The third man said something angry to Viktor. Viktor swung his rifle around and fired a quick three round burst. Then he turned on the other and shot him as well before he could react.
"Whoa," Lamont said.
The white snow turned red around the bodies. Viktor brought the gun to bear on them again.
"Maybe you used up all your ammo," Nick said.
Viktor laughed. "There are more than twenty rounds left. More than enough."
He gestured with the rifle at Ronnie and Lamont. "You and you. Pick those two up and put them in the first car. Don't try for a weapon or I will kill you."
They did as he said, first one body, then the other. They put both dead men in the front seats.
"Close the doors. Good. Now come back over here."
They came back and stood next to Nick.
"You're making a mistake," Nick said.
"I don't think so."
"So Josef was right? The Russians are behind this?"
"Mitreski is simply preserving order," Viktor said. "The Russians are helping us keep our country from becoming another puppet of the West."
"Oh," Selena said. "I see. You would rather be Moscow's puppet instead."
"The time when America could tell everyone what to do is over."
"What about the Macedonians who want a new government?" Selena asked.
"There are always troublemakers, people who don't understand what is good for them."
He raised the rifle. "Get in the car with my former comrades. All of you."
Ronnie fell to his knees and held up his hands, pleading. "Please don't kill us. We can help you."
Viktor sneered at him. "Help me? Look at you. You can't even help yourself. Stand up. Die like a man."
"No, no, please."
Ronnie ducked his head. His hand moved up behind his neck and there was a sudden glint of steel in the air. His throwing knife buried itself under Viktor's chin.
Viktor stumbled and choked, blood spurting out the front of his throat. He grasped at the knife with his left hand. His right hand with the rifle dropped away and the gun fired into the ground. Viktor fell onto his back, pawing at the knife. His feet twitched in the snow and then he was still.
Ronnie stood up and brushed snow from his knees.
"I forgot about that little sticker you keep back there," Lamont said.
"Most people miss it if they do a search," Ronnie said.
"No, no, please? Where did you get that line?" Nick said. "Out of a grade B movie?"
"Hey, it worked didn't it? What do you want, an Oscar performance?"
Selena went to Ronnie and kissed him on the cheek. "I thought you were great."
Ronnie blushed.
Nick turned on his satellite phone and held it up.
"No signal. Let's get out of here," he said. "I'm cold."
"Let me get my knife," Ronnie said.
He went over to Viktor's body and pulled out the blade. He wiped the blood off on Viktor's jacket and looked down at the body. The friendly smile of the helpful guide was gone, replaced by a contorted grimace of death.
"We never did get that coffee he promised," Lamont said.
CHAPTER 17
Stephanie sat at the wide console that controlled the enormous power of the Crays lined up behind her, staring at the lines of code filling her monitor. The room was cold with the air conditioning that kept the computers happy.
The chill Stephanie felt went far deeper than the number on the thermostat.
A cup of coffee cooled on her desk, forgotten. The lines of code displayed in front of her might as well have been written by aliens from Mars for all the sense they made to her at the moment.
She couldn't stop thinking about the ambush that had almost killed her and made her lose the baby. Physically she was healing but the unseen effects were another story.
It would be Christmas soon. She thought about how she would have been in her third trimester, shopping for a baby that now would never come. The doctors had told her she could have another, that there was no damage to prevent a healthy pregnancy. The words were meant to comfort her but were a poor substitute for the child she'd lost.
She'd been in surgery for more than six hours. For a while afterward the pain and the drugs the doctors gave her kept her from thinking clearly. She'd been numb, unable to embrace the reality of her loss. Then the dam cracked and the emotions had flooded in, a dark mix of anger, frustration, grief and guilt. It was a tossup as to which one was the strongest.
Her anger could find no outlet. The men who had violated her were dead. The man who had sent them was dead. There was no one left to go after, to punish. No one to take out her frustration on, no way to satisfy her desire for justice. She'd never seen the men who'd shot her, never seen their bodies. One minute she'd been happy, riding into town with the man she loved to have dinner with her friends. Then there'd been noise and pain and fear and darkness.
She'd woken in the hospital to the certainty of loss. She'd known the baby was gone before they told her. Over the next few weeks she'd struggled with mood swings and the hormonal changes that came from having the baby ripped from her body before its time. She'd swung back and forth between rage and grief, between helplessness and the urge to strike out at someone, anyone.
Thank God for Lucas, she thought.
Without Lucas it would have been worse. He'd shown patience she hadn't dreamed he possessed. They had grieved together. When she lashed out at him for no reason he took it calmly. When she cried, he didn't try to tell her that everything was going to be all right.
As soon as they could handle the physical stress, they'd both immersed themselves in work, Lucas in his job as Director of National Clandestine Services at Langley and Stephanie here at Project headquarters. Work was the only way she could think of to prevent what happened to her from happening to someone else. The man who had caused her so much grief was dead but there were many others like him. Men who cared about nothing. Men who lacked basic human empathy. Men who had to be stopped.
Before the ambush that had been her job. Now it had become her mission.
She felt the grief waiting and pushed it away.
Come on, Steph. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
Stephanie forced herself to look at the monitor. She was writing a program to penetrate the sophisticated cyber security protecting China's satellites. The Chinese were very good at what they did with computers. They had succeeded in hacking into millions of Washington's restricted files, even into the White House. But they were not quite good enough to get into the Project files. She had blocked several attempts to bypass her firewalls, most of them coming from Beijing. Cyber espionage was a constant game of offense and defense, played by a small group of world class hackers who stood above everyone else. Every advanced nation had one or two. Stephanie was part of that elite company.
She picked up the cold coffee and set it back down. Elizabeth came into the room.
"I brought you a fresh coffee."
"You must have been reading my mind. I was just going to make a new pot."
Elizabeth handed the cup to Stephanie. There were deep shadows under Steph's eyes. She looked as if she was a mile away.
"What are you working on?" Elizabeth asked.
"I'm designing a program to get through the firewalls the Chinese have built around their satellite servers. If it works like I think it will, we could take out any of their satellites anytime we wished."
"The Pentagon would love that."
"Beijing has been trying to break into our servers for months," Stephanie said. "It seems fair that I return the favor. Besides, it makes me feel like I'm doing something to fight back."
"Fight back?"
"Against all those evil bastards out there who want to mess things up for everyone. When someone tries to break my firewalls it feels personal. It makes me want to get back at them. In this case it's the Chinese."