Authors: Russell Blake
“What is it, Anton?”
“Someone broke into my workshop. It has to be your newcomer.”
Yulia nodded. “Yes. It appears she decided to go it alone. What’s missing?”
“All our passports, and a little money.”
“She didn’t take all the cash?”
“No. Odd, isn’t it?”
Yulia couldn’t understand why she would have left anything of value. “Why take all the passports?”
“They have considerable value on the black market. Or if she’s got the right gear and knowledge, she could alter them and use them herself.”
Yulia accompanied him to the secure room and eyed Anton’s workbench. “At least she was neat about it.”
“That’s a month’s worth of passports, gone. Now we have to start all over.”
“Nothing we can do about it.”
“What’s worse is that she knows where this base is located. If she wanted to sell that information to the Russians…”
Yulia laughed humorlessly. “That’s about the only thing I can be certain she won’t do. But no matter. Inventory the weapon room to be sure she didn’t break in there and steal anything, and I’ll work the phones. I presume you have a list of the names and numbers of the passports?”
“Of course.”
“Then get me those. She’s good, but nobody can evade discovery forever. When she surfaces, we’ll be waiting.”
Anton’s brow creased. “You didn’t tell her about the missiles, did you?”
“Are you out of your mind? The only ones who know about them are you, me, and the colonel.”
“So this changes nothing about that operation?”
“Why would it? I tried to recruit a mercenary, who repaid my generosity by stealing some documents and running for the hills. It’s hardly the end of the world. Annoying, but our bigger picture remains the same.”
~ ~ ~
The engine of the motorcycle howled into the redline as Jet sped east on a secondary road that paralleled the main highway. She’d located the perfect candidate outside the university, where hundreds of mopeds and small motorcycles were parked. The lock was a joke, the motor small enough so it wouldn’t consume much fuel, and the registration was good through the end of the year, so she wouldn’t run any risk of being stopped over a tag.
She’d filled the tank on the way out of the city and was averaging sixty kilometers per hour. At that rate it would take her until late into the night to arrive in Novorossiysk, leaving her precious little time to get some rest and then case the yacht club and devise a plan. But she didn’t want to risk the highway and any possible random checks, and would pay the price for traveling the entire distance on back roads with a sore bottom and stiff spine.
Jet adjusted the helmet on her head and looked up at the sky. Her one fear was a storm – a fair possibility considering the distance she would be traveling. Trying to slog through the rain on a small motorcycle would be beyond miserable and would slow her to a crawl. For now, though, the high clouds looked benign, and she couldn’t worry about what might happen later in the day.
Her main concern at the moment was walking into an unfamiliar town, with no intelligence other than an hour on the web, intent on terminating a man who would have serious security. She’d already run through dozens of scenarios, but they were all speculative until she arrived at the port and saw the ceremony preparations with her own eyes. The Russian was celebrating the opening of a children’s hospital, as one of a dozen board members for a philanthropic organization that had paid for the facility, and her hope was that there would be numerous opportunities to end his life between the ceremony and the cocktail party afterward.
If she could have a nice sniper’s rifle and a few days to find a suitable location from which to pick him off, that would have been her preference; but she’d make do with what she had to work with. If she could get close, virtually anything would serve as a lethal weapon in her hands. The trick wouldn’t be killing the attorney; rather, it would be doing so in a manner that enabled her to get away clean afterward.
That was usually the hard part. Executing someone if you were willing to sacrifice your own life was relatively straightforward. Slipping away undetected after a high-profile sanction – that was orders of magnitude more difficult.
If she was lucky, she might discover he was staying at a hotel in town and be able to do the deed there. Hotels were always easier than crowded venues – a knock at the door, confused room service, or slipping down the outside of the building to enter through a window…
Unfortunately, one of the articles she’d read had mentioned his private jet, and if he was like most über-wealthy, the last thing he’d want to do was spend a night in a place like Novorossiysk. More likely was that he’d fly in, shake hands and have a few drinks, wave, and be back in Moscow the same evening.
