Текст книги "Splinter cell : Blacklist aftermath (2013)"

Автор книги: David Michaels

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

But then Fisher’s heart rose into his throat as he thought about Grim getting inside that elevator, alone with the agent.

However, that didn’t happen. The heavyset man Charlie had mentioned came into view and joined the trio. They vanished into the lift.

“It’s Grim’s show now,” said Charlie.

“I’m not liking this,” Fisher said. “She should’ve stayed back there with you.”

“You don’t think she can handle herself?” asked Charlie.

“Armed, yes. But right now—”

“And there we go, she’s opened a line,” Charlie reported.

Fisher listened to the conversation in Russian. Grim had both men enthralled with a story of a “crazy” passenger aboard one of her flights. The elevator chime sounded, and then . . . silence.

“We’re on the third floor,” she whispered. “Front of the building. There it is . . . all the way at the end, room 301. He’s turning, key-carding the door. I’m heading back to my room now. Stand by.”

Fisher pulled up the hotel’s blueprints and zoomed in on the room in question. Another box showed that the room was booked in the name of Jacques T. Laurent of Quebec, Canada, a fake identity to be sure. Here was a moment when he missed the new sonar, but hell, he wouldn’t trade his years of tactical experience for any single piece of gear. He’d cleared hundreds of rooms in his day and knew how to reach forward with all of his senses to detect even the slightest shift of weight from someone behind a door.

But that still didn’t rule out using what he had.

“Briggs, I’m going onto the roof to get in tight for a clean IR scan. I want to know how many inside.”

“Roger that.”

“Sam, I’m back in my room, and we’ve got a problem.”

He gritted his teeth. “What’s wrong? Room service ran out of champagne?”

“I’m serious. Charlie, tell him,” answered Grim.

“All right, Sam, I’ve picked up some Bluetooth signals not linked to any phone receiver. These guys are wearing BioHarness watches that measure heart rate and heart rate variability. They give you a heart electrocardiogram, and they also monitor breathing, skin temperature, motion—including speed, distance, even posture—”

“I know where this is going.”

“Yeah, if any one of them takes off his watch or dies, a base station alarm gets tripped. The base station’s in that room.”

“Well, if this was easy, they would’ve called the CIA,” quipped Fisher.

“Hey, now,” said Briggs.

Charlie continued: “Good news is we can wrap up the recon right now. I can tell you exactly how many guys have been fitted, and exactly where they are. There’s one in the lot behind you, one in the blind spot now. Two more up in the room, including Travkin, but a fifth is down in the restaurant.”

“And that’s it?”

“Party of five. That’s it. Plus the girl. Don’t think she’s wearing one. That’s not to say they don’t have an overwatch team up in the mountains or at the airport, but that’s all I have for now.”

“Sam, before you hit the room, we need to take out as many of them as possible,” said Grim.

“You don’t need to remind me.”

“Then I’ll remind you that you can’t kill them. Less-than-lethal measures only, otherwise we trip the bio alarm.”

“You gotta love technology,” Charlie chipped in.

Fisher swore under his breath. “Back in the good old days you could kill a guy, take his uniform, and no one was the wiser. Now everyone’s plugged in. All right, Briggs, you take the guy in the lot. I’ll get the one out back. Are we good to go?”

“Wait a minute, so I need to take this guy out silently but not kill him?” asked Briggs.

“Is that too old-school for you?” Fisher asked.

“No, not at all. But after that, I assume we’ll be moving quickly, because they won’t be checking in.”

“Exactly. Keeping them alive is only buying us a little time.”

“Sam, I’ll get back to the third floor and see if I can get one of those maid’s carts to block the door. If you gain entry through the balcony, we’ll slow their exit. One of you takes the balcony, the other the hall.”

“Perfect.”

“Uh, are you forgetting something?” asked Charlie.

Fisher frowned. “What’s that?”

