The driver’s side window came down, and smoke began pouring out as the man at the wheel was screaming that he couldn’t hear anything now and that he couldn’t see and that she was insane and “don’t fire that weapon in closed quarters!” The rear windows opened, and more smoke began to trail.
Without warning and before Fisher could even look up to brace himself, they plowed right into a white sedan in front of them, the other driver reflexively hitting his brakes and slowing them down, his horn wailing.
Fisher released one hand and tried to reach into his holster to grab his SIG.
But just then, the driver rolled the wheel hard, trying to get around the other car and nearly throwing Fisher off the roof. He was forced to hang on with both hands now—no chance to reach for the pistol. The sedan with its shattered bumper hanging half off finally drifted away to the side, the driver, a homely woman wearing a hotel maid’s uniform, waving her fist and screaming at them.
Up ahead, the Y-shaped streetlights stretched away for miles along the coast. The road itself was divided by a tall stone median lined with shrubs or fencing, and it blurred by at a dizzying rate.
A thought took hold.
Fisher pulled himself up toward the driver’s side door, preparing to make another quick reach for his pistol with his slightly weaker hand. He planned to thrust his hand down through the driver’s side window to shoot the man.
However, he sensed a vibration from the right side of the car, thought it might be the window lowering. As he turned, he spotted a woman coming up from the passenger’s side, bringing a pistol to bear on him. She was striking, with soft, pale skin and haunting eyes. Her long hair whipped like shimmering black flames, and for just a half second they locked gazes—
Before Fisher swung himself around and booted the pistol away as she fired, the round going high.
So this was Major Viktoria Kolosov of the GRU, the infamous Snow Maiden.
Black leather jacket. Full-sized handgun. Teeth bared.
As her hand came back down, Fisher reached into his holster and drew the SIG, but in that second he already knew he was too late. She had the advantage.
Her face would be the last thing he saw in this world, not his daughter, not a memory of something beautiful like her birth or something drawn from the early years of his marriage. No, it’d be this bitch whose lips protruded in a smirk.
But then the Snow Maiden was slipping backward away from the roof rack, her grip ripped free—
Because the driver had cut the wheel hard left to get around a slower-moving taxi ahead.
Fisher now clung to the rack for dear life himself, his body swinging around as, for just a second, he caught a glimpse of the Snow Maiden over the side. She’d reached up and snatched the windowsill at the last second and now struggled to pull herself up with one hand, her back now parallel with the road.
“Sam, Charlie here. Got you on the cams. Those two are Travkin and the Snow Maiden. Can’t see anyone else inside, which makes me think this car could be a diversion and they’re moving the girl out with another team.”
Bullshit. That couldn’t be the case. Fisher needed to know—and he needed to know now.
He pulled himself up and leaned over the side to catch a glimpse of the SUV’s rear seat and cargo hold. There she was, young Nadia, bound and gagged and lying across the backseat. “The package is here, Charlie,” he grunted into his SVT. “I’m looking right at her.”
The thundering roar of a diesel engine came from behind, and as the road curved slightly to the right, brilliant headlights appeared.
Shots cracked from within that glare, and the rounds pinged off the passenger’s side door, forcing the Snow Maiden back inside. Fisher was ready to reach around once more to shoot Travkin, but those headlights and the wailing racket enveloped him. He glanced over his shoulder.
A huge tri-axle dump truck from the construction site next door to the hotel raced by them in the right lane, and though his eyes were tearing from the wind in his face, Fisher still caught sight of the driver: Briggs.
That he’d commandeered the truck was an impressive display of quick thinking. That he could actually drive one and was prying every bit of speed out of the engine was an even more welcome surprise.
The dump truck raced by, billowing thick smoke from twin exhaust pipes rising from either side of the cab. Piles of broken concrete and dirt jutted from the open-box bed, with sand and pebbles whipping across the SUV.
Briggs cut in front of them, heading straight toward an intersection where the light had just turned red.
Charlie screamed.
Car horns wailed.
Briggs plowed right into the intersection, driving a taxi and a pickup truck off to the side of the road, one truck missing a T-bone with his cab by barely a meter.
Travkin had no choice but to follow Briggs’s line through the gauntlet as two more cars approached.
Up ahead now, the dump truck’s hydraulic lift system slowly raised the bed, and the rear door flipped open.
Now Fisher grinned as hundreds of pounds of concrete and dirt began splaying across both lanes of the road, dust clouds rising, the cacophony of cracking and booming cement sounding like artillery fire in the night.
Travkin didn’t react in time. He drove straight toward a chunk of concrete as wide as the SUV itself, turning only at the last second. The Skoda took flight.
And Fisher was no longer smiling.
They came crashing down, with Fisher’s arms straining against the bumps as his entire body was lifted twice from the roof. Was it over? No, they kept on, only to rumble across several more pieces of stone.
It was all Fisher could do to maintain his grip, and then, after another hard blow to the front wheels, the SUV was once more in the air, floating hopelessly like a bloated, wingless bird.
Fisher glanced up.
And lost his breath.
They were heading straight for the concrete median, the wall standing at least two meters, the gray bricks speeding up at them. A head-on collision was inevitable, impact in two seconds . . .
Fisher released his grip on the rack, allowing himself to slide off the roof. He struck the grass and dirt with his shoulder and hip. The dreaded crunch of a broken collarbone never came as he followed through with a roll to further dissipate the shock.
Before he could look up at the SUV, it hit the wall with an explosive boom echoed quickly by the higher pitched tinkling of flying glass and the hissing of spewing steam and fluids. Two more pops resounded—the air bags deploying.
The sea breeze whipped the dust clouds over the Skoda, shielding it from view for a moment as Fisher scrambled to his feet.
Out ahead, Briggs had pulled the dump truck to the side of the road and was leaping down from the cab.
“Sam, it’s Grim. I’m two minutes away!”
“Hold back,” Fisher cried, just as gunfire sent him crashing back down into the dirt and rolling toward the wall for cover.
“Sam, local police are on the way,” reported Charlie.
“How long?”
“It’s Russia. Don’t know. Maybe an extra minute?”
“Great. Briggs, hold fire now. Nadia’s still in there!”
“Roger, but she’s firing at me!”
“Keep her busy. I’m moving up.”
With his SIG in one hand, Fisher burst from cover and fired two rounds at the wall beside the SUV.
The pistol was a double action/single action, so the first trigger pull was tougher, ten pounds to be precise, while the second and all subsequent pulls was less than half that and with a much shorter reset.
His third and fourth shots forced Travkin back toward the SUV, where he opened up the rear door and sought cover behind it. Fisher saw that the agent’s head was cut, his nose bleeding. He was probably still fatigued, too. Good.
Travkin peered out and squeezed off at least four more shots, two hitting the wall near Fisher, the others striking the dirt behind him.