A short female in a matching lime parka and dark green tam dismounted her own all-terrain vehicle.
She shook her head. “Aren’t we in a mood tonight.” She laughed, indifferent to the cold-blooded murders. The tam slouched forward over her eyes and kept Cooper from getting a good look at her face. Skintight black pants hugged broad hips. White running shoes seemed to glow in the headlights. “This bores me. I go for a walk.” A moment later she had disappeared behind the dead Uzbeks’ truck.
A third man, dark, more slightly built and jumpy, took the shooting as an indication he should get off his ATV to climb onto the bed of the truck. His face glistened with perspiration even in the cold night air. It was difficult to tell in the darkness, but he wore heavy gloves and he looked to have some sort of protective vest under his open coat.
He spoke English, but from his accent, Cooper guessed him to be Pakistani. “Ahhh!” he said after examining the contents of both boxes with gloved hands. “Just as you suspected.”
“You are certain?” The man with the thin mustache giggled, wide-eyed.
“Quite,” the Pakistani answered. “No doubt.”
“Oh, this is most excellent news!” The man in the lime-green ski parka clapped his hands, one still holding the pistol. His eyes fell on the Russian. “How rude of me,” he said. “I am Valentine Zamora.”
He pronounced it Valenteen.
The fourth rider, a thick-necked brute with a dark tangle of curly hair and a broad nose squashed above his bearded face, took up a position to Zamora’s left, two paces behind him. He was obviously the muscle.
“Polzin,” the Russian said. He’d raised both hands to shoulder level without being asked.
Good, Cooper thought. Do this on your terms, Misha. This is big… Keep ahead of the curve.
“Mikhail Ivanovich.” The fingers of Polzin’s left hand fiddled with something as if he was nervous. The ring, Cooper thought. It was the first thing he’d noticed about the Russian agent when they’d met, a gold two-headed eagle ring that symbolized Mother Russia. It was an odd thing for a spy to be so brazen about his affiliations.
“Oh,” Zamora said, almost yelping as he rubbed his hairless chin. He bounced on his feet as he spoke, brimming with energy. “I am well aware of who you are. People in my line of work tell frightful stories of people in your line of work. The secret group deep inside the Federal Security Service… ”
“So…” The Russian hunched his shoulders slightly as if stricken with a chill. “What is next?”
Zamora gave him a slow up and down, appraising, saying nothing. He suddenly spun on his heels, moving with an agitated flourish very close to dancing. He swung his arms back and forth for a time, as if walking in place, before beginning to speak. Facing away, much of what he said was impossible for Cooper to hear.
“… must be smart… Vympel unit… selective. I assume… also a scientist?”
Polzin shrugged, his hands dropping little by little as he spoke, fingers still toying with the ring. “I am no scientist, merely a civil servant. She is very old, you know, well past her useful life span. And there are the codes to consider. My own government does not even know what they are. You may as well let me take her home.” He nodded toward the boxes in the back of the truck.
“Take it home?” Zamora spun. His bouncing grew more pronounced. “Oh, no, no, Mikhail Ivanovich, that is not necessary. I myself will provide her a fantastic home. She may very well be old, but Dr. Sarpara is extremely talented. He assures me he will be able to make her viable as ever. You know, there are those who would have me use such a thing against your country.” He leaned in as if with a secret. “But you should know I have other plans that involve something more… red, white, and blu—”
The Russian’s hand flashed to his coat pocket. He rolled, snatching up a hidden pistol to fire through the cloth. At least one of his rounds hit the Pakistani man on the truck.
Cooper reached for his own pistol, cursing the darkness. The night-vision monocular was useless for aiming and the headlights didn’t offer enough light to engage two armed opponents at that range.
Polzin got three shots off before Zamora and his thug mowed him down.
It was over in the span of a breath.
The Pakistani doctor clutched at his neck. He teetered for a moment on the back of the truck before falling headlong, arm draped over the wooden rail.
Zamora spun, running to the wounded Pakistani. Checking the man’s wrist for a pulse, he turned again, one hand clasped over his mouth, the other brandishing the pistol. He launched into a string of Spanish curses, pacing back and forth in the eerie pool of red light cast by the UAZ’s dusty tail lamps.
“Monagas.” He turned, nodding to his thick-necked companion. “Comrade Polzin has caused me a great anxiety.”
Unleashed, the man called Monagas smiled a crooked smile, then strode to a writhing Polzin and put two bullets through the back of his head.
Cooper’s mind raced in the relative safety of his hiding place. He concentrated to slow his breathing. Knuckles white around the butt of his own pistol, he flinched at each shot the man put into his friend.
Zamora’s hand still hung over his mouth, as if keeping it there helped him think. His gun hand hung loosely at his side.
“Perhaps one of your contacts in Iran,” Monagas offered.
“No.” Zamora waved him away. “The Americans hover over them like hawks. I have to think… ” He leaned over, hands on both knees. For a moment, it looked as if he was going to be sick; then just as quickly he bolted upright. “There is someone, but…” He tapped his forehead with the slide of his pistol as he paced back and forth, stopping every so often to kick the dead Russian and curse him in breathless Spanish. Dust from his feet puffed up in the headlights.
At length he stopped, staring into the blackness of the Uzbek desert.
“I need to think,” he said, muttering something Cooper couldn’t make out as he walked through the curtain of darkness.
His boss gone, Monagas stooped in the dust to lift the dead Russian’s hand. The eagle ring, Cooper thought. This pig-eyed son of a bitch took trophies.
Cooper lowered his handgun and grabbed the satellite phone. Intelligence was about information, not revenge. If the back of the Russian truck held what he thought it did, Cooper knew he’d eventually have to make a stand to keep this insane SOB outside from ending up with it. Until then, he had to make certain the information got back to higher — at all cost. Caught up in the drama unfolding outside his window, he’d neglected to send more texts as information became available. Such a rookie mistake.
Thumb-typing with both hands as fast as he could, he didn’t hear the hissing scrape of shoes on concrete until it was too late.
He froze, straining his ears in the darkness. The sound was behind him — and close.
Too close.
Cooper’s hand shot toward the pistol before he even understood the context of the sound. At the same instant a peculiar whoosh, like fluttering wings, came from above. Something heavy struck the side of his neck, the force of it rolling it half up on his side. A wave of nauseating pain sank down his spine. His right arm fell, slamming against the table, limp and useless. His fingers were still inches from the pistol. He gagged as some unknown force yanked his head back and forth like a frenzied dog. Unable to move on his own, the cold realization that he was paralyzed washed over Riley Cooper.
A flaccid cheek pressing helplessly against the table, he could see the heavy hips of a female figure wearing tight spandex pants. The woman. He should never have let himself lose track of her. She clicked on a flashlight and tapped the toe of a white running shoe on the concrete as if annoyed that he was taking so long to die.