Looking around him, Harvath counted six bodies. There was blood and brains and bits of bone everywhere. As quickly as it had started, it was over. The GRU had been caught out in the open, without any cover or concealment. Each of the operatives had gotten his ticket punched.
The most important GRU person, though, was gone.
“Hurry!” Chase yelled, as he, Staelin, and Ashby stepped out from behind the vehicles. “Tretyakov took off!”
Harvath had no idea how they had gotten there, or how they had set up such a quick ambush, but now wasn’t the time to ask.
Spinning around, he could see Tretyakov disappearing into the park’s trees.
The man had shed his briefcase and was running fast. Even with the head start, Harvath was confident that he could catch him, and he took off running.
This was what he had been training for. All the squats, all the hellacious early morning runs, all the wind sprints, and all the Hulk Sauce — it all came down to this. He had pushed his body to the limit so that when it counted most, he could prove he was not only still in the game, but deserved to be here.
With every stride he grew closer. Tretyakov didn’t stand a chance. Short of turning around and firing a gun at him, which he would have done by now if he could, Harvath had him.
Twice, the man had looked over his shoulder and the fear was evident in his face. Gone was the cool customer on the bench. He had been replaced by a scared animal, running for its life. The apex predator was in his prime and was about to prove once again why he occupied the top of the pyramid. Harvath had never felt as alive, as purposeful, as he did at that moment. He had this, and a smile swept across his face.
Then he heard the roar of a car engine, followed by a quick double-tap on a horn. As Sloane raced past him in one of the GRU sedans, she winked and flashed him the thumbs-up.
Rocketing ahead of Harvath, she caught up to Tretyakov, jerked the wheel quickly to the right, and sent him tumbling across the ground.
When he got to them, she already had him Flex-Cuffed.
“You can make goo-goo eyes at him later,” she cracked, as he stood there, mouth slightly agape. “Come on. Help me get him into the car.”
Harvath obliged, and after seat-belting him in, hopped in the back with him.
“We gone,” stated Sloane, peeling out before Harvath’s door was even closed.
“Has anybody discussed a plan?” asked Harvath, as she pinned the accelerator to the floor.
“The plan is that we get the hell out of here.”
Across the river, Harvath could see the flashing lights from approaching police cars. “Good plan,” he said.
Sloane blasted past the cathedral, where Staelin and Palmer peeled out in another GRU sedan right behind them.
“Any other sights you wanted to see before we left town?” she asked.
“Nope,” replied Harvath. “All good.”
“Okay. Buckle up.”
Harvath fastened his seat belt as she sped across the bridge, pulled up her emergency brake, and drifted into a hard left turn.
The maneuver spat them out onto a wide boulevard and she dropped the hammer.
Weaving in and out of early morning rush-hour traffic, she traded paint with buses and all sorts of other vehicles. No matter how dangerous each prior move that she made was, she found a way to top it.
Glancing out the rear window, Harvath saw that, amazingly, Chase was right behind.
“Do you two have some sort of ESP?” he asked.
“Google maps,” she said, nodding at her phone, which she had jammed into the dashboard in front of the speedometer.
“Where the hell’s our destination?” he asked, as she barely threaded the needle between two semi trucks.
“We’re going to the pickup point.”
“Negative,” said Harvath, from the backseat. “Not until we have swept the cars.”
In the rearview mirror, he could see her roll her eyes. “The Russians can’t even afford new combat boots for all their troops,” she said. “You think they’d waste money on tracking GRU vehicles? In Kaliningrad?”
She made a good point. Nevertheless, Harvath wanted to be sure. “Once we’re outside of town, pull over. I’m going to check.”
“I’ll see if we can find a roadside shrine where we can light some candles, too,” she replied, downshifting and swerving around a tour bus.
Harvath looked at Tretyakov, who had wisely kept his mouth shut — but perhaps not because he had any choice. His face was badly battered from the fall he had taken, and based on the swelling that was setting up, Harvath wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he had broken his jaw.
“Tight squeeze!” Sloane yelled from the front seat as she maneuvered between a tram and a delivery truck, knocking the mirrors off on both sides.
Two blocks later they reached the on-ramp for the main route that led west out of the city. Sloane hit it hard, but immediately slowed down as she merged with the traffic.
“Everyone, keep your eyes open,” she said, partly to Harvath and partly to Staelin and Palmer, whom she had on speakerphone in front of her.
The cops Harvath had seen approaching back by the river had probably gone right to the island and were trying to figure out what had happened. The rest of the police force, though, was likely hearing from angry drivers who had called in about two black sedans that had caused damage to multiple vehicles.
The good news for Harvath and his team, though, was when the police ran the license plates, they would come back as GRU and nothing further would be done, no officers would be dispatched to investigate. Only later would they realize that the vehicles had been stolen. And by then, it would be too late for the Russians to do anything at all.
CHAPTER 69
They kept pushing west until Harvath, who had been glued to the rear window, watching to make sure they weren’t being followed, felt comfortable enough to give the okay to pull off the road.
Up ahead was a small, run-down truck stop and Sloane suggested they stop there. Harvath concurred.
Around the back was a pair of beat-up old Dumpsters and a crappy, out-of-service car wash. That was where they parked.
Getting out of the cars, they kept their eyes peeled for trouble as they stretched their legs.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Chase demanded, as he approached Harvath.
“I had a bird in the hand,” he replied. “I wasn’t going to let him go.”
“A bird whose nest we had under observation,” stated Sloane.
“Sometimes birds don’t come back to their nests.”
Chase shook his head. So did Sloane. Staelin was unavailable for head shaking as he had walked over behind the car wash to take a leak.
“We’ve got Tretyakov,” Harvath declared. “That’s what matters.”
“The ends justify the means,” said Chase. “Is that what you’re telling me?”
“In this case? Absolutely. When you get a shot, you take a shot. It’s that simple.”
“You’re lucky we were there.”
“I am lucky,” Harvath admitted, not afraid to say it. “Very lucky. But what the hell were you doing there in the first place?”
Chase was neither ashamed, nor embarrassed. “I thought you made a really bad call. So when you left the roof, I decided to follow you.”
“Bullshit. I would have known you were behind me.”
“Not if I was using the Force.”
Again with the Force, thought Harvath. But there was no arguing with the fact that Chase had indeed followed him, and that Harvath hadn’t even realized it. Perhaps his skills were much farther along than Harvath had been giving him credit for.