“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 i
n 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, w
aving 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.”