Which wouldn’t work for her.
And she didn’t want to invest the time, possibly weeks, staking out his office and home to discover any weaknesses she could exploit. If the man had the clout to get her extradited, he would also have competent bodyguards – and would, in fact, be wary of an attempt now that she’d escaped. He couldn’t be sure that she knew he was behind it, but it must have arisen in discussions with his team, and they’d be on alert, making it even harder to reach him.
No, one way or another, she’d end his life tomorrow.
Because it was either Leo or Jet – and she had too much to live for to give him a second chance at her.
Novorossiysk, Russia
Jet shook out her wet hair, newly trimmed with straight bangs and lightened two shades to better match the photo of the Bulgarian woman in her passport. The shower had done wonders to revive her after a late-night arrival in the port town and a few hours of restless sleep in a dive waterfront hotel. Music had thumped from seedy bars beneath the rooms until dawn, shouted arguments and drunken singing the constant counterpoint.
Rain had hit two hours outside of Novorossiysk and had drenched her, doubling the time it had taken to cover the final hundred kilometers. The downpour had stopped as she’d neared the port, but she’d been shivering when she’d made it up to the second-floor room to which a morose clerk had directed her after pocketing her rubles. She’d stripped off her clothes and hung them to dry in the tiny bathroom and then stood beneath the warm stream until color had returned to her face; now she was treating herself to another shower before going to reconnoiter the hospital and yacht club.
She toweled off and pulled on her stiff, dry clothes, checked the time, and counted her remaining cash before descending the stairs to the hotel lobby and exiting the drab building. The waterfront stank of rot, exhaust, and fuel. In the late morning it was crawling with sailors and dockworkers. Jet stopped at a nearby diner and sat at a scarred wooden table coated with a film of grease and ordered the fisherman’s breakfast and a cup of strong coffee. She watched the activity on the wharves as she waited for her food, noting that most of the vessels appeared to be in poor repair, flagged in countries that were ignoring the sanctions imposed on Russia for its actions in Ukraine. When her meal arrived, she ate the tasteless goop that passed for eggs using slices of bread to sop it up, and by the time she was finished felt vaguely nauseated.
Jet paid at the register and asked the young woman behind the counter for directions to the hospital. It was too far to walk, the woman advised, and gave her several street names and landmarks she could use to find the newly constructed building. Jet thanked her and headed back to the hotel parking lot, where her liberated motorcycle leaned in a corner, too battered for even the most desperate thief to bother stealing in the dead of night.
She located the hospital easily enough and circled the block before parking down the street. It was an indifferently designed monolith built in the same gray style as the rest of the city. Laborers milled around the entrance, putting on the finishing touches in preparation for the evening’s ribbon cutting. She continued past the front, noting the police cars and private security guards watching the workers from the shadows, and rounded the block to see if the rear offered her any better chances. Two large trucks were offloading beds and medical equipment under the watchful eyes of yet more guards, and it was quickly apparent that sneaking into the facility and lying in wait would be an impossibility.
The trip across town to the marina took fifteen minutes. She had a scare when a police truck pulled from a side street and took up position behind her, trailing her through dense traffic along the waterfront until it turned off just before the yacht basin. Jet exhaled a sigh of relief when she saw it disappear from her mirror, and slowed as she neared the site of the cocktail reception. Ribbons were being hung from the front façade, backed by elaborate displays of helium balloons. She found a slot for the bike and killed the engine and, after hooking the helmet onto one of the handlebars, strode along the sidewalk toward the clubhouse.
What she saw wasn’t promising. Security looked professional, not the flabby rent-a-cops she’d hoped to see; the men prowling the grounds possessed distinctively military bearing. Once past the building, she turned and walked to the marina, ostensibly watching the circling birds as she calculated a nocturnal approach from the sea. The problem was that once on the marina docks, she wouldn’t have bought herself anything if the party stayed indoors, which it appeared would be the case from the preparations and the weather.
