Blacklist Aftermath

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.