Aleksa finally emerged from the café at 11:13AM. As she headed for the Volvo, Avery watched closely, expecting police or mafiya to intercept her and throw her into the back of a car. If it was the former, there wouldn’t be much he could do about it other than put distance between himself, and hope that his passport wasn’t flagged so he could get out of Belarus. If it was the latter, he could follow them and possibly even take action. But if he smoked a cop, even a corrupt one, there’d be a nation-wide manhunt for him.
But nothing happened. There was no intercept or ambush.
As Aleksa slid into the passenger seat, Avery became aware of someone watching them, and as he shifted into drive, he locked onto the pudgy face of Vasil Romanchuk as the Belarusian exited the café. Romanchuk watched them, and then looked away when he caught Avery’s glare and continued walking, while his hand pulled a cell phone from his pants pocket.
“How’d it go?” Avery asked, merging into traffic.
“They’re removing the uranium from Sosny today at noon. GlobeEx trucks will be here shortly, and the police will escort them to the airport.”
Avery did another sweep for surveillance — it was becoming an obsessive habit now — and took them back onto Mullovsoye Road. He stopped along the shoulder from a point where they had a clear view of the storage facility, a hundred yards away, across the wide expanse of grass. There was little traffic on the two lane road, but just in case, Avery popped the hood, and got out of the car. He stood over the engine block, pretending to check for problems. Aleksa remained inside. They both stared across the grassy field at the storage site.
Ten minutes later, during which time only three other vehicles had passed them on the road, Avery saw a large, eighteen-wheeler tractor-trailer truck stop in front of the barrier at the guard post. It was escorted by police cars. Even from here, he recognized the colors and design of the GlobeEx Transport logo on the truck’s trailer. The driver climbed down from the cab as the uniformed security officer stepped out of his booth. The driver showed the officer some papers, and the guard consulted a clipboard, flipping pages. Then they parted ways, and the officer raised the barrier and waved the truck through. Another officer signaled with his hands and directed the truck to the storage compound’s loading dock area. The driver turned his truck around and slowly backed the trailer into the dock.
Although confirming what Aleksa had said and what they already suspected, Avery knew there was nothing he could do about what he was seeing. Maybe follow the truck to the airport and witness them load portions of the HEU onto a flight not bound for Mayak. Then he could get the hell out of Belarus and report everything back to Culler and start thinking about how he’d catch up with Cramer again.
He didn’t know what Aleksa was going to do next, and he kept telling himself that it really wasn’t his problem and not to think about it. She seemed intent and capable of taking care of herself, anyway. But the thought still lingered in his mind. He supposed he’d at least offer to help get her out of the country. Culler could pull some strings, if Avery persisted. He knew she’d decline, but at least he’d have done his part to placate his conscience.
Another vehicle approached from the south. It was something big from the sound of it, and the low, steady rumble of the engine intruded upon Avery’s thoughts. Avery stuck his head out from under the open hood and saw a shiny gray SUV approaching, about a quarter mile away in their lane. Sunlight shimmered off the tinted windows. After several seconds, Avery averted his glare back to the storage site across the field. There were a number of figures, men in uniforms, milling about outside the storage site now.
Soon the sound of the oncoming engine picked up from a steady, guttural hum to an aggressive roar, and Avery snapped his head back around with his internal threat detectors lighting up like a fighter pilot’s heads-up display.
The vehicle was a Dartz Kombat, a bulky, wide Russian-made SUV with a V8 Vortec engine capable of doing a hundred plus miles hour. Right now, Avery figured it was topping fifty, and the driver turned the wheel and steered straight for the parked Volvo. Avery started to react, shouted out to Aleksa, when he heard an identical engine coming from behind, the driver gunning it.
Avery’s hand reached beneath his windbreaker and went for the Glock, for all the good that would do. He took a step back just as the oncoming Kombat slammed straight into the Volvo, plowing through the driver side fender, and continued accelerating, pushing the much smaller vehicle off the road and down the slight slope onto the grass. There was the ear splitting shatter and screech of metal grinding against metal. Before the Volvo flipped over, Avery caught a glimpse behind the cracked windshield of Aleksa rocked forward and caught against her seatbelt while air bags deployed, exploding around her.
Avery squeezed off four shots that bounced off the Kombat’s armor plating. He spun around and faced the second Kombat coming right at him, lining him up between its headlights. Avery fired a couple more rounds, but the Kombat’s bullet-proof windshield easily deflected the 9mm rounds.
Avery sidestepped left, and the driver swerved and adjusted his course, pointing the bumper at him. Avery stood his ground, visualized his next moves in his head, and dived to the right, onto the grass, at the last possible second. He felt the big Kombat whip past. The front left fender missed clipping him and pulverizing his hip by mere inches. Avery smacked against the grass and rolled down the slant of the short hill.
The Kombat came fast around, reacquired him, forty feet away, and the driver hit the gas once more as Avery stumbled back up onto his feet. The Kombat barreled down on him, but this time the driver tapped the brakes within a couple meters and swerved, tapping the bumper into Avery’s thighs doing 30 mph. Avery cried out, and the next thing he was aware of was the sensation of going over the top of the hood and flailing through the sky with the grass and pavement spinning around him at a dizzying rate, and then the ground finally collided hard against his face.
For the first few seconds, Avery couldn’t even move, and he wondered if he’d broken his back. Then he became gradually conscious of a tingling sensation coursing through his entire body, especially up his back and neck and in his legs, followed by the gradual onset of immense pain. He realized he’d lost the Glock somewhere along the way, and the world around him was blurry and out of focus when he lifted his head up. The nearest Kombat was a hazy, blotchy wash of gray. He heard the low rumbling of the V8s, and then there came the sound of car doors opening and voices speaking Russian.
Avery tried to sit up, but went right back down when the steel-capped toe of a boot struck him in the breastbone. Another foot kicked him in the side of his femur, and more feet continued striking his shoulders and chest. Two men grabbed onto him and hauled him up onto his feet. When they let go, Avery weakly stumbled around, trying to gather his bearings, but then his legs gave out and the pain in the small of his back was overpowering. He toppled back over and hit the ground again.
From where he lay, Avery saw two men opening the passenger door of the demolished Volvo. They peered inside, and one of them said something, sounding surprised that Aleksa was still alive. She wouldn’t be had she been on the driver side of the car when the Kombat hit.
Not that it mattered.
Avery didn’t imagine that either of them would be alive much longer. The Krasnaya Mafiya was a small, close-knit organization, a brotherhood. Having just killed two of them in Minsk the night before, Avery knew he and Aleksa had earned a slow, bloody, and agonizing death. He thought of the things they’d likely do to Aleksa, and that gave him the determination to keep fighting.