“The house is on fire,” cried Chopra.
He wasn’t kidding. The stench had already grown unbearable, and the staff members were rushing out into the yard, screaming and talking on phones. Sirens began to sound in the distance.
“You have the keys to that car?” asked Chopra. “Give them to me. I’ll be ready to get us out of here.”
“Sure, I’ll trust you with those,” she said. “Come on.” She rose and fired some covering shots to drive the men down as she ran from the tree to the car, just ten meters. The thugs returned fire, the rounds booming and ricocheting as she threw herself behind the back wheel. Chopra and Hussein charged up and crouched behind her. The old man could barely catch his breath, and the kid wasn’t faring much better. This was probably more exercise than they’d had in a year.
With a pop and hiss both tires on the opposite side of the car went flat.
“There goes our ride,” said Hussein.
The Snow Maiden cursed, looked back at Chopra, and handed him the car keys.
“Thanks a lot,” he spat.
Two thugs. No escape plan. And Patti’s intel was obviously worthless.
She closed her eyes for just a moment. Took a breath. All right, she’d been in worse situations. Time to go on the offensive.
The Blackhawk could not land on the hovercraft and didn’t have enough fuel left to engage in a slow, one- by-one extraction of Brent’s team via the hoist.
So Brent had no choice but to cut loose the pilot. The hovercraft was equipped with two small Zodiacs for emergencies, so he and the others would launch them and head back to Dover, where Dennison said she’d have them picked up.
“Wait, getting something else now,” she told Brent, showing him streaming video from a house near Dover that was now on fire. “Reports of an explosion and gunfire. Not sure if it’s related.”
“It has to be,” said Brent, watching as his people prepared the two Zodiacs for launch. “Can you get me some ground transport once we reach the harbor?”
“I’m on it. But don’t get your hopes up, Brent. This could just be something else. Looters? Who knows…”
“They pulled a switch at the restaurant, so they didn’t get very far, I’m telling you.”
“I’ll see if there’s any other air support available. If we can get another chopper over there, we might have a shot.”
Chopra flinched as another bullet burrowed into the car and sparks flew somewhere above him. He crouched tightly near the rear wheel, keeping Hussein close to his side. He draped an arm around the boy, who threw the arm off, saying, “You’re not my father. And that’s creepy.”
“Who are they?” Chopra asked the Snow Maiden, whose expression had formed a tight knot of intense thought. “Did you hear me?” he added, raising his voice.
“Stay here. Don’t move,” she said, then shifted around the car, out of sight.
“We can make our break now,” Hussein said. “We’ll run back to the house. Hear that? The fire department’s coming.”
“We’re staying here,” said Chopra. “And if those guys out there are her enemies, they might be our friends.”
“You know, you got a point,” said Hussein.
“Finally, you’re willing to listen to the old man.”
Hussein snorted. “For now.”
“Your father was a great man.”
“That was random.”
“You can be as great…”
A fresh spate of gunfire made Chopra lean out from behind the car.
He gasped.
The Snow Maiden had darted across the street, drawing the fire of one man while the other ducked back behind his car. She made it all the way across without being struck, or at least it felt so, and then she dropped onto her belly and glanced ahead, where she spotted a pair of legs.
She propped up the rifle, held her breath, and fired a three-round burst, striking the man in the ankle. He cried out, went down, and that’s when she rushed up, around the car, and ran straight at him.
He looked at her and began to bring around his gun, only the eyes showing beneath his green balaclava.
Her rounds drummed evenly across his chest, forming a perforated slash mark, and he flailed back like a leaf in the wind. She ran by, searching for the other guy, the kill as instantaneous and robotic as that.
She was taking a hell of a risk, all right, betting that the kid and the old man would be too scared to take off. Her attention was now divided between the car across the street and the row in front of her.
Then she saw it, movement just head. The tiniest portion of a green balaclava showed above the trunk of an old Mercedes. She threw herself beside the nearest car, rifle at the ready.
“Hey, fool,” she shouted in Russian. “Tell Green Vox to stop wasting my time.”
“You’ve already told him,” the thug replied. He’d chosen to speak in English but his accent was thick and familiar; South American, she knew. “I’m Green Vox!”
“Sure, whatever. It doesn’t matter. But let me ask you — how’d you find me?”
“You’re sloppy. You’re just very sloppy.”
She gritted her teeth. “Izotov’s helping you, Nestes. Isn’t he?”
“Do you want to talk now or embrace in death?”
“That’s dramatic. Unfortunately your death won’t be. It’s all very routine.”
“I’m glad you remember me…” Surprisingly, he shifted out from behind the car, rifle pointed skyward. He wrenched off his mask to reveal a bearded face and piercing blue eyes.
Jose Nestes (not his real name) was a drug lord from Colombia who had joined the Green Brigade Transnational in an attempt to form a splinter group he called “the Forgotten Army.” Nestes’s dream was to lead a terrorist organization large enough to undermine the efforts of the superpowers themselves. He claimed to have brought together several of the world’s most notorious terror organizations, including Hezbollah and the Taliban.
But Green Vox — or at least the original one the Snow Maiden had worked with — had rejected this idea, in favor of his ecological agenda. He fancied himself as more of a noble terrorist trying to save the planet than a crime lord trying to undermine the global economy, a goal that in and of itself seemed rather laughable to her.
Yet Nestes, if he was being honest, had somehow seized the Green Brigade’s reins and was, quite possibly, steering the group in another direction.
“I want to make a deal with you,” he said. “You know I’m serious, because you could kill me right now. We don’t have time to discuss details. But we need to talk.”
“If you wanted to make a deal, then why didn’t you just drop by for tea?”
“Can you blame me for trying to kill you? There’s a bounty on your head. A huge one. Didn’t you know that?”
“You’re right. We don’t have time for this.” She rose and started toward him, lifting her rifle.
He brought his rifle down and aimed at her. She should’ve shot him, but his offer sounded strangely intriguing, so here they were now, in a standoff.
“I guess we both die,” he said.
“Yeah, but you die first, and I always get the last word.”
The Snow Maiden’s cell phone began to ring. She cursed.
“That wouldn’t be Patti calling, would it?”
She froze.
In shock.
If you knew about the