“You guys are going into a hot room. What’s to stop them from just shooting Nadia?”

“She’s their bargaining chip with Kasperov,” said Fisher. “They’ll do anything to keep her alive.”

“I hope you’re right. And don’t underestimate that Snow Maiden. I did a little digging on her, and she’s already got a major rep with the GRU.”

“I don’t care who she is. They need the girl alive. That’s their weakness, and now we exploit it. Enough talk. Briggs? Move out.”

* * *

BY the time Fisher reached the terrace, his gloves were sticky with pine sap, so he removed them and fought back the desire to draw his pistol. There were a few silent ways to kill men, some said as many as eight, but the number of ways you could incapacitate a man without killing him and without relying on drugs, well . . . that was another story. Only a true artist could take a man to the edge of the abyss without sending him over, and in that regard, Fisher was a veritable Michelangelo.

He skulked his way around the back of the hotel. The cool night air blowing in off the sea had a salty tang that was at once welcoming and sent a chill down his spine.

His prey stood across a small driveway where taxis would pick up their fares during the day. He, like his comrade Travkin, was enthralled by his phone, and Fisher found it ironic how the general public despised those who were distracted by technology while he promoted it—promoted it because it made his job easier. During his early years, guards, lookouts, spotters, and other assorted thugs would, for the most part, actually pay a decent amount of attention if they weren’t playing cards or looking at dog-eared copies of porno mags; nowadays, these young bastards were all immediately drawn like addicts to the hallucinogenic glow of their screens when they were supposed to be observers. The only thing this guy would observe now was the void of unconsciousness.

“Sam, Charlie here. Another guy coming out on your end, shit, hold position.”

Fisher was crouched behind some shrubs near a maintenance door. The second agent appeared from the door and shouted something to the other one across the street. Fisher couldn’t quite hear their conversation, but the men were arguing. He pricked up his ears and caught a few snippets: something about one man having to dispose of the body. Damn, they had better not be talking about Nadia.

“Sam, Briggs here. My guy’s out. Gagged and tied. Clock’s ticking now.”

“Roger that. Get up to the balcony outside 301. Plan your entry.”

“On my way.”

By the time Fisher glanced up again, the agent who’d come out to join his comrade was returning to the hotel. The second he passed inside, Fisher darted across the street, ducked behind several parked cars, then glided soundlessly along them, coming up behind the first agent, who was a second away from returning his gaze to his smartphone.

The unsuspecting FSB man had no idea that he was about to take a nap the hard way.

Fisher began by looping his right arm around the man’s neck, making sure the crook of his elbow was beneath the agent’s chin. Next, he placed the hand of that arm on his opposite bicep and then applied his left palm forcefully to the back of the agent’s head, pushing the man’s head and neck into the crook of his flexed arm.

Fisher’s attack didn’t stop there. He applied additional pressure by pinioning the man’s lower body. He did this by swinging his legs to lock around the agent’s and arching his back, just as the man dropped his phone and, as expected, reached up toward Fisher’s head.

The “blood choke” was a strangulation technique that compressed the carotid arteries without compressing the airway. The goal was to create cerebral ischemia and a temporary hypoxic condition in the brain.

A well-applied blood choke should render an opponent unconscious in a matter of seconds. Ironically, the blood choke required little physical strength to perform correctly and was a favorite of those operators who lacked the upper body conditioning for a more traditional stranglehold.

The agent struggled a few seconds more, then went limp in Fisher’s arm. He wouldn’t be unconscious for long.

Fisher got to work, dragging him into the forest behind the cars. He set the man down and checked for a carotid pulse. Good, still there. He bound the man’s wrists behind his back with one of the agent’s bootlaces, then improvised a gag with one of the man’s socks and his belt. He removed the man’s pistol, emptied the chamber, then took the magazine and the two spares the man was carrying and hurled them away, into the woods.

“Third guy’s come back outside, Sam,” said Charlie with an audible tremor in his voice.

