The Survivor

CHAPTER 4

Vasily Zhutov skirted close to the building next to him, ignoring the dim display window full of electronics. The rain was coming down harder, but instead of pulling the umbrella from his briefcase, he just walked faster.

His masters in Moscow had thought he was insane when he’d volunteered to fill an open position in Istanbul. It was technically a demotion, but he needed a break if he was going to stave off the middle-aged heart attack suffered by so many of his colleagues.

Everything in Turkey didn’t revolve around vodka and heavy food, and his new position didn’t rate a car and driver. He’d mapped out this four-kilometer path home from his office the first week he’d arrived. It wound through an area that closed down by the time he got off and was thus devoid of pedestrians who could slow his pace. In less than a month, he’d lost two kilos and cut the time it took to cover the hilly course by almost two minutes.

He turned left into a cobblestone alleyway and glanced at the numbers counting down on his digital watch. It wasn’t a record speed, but considering the weather and descending darkness, it was respectable.

More important to his health than the weight loss, though, was the fact that he was two thousand kilometers from the Kremlin, where career advancement was a universe unto itself. The job became not so much protecting the interests of Mother Russia as it was protecting one’s own interests. His days had devolved into a blur of questionable political alliances and elaborate plots to destroy his rivals while they hatched similar plots against him.

That was what had driven him into the arms of the Americans. Of course, Russia’s leaders would loudly condemn him as a traitor if they found out, but deep down they knew it was they who had betrayed their country. They who were turning it into a corrupt basket case barely kept afloat by natural resources gouged from the land.

There was no innovation, no plan for the future, no attempt to meaningfully engage the West. Only the occasional flexing of military muscle to stir the people’s nationalism and blind them to the fact that they had no more hope now than they did under the communists.

Zhutov was forced to divert around a van moving across the entrance to a square dominated by an empty playground. He looked through the rain at the rusting equipment and once again considered how it could be used to enhance his daily exercise routine. Would a pull-up be achievable before he was recalled to headquarters? His doctor had urged caution, but at forty-three it seemed in the realm of possibility.

The van began to move and Zhutov adjusted his trajectory to cut across its rear. When he did, the driver slammed on the brakes, fishtailing on the slick cobbles. The back doors were thrown open and he stumbled to the right, barely avoiding being hit by one.

Despite extensive training in his youth, Zhutov froze. He found himself unable to resist as a man leapt out of the vehicle and grabbed him by the front of his suit jacket. The Russian was nearly lifted from the ground as he was driven into the vehicle’s cramped cargo space. Somewhere in the distance, he heard the wet squeal of tires, but the sound seemed to disappear when he looked into the dark eyes of the man preparing to close the doors from his position on the street.

“No!” Zhutov shouted before he could be closed off from the outside world. His heart rate, already elevated from adrenaline and his evening workout, shot up again when he managed to put a name to the face. “Stop! I haven’t betrayed you! I swear I haven’t!”

He tried to fight into a sitting position but someone behind him grabbed his shoulders and held him down. Zhutov looked up at the disarming grin and neatly trimmed blond hair of Scott Coleman. “Relax, Vasily. We’re the good guys.”

“Go!” Rapp shouted, slamming the doors. He was sprayed with water as Maslick gunned the van’s anemic engine and drifted it onto a winding street leading north. The safe house was less than three miles away and Coleman’s team would hole up there for a few days to debrief Zhutov and build him a new identity.

A more pressing problem was the similar van barreling down on Rapp from the other side of the square. Behind him, there was a narrow walkway between two buildings. It would be an easy getaway since he wasn’t aware of a single Russian operative who could even come close to keeping up with him on foot. It would also leave a lot of questions unanswered.

Too many, Rapp decided. Kennedy would just have to deal with the fallout.

He slipped his Glock 19 from beneath his jacket and sighted over the silencer toward the van now just over twenty yards away. The windshield wipers were running at full speed, giving him a clear view of the two men in the front seat. He aimed at the driver and squeezed off a round. The Winchester Ranger Bonded wasn’t his normal go-to ammunition, but it was ideal for this scenario. Subsonic to eliminate the crack caused by the round breaking the sound barrier but with excellent penetration capability.

A spiderwebbed hole opened directly in front of the driver’s face, but the bullet didn’t find its mark. It wasn’t entirely unexpected. The deflection of even a hard-hitting bullet could be significant. In his career he’d experienced everything from shots that went straight through to the target, to one that had veered so violently it had sheared off a side-view mirror.

