Blacklist Aftermath

17

Just after midnight, when the last guest had retreated from the hotel’s brick paver terrace, Fisher and Briggs ascended into the pine trees growing beside and overshadowing the building. The hotel reminded him of one he’d stayed at while visiting the Grand Canyon as a kid, nestled in the forest and with balconies that afforded the place a motel/alpine ski resort facade. A row of steeply pitched dormers covered in bright green shingles crowned the roofline, their windows glowing.

From this vantage point they had an excellent view of three sides of the building. Charlie covered their blind spot via the security cameras, but what made the job more challenging was the lack of a rooftop entrance.

Charlie, however, had already keyed his way into the hotel’s registration system. They’d run all the names of the guests through the SMI, not expecting to encounter red flags since the FSB and SVR had assumedly taken care of all that, their rooms permanently booked. A map of the hotel appeared in Fisher and Briggs’s OPSATs. The highlighted vacant rooms were clearly marked on every floor. They were close enough to descend and cross from their trees directly onto the roof. From there, they could reach a balcony, pick the lock or cut the glass, and get inside.

However, this would be anything but a routine rescue. They had unfamiliar weapons, no Kevlar protection, and outdated trifocals and OPSATs whose custom batteries said they had approximately 51 percent worth of charge, but you never knew. And Briggs had twice reminded Fisher about their questionable ammo, which had probably been reloaded by a couple of dedicated Russian college students in their basement shop and sold for extra money.

Shoving his trifocals down over his eyes, Fisher zoomed in on a man who’d just left the main entrance. He came down the short flight of steps, slowed as he reached the terrace, then reached into his suit pocket to fish out a cigarette. No, it wasn’t a real cigarette but one of those electronic versions: he was trying to quit. The Bluetooth receiver in his ear caught Fisher’s attention. Fisher and Briggs were wearing their subvocal transceiver patches on their throats — the SVT patches were easily smuggled past customs in Turkey as “Band-Aids”—and thus Fisher immediately called in this guy.

“I have him, too, Sam,” said Briggs.

“Could be just some assclown playing on his cell phone and smoking,” said Charlie. “But if I can get a better look at his face, we’ll run him through facial recognition.”

“Patch into my trifocals,” Fisher ordered him.

“Gotcha, Sam, okay, zoom in some more.”

“Zooming.”

“Tell him to say cheese.”

Fisher did. Only in Russian. Charlie liked that, said he’d captured an image, and began running it.

“Grim, come down to the lobby,” Fisher ordered.

“I’m already here but can’t talk.”

“Okay. Stay put. Let’s see where he goes.”

“Hey, Sam, Charlie here. There’s a fat old Russian bastard trying to hit on Grim.”

Fisher stifled a laugh. “Keep an eye on her.”

“Will do. And there we go, got him,” said Charlie. “Dude’s name is Travkin, FSB. Shot, scored! He’s got to be one of our men.”

“Nice work, Charlie.”

“I’m not after the fame and fortune—”

“Just the Swiss baristas,” Fisher finished.

“She hasn’t called me back.”

“Wonder why.” Fisher took a long breath. “All right, let’s get ready. He’s heading back inside.”

“Have a look, Sam…”

Charlie sent the security camera imagery directly to their OPSATs. Fisher watched as Travkin strode into the lobby. The reception desk seemed antiquated and straight out of an old Soviet Union newsroom, complete with nine wall clocks showing the Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC, zones across Russia. A presidential proclamation cutting Russia’s times zones from eleven to nine explained two dark circles where the paint hadn’t faded. Travkin steered himself toward the elevators. Grim dropped in behind him, and Fisher tried to ignore the way her flight attendant’s uniform clung to her hips.

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.