“Yo, Alex, wake up,” Lou said, snapping her out of her reverie. “I’ve started the clock already!”
In a mock-up of a house, built on one of the club’s ranges, targets on springs were popping left and right from behind doors or corners, and, if they would have had real weapons, she’d been dead and buried by now. She touched the red button that stopped the simulation and took her earmuffs off.
“Lou…”
“What, if anything, could get you to focus tonight?” Lou asked, ignoring her plea.
“Never mind that,” she deflected masterfully, “tell me where the others are, and why I am the only one taking this abuse from you right now.”
“You were the most advanced in your training. They have a lot more to endure before they can even attempt to pass this certification.”
“Free translation of what you just said is that I’m the only one who got suckered into being here tonight, right?”
“No, I meant it when I said—”
“Lou? Don’t lie to me,” she said, waving her index finger at him and noticing he couldn’t control a chuckle. Busted!
“OK, now that we know where we stand,” Alex continued, “let’s just go home and sleep. Morning is when sleep is the sweetest, and we’re wasting that, and lots of ammo.”
“Nope, we’re staying and finishing this,” Lou replied, turned all serious.
“Really?” Alex protested in a childish voice. “I mean, really?”
“Yeah, really, ’cause otherwise you’ll have to start this all over again some other night, and it will be just as painful. Finish this exercise and I’ll stay off your back for a year!” Lou said, offering her a bone. “Well,” he immediately corrected himself, “except for the monthly gun proficiency, and the weekly self-defense training exercises that are mandatory.”
“Argh…” Alex replied, her face taking an exaggerated expression of frustration. She reloaded her weapon with a new clip.
“How can I get you to focus?” Lou asked again.
She thought for a little while, then turned to the range master who waited patiently behind the yellow line, and asked, “Do you have a red marker?”
“Yeah, sure, here you go.”
She took the marker and went inside the range, where she drew the letter V on all the targets.
Then she came back and grabbed her gun, assuming position at the start of the simulation. “There! That will get me focused.”
“Your mystery Russian?” Lou asked. “You really think he’s still out there?”
“I’d bet my life on it,” she said, frowning.
Her mystery Russian had been on her mind for more than a year, yet she’d made no real progress in finding out who he was. He was the one she couldn’t catch, not yet, anyway. He was a genius mastermind of terrorist plots, creating strategies that sent everyone else hunting shadows and looking in all the wrong places. He was bold, he was majestic, he was grandiose. His plans were spectacular in size and scope.
She’d come close one time; so close that she almost found out who he was. But no, he was gone again, disappeared, and even Mossad had failed to find out more about him. All it knew was that he was Russian, despite his association with Islamic terrorist factions, that his name started with the letter V, and that he was brilliant.
He never used his credit cards for anything; he rotated through his staff, team, or people to pay for things, or however else he could manage to exist in places without leaving a shred of financial evidence. She had tried to identify him like she’d caught others, by running financial tracking software against known locations of terrorist activities, and seeing which names showed at more than just a few. But no, he was too smart for that. All she could find was that at every location of such an attack or conspiracy, there was always one or more Russians traveling, but never the same ones. She tried to find out what, if anything, all these Russians had in common, and came up empty. Nothing. Coincidence? No. The bastard was that good.
And he was that dangerous… In one case, she had definite proof of V’s anti-American interests. That’s the closest she’d ever come to catching him. Then, in her latest case, she couldn’t prove anything, but it felt like him. The terrorists she did catch wouldn’t talk, but their plans had that greatness. Their strategies had that exceptional quality, an uncanny brilliance she’d since learned to associate with him, with the mystery Russian whose name started with the letter V.
She wanted nothing more than to catch him, and her mind could barely focus on anything else. At her house, she had a timeline wall with notes, dates, and entries of all related incidents and bits of information she could gather. She spent countless hours staring at the crazy wall covered in pictures, paper clippings, and sticky notes, all tied up with colorful yarn showing the correlations among them. She stared at that wall for hours, making zero progress. In the meantime, she felt she somehow managed to disappoint everyone, let everyone down. Her team, her Agency family, they all thought she was becoming obsessed with him, with her Russian ghost, and they were losing confidence in her. Because of her obsession with V, she’d broken up with Steve, and her heart still ached. V was ruining her life. He was real, dangerous, and, for sure, keeping busy. And she couldn’t goddamn catch him. Fuck!
She felt a wave of anger rushing adrenaline through her veins, switching her brain into high gear, rendering her wide-awake. She checked her clip with a couple of quick moves and said, “Ready.” Lou started the simulation, and she went in, taking down target after target. She moved fast, left no survivors, and wasted no ammo.
“Cease fire, cease fire,” she heard the range master’s voice, followed by the familiar alert horn.
“Oh, God… what now?” She just wanted the exercise to be over with. Two more minutes and she would have been done.
She approached the range master. “What’s up?”
“It’s your phone, miss. It’s been ringing nonstop. I thought it would go to voicemail, but it keeps on ringing. Must be an emergency, at this time of night.”
She unzipped her duffel bag and took out her phone. Seventeen missed calls! Before getting to see whom they were from, the phone rang again, and Blake Bernard’s name and picture displayed on the screen. She picked up.
“Blake!”
“Alex, thank God!”
“What happened? What’s up?”
“No time now,” he said, his voice sounding desperate. “I need you badly. I’m flying in; I should be landing in 45 minutes or so at San Diego International. Come meet me, please.”
“Sure thing, on my way.” She hung up and stared at the phone’s screen, concerned.
“Who was that?” Lou asked.
“Blake Bernard, our former client, the financier. I’m sure you remember him; you two share a name. He’s in some kind of trouble. We’re leaving now.”
…14
Dr. Gary Davis shifted his weight from one foot to the other, tensing his muscles to restore blood flow. He trotted gently in place, then stretched on his toes and extended his arms above his head, as if reaching for something hanging high from the ceiling. Then he relaxed his arms and shook them gently, welcoming the refreshed blood flow in his veins.
He didn’t dare to move; he couldn’t see anything in the pitch-black darkness of the hole they’d been thrown into. He didn’t want to step on any of his cellmates. The other two were lying somewhere on the cold, concrete floor. In the time that had passed since they left the aircraft, they had learned to sense each other’s presence in the nightly blackness of their confinement.