Simon disconnected and wished he had a bottle or three of good Scotch. Of course, that was an impossibility, but he still felt the tug, remembered the heat like it was only yesterday and not nine years ago, almost felt the sultry ambrosia slide down his throat and warm him, providing the temporary refuge of comforting numbness.
He placed the computer on the bed and flipped the bird at the fan before padding to the bathroom and relieving himself. The idiot ISIS arms merchant hadn’t even suspected that he might have a homing device, although even the most thorough physical search would have come up empty. He’d swallowed the transmitter, a nearly invisible piece of monofilament attached to his lower left molar preventing it from descending too far into his digestive tract, and had retrieved it in the bathroom and secured it to the bottom of the floor drain grid.
Simon flushed the toilet and moved back to the bed for the final minutes of the countdown as a cruise missile or maybe a drone made its way to the warehouse with a high-explosive payload. He didn’t question why his masters wanted the depot destroyed, although he suspected that it was to cover their tracks and eliminate any trace of a connection to the Russian missiles.
The hair on the back of his arms stood on end as he returned to his seat, and he only registered the faint movement behind him when a wire garrote had already been slipped over his head and around his neck.
It took Simon almost as long to die as it took the timer to reach zero, the wire slicing through his throat like butter. His executioner watched impassively as the screen flashed and then went dark, easing Simon’s body to the floor as he stared at the display with eyes the color of lead. He cleaned the room methodically, removing all trace of Simon’s operational purpose and real identity and, after five minutes of double-checking to ensure he hadn’t missed anything, let himself out of the room.
The killer had no idea why the man in the room had to die, nor did he care. He wasn’t paid to question, he was paid to clean up messy situations in faraway places, and he’d carried out his orders with the efficiency of a robot.
By tomorrow he would be on a plane bound for Paris, and after, to the headquarters of the consulting firm he worked for in Virginia, where he’d wait until another situation required his special skills.
Simon’s sightless eyes glared accusingly at the fan, the lake of blood beneath his corpse coagulating in the heat – an anonymous man without a country whose ultimate reward was to be buried in a shallow grave by local fixers paid the equivalent of beer money to sanitize the room before the hotel staff arrived in the morning.
Chapter 37
Verkhnee Turovo, Russia
Jet held up a hand, signaling Yulia to stop. Yulia complied and Jet cocked her head, listening for sounds of pursuit, her legs trembling from the exertion of running. When she didn’t hear anything, she leaned toward Yulia and murmured in her ear, “Let’s find the van and get moving. Won’t be long before they have more roadblocks in place.”
Yulia nodded. “That was close.”
“We’re not in the clear yet.”
Jet glanced to her left and tried to gauge how far the road was, but was unable to with the forest cloaked in gloom. She took her best guess and cut toward where her internal compass told her the vehicle should be, and Yulia trailed her wordlessly. Every few minutes Jet stopped and listened, but the police seemed to have given up following them on foot, and she picked up the pace when she saw a strip of pavement through the trees.
When they arrived at the van, Mikhail and Evgeny weren’t in the back, and Yulia cursed. “We don’t have time for this,” she said, and called their names in a low voice.
“Over here,” Mikhail hailed from behind a clump of bushes and stepped into view. Evgeny followed him to the van under Yulia’s disapproving glare.
“We’re leaving. Pile in,” she said.
“What about Taras?”
Yulia swallowed hard. “He didn’t make it.”
“We heard shooting…”
Yulia made her way to the driver’s side. “So did everyone for miles around.” She climbed in and started the engine, and then her eyes widened on the side mirror as headlights appeared from down the road. “Get in. They’re coming.”
Jet slipped into the passenger seat, and the two men jumped into the back of the van and pulled the doors closed. Yulia tromped on the gas and Jet checked the submachine gun before turning toward her. “No way we can outrun them.”
“I know. It’s going to come down to who’s a better shot.” Yulia’s eyes fixed on Jet for a split second before moving back to the mirror. “I’m hoping you are.”
The police cruiser quickly gained on the van, its siren splitting the night as it bore down, and Jet readied herself for some tricky shooting. Hitting a moving target of any kind was difficult under the best of circumstances, even from a stationary location. Doing so while bouncing down a rutted road was close to impossible – but the cops would have the same problem, which equalized matters.