Shoot First

by Stuart Woods

  “He hung up again, but that should have been long enough for a fix. He says he’ll let Meg go as soon as his man in England calls and says the drive checks out.” Dino’s phone rang again. “Bacchetti. No shit? All right, I want every unmarked vehicle you can muster there as soon as possible. No sirens or lights, and don’t bunch up in a pack. Go!” He hung up.

  “Where is Meg?” Stone asked.

  “Apparently Beria left the FDR Drive and drove onto Randall’s Island, in the East River, and now he’s on Wards Island, where the garbage collectors’ school is.”

  “The garbage collectors have a school?”

  “Well, sure, they’ve got to learn to make the truck work and how to load it properly and how to empty it, and all that.”

  “Who knew?” Stone said.

  * * *

  —

  THE SUV had not stopped, but it had slowed down a lot. Meg decided not to wait for it to come to a halt; she would just roll out onto the ground and hope for the best. She reached for the door latch and struggled with it, but it didn’t work. She tried to retract the cover over her head so she would have access to the rear seat, but that didn’t work, either. She would have to wait until someone unlocked the rear hatch from the outside.

  The SUV had made a turn and was now on a rougher road with lots of potholes. Where the hell could she be? Then she heard brush scraping along the sides of the vehicle.

  The car stopped, and she could hear the two men arguing, still in Russian. She wished she knew what the hell they were talking about.

  She heard the two front doors open, then slam shut. The two men continued to shout at each other as they walked along the two sides of the vehicle toward the rear hatch.

  Meg scrunched down with her feet against the hatch and her head against the back of the rear seat, then flipped the safety with her thumb and held the weapon in both hands, pointed at the hatch.

  Then the hatch opened and daylight flooded in.

  60

  The rear hatch swung up, and two men stood there, staring at the gun in her hand.

  “Kill her,” the slim one said to the gorilla. He took a step toward the car.

  Meg recalled something Stone had said: “Shoot first, think later.” She aimed between his eyes and very deliberately squeezed the trigger. Her aim was off; a hole appeared over his left eyebrow, and his legs seemed to collapse. He fell below the tailgate, out of sight. Meg swung left to fire at the other man, but he was not there. She heard a scrambling in the bushes beside the car. Still holding the gun, she got herself out the rear door of the SUV. The gorilla was lying on his back, blood pooling in his left eye socket. The other eye stared straight ahead, looking surprised. She thought about putting another bullet in his head, but thought better of it. He seemed dead enough.

  * * *

  —

  BERIA RAN STRAIGHT through a thick line of tall shrubs and heard vehicles coming closer. He plunged into more bushes on the other side of the road and kept going, flailing at the brush to keep from putting his eyes out. He kept on and on, then, exhausted, collapsed and fell, still in thick brush.

  * * *

  —

  MEG PATTED the big man’s pockets, looking for a phone, then found it on the ground near his body. She picked it up and dialed Stone’s number.

  * * *

  —

  “BERIA?” Stone said.

  “Hardly,” Meg replied. “How did you confuse him with me?”

  “Meg?” he cried. “You’ve got Fred’s phone—did they let you go?”

  “Hardly,” she replied. “I freed myself and got out the gun you gave me, and when they opened the rear hatch, I shot the big one in the head. The other one moved too quickly for me, so he’s out in the bushes somewhere. I could hear him thrashing about. I’m on a rough road with large, thick bushes on both sides. Apart from that, I’ve no idea where I am.”

  She could hear Dino say, “I’ve got another fix, on Wards Island.”

  “Meg,” Stone said, “we know where you are. It’s a place called Wards Island, in the East River. A whole lot of police are coming for you now, so just stand in the road and flag them down.”

  “All right.”

  “Oh, and put the gun away. They’ll be pretty wired, and you can give it to them later, when it won’t cause them to shoot you.”

  “Okay, done. It’s in my handbag. Oh, here comes a car!”

  “You’re safe, kiddo. Tell them to bring you home.”

