Tom’s choked down the horror. He was crestfallen. “Sam’s dead?” he whispered.
Elise bit her lower lip. “We don’t know yet. It just happened a couple minutes ago. Before the aircraft hit the water, local radar stations picked up multiple objects, potentially the size of people falling. Later, some of those objects had recorded canopy openings consistent with the size and shape of parachutes.”
Tom’s voice was hopeful. “Do we know if Sam Reilly was among them?”
Elise suppressed a smile. “You’ve been watching too many movies. The satellites were tracking the aircraft, not zooming into the faces of free-falling bodies from it. As for the radar, the quality’s exceptional given the distance, but nowhere near good enough to pick up the individual features of human faces.”
Tom said, “But it’s possible, he survived?”
“Yes. More than that. My guess is that Sam was responsible for the explosion. One thing’s for certain, there were a number of people who successfully deployed their parachutes. Four in total. We don’t know how many people were on board, but I’d be surprised if an operation like this had more than ten members. It looks like almost half of those survived. I’m pretty confident in those odds that Sam was one of the lucky ones.”
The helicopter descended and the black Eurocopter disappeared into Tahila’s storage hold, removing any appearance of its existence.
Tom and Elise returned to the command center.
Matthew, the ship’s skipper met his eye. “You okay, Tom?”
Tom blinked, replying automatically, “Yeah.”
“And Genevieve?”
“We’re fine.” He stood next to Matthew, his jaw locked in defiance. “All right, Matthew, set a course.”
“Where exactly?” Matthew asked, before adding, “Elise told us she didn’t have an exact location where the C17 hit the water.”
Tom shook his head. “We’re not heading to the crash site.”
“We’re not?”
“No.”
“Then where are we heading?”
Tom grinned. “Saint Petersburg. That’s where Sam will be and it’s time for us to go get him.”
Chapter Forty-Six
Craig Martin, the director of the CIA watched the secretary of defense throw the phone down, and knew he was in trouble.
Her eyes flashed anger at him. “What the hell went wrong?”
Martin braced for the expected onslaught. “We’re not sure, ma’am. Someone hijacked the plane while it was on the tarmac and the SEAL team was away. Presumably, they killed the pilots and took command of our aircraft.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And our pilots?”
“We have to assume they were murdered.”
She closed her eyes, took a breath, and let that thought sink in. The problem with making a deal with the devil was that eventually, the devil always came to collect. When that happened, people got hurt — and in their line of work, they made plenty of deals with the devil. The question wasn’t a matter of whether or not to make the deal, but trying to choose which ones to refuse.
“All right,” she said, opening her eyes, ready to do battle again. “And our team on the ground… what happened to them?”
“The SEALs are still alive, although two have non-life-threatening injuries.”
“Good. That’s something at least.”
Martin set his jaw firm. “What are we going to tell the press?”
The secretary of defense looked startled at the concept of accepting ownership of any of their problems. “What about?”
“The C17 we lost.”
The secretary stepped closer to him. Keeping her voice low and cold, she said, “You told me it was a wet team, with no links back to our government?”
“It was. But we just lost the Boeing C17.”
She shrugged. “Not our problem. It wasn’t ours.”
The director said, “Sure, but the fact remains the American tax payers are now short a 250-million-dollar aircraft… I’m afraid they’re probably going to want that back.”
“Then I suggest you find a way to retrieve it.”
“That won’t be possible, ma’am.”
“What are you talking about? It’s our damned plane. We have its codes and its inbuilt GPS units must make it pretty hard to hide. So, we send another team in, and retrieve it by force.” Her eyes lit with fiery determination. “We’re the goddamned United States Defense Force… when a bully picks a fight, we sure as hell don’t back down.”
“Agreed, ma’am… only in this case, it’s impossible.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because about ten minutes ago, there was an explosion on board the C17 somewhere over Russia. The aircraft lost altitude and crashed into the Baltic Sea.”
She cursed. “You’d better pray it broke up into a million pieces on impact and there’s nothing to tie the aircraft to us, or our ruined careers will be the least of our troubles!”
“Understood, ma’am.”
Craig Martin accepted his dismissal.
He returned to his office, picked up a secure line, and called the devil.
Without preamble, Martin said, “You assured me you had this under control!”
Igor Mihailovich was not easily perturbed and never intimidated. The leader of the Russian mafia, he had his dirty fingers in every pie possible. Everyone obeyed his commands. No one gave him any. His voice was slow, confident, and steely. “You told me Sam Reilly could be managed from your side.”
“Yeah, well on that score, we made a mistake. You assured me you would fix it. Now I’m told our damned 250-million-dollar aircraft is now sitting on the bottom of the Baltic Sea because of you.”
“At least Sam Reilly’s dead. Besides, you never said anything to me about making sure your precious aircraft didn’t get broken,” Igor countered.
Martin’s lips curled in delight. His heart raced. “Sam Reilly’s dead?”
“He must be. You’ve seen the radar footage… no chance anyone survived that.”
“I was told someone might have parachuted out before it crashed, somewhere over St. Petersburg.”
Igor was nonplussed. A senior boss of the Bravta — the Russian Brotherhood — he had connections to the Russian military might. He’d seen the radar footage taken from an array of military bases off the coast of St. Petersburg. “Three landed in the Baltic Sea. The Russian Navy will pick them up. If they find Sam Reilly, they’ll know what to do about him.”
Martin said, “I was told one landed in St. Petersburg.”
“I saw the footage with my own eyes… that parachute fell at nearly forty miles an hour. Whoever was alive there, sure as hell isn’t anymore. He must be dead.”
Martin said, “That’s good. It will make him easier to locate, because last time I checked, dead men couldn’t run!”
Igor’s voice was filled with curious interest. “You think he’s still alive, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Do you think he knows about The Hague?”
“Impossible, right?” Martin swallowed. “I mean, he couldn’t possibly have gotten that much of his memory back yet, could he?”
Igor Mihailovich said, “I don’t know. It was your idea to erase his memory. Mine was to end his life.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Sam glanced at the Winter Palace.
The building was constructed on a monumental scale intended to reflect the might and power of Imperial Russia. From the palace, the Tsar ruled over one sixth of the Earth’s landmass by the end of the 19th century. It was designed by many architects, most notably Bartolomeo Rastrelli, in what came to be known as the Elizabethan Baroque style.