She returned to the street and surveyed the nearby buildings. An upscale hotel across the street and a restaurant next door offered no apparent advantage, other than a reasonable spot to maintain surveillance while she came up with a plan. Perhaps she could subdue one of the service staff catering the affair, take their uniform, and gain access that way? She’d done so before on past assignments, but always with days or weeks of preparation and research into the company’s rules, as well as in-depth knowledge of the security precautions. A maneuver like that had considerable risk, especially if the company was close-knit – all it would take was one of the other servers to voice misgivings and the game would be over.
Jet ate lunch at the restaurant and lingered over coffee, watching the arrival of the catering crew with sinking spirits. All had security passes hanging from their necks, and the guards checked everyone before allowing them into the building. She could see a possibility if one of the female crew left, but the way it was being operated, with the crew arriving four hours before the beginning of the ceremony to help set up the venue and glassware, she didn’t have a chance.
The afternoon stretched into evening with her no closer to her goal, and as the sun set, she left and retraced her route to the hospital. As she expected, the security around the building was substantial, and a few minutes of perusal confirmed that if she was going to have a shot at Leo, it was going to have to be at the yacht club. She returned to the marina under cover of darkness, parked the motorcycle on the sidewalk across the street from the club, and took up her watch from the bar at the hotel across the way where she could see the entrance from its picture window.
Limousines began arriving with the privileged who’d been invited to the event, many of them single males of a certain age and most in formal dress. The pistol at the small of her back, hidden by her lightweight jacket, seemed to grow heavier by the minute; and then her heart rate spiked when a white limo pulled to a stop and Leo disembarked, his polar white dress jacket and matching shirt and tie glowing in the yacht club’s lights.
Four women in skintight dresses walked into the bar in a cloud of perfume, their makeup and demeanors announcing them as paid company of the high-priced variety. They took the table next to Jet and ordered drinks, laughing and making off-color jokes about recent encounters of the disappointing kind. The waiter delivered their cocktails, and they toasted each other, knocked the drinks back, and ordered another round.
“Can you believe the bit about the security passes?” one of them asked, and Jet’s ears perked up.
“I know. Like, how many of us use our real names?”
“I was all, get real. The guy was, like, what’s your name and address, and I gave him my working name, no surname, and he flipped out.”
“But he eventually gave you the pass, right?”
“Of course. He was just trying to prove how big a man he is,” the girl said, holding her pinkie erect.
The table laughed and the second round arrived. More toasts, more conviviality, and another set of shots was ordered. The waiter brought the bill with the third round, and the women tossed money onto the table while teasing the man about taking his tip out in trade. They raised the shots in the air and downed them as one, and then one of the women, a beautiful brunette with a hard profile, stood and pointed to the rear of the bar. “I’m going to powder my nose. See you inside,” she said with a giggle.
“Don’t powder too much, Svetlana. Save some for when you really need it,” her companion said, and the rest laughed and waggled their fingers at her as she sashayed to the restroom on impossibly high heels, her gold sequined one-piece miniskirt leaving little to the imagination.
Jet waited a few moments and watched as the hookers crossed the street to the event, and then slid a few bills beneath her glass of mineral water and moved to the bathroom. When she entered, the escort was wiping white from a nostril. Jet smiled and walked to the sink beside her, and then without preamble delivered a strike to the side of the woman’s neck, dropping her with the blow.
Jet caught her before she hit the ground and pulled her into one of the stalls, and then cut off the oxygen supply to her brain with steady pressure on her carotid artery. When she was sure the woman was out cold and would remain that way for the duration, she quickly pulled her dress over her head and slipped her shoes off.
Two minutes later Jet stood in front of the mirror with the woman’s clutch purse, applying makeup, exaggerating the mascara and blush, the lipstick an appropriately garish red. When she was finished, she inspected the result – something off a high-budget porn shoot, she thought, which was the effect she was after. She slipped one of the items she’d confiscated from the Ukrainians into the clutch purse and dumped the remainder of the woman’s drugs onto the floor next to her, and then locked the stall from the inside and climbed over.