“What’s his problem?”

“Don’t know. But he’s looking around for his buddy, shit . . .”

“Sam, you’d better get him before he gets back in the hotel.”

Fisher burst from the forest and went running straight at the man.

As the agent reached into his jacket to draw his not-so-expertly-concealed pistol, Fisher seized the man and tripped him flat onto his back, knocking the wind out of him.

Before the agent had a chance to regain his senses, Fisher spun him around, jerked the man’s arm behind his back and broke it. Snap!

Grimacing over the man’s scream, Fisher put him in a blood choke and had him unconscious in exactly eleven seconds. He dragged the agent behind the parked cars, then checked for a pulse. Perfect.

Once more, he used the agent’s bootlace, belt, and sock to immobilize and gag him. He disarmed the man and shoved his pistol and magazines behind the wheel of the nearest car. His pulse now raging, Fisher charged into the hotel.

“Briggs! I’m heading up the stairwell to the third floor. When I tell you, just shoot out that sliding glass door and move in. I’ll be coming in through the main door.”

“Roger that, but I’ve got IR on the room and something’s wrong,” said Briggs.

“Yeah, he’s right,” cried Charlie. “We got big problems. The BioHarness watches? Two of them have gone dead. Alarm’s been tripped.”

Fisher snorted. “No way, my two guys were good.”

“So was mine,” said Briggs.

“Grim, where are you?” cried Fisher. “Grim?”

Her silence sent him bounding up the stairwell. He reached the third-floor hallway where, at the end, he spotted a maid’s cart knocked aside just outside room 301.

As he ran, Grim finally answered, “Sam, I’m here, back in my room. I’ve been trying to figure out how they got tipped off.”

“Shit! Hotel security cams just went down—like they pulled the plug,” said Charlie. “No power to the system.”

“I’m heading inside the room,” Fisher said. He shot past the maid’s cart and found the door to room 301 hanging half open. He drew his SIG and tensed.

He swept his pistol from corner to corner, searching, assessing, taking inventory.

Faint trace of perfume in the air. TV. Double bed. Footprints on the rug. Many sets. Small electronic unit on the dresser: the BioHarness station. Bathroom. Small suitcases still lying open, clothes inside.

“Room’s clear.” He drew the curtain covering the balcony, then threw the lock and slid open the glass door. Briggs was crouched down and waiting for him.

“What the hell, Sam? How’d we lose them?”

The sound of screeching tires from below stole their attention.

A brown Skoda Yeti with driver and passenger in the front seat came bouncing out of the adjacent lot, turned onto the hotel’s driveway, then roared toward the exit.

“That’s them,” cried Fisher before he vaulted over the railing and plunged toward the SUV.

18

IT was just Fisher’s luck that Bab had sold the EMP grenades she’d stolen from the old dead drop. A carefully tossed grenade would’ve rendered the Skoda’s engine useless. Game over. There was no way the Snow Maiden and her partner could’ve escaped with Nadia on foot.

Additionally, Fisher could’ve put Briggs to work with his sniper’s rifle in an attempt to take out a rear tire or two, but the rifle was slung around his back and he doubted Briggs could get it on target in time. They had their sidearms, but taking wild potshots would’ve been much too dangerous with Nadia inside the SUV—and they had to assume she was.

These were, admittedly, all afterthoughts that struck Fisher while he was in the air, realizing that, holy shit, landing on top of the SUV was going to hurt.

Knowing how to move through the impact was half the battle won. They taught you that in jumper school—how to land without breaking your legs. Your feet struck first, then you threw yourself sideways to distribute the shock along five points of contact: the balls of your feet, the calf, the thigh, the hip, and the side of your back.

Still, the years had not been kind to Fisher’s knees, and he was not prepared for another operation on a torn ACL, no. He could take the pain; hell, he embraced the pain, but an impact that might send him rolling off the top of the Skoda to crash to the asphalt had quickly become a very real and breath-robbing possibility.

