling down the street. “Take me to her. Help me save her.”
“If you got to her, he would kill her.” Cold, hard eyes held his—no, that’s what she wanted him to believe. Something in her expression betrayed her and filtered into her words. “Run, Nikol. Keep her alive until you can die trying to be heroic.”
“I’m not running anymore.”
“Sometimes…running does not have to be bad.” A strange smile played over her lips. “Do svidaniya, Nikol.” She aimed a gun at him.
Cardinal backpedaled. Saw the car screaming to a stop. “Please, Kalyna!”
She fired.
Forty-Three
You’re sure?” Lance stepped from the van and glanced at the old church. It sure fit Cardinal’s MO, but the place sat eerily quiet. It’d been entirely too many hours in the plane. “Watters, Hastings, Hogan, VanAllen—check inside. Scrip, Smith, Rocket—check the cemetery. Courtland, you’re with me.”
“You mean, you don’t trust me.”
“There is that.”
“I�
��m not your enemy here.”
“Perhaps, but you’re also not my ally. You broke protocol because you felt something was important enough to do that. Your sister is involved, and I’d wager my career you’d sacrifice every one of us if you thought it’d save her.”
“So wouldn’t you want that type of determination behind this hunt? It is my sister’s life. And the man she loves.” Austin pounded the back of the front seat. “This is stupid! Let me help!”
“Calm down. You’re not winning points with that behavior. Decision’s been made.” Lance squinted toward the cathedral. “What’s taking them so long?”
“It’s a cathedral.” Austin raised his eyebrows. “It’s big.”
This mission was so insane. So hopeless. If they couldn’t find them in time…Being here, in Cardinal’s homeland, his territory, added a level of uncertainty Lance had never experienced before. There was a reason he’d taken the DIA job—and staying put in Virginia was one of them. He was out of practice with field work. Like pitting an admin against an athlete. And with the lives of an innocent woman and a spy—a man he’d admired and respected since their first meeting. Right here.
“Mother of God…” Why hadn’t he recognized it before?
“Yeah, pretty sure you’d find her in there.” Austin smirked then stopped. Frowned as he leaned out of the van.
“Keep your jokes to yourself, Courtland.”
Austin stepped from the van.
“What are you doing? Don’t go any farther.”
Courtland held out a hand. “Shh.” He scanned the trees that hemmed the perimeter of the churchyard. He stilled, cocked his head. “You hear that?”
“Your mouth running is all I hear.”
“Shh!” He tilted his head the other way. “Listen!” He pivoted. “Talon!” Cupping his hands around his mouth, he shouted the name once more.
Lance’s pulse sped. Was the dog really here?
A commotion near the doors caught his attention. Watters emerged, holding the door as laughter filtered out with Candyman…who carried Hogan on his back. Hastings rolled her eyes. “Nothing,” she called.