Someone knocked on her door. She heard Storm ask: “Are you awake? I brought breakfast.”
She slipped on a terry-cloth robe and let him inside.
“I got this from downstairs,” he said. “It’s an English breakfast. I’ve got scrambled eggs, sausage, black pudding, baked beans, and a slice of tomato.” He waved the tray under her face.
She suddenly felt nauseous. And that made him smile.
“Since I spent the night elsewhere,” he continued, “I took the liberty of ducking into your room at the Marriott and grabbing you some fresh clothes. There in the hotel bag.” He dropped a plastic bag on the bed.
“How come you’re so bright and cheery?” she asked.
“I had to take a very cold shower after you locked me out.”
“Just one cold shower? I figured you’d need a couple.”
“The shower was enough to lower my expectations.”
“Cute,” she said.
“I’m going to fill up the rental with petrol,” he said in a mock British accent. “We need to leave in an hour in order to get to the protest rally. Enjoy your breakfast.”
Showers was nursing the worst hangover she’d had since college as they rode to Oxford. She kept her eyes closed under her sunglasses and fought the urge to vomit each time the car hit a bump or pothole.
The anti-Barkovsky rally was being held in the grassy fields of Oxford University Parks, on the northeast edge of the thirty-eight independent colleges that made up the school. Storm parked on a dirt road near the Old Observatory, and they walked toward a stage that had been constructed specifically for the protest. The platform rose only two feet above the grass and was only large enough for a podium and four chairs. There were about a thousand protesters mingling around it. A young girl told them that everyone was waiting for Petrov, who was running late.
As was his practice, Storm surveyed the crowd and immediately spotted three men who seemed to be out of place at the rally. They were Eastern European and in their thirties. Most of the others in the crowd were younger students or older professors.
“Did you bring your Glock?” he asked Storm.
“Yes,” she said. “You don’t have to yell.”
“I wasn’t.”
Just the same, he lowered his voice when he said, “I’m going to point out three men. If my hunch is correct, you may have to shoot them. If you can’t, give me your gun.”
“I’m not giving you my gun,” she said. “And you don’t have to point them out. The fact that they are wearing London Fog overcoats and the sun is out and it is hot makes them stick out. How do you want to handle this?”
Two black Mercedes-Benz S-Class 600 sedans with tinted windows appeared on a road to the right of the park, about two hundred yards away. When they came to a stop, Petrov and Lebedev stepped from the first car. Security Chief Nad stepped from the second. The two cars’ drivers fell in behind the group, and Petrov and his entourage began walking toward the stage.
“I’ll intercept Petrov and Nad,” he said. “You keep an eye on those men.”
“Do you think Nad and the two security guards are armed?” Showers asked.
“I sure as hell hope so.” He started making his way around the crowd.
Storm had gone about twenty feet when he saw two golf carts speeding from behind the platform. Driven by two students, the carts were decorated with anti-Barkovsky placards and were en route to give the guest and his attendants a ride to the stage. Storm realized it would be impossible for him to reach Petrov and his entourage in time.
One of the golf carts delivered Petrov to the stage. Lebedev and Nad stayed in the back of it. The two bodyguards positioned themselves at the front of the platform, on either side of it.
Nad had only brought two men with her! Both wore PROTEC security badges on their dark blazers and berets. If they were any good, they would notice the three interlopers.
The three Eastern Europeans separated. One positioned himself directly in front of the speaker’s podium. The other two moved to the left and right of the stage, taking spots directly in line with the two PROTEC bodyguards. Showers was on Storm’s left and was keeping an eye on the suspect closest to her.
Storm zeroed in on the suspect in front of the podium. He would be the one responsible for shooting Petrov. The others would be tasked with killing his two bodyguards and then backing up their friend. Storm searched for Nad and noticed that she was not studying the crowd as she should have been. Instead, she was watching Petrov, who was now behind the podium being introduced.
The crowd began clapping as Petrov began to speak.