His boots made impact first, creating a sizable dent in the roof, and then, as the SUV’s momentum threatened to send him flying backward, he threw himself forward, onto his chest, reaching out for the roof racks on either side. His right hand latched on first, and that was good, since the driver cut the wheel hard left, leaving the hotel’s driveway for Lenina Street. Fisher was wrenched sideways before hooking his boot onto the rack and pulling himself back up.

The first gunshot blasted through the rooftop about two inches away from his arm. In fact, as he shifted away, his jacket sleeve got caught on the ragged edge of the bullet hole.

Incredible. The shot had been fired from the passenger, and judging from the size of the hole, it was probably from a .40-caliber handgun. That someone had been reckless enough to discharge a weapon inside a closed vehicle with the windows rolled up was nearly as insane as what he was doing. Between the deafening crack and the heavy firing gases and smoke, not to mention the lead and traces of mercury in the air from the primer, the occupants inside would soon choke on their own foolishness.

But that didn’t stop them. Two more rounds punched through, and at the same time, voices sounded in the subdermal:

“I’ve got an idea to cut them off,” cried Briggs.

“What’s going on?” cried Charlie. “I’m black over here.”

“Charlie, get into the cams along Lenina Street,” Grim said. “I’m heading after them.”

Fisher sensed the next few rounds were coming before they did, so he dove for the left side, latching onto the rack with both hands, then slid himself to the side as the roof came alive with more gunfire, the lunatic inside firing one, two, three more shots.

The driver’s side window came down, and smoke began pouring out as the man at the wheel was screaming that he couldn’t hear anything now and that he couldn’t see and that she was insane and “don’t fire that weapon in closed quarters!” The rear windows opened, and more smoke began to trail.

Without warning and before Fisher could even look up to brace himself, they plowed right into a white sedan in front of them, the other driver reflexively hitting his brakes and slowing them down, his horn wailing.

Fisher released one hand and tried to reach into his holster to grab his SIG.

But just then, the driver rolled the wheel hard, trying to get around the other car and nearly throwing Fisher off the roof. He was forced to hang on with both hands now—no chance to reach for the pistol. The sedan with its shattered bumper hanging half off finally drifted away to the side, the driver, a homely woman wearing a hotel maid’s uniform, waving her fist and screaming at them.

Up ahead, the Y-shaped streetlights stretched away for miles along the coast. The road itself was divided by a tall stone median lined with shrubs or fencing, and it blurred by at a dizzying rate.

A thought took hold.

Fisher pulled himself up toward the driver’s side door, preparing to make another quick reach for his pistol with his slightly weaker hand. He planned to thrust his hand down through the driver’s side window to shoot the man.

However, he sensed a vibration from the right side of the car, thought it might be the window lowering. As he turned, he spotted a woman coming up from the passenger’s side, bringing a pistol to bear on him. She was striking, with soft, pale skin and haunting eyes. Her long hair whipped like shimmering black flames, and for just a half second they locked gazes—

Before Fisher swung himself around and booted the pistol away as she fired, the round going high.

So this was Major Viktoria Kolosov of the GRU, the infamous Snow Maiden.

Black leather jacket. Full-sized handgun. Teeth bared.

As her hand came back down, Fisher reached into his holster and drew the SIG, but in that second he already knew he was too late. She had the advantage.

Her face would be the last thing he saw in this world, not his daughter, not a memory of something beautiful like her birth or something drawn from the early years of his marriage. No, it’d be this bitch whose lips protruded in a smirk.

But then the Snow Maiden was slipping backward away from the roof rack, her grip ripped free—

Because the driver had cut the wheel hard left to get around a slower-moving taxi ahead.

Fisher now clung to the rack for dear life himself, his body swinging around as, for just a second, he caught a glimpse of the Snow Maiden over the side. She’d reached up and snatched the windowsill at the last second and now struggled to pull herself up with one hand, her back now parallel with the road.