The van swerved as the driver instinctively raised his hands to protect his face from the tiny shards of glass. Rapp fired a second shot at the damage made by the first. The softened glass reduced deflection and a spray of blood erupted when the driver’s forehead was torn away.

The vehicle slowed as the man’s foot went limp and Rapp moved left, bringing the side door into view. These tended to be three-man operations and that suggested the last team member was out of view in the cargo section. It was a prediction that was proved right when the door slid open and a bulky man with an unsuppressed Russian 9A-91 assault rifle started to leap out. Rapp blew the back of his skull off and watched as he pitched forward into the street. One of his feet got — tangled in a seat belt and he was dragged along, leaving a broad streak of blood and brain matter on the wet cobblestones.

The surviving man in the passenger seat grabbed the wheel and turned the vehicle toward Rapp, desperately trying to get his foot past his dead companion’s leg in order to slam the accelerator to the floor. It was a vaguely pathetic sight, and Rapp just stood there as the van rolled to a stop a few feet in front of him.

“Get out!” he yelled as the Russian stared at him wide-eyed and raised his hands.

He did as ordered and Rapp indicated toward the corpse hanging halfway out the door. “Put him inside.”

The dead weight looked significant but the Russian managed. The square and the windows of the buildings around them were still empty, but it wouldn’t last. One local with a cell phone was all it would take to bring the police down on them.

“You’re driving,” Rapp said, keeping his weapon lined up on the man as he dragged what was left of the original driver into the cargo area. Rapp climbed into the passenger seat and pulled the door closed, pressing the tip of his silencer into the man’s ribs.

“Go. Nice and easy. No need to attract attention.”

The Russian seemed reluctant to lean back into the blood-soaked headrest and instead hunched over the wheel as he steered the car past an empty playground.

“What’s your name?” Rapp said.

“Vadim Yenotin.”

“Do you know who I am?”

The man swallowed and nodded.

“Then you understand your situation.”

“Yes.”

They turned onto a broader avenue and were immediately surrounded by the glare of headlights.

“You have two options, Vadim. The first is that I take you to a safe house with a soundproof basement. Things get ugly and you tell me everything you know.”

“I do not like this plan.” His accent was thick but understandable.

“You’re smarter than you look. Good. Option two is for you to answer all my questions completely and truthfully. After that, my boss calls your boss and they do a little horse-trading. You know the drill — we give up a little information and maybe pad a few of your superiors’ retirement accounts. A week later, you’re sitting in your apartment drinking vodka.”

“Yes. I like this very much. This is what should be done.”

“Why were you sent to pick Zhutov up?”

“The FSB received an email saying that he was being paid by the Americans.”

“Who was it from?”

“Joseph Rickman.”

“And you just believed it?”

“There was a great deal of information. The names of his handlers, information he’d passed to the CIA, dates, places. It said that he is the Sitting Bull that Rickman spoke of on the video.”

“When did you get the email?”

“Five days ago.”

Rapp pulled his gun from the man’s ribs and jammed it into his crotch. “I thought you weren’t going to lie to me, Vadim. Option one is now back on the table.”

“No! I was informed five days ago. I saw the email myself. Our people checked the servers to confirm the date and to try to find where it came from. I swear!”

“Pull over on the next side street and park, Vadim. I don’t want you to run over anyone when I blow your nuts off.”

“I have no reason to lie to you about this! We arrived four days ago and began watching Zhutov to see if he would lead us to any of his contacts. We flew in on a commercial airliner and went through passport control. I can give you the names we used.”

“Joe Rickman died two weeks ago, Vadim. So unless he’s figured out a way to stuff his brain back into his skull, you have a serious problem.”

“Impossible! Please. Check my story. The CIA can do this easily. You will find that I am telling the truth.”

Rapp kept the silencer pressed into the man’s crotch, but his desire to pull the trigger began to wane. He had a nose for lies and the overwhelming impression he was getting from Yenotin was that he was very fond of his testicles. The Russian wasn’t one of the fanatics Rapp had spent his career dealing with. He wasn’t looking to get his fingernails pulled in an effort to please Allah. He was a professional who understood the zero-sum game played by world powers.

“You said your people tried to determine where the email came from. What did they learn?”

“Nothing. It traveled all over the world. There was no way to trace its source.”

Rapp let out a long breath and indicated for the man to turn right at the next intersection. Things had just gone from complete crap to insurmountable disaster.