Picking up his pace, Storm began shoving spectators out of his way. “Move! Move!” he yelled. He was trying to start such a commotion that Petrov and his security guards would notice. Both guards did and slowly reached under their jackets. Nad spotted him, too, but Petrov was too preoccupied with his speech to take note. “Hey, Petrov!” Storm yelled. The Russian stopped mid-sentence.
Everyone was looking at Storm, except for the three attackers in their trench coats.
Storm yelled: “Duck!”
The Eastern European directly in line with Petrov screamed, “Traitor!” and pulled a .45-caliber pistol from under this jacket. He began firing just as Storm tackled him from behind. Petrov collapsed on stage.
The shooter’s two companions drew Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns from under their coats and killed both PROTEC bodyguards with sprays of bullets.
Antonija Nad ran across the stage to Petrov, who had blood coming from his chest. Panic erupted. Some protestors hit the ground; others bolted in different directions, while some stood petrified with fear.
Storm was now lying on the back of the downed gunman. He grabbed the shooter’s right hand, pinning his pistol against the grass. But the gunman was stronger than Storm had estimated. With his free left hand, the shooter pushed his body upward, knocking Storm from his back, but not before Storm was able to break the gunman’s hold on his pistol.
Both men sprang from the grass to face each other. The shooter reached under his coat for a Russian military-issued knife, which he jabbed at Storm. In an expert move, Storm dodged the blade, grabbed the attacker’s hand, and twisted the blade backward, plunging it into the man’s chest. In a move known on the street as “running the gears,” Storm jerked the blade upward, then sideways, then sideways again and finally down into his victim’s stomach before releasing his grip. The shooter’s lifeless body fell limp onto the ground while Storm reached for the gunman’s discarded .45 handgun.
While Storm was subduing the first shooter, Showers had drawn her Glock and fired at the the assailant nearest her. One of her rounds had struck him in his skull, killing him instantly. That had left only one assassin alive, and when he’d heard Showers’s pistol fire, he’d shot a burst in her direction from his submachine gun.
One of the rounds hit its mark, smacking into her shoulder. Her right arm became useless, her Glock falling from her fingers as she grabbed her wound with her left hand and fell to the grass for cover.
Storm fired at the gunman with the retrieved .45. Rap. Rap. Two rounds fired at the attacker’s head. Pop. Pop. Another two at his chest. As he fell, the gunman’s finger pinched the trigger of his submachine gun, emptying what remained of its thirty-round clip into the air and ground around him.
Storm ran to Showers, who was fighting to catch her breath. He got her to her feet, put her Glock into its holster, and looked for help.
“Hang on!” he told her.
During the melee, Lebedev had commandeered a golf cart and driven to one of the Mercedes. He was now racing the sedan across the park toward them. A wounded Petrov was being helped off the platform by Nad.
Leaping from the driver’s seat, Lebedev opened the car’s rear passenger door and yelled. “Bring Petrov here!”
Nad screamed, “He’s still alive! We must get him to a hospital!”
Together they shoved Petrov’s huge body into the sedan’s backseat.
With his right arm wrapped around her waist, Storm hurried Showers toward the Mercedes.
“I’ll take her, too!” Lebedev yelled.
“We’ll follow in my rental,” Storm said. “It’s closer.”
Lebedev pressed the accelerator and the giant Mercedes spit a rooster tail of grass and dirt from under its back wheels, leaving Nad and Storm behind.
Storm ran to the parked Vauxhall and had already buckled in and started the rental by the time Nad joined him in its passenger seat. The Mercedes was nearly out of sight as he drove south toward St. Cross Road.
“Turn left,” Nad ordered.
Storm glanced at the illuminated GPS screen in car’s dash. Downtown Oxford was to his right. He hesitated but then spotted the Mercedes on his left just cresting a hill less than a mile away. It was heading away from Oxford, too. Away from the nearest hospital.
Storm felt a pit of dread in his stomach. He pressed the gas pedal, causing the Vauxhall’s engine to scream. The speedometer registered 136 kilometers per hour and was still moving forward.