“Sam, Charlie here. Got you on the cams. Those two are Travkin and the Snow Maiden. Can’t see anyone else inside, which makes me think this car could be a diversion and they’re moving the girl out with another team.”

Bullshit. That couldn’t be the case. Fisher needed to know—and he needed to know now.

He pulled himself up and leaned over the side to catch a glimpse of the SUV’s rear seat and cargo hold. There she was, young Nadia, bound and gagged and lying across the backseat. “The package is here, Charlie,” he grunted into his SVT. “I’m looking right at her.”

The thundering roar of a diesel engine came from behind, and as the road curved slightly to the right, brilliant headlights appeared.

Shots cracked from within that glare, and the rounds pinged off the passenger’s side door, forcing the Snow Maiden back inside. Fisher was ready to reach around once more to shoot Travkin, but those headlights and the wailing racket enveloped him. He glanced over his shoulder.

A huge tri-axle dump truck from the construction site next door to the hotel raced by them in the right lane, and though his eyes were tearing from the wind in his face, Fisher still caught sight of the driver: Briggs.

That he’d commandeered the truck was an impressive display of quick thinking. That he could actually drive one and was prying every bit of speed out of the engine was an even more welcome surprise.

The dump truck raced by, billowing thick smoke from twin exhaust pipes rising from either side of the cab. Piles of broken concrete and dirt jutted from the open-box bed, with sand and pebbles whipping across the SUV.

Briggs cut in front of them, heading straight toward an intersection where the light had just turned red.

Charlie screamed.

Car horns wailed.

Briggs plowed right into the intersection, driving a taxi and a pickup truck off to the side of the road, one truck missing a T-bone with his cab by barely a meter.

Travkin had no choice but to follow Briggs’s line through the gauntlet as two more cars approached.

Up ahead now, the dump truck’s hydraulic lift system slowly raised the bed, and the rear door flipped open.

Now Fisher grinned as hundreds of pounds of concrete and dirt began splaying across both lanes of the road, dust clouds rising, the cacophony of cracking and booming cement sounding like artillery fire in the night.

Travkin didn’t react in time. He drove straight toward a chunk of concrete as wide as the SUV itself, turning only at the last second. The Skoda took flight.

And Fisher was no longer smiling.

They came crashing down, with Fisher’s arms straining against the bumps as his entire body was lifted twice from the roof. Was it over? No, they kept on, only to rumble across several more pieces of stone.

It was all Fisher could do to maintain his grip, and then, after another hard blow to the front wheels, the SUV was once more in the air, floating hopelessly like a bloated, wingless bird.

Fisher glanced up.

And lost his breath.

They were heading straight for the concrete median, the wall standing at least two meters, the gray bricks speeding up at them. A head-on collision was inevitable, impact in two seconds . . .

Fisher released his grip on the rack, allowing himself to slide off the roof. He struck the grass and dirt with his shoulder and hip. The dreaded crunch of a broken collarbone never came as he followed through with a roll to further dissipate the shock.

Before he could look up at the SUV, it hit the wall with an explosive boom echoed quickly by the higher pitched tinkling of flying glass and the hissing of spewing steam and fluids. Two more pops resounded—the air bags deploying.

The sea breeze whipped the dust clouds over the Skoda, shielding it from view for a moment as Fisher scrambled to his feet.

Out ahead, Briggs had pulled the dump truck to the side of the road and was leaping down from the cab.

“Sam, it’s Grim. I’m two minutes away!”

“Hold back,” Fisher cried, just as gunfire sent him crashing back down into the dirt and rolling toward the wall for cover.

“Sam, local police are on the way,” reported Charlie.

“How long?”

“It’s Russia. Don’t know. Maybe an extra minute?”

“Great. Briggs, hold fire now. Nadia’s still in there!”

