“Your team’s dead, Moshe. Was that worth it?” Ritter asked. The twelfth Israeli was unaccounted for, and Ritter hoped either that Mike had killed him or that he was dead below decks.
“All our lives are forfeit for the greater good of Israel,” Moshe said. He stepped from the container and knelt behind Mike, using him as a human shield between him a Ritter. He kept his pistol pointed at Mike’s temple. “Problem is, Mike didn’t get the launch codes for us before everything went sideways. So, you’re going to call Shannon and give us the codes, and we’ll let you two live.”
Mike tapped two fingers onto the knuckles of his right hand. Behind.
“Moshe, I know Bronislava. She’ll sell you the codes,” Ritter said.
Moshe’s face contorted with rage, and he extended his arm to point the pistol at Ritter. Mike’s head snapped to the side, and he sank his teeth into Moshe’s arm. Mike shook his head with the furry of a striking crocodile. Moshe dropped his pistol to the ground and struck at Mike.
Ritter whirled around and found the last Israeli, his rifle aimed at Ritter.
Ritter fell backward and fired in sync with the Israeli. Ritter’s shot caught the ambusher in the throat. The Israeli hit Ritter in the shoulder.
Ritter felt the sting of the bullet and fell on his back. He had a half second before the real pain set in. He used his uninjured arm to raise the pistol over his head and rolled onto his side.
Moshe stood over Mike, who still had his teeth sunk into Moshe’s arm, and was pounding the bound man in the head.
Ritter shot Moshe in the face. The back of his head burst onto the deck behind them. Moshe stumbled back a step, then toppled over.
Ritter’s shoulder felt like someone had stuck a red-hot fork in it and started stirring. The bullet had dug a quarter-inch divot from the flesh over his shoulder. It bled freely, and the pain gripped his entire upper body in a vice.
Mike appeared over him. His lip was split, and blood had soaked into his beard.
“You okay?” Ritter asked.
Mike nodded and slapped a bandage onto Ritter’s wounded shoulder, then put another bandage over that. Mike sat Ritter up and propped him against a cargo container. Mike slouched down next to Ritter and pulled a tin of chewing tobacco from a pocket. He tapped it against his hand with three snaps and pushed a wad of the foul-smelling black bits into his gumline. He held the tin out to Ritter.
“No, thanks.” Ritter ground his teeth and hissed. His shoulder was spasming.
“Flesh wound. Don’t be a pussy,” Mike said.
Ritter focused on his breathing to take his mind away from the pain. They sat in silence for a minute.
“Hey, you know how to steer this thing?” Ritter asked.
Mike shook his head and spat on the deck.
“Cavalry’s coming. Be here in a couple hours,” Mike said.
“You think we can go home after that?”
Mike shrugged.
An hour and a change of blood-soaked bandages later, Mike and Ritter waited at the helipad as a navy Seahawk helicopter approached. Ritter and Mike went to their knees, and Mike put his hands behind his head. Ritter did his best to mimic him with his one good arm.
Men in gray scale camouflage and ski masks jumped from the Seahawk and pointed MP5s at them. Red dots swirled on Ritter and Mike’s chests.
One of the masked men approached and yelled, “Garnet!” over the helicopter.
“Obsidian!” Mike answered.
The man lowered his weapon. “That’s your ride.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder to the helicopter, and Ritter let out a long sigh.
The rest of the new arrivals, anonymous beneath their masks, filed past Ritter and Mike without interest or another word.
Ritter and Mike climbed into the helicopter. The crew chief had to strap the wounded Ritter to his seat. The sailor refused to speak with, or even look at, Ritter and Mike after they took off from the cargo ship.
A nuke and a cruise missile were in the Caliban Program’s possession. Deep down, Ritter didn’t feel like the world was a safer place for it.
Chapter 9
There was no good way to look debonair with one’s arm in a sling, Ritter decided. Dressing himself without his dominant arm was a challenge, and he’d had to wear his suit jacket over his right shoulder like it was a shawl. The staples holding the bullet wound on his shoulder together nagged at him, as much for the itching as for the reminder of how close he’d come to getting killed. Again.
Eisen Meer kept a number of doctors on retainer, all well known for their respect of patient confidentiality. An elderly Austrian doctor had tut-tutted over him as he sealed the cut on his face with skin adhesive. Gluing a wound shut struck him like something infantrymen would do, not a doctor with a wall full of diplomas.
The same doctor had cleaned out the rest of his wounds and given him prescriptions for painkillers and antibiotics. He took only the latter. The doctor promised Ritter’s arm would heal completely in short order as long as he didn’t pop his staples or “have another workplace accident,” as the doctor so gently put it.
Ritter shifted from foot to foot as the elevator hummed upward. Shannon gave him a day to get patched up, then ordered him back to the office immediately afterward. Vienna wasn’t the same place for him anymore. There had always been a threat from foreign intelligence agencies against him and the office, but after the bloody mess with Moshe and his team, he had a new enemy. If Mossad and the Israelis decided to retaliate, the action would be swift and brutal.
Ritter felt useless in the city. His sling made him stand out like a sore thumb, and ditching a tail was nearly impossible for him now. He wouldn’t favor himself in a fight with a common mugger, much less one of Mossad’s assassins.
The elevator to the Eisen Meer office opened, and Ritter stepped past a pile of boxes and packing material outside the reception desk. Through the Plexiglas walls, Ritter saw more boxes taped up and labeled for shipping. Office workers were clearing out their desks and packing their contents away. A man in overalls was scraping away the company’s name from the wall with a painter’s spatula.
“Hello, Mr. Ritter,” Pfennig said from her desk.
“What did I miss?”
She frowned and buzzed the door open. “Ms. Martel is waiting for you in the vault.”
Ritter pushed through the first door, and all the offices in the back, where the real work of the team was done, were vacant. Even the pile of spent juice boxes and empty potato chip bags from Tony’s office was absent.
The vault door was ajar. Shannon sat with her back to the door; it was a horrible bit of tradecraft that would have earned him a slap on the back of the head from Carlos or Mike. The only other things in the room were a table with a teleconference speaker and an empty chair. He pulled the door open with a grunt and stepped inside.
“Shut it,” Shannon said.
Ritter complied, and the door locked itself with a pair of heavy clicks. A red light on the ceiling switched to pale green.
Shannon wrapped her arms around Ritter and hugged him close, careful not to touch his injured shoulder. Ritter, surprised by this sudden display of affection from her, managed to pat her on the back. Her hair smelled like vanilla and lilacs.
She leaned back and ran a finger down the side of Ritter’s injured face.
“It adds character, but… no. We’ll have a plastic surgeon look it over. Can’t have you with a scar there, now can we?” she said.
“I’m building up a collection,” Ritter said.
“Sit, sit.” She tapped perfectly manicured fingernails on the empty chair seat. Ritter eased himself into the chair. Everything hurt today.
Shannon smoothed her skirt and nibbled on her bottom lip.