The Mercedes was now a half mile ahead, but Storm was making up ground. Without warning, the black sedan suddenly slowed and turned off the main highway onto a dirt path. It disappeared into a patch of woods.
Storm pushed the pedal harder.
“Slow down,” Nad commanded.
He looked to his left in the English-made car and saw that she had drawn her CZ P-01 semiautomatic pistol and was now pointing it at his chest.
“I told you to slow down,” she said. “And turn where Lebedev turned.”
Georgi Lebedev pulled a pistol from under his jacket and leveled it at Showers seconds after he parked the Mercedes under the row of trees.
“Give me your gun,” he told her.
Already in intense pain and holding her wound with her left hand, Showers grimaced and Lebedev realized that her right arm was useless. He reached across the car seat and snatched her Glock from the holster on her right hip.
“It’s time for the truth!” he hollered at Petrov, who was sprawled across the sedan’s backseat, moaning and clutching his abdomen. Blood dotted his white dress shirt.
“Where is the gold hidden?” Lebedev yelled.
“Gold,” Showers repeated. “What gold?”
“Shut up!” Lebedev yelled.
“Georgi Ivanovich,” Petrov pleaded. “Take me to the hospital! I’m dying.”
“Tell me where the gold is hidden, then we will go to the hospital.”
“But we are brothers,” Petrov gasped. “Why are you doing this?”
“No, Ivan Sergeyevich,” Lebedev said. “I’m your lapdog. You feed me scraps. But no more. Never again. Where is the gold?”
Petrov cut loose with a string of expletives.
Without flinching, Lebedev fired the Glock into the back car seat, near Petrov’s head. The shot made a deafening sound inside the sedan, but it was not loud enough to drown Petrov’s screams.
“The next one will be in your foot,” said Lebedev. “And then your balls.”
“Slow down or I will shoot you,” Nad said. “Slow down and turn right at that stone house ahead.”
The abandoned farmhouse was next to the dirt road where the Mercedes had turned moments earlier.
Instead of slowing, Storm jammed the car’s gas pedal against the floor.
“I was wrong. I thought you and Lebedev would not show your hand until later,” he said calmly.
“How long have you known?”
“When I saw the shortened Dragunov’s stock. It had been cut down for a woman. But I should have known earlier. The moment I found the Capitol Hill Police officer’s disguise hidden in a trash can outside the women’s room, not the men’s.”
“You have made your last mistake,” she said. “Slow down. You can’t make the turn at this speed. You’re going too fast.”
She was beautiful. He had wanted her to be something other than what she was. But she wasn’t and now he would have to kill her.
The car’s speedometer topped out at 180 kilometers.
“You betrayed Petrov for gold?” Showers asked, fighting to remain conscious. The pain in her shoulder was excruciating and she was losing blood.
Lebedev replied, “Not just for gold. But for love.”
“You bastard!” Petrov sobbed from the rear seat.
“Shut up,” Lebedev said. “I have been telling Barkovsky about your every move for more than a year. Nad and me. We made a pact. We are going to be rich and together.”
“Are you responsible for the kidnapping in Washington ?” Showers asked. “Did you have Senator Windslow killed? I need to know if you’re planning on killing me.”
“Yes,” Lebedev said triumphantly. “With Barkovsky’s help, Nad and I arranged everything. I wanted the Americans to blame Petrov. We did not want Windslow to help him find the gold. We did not want the CIA to trust him.”
His words sounded to Showers as if they were coming from a great distance. She fought to concentrate.
“I will never tell you where the gold is located, you bastard,” Petrov yelled from the backseat.
“Oh really, comrade,” Lebedev replied. He fired the Glock, sending a round into Petrov’s foot, causing him to scream in agony.
With the turn from the main highway approaching, Storm looked confidently at Nad and broke into a huge grin. “Good-bye. Bitch,” he said.
She gave him a confused look and tightened the grip on her pistol. But it was too late.
