Foley glanced around to confirm that no witnesses had surreptitiously appeared in the hallway and removed a dark gray ski mask from her other cargo pocket, pulling it over her head. Next, she hastily removed her reversible tan jacket and turned it inside out, sliding it back on to reveal large yellow Cyrillic letters superimposed on the front and back of the black nylon jacket. “FSB” to anyone interested.
She removed a Russian GSH-18 semiautomatic pistol from a concealed holster near the small of her back and attached a black suppressor taken from one of her windbreaker pockets. Gripping the pistol firmly with her right hand, she pulled the fuse with the other and scrambled clear of the door. Three seconds later, the charge detonated, and Foley burst through the door, searching through the smoky haze for targets.
A man stood up from a small table in the kitchen area. She aligned the pistol’s tritium sights with his head and fired the weapon, instantly confirming a hit by the dark splatter staining the white cupboards behind him. She shifted her aim to his chest and fired twice, pushing him backward into the crowded kitchen counter. His lifeless body slid to the green linoleum floor, bringing an electric frying pan down onto him and knocking a glass into the sink, shattering it. The spilled grease sizzled as she scanned for the remaining Iranian.
Unable to immediately find her second target, she processed what she knew from her three seconds in the apartment. Two plates filled with food sat on the table, untouched from what she could tell. Glasses of water looked full. Something had been cooking in the frying pan. All of this led her to believe they were a few minutes away from starting dinner. She recognized the man she’d shot from intelligence photos provided by Karl Berg and Viktor’s bratva surveillance teams. Vahid Mahdavi, the Iranian intelligence operative assigned to watch over Ehsan Naghadi was no longer a threat. So where was the Iranian scientist?
Viktor’s teams confirmed that he was in the apartment, which left few options. The apartments were all configured the same — small common area shared with the kitchen and one bedroom with attached bathroom. Her mind had settled on the only possibility before Mahdavi’s body hit the floor. Her pistol was already aimed at the open bedroom door situated in the middle of the wall. She walked silently to the left, squeezing through two tattered armchairs and a flimsy wooden coffee table. A full ashtray and several cans of energy drink littered the water-stained tabletop. Her back brushed against the television set, rocking it gently on the stool used as a makeshift entertainment stand. She kept the tritium sights trained two thirds of the way up the door, gradually moving herself to a point along the wall.
She heard some commotion in the hallway outside of the apartment and realized she was running out of time. She had really hoped to catch them together, watching television or playing cards. Whatever two Iranians would do on a Sunday evening in a foreign country. Now she had one of them in the other room, well aware that something was wrong in the apartment. At least she was dealing with the scientist and not a fully trained Iranian intelligence operative. The voices in the hallway grew louder. Time to try a different approach.
“Federal Security Service! Put your hands above your head and walk forward through the bedroom door or we’ll use tear gas and high explosives!”
Erin lowered her body into a crouch after issuing her counterfeit warning. She had carefully crafted her words to accomplish two goals. To confuse the Iranian scientist and to buy her more time with the neighbors. The words “Federal Security Service” should be enough to send onlookers scurrying back into their apartments.
Feet scampered in the hallway, as onlookers scrambled to remove themselves from the possible line of fire outside of the apartment. She listened for any signs of movement in the bedroom. Nothing. This was not looking good for her. If Ehsan Nagdhi was armed, she stood a high chance of taking a bullet charging through the doorway. She took a shallow, quivering breath, fighting every natural instinct to walk away from the apartment. Gripping the pistol tightly, Erin pushed aside her hesitation and decided to go in low on the count of three. The wall above her exploded in a maelstrom of drywall dust and shredded wallpaper before she mentally reached two.
The burst caught her by surprise, freezing her in place. There was no mistaking what had just torn through the thin wall separating her from the bedroom. Fearing that the next burst would be placed lower, she lurched forward into the doorway, searching for a target. She found a man kneeling on the floor with his hands in front of his face, pleading in broken, yet animated Russian, which was muted by the ringing in her ears. She fired three rounds in rapid succession through his extended palms. Ehsan Naghadi’s brains covered the wall behind him, no longer a threat to the United States.
She stepped forward to confirm the kill, catching sight of a compact submachine gun lying halfway under the bed amidst several spent shell casings. She kicked the weapon into full view and glanced at the bullet hole pattern on the wall by the door. A smirk started to form under her ski mask. He’d fired a twenty-round magazine from a Skorpion submachine gun and missed her, which was a fucking miracle at this range. The pattern showed how lucky she had been. The first round struck midway up the wall, where she would have been if she hadn’t decided to crouch, but that wasn’t the extent of the miracle.
Rays of light from the other room poked through the scattered pattern of holes, roughly trailing up and to the right. The highest round had hit the wall near the ceiling. He had no idea how to shoot the weapon. If he’d braced the weapon and concentrated the burst where his first round had struck, two or three of the rounds would have gone lower, striking her in the head.
She was definitely meant to be on that airplane tonight. Any ridiculous notions she had about staying behind to help Farrington had been erased. She had depleted all of her luck on a single, deadly burst of fire from a submachine gun and would probably get hit by a car on Zorge Street leaving this shitty apartment building. No. She was done with Russia. Less than fifteen miles away, a confirmed first-class seat departing for Bangkok, Thailand, awaited her. She’d be in the air before Russian authorities put any of the pieces together here, and out of Russian airspace when Farrington’s team hit Vektor.
On the way out of the bedroom, something on the dresser next to the door caught her eye. Something familiar. She slowed down long enough to swipe Naghadi’s Vektor security card from the top of the lone dresser in the room and pocketed it. No need to point the police in the right direction too quickly. She took a few steps toward the other room before another thought fired through her head, stopping her. She went back to the dresser and opened the three top drawers.
“Jackpot,” she whispered.
The leftmost drawer held the rest of their identification papers. Iranian passports, work visas, folded copies of their lease. She jammed the rest into her cargo pockets and sprinted to the front door, glancing in both directions down the hallway. Nobody wanted to catch a stray bullet. Less than a minute later, Foley stepped out of the dark apartment building into a courtyard leading to the street. A few people had wandered off the street and into the courtyard, attracted by the sound of gunfire, but they paid no attention to her as she walked casually by them. She had reversed her jacket inside and removed the ski mask, once again appearing no different than anyone else.