Knowing he couldn’t wait any longer, lest one of the troops hurl a grenade at the helo, Fisher sprang into the clearing, and while it would take just a handful of seconds to reach the bird, the moment swept by in a noiseless vacuum of slow motion.
He glanced to his left and saw the troops’ muzzle flashes within the trees. They resembled a string of broken holiday lights poking holes in the shadows.
He turned right, spotted Briggs waving him over, his mouth working, the words swept away by the powerful rotors.
The chopper’s running lights strobed in an almost hypnotic rhythm as the snow and dirt beneath it fanned away into miniature tornadoes. Fisher stomped through the wash, fully conscious that this was it, the final sprint. He hoped he hadn’t pissed off the gods of war, lest a bullet make contact with the back of his head.
He reached the chopper’s open bay door and did a flying leap inside, then turned back and thrust out his arm, hauling Briggs inside—just as the helo lifted off.
They banked hard and away, the pilot sweeping over by staying tight to the trees, avoiding any more chances of potshots and flying nape of the earth to keep them hidden.
The gunner handed them headsets with attached microphones, and Fisher got on the intercom. “Thanks for the lift,” he told the pilot.
She glanced back and smiled. “I’m sorry, sir, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Me, neither,” said Fisher.
Briggs climbed into one of the jump seats and buckled himself in. Fisher joined him and said, “Nice work.”
Briggs patted the backpack lying across his lap. “Just wish we got more.”
Fisher closed his eyes and threw his head back on the seat. “We had to follow up here. So we did.”
“Hey, well, there was something small. I forgot to mention that one of her textbooks still had the receipt inside. Had the address to her apartment in Zurich. Might be worth a shot.”
“We could’ve found her place without that.”
“Probably, but either way we should check it out.”
“Let’s run it by Grim and Charlie.”
“Roger that. And oh, yeah, I wanted to show you something.” Briggs tugged up his sleeve to expose his wrist altimeter. He thumbed a few buttons to bring up his data file, then showed the glowing screen to Fisher—
MAX SPEED: 227 MPH.
Fisher’s eyes bugged out.
Briggs smiled crookedly. “I guess Grim’s data was a little off. When she told me I was doing 210, I was already up to 221. That’s a world record no one will ever know about.”
10
THEY rendezvoused at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, which had a U.S. complement of nearly five thousand airmen. There, Fisher and Briggs returned to Paladin to debrief while the crew took care of refueling operations.
After dragging themselves up the rear cargo ramp and passing through the hatch, they entered the command center to the concerned looks of Grim and Charlie.
“Whoa, you guys got in deep,” said Charlie, gawking at the bloodstains covering their tac-suits.
Briggs sighed. “If it were easy, they would’ve hired someone else.”
“Grim, any word back from Kestrel?” asked Fisher, crossing directly to the SMI table.
“Not yet. Should I activate one of his trackers?”
“Call him again. We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Give him a few hours to answer. If he doesn’t respond, then yeah, we’ll go after him.”
Briggs placed the backpack on the edge of the SMI. “This is all we got.”
“We’ll have Ollie and the rest go through that stuff,” said Grim. She regarded Fisher. “You told me the daughter has an apartment in Zurich?”
“Yeah, I want to check it out,” he said.
“I already have,” said Grim, bringing up surveillance camera video from the surrounding apartment buildings and college. “This street here is Via Trevano. The college is right here in Lugano.” She tapped a screen and brought up traffic footage showing an impressive four-story glass office building nestled in a valley. The snowcapped Lugano Prealps loomed on the horizon. The image switched to a luxury apartment building, then to a closer shot of the sidewalk outside the main entrance.
“See there, that’s Nadia getting into that Bentley Flying Spur,” said Grim.
“Nice set of wheels,” remarked Charlie.
Grim went on: “She’s wearing the backpack you guys found. She’s on her way to the airport to visit her father.”
“Any new intel on where she is now?”
“Nothing. We have more cam footage of her arriving in Moscow, but not much after that.”
“Any HUMINT on the pilots bailing out of the plane?”
Grim sighed even more deeply. “Still working on that, too, plus I’ve got a cleanup crew that’ll hike back into the mountains to pick up your jump gear. I just sent them the GPS locations.”
“Good. Now, here’s what I’m thinking,” Fisher began. “Kasperov decides to bolt. He sends off the daughter’s plane to confuse and divert us. She was planning on flying back, which is why she just left her backpack on board, figuring she’d study during the flight back.”
“That makes sense,” said Grim.
“Charlie, we get anything else on Kasperov’s friends, family, the old teacher, military buddies?”
“No red flags, Sam. Plus the FSB has operatives scoping out all those people, too.”
Fisher turned to back to Grim. “You said the plane was headed to Tbilisi. Any connection there?”
“Just that he’s flown through before. Attended a few conferences over the years. Again, nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Well, we do have this backpack,” said Briggs.
Fisher stood there, looking at them all. He opened his mouth, hesitated, then blurted out, “Let’s go to Zurich. Get inside the daughter’s apartment. Maybe there’s something there.”
“I doubt it, Sam. Have a look.”
Grim fast-forwarded through more security camera footage and slowed down on two sedans pulling up outside Nadia’s building. Four men got out and hurried inside the building. Grim switched to the hallway cameras. The men rushed forward, reached a door, and a fifth man, either the landlord or a maintenance guy, opened the door for them. They burst into the apartment like wolves.
“We can assume the SVR’s already ransacked the place,” Grim said. “Footage doesn’t show them taking anything outside, but I can’t tell if they removed smaller items and just put them in their pockets.”
Fisher stepped away from the table, rubbing his stubble in thought. “The POTUS said it herself: Kasperov is quite a character. And he’s a genius, so he’s anticipated the search. He won’t go to any of the obvious places. It’ll be someplace much more obscure, but it won’t be a place unfamiliar because he still needs to maintain security, and that’s tougher in an unfamiliar environment. He wouldn’t leave himself that vulnerable.”
“All that does is rule out all the places associated with him, his background, his family and friends,” said Grim. “And it leaves the rest of the world wide open.”
“Let’s take a look at his daughter’s place. What’d they do, leave an agent or two behind for surveillance?”
“We’ve picked up two watching the apartment,” said Grim.
“And Kasperov’s place in Moscow?”
“They tore it apart, Sam,” said Charlie. “I mean literally moved everything out of it, furniture, everything. It’s all gone to a warehouse in Moscow, along with everything from his headquarters. Security there is ridiculously tight.”
Grim shrugged. “I think we’d have better luck getting to Kestrel, see if he can tap us into Voron’s search—”
“But then we’re always a step behind them,” Fisher said. “We need to be out front on this—”
“Sam, this time I think Grim’s right,” said Briggs. “I don’t think we’ll find much there.”
“All it takes is one thing, something Kasperov overlooked that’ll give him away.” Fisher faced Grim. “How many scumbags have we taken out because they made one tiny mistake? It’s all about the details—the ones they’ve overlooked.”