Storm jerked the Vauxhall’s wheel to the right, sending the car speeding across the oncoming traffic lane. Its tires hit a slight hump at the asphalt’s edge and the Vauxhall took flight, rising several feet above the ground, aimed directly at the farmhouse’s old stone walls.
“This is your final chance,” Lebedev yelled at a terrorized Petrov. “Tell me where the gold is and I will spare your life. I will drive you to the hospital. For all the years that I kissed your pompous ass, I deserve to know. Now, tell me, or the next shot will be in your crotch.”
A crying and defeated Petrov spat out a series of numbers.
Lebedev punched the longitude and latitude coordinates into an app on his cell phone.
“It’s near the Valley of Five Caves in Uzbekistan?” he said, making the statement sound like a question.
“Yes,” Petrov cried. “I swear it. Now, save me, my brother, I’m dying.”
Lebedev pointed the Glock directly at Petrov’s forehead. “I believe you, my brother,” he said. “If there is one thing that I have learned because of our years together, it is when you are telling the truth and when you are lying. This is my reward for wiping your butt.”
He fired the Glock, spattering his best friend’s brains across the sedan’s back window and seat.
Satisfied, he turned his attention to Showers, who was now so weak and groggy that she could barely comprehend what was happening. Her body was in shock. Without emergency help, she would die.
“I will tell the police that you forced us at gunpoint to come here after the rally and that you shot and murdered my friend with your Glock. I had no choice but to kill you with my own pistol.” He rested her Glock on his lap and picked up his own gun.
“You’re insane,” Showers responded, her voice a whisper. “No one will believe you.”
“I will tell them that you shot him in the foot to torture him, trying to make him confess. I will tell them you went crazy. It will be the word of Petrov’s oldest and dearest friend against a dead FBI agent who came here to avenge the murder of a U.S. senator. The British press will love it.”
“My partner,” she uttered.
“Don’t worry about him. He’ll be dead, too. Nad will see to it.”
Lebedev leveled the gun at her chest.
“Good-bye, Special Agent April Showers,” he said.
It was at that very moment that Lebedev heard the sound of a loud explosion coming from outside the Mercedes and momentarily turned his face to look out the driver’s side window.
The flying Vauxhall nose-dived into the stone wall of the old farmhouse with a tremendous roar. It hit with such force that the vehicle seemed to burst into pieces of shattered glass, busted chrome, twisted plastic, and crumpled metal. The trunk of the sedan flew upward upon impact, and for a moment it appeared that the Vauxhall might topple end over end, but the rear axle crashed back onto the ground with a loud boom. Flames, smoke, and steam poured from under the demolished front hood.
The car’s crumple zone, driver’s side air bag, and the driver’s seat belt had saved Storm’s life. But Nad had not been so fortunate. She had not bothered to put on her seat belt and Storm had flipped off the car’s passenger side air bags. Nad had not noticed and it had cost her her life.
The impact had launched her from the car’s passenger’s seat, rocketing her through the windshield, ripping her unblemished face to shreds. Her head had hit the farmhouse’s wall like a melon hurled at a hundred miles per hour. Her skull had burst open. Her spinal cord had been telescoped. Her broken body was now lying in an unnatural twisted position on the ground next to the burning Vauxhall.
Storm pulled himself away from the wreckage and fell facedown onto the long grass. He could not hear from one ear. There was blood dripping from it and from his nose. His right knee was throbbing. But he was alive.
Gathering his senses, his first thought was of Showers, and the black Mercedes parked a hundred yards down the road, under a clump of English oaks.
Much like a drunk staggering from a bar, he tried to steady himself as he slowly plotted a course to Nad’s body. He spotted her pistol about eight feet away, next to the stone wall. He reached it and with great effort bent down and examined the handgun. It looked undamaged.
I must save April, he thought. I must get to her.
With tremendous willpower, fighting the intense pain that was streaking through his limbs, Storm began making his way from the farmhouse toward the parked Mercedes.
He had gone about fifty yards when he heard a loud crack.
It was the sound of gunfire.
And it had come from inside the parked car in front of him.
To be continued in A Bloody Storm, available in August 2012