  Dino got on the phone and issued instructions to secure the scene and to bring the woman to him. He hung up and slapped Stone on the back. “We got her back, didn’t we?”

  “I guess we did,” Stone said. He phoned Major Bugg. “You can stand down, now. Everything has been resolved here.”

  “Actually,” the major said, “everything’s been resolved here, too. Your man arrived, and he took a swing at me with a large pistol, so I took it away from him and gave him a stern rap on the head. He’s bleeding on the carpet, I’m afraid, but we’ll deal with that. I’ve already called an ambulance.”

  “Good work, Major,” Stone said.

  * * *

  —

  STANISLAV BERIA managed to get across the bridge to Randall’s Island and hail a cab. He gave the driver an address two blocks from his mission, a building occupied by the Russian intelligence service. He knew the mission would be watched.

  “Jeez, mister,” the cabbie said, “what happened to you? Your face is all scratched up.”

  “I got lost,” Beria said. “Now get me out of here.”

  * * *

  —

  “DID YOUR MEN find Beria?” Stone asked Dino, as he hung up his phone.

  “Not yet,” Dino said. “He hasn’t returned to the mission.”

  Stone picked up his phone and dialed a number in Washington, D.C.

  “Hello,” Holly Barker said. Holly was the current secretary of state, under President Katharine Lee.

  “Hello, it’s Stone.”

  “What a surprise! How long has it been, a month?”

  “Oh, not as long as that.”

  “Hang on a minute, I just got in from the office. Let me pee and pour myself a drink, and I’ll be right back.” She put him on hold.

  Stone put a hand over the phone. “I’m on hold,” he said to Dino. “Holly is peeing.”

  Finally, she came back online. “There, that’s better. I’m in a comfortable chair in my study, with my shoes off, my feet up, and a stiff Knob Creek in my fist. How the hell are you? What’s going on?”

  “We’ve had quite a day up here. A client of mine was kidnapped by some Russian thugs, but we got her back.”

  “Any Russian thugs I know?”

  “A guy named Stanislav Beria and his thug, name of Ivanov.”

  “Beria? That piece of shit? He’s nothing but diplomatically protected trouble. I’ve been looking for an excuse to deport him.”

  “Maybe I can help out there. He and his thug disabled Fred and took my client, trying to steal plans for a driverless car her company has built.”

  “I’ve read about that. Is she all right?”

  “The police have her now. They’re bringing her to my office. Is what I just told you enough to get Beria deported? Oh, I forgot to mention that Beria and Ivanov murdered two American citizens a few days ago.”

  “Consider it done. I’ll have him declared persona non grata inside an hour. You want Ivanov gone, too?”

  “He’s already gone—bullet to the head.”

  “Well, that saves us some trouble, doesn’t it?”

  “Certainly does.”

  “Better let me hang up and get the paperwork started before everybody leaves the office. I came home early with a headache, but it’s gone, now. I’ll call you back tomorrow morning?”

  “Oka
y.”

  Holly hung up.

  Meg rushed into Stone’s office. He rose to greet her, and she flung her arms around him. “God, I’m glad to see you.” She hugged Dino. “You, too.”

  “Are you at all hurt?”

  “I’ve got a headache—they drugged me—but I woke up sooner than they planned.”

  “Did you really shoot Ivanov?”

  “I shot the first guy I saw. He didn’t have time to introduce himself. Did you catch the other one?”

  “Beria?” Dino asked. “Not yet, but he’ll seek diplomatic shelter, and Stone just got him declared persona non grata by the State Department. He’ll be out of the country tomorrow for good.”

  Meg fished her pistol out of her purse and handed it to Dino. “I guess I should give this to the cops.”

  Dino pocketed the weapon.

  “What about Owaki?” Meg asked Stone. “How did the hearing go?”

  “Couldn’t have gone better,” Stone said. “He’s in jail pending trial, and that will be months. They’ve got him cold on a weapons charge, and the U.S. attorney will get him twenty years on that.”