“Roger, but she’s firing at me!”

“Keep her busy. I’m moving up.”

With his SIG in one hand, Fisher burst from cover and fired two rounds at the wall beside the SUV.

The pistol was a double action/single action, so the first trigger pull was tougher, ten pounds to be precise, while the second and all subsequent pulls was less than half that and with a much shorter reset.

His third and fourth shots forced Travkin back toward the SUV, where he opened up the rear door and sought cover behind it. Fisher saw that the agent’s head was cut, his nose bleeding. He was probably still fatigued, too. Good.

Travkin peered out and squeezed off at least four more shots, two hitting the wall near Fisher, the others striking the dirt behind him.

Fisher squeezed his trigger in reply, but the round failed to feed, damn it. That cheap ammo was coming back to haunt them, as Briggs had predicted. Fisher dropped to his gut, ejected the mag, and wrenched back the slide, tipping the pistol to allow the jammed round to fall out.

At the same time a hailstorm of fire came in from the other side of the SUV, this probably from the Snow Maiden, who seemed hell-bent on emptying her magazines, the salvos coming thick and fast.

Fisher slammed home his own magazine, then racked the slide, chambering a fresh round.

Back on his feet, crouched over and advancing along the wall, he fired two more shots before the next one jammed again. Garbage ammo and shit aftermarket magazine!

He holstered the pistol and reached for his backup—but it was gone, slipped free while he’d been fighting to hang on to the SUV.

“Briggs, put some fire along the wall to your right, just above the car.”

“Gotcha.”

As the bricks came alive, the sparks flickering and dancing, Travkin couldn’t help but turn back to engage Briggs, as did the Snow Maiden, still out of sight on the other side of the SUV.

Holding his breath, Fisher made his move, vaulting toward the Skoda and reaching the man just as he swung around. Fisher drove himself into the rear door, knocking Travkin onto his back and then, before the agent could sit up, Fisher dragged him by the ankles beneath the door, stopping halfway before coming around behind him.

Reflexively, Travkin tried to sit up but found the door inches from his neck. At the same time, Fisher was already ripping the pistol from the agent’s grip and turning it on him.

The decision to kill never came lightly but when it did, there was never any hesitation. A single headshot point-blank finished Travkin as the police sirens wailed in the distance.

Fisher ducked down to see if he could shoot the Snow Maiden right through the SUV’s cabin—but she was gone.

Two more rounds chewed into the wall.

“Briggs, hold fire,” Fisher stage-whispered. He quietly ejected the agent’s magazine, which felt painfully light. He checked it. Empty. He searched the man for another magazine. Nothing. Damn, he’d killed Travkin with his final round. Fisher dumped the gun and drew his SIG once more, racking the slide and clearing the jammed round.

“Sam, she’s tucked in tight near the front of the car, where the radiator’s hissing,” said Briggs. “I saw her toss away two magazines, and she didn’t reload. She might be out of ammo. Wait, she’s moving now. Lost her. I think she’s heading your way.”

For the span of exactly three heartbeats the road fell eerily quiet, save for that hissing radiator and the drumming of Fisher’s pulse.

Even those klaxons from the police cars seemed muted, and the traffic in the distance began moving more slowly, as though his instincts had automatically switched off all interference so he could focus on the slightest crunch of pebble, the barest whisper of breath escaping from the Snow Maiden’s lips.

Then, abruptly, it all hit him again—the sirens growing louder, the stench of leaking gasoline, the wind beginning to turn icy as he circled around the truck.

His right ankle came out from under him before he realized that the Snow Maiden was beneath the SUV. He hit the ground, tried to roll to get the pistol aimed at her, but she was on him so fast that he thought for a second he was being attacked by a mountain lion or a jaguar.

She struck a roundhouse to his jaw while reaching up to clutch his wrist, nails digging in to trap his pistol over his head. With a groan, he sat up, trying to force the pistol forward toward her head.

