Dragunov thought that over, believing Gil dead and realizing he’d be no match for Kovalenko’s rifle once the sun came up. “What do you propose, traitor?”
“You in your car, me in mine — now! While it’s still too dark to see one another. I reverse, you go forward, and we both live to fight another day.”
Dragunov decided to let discretion be the better part of valor. “On three?”
“We count together!”
Together they counted: “One… two… three!” Then each man darted for his car.
With no idea what the hell had been said, Gil heard Dragunov come scrambling from the rocks. When Dragunov jumped into the car, he reasoned what must be going on and moved quickly around to the passenger side where the door still hung open.
Dragunov nearly shot him when he appeared. “Get in! I thought you were dead!”
Gil got in, and Dragunov gunned the motor before he even had a chance to close the door.
“What the hell was all that about back there?”
“We called a truce before it got light,” Dragunov said. “Kovalenko doesn’t want to risk being caught by the police, and I couldn’t fight him without a rifle. If I’d known you were still alive, I would not have agreed, but at least this way we can beat him to Messina.”
“How do you know he won’t change his plan?”
“The rest of his men will be waiting for him in Rome.”
In the beam of the headlights, Gil saw clothes hanging on a line in front of a house up ahead. “Stop there. I need a new shirt.”
Dragunov pulled to the side and Gil jumped out, grabbing a shirt and some socks to use for bandages. They were under way again a few seconds later.
“Do you guys have a safe house in Italy? Someplace I can get stitched up?”
“Don’t you, American?”
Gil shook his head. “Pope still has no idea who we can trust in Europe. I can’t risk being tracked.”
“I thought you said the GRU was just as bad.”
Gil was shrugging out of his shirt. “You said they were clean. Besides, any port in a storm, Ivan. I won’t be effective for long unless I get this fixed.”
Dragunov shifted gears. “You killed one back there, yes?”
“Yeah.”
“Good, Vassili. Maybe you Americans would have given us a fight after all.”
Gil wrapped a sock around his wound. “Yeah, well, I’m glad we never had to find out.”
“It does not matter,” Dragunov remarked a few moments later. “There would have been nothing left for anyone. We always knew that. It was all a stupid waste. War is a stupid waste.”
“So why do we love it so damn much?” Gil wondered.
Dragunov smiled in the light of the dash. “That is a good question.”
11
Thirty-eight-year-old Daniel Crosswhite was a former Green Beret captain, former Delta Force operator, and Medal of Honor winner, but since his discharge from the army almost two years earlier, he had devolved into someone less than a model citizen.
Just months after his return to civilian life, he and former Navy SEAL Brett “Conman” Tuckerman formed a two-man vigilante squad, dressing up at night as FBI agents to knock over drug dealers in the cities of Detroit and Chicago, killing a few of the hapless dealers in the process. They were ultimately apprehended in Chicago by the Eighty-Second Airborne Division during that city’s brief period under martial law, which had been imposed in response to the menace of nuclear terror then gripping the nation. Only the timely intervention of Robert Pope — director of the Special Activities Division of the CIA — had saved them from life in prison. In exchange for covering their tracks, Pope had required they assist Gil Shannon in his hunt for a Russian RA-115 “suitcase” nuke. Sadly, Tuckerman was killed during the hunt, leaving Crosswhite to carry out further missions alone.
What Pope had never known, however, was that in the moments before Crosswhite’s and Tuckerman’s apprehension by the Eighty-Second, they managed to hide a half million dollars beneath the foundation of a dilapidated building, and Crosswhite had long since returned to Chicago to retrieve it. Now he lived in relative obscurity back and forth across the California-Mexico border, having fallen off the grid and mostly out of contact with both Shannon and Pope.
However, as an avowed adrenaline junky, he had also made it known in the right circles that his services were available on the international mercenary market — if the price was right.
It was two in the morning, and Crosswhite lay naked on a hotel bed with his arm around an equally naked Mexican prostitute when his cellular chirped on the nightstand. With a curious glance at the clock, he sat up and switched on the lamp. The adrenaline began to pump as he read the lengthy text message, supplying him with names, flight numbers, and the location of a CIA drop box in San Diego, where he would find the money to cover his expenses should he decide to accept the mission.
“You gotta be shittin’ me,” he muttered.
Crosswhite replied at once, confirming his acceptance and his intention to begin immediately. Setting aside the phone, he reached for a powder-covered mirror on the nightstand. He used a rolled-up hundred-dollar bill to snort a thick line of cocaine and then reached over and gave the girl a sharp slap on her backside. “Up at ’em, baby! We got shit to do!”
The twenty-three-year-old girl woke up pissed, taking a swat at him and missing as he got off the bed. “Pendejo! Don’t fucking hit me when I’m sleeping!” Her name was Sarahi. She had obsidian eyes and long, raven hair. “Pinche puto!”
He stopped short of the bathroom and whipped around, his devil-may-care grin splitting his handsome, dark face. “Hey, you wanna take a fuckin’ trip with me, baby?”
She sat up, her gaze narrowing with suspicion. “Where?”
“Fuck you care, where? The fuck outta here! That’s where!”
“You gonna pay me?”
“Hell, yes. Now get that hot little ass into some jeans. I just got a mission, and the CIA pays fucking bueno, baby!”
Her eyes lit up like black fire. “CIA money?”
He laughed. “Yeah, CIA money. Now get your ass moving, you sexy little bitch. We’re on the clock!”
She did a couple quick lines of coke and then sprang out of bed, reaching for her jeans. They were dressed and out the door a few minutes later.
Crosswhite fired up his black Jeep Wrangler and sped out of the hotel lot.
“So where we goin’?” she asked, opening her purse.
“San Diego.” He lit a cigarette and tossed the lighter onto the dash. “I gotta pick up some dinero.”
“Can we stop to see my tía?” She pulled down the vanity mirror to check her makeup.
“We don’t have time to visit your fucking aunt, baby. This is a goddamn mission.”
“A mission to do what? What kind of mission?”
He stopped at a light and looked at her, his face suddenly serious. “We’re gonna kill a motherfucker, baby. We’re gonna kill a motherfucker, and it’s gonna be the most exciting, most dangerous fucking thing you’ve ever been involved in.”
She stared at him, thinking at first that he was joking. When she saw that he was not, she felt her pulse quicken. “Is it legal?”
“Legal!” He laughed again. “Baby, this is the CIA. Whatever you can get away with is legal.”
“What if you get caught?”
He took a drag from the cigarette and flicked the ash out the window. “Well, if you get caught, that’s just your tough shit.”
“Then we ain’t getting fucking caught,” she said, looking back into the mirror. “How much are we getting paid?”