“That could be days or even months from now. By then Europe’s major cities could be gone and NATO could be shelling Moscow and St. Petersburg.”
“Guard changes? Men coming out and others going in?”
Rapp shook his head. “Like you said, the guys inside know he’s sick and the ones outside probably don’t. My guess is that the men he has with him went in before his first treatment and won’t leave again until he’s cured or dead.”
“Then we’re back to having no path forward.”
The wind gusted, rattling the discarded metal and whistling through the buildings. Badden Voronin glanced up as the roof over him strained against the bolts securing it, then went back to scanning the area.
“Krupin made you into a ghost story that his enemies told to each other,” Rapp said finally. “The whole point was that you were a boogeyman hiding in the shadows. How much would someone like Voronin know about you?”
“Very little,” Azarov said. “We’ve met, but Krupin provides information only on a need to know basis—sometimes going so far as to intentionally create confusion, even in his allies. He considers the people closest to him the greatest threats and is quite effective at keeping them off-balance.”
It was exactly what Rapp wanted to hear. “Would Voronin know you quit?”
Azarov seemed to realize what he was being asked and considered his answer carefully. “My leaving would have been a humiliation for Krupin. And the fact that he didn’t immediately punish my betrayal could have made him seem weak.”
“And even if he did say something to Voronin, it could have just been disinformation. He’s not a man who goes around telling his security people his long game.”
“It’s possible. But it’s just as possible that Voronin is under orders to kill me on sight. In fact, after what happened to Cara, I’d say it’s likely.”
Rapp had read Azarov’s psych evaluation and one thing stood out—the man’s passion for order and predictability. He’d been too valuable for Krupin to risk in any operation that wasn’t completely nailed down. Winging it just wasn’t part of his world.
“Likely is different than certain.”
“Mitch, I—”
“Listen to me. These assholes are afraid of you. And they have no way of being a hundred percent sure what your real relationship with Krupin is.”
“I think you’re being overly optimistic.”
It was probably true, but there was no point in acknowledging it. “This’ll work, Grisha. All you have to do is go out there and sell it.”
CHAPTER 49
WHEN they emerged from the trees, Badden Voronin immediately slammed his assault rifle to his shoulder. Azarov’s stomach clenched but he made sure it wasn’t outwardly visible. To his left, Rapp seemed utterly unconcerned about their situation. The CIA man had spent his life fighting unpredictable enemies motivated by religion and visions of glorious martyrdom. A far cry from the calculating, wealth-and power-obsessed men whom Azarov had targeted.
Voronin remained nearly motionless, tracking them with minuscule adjustments of his weapon. He was an extremely gifted former Spetsnaz officer whose loyalty to Krupin was utterly unshakable. It would take only a slight twitch of his finger to succeed in doing something so many men had died trying to achieve.
But his finger didn’t twitch. And the wall next to him didn’t drop to reveal the machine gun placement that was inevitably behind it. He just stood there, wide-eyed, reeling through what he’d been told and trying to calculate how it fit with what he now saw with his own eyes. He was desperately asking—as Azarov himself had done so many times—what did Krupin expect of him?
“Badden,” Azarov said.
The calm greeting seemed to pull the man from his trance. “Colonel Azarov. What are you doing here?”
The hint of fear in his voice bolstered Azarov’s confidence. He wasn’t a man to be afraid of a fight. No, his concern was that he might fail his president and country. That he had missed some subtlety to Krupin’s orders that would allow him to act decisively.
“We had information that the CIA may have found this site,” Azarov said. “That they sent a team to try to assassinate the president. Another cowardly attack like the one they carried out in Moscow.”
The man’s eyes widened and flicked to Rapp before looking past them into the woods.
“I think it’s nonsense,” Azarov continued. “But the president wouldn’t be the president if he didn’t send me out into the wilderness for days to search for nothing.”
Normally, he wouldn’t have been so talkative, but under the circumstances, it seemed appropriate. And it worked. Krupin was a man prone to asking the impossible of his people, often for no fathomable reason. Voronin, who may have been living for months beneath that corrugated overhang, would understand this better than most.
He lowered his rifle and a moment later, a young man appeared from cover to Azarov’s right. They had been correct about the weapons placement.
“Colonel,” he said respectfully.
Azarov recognized him but couldn’t put a name to the face. He ignored the greeting and instead just pointed toward the door. It was what Cara called the moment of truth—usually in reference to a new recipe that would turn out inedible or to a wave that would throw him from his board and suck him under.
Voronin hesitated for a moment and then turned to punch a code into the keypad.
“Stop!”
The desperate shout came from a man Azarov had known since he was quite young. One of Krupin’s most trusted guards, but one who had aged to the point of losing his edge in combat situations.
“Pavel!” Azarov called, turning to see the man sprinting toward them with speed he wouldn’t have thought him capable of. “The president has you out here in the—”
“Kill him! Kill Grisha now!”
The door was already sliding open and Voronin, true to his nature, made no effort to defend his own life. Instead, he slammed his fist into a panic button that started to close it again. Azarov lunged forward, grabbing the man from behind and twisting his head one hundred and eighty degrees as bullets began sparking off the metal next to him.
He shoved Voronin’s body across the threshold and dropped to the ground, rolling right as the door closed on the man’s limp shoulders. He could hear the electric motor straining as he passed over the body of the other man, killed by Rapp in some way that was neither immediately evident nor important.
He saw Pavel go down, but not from the impact of the shot that Rapp had just taken at him. The old man was still impressive, sliding behind cover as Rapp struggled to achieve his normal accuracy with the unfamiliar Russian pistol.
A shot from an unknown source hit only a foot away from Azarov, sending shards of metal into his arm as he crawled over Voronin and slipped inside the building. He lay on his side, firing over the corpse in an effort to provide Rapp cover. The CIA man was staying just ahead of the rounds of a still invisible sniper and he went high, diving through the narrow gap as the door continued to pulse, trying to break through the blockage and fully close.
A moment later Rapp had rolled to his feet and was kicking at Voronin’s torso as Azarov continued to fire around him. His weapon ran out of ammunition and he shouted at Rapp, who threw him his weapon and continued trying to work the body out of the doorway.
He finally succeeded clearing Voronin’s shoulders, allowing the door to travel farther, stopping again on his skull. One last kick and the barrier finally was able to slam home.
Rapp picked up Azarov’s empty weapon and inserted another magazine before firing two rounds into a keypad attached to the wall. He was rewarded with a cascade of sparks that would likely make entry impossible for the men outside. The fact that it would make escape equally difficult was something they’d have to worry about later.
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