“What’s to understand? You haven’t said anything!” replied Borodin, even more confused.
Surkov’s eye’s raised to the ceiling in frustration. He had been informed Borodin had a superb mind. From all he had seen and what Surkov had told him, Borodin should have been able to understand Grebnevo. He was going to have to give him the foolproof tour.
“Come with me General and I will blow your mind!” offered Surkov, rising from the sofa.
Borodin followed and exactly two hours later was picking up Vasiliy from the coffee shop where he had been deposited earlier.
“General!” offered Vasiliy as he stepped into the Zil.
“Vasiliy,” replied Borodin. As Surkov had promised, Borodin was in a far better mood than he had been when Vasiliy had been left.
For the duration of their short trip back to the helicopter, neither spoke a word.
As they boarded the chopper and took off, Vasiliy waited for Borodin to unload but after a further ten minutes of silence could wait no longer, concerns of drugging his boss began to creep into his mind.
“Well?” asked Vasiliy breaking the silence.
“I’m still digesting what I have just witnessed!” explained Borodin the smile still affixed to his face.
“And?” prompted Vasiliy.
“Genius, utter and complete genius!” exclaimed Borodin.
Vasiliy waited for more, it wasn’t forthcoming. “What is?”
“Surkov, Grebnevo, Russia,” he said almost wistfully.
“General, are you OK?”
The concern in Vasiliy’s voice snapped Borodin out of his trance. “Of course, I am,” he said in his more usual gruff tone.
“Get me the Head of Spetsnaz team heading to Texas on the radio, I need to speak with him.”
“Whatever has happened?” asked Vasiliy trying to understand what was happening.
“He needs to understand his mission is the most important mission in a generation!”
Chapter 33
Luis looked into the calm of Sean’s eyes and took some comfort, although whether it was enough to pull off what Sean had asked him to do was another matter.
“Are you being serious?”
“Absolutely and more importantly, the clock is ticking. We have less than three hours before all hell breaks loose!”
“Fuck!” he exhaled as he picked up the phone. “Are you sure?” he queried once more before dialing.
A firm nod from Sean told him to hurry up.
El Jefe answered the call after two rings. “Que?” his only response.
Luis did as Sean had prompted. He didn’t ask if his uncle had shot the Colonel, he just assumed he had.
“Uncle, I need the rifle you used!”
A short pause by his uncle as he justified a response was all that was needed to prove they were right.
“Why?”
“You shot a Colonel! That has consequences beyond our control.”
El Jefe had realized almost instantly after his actions that the repercussions could be intense and had led to him sacrificing his own man. The fact that his nephew had guessed instantly it was him was no surprise. However, he was surprised at his nephew providing some kind of solution.
“What will you do?” he asked intrigued.
“The less we talk and you know the better,” replied a very confident Luis.
El Jefe was in no mood to argue. His actions of earlier were beginning to weigh rather heavily as the blood lust began to drain from his psychosis.
“OK, where are you?”
“On the other side!” replied Luis telling his uncle he was in the American Laredo.
“6.”
Luis shook his head as he answered. “No, 15!” he said with some conviction and added. “In forty five!”
In answer El Jefe ended the call.
“Let’s go!” said Luis as he removed the battery pack from another used cell phone.
Sean looked at him as though he were mad.
“I’m not going anywhere near your psycho uncle unless the boy is with him.”
“It’s your plan!” replied a somewhat less confident Luis.
“Exactly, you go get the rifle and I’ll do the rest!”
As Luis hesitated, Sean moved. He eyed up the small collection of corpses in an attempt to ascertain who his patsy was going to be.
“Miguel was the most experienced soldier,” offered Luis as he walked past Sean towards the door.
Sean looked at Miguel. He certainly looked the hardest and most convincing shooter but he had been killed some time before the Colonel had been shot. Sean needed a few days not a few hours to sort things out. The chances of the patsy being accepted had to fit the timeline.
Sean picked the larger of the two bodyguards that had accompanied Luis to the house. He certainly looked the part and was shot after the Colonel, which made him a far better candidate than Miguel.
“Be quick, the timeline for this is tight!” reiterated Sean.
Luis nodded his head nervously. He jumped into his car and sped off.
With Luis having left, Katie and Sean were once again alone in the house. Katie left the safety of the living room and walked towards Sean as he struggled with the bodyguard’s lifeless corpse.
“So who are you?” she asked candidly.
“My name really is Sean Fox,” replied Sean, lifting the dead weight up and onto his shoulder.
Katie watched as he struggled towards the door. The life that had flooded back into her on seeing Sean again had drained completely away. The loss of her son compounding the second loss of her husband was obviously a weight she struggled to bear. Sean dumped the bodyguard’s body in the trunk of his rental and despite his lack of time, returned to the crestfallen Katie. Small and vulnerable he wanted nothing more than to wrap his arms around her and make everything right. Something he knew he would try and do but to have that chance he had to ensure Vincent’s team of assassins stayed as far away from Laredo and her Mexican twin as possible.
“We’ll figure this all out, I promise.” He stood arms length away and held her as you would a child, somebody it was your job to protect and look after. He was treating her as someone he cared for and would save from harm. He hardly knew her but the look in her eyes said much more. She knew him, she read him like nobody had ever read him. She smiled, weakly but it was there, she believed him, she believed in him.
“Thank you,” she replied. “Now go!”
Sean kissed her on the forehead and ran from the house. He needed to get in position and that was not going to be easy.
Chapter 34
“Mayday, Mayday, Laredo tower we have an electrical emergency and request immediate clearance to land.”
Adam spat the French fry from his mouth as the radio burst to life. The word Mayday was even more shocking to him than the scene that had just played out on the TV that was keeping him awake for the graveyard shift at Laredo International Airport.
He grabbed the microphone and hit the communicate button.
“This is Laredo Tower, you are cleared for immediate landing on runway one seven lima. I repeat one seven lima. Please identify yourself.”
“Thank you. This is Aeroflot 321 heavy, in bound towards LAX.”
The Russian designation surprised Adam as he would have sworn the captain’s accent was American.
Adam turned to his radar. There was no sign of the inbound aircraft on the screen; the only sign of a plane was one small unidentified blip with no data. Had it not been for the emergency, he would have written the small blip off as a flock of birds due to how small it registered on his screen.
“Aeroflot 321, did you say you were heavy?”
“Correct. We are an Ilyushin 96.”
Adam stared at his screen. He knew an Ilyushin 96 was pretty much the same size as a Jumbo Jet and there was no way on this earth it was anywhere near Laredo. Its blip would have been screaming at him, not blipping dully.
“On final approach!” announced the captain.
Adam couldn’t help himself. There was nothing on his screen “To Laredo International?”