Aleksandra pushed back the thick fur of her fox hat so she could glare up at the stupid man. He could have no idea of the blood and sorrow her eyes had seen. She said nothing, but reached instead to the pocket of her parka for a metal box the size of a cigarette pack. She stooped to hold the device over the mangled boot, playing it over the burned leather. A thin needle jumped across the illuminated face. Kanatova stood quickly, taking a half step back in spite of herself. Her heart pounded inside her chest. The cold air suddenly took on a bitter taste.
“You will get used to it, my dear,” Lieutenant Tarasov said, his false compassion congealing in the cold like sour milk. “If you think this poor piece of bone is bad, the interior would certainly be too much for your stomach.” Tarasov puffed up like a self-important toad. “I myself found a victim’s tongue stuck to a tile—”
“You have been inside the station?” Aleksandra’s head snapped up.
The lieutenant seemed to take her question as a sign of admiration. He shrugged. “Good citizens are in danger—”
“It is a simple enough question, Tarasov.” She held the metal box against his camouflaged parka. The black needle pegged to the right. “But I have my answer.”
“Someone had to oversee the rescue, my sweet.” He smoothed the corners of his mustache.
“Stop touching your mouth.”
“You are easily excited,” Tarasov chuckled. “I can appreciate that.” He took a step closer, putting a hand on Aleksandra’s shoulder, then letting his hand slide down to her breast. “May I call you Aleks? Do your friends call you Aleks or Sasha?”
Aleksandra closed the gap between them in a flash, bringing her hand from the pocket of her parka to shove it between his legs. “You will call me Agent Kanatova!” she hissed.
“Ahhh.” Tarasov raised a wicked brow. “ ‘Though she be but little, she is fierce.’ ”
“I would not quote dead Englishmen if I were in your shoes.” Aleksandra gave a little tug, letting the lieutenant feel the hooked blade she had at his groin.
“You would threaten me?”
“I do not threaten.” Aleksandra shook her head. “You are already cut. Give your leg a shake. If you do not hear a little thud, perhaps I have not yet removed anything important.”
Snow continued to sift down around them. She sniffed from the cold.
“What do you want?” Tarasov’s shaggy mustache appeared to wilt as a dawning reality chased away his bravado.
“I want you to shut your mouth and listen to me,” she said. “You must be decontaminated before you leave this site — you and everyone else who has gone inside.”
Aleksandra stepped away slowly, withdrawing the cruel-looking knife. Shaped like a talon, there was indeed fresh blood on the curved blade. She kept an eye on the pallid Tarasov as she took a cell phone from her pocket and punched in the number with her thumb. She’d given him too much to think about for him to try and hurt her anytime soon.
“This is Kanatova,” she said when the other party had picked up. “Polzin’s information was correct. Radiation is confirmed. Someone should tell the Americans.” She shoved the phone back in her parka.
“Wha… what are you saying?” Senior Lieutenant Tarasov attempted an angry stomp of his foot, but Aleksandra could see there was no commitment in it. He seemed scared to look down and see how much damage her knife had done. “Radiation? Do you think this is connected to the dead boy at the hospital?”
Of course it was connected, Aleksandra thought, gritting her teeth. What sort of idiot could possibly think a dirty bomb and a college student dead of radiation poisoning could be in any way unrelated? The problem was figuring out how. Instead of voicing her opinion, she nodded slowly, surveying the scene of mangled bodies and destruction. “There is much worse to come, I assure you,” she said, almost to herself.
“Worse than this?” Tarasov’s eyes flew wider under wild gray brows. “Worse than you cutting my… worse than radioactive?”
Aleksandra bit her bottom lip fighting the urge to chew on her already horrid fingernails. The chilly air suddenly grew more bitter and metallic. The smell of cooked flesh made her stomach turn flips. “Vitebsk Station still stands. Life muddles on for kilometers in every direction.” She looked directly at the lieutenant. “Oh yes, there are things much worse than this… ”
Tarasov tugged at the collar of his uniform. “You spoke of decontamination?”
“The teams are on their way,” Aleksandra said, taking out her phone again.
“What do you intend to do?
“Now?”
“Yes, now.” Tarasov’s hand trembled at the end of his powerful arm, an arm he would have been all too happy to strike her with two minutes before.
“I’m but a lowly civil servant,” she said. “I will call in for orders.”
Kanatova took shallow breaths. Falling snow helped to scrub the chilly air to be sure, but there could still be dangerous levels of radiation floating around her in the darkness. She’d made her next decision before she pressed the buttons on her phone. She knew Mikhail Polzin better than his own wife. She would naturally be the one to pick up this investigation. Her bones ached with dread at the daunting thought. The layers of Russian bureaucracy surrounding his death, stolen Soviet-era weapons, and the detonation of a dirty bomb would be like trying to walk a tightrope in the dark. It could be done, but one would have to be extremely careful — and extremely lucky. She had no time for such things. By the time she got the approvals she needed, it would be too late.
Growing up Russian had instilled in Aleksandra the value of the workaround. If something was against the rules, one found a way around that particular rule. If the bureaucracy of the Russian government would hinder her investigation, she’d simply go to America. They’d surely be neck deep in their own investigation by the time she arrived. Following their discoveries wouldn’t be difficult at all — the silly Americans paraded their best information on the television. CNN would indeed be her source.
CHAPTER 5
The angry grumble of a motorcycle engine, taken from the open road and confined to an enclosed parking lot, blatted off the walls of the concrete structure. Jacques Thibodaux rolled into the space beside Quinn with his red and black BMW GS Adventure. Jericho stood at the back of his own bike stowing armored kangaroo-leather gloves in a boxy Touratech aluminum side case.
Corps to the core, Marine Gunnery Sergeant Thibodaux was tall and broad as a mountain. The big Cajun was an accomplished mixed martial artist who fought under the name Daux Boy. His square jaw, combined with the black Aerostich Transit jacket, brought the image of Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator to Quinn’s mind. He wore a high and tight flattop, trimmed so precisely that the barber must surely have used a level to get it right.
A veteran of countless deployments, he’d still found time to father seven sons, the youngest of whom was just a few months old. Like Quinn, Thibodaux had been handpicked by Winfield Palmer as a blunt instrument on one of the Hammer Teams. A Marine to his very soul, he was now assigned to Air Force OSI, a branch of the service he and his fellow leathernecks generally considered bus drivers.
Neither Quinn nor the gunny wanted to keep the boss waiting, and three minutes later saw them trudging up the cordoned asphalt road between the Arlington Cemetery Visitors Center and the amphitheater overlooking the Tomb of the Unknowns. Row after row of some three hundred thousand white markers lay in ghostly perfect lines among the leafless trees on either side of the road.