Mike Dillman took the stairs in the main hall of the station down one level and then turned to head north, expecting to find the tunnel that led to the bus depot across the street. There was a significant crowd of early-morning travelers here, moving through the passages toward the exits to the platforms, many rushing from their commuter trains to catch their longer-haul trains for more far-flung destinations around the country and abroad.
He’d made it about fifty feet through the brightly lit area before coming across a map of the station, and here he saw he needed to descend one level farther. He went over to an employee-only access door, tried the handle, and found it unlocked. Inside was a dimly lit hall with a large service elevator. He quickly stepped inside the car and pressed the button that would take him down one floor.
The service elevator doors opened to a dimly lit area that was clearly under construction. Next to him, a Dumpster the size of a car was full of broken brick and discarded PVC piping, and a long band of tape kept this area separate from the lighted passage directly ahead. Mike saw an older couple passing in front of him, from his left to his right, pulling rolling luggage behind them. They would be coming from the bus terminal, heading to the escalators down the passage that led up to the main hallway.
Mike decided this location was perfect for a static watch. Unless Gentry passed here with night vision goggles, or he happened to shine a light on the construction, he would have no way of seeing someone standing by the Dumpster in the dark fifty feet away.
Dillman stepped out into the dimness and looked into the light in the distance. He saw movement, a lone figure approaching, but he was still too far away to be sure if it was his target or someone else.
Mike settled into a spot between the elevator and the Dumpster, then whispered into his Bluetooth headset, “I’m static at the service elevator, just south of the passage. I have a possible sighting down here. Wait one. I’ll confirm and transmit again after he passes.”
“Roger that,” said Ruth. “I’m two minutes from your position, coming from the downstairs passage.”
Mike did not confirm Ruth’s transmission. Right now he concentrated on the man approaching.
Just as he squinted his eyes for a better look, though, he sensed movement right in front of his face. Before he could get his hands up to protect himself he felt a sharp biting across his throat and an instant constriction of his airway; his hands flew to the area and tried to pull whatever had him by the neck free, but it was tight, too tight to pull it off.
His brain knew what was happening, but he did not want to believe it. Someone, it had to be Gentry, had approached from behind him in the dark and wrapped a cord around his neck.
He was being strangled by a garrote.
Mike fought with all his strength. His rubber boot heels grabbed on the polished tile flooring; he pushed back, simultaneously firing his head behind him, desperate to slam his skull into his attacker’s face, but his attacker defended against the obvious tactic by keeping his head out of contact range. Dillman’s earpiece flew out of his ear and clinked along the floor, disappearing in the darkness.
Mike pushed again with his legs, his hands again clawed at the thin cord over his throat, and he felt the wetness of blood. He had no sense of falling, but he felt the impact as his body hit the floor along with the man behind him. He felt his attacker dig harder with the garrote and simultaneously drive his own shoes down on the floor, pulling both himself and Mike deeper into the darkness, dragging him behind the metal Dumpster.
Mike’s flailing arms weakened, and they dropped down. He felt blood all over his leather coat now, and when his hands reached out to find some loose item in the dark he could use as a weapon his hands slapped in the warm slick wetness of his own blood on the floor.
In the distance he saw the man approaching up the lighted passage coming closer; he would pass within no more than fifty feet within moments.
Mike tried to scream, to shout for help, but he had no open airway with which to do so. His legs kicked out, left and right, frantically trying to make some noise, but his attacker swung him to the right and then the left, counteracting his attempts by rolling him onto one hip or the other.
The passerby walked in front of Mike, but he was completely unaware of what was happening in the darkness of the hall by the service elevator.
Mike tried to call out again, but he could make no sound other than a single low wheeze of air, and when he did this the garrote cinched even tighter around his neck.
As his vision narrowed, as his mind dulled and hazed and as his panic-stricken heart went from a furious pounding beat to arrhythmia and then arrest, he saw now.
He did not understand, but he saw.
The man passing in front of him was Courtland Gentry.
FORTY-TWO
Russ held the garrote around the dead man’s neck for longer than necessary, but he was winded, and the pain in his hip was excruciating. He dreaded rolling back up, climbing to his knees, and then standing, so he just lay there, the dead man on top of him.
This one had been a fighter. Deceptively strong.
Still, he was dead, Court had passed by without knowing what was happening in the dark, and by now he would be on the escalator back up to the platform access level.
He’d told Gentry he wouldn’t lay a hand on the Mossad, but just like in Nice, Russ had decided the tactical situation required a small adjustment to his initial plans. He was out of the loop with Townsend now, he couldn’t obtain any intel from them about their own actions, much less the actions of the Mossad, so Whitlock decided to improvise to help Gentry get out of the city.
With any luck Court would be on a train and out of Stockholm in minutes, free of the surveillance that had been on him here, and Russ’s operation would be back on track.
Russ struggled to his feet; he slipped the bloody garrote back into his coat pocket, and then he wiped his hands on his pants.
That was when he felt the blood on his hip.
Dammit. It wasn’t the dead man’s blood; no, it was his own. His gunshot wound had ripped open again.
Russ was done, for now. He couldn’t provide any more help for Gentry without running the risk of being compromised, stumbling along through a crowd with a growing bloodstain running down his leg.
No, he needed to get out of here now.
He limped into the service elevator and headed back upstairs.
Ruth moved slowly through the brightly lit passageway; her eyes remained locked as far ahead as she could see, searching for any glimpse of her target.
Mike had not transmitted in over a minute. He’d gone silent after claiming to have eyes on a possible subject. It was common during close survey ops to interrupt transmissions for OPSEC, so Ruth thought nothing of the delay in his reply.
But as she walked down the passage, she arrived at the point where it opened at the northern tip of the bottom level of the train station, and she still had neither seen nor heard from Dillman. Here in the station she noticed a taped-off area of construction to her right, and back there, in the dark, she saw the service elevator, but she did not see her man.
She stopped walking. “Mike?” she said softly into her earpiece. “I told you static survey only. If you are in foot-follow on the target, I need you to back off.”
There was no response.
“Mike, if you can’t transmit, can you at least tap your earpiece?”
She expected to hear a scratchy set of thumps indicating Dillman was tapping his Bluetooth microphone, but again, she heard nothing.
Aron had been listening in. He tried to raise his teammate. “Dillman, Ruth is trying to establish comms with you. Are you receiving?”