  “He’ll probably plead out and serve ten,” Dino said, “but the feds have grounds to get his citizenship revoked, and they’ll kick him out of the country permanently.”

  * * *

  —

  BERIA ENTERED a key code to the front door of an anonymous East Side town house a couple of blocks from the Russian mission and let himself in. A guard was waiting and he was shown in immediately to see the duty officer.

  Beria presented his diplomatic passport. “The ambassador called,” the officer said, dropping the passport into a drawer and closing it firmly. “The State Department has declared you persona non grata. You will be driven to your flat, where you will pack your bags, then to JFK Airport. You’re on an eleven PM flight to Moscow, where you will answer to a personnel board for your actions.”

  “Owaki will take care of all that. I’ll be living in London or Paris in a week.”

  “Mr. Owaki is in the Federal Detention Center, without bail, awaiting trial on certain weapons charges. I think you are more likely to be residing in some small town in Siberia, rather than London or Paris, for the remainder of your career.” He motioned to an aide. “Put him in a car and get him out of here.”

  * * *

  —

  “I’M HUNGRY,” Meg said. “I never got lunch, and I’m dying for a drink.”

  “I can do that,” Stone replied.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I am happy to hear from readers, but you should know that if you write to me in care of my publisher, three to six months will pass before I receive your letter, and when it finally arrives it will be one among many, and I will not be able to reply.

  However, if you have access to the Internet, you may visit my website at www.stuartwoods.com, where there is a button for sending me e-mail. So far, I have been able to reply to all my e-mail, and I will continue to try to do so.

  If you send me an e-mail and do not receive a reply, it is probably because you are among an alarming number of people who have entered their e-mail address incorrectly in their mail software. I have many of my replies returned as undeliverable.

  Remember: e-mail, reply; snail mail, no reply.

  When you e-mail, please do not send attachments, as I never open them. They can take twenty minutes to download, and they often contain viruses.

  Please do not place me on your mailing lists for funny stories, prayers, political causes, charitable fund-raising, petitions, or sentimental claptrap. I get enough of that from people I already know. Generally speaking, when I get e-mail addressed to a large number of people, I immediately delete it without reading it.

  Please do not send me your ideas for a book, as I have a policy of writing only what I myself invent. If you send me story ideas, I will immediately delete them without reading them. If you have a good idea for a book, write it yourself, but I will not be able to advise you on how to get it published. Buy a copy of Writer’s Market at any bookstore; that will tell you how.

  Anyone with a request concerning events or appearances may e-mail it to me or send it to: Publicity Department, Penguin Random House LLC, 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

  Those ambitious folk who wish to buy film, dramatic, or television rights to my books should contact Matthew Snyder, Creative Artists Agency, 9830 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA 98212-1825.

  Those who wish to make offers for rights of a literary nature should contact Anne Sibbald, Janklow & Nesbit, 445 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022. (Note: This is not an invitation for you to send her your manuscript or to solicit her to be your agent.)

  If you want to know if I will be signing books in your city, please visit my website, www.stuartwoods.com, where the tour schedule will be published a month or so in advance. If you wish me to do a book signing in your locality, ask your favorite bookseller to contact his Penguin representative or the Penguin publicity department with the request.

  If you find typographical or editorial errors in my book and feel an irresistible urge to tell someone, please write to Sara Minnich at Penguin’s address above. Do not e-mail your discoveries to me, as I will already have learned about them from others.

  A list of my published works appears in the front of this book and on my website. All the novels are still in print in paperback and can be found at or ordered from any bookstore. If you wish to obtain hardcover copies of earlier novels or of the two nonfiction books, a good used-book store or one of the online bookstores can help you find them. Otherwise, you will have to go to a great many garage sales.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Stuart Woods is the author of more than seventy novels. He is a native of Georgia and began his writing career in the advertising industry. Chiefs, his debut in 1981, won the Edgar Award. An avid sailor and pilot, Woods lives in Florida, Maine, and New Mexico.

  stuartwoods.com

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