And then, in a move that was as acrobatic as it was confusing, she locked both hands around the pistol and used it like a gymnast’s horse, launching herself away, both legs high in the air, her boots arcing in a black leather rainbow as she drew on her full body weight and momentum to free the pistol from his sweaty grasp. He spun back, now unarmed.

She hit the ground, rolled, and came up with the business end of the SIG. Her idea of doing business was, of course, to point the gun at his forehead. “Who are you?” she demanded in Russian.

“Briggs?” Fisher muttered. “Now would be a good time to shoot her.”

“I don’t have a bead. I’m moving up for a better shot,” Briggs answered. “The sights are off on this piece of crap rental pistol.”

“Sam, the police will be there any minute,” said Grim. “I need to move in now!”

“I said, who are you?” the Snow Maiden screamed.

19

FISHER’S gaze averted from the Snow Maiden’s fiery eyes to her trigger finger. The gun was slightly too large for her, and the pad of her index finger barely reached over the trigger, meaning if she fired, her shots would tend to go left. Too small of a gun and too much pad over the trigger would send them to the right. This was all academic, of course, because she had Fisher point-blank in her sights. It was just a matter of whether she’d hit him perfectly center mass or a few inches in either direction.

“You’re looking for Kasperov,” Fisher began, trying to distract her. “We know where he is.”

The Snow Maiden opened her mouth, but something on the periphery caught her attention, Briggs perhaps. As she flicked her gaze to the left, Fisher started toward her—

She backed away and pulled the trigger.

The shot rang out with an ear-piercing explosion that sent Fisher stumbling back and falling onto his rump.

But the only pain was in his ears, and when he glanced up, he spotted the Snow Maiden staring down in shock at the smoking pistol in her hands, the slide blown clean off.

One of those cheap rounds had prematurely exploded inside the weapon, possibly firing out of battery.

Fisher bolted to his feet, crying, “Briggs, get Nadia! Grim, get over here!”

The Snow Maiden threw down the pistol and lifted her arms in a defensive block as Fisher lunged at her.

While he outweighed the woman by at least sixty, maybe even eighty pounds, he once more marveled at her agility. Even as he tried to seize her wrists and straddle her, she was already writhing out of his grip and sliding between his legs, only to roll back and hook her ankles around his neck, forcing him back into a blood choke conducted with her legs.

Whether she’d learned these unconventional techniques with the Russian circus or had invented them herself was beside the point; she was the most asymmetric combatant he’d ever faced, twisting and turning like an oily snake.

She even growled now through her exertion, as though every sinew in her body had a voice. With each pound of pressure she applied to his neck, it seemed as though she cast out another demon. He’d just met her, but she fought like it was personal.

A chill of panic struck as he realized he couldn’t pry free her legs. The world darkened along the edges, like ink bleeding into his field of view.

A gunshot boomed.

And suddenly the pressure was gone. He could breathe. He wrenched himself up. Turned. She was gone.

Briggs was hauling him to his feet.

“I think I hit her, but she took off over the wall. Want me to go?”

Grim came to a squealing halt in her rental. “Come on!”

Fisher blinked hard as the blood rushed back into his head. He looked at Briggs, at Grim, then finally said, “Help me get Nadia into the car.”

Still dizzy, Fisher turned back to the SUV, where Nadia was lying, her lips taped shut, her eyes wide. They’d fastened her wrists and ankles with zipper cuffs that they ignored for now, lifting the girl and rushing back to Grim’s car.

After getting Nadia into the backseat, Briggs crossed to the passenger’s seat while Fisher remained in back. As they took off for the next intersection, Fisher gently removed the tape on Nadia’s lips. She took a few tentative breaths. Fisher saw now that her eye was red and bruised and had probably been much more swollen. She looked at him for a few seconds, her brain seemingly unable to function until she finally asked in Russian, “Who are you? Did my father send you?”