to knee her, hard, in the small of her back. She went down on all fours.
The black-jacketed motorcyclist was pivoting toward her, the Glock leveled at her head when Jax’s fist caught him under the chin, snapping his head back. Jax pounded him again and again, knocking the Glock flying and sending him stumbling backward toward the top of the stairs.
“You sonofabitch,” said Jax, landing a roundhouse kick that caught the assassin just above the ear. He wavered a moment, then tumbled back, falling heavily against the wall before pitching awkwardly down the rest of the concrete steps.
“That guy needs to learn to stay away from stairs,” said Jax, breathing heavily. He swung back to Tobie. “You all right?”
“Yeah. Just winded,” she said, wincing slightly as she tried to straighten.
Picking up the Glock, Jax went to stand at the top of the steps and brought the knuckles of his right fist to his mouth. “The sonofabitch,” he said again. “I hope this time he broke his neck.”
Andrei Gorchakove’s voice drifted up to them from the bottom of the stairwell. “From the looks of things, I’d say he did.”
27
“How did he find us here?” whispered October.
Jax threw her a warning frown and shook his head. “Just let me do the talking, okay?”
“I don’t know what it is you’re always so afraid I’m going to say,” she hissed as they walked down the stairs to where Andrei stood leaning against the grimy concrete wall, the dead man at his feet.
At their approach, Andrei reached inside his jacket and came up with a half-empty pack of cigarettes. “Must you always leave a trail of bodies wherever you go, Jax?”
“Body. One body.”
“What about the two motorcyclists the militia found on the road from Rybachy?”
“Motorcyclists?”
“The ones who shot up your Lada.”
“Ah. Those guys.” Jax hunkered down to study the dead man’s ruddy-cheeked face. Wide and sightless blue eyes stared up from beneath straight, sandy-colored brows. It was the motorcyclist from the cathedral.
Andrei stuck a cigarette between his lips. “Ever see him before?”
“No,” lied Jax, pushing to his feet. “Any idea who he is?”
“You tell me. He’s not carrying ID, but I checked the labels on his clothes. They’re American. If this is one of your terrorists, Jax, I’d say Washington needs to rethink some of their suppositions about what’s going to happen come Halloween.”
Jax stared beyond Andrei, to where the blue-and-white militia van waited, its Tatar driver beside it, beefy arms crossed at his chest. “I must be losing my touch. I’d swear I wasn’t being followed. Either by you or”-he jerked his head toward the dead motorcyclist sprawled at their feet-“by him.”
Faintly smiling, Andrei pushed away from the wall to saunter outside. He reached beneath the Lada’s right front fender to come up with a small black box with an antenna.
“Shit,” said Jax. “How did that get there?”
“After I dropped you at the cathedral, I had every car rental agency in the area notified that you might be coming. They were told to give you the ‘special.’”
“It’s nice to be predictable.”
Andrei struck his lighter, his eyes narrowing against the cigarette’s harsh blue smoke. “Did you find anything?”
“Not really.”
Andrei nodded to his driver. “You won’t mind if we verify that?”
The Tatar patted down Jax’s pockets and drew out the fax from Turkey. “Well, there was that,” said Jax.
His jaw silently bunching and flexing, the Tatar grasped October’s bag and upended its contents across the hood of the Lada.
While Attila pawed through her iPod, passport wallet, lip balm, and sunglasses case, October said, “The tracking device explains how you found us.” She jerked her head toward the dead man in the stairwell. “But what about him?”
“Perhaps he was here waiting for you.” Andrei took one last drag, then dropped his half-smoked cigarette to grind it beneath the sole of his boot. “Come. You have a plane to catch.”
“Are you done with my bag?” said October. When Andrei nodded, she scooped up her things and shoved them back inside.
No one had even glanced at Jasha Baklanov’s business card.
Jax stared out the wide plate-glass window at the darkened runway below. The window was filthy, streaked with water marks on the outside and smeared by children’s sticky fingers on the inside. Andrei had personally escorted them to the departure section of Kaliningrad’s decrepit airport, and he didn’t seem to be going anytime soon. Jax had been reduced to calling Matt from the men’s room to ask him to look up a guy named Kemal Erkan in Turkey, and to pull Baklanov’s cell phone records.
Standing now beside Jax, the Russian lit another cigarette and blew out a long stream of smoke, his gaze on October. “So tell me about the woman,” he said quietly.
Jax cast a glance at where she sat on one of the departure lounge’s hard chairs, her head bent over a Chinese textbook. “What about her?”
“She’s pretty, but she doesn’t seem like your type.”
“What’s my type?”
“Tall, long-legged. Very high maintenance.”
Jax gave a short laugh. “We’re just working together.”
“I thought you liked to work alone?”
“I do.”
Andrei’s eyes narrowed with amusement as he drew on his cigarette. “We might get further if we cooperated on this, you know.”
“I am cooperating.”
“You just forgot about the fax in your pocket, did you?”
Jax kept his gaze on the runway, where a plane was slowly taxiing in, its landing lights winking out of the darkness. “According to Anna Baklanov, the captain’s sixteen-year-old nephew was supposed to be on the Yalena. But I don’t remember seeing a boy in the militia photos of the dead crew.”
Andrei frowned. “You think the boy was cooperating with the terrorists?”
“I suppose it’s possible, but I doubt it. According to his widow, the captain was like a father to the boy.”
“The killers could have thrown his body overboard.”
“True. But, why him?”
“Maybe he went over the rail when he was shot.” Andrei ground out his cigarette. “Why are you so interested in this boy?”
“If he’s alive…”
“He’s not alive.”
There was a stirring amongst the assembled passengers as a uniformed woman appeared at the gate. “You’re in luck,” said Andrei. “Only an hour late.”
He stood for a moment watching Jax shoulder his carry-on bag. Then he said, “You’re going too easily, Jax. I think you found something else-something you’re not telling me. What happened to detente? Glasnost? International cooperation and the New World Order?”
“I don’t know anything you don’t know.”
Andrei glanced at October. “Are you kidding? I still don’t know why she’s here. Her Russian is better than yours, yes. But yours isn’t as bad as you like to pretend. So why is she with you?”
