He heard a shuffle of feet on the floor behind him. “Molchat’, chert by tebya pobral,” the first attacker said in Russian through his teeth. “Silence, you clumsy fool. Pick your damned feet up.” He then started to pour the rum over Brad’s face and mouth and down the front of his shirt. Brad coughed, moaned, and spit out the strong liquid. “Shit, he is almost awake already,” he said. He retrieved a lighter and put his finger on the igniter. “Clear the way and let’s get the hell out of—”
Suddenly the man felt his body rise up off the floor as if he had been sucked up by a tornado. He caught a glimpse of his assistant crumpled and bleeding on the floor by the back door, before he felt himself being spun around . . . until he was face-to-face with one of the most fearsome, twisted, malevolent human visages he had ever seen in his twenty years of doing assassinations for the Federal Security Bureau of the Russian government, once known as the KGB, or Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, the union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ security bureau. But he saw the face only for an instant before a massive fist came out of nowhere and crashed into his face right between his eyes, and he remembered nothing after that.
The newcomer let the unconscious Russian drop four feet to the floor, then stooped down to check on Brad. “Jesus, kid, wake up,” he said, checking that Brad’s airway was unobstructed and his pupils didn’t indicate a concussion. “I’m not going to carry your fat ass.” He pulled out a cell phone and speed-dialed a number. “It’s me,” he spoke. “Cleanup at the ranch. Shut ’er down.” After ending the call, he began slapping Brad’s face. “Wake up, McLanahan.”
“Wha . . . what . . . ?” Brad’s eyes finally opened . . . and then they opened wide in complete surprise when he saw the newcomer’s face. He recoiled in shock and tried to wriggle free of the man’s grasp, but it was far too strong. “Shit! Who are you?”
“The bogeyman,” the man said, perturbed. “Where’s your school stuff?”
“My . . . my what . . . ?”
“C’mon, McLanahan, get your shit together,” the man said. He scanned the dining room and front hallway and noticed the closet door half open with a backpack on the shelf. “Let’s go.” He half dragged Brad out the front door, grabbing the backpack off the shelf before he hurried out the door.
A large black SUV was parked on the street near the entry gate. Brad was pushed against it and held in place by a hand on his chest as the man opened the right rear passenger door, then grabbed him by his shirt and threw him inside. Someone else pulled him farther inside as the fearsome-looking man slid in, the door slammed shut, and the SUV sped off.
“What the f*ck is going on?” Brad shouted. He was squeezed tightly between the two very large men, and the squeeze seemed very deliberate. “Who—”
“Shut the hell up, McLanahan!” the man commanded in a low, menacing voice that seemed to cause the seats and windows to vibrate. “We’re still in the middle of the city. Passerbys can hear you.” But soon they were on Highway 101 heading northbound.
The second man in the backseat had moved back to the third row, so Brad was in the second row with the big stranger. Neither said a word until they were well out of the city. Finally: “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere safe,” the stranger said.
“I can’t leave. I’ve got work to do.”
“You want to live, McLanahan? If you do, you can’t go back there.”
“I’ve got to,” Brad insisted. “I have a project that could put an orbiting solar power plant into operation within a year.” The stranger looked over at him but said nothing, then began working on a smartphone. Brad looked at the man as the light from the smartphone illuminated his face. The glow created deep furrows in the man’s face, obviously caused by some sort of injury or illness, perhaps a fire or chemical burn. “You look familiar,” he said. The man said nothing. “What’s your name?”
“Wohl,” the man said. “Chris Wohl.”
It took a few long moments, but finally Brad’s face brightened. “I remember you,” he said. “Marine Corps sergeant. You’re a friend of my father.”
“I was never a friend of your father,” Wohl said in a low voice, almost a whisper. “He was my commanding officer. That’s all.”
“You own the house I’m staying in?” Wohl said nothing. “What is going on, Sergeant?”
“Sergeant Major,” Wohl said. “Retired.” He finished what he was doing on the smartphone, which plunged his scarred face back into darkness.
“How did you know those guys were in the house?”
“Surveillance,” Wohl said.
“You’re watching the house, or me?” Wohl said nothing. Brad paused for a few moments, then said, “Those guys sounded Russian.”
“They are.”
“Who are they?”
“Former Federal Security Bureau agents, working for a guy named Bruno Ilianov,” Wohl said. “Ilianov is an intelligence officer, with an official posting as a deputy air attaché in Washington with diplomatic credentials. He reports directly to Gennadiy Gryzlov. Ilianov was on the West Coast recently.”
“Gryzlov? You mean, Russian president Gryzlov? Related to the former president of Russia?”
“His oldest son.”